By the Author

The Cherry Pit (1965)

Lightning Bug (1970)

Some Other Place. The Right Place. (1972)

The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks (1975)

Let Us Build Us a City (1986)

The Cockroaches of Stay More (1989)

The Choiring of the Trees (1991)

Ekaterina (1993)

Butterfly Weed (1996)

When Angels Rest (1998)

Thirteen Albatrosses (or, Falling off the Mountain) (2002)

With (2004)

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Lightning Bug - Text copyright ©1970 Donald Harington

Some Other Place. The Right Place. - Text copyright ©1972 Donald Harington

The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Text copyright ©1975 Donald Harington

The Cockroaches of Stay More - Text copyright ©1989 Donald Harington

The Choiring of the Trees - Text copyright ©1991 Donald Harington

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

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eISBN: 978-1-61109-436-7

Table of Contents

The Joyful Noise of Donald Harington

Donald Harington’s Grand Jamboree

Lightning Bug

Some Other Place. The Right Place.

The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks

The Cockroaches of Stay More

The Choiring of the Trees

About the Author

The Joyful Noise of Donald Harington

No oeuvre in American literature, past or present, can equal the combination of joy, humor, and wonder contained in Donald Harington’s fifteen novels. He is America’s Chaucer. Ever since I first discovered Harington’s work twelve years ago, I have expected each new novel to be the one that brought its author the literary awards and acclaim his work deserved. When With came out in 2004, I told a fellow writer that if the novel didn’t win the Pulitzer or National Book Award, it would be a damning indictment of our nation’s literary sensibilities. Yet With appeared and disappeared with hardly a review, much less any award. The novels Fred Chappell described as “an undiscovered continent” remained so. Chappell made that comment over a decade ago and, unfortunately, little has changed.

My hope is that this republication of Donald Harington’s work will finally bring him not just literary acclaim but a large popular audience. Harington’s mythical town of Stay More is a delight for any reader to visit. As with Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha, each novel reveals more about the place. We meet generations of Stay More’s denizens. We learn the town’s history, and not just of its humans. Animals and ghosts reveal their place in Stay More’s existence as well. Even the cockroaches weigh in with their perspective. As John Dryden once said of Chaucer, “ ’Tis sufficient to say, as according to the proverb, that here is God’s plenty.” Best of all, though we can leave Stay More, a switch in tense will not allow Stay More to leave us. As Harington once explained in an interview, the use of the future tense “is specifically designed to help prevent the book from ending, because anything in the future tense does not end.”

Donald Harington died in November 2009. During his lifetime, he did not get the recognition he deserved, but perhaps, finally, the time has arrived for the continent to be discovered. Those of us who love and revere Harington’s work call ourselves Stay Morons. Delve into one of these novels and you will likely become one too.

—Ron Rash

Donald Harington’s Grand Jamboree

Right here at the beginning I want to say that I loved Donald Harington, loved him as both a human being and a writer. He filled these essential roles magnificently. What he offered as man and writer was manifold and multisided: passion, laughter, dignity, sensuality, pride, playfulness, honesty, intelligence, a huge capacity for appreciation, and an astonishingly fertile and original imagination. In both capacities he had wonderful style, too.

Although once he took me through the campus of the University of Arkansas–Fayetteville and into a handsome old building to show me the big, shadowy room where for decades he had taught courses in art history, I never saw what Don was like in that classroom, and have always been curious about it. Because he was severely hearing-impaired, he could not have depended much on class discussions. So I wonder if, on many, many days, he did not turn off the lights, project a series of blown-up slides onto a screen, and go through for the benefit of all, including himself, the central act of art history professors: to muse aloud, speculating, thinking, describing in eloquent and ravishing detail what he saw on the surfaces of the paintings. I bet he burnished those paintings with the richness and sensitivity of his responses to them; I bet he made them glow. His students, most of whom would have had no idea their professor was a great novelist, must have loved him; I bet the accuracy and emotional depth of his responses to works of art every now and then moved a couple of them to tears.

Don Harington was a master of language to whom the rhapsody, the elegy, and the soliloquy were native nearly from the first, and because he always had a sort of down-home experimental sense, an innate tendency to push the formal boundaries and subvert the usual narrative structures, the way he built his words into phrases and his phrases into sentences and paragraphs always seemed fresh, vital, moving. It was as though the complexity and power of his thoughts and feelings demanded that he move into extravagance and daring. He took risks most novelists of his vintage would never have considered, firstly because of their sheer difficulty, secondly because to most American writers these techniques were simply unimaginable. (But not so to Marques, Milorad Pavic, Javier Marias, or a clutch of other non-Americans.) Yet Harington never really feels like an experimental writer. He is always anchored in the basic stuff of storytelling, in ongoing, interconnected accounts of bawdy, painful, comic, mysterious human relationships in a thoroughly defined and witnessed locale.

The setting for nearly every scene in every one of the sequence of novels beginning with Lightning Bug is the village of Stay More (in two cases morphed into Stick Around) in the Arkansas Ozarks, which Harington sometimes liked to call the Bodarks. In the same spirit, he liked to insist that the residents of his state should not be called Arkansans, but Arkansawyers. Hamlet may be the right term for Stay More. It is a tiny ville out in the boondocks, too tiny to appear on any map and so friendly in the backcountry way that when visitors declare the intention to depart, its citizens say something like, “Stay More and have some food with us.” These citizens are sometimes referred to as Stay Morons, though not because they are at all moronic. In fact, their inventiveness, high good humor, and love of life propel them through scrape after scrape, adventure after adventure (many of these erotic), and novel after novel, from 1969’s Lightning Bug to Enduring in 2009.

Perhaps not so much anymore in these days of sensibility watchdogs alert for signs of offensiveness, people who, like the inhabitants of Stay More, lived in tiny hamlets in the Ozark Mountains, did not have electricity or running water, made their own liquor, owned guns, were almost entirely self-sufficient, and spoke in a pungently colorful regional dialect (“If I had the sense God gave a chipmunk, I’d get up and get Joel’s gun and shoot ya.”), were once commonly known as hillbillies. And hillbillies were a national joke, two-dimensional rubes with bare feet, a jug in one hand and a rifle in the other. They were cunning but not very smart. From the thirties through the sixties, the cartoonist Al Capp, an urbane type from New Haven, Connecticut, had a lot of cornpone fun with hillbillies named Li’l Abner, Daisy Mae, Moonbeam McSwine, who with many others of their kind lived in his fictional Dogpatch. Donald Harington didn’t object to having his characters referred to as hillbillies; in fact, the term seemed pretty accurate to him, but when Don thought of hillbillies, he didn’t see the uncomplicated denizens of Dogpatch or even the slightly less comic-strip Lum and Abner, Arkansas yokels popular on film and radio. Instead, he saw fully developed human beings with rich interior lives who happened to inhabit a particular region.

Harington had a particularly insightful and comprehensive understanding of that region, but he did not grow up there. He was a city boy from Little Rock who every summer was sent up into the mountains to visit his relatives in the tiny village of Drakes Creek. I think that is why he understood the region and its people so thoroughly, but also so poetically, so generously, with such passionate yearning: he was an outsider. For a writer, outsider status confers certain built-in advantages. The single most representative case I can think of is F. Scott Fitzgerald, who grew up on the fringes of a moneyed world in Buffalo, New York, and St. Paul, Minnesota, and at seventeen went to Princeton, where he pressed his nose so firmly against the glass he nearly succeeded in passing through it. In Fitzgerald, all the magical glamour and beauty of the very blond, very blue-eyed, and very wealthy emanates from the whole-bodied yearning for immediate assimilation on the part of the bright young man from the provinces who stands posted, hair combed and eyes wide open, on the sidelines. He’s hoping you cannot see that he is memorizing the codes of speech, dress, and manners of the golden children of America’s gentry.

As an outsider, I mean, a boy whose urban background must have aroused at least some degree of wariness amongst the natives of Drakes Creek—who nonetheless had to grant him semi-native status as “Jimmie’s boy” (Jimmie being his mother)—the young Harington was positioned to take in the mores and language of a way of life he found both deeply entertaining and deeply rewarding. The other half of this process, as for Fitzgerald at Princeton, involved the thorough internalization of the so ferociously and joyously observed. Although you are not and never can be the Other, you do become a version of the Other.

Harington beautifully described this bittersweet, ambivalent process in a 1994 interview published in the Appalachian Journal. “I am too educated to be a hillbilly…I forfeit my hillbilliness in order to write novels about hillbillies. It is some consolation that certain characteristics of hillbillies—fierce independence, shyness coupled with loquacity, a wry if not sardonic humor—remain in my bloodstream, remain in my genes, and permit me never to forget what it is like being a hillbilly, at the same time that they deprive me of complete objectivity about hillbillies. I can’t laugh about hillbillies because I am still laughing with them.”

In the same interview, Harington also reveals that in Drakes Creek, he read like a demon. For hours each day, he parked himself on a swing chair at the end of his grandmother’s porch and devoured novels by Twain, Dostoyevsky, and Faulkner. One after the other. In a swoon of pleasure, aided by an absolute separation from the familiar, daily self. I really do think that this is how it’s done. At the age of ten or twelve, the true, the most dedicated, the fated reader, the reader destined for a life at the forge, disappears into the text and can be pulled from it by only the need to pee or the necessity of eating something. This is how you begin to create a literary sensibility, by gorging on stories other people have written, the best stories you can find. Later, at seventeen or eighteen, you begin to notice how these great writers go about doing things, how they use language, how they set up episodes that grow into scenes, how chapters begin and end. Something like this movement from rapture to awakening would certainly have been going on in young “Dawny,” Jimmie’s boy—that nice, good-looking kid from the city who spends so much time reading books on his grandmother’s porch.

Reviewers have often described Harington as a regionalist, and although if you squint it is possible to see him that way, when applied to him the label has always struck me as a sort of confinement. Harington is not a writer like Zona Gale, Hamlin Garland, or August Derleth. He is bigger than that, weightier, trickier, more inclusive, less solemn. Calling him a regionalist has always struck me as inaccurate as it would be to say that Stephen King, too, is a regionalist because most of his books are set in Maine. I don’t even think Harington wrote southern novels, particularly. He lived in the South, yes, and his novels are set there, but his fiction does not feel like the work—as different as these writers are from each other—of Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Reynolds Price, Walker Percy, or Harper Lee. Though it is just as deeply felt as the work of any of these fine writers, Harington’s fiction is more aerated and propulsive, more effervescent, bawdier, more playful, more open to transformative brainstorms. He’s like a weird combination of Twain and Nabokov—I can almost imagine Twain deciding to write a novel about anthropomorphized cockroaches, and Nabokov’s influence, visible everywhere in Harington’s work, emerges undisguised in one of my favorite Harington novels, Ekaterina, an inversion of Lolita set in the daffy, ebullient resort town of Eureka Springs.

My absolute favorites here, though, are Lightning Bug, Some Other Place. The Right Place., The Choiring of the Trees, and Enduring. The first and the last of the Stay More novels, plus the second and the fifth. He was thirty-five on the publication of Lightning Bug, and seventy-three on the publication of Enduring, which looks back over the thirty-nine years between it and the first of its kind and remembers every word and phrase. (It remembers every bit of all the other novels, too, for in it all of their characters and each of their situations parade right past the reader, chapter by chapter, as—in a literal parade—does every single character in The Sun Shines Bright, John Ford’s own favorite of all his films. In both cases, the effect is almost unbelievably moving.)

Thirty-five years of age, more or less geriatric senility for tennis players but springlike youth for novelists, is an excellent time at which really to stretch your arms and see how much of the world you can encompass. Harington just simply parachutes into the first pages of his novel, calling them “Beginning” (later followed by “Middling” and “Ending”) and slipping in a lovely, reverberant line of stage direction:

From a porch swing, evening, July, 1939, Stay More, Ark.

So we have a tone, immediately, and I believe it to be the tone of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which is to say that of the ordinary and everyday imbued with the miraculous and eternal. By way of beginning “Beginning,” Harington then sets up what is seen and heard from that porch swing, and does so with great tenderness and patience, concentrating first on the most musical element of the scene, the delightful, ravishing, complex sounds that reach the boy on the swing, who bears his own name but is not he.

Music and musicality have a prominent role in the Stay More novels. Those odd part-titles indicate “Movements”; the conversation of lovers at the end of the book will be in adagio un poco mosso. And the first words in the entire Stay More cycle are:

IT BEGINS WITH THIS SOUND:

…which is that of a screen door, instantly familiar to anyone who has ever lived with or near one, “a plangent twang,” which Harington represents as “WRIRRRAANG,” and tells us that it “seems to evoke the heart of summer, of summer evenings there in that place” just before he drops down a line space and delivers the next bit of stage setting:

IT BEGINS WITH THESE PEOPLE:

Grover’s Corners may be in New Hampshire, but it is not far distant. In place of Wilder’s stage manager we have the omniscient narrator, who both is and is not Donald Harington, a young writer discovering new muscles he had (I bet) always hoped and secretly known he’d had, and doing so by the foolproof method of paying close, reverential attention to everything near at hand, especially that which he most loves, in this case the village postmistress, Latha Bourne, “the heroine, the demigoddess, of this world.”

The narrator, the grown “Dawny,” says, “I love to look at Latha Bourne, which is something I do more often than anything else, except sleep. Maybe I disturb her, looking at her so much.”

In all of Thornton Wilder’s work, there is no Latha Bourne. Nor in Saul Bellow’s, Philip Roth’s, or John Updike’s; and not in David Foster Wallace’s, Michael Chabon’s, or Jonathan Lethem’s; and certainly not in mine. In American fiction written by men, women with such powerful moral and erotic force fields tend to be manipulative, untrustworthy, unreliable, if not treacherous, and witchlike. It is unimaginably difficult to create a universally loveable female character, a woman taken to be ideal, even as she is a normally functioning human being. It cannot be done by cheating, by which I mean by craft alone—the writer must be fully present, completely open and engaged, vulnerable to his own creation. The only other such female character I can think of now is Lady Glencora Palliser, whom Trollope burnishes to a warmly persuasive glow over the six “Parliamentary” or “Palliser” novels.

The emotional honesty and readiness that permitted the creation of Latha Bourne, along with an even more stunning level of ambition and an even greater degree of imaginative immersion, went into shaping Some Other Place. The Right Place. into—to put this as simply as I can—one of the great American novels of the era that followed World War II. It was the first Donald Harington novel I read, and it both puzzled me deeply and opened my eyes to what was formally possible in the English-language novel. Whatever this writer thought he was about, he was fearless.

In the early seventies, while I was living in London, I read a review of SOP.TRP., to use Harington’s own shorthand system for his titles, in the daily Times. The reviewer liked and admired the novel, that much seemed certain, but he appeared to be less positive about his grasp of the book than reviewers (especially male English reviewers, especially in the Times) ever wish to seem—the impression I had was that the man was not at all unhappy to feel that he had been left on the shore of some greater understanding than had been granted him.

This attitude makes a lot of sense. I don’t think anyone is capable of discovering all the secrets of SOP. TRP., of seeing what informs its various narrative feints and dodges, in a single reading. It is much wiser, as well as much more generous, to be open to the possibility that there is more to be learned than it is to feel that the failure to understand a work of art immediately means that the work must be muddled. So it muddled you; so what? Doesn’t that, on the whole, just make it more interesting?

Something like this reasoning caused me to visit my local library and withdraw the Jonathan Cape edition of the book I was too poor to otherwise obtain. I read it over a couple of days. Certain parts of the last hundred pages, I read two and three times. I was under no illusions that I understood everything about Harington’s novel, yet I felt enriched by it. The book seemed luminous to me. About eighteen months later, I bought a copy of the mass market paperback, tricked out to suggest that the book was a horror novel. That misleading little edition endured three or four more rereadings over the next two decades. Then another publisher brought out nice trade paperback editions of the Stay More cycle, and I bought and read it again. Finally, Don and Kim Harington appeared on my doorstep on August 4, 1998, and Don surprised and moved me by presenting me with an inscribed first edition of the book. The next day I saw something new in a jacket I had looked at dozens of times previously: In Wendell Minor’s gorgeous jacket painting, the grain of the canvas is visible through the orange and green of the trees, the yellow-green of the marshy grass, and the glowing red of Diana Stoving’s red Porsche 911E. Through the ravishing representations of the imagined world hangs the pebbly texture of the painter’s ground and medium. The visibility of the underlying canvas is a steady, omnipresent reminder of the fictionality of the images. This reminder only makes them more beautiful. They are simultaneously real and imagined, and the dichotomy/dialogue between these two irreconcilables speaks of a lost, more perfect world.

The central, most famous paragraph in the novel, which Harington knew by heart and can be seen reciting, in his late-manner deaf man’s accent, on YouTube a few years before his death, poses the issue more directly:

“Oh, this is a story of—you know it, don’t you?—a story not of ghost towns but of lost places in the heart, of vanished life in the hidden places of the soul, oh, this is not a story of actual places where actual people lived and dreamed and died but a story of lost lives and abandoned dreams and the dying of childhood, oh, a story of the great host villages of the mind, a story of untold stories, oh, of lost untellable stories, of a boy who loved a girl whose villages had been abandoned, of a boy who took a girl on a long outing to the town of lost dreams, of a boy who wanted to help her find her hidden It, oh…”

He then drops down a line to complete the long sentence in a new paragraph the length of a single phrase:

“…a story of a boy who tried but then lost her.”

Well, in a way; but as you will see, what was lost is also forever held, contained, and protected. Toward the end of this novel, just at the moment Harington moves, as he always did, into the future tense, SOP.TRP.’s long-deceased but still lively main character interrupts the narrative to turn to the sorrowful life of Harington, his author (now “G”), recently alerted by his doctor to allergies involving dust, mold, weeds, trees, dogs, cats, brunettes, book paper, bananas, and babies (though not, alas, bourbon), and that he has achieved a condition “like a town… on the verge of becoming a ghost town.” Thereafter, he is sent spinning off to the Bodarks in search of his lost heroine, Diana Stoving. After he finds her, she miraculously recognizes him as the author of Firefly and recounts to him, step by step, the entire story of the present novel. At that point a mystery occurs: Through the voice of the dead poet Daniel Lyam Montross, whose entire Selected Poems takes up a long, central portion of the novel, SOP.TRP. itself begins to speak to “G” and explains the connection between Montross and the until-now unexplained rescue of the lost child-G, or “Dawnie,” from the forest at the end of Firefly/Lightning Bug.

And everything else, too: for everything else worth explaining is contained in that story. Donald Harington lived by stories—rich, humane, emotion-freighted stories that touch our deepest chords. More than that, he knew that we live by stories, too.

—Peter Straub

For William Styron

il miglior fabbro

Cogito, ergo sum.

DESCARTES,

Discourse on Method, iv.

Fear boys with bugs.

SHAKESPEARE,

The Taming of the Shrew, i.

By lust alone we keep the mind alive,

And grieve into the certainty of love.

ROETHKE,

“The Motion.”

Movements

Beginning

MIDDLING

ONE: Morning

SUB ONE: Recently

TWO: Noon

SUB TWO: Twenty and Eighteen Years Ago

THREE: Afternoon

SUB THREE: Seventeen Years Ago

FOUR: Evening

SUB FOUR: Fourteen Years Ago

FIVE: Night

SUB FIVE: Now

Ending

Beginning

From a porch swing, evening, July, 1939, Stay More, Ark.

IT BEGINS WITH THIS SOUND:

the screen door pushed outward in a slow swing, the spring on the screen door stretching vibrantly, one sprung tone and fading overtone high-pitched even against the bug-noises and frog-noises, a plangent twang, WRIRRRAANG, which, more than any other sound, more than cowbells or distant truck motors laboring uphill, more, even, than all those overworked katydids, crickets, tree frogs, etc., seems to evoke the heart of summer, of summer evenings, of summer evenings there in that place, seems to make it easy for me to begin this one. WRENCH! WRUNG! WRINGING!

IT BEGINS WITH THESE PEOPLE:

the girl coming out through that twanging screen door, prettied up fit to kill in her finest frillery, swinging her fine hips once to clear the returning screen door being closed by that pranging, wranging spring. Her name is Sonora. The way these folks say it, it sounds like “Snory” so that is what I shall call her. She does not live here; just visiting, for the summer, with the woman who is presumed to be her aunt, who is at least the sister of the woman who is presumed to be her mother, Mandy Twichell, of Little Rock, where Sonora lives and goes to school with the rich city kids. She is a very pretty 17, with red hair even, but I am not yet certain that I like her very much. I guess the reason I don’t like her too awfully much is that she is inclined to tease me, if she ever notices me at all. One time when nobody was around, she reached down and chucked me right in my generative organ, and twitted, “My, Dawny, for such a little feller I bet you’ve got a big one!” Imagine. If she weren’t essential to the plot, I would be happy to exclude her entirely from this world.

the woman sitting on the porch, the woman presumed to be Sonora’s aunt. Her name is Latha, with the first “a” long, and one would conceive that it might be spoken “Lay-thee,” in view of the way Sonora’s name comes out as “Snory” but there have been only one or two people who have called her that. She is Latha. Miss Latha Bourne, the postmistress of this place—and the heroine, the demigoddess, of this world. I am not certain yet just how old she is, but she’s old enough to be Sonora’s aunt, or her mother, for that matter, and she’s at least three or four years older than my aunt, who is 35. My aunt thinks that Latha Bourne is “crazy as a quilt,” but we shall have to see about that.

the boy sitting in the porch swing, trying to make out Latha Bourne’s exquisite face in the pale light coming from kerosene lanterns within the house. He is a tousle-haired little whippersnapper, five going on six, who is not related to either one of these females, although he has in common with Sonora that he is just visiting, spending the summer with his aunt, who lives up the road a ways from Latha’s place. He comes down here every evening and sits in that porch swing and watches people, until either somebody runs him off or his aunt calls him home. His name is Donald, but the way they say it, all of them, is “Dawny.” He likes to come to Latha’s place in the evenings because she is a great teller of ghost stories, but mainly he likes to come to Latha’s place because he is in love with her, and will always be, even when he is old. Even when he is old, the thought of her will give him twitchings and itchings [and the only way he will ever exorcise her, the only way she will ever give him any peace, is for him to write a book about her, who is, it should be obvious by this time, the Lightning Bug].

IT BEGINS WITH THIS SETTING:

the house of Latha, which is also the combined store-post office of Stay More, a community of some 113 souls in the Ozark mountains of Newton County, south of the county seat, Jasper, and the lovely village of Parthenon, west of the village of Spunkwater, north of Demijohn, Hunton and Swain, east of Sidehill and Eden. [One must not attempt to find it on a recent map; one may find Newton County, and one may find Jasper and Parthenon and Swain, but one shall not find Stay More—not because it is some screwball name that I made up in my own head, but because today it is nothing but a ghost town, almost.] The origin of the name is obscure. Although the expression is common parlance among the natives of that region, as in, “Don’t be rushin off, Dawny. Stay more, and eat with us,” it is not certain that this connotation was intended by the founders of the town, Jacob and Noah Ingledew, who came from Warren County, Tennessee, in 1837. Some conjecture that these brothers, with prophetic foresight, realized that the village might eventually become a ghost town, and hence the name was meant not as a mere invitation but as a plea, a beseechment. During the last years of its status as a U.S. Post Office, it was resolutely spelled “Staymore” by the postal authorities, over the protests of the postmistress.

It straddles two green-watered streams of small, good fishing water, Banty Creek (a variant, “Bonny Creek,” appears on some maps), the smaller, which empties, near the center of the village, into the larger, Swains Creek, which empties into the Little Buffalo River to the north. In this year, 1939, a crew of W.P.A. men is constructing a cement bridge for Banty Creek where it crosses the main road. There is no bridge on Swains Creek; to reach the schoolhouse one must drive through water over the hubcaps…or walk across a precarious foot-log. The roads, all of them, are, of course, only dirt and gravel.

The business census back in 1906–07 listed the following: Ingledew’s Commissary—Drugs, Groceries, Hotel, Livery and Notary; Jerram’s General Store; two other general stores; three blacksmiths; two physicians, Alonzo Swain and J.M. Plowright; two dentists, Sam Forbes and E.H. Ingledew; William Dill, Wagonmaker [one must remember this one]; Noah Murrison & Son, Sawmill & Gristmill; and the Swains Creek Bank & Trust Company.

Now in 1939 there is only this: Lawlor Coe, Blacksmith; Latha Bourne, General Store and Post Office; Colvin Swain, Physician; E.H. Ingledew, semi-retired dentist (he pulls but no longer fills); J.M. Plowright, fully retired physician; and what is left of the big Ingledew store, which old Lola Ingledew still runs single-handedly (she lost the other hand in an accident at the sawmill) only for the purpose of providing some slight competition for the store of Latha Bourne, whom she detests with every fiber of her being, or something like that. Last year industry came to Stay More in the form of Oren Duckworth’s Cannon Factory, on Swains Creek near the schoolhouse. This opens in June and employs 20 men and women, canning beans during June, and canning tomatoes in July and August; the cans are sent unlabeled to Kansas City where a Big Name Food Processor attaches his own label. The factory does not produce cannon; it is simply known as The Cannon Factory.

The post office is at the head of what would be called Main Street were it not just a dirt road with a few buildings on either side, half of them vacated, especially the bank, a stone edifice whose broken glass window stares the post office in the eye all day long. A traveler passing rapidly south on the main road might miss the post office entirely; it is set back in a kind of hollow a hundred feet up the road that goes to Right Prong and Butterchurn Holler, the same road that my Aunt Murrison lives on. At the foot of the main road is the big old half-empty unpainted Ingledew Store. Lola Ingledew, sitting on the front porch of her store, can squint fiercely and count the number of men on the front porch of Latha’s store, a quarter of a mile away.

Latha’s store is small; the whole building has only five rooms: the large room with the post office boxes and counter at the front end and the merchandise everywhere else; her sitting room, to the left, her bedroom behind it; the spare bedroom, to the right, where Sonora sleeps; and the small kitchen.

A porch runs the whole length of the front. On it, tonight, we are sitting, I in the swing, Snory in the straight-back rush-seated chair, Latha in the rocker, rocking, some.

IT BEGINS WITH THIS MOOD:

[Hell, who has never known a summer evening? But anyway:] from the distance, cowbells are dully clapping thing-thang in dewy fields and shadowy thickets; evening milking is done, and the cows move back to pasture.

From the yard grass, from all around, from everywhere up and down the valley, chirps of bugs scrape cracklingly up, and croaks from the creek, and peeps from the trees; you learn to recognize the instruments of this chorus: the tzeek-tzek-tzuk of katydids, the irdle dee irdle of crickets, the tchung of the tree frogs, and that old jug of rum by the bull frogs.

A watermelon seed drops on the porch floor, bounces twice. Sonora smacks her lips and draws the back of her hand across her mouth.

The air is all blue. All the air is blue. The night is hot, more than hot, but blue is cool.

Latha tells Sonora that she looks very pretty tonight.

My dog—Gumper isn’t my dog, but he belongs to Uncle Murrison, who is my host, and he follows me around—Gumper comes trotting up and climbs the porch and slobbers on the floor. He is an ordinary hound, and he smells. I am embarrassed for his smell. Sonora kicks at him, and Latha swishes her arms at him and makes a noise in her throat, “Gyow hyar!” which means, “Get out of here” but is the only way the dog would understand that. Gumper puts his tail between his legs and bumps down off the porch; he walks to the great oak in the yard and lifts his leg against it and waters its roots profusely and audibly: another sound for the summer night. Later he sneaks back onto the porch from the side, and curls asleep beneath the swing I’m sitting in.

Latha asks Sonora who does she think she might go out with tonight?

Sonora says we will just have to wait and see.

Other sounds: someone, far off, trying to start a car. Farther off, the bugle-baying of a treeing dog. And more crickets and katydids and tree frogs, faster because of the heat, louder because it’s hot.

The blue air carries all the smells of the summer night, which even obliterate the powerful smell of Gumper sleeping below me. The blue air is full of green things, strange wildflowers and magic weeds, and of creekwater, and of some dust and motor oil mixed with the dust and wild dew. Especially of the dew, which is the creekwater and dust and wild green things all liquefied together and essenced and condensed.

Gumper, in his torpid contentment, makes the mistake of striking the floor noisily with his wagging tail. Another thumping sound for the summer night, but because of it he is once again evicted.

“Git home, you smelly dawg!” I holler after him.

His disappearance brings out the cats. From all over: black and striped and marmalade, and gray and white and calico. I’ve never counted, but I think Latha feeds something like two dozen cats. They make no sounds to contribute to the summer night’s chorus, but their indolent grace is a decoration, they festoon the porch rail and the porch and the shrubbery with their sensuous, writhing forms. Some people keep a lot of cats because they like cats, but Latha keeps cats because she likes to watch them fuck. I know this for a fact.

And now, as the blue of the air darkens, the lightning bugs come out. At first, as with stars, only one or two (and I would as soon wish upon a lightning bug as upon a star), but then, quickly, dozens and hundreds, until the air of the yard, of the road, of the meadow across the road, of the creek beyond the meadow, is filled with them. There are at least 35 different species out there, flashing their cold yellow-green light, and each species uses a different signal system of flashes. Contrary to popular belief, the purpose of the flashing light is not guidance, nor illumination as such, but purely and simply to make “assignations”: the males fly around in the air, advertising their availability; the females wait immobile on leaves in bushes and trees, and if they spot a flash coming from an eligible bachelor of their own species, they return a flash whose signal has the same intervals.

[I was disturbed recently to learn from a fellow of my acquaintance, an intelligent person from Andover, Massachusetts, that he had never heard of a “lightning bug.” When I described this creature to him, he replied, “We call those fireflies.” This bothered me so much that, at considerable expense to myself, I asked the Thomas Howland Poll organization of Princeton, New Jersey, to conduct a nationwide survey. The results satisfied me: 87% had definitely heard of “lightning bugs,” 3% had heard of lightning bugs but thought they were insects who made thundering noises, 7% had never heard of a lightning bug, 1% thought it was an automobile, and the remaining 2% had no opinion.]

What is most uncanny is that the interval of the flash is dependent not only on the species, but also on the temperature of any given night. The bugs flash twice as frequently on hot nights as on cool nights. Thus, the brilliant female must not only memorize the signal of her own species, but also know exactly what the temperature is. Otherwise, if she flashes the wrong response and attracts a male of a different species, the only thing she can do is eat him.

The male of the species is fickle. As soon as he engages the female in procreative recreation, she obligingly turns off her luring light. But if any other females happen to be flashing their lights in the vicinity, the busy male will quickly disengage himself, as per coitus reservatus, and take off after the competing lady.

Some species of lightning bugs do not eat at all after becoming adults; the adult stage is only for the purpose of procreation; they become adults, they flash, they fuck, they die. This has nothing to do with Latha. She lives.

The lightning bug, or firefly, is neither a bug nor a fly, but a beetle. I like bug because it has a cozy sound, a hugging sound, a snug sound, it fits her, my Bug.

Deep in the dark blue air sing these lives that make the summer night. The lightning bug does not sing. But of all these lives, it alone, the lightning bug alone, is visible. The others are heard but not seen, felt but not seen, smelled but not seen [I have bottled a sample of that air and sent it for analysis to the Meredith Olfactory Laboratories of St. Louis, whose Dr. S.I. Coryell is the leading authority in differentiation analysis, but his report is of little help: “This specimen is broken down as follows: 1.09% glucosides extract from chlorophyll of various field weeds, primarily Datura stramonium, or Jimson-weed; 2.03% fragrance of clover-blossom; .08% fragrance of alfalfa; .04% essence of hay, primarily Timothy and Johnson Grass, probably new-mown, but not wholly discrete from residues of same included in .009% bovine excreta; .0085% effluvium of stream water with traces of crayfish, bass and bream, and limestone; .00076% excretion from human sweat glands; .00034% miscellaneous excretions from a canine male animal, possibly a hound; .00026% excretions, mingled, from several diverse feline animals, male and female; .00017% traces of oestrus secretions in various mating reptiles and insects, including .000002% exudations of the insect, Photinus pyralis or other species of the Family Lampyridae, fireflies. There is also a trace of emanation from the rubber seal on the Mason jar in which you sent the specimen, but apart from this, Mr. Harington, I regret to say that I cannot positively identify the larger proportion of components, and I would be pleased if you would inform me where and when this specimen was taken.”] That air, that blue magical scented balmy air, is the world, the habitat, the home of the lightning bugs. And of my Bug.

IT BEGINS:

one by one, or together in pairs or groups, the boys come. In his dad’s car, a ’36 Chevy coupe with rumbleseat, is Oren (“Junior”) Duckworth, Jr., and his brother Chester. These are the best-looking. On foot, and separately from different directions, arrive the triplet sons of Lawlor Coe the blacksmith, Earl, Burl & Gerald. You should know that the way they say “Gerald,” he rhymes with his brothers. Gerald will die a hero with the Marines at Iwo Jima in 1945. These brothers look just alike, which is not much to look at: inclined to pudginess, and over-freckled. Alone on foot comes John Henry (“Hank”) Ingledew, Bevis’s boy, nephew to dead Raymond Ingledew, who was Latha’s beau a long long time ago. Then comes the W.P.A. gang, who are staying with the folks of Merle Kimber, who is a W.P.A. boy himself (and who rhymes with the Coe triplets, though he’d just as soon not); he and Leo Dinsmore are the only ones from this valley; the others are Furriners, which means that they don’t come from this valley: Clarence Biggart comes from Madison County and is even a married man, so is J.D. Pruitt, who comes from someplace up north in Newton County, Eddie Churchwell and Dorsey Tharp are from downstate somewhere.

Here are a dozen boys. They have each said, politely, “Howdy, Miss Latha,” and they have each said, warmly, “Howdy, Snory, honey,” and a few of them have even said, “Howdy, Dawny.” One of them, Eddie Churchwell, teases me. “The boogers are sure gonna git you tonight, Dawny boy. I seen one down the road, a-comin this way, and I figgered he was out after me, but he tole me he was comin to grab you.” I titter.

They stand around. There are three empty chairs on the porch, but the boys do not sit in these. Some of them sit on the porch rail, brushing the cats aside, but most of them just stand around, some of them in the yard.

Merle Kimber spits. As if on signal, each of the others, in turn, spits. After a while Merle Kimber spits again, and one by one the others do. Clarence Biggart has a reason to spit, because he is chewing tobacco, but the others spit because…well, because I guess it makes them look manly, although you’d think that if they keep that up long enough, night after night, we would all of us drown in it by and by. Maybe the spit is a kind of advertisement, maybe a substitute for all the sperm they’d like to get rid of.

It is professional spitting. I have tried to do it but can’t. A certain snap of the tongue squirts it out through a crevice between the front teeth, in such a way that it goes in a straight stream and lands intact and compact. When I try to spit, it splatters all over. Any one of these boys could hit a horsefly from five yards away. Naturally, they are spitting only into the yard, not upon the porch. Inside, over the post office boxes is a printed sign, KINDLY DO NOT EXPECTORATE UPON THE FLOOR, but I don’t think any of these boys knows what that means, even if they could read; still, they are gentlemen, and know where to spit.

But Chester Duckworth, spitting, is momentarily careless: his blob alights on J.D. Pruitt’s shoe. J.D. hauls off with his fist and clobbers Chester a good one; soon they are scuffling in the grass, putting up a scrap not really out of belligerence so much as ostentation: they are showing off for Snory. J.D. is older by several years, nearly 21, but Chester is bigger. They smack each other around all over the landscape; J.D. chases Chester up the road, and after a while he comes back, huffing and puffing and rubbing his wounds. Later, Chester too comes back, acting like he was just arriving. “Howdy, Miss Latha,” he says, cool as buttermilk. “Howdy, there, Snory, honey. Howdy, boys. Howdy, Dawny, has that ’ere booger man not cotched you yet, tee hee?”

Merle Kimber spits. J.D. Pruitt says, “Hoo, Lord, aint it a hot night, though?”

Clarence Biggart says, “Yeah boy.”

Junior Duckworth says, “Hotter ’n Hades.”

Hank Ingledew says, “Might come a rain tomorra.”

Earl, Burl & Gerald Coe spit.

Eddie Churchwell says, “Well, now, boys…”

[Now if one has not been reading me carefully, one is anticipating that pretty soon Latha Bourne will start selling tickets and each of the boys will take Sonora into the house. One is not reading me at all.]

Eddie Churchwell says, “Well, now, boys, why don’t we just draw straws?”

John Henry “Hank” Ingledew slugs him square on the jaw. Then the big fight begins. Although Merle Kimber and Leo Dinsmore are local boys, they side with the Furriners because being a W.P.A. boy is more important than being a local boy. So it is six against six, our boys against theirs. Knock down, drag out, clear-to-Hell-and-back-again. Even though they are serious, and even though they are hurting one another, they are still essentially showing off for Snory.

I have watched this fight so often it no longer interests me. So I watch Latha and Snory watching it. Snory is feigning alarm, and even making little screaming noises. But Latha has the trace of a smile around the edges of her mouth.

What does she look like? She is dark, and of very fair skin. She is taller than average, and neither thick nor thin, but full-bodied, I suppose what you could call “shapely” though not in any way to make men whistle. [I cannot help but think of Vanessa Redgrave in Blow-Up, which of course is ridiculous, and possibly even an insult to Miss Redgrave, but I have no doubt that a highly paid make-up technician could take Latha and after some diligent and thoughtful work transform her into the spitting image of Miss Redgrave. As a matter of fact, I have before me—on the wall—a poster obtained for $1.00 from Famous Faces, Inc., Box 441, Norristown, Pa. 19404, depicting Miss Redgrave life-size from the scene in Blow-Up when she is about to allow herself to be laid by David Hemmings in order to “buy” his roll of incriminating negatives. She is wearing a dark hip-hugging miniskirt with a wide black leather belt. But she is topless, and out of modesty has hugged her arms around herself to cover her lovely breasts. She is staring out of the picture (and into the eyes of Hemmings?) with large eyes—with the expression of a very sweet and good girl who has done a bad thing and is now getting ready to do another bad thing because of it. (My Aunt Murrison always said, “Two wrongs never make a right.”) Not only have I seen Latha Bourne in that exact same pose, one afternoon when I barged in on her while she was dressing, but also I have seen Latha Bourne with that exact same expression…and, kindly believe me, that exact same beauty.] I love to look at Latha Bourne, which is something I do more often than anything else, except sleep. Maybe I disturb her, looking at her so much. The fight goes on, with grunts and thuds and slams and rips, but I don’t watch it.

Here are all of the known facts about her: she was born in Stay More, in a cabin on the east side of Ledbetter Mountain. (The post office is at the foot of the south side of the same mountain.) Her father, Saultus Bourne, was a subsistence farmer. He died of pneumonia in 1921 and lies buried in the Primitive Baptist Church cemetery on Swains Creek. Her mother, Fannie Swain Bourne, was descended from one of the original settlers of Stay More. She died of apoplexy in 1927 and is interred in the Church of Christ cemetery at Demijohn. Latha has two sisters, Mandy, who married Vaughn Twichell and lives in Little Rock, and Barbara, who lives in California but has not been heard of. Latha attended the Stay More grade school, first through eighth grades, then went to high school at Jasper. She was popular in high school, and at graduation she was unofficially engaged to Raymond Ingledew, a Stay More boy, but he joined the service and was killed in the Argonne—actually, he was only listed as missing, but he never did come back, although some people say that Latha is still waiting for him, which I doubt. Latha had already lost her virginity, at the age of eleven, to some third or fourth cousin of hers. (Well, as they say in this part of the country, a virgin, by definition, is “a five-year-old girl who can outrun her daddy and her brothers,” so I guess Latha was a late-developer or else just lucky—or, from another point of view, unlucky.) There was some gossip that as soon as she learned that Raymond Ingledew was reported missing Over There, she began to carry on again with that same third or fourth cousin, but nobody ever caught them at it. In any case, shortly after the death of her father, in 1921, she moved to Little Rock to live with her married sister, Mandy. About nine months after that, in May of 1922, she was committed in the Arkansas State Hospital at Little Rock, where she remained nearly three years. Her escape, in March of 1925, attracted some attention in the Little Rock newspapers. Although escapes from the A Ward, the B Ward, and even the C Ward were relatively routine, Latha was (and today remains) the only patient who ever escaped from E Ward. She was never captured. Some folks insinuate that she lived thereafter as a prostitute in some large city, possibly Memphis or New Orleans or St. Louis, but nobody really knows. In any event, she was never seen again until June of 1932, when suddenly she appeared out of nowhere back in Stay More, with a deed to Bob Cluley’s General Store which had recently been foreclosed by the bank in Jasper. Where she got the money nobody knows, though they’ve had a long lot of fun trying to guess. Two years after establishing herself as proprietress of the store, she applied for and obtained the post of postmistress, after the death of longtime postmaster Willis Ingledew, the father of Lola, who wanted the job and will always hate Latha for taking away what she thought was rightfully hers.

And that is all. Nothing has happened to Latha since. She has received, and rejected, proposals of marriage from the following: Doc Calvin Swain, Tearle (“Tull”) Ingledew, our village drunk, and a five-year-old boy euphoniously sobriqueted Dawny.

The fight is over. Our boys, as usual, have emerged victorious, bloody but unbowed. The W.P.A. boys are shuffling off up the road, declaring that they are going to a square dance at Parthenon where the real men are and the real gals are, and that besides you Stay More boys fight dirty.

Junior Duckworth is inspecting his tattered shirt and his dirt-caked abrasions. In front of Snory he holds his arms out as if to display himself, and says to her, “Aw, shoot fire, Snory honey, aint I a sight? I was aimin to take you over to Jasper to the pitcher show, but now it looks like I got to go home and git cleaned up some, don’t it?”

Junior and his brother Chester get into their car, and Junior sprays gravel letting out the clutch, and shows off some more turning the car around skiddingly like a maniac.

Earl Coe says to Burl Coe, “You want to see thet pitcher show?”

Burl Coe asks, “Is it Tex Ritter or Hopalong Cass’dy?”

Earl Coe says, “Hit’s ole Hopalong.”

“Sheeut,” says Burl Coe. “Noo, son, let’s see what’s doing up to thet thar squar dance.”

“Okey doke,” says Earl Coe, then turns to Gerald. “You, Jerl?”

“Fine and dandy,” says Gerald Coe.

The Brothers Coe say “See y’all around” to us, and amble off up the road.

That leaves Hank Ingledew. He spits, shuffles his feet, clears his throat. “Snory,” he says. “You keer to watch that squar dance, or somethin?”

“Or somethin,” she says, echoing, slightly teasing.

She stands up, walks down off the porch, takes Hank’s hand.

“See y’all,” says Hank.

“Night night,” says Snory.

“Be good,” speaks Latha. It is a formality; I do not believe she means it. In fact I think she means, “Be bad as you can!”

Hank and Snory walk off up the road, hand in hand.

It is easy enough to surmise that a girl of Sonora’s temperament, appearance and popularity might be inclined to promiscuity, but this is not the case. Unless I miss my guess badly, her body, if not her heart wholly, belongs only to John Henry Ingledew. When the other eleven boys are around, he is merely one of them, a rather reserved and inconspicuous member of the gang, but when he is alone with Snory he is her lover. I have watched them make love three times, once in a thicket on the other side of Swains Creek, once in the abandoned tavern up the road from Latha’s store, and once in the corn crib behind Latha’s place. It is a sight to behold. It is beautiful, and it is awesome, and it is only faintly disturbing to a boy of five whose immature penis can only envy such voluptuous recreation.

I think Latha lives vicariously in Sonora. The younger woman appears, to all intents and purposes, to be the Lightning Bug, but it is the older woman who lives in her and really appreciates it.

Latha and I are alone now. I rock the swing gently, my feet not reaching the floor. Latha holds in one hand a lovely silk handkerchief, which she has been using for the purpose of blotting perspiration from her brow. She stares off up the road in the direction Hank and Snory have disappeared. She raises the handkerchief to her mouth and grips a corner of it between her teeth.

Clouds march past the moon.

The blinking, flashing scintillation of the lightning bugs seems to keep a beat with the music from the grass and trees.

The music runs, and if I listen very carefully I can separate the instruments. They speak to her, my Bug, who does not hear them.

Only I can.

The katydids:

Cheer up, cheer up, Bug. Cheap luck, Bug, Sit your seat, Bug. Sweet seat, seat you sit, Bug. Sitting sucking sweaty sweet silk, sighing, Bug. Sweet sullen suffering Bug, sitting swept by swift Swains Creek. Creak your seat, Bug. Swing, swivel, swoop, sway. Switch, Bug, itch, Bug, twitch, Bug, in this tweeting twangling twinkling twilight!

The bullfrogs:

Bug, O come! Bug, a crumb! Drug a mug a some scummy jug a rum! Hump a stumpy rump! Thrum, you smug dumb Bug! Shrug your chummy bumps! Jump the rug’s numb lumps! Bug, Bug, O Bug, become! Hum, Bug, hum with your gums, you sluggish bummy Bug! O Bug, O Bug, O hugging, tugging, thumping Bug so mum!

The crickets and cicadas, in chorus:

Were you to stir your blurry fur and purr, O Bug, I would demur to slur you. Such verse is worse than Satan’s curse, but terse as all the universe. Disgust you must such lusty crust, and fussed, and cussed me for it, yet still I trust you will be just, and never bust me for it. Enough rebuff will make me gruff, and puff my cheeks in stuffy huff.

Sick. sick. sicksicksicksicksicksick.

Cheap. cheap. cheapcheapcheapcheap dirt-cheap

Cheer up. cheer up. cheerupcheerupcheerup chirp chirp

Wish. wish. wishwishwish

crick critic critter crotch

O Bug

“Tell me a story.”

“Sure, Dawny, but first I have to go out back.”

She rises. The screen door WRIRRRAARAANGS. She walks through her sitting room, through her bedroom. There is a faint distant wrirraanngg of the spring on the back door. She walks up the path, she climbs a few stone steps, she opens the door of the outhouse. It is, for some reason, a two-seater, I don’t know why. I doubt that she and Sonora have ever sat there together. I have never found them there together. (Yea, in my watchings I have even spied once there. From behind. From below.)

Tearle Ingledew comes staggering down the road. A man of 48, he is “The Bad Ingledew,” the one out of six brothers who has gone wrong. He has what they call a drinking problem, which means he is never sober. To me he is the Good Ingledew.

He stops before the porch, spreads wide his arms, and in a thick gravelly voice declaims, “Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast dove’s eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead. Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which come up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them. Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate within thy locks. Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men. Thy two breasts are like—”

I interrupt him, “She’s not here just now.”

“Who’s thet?” he says, dropping his arms and squinting in the dark. “Thet you, Dawny?”

“Yep.”

He sits on the bottom step. “Whar’s Lathe?”

“She’s takin a pee.”

“Oh.” He puts his elbows on his knees and cradles his chin in his hands. “S’funny,” he muses. Soon he rises up. “Wal,” he says, “I jest drapped by to give her my love. I’m off up towards Right Prong, to see if Luther Chism’s rotgut is done makin yet. Give her my love. You don’t let them fool ye, Dawny, about them boogers. They aint no sech thing. I know.”

He walks away.

Then—a moment later—what seems to be merely one among a million lightning bugs grows brighter and brighter, coming up the road. It is not a lightning bug but a flashlight. The light comes nearer; soon I can make out the arm holding it and then the figure of a man attached to the arm. The flashlight swings upward and plays for a moment upon the center of the sign attached to Latha’s store:

Then the flashlight beam swings along the porch until it comes to rest on me. I raise my arms to shield my face from the glare. I cannot make out the figure behind the flashlight, but something in me senses that he is a stranger, and I am slightly frightened.

“Howdy there, sonny,” his voice says, and it is unfamiliar but warm and friendly. “You must be Bob Cluley’s boy…or maybe his grandson.”

“Nossir,” I reply. “Bob Cluley don’t live here no more. He sold out back in 1932.”

“Do tell? Why, that was quite a ways back.”

“Yessir.”

“I notice they’ve moved the Post Office to here. Is the Ingledew Store gone?”

“Nossir, but it’s not the post office no more.”

“Who owns this place now?”

“Latha Bourne does.”

Silence. Then in a very low voice, as if not talking directly to me at all, he says, “You don’t mean it.” Then he says, “You don’t mean to tell me.” Then he says, louder, but tripping on his words, “Are you…are you her boy?”

“Nossir. I live up the road at the next place.”

“The Murrison place? Then you must be Frank’s boy. You kind of favor him.”

“He’s just my uncle.”

“I see. Latha Bourne…she don’t have any children?”

“She aint married.”

“I see. Well, tell me, son, where is she at, right now?”

“I thought she’d just gone to pee but I reckon she must be making hockey too.”

He laughs and says, “My, you sure talk brash, for such a little spadger.” Then he seems to get rather nervous, and says, “I reckon she’ll be coming back directly, then?”

“I reckon.”

“Well, uh, tell me, is there anybody living on the Dill Place?”

“The Dill place?”

“Yes, it’s up beyond your Uncle Murrison’s, first house on the right up beyond…. Or it used to be, anyway.”

“You mean where that old blacksmith shop is?”

“That’s the one. But it wasn’t actually a blacksmith shop, but a wagonmaking shop.”

“That house has been empty since that blacksmith died, twenty year or more ago.”

“He wasn’t a blacksmith. He was a wagonmaker. Well, I guess I’ll just mosey up there and take a look around. See you later, sonny.”

Quickly he walks away. Very quickly.

Scarcely are he and his flashlight out of sight when Latha returns from her errand of elimination. When she has seated herself again, I tell her,

“There was a man here.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me his name.”

“What did he want?”

“Nothing. Just wanted to know who lived here now. I told him. Then he wanted to know if anybody was livin on the Dill Place, so when I said no he headed off in that direction, said he was just gonna look around up there.”

Latha stares in that direction. I detect a quickening of her breathing. “What did he look like?” she asks. I have never heard her voice quaver quite like that before.

“I couldn’t much tell. He was on the other side of a flashlight. Sort of tall, I guess. Seemed like a nice man.”

She is silent a long time.

Finally I have to remind her, you were going to tell me a story.

She comes back from her trance, and smiles, and reaches over and rumples my hair. “Sure, Dawny,” she says. Then she asks, “Would you care to hear a strange tale about a dumb supper? Have you ever heard tell of a ‘dumb supper’?”

“Caint say that I have.”

“Well,” she says. “Once upon a time, in a month of May long time ago, a bunch of girls who were just about ready to graduate from high school decided to set themselves a dumb supper, which is an old, old custom that must go all the way back to the days of yore in England.

“The idea [she, like all others, pronounces this “idee” ] is that you take and set out a place at the dinner table, just like you were having company, except you don’t set out any food. You put out the plate and the knife and fork and spoon, and the napkin. Then you turn the lamp down very low. A candle is even better. Then you wait. You stand behind the chair and wait to see what happens.”

As in all her tellings of ghost tales, she says these words very somberly, and makes a dramatic pause, and I feel the thrilling chill that makes her ghost stories so much fun.

“Well,” she goes on, “there were six of these girls, and they set out six places, and then the six of them stood behind the six chairs and waited, with only one candle to light the room. They waited and they waited. The idea is that if you wait long enough, the apparition—not a real ghost, Dawny, but a ghost-like image—the apparition of the man you will marry will appear and take his seat before you at the table.

“Oh, of course it was all a lot of foolishness like all that superstitious going-on, but these girls believed in it, and anyway it would be a lot of fun. So they waited and they waited.

“Sometimes, if a girl was wishing very hard that a particular boy would appear, somebody she was crazy wild about, then she might get hysterical and really believe that he had come! Imagine that, Dawny. But the other girls would just laugh at her.

“Anyway, these girls waited and waited, but of course nothing happened. Some of them closed their eyes and mumbled magic words, and some of them prayed, but no boys showed up, and no apparitions of boys showed up. Until finally…”

I suspend my breathing. It is as near to approaching an orgasm as a five-year-old boy could ever get.

“Until finally there was this one particular girl who was wishing very, very hard, and she opened her eyes, and there coming into the room was a boy! With his hat pulled down over his eyes, he came right on over to her chair and sat down in it! And then in the candlelight she saw who it was! It wasn’t the boy she was wishing for at all! It was another boy, the one she had already turned down twice when he asked for her hand!

“And then she fainted dead away.”

I wait. “Well,” I say. “Then what happened?”

“Well, after they got her revived, with smelling salts and cold compresses, one of the girls explained it all to her. Somehow that boy had found out about the dumb supper. The boys weren’t supposed to know, but somehow he had found out. And came on purpose. The other girls had thrown him out of the house, after this poor girl fainted, and told him he ought to be ashamed of himself. And maybe he was.”

“Well,” I ask, “did she ever marry him?”

“No.”

“Did she ever marry the other one, the one she was wishing for?”

“No.”

“That other one, the one she was wishing for, his name was Raymond, wasn’t it?”

Latha makes a little gasp, and then exclaims, “Why, Dawny, I didn’t know you knew about that!”

“What was the name of the one who came to the dumb supper?”

She does not answer.

I leave her alone, but I cannot leave her alone for long. “Latha,” I say, sweetly as I can, “what was the name of the one who came?”

“Won’t tell you,” she says, and her voice is the voice of a child.

“Please tell me,” I beg.

“No,” she says. “You’ll have bad dreams, and your Aunt Rosie will come down here and give me a talking-to again for telling you ghost stories.”

“I will have bad dreams anyway,” I declare.

“No.”

“Please.”

“No. I won’t.”

“Pretty please, with sugar and cream on it.”

“No. Hush. You stop asking me.”

“Was it Tull Ingledew?”

“Law, no!” she laughs. “Back then he didn’t even know I existed.”

“Was it Doc Swain?”

“He was too old, and besides, he had a wife back at that time.”

“Then who was it? Was it anybody I know?”

“No.”

“Please, please tell me.”

“No.”

“If you don’t tell me, I’m going to go away and never come back, and I’ll never ever love you anymore.”

She laughs again. “Or, if not that, you’d be nagging me about it for the rest of my days, wouldn’t you?”

“I just might,” I say fiercely.

“All right,” she says. “His name was Dill. Every Dill. Isn’t that a queer name? It wasn’t Avery, but Every. He was William Dill’s boy, old Billy Dill who used to make wagons.”

I break out in a rash of goose bumps. “What…whatever…what did ever…become of him?”

“Nobody knows, child.”

“Maybe…” I say, pointing up the road toward the Dill place.

“Yes, Dawny, that’s what I’ve been wondering about too.”

I suddenly ask, “Can I sleep with you tonight?”

“Whatever for?” she asks, with a big smile.

“To protect you.”

She starts to laugh but decides it might hurt my feelings, which it would’ve. Instead she says, “Your Aunt Rosie wouldn’t allow it.”

“Aw, sure she would. She don’t care where I sleep.”

“But I don’t have any spare beds, except that one that Sonora sleeps in.”

“Why caint I just sleep in your bed?”

She laughs. “My, my,” she says. “I haven’t ever slept with anybody in my bed.”

“Never?”

“Never not all night.”

“Well,” I promise, “I won’t bother you.”

She laughs a long gay lilting laugh. “You’d have to let your Aunt Rosie know where you are, and I bet you she wouldn’t want you spending the night down here.”

I stand up. “I’ll be right back, fast as I can.”

“Good night, Dawny,” she says, and waves. “See you in the morning.”

“I will be right back,” I say.

I run all the way home, which isn’t far.

I burst in upon Aunt Murrison, who is reading her Bible by coal-oil light. I have always been a good liar, even then. I tell her that a whole bunch of kids are having a bunking party at Latha’s store; they’ve laid out a lot of pallets and are going to have a real jamboree of ghost-story telling and I will just die of heartbreak if I can’t join in.

“Which kids?” she says, eyeing me with leaden lids.

“Well, there’s Larry Duckworth, and Vann and Tommy Dinsmore, and Jack and Tracy and Billy Bob Ingledew, and—”

“I bet them kids don’t want a little squirt like you hangin around.”

“But Sammy Coe’s there too, and I’m older’n him!”

“How come y’all are havin yore bunkin party at Latha’s place?”

“Well, she’s treatin us to free soda pop.”

“Hmm,” says Aunt Murrison. She mutters, “That crazy gal…” Then she says to me, “Well, you behave yourself, you hear me? Be a good boy and don’t bother them other kids.”

“Yes ma’am!” I cry, and rushing out, holler back, “See you in the mornin!”

So that is how I came to spend the night with my beloved Bug.

(There remains just another short piece of bug business, and then I am done with these over-long prefatory hemmings and hawings. Another image symbolically related to lightning bugs: that of a book of matches being struck, one by one. It happened like this: with my beard and my pipe and my Harris tweed jacket I was fool enough to think that I could pass for a visiting psychiatrist, but the Keeper of Records at the Arkansas State Hospital said to me politely, “It isn’t that we are challenging your authority, Doctor, but our regulations require that we cannot give you access to our records unless we see something in the way of credentials, perhaps only your a.a.p.p. membership card…” So I went away and bought a doctor’s white smock and came back in the middle of the night and snapped impatiently at the night clerk on duty, “The file on Latha Anne Bourne, please. B-O-U-R-N-E. 1922–25.” But the night clerk looked at me and said, albeit pleasantly enough, “Which ward are you from, Doctor? I don’t recall seeing you around before. But I suppose you’re new. Perhaps your name is on my list here, let’s see….” One would think that my nerve, which has never been distinguished for its intrepidity, would have failed at this point. But I was extraordinarily dedicated. I went upstairs and walked the corridors and read the names on the doors of doctor’s offices, picking one at random. Then I went over to Ward A and read the list of patients, picking one at random. Then I went to a phone booth and called that same night clerk in the Records Office and said, disguising my voice, “This is Doctor Reuben. Please, would you very quickly get the file on Wilson Olmstead and bring it up and slip it under the door of my office? Thank you so much.” Then I quickly returned to the Records Office. The clerk was gone. But he had locked the strong wire gate to the Records Room. There was, however, a small opening at chest-level for the purpose of passing documents through, and I managed to squeeze through this. I did not dare turn on a light. I used up three matches finding the 1920’s section, and two more matches locating the b’s, and one more finding Latha’s file. Then I sat on the floor with it in my lap, and opened it, and used up the rest of my matches quickly reading it. It was a thick sheaf of papers, sandwiched between an Admission slip which said, “Committed, under protest, May 12, 1922, by married sister, Mrs. Vaughn Twichell,” and a small piece of paper which summarily remarked, “Escaped E Ward, method unknown, March 23, 1925.” Several times I burned my fingers because I was so absorbed with what I was reading that I did not watch the match closely. If there is no draft, a book match can be made to burn for a maximum of 36 seconds. This means that I had a total reading time of only about 7 minutes 45 seconds. But I am a relatively fast reader. And the glow of those matches, so help me, was quite uncannily akin to the pulsing flashes of a lightning bug.]

“Dawny, close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“You don’t want to watch me undressing, do you?”

“But it’s pitch dark, I caint see you noway.”

“Close your eyes.”

“Okay.”

Why is it, I wonder, that all those sounds of the summer night are louder indoors, when you’re lying in bed, than they are outdoors, when you’re sitting on the porch?

“Well. Now you can open your eyes. But don’t look at me.”

“Why caint I look at you?”

“Because it’s so hot and we’d have to pull the covers up because I don’t have anything on.”

“You mean you’re nekkid?” I begin to turn my head.

Her hand presses the side of my face. “Don’t look.”

“But it’s so dark I caint see nuthin noway.”

“Maybe you can. I can see you.”

“What’s wrong with lookin at you? I like to look at you.”

“But I don’t have anything on.”

“Who cares?”

It is very hot, not a night for covers at all, not even a sheet. I look down at myself, at my undershirt, at my shorts. The faintest breeze comes through the window screen.

“Do you sleep nekkid all the time?”

“Just in the summertime.”

“I never knew of anybody sleepin stark nekkid.”

“Most people don’t.”

“I reckon it’s a awful lot cooler, that way.”

“Oh, it is.”

“Can I sleep nekkid too?”

“Dawny, I wish you wouldn’t say ‘nekkid.’ It makes it sound bad.”

“Okay, can I sleep undressed too?”

She does not answer for a while. Then she laughs a little and says, “Dawny, you’re commencing to make me nervous. If you ever told anybody, your Aunt Rosie or anybody, that me and you slept together, let alone without our clothes, do you know they would cover me with hot tar and feathers and ride me out of town on a rail?”

“Aw, Latha! Do you honestly think I would ever tell anybody? I aint ever gon tell anybody anything about me’n you.”

“Maybe,” she says, “maybe I better get a quilt and fix you a pallet on the floor in the other room.”

I begin to cry.

“Oh, shush, Dawny, a big boy like you!” she coos. “Lie still, and shush.”

I keep crying.

She reaches over and grabs me by the undershirt, and at first I think she’s going to fling me clean out of the bed, but she just tugs my undershirt over my head, and then pulls my shorts down and off my feet.

“There!” she says. “Now shush.”

I shush.

It is hard, from here, to see through the window and watch any lightning bugs. But I don’t care. I have my own Bug beside me.

“Close your eyes and go to sleep.”

“I’m not much sleepy. Are you?”

“Not much, I guess.”

“Tell me a story.”

“All right.”

She tells me, not just one ghost story, but several, many. Some of these I have heard her tell before, but they are good ones, and the new ones which I have not heard before are very good indeed. They thrill me, they hold me, they seize me, they jolt me, they drain me. It is nearly as good as if I were full-grown and could mount her and ride her, over and over, again and again, till the last drop of my seed were draught off. Often, in the grip of a mighty story’s climax, I have to squeeze her hand.

She likes her own stories too, and gets carried off by them, which is why she is such a good teller…and which is why she has not noticed that I am staring at her. The moon has shifted from behind a tree, and some of its light comes into the room. She lies staring at the ceiling as she talks, one of her hands gripped by mine, the other hand resting upon her white stomach. All creation does not know a sight lovelier than her breasts. How does Tull Ingledew say it? Yes: “Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lillies.” I do not know what a roe is, but it has a lovely sound.

“Latha,” I say, “I love you.”

She turns, and does not seem to mind that I am staring at her, and that there is enough light for us to see one another. “Oh, Dawny,” she says. Then she reaches out her hand and rumples my hair and says, “I love you too, and if you were a growed-up man I would marry you right this minute.” She pulls me to her and squeezes me and then puts me back where I was. “Now let’s try to get some sleep.”

We try to get some sleep, but we are both listening.

We listen for a knock, or for footsteps on the porch.

The night passes on. The symphony of the bugs and frogs never stops. The night cools.

Footsteps. My heart thunders. But it is not my heart, it is Latha’s. I realize I am in her arms, my ear against her chest.

A voice. A girl’s. It is Snory, coming home. Her screen door opens very slowly in a very slow WRIRRAANG, and light footsteps move across a floor, and to a room. She bumps against a table or something.

Then it is silent again, and stays silent a long time,

By and by I ask Latha in a whisper, “Do you think that it might really be him up there? Do you think it’s really Every Dill?”

“Oh, I know it,” she says, and there is no fear nor alarm nor anxiety of any sort in her voice, but almost a kind of thrilled anticipation. “I know it is.”

We sleep.

MIDDLING

ONE: Morning

On this day of days, she rose, careful to touch the floor with her right foot first—though this practice was habitual, spontaneous, she was conscious of it as her first waking thought. Her second thought was: Today. Then she slowly dressed, in her multipatched denims and her faded chambray shirt. She put on her heavy shoes, which the night before she had carefully left in the position of the shape of the letter T. That T, she realized, could have stood for Tomorrow, or, now, for Today, although this was not the reason she left them in that position.

Before leaving the room, she turned and cast an affectionate parting glance at the small boy asleep in her bed, and felt a momentary anxiety, a fleeting self-reproach: I oughtn’t’ve allowed him to do that. Fool girl, you are going to step too far sometime. Then she turned back from the door and walked quickly to the big four-poster and leaned down to kiss the sleeping boy on his forehead. He did not wake; he would sleep a long time yet.

In the kitchen she took a platter of day-old pork-flavored biscuits from the food safe and carried them out onto the back porch and threw them one by one to her cats, saving the last one for herself. She munched it slowly and lingered to watch the cats fighting over the biscuits. She stayed even longer to watch the cats loll in the early morning sun and lick themselves and each other, then she returned to the kitchen and got her milk pail and filled it a quarter ways with water dipped from the water pail. She carried this up the hill to the cow lot, pausing only briefly at her backhouse. She squatted by the Jersey’s flank, not needing a stool, and after washing each of the teats carefully with the water in the pail, she swirled the rest of the water out of the pail and began to milk.

The milk was good; Mathilda had been grazing lately on the orchard grass, free of the lower pasture’s bitter weeds that gave the milk a pungent taste. The pesky flies of July bothered Mathilda, and she fidgeted restlessly while she was milked. “Saw, Jerse,” Latha would croon at her, “saw.” Latha closed her eyes while she milked and enjoyed the feel of the long cool dugs. She filled the pail and carried it down to the springhouse to crock it and leave it to cool.

By this time her free-ranging chickens had assembled in a packed flock around the back steps of the house. She walked through them to the back porch and scooped into the feedbag and flung several handfuls into the yard. The chickens made a racket.

Then she took down the slop bucket hanging from the porch ceiling and carried it to the sty, for her four Chester Whites. Pigs were her favorite animal, not alone for the ebullient gratitude they showed for the garbagey swill she showered upon them, but for the noises they made, which seemed to her an expression of basic life forces.

Now for a moment she spoke with these hogs in their own language of intricate reiterated snorty grunts. Then she chanced to look up and catch sight of a redbird in a tree. Quickly she made a wish, and waited. Soon the redbird flew down to a lower limb. If it had flown upward, her wish would have come true. But I really didn’t mean that wish, she decided, I don’t honestly want for that to happen.

The animals all taken care of, it was time for the vegetables. She returned to the house and consulted her calendar and discovered it was turnip-planting day. Personally she hated turnips, but you always plant turnips on turnip-planting day. She entered her store and took a package of seeds from the rack. Then she gathered up her hoe and her rake and headed for the garden across the road. This land belonged to whoever still owned the abandoned house beside the garden, but she had raised a garden here every year for the past eight years, and nobody’d ever said anything about it.

Crossing the road she saw Penelope sitting in the road. Penelope was one of her cats, an all-white. To see a white cat sitting in the road is good luck. So there, that takes care of that down-flying redbird.

She planted the turnips, reluctantly. Sonora likes turnips but she’ll be gone back to Little Rock before they’re ready. Well, I will make a turnip pie for Tull Ingledew. Or will Sonora be going back? I wonder if Every likes turnips. After the turnip seeds were in the ground she took her hoe and chopped weeds out of the lettuce and cabbage and beans, chopping hard, working up a sweat, a real lathering sweat.

She began to sing:

Well met, well met, my own true love

Long time I have not seen thee

Well met on such a shining day

but stopped, shocked at herself, stopped hoeing too, stood still and remembered: Sing before breakfast, Cry before supper. It means I will be crying before this day is out because I haven’t had my breakfast yet. Well, it’s likely I will. Serves me right. It’s like as not I’ll have more than enough reason for crying before suppertime.

She resumed chopping weeds, with a vengeance. Accidentally she decapitated a cabbage. Still she kept chopping, until her shirt was soaked through with sweat. She grabbed up the cabbage head and ran back to the house. She went to her room and got a towel and a dress. The boy had rolled over, embracing the place she had left, but was still sound asleep. She left the house once more, crossed the road once more, entered the garden once more. At the end of the vegetable rows, beyond her tall corn, is a dense line of trees, bordering Swains Creek. She went into these trees.

She began to remove her sweaty clothes, but noticed for the first time that she had her chambray shirt on wrongside out. Oh, great gracious sakes! she sighed. Isn’t this just dandy? Anybody knows that if you accidentally put something on wrongside out, the only way you can keep from having bad luck all day is to keep wearing it wrongside out until bedtime. But this shirt was all dirty and sweaty, even if it was fit to wear for company coming.

She continued unbuttoning it. Latha dear, she said resolutely, once in your life you’ll just have to quit being so all-fired superstitious. And while she finished undressing, she reflected upon the nature of superstition, and remembered something that nut doctor in Little Rock had tried to get her to believe: “Superstition is the harmless but invalid attempt of the individual to cope with the unknowns and intangibles and the factors in fate and environment over which he has no control. Superstitions vanish as the person becomes more civilized and develops more sense of control over his fate and environment.” Remembering this, Latha laughed, but reckoned it was true.

Now in her nakedness she stepped through the thicket and slipped into Swains Creek and lay down in the shallow water, and cooled. She loved her body; that was her one certainty; not the sight of it, nor even the feel of it, but the it of it, the itness of it, that it was there, that it was hers, that it could feel something like cool creek water swarming around it and washing the sweat from it, that it could sweat, that it could be cleansed, that it could tingle. I am a jar of skin, a bottle of flesh, a container. All the things I contain….

She leaned her head back and gazed up at the sun rising above Dinsmore Mountain, and gauged it. It was about five-thirty. Stay More was waking up. Tull Ingledew was just going to sleep, but the others were beginning to wake. Lola Ingledew with a goose feather was tickling the soles of the feet of E.H., her brother. Stanfield Ingledew was exaggeratedly imitating the snores of his brother Odell, in an effort to waken him. In another room, Emelda, the wife of Bevis Ingledew, was crowing into Bevis’s ear an excellent imitation of a rooster. Their son, John Henry, would sleep for another two hours; he had been out past midnight, shagging Sonora Twichell three and a half times.

Retired physician John Mabrey Plowright was stepping out onto his front porch and hollering across the road at Doc Colvin Swain’s house, “How’s yore goddam arthuritis this fine mornin, you on-scruplous young horse doctor?” And Doc Swain was stepping out onto his porch and hollering back at his nearest neighbor, “A damn sight better’n yore putrid rheumatism, I reckon, you frazzled old sawbones.” From the creek Latha could hear the distant sound of their imprecations.

In the rough homestead in the timber atop Dinsmore Mountain, Selena Dinsmore, whose man Jake went to California three years ago and has not returned, was banging the dishpan with a large spoon, and with each clanging stroke calling out “Hubert! Sarah! Clovis! Lorraine! Tommy! Vann! Jelena! Doris! Willard! Ella Jean! Tilbert! Norma! And Baby! Y’all all tumble out!”

Luther Chism went out to his smokehouse where the revenue agent was tied, and asked him, “How you lak yore aigs cooked?” The agent complained, “How’m I gon eat any aigs with all this here rope on me?” Luther said, “My gal Lucy’ll feed em to ye. How you lak em cooked?” The agent said, “Turned over.” Luther said, “You take sweetenin in yore coffee?” The agent said, “Some, I thank you.” Luther said, “Yo’re welcome.”

Oren Duckworth, finished with shaving, took down the leather strop and lined up his four boys, Junior, Chester, Mont, and Larry, ranging in age from 19 to 9, backsides to him, and tanned their hides. It was for whatever mischief they might have gotten into the night before. Then, because tomorrow was Sunday and he would not lay the strop to them on the Lord’s Day, he tanned their hides once more, for whatever mischief they might get into tonight.

Frank Murrison woke to discover he had a morning hard, but Rosie protested, “It’s Sattidy. My day off.” He waited for it to subside, and when it did not he went to the barn and used a ewe.

Ella Jean Dinsmore came running into the kitchen, hollering, “Maw! Baby Jim fell through the hole in the outhouse!” Selena Dinsmore smiled absently and said, “Aw, just leave him go, Ella Jean. It’d be easier to have another’n than to clean that un up, even if we could git him out.”

There are no morning bells, no matinals, in Stay More. Instead there came the chime of hammer and anvil in Lawlor Coe’s blacksmith shop. This morning it was answered, once, by the distant anvil in Dill’s wagon shop, deserted these many years.

Latha, in the water, sneezed. And recited to herself:

Sneeze on Monday, sneeze for danger

Sneeze on Tuesday, kiss a stranger

Sneeze on Wednesday, sneeze for a letter

Sneeze on Thursday, sneeze for better

Sneeze on Friday, sneeze for sorrow,

Sneeze on Saturday, a friend you seek

Sneeze on Sunday, the Devil will be with you all week.

What day’s today? she asked herself. Why, I believe it’s Saturday. Yes, I’m almost certain it’s Saturday. She lay in the slow-running green stream but a few moments more, then got up and waded out, and toweled herself dry. She put on the dress, a blue one with small yellow daisies printed on it, and carried her work clothes bundled in the towel back to the house.

She started breakfast. The woodbox was near about empty. She went out to the backyard and chopped an armload of kindling slowly so as not to sweat again. She stuffed half a dozen sticks into the stove, poured some coal oil over them, and lighted it. She filled the kettle and put it on.

When the coffee was making, she noticed that the coffeepot was rattling on the stove. That was sure enough a sign that a visitor would come before nightfall.

She ate her breakfast alone, and left a platter of eggs and bacon and biscuits on the warming shelf for Sonora and Donny.

Then she unlocked the store from the inside. Jesse Witter was already sitting on the front porch, waiting to hire folks to help pick his tomatoes.

“Mornin, Jesse,” she said.

“Fine mornin, Latha,” he replied. Then he asked, “Could you let me have a plug a Brown Mule and I’ll pay ye after I’ve took my tomaters to the cannin factry?”

“You want me to bring it out to you, or you want to go in and get it yourself?” she asked, smiling.

He snorted. “Aw, shoot, I can git it myself,” he said, and got up off the nail keg he was sitting on and went into the store and behind the counter and reached up and got the plug of chewing tobacco and unwrapped it and bit off a chaw.

Then she took him by the hand and led him over to the corner where the feed bags were stacked and made him lie down on the pile of feed bags and unbuttoned his pants and groped around inside until she found his dood and pulled it out which was limp and floppy as a hound’s ear but she worked on it with both hands and got it perked up enough so she could lift her dress and sit down on it and get it well in and then pretend she was on a galloping horse going faster and faster bouncing up and down and Jesse Witter had to turn his head to one side ever now and again to spit tobacco and she had to point out to him the sign KINDLY DO NOT EXPECTORATE UPON THE FLOOR and he said “Goll darn it, Latha, the least you could do is keep a spitoon over in this corner so a feller could take a spit while you was diddlin the daylights out of him” and she said “Shut up and wiggle your rump” and he did and she galloped faster and finally came

“How many hands do you need today?” she asked him.

“Aw, I reckon five or six ought to do her. Aint but about twenty short rows left in that patch.”

“Those W.P.A. boys aren’t working on the bridge today. Maybe a couple of them could use some extra cash.”

“I wouldn’t hire a W.P.A. boy to break rocks or tie string.”

Latha went back into the store and got her turkey-feather duster, and dusted her three show cases. Her small store was stocked to capacity, using every inch of space. There was this difference between hers and Lola’s; that Lola’s seemed empty because it was so big for what little was in it, while hers seemed full because it was so little for what a big lot was there. There was also another difference, not to mention the post office: Latha kept a Coke cooler full of soda pop and ice, and on these hot days she made a good profit. Lola claimed it wasn’t worth the cost of the ice, but she was wrong.

Latha’s staples were lined up in neat clean rows: baking soda, sugar, salt, flour, crackers, and some canned stuff, Vienna sausages and such. She carried hardware too: files, and bolts, plowshares, axe handles, horseshoes, four different sizes of hemp rope in large neat coils. And fresh things: eggs, butter, bread (both store-boughten light and her own), and home-made sausage.

Things hung from the ceiling, like stalactites in a cave: lamp chimneys, hickory handles, horse collars, harness straps. And she kept things for the womenfolk too: all kinds of thread, needles, Putnam dyes, and several bolts of bright gingham and flannel and even rayon. And she dispensed Lydia Pinkham Remedies, and Carter’s Little Liver Pills and other medicines. And four brands of snuff, six of chewing tobacco, seven of smoking tobacco. It was rare that somebody asked for something she didn’t have.

Last year she had cleared a net profit of $438.

On the front porch were three of the Dinsmore children, with the oldest, Lorraine Dinsmore, as their spokesman, bargaining with Jesse Witter:

“How much you payin today?”

“Seven cents a bushel.”

“Maw said not for us to do it for less than nine.”

“Eight is the most I could ever hope to give ye.”

“Is they first-picks or pickovers?”

“Some of it’s pickovers, but they’s a good few fresh rows.”

“Enough for till sundown?”

“I reckon not, but leastways till six or so.”

“Okay. We’ll do it for eight. Miss Latha, you heerd him promise us eight, so we count on you to keep him to his word.”

“Git in the wagon,” Jesse said. “We got to see if two or three more show up.”

It was nearly seven o’clock, and Jesse Witter was fidgeting with restlessness, before Dulcie Coe came and offered to pick. Right behind her came Estalee Jerram, the schoolteacher, unemployed for the summer.

“Doggone,” said Jesse Witter, “I wush I had me a couple of stout boys ’stead of all you gals.”

Lorraine Dinsmore said, “You aint payin us by the hour, noway. I kin pick fast as ary boy you’d find.”

“Well, let’s git on with it,” said Jesse and the six of them got into his wagon and he turned it into the Parthenon road.

Then Latha was alone until eight o’clock, when the candy drummer from Jasper drove up. He was a new fellow. “What happened to Mr. Clinton?” she asked him.

“Aw, he got hisself into some trouble down towards Hunton, a-foolin around with the storekeeper’s daughter. Only way to stay in this business is behave yoreself. But I do declare, lady, it’s shore gonna be mighty hard for me to behave myself with a pretty thing like you.” And he winked big before turning back to his car to get his sample case and order book.

A little while later, inside the store, he said, “I caint hep but notice, ma’am, that you aint wearin no weddin ring.”

“And I cant help but notice that you, sir, are a good bit fatter and unsightly looking than Mr. Clinton was, and I will bet anything you can’t last nearly half as long, but come on anyway,” and she drew him over to the feed sacks and yanked down his britches and took a sad look at his sorry little pink dinger and had to gobble it and lap on it and draw on it and nearly swallow it for a long time before it got sturdy enough and him standing there eating one of his own candy bars and then when she’d gone to all that trouble to get it ready he wouldn’t let go of her but grabbed her by the hair and dove down her throat and spewed a half-pint and shoved his candy bar up her thigh and into her Every Dill Every Dill O Every

“I will take a box of Baby Ruths, a box of Butterfingers, a box of Powerhouses, and a box of those round pink-goo peanut blobs, whatever you call them.”

“I couldn’t interest you this mornin in some Tootsie Rolls or some Hershey Bars?”

“In this weather?”

“You could cool em in with your sody pop there.”

“I’ll do that when you invent a waterproof wrapper.”

“Well, how bout some orange slices? They’ll keep in any weather.”

“They’ll keep forever, too, because nobody around here eats them.”

“All right. How bout me’n you seein the pitcher show over to Jasper tonight? That’s my own car out there.”

“I thank you. But I’m already set up for tonight.”

“I bet he don’t have his own car.”

“No, but he’s got something a durn sight prettier than any car.”

The candy drummer stared at her for a moment, and then he blushed from his tight collar to his brow, and said, “Haw.” Then he said, “Well.” Then he closed his order book and headed for the door. “Feisty gal,” he mumbled. “Good day, ma’am,” he said and went to his car and drove off.

Donny came into the store from the side door, rubbing his eyes. “Could you tie my shoes for me?” he asked her.

“Hot day like this, you could go barefoot,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, and took off his shoes.

“Come and I’ll set you out some breakfast,” she said, and led him back to the kitchen. She poured him a tall glass of milk and gave him a plate of eggs and bacon. While he ate, she asked him, “Did you sleep all right?”

“Just fine,” he said. “But I had a lot of bad dreams.”

“What did you dream about?”

“You and that feller Every.”

“What was bad about it?”

“I don’t remember.”

She washed some dishes while he finished his breakfast. Then she said to him, “You’d better go let your Aunt Rosie know you’re okay. I imagine she won’t like it that I fed you breakfast.”

“She won’t care.”

“Dawny, you’re not going to tell…”

“Course not,” he said. “Never.” Then he asked, “Can I sleep with you again sometime?”

She frowned. “We’ll have to see,” she said.

He went home.

There was nothing to do until the mail came at ten o’clock. She sat in the rocker on the front porch. She had learned to sit quietly, doing nothing, she had learned long ago to keep company with herself. Infrequently a wagon would pass, or a rider, sometimes a car, and they would wave and she would wave back.

Sonora woke up around nine o’clock and got her own breakfast, then took a bar of soap and went to the creek to wash her hair. When she came back, she picked a sunny spot of the porch to sit in, to dry her red hair in the sun. After a while she began to comb it.

A car passed, its occupants waving. “Was that Merle Kimber in there?” Sonora asked.

“Looked more like Leo Dinsmore,” observed Latha.

The cats crawled under the porch to sleep in the shade.

A wagon passed, and two boys on the buckboard waved. “Is that ole Ralph Chism from Sidehill?” Sonora asked.

“I believe.”

“What’s he doing around here?”

“Guess he’s going up to visit his uncle.”

A mild breeze came down Swains Creek, bearing the faint sound of the machinery in the canning factory, and the acid smell of boiled tomatoes.

Folks began to drift up to the store to wait for the mail truck to come. By ten o’clock there were nearly twenty people hanging around the store porch. A few of them bought cold soda pop.

Rosie Murrison asked Latha, “How was yore bunkin party last night?”

Latha studied the question for a moment, and studied Rosie’s face before answering, “Oh, pretty good, I guess.”

Sonora asked, “What bunkin party?”

Latha said to her, “Hon, you sleep so late of a morning that you miss pretty near half of everything that goes on in the world.”

Some of the boys on the porch commenced to have a giggling fit, and Sonora pouted and said nothing more.

Across the road Sammy Coe and Donny were throwing rocks at each other.

“You, Dawny!” Rosie hollered. “You stop that this minute or I’ll send you home.”

Doc Swain chuckled, and remarked, “Puts me in mind of old Granny Price up on Banty Creek. Th’other day she come into the room where her granddaughter Sally was a-nursin that big overgrowed baby a hers, and she says, ‘Why, law sakes, chile, when air ye ever gonna wean that youngun?’ and Sally says, ‘Grammaw, I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but ever time I wean him he throws rocks at me.’”

A small few of the men and boys guffawed, but the main sound was the prim gasps of the ladies.

The mail truck came at 10:08.

The driver opened the canvas flap at the end and unwrapped the canvas covering on the ice, and with his tongs lifted two 25-pound blocks of ice and carried them into the store and put them in the soda pop cooler, while behind him at the truck a mob of small boys were fighting over the tiny shavings of ice around the blocks and Donny was screaming because they weren’t giving him a chance to get any.

“You boys!” Latha snapped at them and they stopped and looked at her. “Give Dawny a piece.” One of the older boys reached in and drew out a big sliver and handed it to Donny, who began happily licking it.

“Takin up for him, are you?” said Rosie to Latha.

“Somebody ought to,” said Latha, and turned and went into the post office part of the store.

The driver brought in two mail bags, and she took out her key and unlocked the collars on them. One bag was for Stay More, and she would sort that slowly later on, but one bag was for the south end of Swains Creek Township, and she had to sort the mail quickly for Demijohn, Hunton, Spunkwater and points beyond.

“Here you are, Ted,” she said, and gave the driver the empty Stay More sack and the sorted sack for the other towns, as well as the sack of outgoing Stay More mail.

“Fifty pounds on Monday?” he asked.

“Better make it seventy-five, if this weather keeps up.”

After he left she sorted the Stay More mail, while the folks congregated near the boxes, waiting. This morning there were two pieces of mail for herself, a letter from her sister, and some business from the Post Office Department. When she had finished all the sorting, she opened and read the letter from her sister. She was only dimly conscious of the sounds around her—other people opening their mail and reading it and sharing whatever news there was.

Dear Sister—

Sure is hot and dry here in LR. Wish I could come up to SM and cool off, but I just never seem to get caught up with all there is to do. We take the streetcar out to Fair Park just about ever evening to cool off, but sure is crowded out there.

Hows my little girl? Sure do miss her. Latha, me and Vaughn have been talking. You know she is all we’ve got in this world. If it doesnt make a whole lot of difference to her or you, I wish she could just come right on back to LR right now, instead of waiting till late August. Do me this favor, and just take her into Jasper and put her on the bus.

Latha, I sure wouldn’t hurt your feelings for anything. So I dont mean we dont trust you. You swore what you swore, and we took you on your word. So thats that. But I just dont sleep good nights worrying about her. She’s really my little girl, after all, who I brought up and reared with a true Mother’s Love. No telling what all kinds of trouble a girl of her age might get into without proper supervision.

Also, me and Vaughn dont much like the way she changes after staying in SM. You remember last summer. She come back here to LR talking and acting like a ignorant hillbilly, and it didn’t do her much good at LRHS, the other kids poked fun at her, the way she talked. And she didn’t even seem to care! So me and Vaughn oftentimes have wondered, is SM a bad influence on her. Just another year or so and our baby will be leaving us to get married, and I mean to see to it that she marries the right crowd.

So I hope you dont think I’m a Indian Giver or Double Dealer or nothing, but I just think we’d all of us be a lot more happy if she come on back home now. Say hello to everbody for me. Hope you are all well.

Your loving sister, Mandy

Latha laughed, and she crumpled the letter and dropped it into the scrap box, singing to herself under her breath, Too late, too late, you’re way too late, My darling sister dear….

Then she opened the other envelope. Usually she never even bothered to read any of the duplicated stuff the Post Office Department was always sending to her, but something in this one caught her eye. It was duplicated too, just a form letter, but there were blanks that had been filled in.

POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT

Regional Operations

Headquarters Office

Postmaster:

You are hereby directed to discontinue the post office at Staymore, Ark. on the day of August 1, 1939, and required to account for the fixed credits, all funds and all Government property in your possession. Your final postal account should be forwarded to the Regional Controller’s office at Little Rock, Ark..

You shall deposit all surplus funds, including paid money orders, redeemed saving stamps, and funds remaining in your various fixed credits in the Federal Reserve Bank, P.O. Box 2744, Little Rock, Ark..

You shall render a final postal savings report on Form PS 704, The Division of Postal Savings will instruct you as to the disposition of postal savings certificates, records and active accounts.

Upon receipt of your acknowledgment of this order (please sign enclosed Form OC 526 and return promptly) this office will forward instructions regarding disposition of postage stamps, revenue stamps, money order forms, post office scales, other Government property, as well as your current account book, any cashbooks, bond records, and the mail keys.

Mail for the patrons of your office, all records on file pertaining to forwarding addresses, and all records pertaining to registered, insured, and cod mail will be sent to the post office at Parthenon, Ark. at the close of the date set for discontinuance.

You and your sureties will be held responsible under your bond for the proper execution of these instructions.

The enclosed notice shall be placed in some conspicuous place available to the public. The post office sign must be removed from the building.

Form B/A-201, Report of Separation, must be completed and forwarded to Regional Controller.

Sincerely yours,

Blakely F. Lucas

Operations Manager

Sing before breakfast, Cry before supper. Is that what I am fated to cry about? But she did not feel like crying. She felt like swearing. So she did. “Goddamn those bastards!”

Doc Swain stepped over. “Which bastards?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

She handed him the enclosure. “Here.”

He read it. Then he read it aloud to the others in the store, his voice quavering:

NOTICE TO THE PATRONS OF THE U.S. POST OFFICE AT STAYMORE, ARK.

By order of the Postmaster General, effective Aug. 1, 1939 this post office is discontinued. Patrons may arrange to receive their mail and contract business with the Post Office Department through the post office at Parthenon, Ark.

At first there was no response from the gathering. The first person to speak was Larry Duckworth, who asked his father, “What does ‘discontinued’ mean?”

Oren Duckworth looked down at the boy with contempt, and answered, “It means they are closing this here post office, son.” Then to the company at large, he said, “By godfrey, they caint do this to us!”

“Hell fire, no!”

“Dadburn em, they caint!”

“I swan, they’ll never!”

“Judas Priest, naw!”

“Who do they think they are?”

“I, for one, shore don’t aim to walk all the way over to Parthenon to get my consarnit mail!”

“Nor me neither!”

“What d’ye reckon has gave them people such a notion?”

Rosie Murrison pointed her finger at Latha and declared, “It’s her fault! She aint been runnin this post office proper, so they’re closin it on account a her, I just know it!”

“Now, Rosie,” Doc Swain said. “More’n likely the reason they’re closin it is because this town is simply got too small to have one.”

“Small, my hind foot!” said Oren Duckworth. “Why, we got a cannin factry, aint we? Do them Government bigwigs know that we got a industry in this here ‘small’ town? How’m I gonna conduct my business, I ask you? Naw, I won’t stand for it!”

Rosie said, “Let’s have a ’lection, and vote for Lola Ingledew for postmaster, and then tell them people we’ve done cleaned the corruption out of the post office, so’s they’ll let us keep it.”

“Good idee!” said another woman, but Doc Swain said, “Aw now, postmasters aint ever elected, and besides it wouldn’t make no difference to them people. If they’ve made up their minds, their minds is made up.”

“You kin talk big, Colvin Swain,” said Woodrow Kimber, “’cause you got a fine automobile to ride over to Parthenon and git yore mail, but most of us folks is gonna have to wear out shoe leather gittin thar!”

“Not me!”

“Nossir!”

“I won’t stand for it!”

“They can just keep their dadgummed mail!”

“Keep it till they drown in it!”

“Aw, listen, folks,” Doc Swain said, “like as not they’ll be sendin out a mail carrier from Parthenon, and all we got to do is each of us get us a mailbox and set it up out front of our house. We’ll just be a rural route instead of a post office.”

Oren Duckworth moved into the doorway and pointed up the road. “By jiggers, lookee out there! Does that look like any rural route to you? Does it? Don’t it look more like a town to you? Lookee out there, goddammit, and tell me what you see!”

Sadly Doc Swain said, “I see an old bank building with its window lights bustid out, and I see a few old houses mostly without anybody livin in em, and I see a big old Gen’ral Store that don’t do much business any more, and I see a old barn that somebody has tried to turn into a tomato cannin factry…”

Oren Duckworth came out of the doorway and thrust his nose up against Doc Swain’s. “Doc, boy, you makin light of me?”

“Naw, Oren, I’m just makin light of this town.”

“If it’s too light fer ye, you could just git out of it.”

“Been here all my life, Oren. Same as you. Gonna be here all the rest of my life, the Lord willing.”

Latha went into her bedroom and closed the door behind her to muffle the noise of all the bickering going on in the store. She sat at her dresser and got out her stationery box and wrote a pair of letters:

Dear Mr. Lucas:

Your communication, incorrectly addressed and mailed, has been forwarded to this office. As there is no “Staymore” post office in the state of Arkansas, an order discontinuing same is invalid and will therefore be disregarded.

Yours respectfully,

(Miss) Latha A. Bourne, Postmistress

Stay More, Arkansas

Dear Mandy:

I doubt if Little Rock could be any hotter than Stay More has been lately, around 95° in the shade, so you aren’t missing anything. We are all well, and hope you are the same. Sonora seems to be having a good time. John Henry Ingledew, Bevis’s boy, seems to be her special “beau.” I am sure she would not consider, for even a moment, the dreary prospect of returning to Little Rock prematurely, and I seem to have no inclination toward urging it upon her. Sorry.

Your loving sister,

Latha

P.S. Every Dill showed up in town last night. What do you know!

She read this letter over again, and decided to remove the postscript. She took a pair of scissors and snipped it off. There would be, she decided, time enough for that news later.

She returned into her store and mailed her letters at her post office but realized that they wouldn’t be picked up until Monday, because on Saturday afternoons the mail truck did not come back down Swains Creek but went on back to Jasper by way of Highway 7. I might as well go fishing this afternoon, she thought. If Every Dill doesn’t ever show his face, and I could get Sonora to mind the store again, I’d just go up Banty Creek and fish awhile, and I might even run across that fellow Dolph Rivett again.

Most of the folks had taken their mail and gone on home. A few were still sitting on the porch, arguing about the closing of the post office and wondering what the world was coming to. Latha looked out the window at the road for a while, thinking of nothing, then she got down the big book, U.S. POSTAL CODE, and blew the dust off of it, and read for a while.

The Coe triplets came in to get the mail for their father, and then they each bought a Baby Ruth bar and a Dr. Pepper soda pop, and stood around silently munching their candy and sipping their pop.

Donny came running into the store, yelling, “He’s coming down the road!”

Earl, Burl and Gerald Coe said together, “Who is?”

“Him!” Donny yelled at her. “It’s him, I seen him, and he’s coming this way.”

“Just be easy, Dawny,” she said, and moved along behind the counter to the window, and furtively looked out. The Coe triplets crowded into the doorway, and watched the road. The men sitting on the porch stopped talking.

And then he came into view, and it was sure enough him, though you’d hardly know it. He would be almost 40 years old now, and he looked it. He was wearing eyeglasses, too, and with his long sideburns and his hair parted in the middle he looked like…like a drummer, or maybe a preacher, or a county judge or something. But even with those glasses and that hair and those sideburns he was more handsome than he’d ever been, and Latha heard herself sighing at how sightly he was.

He did not approach the store, though. He just stopped, out in the road, nearer the far side, and after a quick glance at the store he turned and looked at the bank building. She could not see his face then but she could imagine what thoughts might be going through his head as he stared at the empty old bank building with its broken window and its door sprung loose. I bet he is thinking, she said to herself, Did I do that?

He was carrying in his hands a sheaf of papers. He was wearing a light summer suit, gray-colored, with a white shirt and a necktie. He was a tall, lanky man and the suit hung loosely on him. His brown hair, even though it was greased and parted down the middle, was thick and long, even the heavy sideburns. He had not shaved this morning, and there was a stubble of beard on his strong firmly chiseled jaw. She strained her eyes to see if there was any glimmer from a gold band on his ring finger but that hand was wrapped around the sheaf of papers and she could not tell.

“I aint scared,” Donny declared, and he ran out of the store and down into the road, and began talking to him.

From inside the store Latha could not hear what they were saying to each other, but her left ear was burning and that was a sure sign that somebody was talking about you.

He gave Donny a sheet of the papers he was carrying, and said something more to him, and then Donny turned and came back into the store.

“Here,” he said, and gave the sheet of paper to Latha. “He wants to know if you would mind puttin this up on the store.”

Latha looked at it. It had a printed photograph of him, like on the Wanted posters that the Post Office Department sent out, but underneath the photograph it said:

BROTHER EVERY BANNING DILL

EVANGELIST

Revival Meeting at Stay More, Ark. Week of July 26–Aug. 2

EVERYBODY WELCOME!

“Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with, all confidence, no man forbidding him.”

—Acts 28:31

Latha broke down and had a long fit of laughter. She couldn’t hold it back, and the sound of it reached him out there in the road, and he turned his face away. Woodrow Kimber came in off the porch and asked her, “Who’s that feller out there? I seen him somewheres before.” Latha handed him the poster. He read it, and it took a long time for the name to register. Then he said, “Well, strike me blind! If that aint the—! Can you feature that!” Then he began hobbling quickly toward the rear door, saying, “I got to tell Bertha. She won’t believe it.”

Donny said, “He wants you to sell him a box of tacks so he can nail these up on trees and places, all around.”

Latha, still laughing, said, “Well, if he wants to buy something he can darn well come in here and get it!”

Donny returned to the man to tell him this. The man seemed to fidget, and he said something to Donny, and Donny came back into the store and said, “He doesn’t know if you want to see him or not. He says he don’t want to cause you no embarrassment. Latha, he’s a awful nice man.”

“The only embarrassment he’s causing me is standing out there in the road like a fool,” she said, and then she took a deep breath and walked out onto the porch and stood on the edge of the porch and stared at him. He stared back at her for a brief moment, then he looked down at his shoes and began to kick at the dust in the road. He looked like he was about to wet his britches.

“Howdy, Preacher,” she said, still laughing, but with gentle mirth, not malice.

He looked up. He started to say something, but choked. He coughed and then he said, “Howdy, Postmistress.”

“Come in out of the boiling sun,” she said, “before you get stroke.”

“Thank you,” he said and began walking toward her.

I must hold my hands at my sides, she warned herself. I must keep them tightly against me. I must will them to stay put. I must not allow them to reach out.

He came up into the shade of the porch, and faced her. For a moment there his hands seemed about ready to spring out and grab her, but he stuck one of them into his pocket and the other one, the one holding the posters, behind his back.

“Have a chair,” she offered. She deliberately pronounced it “cheer.”

“Thank you,” he said, “but I caint stay but a minute. I’ve got to get these here posters tacked up all around, if you’d kindly sell me a box of tacks.”

“Sure,” she said. She pronounced it “shore.” She went inside and got a box of tacks and brought it out to him.

“How much?” he asked, fishing in his pocket.

“A nickel.”

He gave her a nickel, then he said, “I hope you’ll come to the meetin too.” Politely, a little formally, but still with some warmth in it.

“I haven’t been to a church meeting in twenty years,” she said, and he frowned, and she added, “but I’d like to hear you. Where’s it going to be at?”

“Well, I don’t rightly know…yet,” he said. “I was wonderin who’s the head deacon in charge of the meetin house, and I’ll ask him for permission.”

“That would be Oren Duckworth,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. “Well.”

“But ask him anyway. He might let you.”

“Well,” he said.

She noticed for the first time Sonora sitting there on the porch, watching and listening, and she said, “Sonora, this is Every Dill. Every, this is my niece Sonora.”

“Howdy,” he said. “Barb’s girl?”

“No, she’s out in California and none of us have heard from her in a coon’s age.”

“Then…” he said, “is she Mandy’s?”

“Yes.”

“Mandy?” he said, and stared at the girl. “Don’t favor her too much.”

“Favors her dad,” Latha said, and looked at him.

“Oh,” he said, and stared at her some more. Then he said, “Sure has been a lot of water flowed under the bridge. I’ll have a lot of catchin up to do. Well, I got to git these signs tacked up. Do you reckon you could loan me a hammer?”

“You sure travel kind of light,” she said, and laughed, but fetched him a hammer from the store. Then she walked as far as the road with him, out of earshot of the others, and she asked, “Do you suppose folks are going to let you get away with it?”

He wrinkled his fine forehead. “Get away with what?” he asked.

“You,” she said, “giving a revival meeting.”

His face flushed. “Well, my goodness,” he protested, “I’ve given meetings for the last eight years, in hundreds and hundreds of towns all over the—” His voice faltered, and he stopped, and he resumed in a weak voice, “Latha, could I come and talk with you?”

“Any time,” she said. “Any old time. I’ve been here nearly eight years.”

“See you later, then,” he said. “Soon,” he added, and walked away.

She tacked up his poster on the front of her store, and stood back and studied the photograph. My, he was distinguished-looking.

Sonora was looking at it over her shoulder. “I’ve heard Mother mention him,” she said, “but I didn’t know he was a preacher.”

“I didn’t either,” Latha said.

“He’s awful good-looking,” Sonora said, “even with those glasses and that hair.”

“He didn’t used to be,” Latha said.

“Is that why you never married him?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

Donny asked, “Are you going to marry him now?”

Latha laughed, and she said, “Well, not this afternoon, Dawny.” Then she added, “And probably not ever.” She rumpled his hair. “I’m going to just wait until you grow up.”

At noon Donny went home for dinner, and the few others on the store porch got up and went home for dinner. Sonora offered to fix dinner—just some sandwiches and milk—so Latha sat on the porch alone while Sonora was back in the kitchen.

While she was there alone a man rode up on horseback.

She recognized him even before he got down off his horse.

She wanted to run and hide.

More than that, she wanted to go off into the woods with him and spend the whole afternoon making love, again and again.

He had said his name was Dolph Rivett and he had said he lived the other side of Spunkwater. Sometimes she had seen that name on the mail that she sorted out for Spunkwater.

She had told him her name was Sue McComb and she lived down below Demijohn.

Now he was saying, “Howdy. There aint any Sue McComb anywheres near Demijohn.”

She did not comment on that.

“But,” he said, “I figgered if I just kept lookin hard enough, I’d find you. So this is where you live, huh?”

She nodded.

“Well, Sue-or-whatever-yore-name-is, I been doin a lot of thinkin lately. Matter a fact, I aint hardly been able to think of nuthin else. And here’s what I’ve decided: I’ve just got to have you. I don’t keer whut it takes. I will leave my wife and kids. I will sell everthing I own. I swear, they aint nuthin on this earth that I ever liked as much as that little hour me’n you spent in that cave up on Banty Creek. I swear, they aint nuthin in this world that I want to do any more, exceptin that. I know you liked it too. I swear, they’s not nuthin for me to do but have you. I mean to have you, and I aim to tear the clouds out of the sky to git you.”

I am not imagining this, she realized. He is a real man, and he is really standing there and talking to me. He is really saying what he is saying.

SUB ONE: Recently

That summer you often could have gone fishing, Bug, not because the sport of it held any particular fascination for you, nor even because the fish supplemented your larder (although you have confessed to a weakness for sunperch fried in cornmeal), but only because it could have been your one legitimate excuse for escaping occasionally from the store, from the town, and getting up close to the Nature which was what you loved most. In blackberry time and gooseberry time, you could have donned your old clothes (tight at the neck and wrist to keep out chiggers and ticks) and gone off with your pail on your arm and without an excuse for anyone, but berries don’t come in all summer long and you could have needed another reason to tell Sonora where you were going.

Because you were required to sort mail twice a day except Saturdays and Sundays, the only time you could have gone fishing would in all likelihood have been Saturday afternoons or any time on Sunday.

It could have been a Sunday morning in late June or early July, when most God-fearing people were at church and you, Bug, could not have feared God if he had appeared in a burning bush before you and called you dirty names. It could have been that you rose just before dawn and quickly tended your chores then dug a bucket of redworms out of the compost pile and pulled your cane pole out from under the porch and took off, up the creek. It could have been Banty Creek that you chose, because there were a couple of deep holes in deep-forested timber up below the south side of Dinsmore Mountain.

You could have taken your time getting there, because you liked to stop and identify the wildflowers. You could have known them all by name: Beebalm, Mallow, Lady Slipper, Bouncing Bet, Fleabane, Loose Strife, Bluecurls, Lobelia, Dayflower, Mullein, Saxifrage, Bedstraw—you might have known a hundred other names. You could never have picked one.

It might have neared seven o’clock before you finally reached that one cove of stream known as Ole Bottomless. Previously some time ago you could have touched bottom yourself to give the name the lie—it was from five to six feet deep almost everywhere except for one small drop-off that went down to about twelve feet. You could have unwound your line and baited your hook and thrown—

No, probably first if the morning was warm and you felt like it you could have taken off your shirt and jeans and plunged into the—But if you had done that it might have scared the fish off and besides if all you wanted to do was swim you could have done it in the privacy of Swains Greek right behind your own garden.

So you could have begun fishing right away, and because of the time of the day the fish would have been hungry and you could have caught, say, five sunperch, three crappie, two catfish and a trout within the space of an hour, as well as several redtails and hogsuckers which you threw back in.

For a stringer, you could have taken your jackknife and stripped a thin branch from a sapling and sliced the bark off of it. While you were doing this you could have leaned your back against the sapling and have been a little amazed to notice how the sapling quivered with your body, and it could have made you feel very much like a live, live thing. You could have strung the fish on that branch and kept them cool and alive in the water.

Sometime around eight o’clock the man could have come downstream, carrying his fine store-bought rod and reel and his tackle box. A dog could have followed him, a mongrel whelp, black and tan.

“Why, howdy do, ma’am,” he could have said, surprised to find you there fishing, because it is a very rare thing for a grown woman to be found fishing in these hills, let alone a grown woman all alone. Fishing is the preserve primarily of young boys and an occasional grown man. You, Bug, would have been the first grown woman fishing he had ever come across.

And you could have returned his greeting, saying, “Howdy do, sir,” but more likely you would not have. More likely you could have simply smiled and kept on fishing. Voices scare the fish away. Fish in silence, get plenty; fish talking, don’t get any.

Then he could have stepped to the edge of the bank and pulled up your sapling branch and taken a look at your string and exclaimed, “My, my, what a purty mess of fish! What you usin for bait?”

“Worms,” you could have replied.

“Well now, that shore is one of the purtiest mess of fish I ever seen,” he could have continued, lowering the string back into the water. “All I got is spinners and flies, no live bait, but we’ll just see if them fishes is in the mood for teasin. I do hope you don’t keer, ma’am, if I just throw my line in there too.”

You could have shaken your head to signify that you did not mind his sharing the pool with you. Your feeling might have been that you had caught enough fish already and perhaps had even been on the verge of leaving when this man showed up. You might still have been planning to get up and go at any moment, but something could have been holding you back.

The man could have lashed his rod and cast his lure way out to the far edge of the pool and have slowly begun retrieving it, while you could have been slyly scrutinizing him. He could have appeared to you to be tall, sturdy, obviously a hard-working farmer, with skin browned and wrinkled by the sun, and a sun-bleached shock of light hair, and small eyes the color of mockingbird’s eggs. He might have been about your own age, which could have been 38; possibly he might have been a year or two younger.

He could not have had much luck; you could have had told him that, that these Banty Creek fish in Ole Bottomless did not seem to care for any bait but worms or grasshoppers or crawdad tails. After he had failed to get a strike during his first ten minutes of fishing, you could have given him a worm. He could have at first rejected it, but then have accepted it.

“Aw heck, I aint never fished this creek afore,” he could have said, as if that explained something. Then, casting the worm and letting it sink, he could have turned his glance on you and asked, “You live roundabouts?”

Now you could have been asking yourself why you had decided to lie to him. You could have shaken your head and have answered, “No, I’m from down towards Demijohn.” Now why did I tell him that? you could have wondered immediately, Why didn’t I just tell him that I’m the Stay More postmistress?

“Demijohn,” he could have responded. “Well, now, I caint say I know anybody from that part of the country, though I’ve been there a time or two. I’m from up beyond Spunkwater myself. You know whar that’s at?”

“I’ve been there a time or two,” you could have answered, truthfully.

“Dolph Rivett’s my name,” he could have offered.

“Sue McComb’s mine,” you could have returned, and could have said to yourself, There! Now I know I’m lying.

“Mighty pleased to meetcha, Miz McComb,” he could have said, and added, “It is ‘Miz,’ I reckon.”

“Miss,” you could have corrected him, and in all the trees all kinds of birds could have been singing.

“Do tell?” he could have remarked, beaming. “Why, how come such a keen-lookin gal like yoreself happened to turn out a maiden lady?”

You would not have liked that expression, “maiden lady,” although you would have preferred it to “spinster” or “lone woman” or even to “bachelor girl,” and you could have felt vaguely grateful for his tact.

“Nobody ever asked me,” you could have lied to him.

“Aw, I aint about to swaller that,” he could have objected. “Such a peachy dream as you, them fellers down to Demijohn must all be old men or else their eyes is all on the wrong side of their heads.”

“They are just all already married,” you could have pointed out and have added, “like you.”

“Why—!” he could have exclaimed. “What gives you the idee I’m married?”

“I haven’t yet met a good-looking man who wasn’t.”

He might have blushed and have asked, “You think I’m good-looking?”

“Oh, yes indeed,” you could have affirmed, but have cautioned yourself, Easy, girl. You are supposed to let him do the courting.

He would have blushed even deeper, and coughed, and hemmed and hawed, and said, “Well, let me tell you something, honey, and I don’t keer if you believe it or not, but you are the most scrum-didliumptuous lookin creature I ever seen in all my born days.”

You could have laughed at length and have said, “Nobody ever called me that before.”

And he could have joined your laughter and have said, “Well, they just aint any words. You’re cute as a bug’s ear.”

So saying, he, Bug, would have been the first to sense your bugness.

You could have liked him from the word go. Whether he was married or not—and that could not have mattered anyway because you could have been lying to him—you could have sensed something in the simple kinship of the situation: that he and you alone could have happened to be fishing at this spot on this morning when all God-fearing people were getting ready to go to church.

There would have been an easiness about him that could have helped you feel at ease. This would have been important. For you could have begun to entertain a thought, a thought so serious that the only way to tinker with it would have been with easiness.

Your problem, Bug, your long-standing and nearly hopeless problem could have been this: that being a woman, and a woman still relatively young, you possessed a woman’s body, and a woman’s reproductive system with all its nerves in full function, a woman’s sex and a woman’s (no average woman’s, granted) desire, and capacity for passion. It had gotten you into difficulties in the past…the distant past. Now, what opportunities could there have been in Stay More? Tearle Ingledew, one night when he was so drunk that he would mercifully have forgotten it the next morning had slipped his hand up your dress and toyed briefly with your pudendum. Colvin Swain, after writing out a prescription for some anodyne to help you sleep better, one time, had questioned you in a halting and roundabout manner as to whether or not your life had enough “satisfaction” and then he had taken a heavy swallow of some nerve-giving medicine and announced, “By God, Latha, I may be gittin on in years but I swear I can still coax a respectable stand out of the ole dingbat down here, so if there ever comes a time when you feel like you just got to have it, then I’ll gladly be at your service.” But the effort of this announcement had cost him so much—he grew red as a beet all over and had a terrible coughing fit—that you never got a chance to answer him, even if you had been able to.

Oren Duckworth had tried for two years to seduce you, but had given up several years ago. Shy, homely Stanfield Ingledew had broached the subject in a very tentative and inconclusive way. Six assorted drummers, two traveling salesmen, a county road agent, and three random “tourists” had all, within the last eight years, flirted with you with intercourse as their object.

Had you submitted to any of these, Bug, you might well have achieved some of that “satisfaction” that Doc Swain had alluded to, but the price you would have paid for it would have been the disrepute of a “loose woman” and all the concomitant opprobrium that would have ruined you as far as Stay More was concerned.

A man who needed it badly could have gone up to Eureka Springs and bought it at a whorehouse. There was nothing anywhere for sale for women, and even if there had been you could not have paid cash money for it, Bug.

The only way open to you, and this is what you could have been thinking about on this morning at Ole Bottomless, would be a chance encounter with a stranger in some remote place, under an assumed name, so there would never be any fear that he might tell on you or that anyone might ever trace it to you if he did. This situation, now, this meeting with Dolph Rivett, could have been virtually perfect—the answer, if you’ll pardon the expression, Bug, to a maiden’s prayer.

It has been so long! you could have been shouting to yourself. I can’t even remember what it’s like.

Dolph Rivett, by this time, could have seemed to have lost his interest in fishing, and could have appeared to have been more interested in talk, a loose, easy, bantering kind of chitchat.

“I declare,” he could have remarked, with a wink in his voice if not in his eye, “aint you a little bit skeered to be way out here in the woods all by yoreself?”

“No more scared than you,” you could have rejoined.

“Some old goat might could come along and try to lead you astray.”

“I expect he’d find me hard to lead.”

“Never kin tell when there might be one of these here sex fiends a-runnin around loose.”

“Life is full of dangers.”

“Why, for all you might know, I might even be one of them myself.”

“You sure don’t much look like one.”

“Caint never tell. Them that don’t look it is probably the most likely.”

“Do you feel like a sex fiend?”

“Well, by nature I gen’rally feel pretty harmless, but any man would get to feelin kinda roosterish after lookin at you long enough.”

“Now that’s too bad, because roosters can’t last more than a poke or two.”

He would have blushed, but have said, “Haw! I happen to know one particular rooster who kin shore last a lot longer than that.”

“Braggart,” you could have teased.

“I’d be right glad to prove it to you.”

Your wit could not have come up with a good retort for that.

“How about it?” he could have asked, no longer joking, and you would have had to say something to that.

“Fast, aren’t you?” you could have managed finally.

“Thank you. Folks up home is always sayin that Dolph Rivett is slow as molasses in January.”

You might have been desiring to say, “Then let’s see if you can be slow enough for you and fast enough for me!” Why am I being coy? you could have been asking yourself, in view of your decision to go through with it. What did it matter? Perhaps you simply could not have wanted to seem too easy. Or perhaps there could have been still some reservation in your mind, which, however, would have been dispelled when you now remembered that it had only been the night before when Sonora came home and confessed to you that she had lost her virginity and you, after assuring yourself that the girl was smart enough to have been careful against the possibility of impregnation, had received from her a rather frank sketch of the experience, which not only had cemented forever a bond between the two of you but also had left you feeling for the first time envious of her youth and position and popularity.

“All right,” you could have said.

He could have looked at you strangely, not understanding, uncertain, and then have asked, “All right what?”

“All right prove it.”

“You honestly mean it?”

You could have nodded.

“You mean…” he would have been suddenly uncomfortable, not expecting you to give in so readily “…you mean me and you…I hope you understand what I’m talkin about…now do you honestly mean that it’s all right with you if I…if you would…if me and you were to…to sleep…”

“Not sleep.”

“Naw, I mean…you know…”

“I know.”

He could have stared at you for another moment, and then asked, “You’re not a…you aint…you’ve done it before, have you?”

You could have nodded.

“I—” his voice would have been apologetic, “I aint got no…none of them…them things, you know, them safes…you know, them rubber—”

“It’s all right,” you could have assured him.

“Are you sure?” he could have persisted. “If you wanted me to I could…I could…stop beforehand…before…the seed…”

“I just finished my monthlies,” you could have prevaricated.

“Well now, that’s just jim dandy,” he could have said, beaming, and begun to look around him, as if looking for a nice spot to do it on. He would not have noticed that a fish had taken his bait and was pulling it down into a hole at the bottom of Ole Bottomless.

“You’ve got a bite,” you could not have helped pointing out to him.

“Huh?” he could have said, a little panicky, perhaps thinking you had made some accusation which precluded the anticipated tumble.

“There,” you could have said, pointing out the line being unreeled and disappearing into the water.

“Shoot fire!” he could have exclaimed, and grabbed up his rod and begun reeling it in. After a minute’s work, a large fish could have appeared at the surface, a gollywhopper, the biggest catfish you’d ever seen, thrashing around and trying to pop the hook loose from its lip. Dolph Rivett would have been as a man torn. He would have wanted to land that prize cat, but have feared that during the several long minutes it took him to play the fish out you might change your mind. You could have been tempted to assure him, “Take your time. We’ve got all morning,” but somehow this would not have seemed a decent thing to say.

Dolph Rivett could not have taken his time. “Aw dad hackle it,” he could have said, and jerked the line hard in order to remove the hook from the fish’s mouth. “What’s a ole fish at a time like this?”

He could have reeled in his line and have put down the rod, and have asked you, “What about that willow thicket over there?”

You could have shaken your head. “The chiggers’d chew us alive.” Then you could have pointed up at a ledge on the side of the mountain, “There’s a little cave up there,” but have regretted this: being from Demijohn, you would not have been supposed to have been familiar with the local terrain.

“Just lead me to it!” he could have enthused.

The two of you could have climbed up to the ridge, a hundred feet above the creek, and walked along beneath the overhanging ledge until you came to what was not actually a cave so much as a nook, a recession in the rock where ancient Bluff Dwellers had a shelter. The dirt floor of this cavern was still littered with the fragmented relics of this strange non-Indian tribe that had owned the Ozarks in the time of Christ. With his foot Dolph could have swept an area clean of bones and shards.

His black and tan mongrel could have followed you. “Go tree a bird!” Dolph could have commanded it, but it could have sat firmly on its haunches with its head cocked to one side, curiously watching these two crazy people. You would not have minded, but Dolph would have, and eventually he could have thrown a piece of 2000-year-old pottery at it, and have hit it, and it could have yelped and dragged itself out of sight.

You could have unbuckled your belt and unbuttoned your jeans and sat down on the dirt floor to tug them off your legs, and then have sat upon them as a mat of sorts.

The light in the cavern would have been dim, but not dark, not really dark enough. For this reason, Dolph Rivett could not have removed his trousers; he merely could have unbuttoned his fly.

You could have had a fleeting glimpse of his privates before he knelt before you: one of the heavy hirsute stones would have been still inside the fly, the bolt swollen and bolt upright, taut and straining.

He would not have bothered with any preliminaries, assuming you were already aroused and ready. The sight of his equipment would have anointed your passage with some erotic dew, but not enough, not enough to ease his sudden hard deep entrance.

It could have hurt. You might even have cried out. It would have had been so long since you last harbored a bloated penis within you that there simply would not have been room.

He could have stopped. But only for a moment. Yet a moment of welcome respite that would have given you time to expand and to lust and to seep.

Then he, having groaned repeatedly and having mumbled “Ah, Lord Jesus,” could have begun to pump, from the first stroke driving at full speed, an unvarying tempo of banging jolts. You, Bug, would have wanted to churn in response, but because of his weight upon you and the hard earthen floor beneath you you could not have. So all the work would have been his.

And he could not have lasted very long. Just as you could have begun to hope that you might be plugged to that peak from which you could soar free, he, crooning “Goody” to the beat of each shuddering sock, could have disgorged his gob into you, you would have been able to feel the pulsing spasms of the unloading, the throbs shortening and weakening, until there was no movement or sound remaining but his breathlessness.

He could have rolled off of you, and lay by your side.

After a while, you could have said, not bitter nor even teasing, but dispassionate: “Rooster.”

“I beg pardon, Sue,” he could have responded. “I reckon I just had it stored up too much.”

Then he would have talked to you about his wife, who, it seemed, would only let him “bother” her about twice a year.

The two of you could have lounged for a while on the dirt floor of that rock shelter, talking to each other about yourselves. You would not have learned much of consequence.

Then you could have talked, idly, about various things. He could even have talked about politics. “I been readin in the papers about this here D.A. feller up to Noo Yark, fergit his name, but they say he could shore give old Franklin D. a run fer his money.”

“Dewey,” you could have said.

“Yeah, that’s the one. I heerd tell that one of them gallop polls says that Dewey’d git 52 per cent of the vote right now. ’Course, I’ve voted Democrat all my life.”

By and by, Bug, you could have impulsively reached out and wrapped your fingers around his drooping piece. It would have been what you thought was the first time you had ever touched one. And because it would also have been what you thought was the first time you ever had an opportunity to take a good look at one in the light of day, you could have begun to study it while you fondled it. He would have been fidgety at first, because it would have been the first time anyone had ever fondled, let alone studied, his member. But then he would have become less fidgety and more fiery as he felt himself beginning to stir beneath your touch.

You could have been thinking that it was a durn shame that society compelled a man to keep his genitals always covered, because there was something uniquely handsome about a smooth, sleek, sinewy, tall-standing stalk of healthily pink flesh. There was a carnal grandeur about it unequaled by any of Nature’s other deliberate inventions.

And you could not have needed to have told him that you needed it.

He could have started to bestraddle you again but you would have asked him if he didn’t mind taking off his pants. Blushing deeply, he would have.

Then he would have been into you again, and this time, because there was no great pent-up gism thrashing to break loose, he could have lasted a good bit longer, his strokes steady and not quite so violent—a mechanical piston, a skin-sheathed ramrod. If you could have bothered to have counted, you would have found that he kept this up for nearly three minutes before reaching that point where he quickened, and his breathing began to puff “Goody, goody, goody” to the beat of his beats, and your cinctures expanded and contracted with the throbbing of his spewing.

But this time, when he rolled off of you, you could have rolled with him and have pinned him down and have climbed aboard, and in the brief minute left to you before his magic wand lost its turgid magic you could have ridden upon him, tilting and pitching your hips, fashioning your own elaborate alternating measure, with irregular stresses that sung a cadence of touch and sensation your strings could be moved by. You would have been so busy constructing this great resplendent convulsion that you would not have noticed that Dolph Rivett could have been beginning to say “Goody goody” again. All that you could have been conscious of, as you closed your eyes and wildly wrenched your bottom, was the surge of your substance merging with all nature, while in the background the cockles of your heart rollicked and roistered. I confess, Bug, it gives me one just to think of yours.

When you could have come to, some time later, you would have found that Dolph had soaked his handkerchief in cold creek water and spread it over your brow and was fanning you with a frond of fern.

“Why, I declare, Sue, darlin,” he could have declared when you opened your eyes, “if you didn’t just pass plumb dead out. Give me kind of a skeer. But, boy golly, I liked to of passed out myself.”

You could have risen and put your jeans back on, and have gone down to the creek and found a spot along the bank where a spring flowed into it, and have cupped your hands and lapped up a refreshing drink.

“You know somethin?” Dolph, at your side, could have said, “That there was the first time in my life I ever let off even twice, let alone three times. Holy snakes! Who would a guessed I had it in me?”

You could have retrieved your fishing pole and your catch, and then have asked him a test question: “I wonder how far it is from here to Stay More?”

“Couldn’t rightly tell,” he could have replied, to your relief. “If we was up on the road I might could spot a landmark, but it’s hard to say from here. I reckon it aint more’n maybe three, four mile at the most. You aimin to head that way?”

“No, I’m just going on back over the mountain to Demijohn.”

“Sue…could I…I got me a horse…could I sometime maybe ride down to Demijohn to see you?”

You could have pretended shock. “Lord have mercy! Dolph, my daddy and my six brothers would shoot you on sight if they even caught you talking to me!”

“Well.” He would have seemed dejected for a moment but then have brightened. “Is there any chance you might be comin back here fishin again?”

“More than likely,” you could have replied.

“Then maybe me’n you might could…might could get together again.

“Sure.”

“Then I’ll be lookin fer ye, Sue. I shore am much obliged. You’ll never know what a good turn you did me.”

Then he would have been gone, and you could have heard him off up the creek whistling for his dog.

You could have started home, reflecting, But he didn’t even kiss me.

TWO: Noon

WRIRRRIRRAAANG! sounded the screen door, and Sonora came out, carrying a plate of chicken-salad sandwiches and two glasses of milk. She gave her a glass and a sandwich, and then, because it is very rude not to offer something to another person present, even a stranger, she held out the plate to him.

“Thank you kindly, I aint et since five this mornin,” he said and took a sandwich from the plate and bit a large bite out of it and studied Sonora while he was chewing.

“This is my daughter,” Latha said.

He chewed quickly and swallowed down the bite half-chewed.

“You tole me you wasn’t married,” he said.

“Reckon I must’ve been telling you one.”

“Miss…” he said to the girl, “…would ye mind too awful much if me and yore Maw had a couple words private?”

“That depends,” said Sonora.

“’Pends on what?” he asked.

“’Pends on whether them two words is nice or nasty.”

“I promise ye, gal, they’ll be nice as I kin make em.”

“‘Maw,’” said Sonora to her with a smile, “you want me to leave?”

“Just for a minute or two, hon,” she said, “if you don’t mind.”

“Okay,” said Sonora, and took her glass of milk and her sandwich and went back into the house.

“Now,” Dolph said, as soon as the girl was out of sight, “kindly tell me: whar’s yore man?”

“He’s working over at the canning factory,” she answered.

“I’d be pleased to meet him,” he said challengingly.

“He’d make worm food out of you so fast you wouldn’t know it.”

“Naw, now, I don’t ’low he would. Leastways, not ’less you’d done already tole him bout me’n you, and I reckon you wouldn’t never a done that or else you’d already be worm food yoreself. I figger yo’re smart enough not to tell him, ’less you aim to persuade him I raped ye.” He paused and took a deep breath and then resumed, speaking rapidly. “But even if you had tole him, he’d never whup me with his bare hands, he’d have to use a gun, and if he did that I wouldn’t keer, because I’d just as soon be daid as not to have you. But may be I could persuade him anyway, if you’d just tell me where to find him. But maybe he aint even there. Because maybe he just aint.”

“Don’t you be talking such foolishness, Dolph Rivett,” she said sternly. “I’m a respectable married woman and here you are coming around to try and start a scandal and I won’t stand for it. Now you just go right back where you came from.”

“No, honey, I reckon I caint do that. I been roamin around these hills for the last week or more, looking for you, and now I’ve found you I aint gonna quit so easy. I shore don’t aim to go home. I’ve seen all I’m gonna see of that wife of mine. So I will just tell you plain: I aim to have you for my own, and if I caint git you then I’m better off daid. Now’f you’ll just kindly tell me whar that cannin factry’s at….”

“Just right up the creek there and take the first road to your right.”

“Thank you. Now, you mind tellin me yore man’s name?”

She thought. What would his name be? Then she thought of something and smiled and said, “Luther Chism.”

“And yore real name aint Sue, but—”

“Sarah.”

“Thank you. And yore gal’s name is—”

“Lucy.”

He climbed on his horse. “Well, Sarah, my darlin, I will see you later, or else you will see me later, in a coffin.” He began to ride away.

“Don’t be a fool, Dolph!” she yelled after him. “Don’t do anything rash!”

He kept on riding away. She did not watch him ride out of sight. It is bad luck to do so, to watch somebody go out of sight. Sometimes it means that person will die.

But would he die? Of course not. She smiled as she envisioned the scene;

“Which one of you fellers is Luther Chism?”

“Whut d’ye keer to know fer?”

“I’d just keer to know, just lak to ast him a question or two.”

“Mister, if yo’re another revenuer, I kin tell ye y’aint gonna leave this valley alive.”

“Sheeut far, do I look lak a revenuer to you fellers?”

“I seen all kinds of lookin revenuers. You caint never tell. I seen a old lady schoolteacher who was a secrit revenuer.”

“Boys, I swear on a pile of Bibles, I aint no revenuer. I’d jist lak to ast Luther Chism a question or two, and it aint got nuthin to do about no moonshine or nuthin. Strak me daid if I’m a revenuer.”

“We will strak ye daid.”

“Lord tear my tongue out if I’m lyin to you boys.”

“All right, mister, I’m Luther Chism. Whut d’ye aim to ast me?”

“Sir, hav ye got a black-haired wife name of Sarah?”

“Yeah, I happen to. Whut about her?”

“Hev ye also got a growed daughter name of Lucy?”

“That’s right. Whut about her?”

“Then yo’re the feller I’m a-lookin fer.”

“Mister, if ye’ve went and got Lucy inter trouble, I’ll—”

“Naw, naw, this don’t concern her.”

“What are you laughing about, Latha?” asked Sonora.

“Him,” she replied.

“What did he want with you?”

“Oh, he’s just another one of those cagey fellows with snatch on his mind,” she said, and both of them laughed.

“Is that why you told him I was your daughter?”

“Yes, and it worked.”

“Did you have much trouble getting rid of him?”

“Not much.”

“I am your daughter, aren’t I, Latha?”

“Why land sakes, honey! What makes you say that? Just because I told that feller—”

“I don’t much favor Mother at all. I look a lot more like you than like her.”

“My goodness, that doesn’t mean anything! Why, I favor my Aunt Robie more than my mother, but that doesn’t mean I ever thought Aunt Robie was my mother. Whatever put such a notion in your head?”

“I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking. Folks say I resemble Daddy, but I don’t especially think so. Gee, I don’t look any more like him than like…like…like somebody like that fellow Every Dill!”

“Now, Sonora! People can’t help who they look like. You’re a very, very pretty girl, and it might be a wonder how Mandy and Vaughn Twichell could have such a pretty girl, but you ought to just let it go at that.”

“How come I don’t have any brothers or sisters?”

“Hasn’t your mother ever told you?”

“Never a word.”

“Well, when you were born it was a bad delivery so the doctor tied up your mother’s tubes so she couldn’t have any more children, for fear they couldn’t’ve been delivered.”

“Well, okay, but how come Daddy’s first wife didn’t have any children?”

“I didn’t realize you knew your father’d been married before.”

“I found some old letters.”

“Well, you nosy kitten, I reckon you’re going to find out everything by and by.”

“Will I find out who my real mother is?”

“Mandy Twichell is your real mother.”

“Will you look me in the eye and swear that you are not my mother?”

“I will look you in your eye and swear that I am not your mother.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“Sonora, what’s got into you? Your mother would be hurt if she could hear you talking like this.”

“I think she can hear me talking like this, and she does not look very hurt,” Sonora said, and then she turned on her heel and went back into the house.

My, my, thought Latha, what could I say?

A while later Luther Chism walked up and asked, “Store open?”

“Just finished my dinner,” said Latha.

“Need me a bag a Bull Durham,” he said.

She got it for him and made change for his quarter.

He stood on the porch and rolled a cigarette and lit it.

“How’s things over to the factory?” she asked.

“Slow. Aint many termaters been comin in today,” he said. He took his cigarette out of his mouth and frowned at it for a while. Then he said, “Latha, you happen to know any fellers named Rivett, any chance?”

“I might,” she said.

He shook his head, back and forth. “Funniest durn thing,” he said. “We’uns was sittin under a tree over to the cannin factry just a little while ago, eatin our dinner, when this here stranger rode up. He got off his horse and ast which one of us was me. Said he wanted to ast me some questions. Well, we took him fer a revenuer at first, but I figgered I’d jist find out what he wanted. So I tole him who I was. And he ast me did I have a wife named Sarah, and I says yes. And you’d never believe whut that feller said then!”

“I can imagine,” she said.

Luther stared at her. “You mean you put him up to it?”

“I wouldn’t say it like that. Anyway, just tell me: what happened to him? What did he do?”

“Well, one of the boys said to Bob Witter, he said, ‘Bob, you git in yore car and ride over to Parthenon and tell em to let you use the telephone, and you telephone the state loony bin and tell em to git up here quick, cause we’ve caught us a feller who thinks he’s fell for ole Sarey Chism!’ And everybody just belly-laughin fit to bust a gut.

“And this feller got right pervoked, and he says, ‘I don’t aim to let nary man make fun out a my true love, and I’ll whup ye one at a time or all put together, come on, ye bastuds, and put up yore dukes.’

“Well, some of the boys was about to take him up on it, but that’ud spiled the fun. Most of em was jist hollerin, ‘True Love! True Love!’ in prissy voices. And Fent Bullen was a-slappin me on the back and sayin ‘Aw, come on, Luther, and be a sport. Give ole Sarey to this feller. You’ve had her long enough.’ And other boys sayin ‘Charge him fifty dollars!’ and ‘Swap him for his horse and saddle!’

“Well, I got that stranger calmed down and tole him none of us wanted to fight with him, and then I ast him, ‘Mister, jist tell me, how long has this been goin on?’ And that set all the boys to splittin their sides again.

“And he says aint been nuthin goin on. And I says, ‘Well, mayhap ye jist seen her ridin by on her mule and was smitten at fiist sight?”

“He says naw, he’d jist seen her twice, wunst up fishin on Banty Creek and wunst just now on the storeporch.

“So I knew fer sartin right then and there that it warn’t nuthin but a bad case of mistook identity. Fer one thing Sarey aint never been fishin on Banty Creek, leastways not that I ever knowed about, and fer another thing she’d have no business to be on no storeporch today. So I says to the feller, ‘Would ye mind tellin me what this Sarey a yourn looks lak?’

“He got plump rapcherous. ‘She’s got eyes like a startled doe’s,’ says he, ‘and a mouth like a pink morning-glory just openin, and hair like the smoke in a kerosene lantern, and she’s nearly tall as me and built like a young cat.’”

Luther Chism chuckled and flicked tears from his eyes. “Well, I tell ye, I said to him, ‘Mister, I know of jist one gal hereabouts who’d fit that description, but it sho aint Sarey. My Sarey’s got eyes like a sow’s, and a mouth like a dried persimmon, and hair like a black rooster a-sittin atop her haid, and she’s half as short as you and built like a brick outhouse.’

“Well, by this time I figgered that pore feller had reckoned somebody’d put him on a false trail, and he says, sour-like, ‘Thank you. I’m sorry to’ve bothered ye.’ Then he turned and got on his horse. Then he ast me, ‘Could I trouble ye to tell me the name of that one you mentioned that fits the description?’

“‘I could, but I won’t,’ I says to him.

“‘Thank you, anyhow,’ says he. ‘I reckon I kin find it out someway.’ Then he spurred his horse and rid off. But he didn’t turn his horse down this way. Headed up the creek. So I come right on over to see if you was the one he had in mind.”

“Guess I am,” she said.

“Well, if he shows his head again, you just let me know, and I’ll round up the boys and run him clean out a the country.”

“Thank you, Luther. I just might have to do that.”

He turned to go, but turned back again. “Say!” he said. “Did ye know who’s all of a suddent turned up again?”

She pointed at his poster tacked on her store.

“Yeah,” Luther said. “He come and put one up on the cannin factry this mornin. Everbody over there aint stopped talkin about it since. What do you make of it?”

She shrugged. “He’s the last person I would have taken for a preacher.”

“Yeah, that’s what I been thinkin.” He moved closer and lowered his voice, although there was nobody around. “You don’t suppose he might could be a revenuer?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me as much as him being a preacher.”

“Hmmm,” said Luther. “We’ll have to keep a sharp eye peeled. Every always was kind of ornery and standoffish, just like his dad. Them Dills never did seem like true Stay More folks.”

“Nobody ever gave them much of a chance to.”

Luther was squinting out at the road. “Speak a the Devil!” he said. “Yonder he comes.”

Down the road Every came walking, holding the hammer she’d loaned him. He approached the store, and stopped at the steps and looked up at them. “Howdy, Luther,” he said.

“Howdy, Ev. We was just talkin about you.”

“Nothing bad, I hope.”

“Not exactly. Just been wonderin if yo’re really a genuine preacher or not.”

“Well, Luther, actually I’m a special agent of the United States Revenue Office, and they sent me out to find one of our men that you’ve got locked up in your smokehouse.”

Luther turned purple and his legs gave away and he sat down on a chicken crate. “Great jumping Jehoshaphat!” he croaked.

Every smiled. He pointed the hammer at Luther and said, “This here Colt revolver is loaded and ready. Will you come along peaceable or do I have to shoot you?” he laughed.

“Dangdarn ye, you varmint! Are you a-pullin my laig?”

Every reached out and pulled his leg.

“But dadblank it all!” said Luther. “How did you know I got a revenuer in my smokehouse?”

“Everybody knows it. You told Fent Bullen and he told Bob Witter and he told Lawlor Coe and he told somebody else who told his wife who told me.”

“Dodgast that Fent Bullen! I got a mine to go wring his neck.”

“What are you going to do with your revenuer, Luther? Train him to tree squirrels?”

“I’m still studying on it. I aint figgered out nuthin yet.”

“Why don’t you bring him with you to my revival meeting tomorrow?”

“I aint a-comin myself.”

“Why, Luther, you yourself just said you were wondering if I’m a genuine preacher or not. Why don’t you just come and find out. I might even save your soul for you.”

“You just might even try to talk me out of moonshinin, mightn’t ye?”

“Why, no, that aint part of my business, Luther. I hear tell you make some of the finest whiskey to be found. I imagine you’d rather die than make a run of bad whiskey, am I right?”

“You bet yore boots.”

“I really doubt that anybody’s ever got fusel-oil poisoning from drinking your whiskey, have they?”

“Nary a soul.”

“If I were a drinking man, I’d even be mighty proud to be your customer myself.”

“Aw shucks, preacher, I aint all that good.”

“Making pure whiskey’s your business, Luther, and making pure souls is mine. If I would go to you for whiskey, you ought to come to me for religion.”

“Well, uh, look, I got to git back to the cannin factry,” Luther said, and began walking away. “I just might,” he said. “I just might come, Brother Dill.” He went on off.

Every called after him, “Tie a collar on your revenuer and bring him along!”

Latha, laughing, remarked, “If you can get religion into Luther Chism, you might even get it into me.”

He smiled. “I’d sure like to try.”

“Pull you up a chair,” she offered.

They sat together on the porch, he in the straight-backed chair, she in the rocker. A long moment of silence drifted by. Then he clapped his hands together, once, and said, “Well, well, well.” Another moment of silence passed before he said, “Sure has been a right smart spell.” Then he turned to her and said, “I’ll swear, Latha, I’m pleased as punch to see you looking so good. You haven’t changed a smidgin.” At length he asked, “How you been?”

“Tolerable,” she said with a smile, pronouncing it “tobble.” “How’ve you been, Every?”

“Tobble too,” he said. “I’ve sure seen some places. Been all the way to California and back.”

“And been all the way to Heaven and back too?” she said.

He looked at her, momentarily puzzled, then said, “Oh,” and laughed mildly. “No, I haven’t had a chance yet to inspect the Kingdom, though I’ve had a couple of words with the King.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Believe it or not,” he said.

“It is a little bit dubious,” she said.

“Remind me sometime,” he said, “to tell you how I got converted.”

“I suspect there are a lot of things I will have to remind you to tell me how you got.”

He did not comment on that. He was not looking at her but at the old ruin of the bank building across the road. “You’ve not changed at all,” he said, “but this town sure has. This old place is sure dead on the vine.” In a reminiscent tone he continued, “Last time I was through here was back in the spring of ’25, and it was late at night and I didn’t stay very long at all. Just made one stop. Just dropped in for a few words with Lawlor Coe.” He dropped the reminiscent tone; his voice became earnest. “You recall Lawlor used to be just about my only pal back in the old days, so I didn’t mind talking to him. There was only one reason I had for talking to anybody. I want you to know what that reason was, Latha. I will tell you: the only reason I come through here that night was to try and find you.”

He stopped. After a while he said, quietly, “Lawlor told me they’d had you locked up down there in that state hospital for going-on three years. Three whole years. So I reckon there are a lot of things I will have to remind you to tell me how you got.”

She did not comment on that.

“Latha,” he said, “you and me are going to have to do an awful lot of talking, sooner or later, but there’s just one thing I’ve got to ask you right now: are you boiling mad at me, or just plain mad at me, or just peeved at me, or what?”

She smiled. “A little bit burned, maybe.”

“Well, is it just a first-degree burn that I could put some ointment on, or is it a hopeless fourth-degree burn?”

“Hard to tell, Every. It’s an old burn with a lot of scar tissue grown over it.”

“I will heal it,” he declared. “I promise you.”

“All right,” she said.

“Last night…” he said. “Last night I couldn’t hardly believe it when I found out you were back here again. I went up to the old home place and tried to sleep on an old pile of straw in the corner, but I couldn’t. Not a wink. I swear, I had a hard enough time talking myself into coming back to Stay More in the first place, to give a meeting. But after I found out you were here, I just didn’t know if I could ever get up my nerve to go and do it. I tossed and turned till the crack of dawn, and then I got up and went out into the yard and asked the Lord if He could give me any help, but He just said to me, ‘Son, this is something you’ll have to settle on your own. This is your Big Trial, and you’ll—’”

“Horsefeathers,” she said. She said that and he hushed, and she said, “Every, if you’re asking me to believe that you actually heard a voice saying those words, then you are crazier than I ever was.”

He looked hurt for a moment, but then he grinned and asked, “When you were down there at that state hospital, did you ever hear voices?”

“I don’t recall,” she said. “I suppose I did.”

“I’ll bet,” he said, “that you even hear voices once in a while even still.”

She shook her head, but he was right.

“Aw, come on, I’ll bet you do,” he insisted.

“Okay,” she said. “So both of us are crazy.”

He shook his head. “No, you don’t have to be crazy to hear a voice. Now I don’t mean for you to believe that I heard some actual sound coming out of the Lord’s mouth and into my ear. I don’t hold with that prodigy hokum myself. But a true Christian has got his Lord in him, and can talk with Him subjectively, in his mind or in his heart’s core. Likewise, some crazy people might have the Devil in them, and hear subjective voices of evil.”

“So you believe in Satan too?” she said.

“I believe in Evil,” he said, “just as I believe in Good. I don’t believe in any fiendish-looking brute running around in his red underwear with a long tail and a pitchfork, just as I don’t believe in any old white-bearded Grampaw a-sittin Up Yonder on a cloud. But I believe in Forces. Powers. Causes. Agents. Movers, even if all they move is people. I believe in Light and Darkness, in Right and Wrong, in True and False, in Sickness and Health…”

“You’ve got it all spelled out, have you?” she said, with sarcasm, but then she softened her tone and said, “Preach to me tomorrow, Every. Go ahead and finish telling me about this little chat you were having with the Lord.”

“Well, He just wanted me to know that He was trying me out on my own, that I couldn’t be hanging onto His apron-strings during this particular time of trial. But He left me with the notion that He wouldn’t think too highly of me if I was to back down.”

“Maybe that Mover inside of you isn’t the Lord,” she said. “Maybe that thing talking to you was just your guilt.”

He thought about that for a while. Then he asked, “How do you mean that, Latha?” There was that sudden nervousness in his voice again.

“You feel the Lord has deputized you to come and save Stay More,” she said, “to save the town you nearly ruined!”

He was stricken. “You mean you—”

“I don’t mean me,” she said.

“Then I don’t know what you might mean,” he said.

“I think you do,” she said.

Impulsively his eyes shifted to the old stone edifice across the road, and then he seemed to realize that she had caught him glancing at it, and when his eyes returned to hers they were thoroughly sheepish. He asked, “Does everybody think that I—?”

“Nobody thinks anything,” she said. “Nobody even knew that you were back in town, remember?”

“Then why do you think it was me?”

“Think what was you?”

“Think it was me that robbed—”

“How did you know it was robbed?”

“You just said so.”

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t say a word about it.”

“Well, somebody told me, then. But why do you think it was me?”

“Good Lord, Every, who else could it have been? And even with that get-up you were in, that hood with the two eye-holes cut in it, and those outlandish clothes, I knew it was you, Every. Have you forgot it was me that you robbed, not just the bank? Have you forgot that I was the poor scared teller you held up? And even though you didn’t even speak to me, even though you didn’t want me to recognize your voice so you just passed me that note, I knew it was you. But I almost didn’t believe you, I almost felt like testing you, to see if you really would kill me, but I figured that if you were desperate enough to hold up the bank, you were desperate enough to kill me. You would have killed me, wouldn’t you have?”

“Did you ever tell anyone you thought it was me?”

“No.”

“Why not? Didn’t the sheriff ask you who you thought might have done it?”

“Yes, but I told him I thought it must’ve been some foreigner because there wasn’t any resemblance to anybody I’d ever seen.”

“Why’d you tell him that?”

“Why, to protect you, of course, you fool. See? That’s what I did for you, after you’d gone and threatened to kill me. And you would have killed me, wouldn’t you have?”

“I still haven’t said it was me,” he said.

“Then don’t say it! Keep it a secret to your grave! I don’t need you to say it, because I know it was you!”

“Shhh, Latha. No call to shout. Somebody might hear.”

Quietly and wearily she asked, “Why did you do it, Every?”

“It wasn’t me, Latha, Not me, the me that I am. Not the me that I am now. I’m a Christian, and a good man. That job was pulled nearly twenty years ago by a mean young hellraiser.”

“All right, why’d he do it then?”

“Pure meanness. He hated Stay More. Those Ingledews had already run him out of town twice, hadn’t they? And after all he’d gone and done, getting in trouble with the Army and court-martialed, trying to rescue Raymond Ingledew from the Huns. And coming home to find his dad dead and finding out nobody’d even gone to the funeral. And finding the girl he’d loved all his life was still pining for Raymond that wasn’t ever coming back…”

“And raping her.”

“Yes, and ravishing her out of despair, and doing all kinds of mischief, and making all kinds of trouble, until the only mean thing left for him to do was take the bank’s money and—”

“And go away forever.”

“No. He never meant to do that. He meant to go down to Little Rock and buy an automobile and come back and get that girl.”

“And why didn’t he?”

“Because being a mean young hellraiser, you see, wouldn’t he just have to go and get himself into a gambling game down there in Little Rock and get himself drunker than a boiled owl and lose most of his money, and get in a fight, and get picked up by the police and handed back over to the Army to serve out the rest of his court-martial that he’d broken out of Leavenworth to go back home and ravish that girl and rob that bank, and be locked up for three more years before he could break out again and go back to Stay More once again long enough to find out that she herself was locked up down in the state hospital in Little Rock.”

“She broke out too,” Latha said.

“Does she remember how she broke out?” he asked.

“No, she just woke up one morning and discovered that she wasn’t in the state hospital but in a hotel room in Nashville, Tennessee.”

“That,” he announced, “was the same hotel room where that mean young hellraiser got converted into a faithful Christian.”

SUB TWO: Twenty and Eighteen Years Ago

For a while yet, Bug, I cannot permit you to discover what he meant by that. You will find out in time. And when you find out it will heal that scar tissue which you spoke of. But until then I cannot let you love him as you had when you were a child.

He had been your first lover, we know that. His mother was a second cousin of your own mother, whose grandfather was the great-uncle of his mother, and when this old man lay dying in his home down at Demijohn, when you were only eleven and Every was twelve, you had been left at the Dill cabin one night when the grown-ups went down to Demijohn to set up with the dying man, and although you had been left in the bedroom of the cabin’s east wing, separated by the dog-trot from the west wing where he was to sleep, you crossed this separation out of loneliness and fear of the night and out of curiosity, and although he was shy and awkward, just as virginal as yourself, he was just as ripe as yourself, and the two of you tried. You tried long enough, and it worked.

From then on he considered you his girl, and he planned to marry you as soon as the two of you came of age. But when your mother learned of your attachment to him, she talked you out of it. It took her a while, more than a while, but she did. The Dills, she thought (and said) were trash, even if Every’s mother was her own second cousin. Every, she thought (and said), would never amount to anything. She wanted you to marry an Ingledew. Presumptuous of her, that “social climbing”—upon a ladder with so few rungs, and those broken or cracked, that it was not fit for any ascension. The Ingledews were, by and large, wealthier than most people in Stay More, since John Ingledew owned the bank, and they were certainly wealthier than the Dills, who were quite poor indeed, but I have never been able to figure out why your mother sensed any sort of social or economic strata in a town where nobody had any great wealth to speak of.

Still, Every was the closest thing to a beau you had for several years, although you had to keep it hidden from your mother. But when you started high school it was Raymond Ingledew who sat beside you on the school wagon into Jasper, you and he the only two graduates of the Stay More school to be sent into town for the last three grades. Every didn’t go; instead, like most others, he went to work. Now your mother really had a reason for rating Raymond over him.

And Raymond was very good-looking, which Every had never been. But that itself was what was wrong. He was too much interested in girls to give all his attention to you. Like the fickle male lightning bug, he was all too ready to forget you whenever anybody else wearing a dress came into view. Even after he had asked you to marry him, and you had agreed, he still courted other girls. You pretended not to notice, but Every, who never gave up trying to get you back from Raymond, would make you notice; he would rub it in.

One night when Raymond was away keeping company with Wanda Dinsmore, who everybody knew was a loose girl, you, in bitter retaliation, gave yourself to Every again, for the first time in years. When Raymond found out about this, his strict double standard tore him up. He and Every had a fist fight, which did not last very long. When Raymond picked himself up, he ran off to Jasper and enlisted in the Army. You blamed yourself more than you blamed Every, but still you would not let Every become your beau again, although he tried very hard—until Raymond’s brothers ganged up on him and told him he had better go and join the Army himself, or else.

They were both gone nearly two years before you saw one of them again, and the one you saw again was not the one your heart had grown fonder over the absence of.

He comes: the horse galloping madly, down the road from towards Parthenon; he jerks up on the reins and brings the horse to a stop, and is leaping down and hitching the reins to the post even before the horse can cease all its momentum. Then he takes all of the steps of the porch in one bound.

You are in the first month of your new job at the bank and you are still not accustomed to John Ingledew’s habitual noontime parting, made with a grin, “Watch out for robbers”—you don’t know yet just how much he means it or not, and thus, alone in the bank, you are frightened at the dashing speed with which this man arrives.

You do not know him at first. He struts boldly up to the counter, dressed in a soldier’s uniform with the red chevrons of a sergeant on his sleeves, and a broad and flat-brimmed doughboy hat cocked down over his eye. He thrusts the folded note at you. With trembling hands you take it and unfold it and read it.

THIS IS A STICK-UP. FORGIT THE MUNNY, BUT HAND OVER YOURSELF. ALL OV IT. P.S. I LOVE YOU MOAR THEN ENYTHANG IN THE HOLE WIDE WURL.

You look up, and he is grinning big at you, and you recognize the grin before you recognize the face: the old familiar, half bashful, half-mischievous expansion of the mouth with just a thin line of the white teeth showing. You are about to exclaim his name, but instead you wad up the note and fling it at him and say, “You gave me a bad skeer. I ought to get the sheriff on you.”

He holds up his hands as if you were pointing a gun at him, and says, “Aw, please, Latha, the only crime I’ve done was borry a horse from a feller without him knowin it so’s I could come and see ye.”

“Your’re looking right good,” you say. “How come you’re wearing that fancy uniform if you’re out of the service?”

“I ain’t out yet,” he says. “Matter of fact, I aint even on a proper furlough, but I was gittin to where I was gonna kill me a couple of majors or colonels, ’less I could come and see you.”

“How’d you know I was working in the bank?”

“Mandy tole me.”

“Where’d you see Mandy?”

“Well, my train ended up in Little Rock, and this buddy in my outfit was a cousin of Vaughn’s and he’d given me their address, so I figgered I’d just drop by and ask her how-all you was doing.”

“You tell her you were coming up here?”

“I did.”

“What’d she say?”

He laughs. “Said she aimed to write Tull or Bevis and warn em I was a-comin. I aint skeered a them, though. I’d walk through hell barefoot and blindfolded to see you.”

You do not smile. “I tole you last letter I sent you,” you say, “that you better just put me out of your mind.”

“Yeah, you did, but that was before—”

“Before what?”

“Before Raymond was listed missing.”

“I don’t care,” you say. “He’s just missing, and he’ll find his way out of there one day…unless…unless, and this wouldn’t surprise me a bit, unless you killed him yourself and hid his body somewheres.”

“Latha,” he asks, “when do you git off work? I got to talk to you.”

“Four o’clock, but I won’t see you then.”

“How come?”

“I don’t want to see you. Can’t you get that through your big dumb head?”

“My head may be big, but it aint so dumb. It knows a few things that might be of interest to your ears.”

“If you have something to say, then say it.”

“Not here. Standing up like this. We got to sit down someplace private.”

“I don’t want to be anyplace private with you.”

“Latha, why do you hate me so?”

“I don’t hate you. I just don’t want to have anything to do with you.”

“All right,” he says severely. “I’m going up to visit with Mom and Dad for a little spell. Then I’ll come and talk to you. Then I’ll go.” He turns on his heel, a soldierly about-face, and marches out.

At four o’clock, Mr. Ingledew closes the bank, and you walk with him down to his brother Willis’s post office and store, but you do not tell him that Every is back in town. It is for nothing that you withhold this information, for as soon as you arrive at the post office, Willis says to his brother, but glancing at you, “John, Tull says he got word Every Dill’s coming back to town.”

“No!” John Ingledew says. “Where’d he hear that?”

“A certain gal wrote him and told him she’d heard it from Every hisself.”

Mr. Ingledew looks at you. “Just let us know,” he says to you.

You decide not to keep it. “He’s back, all right,” you say. “He came in the bank at noontime while you were out.”

“No,” says Mr. Ingledew.

“Aint he got a nerve, though?” says Willis Ingledew.

“What’d he do? What’d he say to you?” Mr. Ingledew asks.

“I reckon he’s still after me,” you tell him.

“That bodacious rasper!” says Willis. “He wouldn’t dast!”

“What’d you tell him, girl?” Mr. Ingledew asks.

“Told him he was wasting his time,” you say.

“Where’s he now?” Mr. Ingledew asks.

“Said he was going up to visit his folks.”

“Come on, Willis!” he says to his brother. “Where’s the boys?”

“I don’t know. Over to the mill, maybe.”

“Never mind em, then. Me’n you’s enough.”

“Lola!” Willis hollers. “Mind the store, I got to go out.”

They stalk off up the road at a brisk pace, and after a moment you follow. You are going that way anyway; it is necessary to pass the Dill place to reach your own house. But that alone is not why you are following. There is an imp of perversity in you, Bug, that makes you want to witness the confrontation between these two angry men and Every. Well, you say, justifying it to yourself, if I can’t make him go away and leave me alone, then somebody else has got to do it for me.

The Dill place is a wattle-and-daub log cabin of two rooms connected by a dogtrot, set back up on the hill a short way from the small clapboard shop on the road where William Dill makes and repairs wagons. The cabin is nearly choked up by a lush growth of vines and trees surrounding it. The two men pause at the shop and, finding no one there, head on up toward the house. You leave the road and cut through the woods, to eavesdrop from the side of the house without being seen.

Old Billy Dill and his ugly wife and son are sitting together in the dogtrot.

Mr. Ingledew addresses them. “Howdy.”

“Howdy, John. Howdy, Willis,” Billy Dill says. “What brings y’all way up to my digs?”

“Him,” Mr. Ingledew says. “What’s he doing here?”

“Wal,” Billy says, “I caint see none too good ’thout my specs, but looks to me lak he’s jest lollygaggin thar and airin his heels.”

“Don’t ye trifle with us, Billy,” Willis Ingledew says. “Whut’d he come back to Stay More fer?”

“Damn ’f I know, really now,” Billy says. “Reckon maybe the durn idjit got some fool notion ter drap in and see if his ole folks was still above ground.”

“I got a powerful hunch,” says Willis, “that his ole folks aint the main party he’s interested in. I got a idee he’s maybe sniffin around after a sartin gal, and me’n John is wonderin if he aint complete disremembered that that gal belongs to John’s boy.”

“She caint belong to no boy who’s six feet under,” Billy says. “John, when you gonna git that through yore noodle?”

“I don’t feature that,” John says. “Aint nobody said he was officially dead. For all anybody knows, he could still be in some hospital over there, banged up bad maybe but still kicking. I don’t aim to hold with him being dead till I git the word from Uncle Sam.”

Every speaks up. “Might have to wait forever for that, Mr. Ingledew.”

John’s voice bristles. “Then by God I’ll wait forever, but I shore don’t aim to ’low no unprincipled cur-dawg to swoop down like a vulture the minute Raymond’s gone and try to take his bride away!”

“Why’ntcha lock er up in yore bank vault, John?” Billy says. “That way ye’d keep her a ole maid till the Judgment Day when her and Raymond could finally tie the knot.”

“I don’t have to take no sass off you, Billy Dill!” John says. “You’re fergittin somethin I already got in my bank vault, and that’s the mortgage on your shop!”

“How ’bout that, Ev?” Billy says to his son. “Kinder looks lak this son of a bitch is threatenin to run us up a stump, don’t it? I’m jest skeered shitless, aint you?”

Mrs. Dill speaks up. “Such language, Bill,” she says. “Is that any way to talk in front of these sons of bitches?” Then to John Ingledew she says, “Why’nt ye take that mortgage to yore outhouse and use it for wipes?”

“By God, you don’t think I might?” John demands.

“Beats corncobs a real sight,” she says.

“Naw,” says Billy. “That mortgage paper’s too slick. It’d slide right off ole John’s bung-hole and leave him nasty as ever.”

“Shoot,” says Every. “When God made old John, he plum fergot to give him a bung-hole.”

John says to his brother, “Willis, I’ve had all I can stand. Remind me tomorrow to foreclose on these riffraff.” He turns to Every. “Now you listen to me, boy. And listen good. You kin visit yore folks all you want, but if you aint out of this town by noon tomorrow, you’re gonna have an escort party of about seven fellers to see you out. Noon tomorrow. And if you come anywhere near the girl before then, you’ll be leavin all the sooner.”

“Well, I’ll tell ye, sir,” Every says. “As far as gettin out of town’s concerned, I got to go back in the mornin anyhow. As far as seein that girl’s concerned, hell and high water aint gonna stop me. But I’ll tell ye why I got to go back in the mornin. I got to face court-martial. Want to know why they’re court-martialin me? Cause I knocked a lieutenant flat on his ass. Want to know why I knocked him flat on his ass? Cause he wouldn’t let me crawl fifty feet through the woods to untie Raymond from a tree. Want to know why he wouldn’t let me? Cause the Germans had tied Raymond to that tree for a decoy, to ambush us. Want to know what Raymond said to me after I’d knocked down that lieutenant and went to him anyway and tried to untie him? Said to me, ‘Get away from here, you fool!’ Want to know what I said back to him? Said back to him, ‘Naw, Ray, I done writ yore sweetheart and tole her I’d fine you by and by and git you out alive or else die tryin.’ Want to know what he said to me then?”

Every’s voice chokes, but he clears his throat and continues in a fierce, quivering tone, “Said to me, ‘Ev,’ said to me, ‘Ev, no sense in both us gittin kilt! Clear the hell out a here while ye kin! It’s a trap!’ But I started untyin him anyhow, and I said to him, ‘I don’t see no trap. Reckon if it’s a trap, they aint about to settle for just me. They’re waitin to git a few more before openin up.’ But just then I ’spose they got tired of waitin and figgered I was all they’d ever git. They opened up. See these here red scars on my laigs? Them’s machine gun bullets. I couldn’t stand up. I couldn’t no more of stood up and finished untyin him than I could of took off and flew. And him screamin at me, ‘Ev, you fool, clear the hell out a here!’ So I did. My boys was brave enough to come down and open fire on that machine-gun nest long enough for me to drag myself out of there.”

There is a long silence. Eventually John Ingledew asks in a quiet voice, “Was Raymond hit. Did they hit him?”

“I don’t know,” Every says. “Some a that spray that cut me down might’ve hit him, but then on the other hand maybe that tree he was tied to was shieldin him. I don’t know. The next thing I knew a couple a my boys had tuck me under the arms and dragged me clean out a there afore I could take a good look back. Then that lieutenant I’d clobbered came up mad as a rattlesnake and kicked me in the face. I woke up in a field hospital.”

“So you have no way of knowing that Raymond’s dead,” John Ingledew said.

“Naw. But the war’s over, dammit. If they’d kept him alive as a prisoner, he’d of been liberated, and he’d of showed up by now, wouldn’t he?”

Willis Ingledew says to his brother, “You know what I think, John? I think maybe this rascal is just makin up a tall tale. I think maybe the real reason they’re court-martialin him is that he killed pore Raymond hisself.”

“Hmmm,” says John Ingledew. “I wouldn’t be too surprised.”

“Goddammit,” Every says. “Come to the trial with me and hear the story from somebody else, then.”

“Still and all…” John says, and then he says, “How do we know you aint even makin up the whole story about the court-martial? If they really meant to court-martial you, they wouldn’t be lettin you run around loose like this.”

“They sure wouldn’t,” Every agrees.

“You mean you’re—what’s it called?—you’re—”

“A wall,” Every says. “A.W.O.L. I broke barracks.”

“But you’re going back to face up to it?”

“In the morning.”

“Well, even if the court-martial don’t put you in the hoosegow, they’ll put you away for being A-wol, won’t they?”

“More’n likely.”

“So you aint gonna have no chance to be foolin around with that girl for several years maybe.”

“That’s right. So I’ve got to do all of my foolin around while I’m still here.”

“Naw you aint neither. You leave her alone. Time you git out a jail, Raymond’ll be back.”

“Maybe not. Time I git out a jail, maybe some other feller who aint got any right to her is liable to’ve took her away from me.”

“Then good for her, sonny boy, cause she’d shore be a lot better off with just about anybody ’ceptin a devil lak you.”

Billy Dill speaks up. “If you disparage my boy just once more, you bastard, I’ll come to the bank tomorrow and wipe my own ass with that mortgage and make you a hat out of it.”

“Come on, Willis,” John Ingledew says. “Let’s leave these scum.” To Every he says, “But I’m tellin you for the last time, if you even dare look at that girl again, they’ll be eight going out and seven coming back!”

John and Willis turn and stalk quickly away.

You leave too, Bug, but you are left with the feeling that somehow the Ingledews have not sufficiently intimidated the Dills, and that Every probably would not heed their threats. Thus you are anticipating that he might present himself to you again, and you are wondering what you can say to get rid of him. You are also in deep distress from hearing him tell how the Germans had caught Raymond and had used him. When Every had written you that letter claiming that he would find Raymond “for you” and get him out alive “for you,” you had considered it merely more of his vainglorious boasting, just as he had boasted when leaving to enlist, “I’m gonna go over there and protect him for you,” and just as he had later boasted by mail, “Here I am a sergeant already, and he aint but a corporal still,” and “Killed me two Boches barehanded today,” and “Tole Raymond that when I get to be general I’ll make him a colonel if he’ll let me have you; he said he’d think about it,” and “Today they pinned the Craw de Gur on me—that’s one of the medals the Frenchies give out—the only decoration Ray’s got is the Dose of Clap—the Frenchies give that one out too.” You are inclined, like John and Willis Ingledew, to be skeptical of his story, although you cannot quite accept the possibility that he would actually have killed Raymond…unless his desperation to have you was so great as to drive him to it.

But for the first time you begin to realize that Raymond might actually be dead. Before, you have not been able to accept this. And if he is dead? Would you have Every? Certainly not. He is the last man you would have. Indeed, even if he did not actually kill Raymond, he was responsible for Raymond’s joining the service in the first place.

This is what you are going to remind him if he bothers you again.

But the afternoon passes on without his showing. You have returned home and have eaten supper, waiting, expecting him any minute, but he does not show up. After supper you sit on the cabin’s porch until full dark, waiting, but he does not appear. “Lookin fer cumpny?” your father asks. No, you say. “Reckon I’ll turn in,” he says, and leaves the porch.

You are alone for several minutes in the dark, before you hear the whippoorwill. It is a good whippoorwill, coming from the woodlot, but, real as it sounds, there is an edge about it that tells you human lips are making it, and for a moment you are washed with a flood of old memories, some sweet but mostly bitter. When you were twelve and he was thirteen the whistle of the whippoorwill had been his signal, coming from that same woodlot, to tell you he was there. It was a near-perfect imitation; one night your mother had said “That shore is purty,” and had listened sweetly entranced for a moment to what she thought was a real bird. Many times, all but the last time, you had heeded the signal and gone to the woodlot. Now again you do not heed it. It comes twice, thrice, four times, at one-minute intervals, but you remain seated. When it sounds the fifth time, you turn you head toward the woodlot and say, “Go away,” not loudly, not loudly enough for anyone in the house to hear, nor anyone in the woodlot either. When it sounds the sixth time, mournful as the dancing of dead leaves, you cannot stand it. You leave the porch and walk out through the yard to the very edge of the woodlot, and you peer into the black mass of trees and say, “Go away!”

“Thought you’d not remember,” his voice says softly. You cannot see him in there at all. He makes the whippoorwill whistle once more, just loud enough for you to hear. “The whippin of ole pore Will,” he says. “Means you’ll be making a journey in the direction it was heard. Remember? This way’s northeastwards from your house. We was gonna head northeast. Remember? Well, I got to go northeast myself now, tomorrow. Wonder could I say anything to get you to go too, to bear me out, to stand by my side. Guess I caint, but I’ll try anyhow.”

“You’re not a real whippoorwill,” you say, needing to say something, even to assure yourself that he is not, despite the eerie resemblance between the plaintive tone of his words and the cry of that bird. You still cannot see him, though you know where his dark form stands.

“Am too,” he says. “Me all over, I’m one. Same habits. Same lonesomeness. Just a-lookin everwhere for my mate. Caint find her. Keep a-callin and a-callin for her. Keep—”

“Please go,” you say. “Please, Every.”

“Got to tell you somethin first, Latha. Want to tell you about ole Ray. I’m shore abashed if any of them smart-alecky letters I sent ye gave ye any offense. Didn’t mean em that way. Didn’t mean to make em look lak I considered myself a cut above him, no. Naw, he was second to none, Latha. He was a real brave boy, lots more of a man than me. I want to tell you what he done.”

“I’ve heard your story,” you tell him.

“Oh,” he says. “Them Ingledews tell ye?”

“No,” you say. “I was there. You didn’t see me, but I was listening in.”

“Oh,” he says, and his voice loses its gentle plaintiveness, sharpens. “I reckon you put em up to pay in a call on us.”

“No,” you say. “Mandy’s letter put em up to that.”

He comes nearer to you, out of the woods; you can see his dark shape clearly before you, although you cannot see his eyes. He is still wearing that Army uniform with the round-brimmed doughboy hat. “Latha,” he says, “I let down on you. I let down on the promise I made ye. I couldn’t get him out. But I tried my best.”

A laugh escapes your throat. “Too bad you couldn’t’ve got him out as easy as you got him in,” you say, with sarcasm.

“You still blaming me for that?” he asks, hurt.

“I’ll forever blame you for that,” you return.

“You don’t hold yourself none to blame?” he demands.

“A little,” you admit. “Not much.”

“All right,” he says. “But listen, Latha, he’s not coming back. I would bet almost anything on that. Now if you were hearing me when I tole them Ingledews about the court-martial, you know I aint in any position to ask you to marry me. So I’m not. But could I just ask you to wait just a little while, to see what the Army’s gonna do to me? Could you just not marry nobody else for a little while, till I get some word to you?”

“The word I want,” you tell him, “is a word from the government saying that Raymond is dead and buried.”

“You might never get that,” he says. “Then what?”

“Then I’ll wait,” you say.

“You might wait forever.”

“Then I’ll wait forever.”

His hands come up and grip your arms. “Latha, don’t you want a man?” he reasons with you. “Do you want the coldness of being a maiden all your life? Was Ray so important to you that you’ll wait forever, lonely and cold, for him to come back? Won’t you ever long for somebody to be close to?”

His words more than the grip of his hands grip you, and draw you for an instant to him, and you are about to say, Oh yes, Every, I will long even for you, when a lantern suddenly flares up to illuminate the two of you, and a voice says, “Okay, buster, git yore goddamn hands off that gal before I blow yore gizzard out!”

The voice is Tearle Ingledew’s and you turn and see him aiming a shotgun at Every’s heart. Bevis Ingledew is holding high the lantern in one hand, a pistol in the other. Stanfield Ingledew and Odell Ingledew are each holding rifles. E.H. Ingledew is holding a pitchfork.

Every does not relax his grip on your arms. He glowers at Tearle.

“You think I don’t mean it?” Tearle snarls. “Well, just hold on till I count three, and then you kin count the number a buckshot sprinkled through yore innards! One…Two…Thr—”

You break away from Every and stand back from him. He remains there with his hands still gripping the air where you had been. “Goddamn ye,” Every says to Tearle, “I aint armed. Lay down yore yellow-livered shotgun and I’ll take ye on man for man!”

“And I’d whup the shit out a ye so fast,” returns Tearle, “thet you’d think ye was a freshed-up stable! But I aint gonna bother. I’d jest as soon blow off yore haid as look at you. And I reckon I will!” He raises the shotgun toward Every’s head.

“Drop it, Tull!” comes another voice, from the woodlot. “All you fellers lay down yore arns! You heerd Ev, it aint fair he aint got a gun.”

Tearle does not lower his shotgun. “Who’s thet?” he demands, squinting into the woods. “Who’s thet in thar?”

“Drop it, I say!” the voice persists.

“Thet you, Lawlor?” Tearle demands. “Lawlor Coe, thet you in thar?”

“Yeah, and if you fellers don’t lay down yore arns and fight fair, they’s gonna be a big gatherin up at the cemetery tomorrow.”

“Lawlor now, you lissen a me,” Tearle says. “This aint none a yore business. You butt in whar ye don’t belong, yo’re liable to git hurt yoresef!”

“Nobody’s gonna git hurt but y’all, ’less y’all lay down them guns right now, and I don’t mean maybe! My Winchester’s on yore heart, Tull, and my finger’s giving me trouble!”

“I see ye now, sonny boy,” comes still another voice from the woodlot, and you realize with alarm that it is your own father, “and I got a right fine Springfield a my own that’s ready to handle the likes of Lawlor Coe meddlin whar he don’t belong!”

“Saultus Bourne!” comes a voice from the path to the road. That white nightshirt a yourn makes a fine target fer my old flintlock!”

Bevis Ingledew with his pistol says, “Naw ye don’t, Billy Dill! I got the drap on ye!”

Then there is a long moment of complete silence.

Tearle finally breaks it. “Somebody better git a drap on ole Bevis, he’s the only one aint got a drap on im.” Then he says, “Well, all right, we might as well all fire together, and the devil take the hindmost. Aim good, everbody, ’cause the only one dead sartin to be kilt is Every, and I’ve got him.”

A shot explodes—Lawlor’s?—a shot is fired, and the lantern in Bevis’s hand shatters and after a quick burst of flame it goes out. In utter darkness, other shots are fired, matched by violent curses.

You run to the cabin, where your mother is standing on the porch. “Maw!” you yell, “get a lantern, quick! Light a lantern!” She runs into the house and you stand waiting, trembling, listening to the shots fired and the curses screeched. When she returns with the lantern, the shooting has stopped but the curses are roaring louder then ever. You take the lantern and run bravely with it back out to the midst of the fight at the edge of the woodlot.

Every has his arm in a stranglehold on Tearle’s neck and is choking him to death. Your father has a stranglehold on Lawlor Coe but Lawlor is breaking loose. Bevis Ingledew has clubbed Billy Dill over the head with his pistol butt and is standing over his unconscious form. Stanfield Ingledew with his rifle and E.H. with his pitchfork are taking aim at Every, while Odell is taking aim at Lawlor Coe.

“Let him go, Ev!” E.H. snaps, and pokes Every in the back with the sharp tines of the pitchfork. Every continues choking Tearle. E.H. thrusts forward with the pitchfork. Every lets out a yelp and releases Tearle and grabs himself in the small of the back.

“Goddamn ye, you punctured my backbone!” he yells at E.H.

“Yeah, and I might put yore eyes out too!” E.H. replies.

Tearle, freed, grabs up his shotgun, howling, “By God, now I’ll plug holes through the bastard!” and he raises his gun at Every again, but Stanfield puts his hand on the barrel and forces it down.

“Naw,” Stanfield says to Tearle. “We aint gonna kill him. We’re jest gonna give him a head start afore we start firing.”

“And you too,” Odell says to Lawlor Coe. “You kin jest keep him company on that head start, Lawlor, and both you sonsabitches kin git clean out a town.”

“My dad’s hurt,” Every says. “If you fellers’ve hurt him—”

“He aint hurt,” Bevis says. “Might have a knot on his head when he wakes up, but he aint hurt.”

“Now listen, Every,” Tearle says. “Yo’re leavin town fast, kin ye understand? Yo’re leavin town fast as yore two legs kin carry ye, and ye aint never comin back. Never! Ye understand! If you ever show yore hide in this town again, we’uns will shoot you down afore ye could git word to God! We won’t speak fust, we’ll jest fire. I swear that to ye. Now march! You too, Lawlor, start marchin, and I don’t keer to see ye again neither.”

The Ingledews advance on Every and Lawlor and prod them with their weapons. They begin moving.

“Latha!” Every hollers. “Come with me! Please come with me!”

There is a brief thoughtless instant when you are tempted to yield to this pathetic request, but you do not move. The Ingledews would not have let you go with him anyway. You shake your head.

“Then wait for me, Latha!” he hollers. “I’ll come back!”

“You’ll never come back, I told ye,” Tearle snarls. “If you come back, it’ll be to git yoreself measured out fer a coffin. We’ll be lookin at each other, and one of us won’t know it. Now march! Run! We start shootin any minute! You too, Lawlor! Get a move on there!”

Every and Lawlor trot down the path to the road. When they reach the road, the Ingledews begin firing. They reload and fire several times.

You do not watch Every run out of sight. It is bad luck to watch somebody go all the way out of sight. It means they might die.

But maybe you should have, Bug. There would come many a time when you would wish that you had watched him walk out of sight, so he would have died and never returned. Because he did return, once more.

Another two years pass; you forget him; it is when you have completely forgotten him that he comes again, again by surprise.

It is after supper again, it is a summertime evening after supper again, and you are doing your evening chores. You are feeding the hogs. You have thrown their slop to them and are turning around with the empty slop bucket in your hand when he comes out of the woods. You drop the slop bucket. It rolls down the hill. You watch it roll away.

“No, now,” you say, as if to the bucket. “Go away. You will be killed.”

“He hasn’t come back, has he?” he says. “I told you he wasn’t coming back. He won’t ever come back.”

“How did you get out?” you ask. “They told me you were locked up in that Army prison.”

“I broke out. I had to talk to you, Latha. I had to tell you that I could stand being locked in there for two more years if you would just tell me that you will wait for me.”

“I won’t tell you that.”

“Who are you going to marry, then? Has somebody spoken for you?”

“No.”

“Raymond’s never coming back, I told you. I know. Believe me, he’s dead.”

“All right, but I can’t marry you, Every.”

“Why not, Latha? What’s wrong with me?”

“They wouldn’t let me marry you. Not just the Ingledews. There’s nobody in this town who would let me marry you.”

“We could run away.”

“I don’t want to run away. Stay More’s my home.”

“Then I’ll come back here, and mend my ways, and make folks like me. I’ll make em all like me.”

“You forget the Ingledews have sworn to kill you if you ever come back.”

“They got no right to.”

“That won’t keep them from it.”

“I’ll talk to them! I’ll try to get em to understand!”

“They’ll shoot you before you get a word out of your mouth.”

“Then, Latha, you talk to em! Try to get em to understand!”

“Understand what?” you say. “Understand that you’re still stubborn enough to want to marry me still? After all that’s happened?”

He clenches and unclenches his fists. Through clenched teeth he says, “Latha, put yourself in my place! What would you do? What can I do?”

“The first thing you better do is give yourself up, and tell them you’re sorry you broke out. Then if they ever do let you out, you ought to look around for some place to go, some place except Stay More.”

He pounds his fist upon the rail of the hog pen. “All right, goddammit!” he says. “Looks like there’s nothing I can do, is there?”

“No.”

“All right, Latha. Goodbye, then, I’m going. Tell Mom and Dad I said hello. Tell em I’m all right. Tell em I’ll be back one day, tell em to keep their chins up.”

“Your dad’s dead, Every. He died last winter.”

“Naw!” he says. “Please don’t say that’s true! What’d he die of?”

“Stroke, I guess,” you say. “I’ll tell you one thing I did, Every. I went to his funeral. I don’t know why, but I went. Nobody else did. Just me and your mother.”

He pounds the fence rail with his fist so hard he breaks it. “By God!” he screeches. “I got a mind to kill everybody in this town! I got a mind to get me some dynamite and blow the whole motherfucking town sky high!”

“I’m sorry,” you say. “You can’t blame everybody.”

“I caint, huh?”

“No,” you say.

He hangs his head. For a moment, you want to reach out and touch him; more than that, more than touch him, you would like to make love to him once more; but even if you could do this, it is not the right time of the month for you, and you know it; and even if you could do this, it would make it all the harder for him to leave. You cannot touch him. You cannot allow him to touch you. You must not. A touch would ruin it all.

He raises his head. His eyes are damp. But do not touch him! “Well, so long, Latha.” You must not touch him. “Be seeing you some day, I reckon. I’m bound to, I reckon.” Then some day touch him, but not now. “Do you suppose you could give me a goodbye kiss? I aint never even kissed you for nearly five years.” You cannot, you must not.

“No,” you say. “Don’t you touch me.”

He starts to reach for you; you pull back. “Just a kiss,” he says. “I aint even had a kiss in nearly five years. I bought a woman, once, over in France, but I never kissed her.” He comes after you, but you back away. You must back away.

Your backing alone does not stop him. You must say something. “If you touch me,” you say, “I’ll holler, and Paw’ll come up here and shoot you himself.”

Your threat changes him, angers him. “He will, huh?” he says. “Well, we’ll just see about that.” He clamps his hand over your mouth and with his other hand forces you up against a tree and presses you against it with his body. He whips off his belt and uses it to tie your hands together behind the tree, holding you to the tree. He whips out a handkerchief and gags your mouth with it. Now you cannot holler, you cannot even speak, you cannot even tell him that you are in the wrong time of your month.

He yanks up the hem of your dress and stuffs it into your collar. He tears away your panties with one strong pull and flings them aside. You squirm and try to bite through your gag; you cannot holler, but you can squeal; you squeal as loud as you can; the hogs watch you curiously.

He bends at the knee and then straightens up, and when he straightens you feel yourself entered, and all your squirmings cannot dislodge him. You feel the bark of the tree biting into your back as he thrusts and thrusts violently against you. You pray that he will come, and leave you, but he is holding himself back, and then you are praying that he will not come.

You hear a whippoorwill warbling shrilly, but realize it is your own bird within you.

You are still squirming, but in a rhythm to match his own.

You know he has come but has not stopped; you are glad; you hope he will go on, but he does not he comes out of you, he leaves you and flings himself back from you just as you reach the edge, when you want to cry out: Oh, stay, Every, stay, stay more forever and have me forever but he turns and begins running into the woods, and you realize he is disappearing into the woods and if you watch him go all of the way out of sight he will die, and you must not do that, and you must get over the edge.

You close your eyes to keep from watching him disappear all the way out of sight. You go over the edge.

It is full dark when you come to, and at first you do not know whether the blackness is of the night or of your passing out. Your first thought is I have swooned. And you wonder Have I swooned so’s not to watch him go, or so’s not to feel him come?

Your wrists are still bound by his belt behind the tree. Maybe this is the way poor Raymond was strung to that tree. You wriggle your wrists, for a long time you twist them and tug them before you can slip the belt off them. Then you are free. You pick up the belt and keep it.

You return to the house and build a fire in the kitchen stove to heat water.

Your mother comes and says, “Law, whar you been, gal?”

“Walkin,” you say.

“Whut you fixin to do?” she asks, pointing at the kettles of water on the stove.

“Take a bath,” you say.

“A hot bath this time a year?” she says, but it is not really a question, it requires no answer. She goes.

It is a hot bath you take, Bug, a scalding hot bath in which you sit and soak a long time, thinking But it’s too late, this isn’t doing any good.

The next day at noon when Mr. Ingledew says, “Watch out for robbers” before leaving to eat his dinner, you want to say, “Don’t leave me” but you cannot.

You hear the approach of horse’s hooves, and you start to think He is sure enough going to do it but you do not think this yet. You do not think it until he comes through the door, carrying the empty toe-sack in one hand and the revolver in the other. He is fully disguised: strange, old-fashioned clothes, a queer hat, beneath the hat a pillowcase covering his head with two slits for the eyes. He does not even walk like Every, but you think It must be him.

He comes quickly to the counter and passes you the note; you know then; you have seen a note before, the same handwriting:

CLEAN OUT THE SAFE IN 2 MINITS OR YOU ARE A DEAD GIRL

“Haven’t you done enough?” you say to him.

He raises the pistol point-blank to your nose.

You do not move.

He cocks the hammer. He hands you the sack.

You take the sack to the safe and stuff it. You take the sack back to him. Then you hand him his belt, rolled in a neat coil.

He looks at the belt but does not take it. He refuses it.

He backs out through the door, holding the pistol on you until the last moment, when he turns and leaps from the porch to the back of his horse, and gallops quickly away.

You turn aside to keep from watching him go out of sight.

THREE: Afternoon

“Why, land sakes, Every!” she exclaimed. “Whatever do you mean by that?” But before he could begin explaining himself, they were interrupted by the approach of a man on horseback. “Uh-oh,” she said, and in an aside to Every she said, “Listen. Just pretend you’re my husband, all right? I’ll explain it to you later.”

Dolph slowly climbed down off his horse and tethered it.

“Howdy,” he said to them. “Shore is one hot day, aint it?” He came up onto the porch and sat in the swing. He began to swing gently.

To her he said, “Would you like to hear a funny story about what happened to me over to the cannin factry?”

“I’ve already heard it,” she said. “From Luther Chism.”

“I bet it liked to tickled the daylights out of you, didn’t it?”

“It was pretty funny.”

“Wal, now that you’ve had yore fun, would ye keer to tell me who you really are?”

“I’m Latha Dill,” she said and was surprised at how much she liked the sound of that, “and this is my husband Every.”

Dolph looked at Every and then extended his hand and said, “Pleased to meet ye, Mr. Dill.” He shook hands with Every and said, “Or I reckon I should say Brother Dill. Yore pitcher’s been starin me in the eye from every tree and fence post in town. Come to Stay More to give a revival, have ye?”

“That’s right,” Every said, “And I’d be happy to have you come.”

“Reckon I might just do that, preacher. Reckon I’d shore lak to hear you explain to folks how you managed to hit town one night and git married to Latha Bourne the very next day.”

A long and awkward moment of silence followed that. She wondered how he knew her real name, but she realized it wouldn’t have been much trouble to have made a few inquiries here and there.

Every said to him, “What’s your interest in this matter, sir?”

“Wal, I’ll tell ye,” he said, “I aim to marry Miss Latha myself, and if it’s shore enough a fact that you’ve done beat me to it, why, then I reckon I aim to kill ye.”

“Those are strong words, my friend,” Every said, and stood up. Dolph rose with him. “What do you aim to do it with?”

“My bare hands,” Dolph said, holding them out.

Every looked at his hands and said, “Them’s right powerful-lookin biscuit hooks you got, my friend. Well, if you’ll just step down into the yard we’ll find out just how powerful they are.”

“Glad to,” Dolph said, and jumped off the porch.

“Boys!” she snapped at them.

“Well, it’s him or me, isn’t it?” Every asked, taking off his coat and his glasses before jumping off the porch to face Dolph.

“No,” she said. “Dolph, you just clear out of here and leave him alone.”

“He’s done already challenged me,” Dolph said, “and I shore aint one to back down from a challenge. Come on, preacher, and let’s see how long you kin last.”

Every asked him, “You mind if I pray, first?”

“Go right ahead,” Dolph said. “Matter a fact, I advise ye to.”

Every knelt in the dust. “O Heavenly Father,” he said in a loud voice, “Thou knowest that when I killed those three fellers in that barroom up in Springfield, Missoura, I done it in self-defense. Thou knowest, too, Lord, that when I splattered Carl Rawley’s brains all over his corn patch that it was forced upon me. And it was sure self-defense when I had to strangle those two Germans in that trench in the Argonne forest. So now, Lord, Thou has heard this here pore wretch threaten to kill me, and when I put him in his grave I ask Thee to have mercy on his soul. In Jesus Name, Amen.” He stood up and presented his fists to Dolph.

“Haw,” Dolph said nervously. “Tryin to git me skeered, huh? Wal, fer one thing I don’t skeer easy. And for another thing I don’t believe ye. And for yet another thing, you aint a goddamn bit bigger’n me.” And he swiftly lashed out a fist and caught Every a blow that sent him sprawling backward into the dust.

Every scrambled to his feet but couldn’t get his hands up in time. Dolph pummeled both sides of his head with several hard blows, the last of which sent him into the dirt again.

She yelled, “Dolph! you quit that! you hear me?”

“Had enough, preacher?” asked Dolph, standing over him.

“Enough?” said Every, “Why, my friend, we’ve not truly started yet. I’m just testing your punches out, to see how hard they are. I’d say they were about medium, maybe a little on the light-to-medium side.”

“Then git on yore feet and I’ll show you some heavier ones!”

She did not even see Every rise, he was up that fast, and the first thing she noticed was Dolph’s head whipping from side to side as Every drove him with quick drubbing smashes out toward the road. Now Dolph was reeling groggily, and Every could have flattened him with one more punch but he stopped and said, “Those were what I think of as my light-to-medium punches, my friend. Are you still game for some medium ones?”

This pause gave Dolph time to clear his head. “You talk too much, preacher,” he snarled, and sprang at Every with his head down and butted him in the stomach hard enough to lay him on his back. Then Dolph knelt over him and began pounding his face with short blows. Every arched up suddenly with his hips and threw Dolph off him.

Oh my, she thought, there’s so many fights in that yard I ought to set up a booth and sell tickets.

They both got to their feet and squared off again. Dolph swung and missed; Every missed his first swing but connected with his second, which caught Dolph’s shoulder and sent him staggering back. Then Every hit him two tremendous punches on the jaw, the second one actually lifting him off his feet and laying him flat out.

Every stood over him. “Those two,” he said, “were of the medium variety. I’m afraid that the heavy variety are going to bust your head clean open. Git up.”

Dolph could hardly move but he managed to climb slowly to his feet, and he even took a couple of wild slow swings, saying, “If yo’re gonna kill me, preacher, then kill me, cause I don’t keer to live without Latha!”

Every drew back his fist for a roundhouse wallop, then swung it mightily forward—and wrapped Dolph around the neck in a hug. Holding his neck that way, he led him toward the porch, saying, “Let’s have a little talk. Might could get more accomplished that way.” He put Dolph in a chair, and said to her, “Latha, could we have us some liniment?”

She went into the store for the jar of liniment and when she came back, Dolph was saying, “Not very long, but long enough to know I love her.”

Every took the jar and opened it and dabbed into it and began spreading the liniment on Dolph’s face. “And you?” he said to her. “How do you feel about him?”

“I hardly know him,” she said. “I like him, but I think he’s a fool to leave his wife and kids and come over here making trouble.”

“Is that a fact?” Every asked him. “Have you left your family?”

Dolph, hanging his head, nodded.

“Why?” Every asked.

Dolph raised his head. “Why?” he said. “Why, because I aim to marry her, that’s why.”

“Has she given you any cause to think that she would marry you?” Every asked.

Dolph nodded.

Every looked at her and asked, “Have you said you’d marry him?”

“No,” she said.

Every asked her, “Have you led him on, at all?”

“No,” she said,

“That’s a durn lie!” Dolph said to her. “Have you forgot about that time me’n you—”

“Hush,” she said.

“I won’t hush!” he said. “I don’t keer if he knows it whether he’s a preacher or yore husband or who he is. Me and you laid together lak husband and wife, and that’s the whole truth, so help me, and if he’s gonna kill me for it because yo’re his wife then lak I said before let him kill me ’cause I don’t keer to live without you!”

Every stared at her, and she had to turn her eyes away. Damn Dolph for telling on her!

“Maybe,” Every said in a sort of choked voice, “maybe I better go off and let the two of you talk this out between yourselves.”

“Don’t go, Every,” she said. “I don’t have anything else to say to him. I won’t marry him, and that’s that.”

Every laughed, rather hollowly, and said, “You know, this whole situation has a kind of painful familiarity for me. I recall when I was a young fellow I had a mighty powerful crush on a certain gal, and I kept asking her to marry me, but she said ‘no’ every time. I was stubborn as all get out, too, and I wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

“Just like me,” Dolph said. “That’s the exact same way I feel, preacher. So what did you finally do?”

“I never finally did anything. I reckon I’m still trying.”

“You mean you been a bachelor all your life, on account of that girl sayin ‘no’?”

“That’s right, my friend.”

“Did she get married to somebody else?”

“Not that I know of.”

“But she still says ‘no’ when you ask her?”

“I’ve not had much of a chance lately to ask her. Too much excitement going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, just recently when I was getting ready to ask her I found out she’d been laying in fornication with some other fellow. What would you do if you were in my shoes?”

“Why, I’d kill that—” Dolph started, but stopped, and stared back and forth between Every and Latha.

“Yes,” Every went on “that’s what I was thinking. In fact, I had already come pretty darn close to killing him even before I found out what he’d done.” Every re-opened the jar of liniment and began smearing some of it on his own face. “But, you know,” he went on, “since I’ve been thinking about it, I’ve decided she wouldn’t have laid with him if she didn’t want to.”

“That doesn’t follow,” Latha put in. “She’d been raped once before in her life.”

“I didn’t rape her!” Dolph said.

“We understand that,” Every said, and with sarcasm in his voice he said, “After all, you can’t begrudge a spinster needing it ever once in a while.”

“Every!” she said.

“Well,” he said, standing up, “I’ve got to go look over my sermon notes or something,” He shook hands with Dolph and said, “Hope you’ll come to the meeting too. Looks like me and you are rivals, but I’ve had rivals before, and if this rivalry ends in disappointment for me, why, I’ve had many a disappointment before, including some recent ones.” He turned and walked down off the porch and began walking away.

“Every!” she called after him. “You come back here and stop acting like a hurt child.”

He pointed one finger heavenward and said, “The Voice of God is calling me to Meditation. See you later.”

He walked on away.

“Now see what you’ve done!” she said to Dolph.

“Hell’s bells,” he said, “if you really keer for him so darn much why do you keep saying ‘no’ to him?”

“I haven’t said ‘no’ to him for nearly twenty years. Like he said, he hasn’t had a chance to ask me lately because of the trouble you’re making.”

“You mean today’s the first you’ve seen of him in twenty years?”

“Pretty nearly.”

“And you mean you been waitin all this time for him to show up again?”

“Maybe I have, now that you mention it.”

“Snakes alive, gal! Why didn’t you just say ‘yes’ the first time he asked ye?”

“Now that is a long, long story.”

“Shoot, I got all kinds of time to listen to it. Why, I got scads of time on my hands! Aint a blessit thing on earth for me to do no more except wait and see if I caint out-spark that preacher.”

“Then you’re wasting your time. I’d marry him the minute he asked me.”

“What’s he got I aint got?” he asked. “—Other’n quicker fists.”

“Well,” she said, thinking, “a job, for one thing.”

“A job?” he asked. “Heck fire, you call preachin a job? Why, I bet he don’t make enough money to pay for his shoe leather. And me—anybody kin tell ye that Dolph Rivett’s one of the hardest-workin farmers in Newton County!”

“Except when he’s out stirring up trouble,” she said.

“Why, I’ve got one of the purtiest spreads a land y’ever laid eyes on, eighty acres of good bottom and a hundred twenty acres of upland, and a herd of fifty Angus and—”

“Who’s been feeding those cattle lately?” she asked.

“They’re out to pasture,” he declared. “If you mean who’s been milkin em and other chores, my boys is big enough for that.”

“Do you plan on taking me to that place?” she asked.

“Sure do.”

“Do you think your other wife would stand for it?”

He mulled that one over for a while, and finally he said, “I’ll work out somethin.”

“I can’t see how you could work out anything that wouldn’t leave somebody pretty badly hurt.”

“Latha, I’ve already been hurt pretty bad myself,” he said. “By her. I reckon you of all people kin understand what’s it like to be desperate to…to…you know, to get together with somebody ever once in a while. Now I aint one of these twichet-struck tomcats who’s got it on his mind day in and day out, but I’m a man, goddammit, and you showed me what it’s like for the first time to enjoy bein a man. That’s the honest truth. That time in that cave on Banty Creek—that was the highest old goluptious time I ever had. Why, it was lak barbercued sidemeat to a man dyin a hunger, lak ice-cold sarsprilla to a man dyin a thirst, lak a easy chur to set in after plowin all day, lak Christmas mornin after a good year, hell, they aint no words for such a hunkydory jubilation. I feel lak clawin myself just thinkin about it.”

“Oh, Dolph—” she protested, sighing, but she felt like clawing herself too, and she wished he had not reminded her of the exhilaration of it with such rapturous terms. Now there were stirrings in her which she didn’t want.

He suddenly asked, “Why’d you do it to me?”

She said, “It was more like you doing it to me.”

“All right. Darn. Why’d we do it, then?”

“Craziness, I guess,” she said, and reflected upon the truth of that answer. It had been crazy of him to do something that would lead him into abandoning his family. It had been crazy of her to think that the situation was a foolproof escape for her. But despite the trouble that had come of it, she realized that she was actually a little pleased to find herself in such a situation. It’s passing strange, she thought, that I’ve been sitting on this porch for eight years, and now all of a sudden two men are fighting over me. I feel like Sonora. Maybe this was all happening because of a configuration of those signs that morning: the redbird flying downward, the white cat in the road, singing before breakfast, the shirt on wrong side out, sneezing on Saturday, the coffeepot rattling on the stove…And Every home again! And making a preacher of himself! And saying he’d been converted in that same room where I woke up? What was he doing there? What was she doing there? Oh, there was plenty of time for plenty of answers; she was not impatient; she was curious, and expectant: something, good or bad but something, was finally going to happen to her. It was good to be fought over again, and Dolph even reminded her in a way of Raymond. And for that matter, was Every any better than him? Getting peeved and insulting, like that, just because she’d made love with another man four weeks before he had suddenly shown up again. The preacher in him, she thought. Any sex is sin. More than likely his religion had half-castrated him. More than likely, if she married him, he could only do it once a month with his pants on after asking the Lord’s blessing. I could never be a preacher’s wife, she decided.

“Latha,” Dolph asked softly, “have you got the heebie jeebies over that preacher?”

“I’ve barely had a chance to talk to him,” she said. “It’s been so long since I saw him, and way back then I sure didn’t have the heebie-jeebies over him.”

“You turned him down because you were struck on somebody else?”

“Yes.”

“What became of the other feller?”

“He was killed in the war.”

“And even after that you still turned him down?”

“I didn’t believe the other one was dead. I thought he might come back.”

“You mentioned somethin about bein…bein took against your will. Was it the preacher who done it?”

“He wasn’t any preacher back then.”

“But he done it?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re still glad to see him, after that?”

“I guess…I don’t know…it’s been so long.”

“Would you really and truly marry him the minute he asked ye?”

“Maybe not the same minute.”

“Latha, have I got even a ghost of a chance? If you say I’ve got at least a ghost of a chance, I will tear down mountains to persuade you to have me. But if I aint got even a fighting chance, I will just go off and find me a good spot to lay down and die.”

“I don’t want you to die, Dolph.”

“Then give me a chance!”

“All right, Dolph, I will give you a chance.”

He grabbed her head with both hands and kissed her.

It made her head swim, and her heart pound.

When he released her, she said, “You didn’t even kiss me, before, that other time….”

“I know, goshdarnit, and I been cussin myself for it ever since. I reckon I just got so carried away I plumb fergot how to act. But I’ll shore make it up to ye!” And he kissed her again.

She felt herself melting away, but she pushed him off and said, “That’s enough, now. Somebody might come along.”

“Aint nobody come along yet but me,” he said. “On a dull Saturday afternoon like this, why, me’n you could take our clothes off and do it right here on the porch for the next three hours, and nobody’d ever see us!”

She laughed at that image. “I think Sonora’s in the house,” she said.

“Who’s Sonora?”

“My daughter.—I mean, my niece. You met her.”

“Oh,” he said. He got up and walked over to the door and yelled through the screen, “Sonora, honey, you in there?”

There was no answer. He opened the door and went in. “Oh, cut that out!” she called after him, but he wouldn’t mind her. A little later he came back.

“Not a soul in sight,” he said, and came and gave her a third kiss.

That third kiss nearly undid her, but she said, “Stop it, now.”

“Let’s go inside,” he said.

“Heavens, no, Dolph! I’ve got to mind the store.”

“Mind the store?” he said. “Who’s been comin to the store lately? Any fool in his right mind wouldn’t come out of the shade this time of day.”

“Somebody might come,” she said lamely.

“Aw, if they did, you could git up and go tend to them,” he said.

All right, all right! she said and grabbed his hand and led him to her bedroom and closed the door and didn’t bother to take off her dress but just got her panties down and lay back on the bed in the hot room not as hot as she was and all soaked in the hairs of her crotch so that he flowed right easily into her and although it had been pent up in him since that last time he’d had her he managed to last and last and thrust and thrust so she could nearly feel him in her womb and she knew if she fainted this time there’d be nobody to mind the store Every O Every. Every?

He was kissing her neck, like a lover, and whispering into herear.

“You’re ruining me,” she said. “You’re making me into a bad woman.”

“You don’t really think it’s bad,” he said. “Do you?”

“No, but everybody else does.”

“Not me,” he said. “Come on. It’ll just take a minute.”

“I don’t want for it to take just a minute.”

“Then three hours if you want. Come on.”

“No.”

Uncannily he seemed to sense what was on her mind. “If you…if you were to pass out again, I’d just mind the store for you and tell anybody you’d gone visiting and would be back directly.”

That wilted her resolve.

She looked up the road in each direction and then she pointed and said, “That room.”

He lost no time going into it, and she followed and latched both doors from inside. She climbed onto the fourposter and lay back and arched her hips to remove her panties. He unbuttoned his fly and came after her.

“Take off your pants,” she said.

“But what if somebody comes,” he said.

“Indeed, what if somebody comes,” she said, and began putting her panties back on.

He lay his hands on hers and stopped her. “Okay,” he said, and quickly removed his trousers and hung them on the bed post.

She was very warm and very open and very wet, and he went right in and began his mechanical ramming.

“You’re like a machine,” she told him.

He stopped plunging. “How do you want me to do it?” he asked.

“Hold still, and I’ll show you,” she said.

He held still. She showed him.

Then for a long time they were a team of grindings and flexings and kneadings and smackings, and his heavy breathing in her ear began to groan “Goody goody go—”

“Don’t say that,” she sighed in his ear.

He hushed, but kept groaning.

“Now,” she said. “Be your machine. Quick.”

And he became again his repetitious pounding machine, and she pounded with him and no longer tried to keep from even thinking about fainting.

“Latha?” a small voice said.

She started so hard she jerked clean off his end, and scrambled out from under him, and got up and smoothed her dress and smoothed her hair and opened the door a crack and looked out. It was Donny.

“Hi,” he said and held out his palm to reveal a coin in it. “I got a nickel for some soda pop.”

“Just help yourself, Dawny,” she said. “I’ll be right out.”

“Gee,” he said, “you’re sure all sweaty. Are you doing some hard work in there that I could help you with?”

She laughed. “I’m all finished, thank you. I’ll be right out.”

“Okay.” he said, and headed for the soda pop cooler.

She closed the door and turned to Dolph. “Listen,” she whispered, “you go out that back door quiet as you can. I don’t want him to see you.”

“Aw,” he said, “it’s just a kid. Come on and let’s finish.”

“No,” she said. “You go on now.”

“But he’s just a little bitty sprat, and I’m so close to lettin off that just one or two more pokes would do it for me!”

“Shh, hold your voice down.”

He got up off the bed and came to her and wrapped one arm around her back and lifted her dress with his other hand, and jammed himself between her legs. “Please,” he pled.

“No. Get on out of here now, Dolph.”

“Just one or two pokes,” he pled, poking.

“I mean it!” she said, and shoved him away from her.

He turned toward the rear door, buttoning his pants, and grumbling, “I’ll fix that durn kid.”

“You touch a hair on his head and that’s the last of you, buster,” she said.

He stared at her for a moment. Then he turned and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

She went to the dresser and brushed her hair, then waited a while longer and went back out on the porch. Donny was sitting in the swing, drinking his soda pop. She sat down in the swing beside him.

“Who were you talking to?” he asked.

“Why, nobody, child,” she said.

“I heard voices,” he said.

“Must’ve just been me, talking to myself.”

“I heard a door slam,” he said.

“That was just me, going to the kitchen.”

“Why’d you slam it? Are you mad at somebody?”

“No, just careless, I guess.” I am indeed right careless.

“Are you mad at me?”

“’Course not, Dawny.” She rumpled his hair.

He sipped a sip of soda. “You smell kind of funny,” he said.

“You mean like I need to take a bath?”

“No, not a bad smell. Like…sort of like creek water with fish.”

“Oh,” She said, “I’ll go put on some rose water.”

“No,” he said. “I like the way you smell.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I like the way you smell too.”

“How do I smell?”

“Like a five-year-old boy,” she said. “Milk and honey and grasshoppers and skinny skin skin.”

Donny laughed, and she laughed with him. A mad thought seized her. She was still feeling wild, and frustrated, after that interrupted tumble with Dolph. She’d already made such a mess of things. She would take Donny into the bedroom and let him take up where Dolph left off. Would it scare him, or would it tickle him pink? Would his little thing be able to rise up? Maybe it wasn’t so little. She’d like to look. Maybe it was big, and could even shoot his juice. Wouldn’t that be fun? And if he went and told his aunt and they came and ran her out of town it would serve her right. She’d already made such a mess of things.

“There was another man asking about you,” Donny was saying.

She didn’t know at first what he meant, then she asked, “When was this, Dawny?”

“Right after dinner,” he said, “up at Aunt Rosie’s.”

“Oh,” she said.

“He was riding a horse,” Dawny said. “Just like that one.” He pointed at the roan mare tethered in the yard.

“Oh?” she said.

“Yes. He asked Aunt Rosie what was the name of the lady who ran the post office, and Aunt Rosie told him, and then he asked when would the lady’s husband be coming home, and Aunt Rosie said you never had no husband, and he said ‘Thank you ma’am’ and rode off.”

“Oh,” she said.

“And after he rode off Aunt Rosie said to Uncle Frank, ‘Now I wonder what he’s after?’ and Uncle Frank said, ‘Moosey, maybe.’ What is moosey, Latha?”

“Oh,” she said, “it’s…it’s just a brand of chewing tobacco. I know the man you mean. I sold him a plug of Moosey.”

“Why did he leave his horse?”

“Well, Dawny, he said he wanted to hike up the mountain and look for wild turkeys.”

The boy seemed to accept that. But after a while he smiled and said, “You tell better stories than I do.” Then he got up and said, “That reminds me, Aunt Rosie told me to come right back and help her shell some beans.” He walked down the porch.

“Dawny…” she said.

He stopped. “Huh?” he said.

“You’re not…you won’t…tell on me, will you?”

“Aw, Latha,” he said. “I told you I won’t ever, ever tell on you.” Then he went on towards home.

She was alone then, and stayed alone a good long while. She wondered where Dolph had gone off to, without his horse. She wondered when, and if, Every would be coming back.

So much excitement in one day, she thought. She was used to sitting alone, oh, she had so much practice at it, but somehow it was hard to sit still after the excitement had started.

I am still slated to bawl before supper, she realized, remembering: Sing before breakfast, cry before supper. When will it be?

She had not wept since her father died, eighteen years ago.

As the afternoon was waning, Tearle Ingledew came walking—tottering—down the road. Climbing the store steps, he tripped, but staggered onward and grabbed hold of a chair and got himself into it.

“Good momin, m’love,” he said to her. “Real fine and fragrant mornin, aint it?”

“It is,” she agreed.

“I’m clean out a aspreens,” he said, “and my ole noggin feels lak two dozen dawgs fightin over a rutty gyp. Reckon ye could lend me the borry of a couple a aspreen?”

She got up and went to the kitchen for a dipper of water, then came back through the store and picked up a package of aspirin and opened it and went back to the porch and ministered to Tearle’s hangover.

“Jesus Christ A-mighty, that’s fine water,” he said. “Cool dipper a water from yore well’s the best drink on earth. Wush I could stick with it.”

She wished he could too. No, she realized, she used to wish he could; now she knew he had only one liberation. There were three, she reflected: drink, madness, religion. Tearle had chosen wisely. Without the whiskey he had been the most handsome of all the Ingledews, and he wasn’t a man who had any use for being handsome.

“You know what, by jimminy cricket?” he said. “Ole Luther Chism’s done went and caught hisself a revenuer! A real live one, too! Got him locked up in the smokehouse.” And Tearle had a fit of laughter that became a fit of coughing.

“I heard about that,” she said. “What does he plan to do with him?”

“Whut kin he do with him, fevensakes? He shore caint let him go. Reckon he’ll just have to slice the pore feller’s throat and bury him some’ers.”

“He’d better not do that. Too many folks already know about it.”

“Wal, he’d better do somethin quick. Old Luther don’t know it, but that revenuer is a-tryin to sweet-talk his gal Lucy. I heerd im. I was up thar last night when he cotched that revenuer, and when I woke up this mornin I was in thet same smokehouse, and thet gal Lucy was feedin thet revenuer with a spoon, and he was shore a-sweet-talkin her. But I reckon Lucy’s old enough to take keer a herself.”

“Tull,” she said, “have you heard Every’s back in town?”

“Who?” he said.

“Every,” she said. “Every Dill.”

“Naw,” he said. “Naw, now. NAW!” He stood up, unsteadily, and began looking in all directions. “Whar is the low-down dawg? Jist let him show hisself!”

“He’s a preacher now, Tull.”

“A whut?”

“He’s come to Stay More to give a revival.”

“Latha, hev you maybe been out in the sun too much today? I seen them bills tacked up on trees along the road but I never bothered to read one. Are you sure you wasn’t imagining things when you read it?”

“There’s one right there,” she said, pointing. “Read it for yourself.”

He did, squinting fiercely at it for a long time. “Hmmm,” he said. “Must be somebody with the same name. Don’t look lak ole Every a-tall.”

“It’s him, Tull. I met him.”

“You did? What did he say?”

“Oh, we just had a little chat. Seems like he’s honestly reformed, and he’s been a gospel preacher for about eight or nine years.”

“You don’t mean to say. Does he have any family with him?”

“No. I don’t believe he’s married.”

“How d’you know? Did he tell you he wasn’t?”

“No, but I just—”

“Did he perpose to ye again, right off?”

“No, but—”

“But whut?”

“But he might.”

“Wal, if he does, you jist let me know, will you? If he even mentions anything about marriage, you jist tell me and me and the boys will run him clean out a the country this time.”

“Why, Tull! He’s not the same old Every. You’ll get used to him.”

“Dang if I will,” he said. “I won’t ever in my life git used to Every Dill.”

Tearle stayed on her porch for the rest of the afternoon. Countless times he had spent the whole afternoon on her porch, but today he seemed to have a special reason for it, as if he were waiting to see if Every would dare appear before him. Every wasn’t mentioned again; they talked idly of matters general, nothing significant, the weather, the bold capture of the revenuer by Luther Chism, the mess those Germans were making again over there, E.H. Ingledew’s own teeth falling out after thirty-five years as a dentist, the relative merits of the Dinsmore corn and the Chism corn for the production of Luther’s liquor, the progress of construction on the W.P.A. bridge. Latha did not tell him that the post office had been ordered to close down. No need to send him to the bottle over that.

Dolph’s horse, tethered to her hitching post all this time, began to fidget and whinny. Tearle noticed it and asked, “You or Sonora got company?” No, she said, the horse belonged to some surveyor who had hiked up the mountain. When’s he coming back to get it? she wondered.

Late in the afternoon Every reappeared. One of his eyes had turned black from his fight with Dolph and he had red bruises on his jaws and temples.

“Howdy,” he said, studying the creased face of the man scowling at him. Then he said, “Why, I do believe it’s ole Tull! How you doing, Tull?”

Tearle only scowled.

“Well, I declare,” Every said, smiling, “your face is sure a lot friendlier than the last time I saw it, on the other end of a shotgun barrel. Latha, is this really ole Tull?”

She nodded.

Every wagged his head and said, “I swear, it’s good to see you again after all these years, Tull.” He held out his hand for a shake. “What do you have to say, you ole cuss?”

Tearle continued scowling. He did not take Every’s hand.

“Come on, put er there, Tull,” Every said. “Bygones are bygones. Let’s forgive and forget. The past has passed like yesterday’s snows. Come on and press the old flesh with me.”

“I aint so damn sartin I’m ready to,” Tearle said. “Whut hev ye come back fer?”

Every withdrew his hand and sat down on the porch rail. “My third chance, Tull. Everything comes in threes. I’ve been run out of town twice. I’d like to see if anybody wants to run me out once more.”

“Boy,” said Tull, “you’ve fergot whut you was tole the second time you was run off. You was tole you’d be shot on sight if ever you come back.”

“You’re right, I forgot, Tull. I forgot because it was such a long time ago. Long enough for a man to forget all kinds of things. But I’ll tell you something I aint forgot, Tull. I aint forgot how it took five fellers ganging up on me to get me out of town. I aint forgot that no one man could have done it all by himself without his brothers. But I’ve forgot everything else. I don’t harbor any grudge against you, Tull. I’ve made my peace with the Lord and I’m ready to make it with you.”

Tearle broke his scowl long enough to make a short laugh. “Hoo,” he said, “it’ll be the day if I kin ever feature you havin anything to do with any Lord.”

“I’d be right proud to have you come to the meeting tomorrow and see for yourself.”

“Not me,” he said. “Never been near a churchhouse, nor never will.”

“Now that sounds like a ’shiner I knew once who was offered a taste of eight-year-old store-boughten bottled-in-bond real McCoy, and he said nearly them said words, he said, ‘I never drunk government stuff, nor never will.’ Have you ever sampled the pure quill, Tull?”

“Naw, and I aint got no use for that neither.”

Latha said, “If you boys will excuse me, I’ve got to go start supper.”

She went to the kitchen and left them talking—and bickering—on the porch. From time to time, as she rolled out dough for a pie, she could hear their voices raised against each other, but after a while it grew so quiet that she thought one or both of them had left. She wiped her hands on her apron and went through the store to peer out the window. They were still there. Every in a quiet voice was telling some kind of anecdote to Tearle, and Tearle was grinning fit to split his jaws.

After she had all of supper on the stove or in the oven, she rejoined them.

“…during that big freeze last winter,” Every was saying, “I was at this big revival over in Kentucky, with preachers there from all over the country. Well, there was a boy staying in one of the boardinghouses over there and he told everybody that he’d had a dream of hell. One of the preachers kind of smirked and said, ‘Sonny, what is it like in hell?’ And the boy answered him, all right. ‘Just about like it is here,’ says he. ‘I mighty nigh froze. The preachers was so thick, I couldn’t get near the stove.’”

And Tearle let loose one of his pealing guffaws, pounding his knees with his fists.

Every wrinkled his nose and said, “I’ll wager my shoes that there’s a wild cherry pie baking in Latha’s oven, and it sure smells good. Tull, if me and you just hang around long enough, she’s bound to invite us to stay and eat.”

“Sure,” she said, “Both of you boys stay more and eat supper with me.”

“Supper?” said Tearle. “Shoot, I aint even et my dinner yet. Anyhow, thank you kindly, but I tole Lola I’d eat with her this evenin.” He stood up, placing a palm on the storefront to steady himself. “Well, Every,” he said, “I reckon maybe I’ll just go and have a little talk with Oren Duckworth, and if he won’t let ye use the meetin house, why, then I’ll just come early in the mornin and help ye cut branches to make a brush arbor.”

“That’s awful good of you, Tull,” Every said, emotion in his voice. “I’m much obliged.”

“S’long,” Tearle said, and shuffled off.

When Tearle was out of sight, Every exclaimed, “Good land! He sure has changed. I’d hardly know him. Makes me feel old, to think he’s not but eight or nine years older’n me.”

“He’s mellowed considerably, too,” she said.

“You’re telling me. When I first saw him, I started quaking in my boots. I never told anyone, but he used to be the only feller in this town I was ever afraid of. When did he start drinking so hard?”

“Right after he lost most of his money when the bank was robbed.”

“Oh.”

A full minute passed before another word was spoken. She sat down in the rocker, thinking, Supper’s nearly ready, and I haven’t felt anywhere near like crying yet.

“You know,” Every said, “I just took it for granted that that mare there was his. When he walked off on foot, then I recognized the mare. Has Dolph moved in on you?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t know where he is.”

“Why’d he leave his horse, then?”

Is this what I’m supposed to cry about? she wondered. Is this going to lead up to me crying? If so, she decided, then supper was going to be awfully late. “I don’t know,” she said. “Really, I don’t have any idea.”

“Have you invited him to supper?” he asked.

“No, and I don’t intend to. I reckon it’ll be just you and me and Sonora, when she gets back. I think she went swimming with some of her friends up the creek a ways.”

“Latha—” he said.

“Yes.”

“I’ve been wanting to ask you—”

“Yes?”

“Who is Sonora’s father?”

“Vaughn Twichell, who used to live at Hunton. I thought you knew Mandy had married him. They live in Little Rock now. You used to know him, didn’t you?”

“Knew him right well. Knew his first wife too.”

“Really.”

“Yes, and I wonder why Mandy married him. She used to always brag so about how many children she was going to have when she grew up. Wonder why she settled for just one.”

“Well, maybe she thought Sonora was enough, or too much.”

“Latha, are you positive she’s theirs?”

“No. Maybe they adopted her.”

“They must have. Did Mandy know why Vaughn’s first wife left him? Did she know that Vaughn was sterile?”

She did not answer.

“Latha, I’ve got a strong suspicion that that girl is yours.”

“I swear she’s not!” she said, and realized, Oh no, it’s coming.

“And maybe mine too,” he said.

“You’re mistaken! I swear she’s Vaughn and Mandy’s!”

“‘Thou shalt not bear false witness…’”

“I swear it! I swear it!” she said, and felt the first hot tear drop down her cheek, and then another from the other eye. I am going now. “I swore to them I’d always swear it!” She collapsed in sobs.

SUB THREE: Seventeen Years Ago

Cry, Bug. This is a happy story, and at first glimpse your tears would seem most unwelcome, but I’ve persuaded myself that they are called for, even required. Let them flow. I’m sorry you had to wait so long before you could have a good cry, with a strong man beside you to comfort you through the deliverance.

I’ll tell you about the last time I myself shed some tears. It was during my last visit to Little Rock, a few days after that evening I had clandestinely found my way into the Records Office of the State Hospital. On foot I went out and located 2120 West Nineteenth Street, that Taft era bungalow in the shotgun style. A family of blacks is living there now, as I discovered when a large and kindly woman came out and said to me in a mild voice without any indignation, “White man, whut you standin out here fo and gawkin at my house fo and waterin yo eyes so fo?” I told her a friend of mine had lived there long ago, and asked her if I might come in for just a moment. “My house a messy wreck,” she protested, “but if it make you dry yo eyes, you jus come on in.” I went in, but it did not make me dry my eyes. I found the room which I was almost sure was the room.

You were sitting in a chair with your feet propped up on the window sill; your legs were aching painfully again and you were trying to rest them. The view through the window was of a vacant lot next door [door? no door] grown high with rampant weeds. You had counted all those weeds; had you the desire you would have given a personal name to each. Your hands were together in your lap, almost out of sight below the bulge, your fingers were stripping tiny shreds of flesh from around your fingernails.

Beyond the field of weeds rose a single large sycamore tree; you had studied the configuration of its branches endlessly and you were beginning to read the language hidden in that wild calligraphy. God or Whoever It Was had been putting up these trees as signboards, as posters, for millions of years, but nobody until now had learned how to read the script of the twisting branches. You were finding a long message there, and understanding it; without that message you could have closed your eyes and ceased to exist.

You were three weeks overdue, and Vaughn had begun to make smart remarks. “It’s just costiveness. Let’s dose her with a big gulp of prune juice and she’ll unclog.”

That man, he was needing to be spiteful. For seven months now he’d been unable to forgive you for so violently rejecting his charitable offer to screw you on the sly for mercy.

Your sister was not being much better. At first, when you were very happy to be carrying a child, she had hated you bitterly for it, and abused you constantly and said things to you like, “If you had any sense at all you’d run a coat hanger up you and rip it out.” Her real motive had been that she was maddeningly envious of you; but she pretended that you were bringing disgrace on your whole family, even though she was the only one of your family who knew about it. “If I were in your place,” she would say, “I would just wear my head in a sack.”

She had made you do the next best thing to it. She had kept you confined to the house for the past five months.

“Why couldn’t,” you would ask, “why couldn’t I just wear a ring and you tell people my husband’s in the service?”

“Too late,” she’d say. “All my friends already know.”

“But they’re your friends, not mine. I don’t care what they think.”

“But I do, and I’m the one with a position to keep in this town.”

“But,” you’d say, feeling as if you could not even think straight any more, as if you were unable to grasp the slightest bit of logic, “if your friends already know, what’s wrong with anybody seeing me?”

“You don’t have to make a public spectacle of your sin!” she’d shout.

“But,” you’d persist, clutching at one receding straw of logic, “what does my condition have to do with your position in this town?”

“You’re my sister, aren’t you? You think I want everybody to know I’ve got a whore for a sister?”

“But if you’ve already told your friends—” you’d say, and stop and wonder if you were making any sense at all, if you weren’t perhaps just babbling some blathering rubbish.

Now things were turned around, and this was more confusing yet. You were hating that creature inside you and wishing you could kill it without killing yourself…or both. Once when it was kicking violently you had pounded your fists on it until you had become quite dizzy and it had stopped and you had thought it was dead.

But Mandy was taking a loving interest in it all of a sudden, and when she had found out you’d been pounding on it, she had upbraided you.

“What’re you trying to do, for Chrissakes, kill it?”

“Yes.”

“Why, for the love of Pete?”

“I don’t want it.”

“You don’t want it? Are you out of your mind, girl? What have you got against babies? Pore defenseless little thing…. Pore, pore sweet little thing.” And she would even stroke and pat your belly till you felt like screaming.

“It will be a cute little boy,” she would say, “and we could name him Saultus after Dad.”

“It will be a disfigured monster,” you would say, “and I will name it Mandyvaughn after y’all.”

“Well, I like that! That’s a fine lot of gratitude for all me’n Vaughn have done for you! Who feeds you? I ask you. Who gives you a place to stay, huh? Who the hell you think is gonna pay the goddamn hospital bill and the doctor bill? Huh? You answer me that!”

And that had been the day you had run away. You had walked and walked, nearly out of the city, before Vaughn’s car had caught up with you and begun to move slowly along the road beside you, for another hour or so, with her at the window, saying over and over, every mile or so, “Tired yet? Hungry yet? Shamed yet?” until you gave in.

And there had been the time you read in the newspaper about the law permitting abortions in the case of violent rape, and you had asked Mandy if she had known about that law, and, if so, why hadn’t she done something about it while there was still time.

“How you gonna prove it was rape?” she’d said. “Who would believe you? If ever time you’d gone off in the bushes with a feller was rape, then, sister, you’re a regular rape-catcher. Besides, you won’t never tell who done it. They’ve got to catch the feller and make him confess, and if you won’t even tell who done it, how can they? Come on, honey, for the last time I ask you, please tell me who it was.”

“I’m glad to know that’s the last time you’re asking me,” you’d said.

And Vaughn and his endless remarks:

“’Course she won’t tell you who done it. She’s hopin he’ll come back and do it again.”

“Whoever he was, he must’ve been a awful big and strong feller, to of broken down her notorious resistance.”

“Bet he had a pecker on him so thin and tiny she didn’t know she’d been raped until she found herself knocked up.”

“Bet she run first thing to her dad and hollered, ‘Paw, a feller just ruined me! What are you goin to do about it?’ and ole Saultus he just smiles and says, ‘first I got to take care of that feller who ruined you last week.’”

“Wouldn’t surprise me a bit if it was a gang shay, and she has quintuplets, each one different.”

“Well, maybe they’ll catch the feller and put him on trial and the judge’ll call on her to testify, and he’ll say to her, ‘Miss, this offense occurred on or about the middle of June. Has the man ever bothered you before or since?’ and she’ll answer, ‘I’ll say he has! It’s just been rape, rape, rape, all summer long!’”

That small, small room—it would not have been so bad if you could have locked yourself into it, but since you had refused to leave it, they had to come into it to vent their verbal indignities upon you, and it was crowded with the three of you in that small small room which you never left except to go to the bathroom—and Mandy had taken the lock off the bathroom door after she discovered you trying to take a bath.

“Have you lost your senses completely?!” she stormed. “Don’t you know you can’t take a bath when you’re pregnant? Don’t you know you’re not supposed to immerse that pore thing in water?”

“How’m I going to get clean?” you’d whined.

“Just use a sponge, you idiot!”

And you had used sponges, and Vaughn, sometimes, in your room, would say, “Pee Yew! I’ll shore be glad when warm weather comes so we can open that window and air it out in here.”

And because the lock was removed from the bathroom door, he could barge in on you, saying, “Oops!” but lingering long enough to take a good look.

“Why, I’ll declare!” he had exclaimed recently, pointing. “Lookee there, sugar, yore belly-button has popped wrongside out!”

On the faded wallpaper of the small room was a calendar, March of 1922, with a large circle drawn around March 6, and heavy black X’s over March 7, March 8, March 9, March 10, March 11, March 12, March 13, March 14, March 15, March 16, March 17, March 18, March 19, March 20, March 21, March 22, March 23, March 24, March 25, March 26, March 27 and March 28.

You were sitting in a chair with your feet propped up on the window sill, on March 29, counting the weeds in the vacant lot next door and then reading the script in the branches of the sycamore tree, when suddenly you felt a snap in your womb and then you flooded the chair and made a puddle around it. You went to the kitchen and looked for the mop. Where would Mandy keep the mop? You looked on the back porch. But you could not find the mop. So you got a towel from the bathroom. But when you returned to your room, you found that you could neither kneel nor squat to mop the floor. Using the chair as a brace, you slowly lowered yourself into a sitting position on the floor, with your legs out straight before you. You began to mop. Then the first pains started, and you had to stop mopping. You waited. The pain went away. You finished mopping. You found then you could not get yourself up off the floor. You tried to remember where Mandy had said she and Vaughn were going. You only half-listened to anything she’d said lately. Were they out playing cards with some friends? Had they gone shopping? Were they away off up in Hunton visiting Vaughn’s relatives for the weekend?

If you could get up, you might go on to the hospital by yourself. Which hospital? you wondered. Where is it?

You scooted backwards across the floor to your bed, and just as another pain started you turned over and got a good grip on the bedpost and pulled yourself up and collapsed on your back in the bed.

That is where you spent the next seven hours, and when Mandy and Vaughn came home, around midnight, you were screaming.

“You get her legs,” Vaughn said, “and I’ll get her arms and let’s see if we can carry her out and dump her in the car.”

“It’s too late, I think,” Mandy said. “You know anyone who has a telephone?”

“Not around here.”

“Then drive on out and try to get Dr. Rory and I’ll stay with her and try to deliver it if you don’t get back in time.”

You screamed, and you screamed.

It seemed like days passed before Vaughn returned. “This is all I could find,” he said. “Doc Rory’s out of town.”

The stranger came and looked at you and then snapped at Mandy, “What are you sitting on your ass for? Why haven’t you got some water boiling on the stove and some clean towels ready?”

Mandy got up off her ass. The stranger placed his cool hand on your brow and felt your pulse. “Easy, girl,” he said. “Easy.” It was the closest approximation to pleasant words you had heard in quite some time. But still you screamed.

“Get out of the room!” the stranger said to Vaughn.

“Aw,” said Vaughn, “it aint no different than watchin a mare foal.”

“Is she your wife?” the man asked him.

“Naw, she’s my sister-in-law, Doc. She aint even got a husband. Claims the guy raped her.”

“That true?” he asked you.

You screamed.

“Listen,” he said to you, “do you want this baby?”

You screamed, and thrashed your head violently from side to side.

“She does too!” Mandy hollered, coming in and clutching the man’s sleeve and saying, “Look, Doc, we got to have that baby. Even if she don’t want it, I do. I’ll take care of it, Doc. Me and Vaughn caint have no children of our own, so I’d be more than happy to have it. Please, Doc—”

“Get out of here, both of you!” he snapped. “I’ll holler for you if I need you.”

Then you were alone with him, and he went to work.

“Relax, girl,” he would say. “I swear, I never saw anybody sotense.

“Relax. Try to take a deep breath.

“Now. Bear down. Hard.

“Relax. Easy. Easy, girl, easy. Deep breath.

“Bear down.

“Relax.

“Bear down. You’re not bearing down. Pretend you’re trying to evacuate if you were constipated.

“Ease up. Jesus Christ, girl, how long have you been tying yourself in knots?

“Come on now, press! press! press!”

He sighed loudly. You screamed loudly.

“I don’t want to have to do a Caesarean. Need you in the hospital for that.

“Let up.

“Squeeze.

“Goddamn you, mister, I told you to stay out of here! If you show your head again I’ll come after you with a scalpel!

“Let up. I’m sure it’s a breach. Now relax completely, I’m going to try to turn it. Easy. Relax. Relax.”

He gave you chloroform. For a while it was paradise. You heard nothing. You felt nothing. Later you heard:

“Mr. Twichell, come back in here a minute! Listen, I want you to telephone for an ambulance.”

“No telephone, Doc.”

“Then go out and get one! No, wait, just get your wife, and the three of us will carry her out to the backseat of my car.”

You were lifted, screaming, and manhandled out to the car. The doctor knelt on the floor of the rear seat beside you. “Twichell, you drive. And I mean drive!”

More chloroform, blessed oblivion.

A white room. Bright lights. People all around. An old white-haired man saying to the doctor, “What the hell does a goddamn interne know about giving Caesareans anyway? Shit, you don’t even know how to turn a baby! Here, nurse, she’s rousing, let’s clap that ether coat on her. That’s eno—”

Another room. A woman in another bed. A nurse. Mandy. Mandy saying, “Well, sister, you can go out and get raped all you want to, now, and never worry about having any more babies.”

You opened your mouth to scream again, but a calm question came out: “What do you mean?”

“Doctor tied your tubes. Caint have no more babies.”

“Why’d he do that?”

“I told him to.” Smug, self-proud.

“Now that’s not strictly true, Mrs. Twichell,” said the nurse, stepping forward. She carried a bundle in her arms. “The doctor simply asked for your permission. He himself considered it a wise thing to do, as future pregnancies might endanger her life.”

“Well,” said Mandy, “after you take a gander at this little monstrosity you produced, you’ll be glad you caint have any more.”

“It’s a beautiful baby,” the nurse protested, and brought the bundle forward and placed it in your arms. It was not a beautiful baby. It was hideous. It had a horribly misshapen head as if it had been hit with a sledgehammer in several places. It bore no resemblance to either its mother or its father. Thus you could not understand why you suddenly felt such deep, overwhelming love for it.

“Is he…is he…all right?” you asked the nurse.

“She,” she corrected you. “It’s a girl. And she’s just fine. Weighs eight pounds, eleven ounces. Not a thing wrong with her. She’ll be a beautiful girl.”

“But all these bumps and creases in her skull…” you said.

“Those’ll clear up. Always do. Give her time, and she’ll have a lovely head on her.”

Later Mandy and Vaughn came together, with the old white-haired man.

“How you feel?” the white-haired man said. “You had us pretty worried for a while there, but everything turned out just fine. That’s a near-perfect baby. Have you been thinking any about names? I’d like to get these papers filled out.”

“Yes I have,” you said.

“Fannie Mae Twichell!” Mandy said. “After Momma.”

“That’s a right pretty name,” Vaughn said, and tried it out: “Fannie Mae.”

You had been listening to the baby crying, and there was such a sweet quality about her cries, like songs, little songs. “Sonora,” you said to the doctor. Little song. “Sonora Bourne is her name.”

“The hell with that crap!” Mandy said.

The doctor said to you, “I understand the infant has no father. Legally, that is. You don’t plan to keep it, do you?”

“Why not?” you said.

“Well, don’t you understand, there would be difficulties…”

“We’ll keep it, Doc!” said Mandy. “Just put down Fannie Mae Twichell and we’ll keep it.”

“The child’s name is Sonora Bourne,” you said.

“Well, look,” said the doctor, “this is just for the birth certificate, and you can change it later if you like. Why don’t I just put it down as Sonora Twichell?”

“Oh no you don’t!” said Mandy. “It’s our baby and we got the right to name it, and its name is Fannie Mae Twichell, and if you don’t like it you know what you can do about it!”

“Madam,” the doctor said, “I’m trying to compromise. She is the mother, after all, and as such she ought to have the right to name the infant, at least for the mere purpose of this certificate.”

“Doc,” said Vaughn angrily, “you heard what my wife said. Now you put down Fannie Mae Twichell on that thing, goddamit, or I’m walkin out of here and washin my hands of any responsibility. I won’t pay a cent.”

“Sir,” said the old man, “I personally don’t give a shit for your cents…or your sense.”

“Come on, Mandy,” said Vaughn. “The hell with it.”

“Bye bye, sister dear,” said Mandy. “Hope you have fun getting yourself out of this fix.”

They left.

“Shall we make it Sonora Twichell?” the doctor asked you.

“Sonora Bourne,” you said.

“Very well,” said the doctor, and took out his pen.

But two days later Mandy came back, just as the nurse was bringing the baby in for feeding. She hovered over the bed. When you gave your breast to Sonora, Mandy said, “Hey, don’t do that!” and clutched at the baby and tried to pull her away from you. You slapped viciously at Mandy’s hand. She retreated, slightly, protesting, “That’s so…so backward! And it’s also unhealthy! And it will ruin your figure, and also it’s just not nice. You’re way behind the times, kid. I’ve been studying up on it, and all the latest modem scientific—”

“Shut up!” you said.

After you had finished feeding Sonora, Mandy came and took a good look at her, and exclaimed disgustedly, “Holy cow, isn’t she gosh-awful ugly, though! I’d have to be blindfolded before I’d let that creature suck on my tits. I just don’t know if I can bear to keep her….”

But when the time came for your release from the hospital, there she was, and Vaughn with her. “Vaughn paid the bill, after all!” Mandy declared with a laugh. “I bet those jerks thought he couldn’t do it. But just wait till you see all the things we’ve bought for the baby!”

Among all the things she had bought for the baby, you discovered when you were returned to the house on West Nineteenth, were a dozen glass bottles with rubber nipples.

You ignored them.

One day after finishing your bath you returned to your room and found Mandy holding the baby in her lap and trying to force a bottle on her. “Come on, Fannie Mae, sweetums, open your nasty little mouth.”

You slapped her.

She dumped the baby on the bed, and slapped you back. Then she slapped you once more, harder. “Damn you!” she shouted. “We paid hard money for them bottles, by God, and I mean to use them!”

“You leave my baby alone, you,” you said.

“She’s not your baby!” she shrieked.

You said nothing more. You said nothing more at all, not at all, for the days and weeks following. You said not a word to either of them. You did not even talk to your baby.

Nearly two weeks went by before it dawned on Mandy and Vaughn that you had not been saying anything.

“Cat got your tongue?” Mandy asked one day.

You did not reply.

“She’s just being high and mighty,” Vaughn explained. “Just stuck up.”

“Say something, sister,” Mandy urged you.

You did not.

“See if I care, then,” Mandy said. “Button your lip for the rest of your life, for all I care. Who’d want to listen to you anyhow?”

But your continued silence began to fray their nerves.

“Want a nice piece of custard pie?” Mandy would ask, and wait for you to respond. You did not.

Vaughn would sneak up on you and yell “BOO!” at the top of his lungs but you would not even flinch.

“Would you like to go for a ride today, honey?” Mandy would ask, and wait, and wait.

Once when you were in the bathtub (and the lock had never been replaced on the door) Vaughn came in and sat on the edge of the tub and gazed at you. “Caint tell me to get out, can you?” he taunted you. “Caint even open you damn mouth long enough to say ‘Get out,’ can you?” You just glared at him. “All righty,” he said, “I’ll just sit right here and feast my eyes until you’re finished.”

It was not that you were deliberately holding yourself incommunicado, Bug. You were not consciously refusing to speak to them. It was simply (maybe not so simply) that you were unable to speak to them. Occasionally, there were times you wanted something, like a particular medicine for some distress, but you were unable to open your mouth and ask for it.

They ceased trying to get you to speak. They began to pretend you were not there, and to talk about you in your presence.

“She don’t really want that baby.”

“Of course she don’t. She’s ashamed of it, I bet.”

She won’t even talk to her own baby. What kind of mother is that? Pore little Fannie Mae, she needs somebody to sweet-talk her and baby-talk her.”

“She’s so stubborn and standoffish she won’t even talk to her own baby.”

“What kind of mother is that?”

“She don’t really want it.”

“’Course she don’t.”

“She’d be a lot happier without it.”

“Sure she would.”

“Maybe it would be happier too, if she weren’t around.”

“More’n likely.”

But still they would occasionally stare at you and study your face and bite their lips or chew their thumbnails.

One day they took you and put you in the car and said they were going for a ride.

They drove you out to a park, and through the park to a group of large white buildings on a hill. They took you into one of these buildings. In a room was a desk with a man in a white jacket sitting behind it and they tried to get you to sit down at the desk. Wordlessly, you broke and ran. Mandy and Vaughn took your arms and brought you back. You shook your head and shook your head and shook your head.

“Please sit down,” the man said, and came around from behind his desk and pushed down on your shoulder to make you sit. Then he returned to his seat behind the desk and looked at the papers in front of him. “You can talk to me,” he said. “Will you tell me your name?”

You would not.

“I told you her name,” Mandy said. “It’s Latha Bourne.”

The man frowned at her. “Will you two leave the room, please?”

When they were gone, he said, “Now, I already know your name. You can talk to me, I know. Will you tell me your age?”

You spoke. “Almost twenty-one.”

“Good,” he said, and wrote something on the paper. “Now, do you know why your sister and brother-in-law have brought you here?”

You shook your head.

“Now, now,” he chided. “I’ll bet you do. I’ll bet you think it’s because they’re trying to get rid of you. Am I right?”

“Are they?” you asked, puzzled. “I don’t know. Are they?”

“No,” he said. “They are not. Why do you think they have brought you here?”

“I really don’t know,” you said.

“Oh come now, Miss Bourne. Really. Do you know what place this is?”

“A hospital?”

“Do you know what kind of hospital?”

You shook your head.

“Really now,” he said. “If you don’t know what kind of hospital it is, why did you break loose and try to run away when you were brought in?”

“I…I was frightened,” you said.

“Of what, Miss Bourne? Of what were you frightened?”

“I…I don’t…really know….”

“Was it perhaps you were frightened that we might keep you?”

You lowered your head and nodded it.

“Very good. So I’m sure you can tell me what place this is, can’t you? Try to tell me, Miss Bourne,”

“Is it…is it an…an insane asylum?”

“There!” he exclaimed, beaming broadly. “I knew you could tell me. Now, I’ll bet you think that there’s no reason why you should be here. Am I right?”

“You are right.”

“But I am told that you have not spoken a word to anybody for nearly two months. Why is that, Miss Bourne? Are you perhaps feeling angry at the world?”

“Not the world. Just them.”

“Why are you mad at them, Miss Bourne?”

“They’re trying to take my baby away from me.”

“Why would they want to do that?

“They want her.”

“Don’t you think that it might be because they are concerned for the baby? Don’t you think that they might feel you are not in the best mental condition for taking care of the child?”

“That’s not true!”

“I understand that you don’t even communicate with your child, Miss Bourne. Do you think that’s good for the child?”

“I try to talk to her! I just can’t talk to her when they’re around. Often at night when they’re asleep I talk to her.”

“I understand that the child is illegitimate, Miss Bourne. Perhaps you feel some guilt for your error, and this guilt is being reflected in your conduct toward the child.”

“I love her! I take very good care of her!”

“A child needs a father, Miss Bourne.”

“I’ll marry somebody!” you said.

The man’s voice became cold. “I understand further, Miss Bourne, that when the child was still in your womb you pounded your fists upon your abdomen repeatedly, as if you were trying to kill the child.”

“I didn’t want it then. But I want it now. Oh, I want her so!”

The man signed his name at the bottom of a sheet of paper and said, “I am recommending, Miss Bourne, that you remain with us for observation.”

“You can’t do this to me!” you protested. “You have no right to do this to me! I’m as sane as you are!”

“But I should point out that, legally, you are still a minor, and your older sister has signed papers appointing her your legal guardian. In the eyes of the law, Miss Bourne, she is perfectly within her rights to have you committed.”

“She’s just trying to get rid of me, so she can have the baby!”

“I knew you would feel that way, Miss Bourne, but you are mistaken. It is the child that we are concerned for. Our job is not merely to help people with mental problems, but also to protect the rest of society from them until they can return to their responsibilities; therefore—”

You stood up and began backing away from the doctor’s desk. He pressed a button on his desk. You turned and ran to the door. You twisted the knob but it would not open. Another door opened and two men in blue jackets came into the room and took you by the arms. You struggled. You yelled.

“Please go along peacefully,” the man behind the desk said, “or else we might have to use force.”

You continued yelling and struggling.

They used force and took you away to a cell, and locked you in it.

You tried to cry, Bug, alone in your cell you tried with all your might to cry, but you would not be able to cry for another seventeen years.

You spent three weeks in B Ward.

You were transferred to C Ward, where you spent five months.

After six months, at Christmastime, Mandy and Vaughn came for a visit, bringing candy and flowers, but without Sonora.

You fell down on your knees before them and raised your hands in supplication. “Please get me out of here!” you begged. “Please! I’ll do anything for you! I’ll cook for you! I’ll sweep for you! I’ll do everything for you! Please get me out of here!”

“See!” Mandy said to Vaughn. “I told you she was just playing possum. I told you she could really talk, if she put her mind to it.”

“Please, please, please, oh please….” you pled.

“No,” she said. “You’d be a bad influence on the baby.”

You were transferred to D Ward.

FOUR: Evening

“Dear Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for this food, the yield of Thy gracious bounty, and for the loving hands that hath prepared it and brought it before us. Bless those hands, Lord, and bestow Thy loving grace and kindness upon her who uses them to enrich Thy bounty for the pleasure of our mouths and the strength of our bodies. Bless also, we pray, this lovely girl, her niece; keep her near Thy heart; do not let her stray far from Thy hand. And finally, Lord, bless me Thy servant; strengthen me; grant me the power to meet what comes my way. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.”

“Have some beans, Every.”

“Thank you.”

“Pickles?”

“Don’t care for any, thank you.”

“Sweetening for your iced tea?”

“No, thank you. I’ll declare, Latha, I never thought I’d see the day I’d be drinking iced tea in Stay More. How do you do it?”

“Well, the mail truck brings ice from Jasper, and twice a month a truck from Harrison comes through with lemons and other fruit. Have some potatoes.”

“Thank you. Sonora, you care for any pickles?”

“Thank you. I’ll bet they’re Dill pickles, why don’t you have some yourself?”

“Ha! Now don’t you go poking fun at me too, young lady. Has your m—has your Aunt Latha told you that everybody used to call me ‘Pickle’ when I was a kid?”

“Just because of your name? Or because you were sour?”

“Dill pickles aren’t really sour, are they? I reckon I was pretty full of vinegar, though. And I was kind of pickle-faced too, wasn’t I, Latha?”

“You sure weren’t much to look at,”

“Maybe you’re still full of vinegar,” Sonora said. “How’d you get that shiner?”

“That what?” he said, and “Oh,” he said and raised his fingers to his blackened eye. “You mean this? Well, I’ll tell you. I was so busy tacking up my posters on trees this morning that I didn’t watch where I was going, and ran plumb head-on into a big elm sapling.”

“I’ve got a slab of beef you can lay on that eye after supper,” Latha said, “and maybe it will go away. You’d look just fine preaching a revival meeting with a black eye and all those bruises.”

“I tore my britches, too,” he said, “and my coat-tail barely covers it. Could you lend me some needle-and-thread?”

“I’ll patch them up for you myself,” she offered.

“How’d you rip the back of your britches running head-on into an elm sapling?” Sonora asked.

He laughed. “Well, that is pretty complicated. It was like this: when I smacked into that elm sapling it kind of bent over and then sprung back and flung me right up against a barbed-wire fence. My, Latha, these sure are fine pork chops!”

“You think it’s right for a preacher to tell big fibs?” Sonora asked with a grin.

“Why, no,” he said. “It’s sure not right, at all. But depends on what you mean by a fib. For instance, tomorrow morning I’m going to stand up there in front of those people and I’m going to say to them—” Every began to imitate his own preaching voice “—my friends, you see this here black eye? And you see these bumps and bruises? And you see this here patch on my britches? Well, my friends, as I was coming into Stay More I met the Devil blocking my way and telling me he had Stay More in the palm of his hand and he wasn’t about to let me meddle with his territory. But I just said to him, ‘Get thee behind me, Old Harry!’ But Old Harry said to me, ‘Not without a fight first, by nab!’ So me and Old Harry just squared off right there in the road. Now, my friends, I’m afraid I caint tell you that I got the best of him, but he sure didn’t get the best of me, or else I wouldn’t be here to tell it to you!”

Sonora shook with laughter, and Latha found herself laughing too, and marveling at a certain spell-binding quality in Every’s voice. He had made his point, she realized: it doesn’t matter that what you say is a ridiculous fib, if you say it right.

“Well,” said Sonora, “I was thinking maybe there was some connection between your black eye and Latha’s red eyes.”

“Now, there is, since you mention it. When she saw what a pitiful condition I was in, with all these bumps and bruises, she just broke down and blubbered. What’s the matter with you, girl, how come you’re not crying too at the sight of such a pore ole battered-up man?”

“Maybe I don’t love you as much as she does,” Sonora said. Every choked on a bite of pork chop and blushed deeply. “But I might,” Sonora said, “if you’d stop telling fibs.”

When Every regained his composure and coughed the dab of pork chop out of his windpipe, he said, “All right. That’s a deal.”

“Really?” Sonora said.

“No more fibs,” he said. He crossed his heart.

“Okay,” she said. “Who did you get into a fight with?”

“I don’t know if you’d know him,” he said.

“I might,” she said. “If he was a tall fellow with light hair riding a big roan mare that’s tied to the post out front.”

“You got him,” Every said.

“Okay, why did you get him?”

“Well, I reckon you might say we were quarreling over a certain lady.”

“Is that the reason the lady has red eyes?” Sonora asked.

“No.”

“Then why does she?”

“Mercy, gal, are you going to give me the third-degree all night? You’re spoiling my supper.” He glanced at Latha and said, “I think maybe I’d best let her answer that.”

“All right,” Latha said. “We were just talking over old times, honey. You know how it is. It makes you sad to think of old times.”

“It must have been awfully, awfully sad to make you cry,” Sonora said.

“It was,” Every said, and his voice was severe. “Saddest damn thing you ever heard.”

“Do preachers swear?” Sonora asked with surprise.

“Sometimes they just have to,” he said.

“Tell me what it was that could make a preacher swear,” Sonora asked.

“Latha?” he said.

“Honey,” she said to Sonora, “it isn’t any of your concern.”

Every brought his palms together and looked up at the ceiling. “Father, forgive us all our fibs. Amen.” But his voice was serious.

“There is only one thing worse than telling a fib,” Latha said, “and that is breaking a promise. So there. That is that, and let’s talk about the weather. Maybe it will rain tomorrow.”

“I don’t care,” Sonora said. “I know anyway.”

“Have some more cornbread, Every.”

“Thank you. Could you pass me the butter, Sonora?”

“Here!”

After supper she went out to do her evening chores, leaving Every and Sonora discussing the difference between his religion and hers—or rather that of Mandy, who had joined an Episcopal church in Little Rock. “I just can’t stand all that fancy ritual,” Sonora was saying to him as Latha went out. While she was feeding the hogs, she realized she was not really worried that Every would tell Sonora anything; after all, he had promised her he would not. But all this business of promises was becoming rather ridiculous anyway; that girl could sit there at the table and look across the table and see her own features written all over the face of the man sitting there talking to her. What worried Latha was not that Every would give anything away, but that Sonora would back him into a corner and try to make him confess what she had already guessed on her own. Still I will never break my promise, she determined. As she was milking Mathilda, she realized she was working too fast, as if she were eager to finish her chores and get back to the house. Relax, girl, she said to herself. Give father and daughter a chance to get acquainted. She began to move more slowly, and to take her time.

While she was feeding her chickens, she heard a commotion coming from the front yard, and she went around the house to investigate, wondering if it had something to do with Dolph. But Dolph’s horse was gone, and so was he. It was just the W.P.A. boys and the local boys having their nocturnal free-for-all, for Sonora’s audience. Every came running out of the house and saw the fight and ran out into the midst of the ruckus and began separating the battlers, grabbing them by their shirt collars and pulling them off one another, and saying, “Here now, what’s this all about? Here now, let’s break it up a minute!”

He had trouble separating Junior Duckworth from Clarence Biggart, and when he finally succeeded, Junior grabbed him by his shirt front and said, “Who in hell are you, you ole geezer?”

Sonora, from her throne on the porch, laughed and said, “He’s my father, and he can lick all of you guys put together, if you don’t watch out!”

“Sonora!” Latha said to her.

Junior removed his grip from Every’s shirt front and offered his hand. “Gee, sir, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know who you was.”

Every said, “Sonora’s just a-foolin you. I’m not her dad, but I might just have to lick y’all all together if you don’t knock it off. Now tell me, what’s all this rumpus about, anyhow?”

“It’s his fault,” Junior said, pointing to J.D. Pruitt. “He hit me first.”

Clarence Biggart said, pointing to Junior, “Burl Coe put im up to it. He darred im to trip ole J.D. and ole J.D. couldn’t do nuthin but hit im fer it.”

“Well, why are all the rest of you fellers fightin?” Every asked.

“Aw, we aint fightin serious,” Earl Coe put in. “It aint a real fraction. We’uns was just horseplayin, to show them damn Dubya Pee Ayers who rules the roost around here.”

“No need somebody gettin hurt for that,” Every said. “If all you want to do is find out who rules the roost, why don’t y’all just hold a Indian wrasslin?”

“Whut’s thet?” Junior asked.

“You aint never Indian-wrassled?” Every asked. “Well, come over here to the porch and I’ll show you.” He and Junior sat down in opposite directions on the porch steps and Every put their arms up together, elbows down on the cement step, and their hands clenched. “Now the idee,” Every said, “is to see if you can force my hand down and I try to force your hand down. Winner’s strongest. Not only is he strongest but he’s also got the most will power and spunk. Okay. Here we go.”

Every and Junior strained together, the knot of their clenched hands vibrating for a moment before Every let his hand be pushed down, saying, “There! See, you beat me. Now you take on one of the others.”

There began a round of eliminations. Junior Indian-wrestled with Clarence Biggart and lost; Clarence matched Earl Coe and won, but lost to Gerald Coe. Gerald beat Merle Kimber but lost to J.D. Pruitt, who defeated both Burl Coe and Chester Duckworth, and then engaged Hank Ingledew in a match that lasted nearly four minutes before Hank forced J.D.’s hand down.

Hank then took on Eddie Churchwell, Leo Dinsmore, and Dorsey Tharp, defeating each of them.

“The winner!” Every declared, raising Hank’s arm. “What’s your name, son?”

“John Henry,” he said, and added, “Ingledew. And now I’ll take you on, sir, if you want to Indian-wrassle.”

“Why, I was the first one eliminated,” Every protested. “This boy here beat me in the first match.”

“I saw that,” Hank said. “You let him. You just let him do it. Come on and Indian-wrassle with me.”

“Okay,” Every said, and sat down and matched arms with Hank. Their clenched hands strained and quivered for half a minute, then Hank smashed Every’s hand down. “Oof!” Every exclaimed. “Wow, that’s too much for me.”

“Aw, you wasn’t even tryin!” Hank protested. “Come on, goddamn ye, and try.”

“Swear all you want,” Every said sternly. “Just don’t bring the Lord’s name in to help ye.” And he took Hank’s hand again and they matched up for only a few seconds before Every drove his arm swiftly down.

“Haw!” Hank exclaimed, “I knew you could do it! Come on, best two out of three. I took one, you took one, now let’s settle it!”

Once again they matched up, and Hank closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, and all the muscles in his neck bulged out. Minute after minute went by, and each of them began to grunt with enormous effort, but their hands remained totally immobile, not even trembling.

Five or six minutes passed. Seven. “Let up!” Latha said. “Your eyeballs are going to pop right out of your heads.” But the others were urging them on. “Break his arm off, Hank!” “Give it to im, Hank!” “Come on, Hank boy, you can do it, Hank boy!” The W.P.A. boys were taking sides with Every. “Kill im, mister!” “Attaboy, hold im thar, ole feller!” “Don’t give an inch, Dad!”

Soon they stopped yelling and held their breaths, waiting. The clenched hands began to move, an inch this way, an inch that way.

The only sound was the insects in the grass, and the noises of toads. Latha suddenly looked at the porch swing and wondered where Donny was. Not like him to miss a night. She returned her eyes to the contest, in time to see that Every had Hank’s arm tilted at a downward slant. And then with a crash it was over.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Hank complained. “You aint human, mister! That aint a human arm you got, it’s a ox’s! Who are ye, anyhow? Whut’s yore name?”

He told him his name.

“Oh,” Hank said. Then he said, “I’da knowed that, I’da tried a little harder and whupped ye.”

“I’d be glad for another go-round,” Every offered.

“Not me,” Hank said. “My arm feels lak it was pulled plum loose off my shoulder, I caint even feel nuthin in it.”

Gerald Coe said to Every, “I’ve heerd my dad say some fine things about ye, mister, I don’t keer whut others say.”

“Who’s your dad?” Every asked him.

“Lawlor Coe,” he said. “My name’s Jerl, and them thar are my brothers, Earl and Burl.”

“I’m sure pleased to meet you,” Every said. “Your dad’s one of the finest men I’ve known. Him and me were friends all the way back, and he was just about the only true-blue pardner I ever had.”

Merle Kimber spat, then said, “Birds of a feather always flock together.”

Gerald Coe doubled his fists at Merle and said, “You son of a bitch, I’ll pluck all yore feathers!”

“Now, boys—” Every said.

Latha found herself wondering again why Donny had not come. It was so unusual for him not to be here that she felt like going up to his house to make sure he was there. Her attention was returned to the argument by something Hank Ingledew was saying.

“Wonder,” Hank was saying to Every in a low, snide tone, “wonder if ole Lawlor helped ye rob thet bank.”

The quiring of the tiny lives in the grass and trees was all the sound for a long little spell. She was alone with him now on the porch—Sonora and the boys had gone off somewhere—she was alone with him, but fretting more about Donny’s absence than Every’s anguish. She wondered if Dolph had made good his threat to “fix that durn kid.” Could he be so mean? If Donny didn’t show up soon, she was just going to have to force herself to go up to the Murrison place and ask about him.

Every sat brooding with his elbows on his knees and his jaw in his hands. He’s sure in a fine mess, she reflected, and even had a notion that Every was a bringer of bad luck. Why else would she have received—on the very day he appeared—a letter ordering the post office to close and a letter ordering her to send Sonora back to Little Rock?

Every spoke. “Latha,” he said, and his voice was nervous, “what if they try to have me indicted for that bank robbery?…”

“Every,” she pointed out to him, “there is something called a ‘statute of limitations,’ I don’t know exactly how it works, but it means that you can’t be convicted of a crime committed long ago.”

“Oh?” he said.

“But even if that didn’t work for you,” she said, “there’s another law that would. The only way they can convict you is to get the testimony of the one person who saw you do it. And the law says that a wife cannot testify against her husband.”

He thought that over for a while, figuring out what she meant, and then he laughed and said, “Are you trying to blackmail me into marrying you?”

I was sort of hoping he’d come and kiss me when I said that, she told herself, feeling disappointed. “Come into the house,” she said, “and I’ll mend your trousers.” She led him into her bedroom and got a needle and some thread from her sewing table. She inspected the rip, lifting his coat-tail. “Goodness, that’s a bad tear,” she said. “Well, take them off and I’ll see what I can do.”

Every reddened, and began to look around him. “Uh,” he said, “why don’t I just step into the closet and pass them out to you?”

“Why, Every!” she said. “For shame!” And he blushed even deeper. “How can you be so modest with me?”

“Aw, heck, Latha,” he protested. “It’s not like we were already married yet.”

“It’s not?” she said. “Yet?” she said. “Seems to me like we’ve been married for eighteen years, at least.”

“Aw, now, heck, shoot,” he mumbled. Then he said, “Well, at least pull down the winder shades.”

She pulled down the window shades, and lit a coal-oil lantern to see her work by. He unbuckled his belt, and turned his back to her and unbuttoned his fly and lowered his trousers. He was wearing polka-dot shorts, and she laughed. “Them’s mighty snazzy underpants fer a preacher,” she said, and he said, “Goshdarn ye, no wise cracks, now,” and without turning to face her he reached back and handed her his trousers. Then he whipped the coverlet off the bed and wrapped it around his waist and sat down on the bed.

She sat down at her table and began mending the tear, but she kept an eye on him. “Tsk tsk,” she clucked. “I’ll bet this is the first time a woman’s seen your hairy legs since you became a preacher.”

“You—” he said, then he laughed and said, “Why, no, it’s not, neither. Sometimes when I give a baptizing in a shallow creek I roll my britches up as far as they’ll go, and I’ll have you know there’s many a woman has admired my hairy legs.”

“Is that all they’ve admired?” she asked.

“How do you mean?”

“Has a woman ever admired your hairy legs except at a baptizing?”

“You trying to get me to tell if I’ve had a girlfriend?”

“I am.”

“Well, yes. There was one I nearly married a few years back, out in California, but as far as that matter goes, she never saw my legs, nor me hers.”

She asked then what she wanted to: “Why have you never taken a wife, Every?”

“You’d never believe me if told you.”

“I might. Try and see.”

“Naw,” he said. “You don’t believe I can talk with the Lord. You don’t even believe in the Lord, as far as that goes. You’d just laugh and poke fun if I told you.”

“Every,” she said solemnly, “if you wanted me to, I would believe anything you say.”

“Then believe the Lord talks to me!” he said. “Or talks in me, at least!”

“I believe the Lord talks in you, Every.”

“All right!”

“All right, what does He have to do with your being a bachelor?”

“Well, Latha,” he said, “you see, He told me one time that if I was patient enough, and good enough, He would allow me to find you again.”

Her hands stopped sewing, and her blood pounded in her ears, and for a moment she almost did believe in the Lord; she wanted to believe in the Lord, she wanted the Lord to talk to her or in her too, and tell her what to do. She was too choked up for speaking, but finally she said in a small voice, “That’s very flattering.”

“Of the Lord?” he said. “The Lord don’t flatter nobody.”

“Are you happy you found me?” she asked.

“I caint tell you how much I am,” he said.

“You’ve been rather reserved,” she remarked. “You haven’t exactly been acting like a man who’s found his long lost love.”

“Well, I didn’t know how you would take it,” he said. “I didn’t know if you would be glad to see me, or not. I guess I was sort of waiting for you to make the first move.”

“You seem to be still waiting for me to make the first move.”

“I caint help it.”

“Well, are you going to come over here and kiss me, or do I have to come over there and kiss you?”

He laughed happily. “Why don’t we meet halfway?”

“All right,” she said. “Here I come.” And she put aside his trousers and stood up.

He stood up too, but when he did so the coverlet wrapped around his waist came loose and flopped to the floor. He bent down to pick it up, but she had already gone beyond the halfway line, and when he raised up she shoved hard against his shoulders and pushed him back and down on the bed and she climbed up beside him and brought her mouth down to his and kissed him for a long, tight, moist time. But he did not raise his arms to put them around her.

“There!” she said, when she broke the kiss. “I met you more than halfway.”

“You sure did, didn’t you?” he said. “And if you don’t backtrack a little bit, there’s going to be an embarrassment coming between us.”

“I don’t care,” she said, misinterpreting him, and lowering her face to kiss him again. Still he did not put his arms around her.

He twisted his mouth loose from hers. “Latha!” he said sharply.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Don’t you like to kiss?”

“Not in this position,” he said.

“You want to get on top?” she asked.

“No, Latha, this isn’t right. We can’t let ourselves get carried away.”

“Why not?”

“We aren’t really married yet,” he pointed out. “In the sight of God we have no sanction.”

She rose up off of him, and got off the bed. He sat up and drew the coverlet around his waist again. She felt like using some choice profanity. Instead she asked, “Do you mean we have to be legally hitched before you can even make love to me?”

Instead of answering, he asked his own question, “You never have read much of the Bible, have you?”

“No,” she said. “It’s never had anything to say to me.”

“That’s your loss, then,” he said. “For if you knew your Bible you would know how important it is for you to be married to the man you give your body to.”

“The father of my daughter was not married to me!” she came back at him.

“I’ve repented that,” he said. “Can you repent?”

“Repent being raped?” she demanded. “Every, you are insane.”

“I didn’t mean that,” he said. “I didn’t mean you have to repent acts committed against you. I ask only if you can repent those sins which you have committed yourself.”

“What sins, for instance?” she asked.

“Laying with Dolph Rivett, for instance,” he said.

“That was no sin,” she said defiantly. “That was heaven. Every, take off that silly coverlet and make love to me. We can both repent afterwards.”

“I can see I’ve got a lot to teach you about the meaning of repentance.”

“I won’t be taught. Life’s already given me all the lessons I can handle.”

“You’re wrong, Latha. If you’re rejecting the Word, then you’re rejecting me. I come to you with more than love; I come to you with the precious gift of the Word of God, and if you reject that present without even opening it to see what it’s like, then…why then I reckon you don’t want me either.”

“There’s another present I’d like to open first to see what it’s like,” she said.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Your drawers,” she said.

“Don’t talk dirty,” he said.

“Dirty!” she said. “Dirty! Maybe your drawers are dirty, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Every, I swear, if that precious Word of yours teaches you that it’s dirty, then I don’t want to hear a word of your Word.”

He gazed sternly at her for a while, and then he said, “You’ve always been pretty feisty, haven’t you?”

“Feisty is another word like dirty,” she replied. “It doesn’t mean anything to me because it means so many different things to everybody else that I don’t care what it means. Anyway, I have never been ‘feisty’ as you mean it.”

“All right. You asked me if I’d had any girlfriends, have you had any boyfriends?”

“Lately, you mean? Sure. Doc Swain is my boyfriend. So is Tull Ingledew. My very special true love is a five-year-old towhead named Dawny.”

“But you haven’t made love to them…”

“Well, last night me and Dawny—”

“Be serious, Latha.”

“No, I haven’t been made love to.”

“Except—?”

“You want a case history, darn it?”

“I’d be obliged.”

“Okay. Eighteen years ago last month I was violated by force. Since that time I’ve been made love to twice, which averages out to once every nine years.”

“Once was with Dolph Rivett, of course. When was the other time? Do you remember?”

“I sure do.”

“But—” he said, puzzled. “I thought you couldn’t remember anything of that time.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard to remember,” she said. “Let’s see, how long ago was it? I’d say, roughly, about four and a half hours.”

He did not say anything. A minute or two went by. Then he said, “Would you hand me my trousers, please?”

“I’m not finished with them yet,” she said.

“I don’t care. Just hand them over.”

“I’m not finished with you either,” she said.

“What more’ve you got to say?”

“I want to ask you a few questions.”

“Ask em.”

“Are you going to propose to me, or not?”

“I was. I might still. I caint right now.”

“Why not?”

“What would you say if I did?”

“I would say, ‘Yes, on one condition.’”

He laughed hollowly and said, “Wow! I’m making progress. Eighteen years ago it was, ‘No, no, no, not if you were the last man on earth!’ All right, what’s your one condition?”

“That you come down off your religious high horse long enough to make love to me.”

“Why is that so important to you, Latha? Eighteen years ago I had to take it from you; now you’re practically begging me for it. Are you trying to get me to prove that I can still do it?”

“Maybe I am,” she said.

“Well, then, I give you my word I can. Just as soon as I get that ring on your finger I’ll prove it to you.”

“How do you know you can? If you haven’t done it in eighteen years.”

“Not eighteen,” he said. “Fourteen.”

“Oh,” she said. “Who was that?”

“You,” he said.

SUB FOUR: Fourteen Years Ago

Can you remember anything of that dark time, Bug? I would be rather surprised to know that you could, for I am told that following that particular type of fugue state [ fugue = flight] there usually is what was incorrectly known as aphasia, now properly known as a form of amnesia. You would not remember; you would remember a dank December afternoon sitting in a rocking chair at the end of a corridor, and a doctor approaching you and asking you a question; you would even remember the first part of the question he spoke, but then the next thing you would know it would be a bright morning in late March and you would find yourself in a small hotel in Nashville, Tennessee.

When you woke that morning you would not yet have been technically “sane” [whatever that means for somebody like you, Bug, and although I have had your thing explained to me over and over, under such fanciful terms as “The Control of Aggression by Dissociation and Disavowal,” I am still not able to accept that you were ever actually mad], but you would have begun to record again in memory what was happening to you. Before that point you were as Sleeping Beauty [a particularly apt comparison; I think she must have been in a fugue state too], so I must attempt to see all of this through the eyes of the Prince. Certainly the labors of your Prince were as great as those of hers.

On the afternoon of March 23rd, he parked the stolen car in a weed-choked vacant lot on West Fourth Street bordering the grounds of Fair Park. He was wearing a blue pin-striped double-breasted suit he had obtained that morning at Pfeifer’s Department Store by putting it on beneath his old work clothes in the dressing room. But his shoes, scuffed brogues, were incongruous with the splendid suit. He had wanted to buy some shoe wax and touch them up a bit, but he was impatient.

He used the Visitors’ Entrance and went up to the desk.

“Ma’am,” he said, “I’d like to visit with Miss Latha Bourne.”

“Are you a relative?” she asked.

“Distant cousin on my mother’s side,” he said.

The woman consulted her list and said, “She’s in E Ward.”

“How do I get there?” he asked.

“You don’t get there,” she said.

“How’s that, ma’am?”

“The only visitors permitted in E Ward are members of the immediate family.”

“Oh. So you mean I can’t see her?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Couldn’t I just maybe look at her from a distance?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, could you just show me which window is hers so’s I could just holler ‘hello’ to her?”

“We couldn’t do that.”

“Well, could you get ahold of a preacher who would marry us so then I would be a member of her immediate family and could visit her?”

The woman stared at him for a moment, then said, “Oh. You are being playful.”

“No,” he said. “I mean it.”

“Why are you so eager to see her?”

“Aint seen her in nearly four years.”

“You should try to understand, sir, that even if we permitted you to visit with her there would likely not be any communication. Most patients in E Ward are totally withdrawn.”

“Oh,” he said. He asked, “Can they not be cured?”

“The hopeless incurables are in F Ward. In E Ward we have a partial recovery rate of about five percent.”

“How long will she have to stay here?”

“I couldn’t say. If you were a member of the immediate family you could make an appointment to discuss the case with one of the doctors.”

“Looks like I’m shit out of luck, don’t it?” he said, “not being an immediate family.”

“Sir,” she said.

He left. He wandered around the grounds, looking at the buildings. There were seven white austere blocks, each five floors in height. He thought it looked worse than Leavenworth. Some patients were sitting on benches in the spring sunshine, but they did not seem to notice that flowers were blooming and trees were leafing. He approached one bench and asked the old man sitting there, “Which one is E Ward?”

“Who knows the way out of a rose,” the man replied.

He wandered on; he came to two men walking. “Is either one of you fellers sane enough to tell me where’s E Ward?”

One turned to his companion and asked, “Will you tell him, Doctor, or shall I?”

The other said, “I yield to you, Doctor.”

The first said, “No, Doctor, I should much prefer that you tell him.”

“I demur,” said the second. “You are saner than I.”

“On the contrary,” said the first, “your sanity is better equipped for answering directional questions.”

“Let us examine the question, Doctor,” said the second. “This gentleman is not asking us for the location of E Ward. He is asking if either of us is sane enough to tell him the location of E Ward.”

“I see,” said the first. “Then what is your diagnosis, Doctor?”

“Frankly, Doctor,” said the second, “I am inclined to detect symptoms of chronic pathological mythomania in both ourselves; therefore neither of us is capable of giving the gentleman a truthful answer.”

“I quite agree,” said the first. “But if we simply said ‘no’ to this gentleman’s question, would we be lying?”

“I think not,” said the second, “but of course my opinion would be influenced by my mythomania.”

“In that case,” said the first, “I suggest we answer ‘yes.’”

“Very well,” said the second. “Yes, sir, either one of us is sane enough to tell you the location of E Ward.”

“Then tell me, dammit!” he said.

“Why do you want to know?” asked the first.

“I’m goin to visit my dear old mother,” he said.

“What’s the lady’s name?”

“Smith.”

He turned to the other, “Do we have a Smith in E, Doctor?”

The other said, “I think not. I suspect this person is delusional.”

“Perhaps he is a patient. What is your name, sir?”

“Smith.”

“Do we have any patients named Smith, Doctor?”

“Surely we must, Doctor.”

“Come along, sir, and we will find out where you belong.”

They each took one of his arms, but he broke loose, saying “Now just a dadblamed minute!”

A nurse came up and shook her finger at the two men. “Now, boys,” she said, “we mustn’t molest the visitors.” Then she asked him, “Did they disturb you, sir?”

“Naw,” he said, “I was just trying to find my way to E Ward.”

“Right over there,” she said, pointing.

“Thanks,” he said, and walked away from them. He was beginning to feel half-touched himself.

E Ward was identical with the other buildings, the most conspicuous difference being that all of the windows were barred. Just like Leavenworth, he thought. He walked around the building. Although the windows were barred, they were open to let in the spring air. A sound came to him, and he realized the same thing you had previously realized, Bug: that E Ward was appropriately named. The steady noise characteristic of the place was a high-pitched “Eeeeee! Eeeeee! Eeeeeeee!”

An old woman appeared at a third floor window and looked down at him. She began to screech, “JOHN MY SON MY SON JOHN YOU’VE COME FOR ME!”

Immediately a younger woman appeared and shoved the old lady out of the way, saying, “That aint your son, you old bat! That’s my man Willy.” She called down to him, “OH WILLY COME AND FUCK SOME CUNT OH WILLY COME AND SUCK SOME ASS OH WILLY COME AND FLOOR YOUR WHORE WHO’LL LICK YOUR DICK AND DRINK YOUR PISS AND GOOSE YOU WITH HER PRETTY LITTLE THUMBIE THUMB THUMB!”

“I aint Willy,” he told her, and walked on.

From another window a girl was staring silently at him. She was an albino with snow white hair and pink eyes, but she seemed to be completely all there. He called up to her, “Do you know Latha Bourne?” She did not answer. He called again, “Is Latha Bourne up there?” She stuck out her tongue at him.

You who shared the cell with this albino girl heard your name twice, and began to rise from your cot. You lifted a foot; you lifted an arm; you lifted another foot, another arm; you raised up your head, your shoulders; you sat up; you put your feet on the floor; you pushed down on the edge of the cot with your hands and rose up; you stood; you turned; you began to walk toward the window; you began to run; you ran and ran and ran and finally reached the window; you looked out. There was nobody there.

He wandered through Fair Park, thinking. You should realize that up until this point he had only wanted to see you. He had only wanted to see that you were alive and well. He had hoped perhaps to see you smile. He had hoped to be able to get you to hear him and understand him when he said that he was going to wait for you to get well, however long it took.

Only his bitter disappointment, his intense frustration over not having been able to see you at all, was what now drove him with the sudden determination to get you out of there. He did not even consider that there was anything wrong with abducting you away from there; to him it was not conceivable that you could actually be insane; to him you were a lovely goddess unjustly incarcerated among foul hags. To him he would be protecting your sanity by rescuing you from that place [and this notion, as we know, was not far from the truth]. The brief experience with the old woman, the obscene woman, and the albino, had impressed him deeply. That was no place for you.

But, even given his talent for having broken out of a federal military stockade unaided, he was at a loss for means of freeing you. To break out of a place is one thing; to break into a place and get somebody else out of it is, he said to himself, an apple off another tree.

He thought of bribing one of the guards (or aides or attendants or whoever ran the place). He had sixty-five dollars to his name. Would a guard accept such a paltry bribe? Even if he would, there was too much danger in dealing with people. If the attempt failed, he did not want anybody to know even that. He did not want to be seen by anyone sane enough to give a description of him to the police.

Darkness was necessary, of course. While waiting for it, he went to a hardware store and spent fifteen of his sixty-five dollars on some tools and rope. He stashed these in the trunk of his car and went off to the carnival in Fair Park to while away the early night. He rode the Ferris wheel several times before dusk; and each time it took him to its apex he would look out across the treetops and study the roof of E Ward. After nightfall, he spent an hour at the shooting gallery, winning a great armload of prizes, which he distributed among the children. He wandered around. He bought a ticket to the Girlie Show and went in and watched it through twice. He rode the Merry-Go-Round. A girl offered herself to him for ten dollars; he thought about it, and bought the girl a soda and talked with her some; but finally turned her down. He rode the shooty-shoot. A girl offered herself to him for free; he declined. He visited the ball-pitching booth, and won a giant stuffed Panda. He placed it in the hands of the first girl who passed; her escort took umbrage and accused him of getting fresh, and picked a fight. The man was a big fellow, with much beer on his breath. They squared off. The man swung a roundhouse; he ducked under it and deflated the man’s intestines with one jab, then broke his jaw with an uppercut. The girl thanked him for the Panda. He walked on. The carnival was beginning to close.

At a quarter past one he went back to his car and got his tools and rope. He crossed the grounds of the hospital, keeping to the shadows of trees. There was not a soul around, but the grounds were still illuminated. He approached E Ward from the corner nearest the trees. He stood at that corner for a moment, listening, then he looped the rope over his shoulder and stuffed the pockets of the suit with his tools, and reached out and took hold of the drainpipe, a thick galvanized tin tube running up to the roof. He began to climb. At the third-floor level he paused and studied the bars on the windows. The ends of the bars were embedded in mortar; he did not have the tools to cut them or bend them. He had a file, but that would take too long.

He continued climbing, past the fourth floor, past the fifth. The height did not dizzy him, but he was a little nervous about the drainpipe pulling loose from the mortar. It was an old building.

He arrived at the roof and clung to its gutter; he kicked out with all his might and managed to swing one leg up and hook his heel on the rim of the gutter. Then he pulled himself up.

He stood up on the sloping roof and climbed it, climbed over a gable and down to a vent on the other side of it, a louvered triangle. He took a screwdriver out of his pocket and pried around the crevices. He discovered there were three bolts in the vent—bolted on the outside, naturally, to keep anyone inside from tampering with them. He took a wrench from his pocket and removed them. Then he inserted the wedge end of his nail puller into the crack and forced the vent out. He laid it carefully on the roof, along with his coil of rope. Then feet-first he let himself down through the vent until his feet touched solid floor.

From another pocket he took a candle and lighted it and discovered he was in a small attic. He crawled across the floor and located the hatch. It was latched—and probably locked—from below. But the hinges and screws were on this side. He removed them. The hatch dropped down and swung from the padlock on its underside. He slowly peered below. It was the end of a corridor; there was no ladder; it was a good twelve feet to the floor. He lowered himself to his full length, hanging on by his hands on the hatch, then he let go and dropped, flexing his knees to cushion his drop; even so the corridor rang out with a crash of his feet upon the wooden floor. He waited, listening, for several minutes until he was convinced that nobody was coming to investigate the noise.

He explored the corridor. Apparently all the rooms on this floor were storerooms. He went to the stairs and descended to the fourth floor. The rooms on this floor had names on them: “Hydrotherapy,” “Electroshock Therapy,” “X Ray.” He continued on down to the third floor.

He was almost spotted by the night attendant, a big woman sitting at a desk. He retreated, back up to the fourth floor and along its length to another stairway. He went down this stairway to the third floor again, but the door at the foot of the stairway was locked. Yet once again, however, the attachments were on the side opposite that to which patients would have access. He took his screwdriver and removed the whole lock from the door. Then he found himself in a dimly lit corridor of many rooms.

Each door had a nameplate with two names on it. “Ella Mae Henderson and Mrs. Ruby Bridges.” “Mrs. Marianne Templeton and Mrs. Dorothy Grace.” “Agnes Colton and Huberta Read.” “Mrs. Velma Lucaster and Georgene Masters.” “Jessica Tolliver and Latha Bourne.”

One more locked door, with a barred window set in it, and he had no tools for this one. His first impulse was to knock gently and see if you would open it from the inside, but he realized that this door would lock from the outside. And who would have the key? Why, that big woman down at the end of the corridor, of course.

He moved quietly along the corridor, still firm in his resolve not to have any contacts with anybody, but determined to club her over the head from behind, if necessary.

It was not necessary. The woman was asleep. He could hear her snores before he saw her. Her chin was embedded deeply into her chest as she sat in heavy slumber with her hands folded over her stomach. Under her right elbow he saw a ring of keys attached to her belt by a leather thong. He congratulated himself on having the foresight to have included a pair of shears in his purchase at the hardware store.

He stole up to her and snipped the leather thong and grabbed the keys and stole away, without causing any irregularity in her heavy snoring.

He returned to your room and tried many keys until he found the one that fit. He unlocked the door and opened it.

Now, he thought.

There were two cots, and that albino girl was asleep in one of them. You were asleep in the other. He closed the door behind him. He moved to your cot and knelt down beside it. Maybe, he said to himself, maybe I ought to just try and pick her up and carry her instead of waking her up. But he knew he would not be able to get the dead weight of you out of there. He would need some cooperation from you.

Gently he shook your shoulder and began whispering in your ear, “Latha, honey, it’s me. I’ve come to take you home. Wake up, sweetheart, and let’s get on back home.”

Instantly you were awake, and in your eyes that look he had so often seen: that big-eyed look that was not astonishment nor startlement but a kind of hesitant surprise as if you were just waiting to see what the world was going to do to you, knowing it was going to do something and even wanting it to do something, and watching big-eyed to see what it would be.

You did not speak to him. Knowing what I do about your condition, I would venture a positive guess that you immediately recognized him, even subliminally, that is, that even though you could not have spoken his name to save your soul, you knew him. He was the first non-stranger you had seen in a long, long time.

Did you even smile? I refuse to discount the possibility that you could have. But his eyes were so close to yours that he wouldn’t have noticed what was happening to the mouth down below.

“Howdy, Latha, honey,” he said. “I’ve come to take you home.” It bothered him a little bit to be lying; he had no intention of taking you home. “Now don’t you make a sound, sweetheart, because nobody knows I’m here. Now you just get your dress on and we will get out of this place and I will take you home, away from all these crazy people.”

Slowly you rose up out of bed, and he impulsively turned his face away when he saw that you were naked. You stood there for a while like a statue. He had to return his eyes to you to see what you were doing, and when he saw that you were doing nothing he began to look around for a garment to put on you. He could not find one. Had they taken away all your clothes? While he was searching the room he was surprised to discover that the albino girl was awake and watching him. He put his finger to his lips and said to her, “Shhh.” There was hardly anything in the room other than the two cots—no closet, no wardrobe, nothing. He took the wool blanket off the bed and wrapped it around you, then he said to you, “Come on.”

“Take me,” said the albino girl.

He tried to determine whether she was asking him to rescue her too or whether she just meant she wanted him to lay with her. “I caint,” he said. “No time. I’m sorry.”

“Take me!” she repeated, insistently.

“I’m sure sorry,” he said, and began pushing you out through the door. He closed it and re-locked it, but even the closed door would not muffle that girl’s loud sobbing. He began to get jittery for the first time. “Wait right here,” he said to you, and then he moved quickly down the corridor to where the night attendant’s station was, and, finding that she was still asleep, he gently lay the ring of keys on her lap. Even when she woke and found the leather thong of the key ring cut, she would not dare mention the thong to the investigators, for fear it would be an admission that she had fallen asleep on duty.

He returned to you and said “Come on” again and led you up the corridor stairway, and pushed you far enough up the stairs so that he could get the door closed and then carefully replace the lock he had unscrewed. Then he led you on up to the fifth floor.

Only when he arrived below the hatch to the attic did he realize his most serious error. “Of all the boneheaded stunts!” he said. How was he going to get back up? The hatch was twelve feet above the floor; he should have left his rope dangling down. Feeling near the edge of panic, he began to look around for a ladder or even a box to stand on. He could find nothing; all the storerooms were locked.

At this point for the first time it occurred to him that if he were caught he would get at least twenty years, maybe more.

There was only one thing to do. He came back to you and put his hands on both your shoulders and spoke slowly and gently, “Now listen careful, Latha, here’s what we’ve got to do. I’m going to boost you up there and you climb out and then you’ll find a triangle vent-hole and right outside that vent-hole is my rope. You get that rope and bring it back to me.”

Those big eyes of yours stared at him.

“Kin you understand me?” he pled. “It’s our only chance. The rope, we got to have that rope. I’ll boost you up to the attic, and you’ll see that there vent-hole that I opened up, and right outside it on the roof is a coil of rope. Bring me that rope.”

A nod from you would have eased his mind, but you did not nod. You did, however, crane your neck and stare in the direction he was pointing, upward at the hatch.

It was his only chance. He clenched his hands together and opened his palms to make a stirrup for your foot. You stared at the stirrup for a moment. “Come on, honey, you kin do it!” he urged. You put your foot in the stirrup. You raised your arms and put your palms against the wall. He began to lift. Up, up you went. When your feet were level with his chest, he unclenched the stirrup and got each of his palms under the soles of your feet and pushed upward until his hands were as high above his head as he could reach, and him on tiptoe. The blanket in which you were wrapped fell off of you and covered his head but he did not flinch. Your fingers strove upward and felt the rim of the hatch. You caught hold. You tried to pull yourself up. Your feet left his palms and he whipped the blanket off his head and looked up at you. You were straining. The hospital had never given you any exercise, and you were weak.

You fell. He caught you, breaking your fall and falling with you to the floor. He got up, sighing, and helped you to your feet. There would be bruises on your back where you had mashed against the hard tools in his pockets. He covered your nakedness again with the blanket, knotting two corners of it together around your neck.

“Let’s try it once more,” he said. “See if you caint get your hands on the sides of the hatch, that way you’d have more leverage.”

Again he made the stirrup with his hands. Again you rose slowly up the wall until your hands reached the hatch, one hand on one side, the other hand on the other. Again your feet left the palms of his hands. Again you began to strain, every muscle in your arms and shoulders exerting itself.

You began to rise, but reached a point where you could strain no longer and were on the verge of falling again. Suddenly he leapt. He leapt upward for all he was worth, shoving his hands upward against your feet and propelling you upward beyond that crucial point. You got your chest up onto the attic and clambered up and out of sight.

You were gone for quite some time. He was exceedingly nervous. For all he knew you had fallen off the roof. Maybe you were gazing at the stars. Maybe you were just trying to find that triangular vent-opening. Maybe you had forgotten what he had asked you to get, or had never understood him in the first place. We do not know. At any rate, you caused him considerable anxiety.

But at last you re-appeared, and you had the coil of rope. Now another problem presented its ugly self to him: could he explain to you how to tie one end of the rope to something so that he could pull himself up? He did not wait long enough to formulate the explanation in his mind. “Just drop it down,” he said, and you dumped the rope on him.

He quickly fashioned a lariat, and, after two or three misses, he lassoed the dangling hatch-cover, pulled the rope tight, grabbed hold and climbed hand over hand up the rope with his feet braced against the wall until he could reach the hatch. He pulled himself up through it.

Then he untied the lariat, and replaced the hatch cover, screwing the hinges back on. He was covering all his tracks.

There remained just two tracks to cover: he led you out onto the roof and after cautioning you to be careful not to fall off he replaced the louver in the vent opening and bolted it back on. Then he fashioned a small loop on one end of his rope and dropped it over an iron finial on the corner of the eave.

“Now here comes the tricky part,” he said. He could not trust that drainpipe to remain attached to the mortar. Nor could he trust you to lower yourself alone down the rope.

He turned his back to you and said, “Wrap your arms around my neck.” You hesitated. He reached back and took your hands and raised them and wrapped your arms around his neck and clenched your fingers together and said, “Hold on tight as you can.”

Then he threw the coil of rope down off the roof and watched it uncoil to the ground. He knelt with you straddling him at the edge of the roof and grabbed hold of the rope and edged himself over.

As he began to lower himself hand under hand down the rope he cursed himself for overestimating his strength. The weight of you on his back was such that he dared never release one of his hands from the rope; instead he had to slide his hands down the rope and the rope was burning the heck out of his fingers and palms. Then the clench that you had on his neck tightened as you yourself sensed fear, and you began choking him. He could not even get his throat unclenched enough to ask you to stop choking him.

He was near to passing out, and began to think it would be a blessed release to let go and kill both of you. Then out of the survival instinct’s self-centeredness he began to think that if he fell you would fall first and land on your back and cushion his fall so that even if he killed you he might survive and escape and whoever found you would think you’d somehow done it all on your own.

But while he was thinking these mad thoughts he was making swift progress down the rope; his hands and his neck were in such pain that he was oblivious to his own progress. He did not even realize that he was so near the ground. When he finally could stand his pain no longer and said to himself The hell with it! Let us die! and let go of the burning rope with both hands he was surprised to find that he was standing on the ground.

He collapsed. You collapsed with him and let go of his neck, and finally he got his wind back and stood up. There was just one track to cover. He could hardly bear the touch of that rope again on his raw hands but he grasped it once more and gave it a whip, and the whip undulated higher and higher but did not quite reach the top. He gave it another whip and the whip undulation rose and rose to its end, and snapped, cracked, and the loop popped off the finial and fluttered down to the ground. He coiled the rope and said to you, “Okay, let’s go.”

It would have been insanely ironic if someone had caught you leaving the grounds, but maybe the night watchman was over in F Ward helping subdue a maniac. The grounds were deserted. So were the streets beyond them. In Little Rock at three o’clock in the morning only the milkman is out on the streets.

You made it to his car. He opened the door for you and got you in, and then he opened his door and threw the rope and tools into the back seat, and got in. He started the motor and drove away.

“You’re free, gal!” he cried. “Call me a monkey’s uncle if you aint free, by granny!” And as he drove he began whistling loudly and happily the tune of “She’ll Be Comin Round the Mountain When She Comes!”

You quietly uttered your first word: “Free.”

We do know of the phenomenon whereby certain mental patients, resistant to and perhaps resentful of all efforts to make them well, have become spontaneously cured, as it were, upon being removed from formal treatment. There are on record a number of cases of patients, many of them considered incurable, who, when abandoned or sent home or left alone in some corner of the institution, seemed to become so relieved at being free from the intense attention of the doctors that they rapidly cured themselves.

We do not know at what precise point during this episode you began to heal. It might have been at the very moment he came into your room and woke you up. It might have been during those minutes when you were required to climb up through that hatch and fetch that rope. Possibly when you muttered that first word, “free,” you were beginning to feel a definite sense of relief from the treatment. Any one of a number of incidents occurring in the days following could have been the trigger. We know you would not be wholly “well” for weeks to come, and we know you would not even regain use of your memory until that morning in the Nashville hotel. But you were on your way.

He did not cross the Arkansas River at Little Rock, because he did not want to drive through the downtown business area and risk being spotted by a policeman. He drove through Fair Park and emerged on the other side into a dirt country road, and he kept to backroads up through northern Pulaski County, and Perry County, heading toward the ferry that would get the car across the river and on toward Conway.

He talked a blue streak the whole time, trying to be amusing. He told jokes by the dozen. It must have been a relief for you to listen for the first time in three years to a voice that was neither screaming obscenities nor trying to get you to confess when you first masturbated.

“You remember back when the big craze was riddles,” he would say, “and folks would stop strangers right on the road to try out some new riddle they heard. Well, I was riding up to Jasper one day with ole Till Cluley when the wagon got stuck bad in the mud, clear up to the hubs. Ole Till was whippin all four horses and hollerin cuss words at the top a his voice. Just then this preacher from Parthenon come along and says to Till, ‘My friend, do you know the name of Him who died for sinners?’ And ole Till says, ‘I aint got no time for no goddamn riddles. Caint you see I’m stuck in this son-a-bitchin mud?’”

And he would slap his leg and laugh, then turn to see how you would be taking it. But if you were smiling, it was hard to tell.

And speaking of being stuck in the mud, those old backroads were in pretty soggy condition, what with the spring rains and all. Most of the time he would put the car in low gear and bull his way through, slipping and sliding wildly with the engine roaring. But a few times he got mired. I think if you tried hard enough, Bug, you might be able to remember that.

The first time the car got stuck, he turned the wheel over to you and got out and pushed, but when he pushed you free you drove on for nearly a quarter of a mile before finding the brake, and that gave him a bad thought or two. So the second time the car got stuck he made you get out and push, and pretty soon that blanket you were wrapped in was considerably splattered with mud.

Then before long the car lurched into a mud hole that seemed more like quicksand than mud, so both of you had to get out and push together. It was very laborious, and by the time you got the car back onto a semblance of dry land, you were both covered with mud from head to toe.

You stood there panting and staring at him in that fine blue pinstriped suit all covered with mud. The dawn was coming up. Something about his muddy appearance, and an awareness of your own weird appearance in a mud-soaked blanket, suddenly got through to you. You began to laugh.

If I had my own guess, Bug, that would be the moment when you began to get well.

And when you laughed, he began laughing too, and you each pointed at each other and howled with laughter. And then you were in each other’s muddy arms. And then you were not laughing.

Could anyone imagine that a muddy kiss would taste so good?

He stopped in the small hamlet of Bigelow and prevailed upon the keeper of the General Store to leave his breakfast and open the store long enough for him to buy some fresh clothes for the two of you, and a jar of salve for his rope-blistered hands. Then he even persuaded the storekeeper’s wife to sell him some boiled eggs and biscuits and pork jowl and a Mason jar full of steaming coffee. The storekeeper’s wife accompanied him back to the car, and she saw you. He explained, “My wife and I got pretty badly muddied up down the road aways and my wife ruined her dress and had to wear the blanket.”

“Them roads is sure awful this time a year,” the woman said. Then she asked, “Whar you folks headin?”

“Conway,” he said.

“Wal, I’ll tell ye. Ron Lee Fowler don’t start runnin the ferry till noon, but he lives not too awful fur up the road that runs north of the landin, so if you’uns was to go to his house and ast him, he might take you on across.”

“Thank you, ma’am. Much obliged,” he said, and drove on.

Before going on to the landing, he pulled off at a creek, and the two of you cleaned up, washing all the mud off, and donning the new clothes he’d bought. Your dress was a size too small, but it did nice things for your figure. Your shoes were two sizes too big, but they’d do, for a while. Then you sat on the grass and ate breakfast together. It was very good.

Ron Lee Fowler agreed to take the car across, for 35 cents. The roads on the other side of the river were better, and Conway was reached and left behind before any of the stores had opened.

He headed east across Faulkner County, still keeping to back-roads, avoiding highways, pointing in the general direction of Memphis. The traffic was light, a few wagons and horsemen, no automobiles. Still he began to get nervous as the day wore on and more and more houses and people were passed. By this time, word would have been sent out that a nut was on the loose from the state hospital.

Around ten A.M., east of Beebe, he turned off into an old trail that led through a grove of cypresses in and alongside a bayou. He drove as far as he could before the road got too muddy, then he stopped. It was a cool place, nearly dark, like a primeval jungle, with all the big cypresses and their beards of Spanish moss.

“Let’s take a nap,” he suggested, and got out of the car and found a shady patch of soft ground covered with a bed of cypress needles. You followed. You felt very sleepy, and possibly you were feeling grateful for the chance to stop and nap.

The two of you lay down, a few inches apart. He folded his arms over his chest and closed his eyes. He was dead-tired. You turned your head and smiled, and then you snuggled against him. He opened his eyes and smiled back at you and then he wrapped one arm beneath you and you fell asleep with your head on his shoulder.

You woke, in the same position, seven hours later. As soon as you raised your head from his shoulder, he woke too. The two of you rose and brushed the cypress needles off you, and resumed your journey.

He drove all night. Sometimes he sang songs, “Old Joe Clark,” “Sourwood Mountain,” “The Jealous Lover,” and “Sally Goodin.” Sometimes he just talked, telling funny stories.

“I remember that day we was going off to war, and the Jasper Women’s Club come down to the staging area where the Army was fixin to pick us up, and those women said they was throwin a seeinoff party for us patriotic fellers. So they served us punch and cookies, and this one lady comes up to me and says, ‘Young man, would you make a speech?’ And I choked on my cookie and says, ‘For God’s sake, what about?’ And she says, ‘Just anything you like, and tell em what you think about it.’ So then I stood up and I says, ‘Well, I like Miss Latha Bourne better than anything else, and I think she is wonderful.’ And then I sat down, a-wiping the sweat off my forehead, and afterwards everybody comes up and says that is the best speech they ever heard.

“J’ever hear the one Doc Swain used to tell about one time he gave Granny Price a dose of medicine and he says to her, ‘Keep a close watch, and see what passes.’ Next day he came back, and she was feeling a little better. He asks her, ‘Did anything out of the ordinary pass?’ ‘No,’ says Granny, ‘just a ox-team, a load of hay, and two foreigners on horseback.’ Doc Swain he just looked at her. ‘Well,’ says he, ‘it aint no wonder you’re a-feelin better.’”

But you did not show much reaction to any of his stories, and he did not dare attempt to engage you in serious conversation, for fear he would find that you could not reply to the simplest question.

The Mississippi was crossed around midnight, and he drove through the back streets of Memphis and headed northeast. He stopped once at a café to pick up coffee and to consult his road maps.

At dawn he parked beside a remote barn west of Lexington, Tennessee, and you slept on the hay. Because you were in the habit of sleeping without clothing, you took off what you had on. He discovered this when he woke up six hours later. You were still asleep. He lay there and stared at your body for a while and a tremendous hard-on grew on him. Many times already he had debated with himself the question as to whether sex would have any harmful effect on your mind. Now the fact that you were asleep, combined with the intensity of his desire, broke his reserve. He gently grasped one of your ankles and spread your leg. You did not wake. He opened his fly and released his rigid phallus. He stretched himself out over you, careful not to touch you anywhere, except at the point of coupling. He nestled his crown into your folds and gently pressed forward. He pressed forward less gently, but you were dry and tight. He drew back and knelt and moistened you with his tongue. Then he stretched over you again and pressed against you again. Still you were tight, but he increased his pressure and suddenly you unclenched and enfolded him. He sighed as your warm inner furrows rippled down along the length of his sinews. Slowly he withdrew, your lining slithering off the end of his crown in a wake. Then he slowly stroked into you again, not deeply, not to your depth. He backed. He forthed. It did not take much. The combination of your helplessness, the tension of keeping himself suspended above you, and the excruciating enjoyment of your swallowing his entrances and sucking at his exits, soon finished him. Almost coolly, when he sensed his unladening near, he continued moving slowly into you, deeper, to your depth this time, to his depth, where he stopped and waited totally immobile for a few seconds until his freight exploded out of him.

You slept for another hour. Perhaps you were having a nice dream, Bug. A healing dream. When you woke, and the journey was resumed, he kept studying you, trying to detect the slightest change in you, but there was nothing.

He had not meant to stop in Nashville. He had toyed with several notions, including New York. But Nashville struck him as a pretty town, a good-sized city where a man could find work, and it was sufficiently far away from Little Rock. He registered at the cheap Dixie Hotel under the names “Mr. and Mrs. Robert Smith.”

He was reluctant to leave you alone in the room, but he had to go out and find a job. The hotel demanded advance payment because you didn’t have any luggage, so he had to go out and earn enough money to buy at least a cheap suitcase or two. It was Friday, and he was nearly flat broke and didn’t want to do any more robberies that would have to be fled from. He had enough money left to buy some bread and meat and a few magazines which he brought to you and told you to read. “Honey, I got to look for work,” he tried to explain to you. “Now you just stay here and try to be as comfy as you can, and I’ll be back this evening. Don’t you go out.”

He was terribly relieved and happy when he came back that night and found you were still there. “All I could find,” he told you, “was a job washing dishes in a cafe, but I got two free meals and a dollar for it. And look what I brought you.” He had stolen from the cafe a complete dinner, which he had packed carefully in a cardboard box: big slices of roast beef, baked potato, fresh sweet peas, salad, and a big wedge of fresh strawberry pie. It was very good.

That night when you undressed for bed, he turned off the light and took off all of his clothes too. He lay beside you for a while and then in a worried voice he asked the long-delayed question: “Latha, can you say anything at all?”

“Free,” you said, and he was so happy he gave you a big hug and you squeezed him tight in return, and pretty soon his male figurehead had risen up to pay a call on you. He did not care this time that you were awake and conscious. He figured that since you had stripped naked and got into the same bed with him it meant you had a pretty good idea of what might come of it. Thus he was rather surprised when you put up resistance. You squirmed and whimpered in such a way that he did not enter you. He got off of you and lay there worrying for a long time. He thought about maybe waiting until you fell asleep before doing it, but then he decided to just wait and give his erection a chance to subside. He waited and he waited, and could not feel sleepy at all. When it became obvious to him that his danged dinger was going to keep a-standing there the whole night if he didn’t do something about it, he asked, “Latha, are you awake?” You did not answer or stir. He decided that this didn’t mean anything. He got up and went into the bathroom and jerked off into the toilet. When he came back to bed, you rolled over and snuggled asleep in his arms.

Saturday he worked in the café again, washing dishes, and that night he brought home another dinner for you. After you had eaten it, he said, “Let’s go see a moving-picture show.” He walked you several blocks up the street to a theater. The film was The Navigator, with Buster Keaton. It was very romantic; also rather funny. It was the first motion picture you had ever seen. You were enthralled.

Back at the hotel afterwards both of you took Saturday-night baths. He spied on you when you were taking yours. He liked to watch the languid grace with which you lathered yourself. But although he was extremely aroused by this sensuous bathing of yours, he did not molest you at bedtime. All day while washing dishes he had been thinking about this matter, and he had decided that he had better leave you alone until you got better. You snuggled tightly into his arms again, still moist from your bath and smelling fragrantly of soap, and went to sleep. Again against his will, his penis distended and kept him sleepless. He wished he’d had enough money to have bought a pint of whiskey. In your sleep one of your knees came between his and your thigh rested on his, and for a moment he was mad to have you. But he was resolved not to tamper with your fragile senses. He counted 2,389 sheep leaping a fence and fell asleep.

Imagine his astonishment, therefore, when he woke soon after dawn and saw what you were doing. The covers were off the bed. Your ear was on his thigh and your lips were feasting upon his penis: alternately you were sucking rapaciously on the tip or lapping the shank with your tongue or wolfing the whole thing nearly down your throat. “Hey!” he said and reached down to pull you away. But his passion stayed his hand. He was then thoroughly discomposed by a mixture of feelings. One of his first feelings was jealousy: he wondered where you’d learned to do that and who taught you how. The only time this had been done to him before was once in Châlonssur-Marne by a girl he’d paid for; and he had felt at the time that the act was debasing her; oddly enough he was not now feeling that it was debasing you—you were doing it with such greedy abandon that he figured you must be enjoying yourself. You were also making him nearly delirious with ecstasy at the same time he was nearly frantic with worry. You never opened your eyes and he thought you might be still asleep but he couldn’t understand how you could be doing all that fancy work if you were asleep. He was forced now to close his own eyes and throw his head back on the pillow. He began to buck at the hips but you held on. You were no longer dallying with it; you were swallowing and unswallowing it as rapidly as you could bob your head and your head was bobbing so rapidly it shook your whole body. Abruptly both of his hands came down and grabbed you by the hair and tried to pull you away, but you hung on for dear life and buried your lips in his pubic hair and waited until the last spurtle had dribbled down your gullet.

Then slowly you slipped your mouth up off of it and raised your head and opened your eyes and smiled at him.

He smiled back at you but couldn’t think of a blessed thing to say.

You sat up and continued smiling at him.

He felt he ought to say something, and he considered some possibilities, such as telling you how terrific that had been. At length he finally said, “Have you ever done that before?”

You shook your head, still smiling as if you were pleased with yourself. Your smile was so simple and so pleasant that he began to wonder if maybe being in that hospital had made you simple-minded. But your shaking your head made him glad to know that you could respond to questions.

“Why did you squirm and whimper when I tried to make love to you the other night?”

No answer.

“Was it because you didn’t like me?”

You shook your head.

“Was it because you didn’t want to?”

You shook your head.

“Latha, why can’t you talk?”

No answer.

“Is something wrong with your voice?”

You shook your head.

“Have you forgot all the words?”

You shook your head.

“Are you afraid of me?”

You shook your head.

“Do you know who I am?”

You nodded your head.

“Say my name.”

No answer.

“Do you feel good? Do you feel well?”

You nodded your head.

“Then why won’t you talk to me?”

No answer.

“Do you want anything?”

You nodded your head.

“What?”

No answer, then you reached out and touched him on his penis.

He laughed and said, “Well, he shore don’t look very useful right at this moment.”

You smiled.

“However…” he said, and he reached for you and pulled you down to him and held you and gave you a kiss. He kissed you and you kissed him for a long little spell; by and by he swelled up again; he wanted into you, and you let him in.

Because he was below you it freed your movements, and you moved, free and wild.

It took a while but he kept with you all the way.

When you fainted and your head fell on his shoulder, he thought you were just resting.

After a while he said “Latha” and his hands upon your buttocks gave them a shake. He raised his hands and shook your shoulders and said “LATHA!”

He rolled out from under you and you flopped down on the bed like a rag doll.

He thought you were dead.

He was more scared than that time those two Germans had sprung into his trench.

He had the presence of mind to feel for your pulse. It was easy to feel, for it was racing wildly, 120 beats to the minute.

He soaked a towel in cold water and draped it across your forehead. He slapped your cheeks. He wanted to run out and fetch a doctor but that might be dangerous if they had to hospitalize you and find out who you were.

He was in such an agony of distress that he began looking wildly around the room, as if he could find some magic talisman to restore you. He felt so helpless that he was unconsciously searching for something outside himself, just as the drowning man looks for a board to clutch at. By some accident of destiny, his glance fell upon the Gideon Bible on the bedstand.

He picked it up, this drowning man’s board, and on the very first page he saw written, “For Help in a Time of Need, Read: James 1:6,7; Psalm 91; Ephesians VI:10–18,” etc. He found every one, and read it, but it wasn’t much help. He was left, however, with a strong suspicion that God had something to do with this, and the only thing that would help would be to take the case directly to Him.

He was not a religious person, to put it mildly, and James 1:6 had cautioned him, “But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.” I am certainly driven and tossed, he realized. His parents had been slightly religious and they had urged him to pray, yet never once had he felt that Anybody was listening to his prayers.

But we know, Bug, that the same emotional states which drive some people into psychosis can drive other people into religion; old William James got this down pat long ago. So it shouldn’t be hard to understand how this crisis “deranged” him in a fashion that wasn’t too awfully far removed from what had happened to you. The ironic thing, Bug, the thing that nearly kills me with irony, is that he was becoming “deranged” at the same instant you were in the process of becoming “ranged.”

He knelt on the floor.

“God, can you hear me?” he asked. “No, I won’t ask you that, because if I did it would mean I doubted whether you could or not. I know you can hear me, God, so just listen careful. I’ve sinned a time or two, but the only really bad thing I’ve done lately is help this pore girl get out of that crazyhouse. Anyway, if you really wanted to punish me, why didn’t you put me into a trance instead of her? Anyway, the problem is: what do I have to do for you to get her out of that trance?”

He paused, and when no answer came he continued, “Lord, if you will just let her wake up, if you will just make her well, Lord, and I mean completely well, why, I will just dedicate my life to you. Is that too much to ask of you? Wouldn’t you rather have a big strong man dedicated to you for the rest of his life, and doing good works for you, than keep a pore innocent girl in a trance?”

When he received no reply to that question, he continued with fierce intensity, “I swear it to you, God! Now you may be thinking that on the basis of my past behavior I shouldn’t be trusted, but I’m not kidding you. I put my hand on this here Bible and swear to you that if you will make this girl well, if you will even show me some token that you intend to make her well, I will get up right this minute and devote every minute of the rest of my life to your service. Is that a deal? Answer me, God! Prove to me you can do it! ANSWER ME!”

And behold, the Lord God answered him.

My son, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Find thee a minister of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, repent unto him, confess, and be received into baptism. Latha Bourne shall be healed. Sin no more. Follow me all the rest of thy days.

He continued kneeling a moment more, amazed that God had spoken to him, then he sprang up and threw on his clothes and dashed out through the door. He ran down to the desk and asked the clerk, “Where can I find the nearest preacher?”

“At this time of morning?” the clerk said.

“I don’t care,” he said. “I got to see a preacher.”

“Well, what kind did you have in mind? Baptist, Methodist, Church of Christ, Presbyterian?…”

“Any kind, so long as he preaches the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Well, I guess the nearest that I know of would be Brother Shirley Norvil, lives a couple of streets over, but he aint gonna be none too happy being woke up at this time of mornin.”

“Just give me his address,” he said.

The clerk wrote it down for him, saying, “Big white house right next to the church. You can’t miss it.”

He ran out, and, forgetting he had a car, ran all the way over—four blocks—to the preacher’s house. He banged on the door. He waited, and banged louder. Five minutes went by before the door was opened and an old man in his nightshirt said, “Oh well, I always get up at six o’clock of a Sunday mornin anyway.”

“Are you Brother Norvil?” he asked him.

“That’s right.”

“Can you baptize me?”

“Be glad to, son,” he said. “Come to the services at 10:30 this mornin, and we’ll take care of you.”

“I caint wait till then. I’ve got to be baptized right now.”

“Well, the plumbin is busted in the baptistry, and my plumber said he’d try to get around to it before 10:30.”

“Couldn’t you just sprinkle some tap water on me?”

The preacher looked at him in shock and said, “Son, if you aim to be saved, you’ve got to be totally immersed.”

Impatiently he said, “Well, couldn’t we just use your bathtub or something?”

The preacher chuckled and said, “Well, I don’t see why not. There’s nothing in Scripture against bathtubs.” He held the door open and said, “I never seen anybody so eager to be baptized, but come right on in and we’ll shore do it.”

The preacher led him into the house and upstairs to the bathroom. A woman appeared and looked at them. “Go back to bed, Ma,” the preacher said. “I’m just a-fixin to baptize this young feller.” The woman stared at them for another moment, then went away.

The tub took a long time to fill.

He asked the preacher, “Do you want me to take off my clothes?”

“No, generally we just baptize ’em clothes and all. That’s part of the ceremony.”

“All right,” he said, and climbed into the tub.

“Now,” said the preacher, “have you repented your sins?”

“I have.”

“Do you believe with all of your heart that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God?”

“I do.”

“Now bear in mind that you’ve got to be completely under, every inch of you, so when I dunk you you’ll have to kind of scrooch down so your knees won’t stick out. Okay? Here we go. I baptize thee in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!”

Under he went.

Perhaps [and wouldn’t this be sweet, Bug?] at the very same instant that he received holy baptism, you were waking up from your faint—and also waking up from your fugue and regaining memory. Your first thought was that D Ward looked awfully strange this morning. Then you sat up in bed and rubbed your eyes. Why, it didn’t look like D Ward at all! You went to the window and looked out. You were in a hotel, by golly. You looked at the rumpled bed and you saw a man’s jacket hanging in the closet. You felt a mild ache in your vagina, and you clapped yourself on the brow and thought, Oh my gosh, I’ve prostituted myself! Quickly you began dressing, thinking, I’ve got to get out of here, fast.

“Well, son, stay and have a cup of coffee with me, and dry your clothes and we’ll talk about problems of the spirit.”

“Thank you, but I’ve got to go. Do I owe you anything for the baptizin?”

“’Course not. But you owe it to yourself to come to church this mornin.”

“Might see you later then. Thanks. Bye.” He dashed out of the house. His soaked trousers impeded his running.

You turned a corner going one way as he rounded the corner by the hotel. He missed you.

When he found the room empty he ran back to the street and got into his car and roared up and down the streets of Nashville for two hours. All he got for it was a ticket for speeding.

“It’s God’s punishment on me,” he said. “He kept His promise and made her well, at least she couldn’t have got up and gone off unless He’s brought her out of that trance.”

At ten thirty he went to Brother Norvil’s church and devoutly prayed and worshiped.

He stayed at the hotel for another week, hoping you’d come back.

Then he enrolled himself at a good Bible College that Brother Norvil had recommended.

FIVE: Night

WRIRRRAANG! sounded the screen door, and she came out, bringing the slab of beef to put on his eye. He leaned his chair back against the storefront, and tilted his head back, and she draped the beef slab across his eye. “There,” she said, and sat down in her rocker and said, “Now while your eye is healing you can tell me all about it. Start at the start, and tell me everything.”

So he began at the beginning and told her as much of the story as he could remember. He seemed to be glossing over or making little of his own efforts, which she realized must have been little short of stupendous. Great Day in the Morning! she thought: My hero. I’ve got a hero. It’s like a fairy tale,

“…So you see,” he concluded, “that was my solemn covenant with the Lord. He pledged to make you well, and He did it. I pledged my life and my service to Him, and I’ve done it. If you and I were to break that covenant by sinning before marriage, why, don’t you see, He might just put us back where we started from, He might just put you back into that trance and me back again into being a mean hellraiser.”

“All right, Every,” she said. “Let’s get married. Soon as we can. But I think I ought to warn you that I might get into one of those ‘trances’ anyway.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s happened,” she said. “But it’s not really a ‘trance.’ I just get so carried off when the big moment comes at the end that I just swoon clean away, as if it were too much for a body to bear.”

He frowned. “That happened…with Dolph?” he asked.

“Yes. Once.”

He pondered with a long face for a while before speaking. “Well,” he said, “that was just God’s way of telling you that He didn’t approve of what you were doing.”

“No, Every,” she said, “It was just my way of telling me that I approved of it so much I couldn’t stand it.”

He reflected, then he lifted the slab of beef off his eye and peered at her. “You’re hurting me, you know it?”

“I don’t mean to,” she said softly. “I’m just trying to help you understand.”

He tilted his head back again and replaced the slab of beef. “Galatians Six, seventh and eighth verses,” he said: “‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.”

“I sow to the spirit!” she protested. “It’s not the flesh that makes me faint, it’s the spirit!”

He whipped the slab of beef off his eye and threw it on the floor. “You don’t have the first notion what the Spirit means!”

She stood up. “I’m going up the road a little ways,” she said. “To Dawny’s house.”

“Why?”

“Just to see if he’s okay. I’ll be right back.”

She walked rapidly up the Right Prong road toward the Murrison place, wondering again if Dolph might have done something to Donny. But if that were so, the Murrisons would have told Latha about it. Or would they have?

Rosie and Frank were sitting on their front porch, taking in what little evening breeze there was, but Donny wasn’t with them. Latha stopped at the foot of the porch steps and looked up at Rosie. “Hi,” she said. “Where’s Dawny?”

“Well, I never—!” Rosie huffed. “Wanting to take up for him all the time is one thing, but wanting to know were he’s at is something else. What’s it to you, where he’s at?”

“I…” she said, becoming flustered, “we…just missed him this evening, he’s usually always down to the store after supper, you know, and…I just wondered…just wondered why he didn’t come tonight.”

“Is he supposed to come ever blessit night?” Rosie asked belligerently.

“No, but this is the first night he’s missed in such a long time, I thought maybe something had happened to him, and I—” she stopped, for she could hear faintly, coming from a room upstairs, a child’s muffled sobbing. “Rosie, is he all right? Tell me,” she said.

“He’s all right,” Frank said. “’cept for being black and blue all over, he’s all right.”

“Why, Frank!” Latha said. “What happened to him? Why’s he black and blue?”

“He got his little hide overhauled,” Rosie said, “for tellin a whoppin lie. Even when I caught him out on it, he wouldn’t tell me the truth, so I really mopped the floor with that little devil. He still won’t tell me, so maybe you better. Whut was he doin down to yore place last night? And don’t gimme no fudge about no bunkin party, neither, ’cause I found out from Selena Dinsmore and Viola Duckworth that none a their kids went to no bunkin party at yore place last night.”

Latha took a deep breath and said, “All I did was provide him a place to sleep, and tell him some bedtime stories.”

“Ghost stories, I bet! Skeered him so much he wet his pants, I bet! But if that’s all you did, he wouldn’t a refused to tell me, ’cause he’s tole me afore about them ghost stories a yourn. So you must a done somethin else ’sides that. You must a done somethin real bad.”

Latha wondered what would happen if she just went into their house and went upstairs and got Donny and tried to take him away. They would stop her, of course. I wish I’d brought Every with me.

“Latha Bourne, ’pon my word,” said Rosie, “if you don’t tell me, I’ll never let that little rascal come anywhere near yore place ever again!”

How are you going to keep him from it? she wanted to ask, but she knew that Rosie would tie him to the bedpost if she had to. “You are a mean woman, Rosie Murrison,” she said.

“’Druther be mean than evil. Just what do you mean, anyhow, temptin a innocent boy to stay all night with you? No tellin whut you done to him, you witch. No wonder he won’t tell me whut you done, it’s so horrible he can’t bear to speak of it.”

I wish I had more nerve, she thought. But as it is I’m a coward. “Good night,” she said, and began walking away.

“You just come back here!” Rosie hollered after her. “Latha Bourne, you just better come right back and tell me whut you done!”

She did not stop.

“All right for you!” Rosie hollered. “You won’t never see him again!”

We will just see about that, she said to herself.

She returned to her house and sat beside Every again on the porch, but she did not say anything to him. She brooded. Out of helplessness she conjectured wild ideas: Every and I will just take Sonora and Donny and go far, far away. But she could not ever leave Stay More again.

After a while Every asked, “Was he okay?”

“No,” she said.

He waited for her to elaborate, and when she did not he asked, “What’s the matter?”

Should I tell him? she wondered. Can I tell him? She decided that there must be no secrets between them, and that if he was to have her he would have to have her as she really was. “They beat him,” she said, and her tone became fierce, “They beat him up! And it’s my fault! They beat him up because he refused to tell on me.”

“What was it he refused to tell?” Every asked.

She had to think about it for a moment longer before persuading herself to tell him, and when she told him she did it defiantly, as if to say: See how bad I am? Now is there any hope for me as a preacher’s wife?

“Latha, you’re sure lucky Dawny refused to tell his aunt even after she beat him. Do you know what folks would do to you if this tale ever got out?”

She did not reply. She thought of saying, “I’ve thought about it,” but she did not.

“I just don’t know what to make of you,” he said.

“Oh, I’m bad, bad, aren’t I?” she said challengingly.

“You’ve sure got a lot to learn, is all I can say,” he said.

“Then teach me, Every! Come on and gospel me!”

“I don’t know where to start,” he said.

“Start in the beginning. Start with Adam and Eve. Teach me why they started wearing clothes. I’ve never been able to understand.”

“Shame was God’s punishment on man for disobeying his commandments.” Every was trying hard to keep from sounding like a Sunday-school teacher.

“All right,” Latha challenged, “then if we agreed to obey all of God’s commandments, would He let us run around naked again?”

Every sighed. “You know,” he said, “I sure do hate to get involved in arguments about Original Sin because it’s just about the trickiest thing God ever did. Especially since I caint literally believe in Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge and all that. But just look at it like this: somewhere along the line, man lost his innocence. Losing his innocence made him aware that he was naked. Now our Lord Jesus Christ tells us, ‘Except ye become as little children, ye can in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven.’ We’ve got to regain that lost innocence.”

“Then I’d think that your job as preacher ought to be to persuade people to take off their clothes and become innocent again.”

“It’s not so simple as that, Latha,” he protested. “Just taking off our clothes won’t make us innocent. We’d still feel shame. We have to live a life here on earth amongst sin and corruption, amongst heathens and transgressors, keeping ourselves pure through the grace of our Lord, who promises us salvation.”

“We can’t take off our clothes till we get to heaven?” she asked.

“I never thought of heaven as some kind of nudist colony,” he said, “but you might have a point there. In heaven there’ll be no such thing as nakedness, for we’ll not know that word. We’ll all be clothed with the light of the Lord. There’ll be no light or darkness but the light of the Lord, and in that light all things will be beautiful.”

“That sounds very nice,” she said. “But what if I already think that nakedness is beautiful. Does that mean something’s wrong with my eyes?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Every said uneasily. “In Leviticus, the Lord spoke to Moses and told him, ‘None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness.’”

“Now there you go misinterpreting again,” she said. “That means kinfolks, doesn’t it? It means you can’t go around stripping your sister or your mother or your aunt. It doesn’t mean you can’t strip yourself or your girlfriend or your wife, does it?”

“All right,” he said, holding out his hands as if to ward off blows, “when you get right down to it, there’s nothing I know of in the Bible against being naked, except that a naked woman would cause a man to feel lust, and Jesus Christ has said to us, ‘He that lusteth after a woman has already committed adultery with her in his own heart.’”

“He’s talking about married women, isn’t He?” she asked, and answered her question, “Sure He is. If a man couldn’t lust after a maid, he’d have no desire to wed her, and where would the world be then? You still haven’t proved there’s anything wrong with you and me being naked to each other.”

“It doesn’t need proving,” he said. “Nakedness would tempt us into fornication, which the Lord clearly forbids, and no dispute about it.”

“Every,” she said earnestly, “I don’t think the Lord would consider you and me fornicators. He’d think of us as having been in a sort of common-law wedlock ever since we were about twelve years old.”

Every smiled. “I like you saying that,” he said. “That’s sure pretty. But the Lord wouldn’t consider you as bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”

“Why don’t you ask Him?” she challenged. “You claim you can talk to Him, why don’t you just ask Him what he thinks of you and me?”

“He wouldn’t give me permission to lay with you, if that’s what you want.”

“How do you know? You haven’t even asked Him. Go on, right now, and ask Him.”

“I would need privacy and meditation to get in touch with Him.”

“Use my bedroom,” she offered. “Use my outhouse.”

“Don’t jolly me,” he said.

“Well?” she said. “Don’t just sit there. Get in touch with the Lord.”

“I don’t think it would work in such circumstances,” he protested.

“You won’t even try,” she accused.

“I just might,” he declared. “But you better agree to accept whatever He tells me.”

“All right,” she said. “I can do that.”

He stood up. “I think I’ll just take a stroll down by the creek. I always liked that creek.” He walked down off the porch.

She called after him, “Watch you don’t step on my cantaloupes.” Then she was alone, alone with herself for the first time in several hours, and glad of it; aloneness was her natural element, she was comfortable with it; there was a great effort to talking so much all of a sudden. Those bugs and frogs out there in the grass and trees were as talkative as all get out. But the lightning bugs never made a sound; just light; and mightn’t it be the light that Every said the Lord would clothe us with in that Gloryland he talked of? The lightning bugs didn’t talk; they were just there. “I’m here, Lord,” she heard herself saying, and wondered why. Then she heard herself asking, “Are you there, Lord?” She even waited, and tried to feel, if not hear, any answer. There was none, no wonder. But still she felt as close to prayer as she had ever come. It was as if, having been talking so much, she had to continue, had to keep talking although there was nobody to listen, save the Lord, if He could, if He was, if He did, and she doubted it. “Listen,” she said, “I don’t believe he can really hear You, but if he can, tell him a thing or two, will You? Remind him he married me, oh, twenty-eight years ago, wasn’t it? Were You in on that one? Then straighten him out. Tell him we’ve got just as much right as any of Your other creatures. Tell him he doesn’t need to be such a Bible fanatic. You don’t really think it would be fornication for us, do You? He says You preach love and mercy. Get it across to him that he misunderstood something important about that time in that Nashville hotel room. You didn’t fix me up because of that ‘covenant’ with him, did You? Then open his eyes. I can stick with him forever if all he wants to do is preach Your love and mercy. But if he wants to stuff us with all this ‘sin-and-salvation’ clamjamfry, why, then I’d have to turn him away once again, and then where would I be? Where would he be? If You actually want him to devote himself entirely to you, then that’s that, and I hope You can use him more than I could. But I just wish You’d give him to me. Now, do I have to say ‘Amen,’ or will You just accept—”

Hush! she said to herself, and hushed, thinking, There’s nobody listening. Nobody listens to those bugs and frogs except their mates. No reason to talk to anybody except somebody you want. She began to rock slowly in her rocking chair, and let Time fall back into its timelessness.

Sometime later a figure riding a mule came trotting by, and turned down the main road into the village, spurring the mule for all it was worth.

As the mule and rider disappeared into the darkness down the main road, Every reappeared.

“Who was that?” he asked, jerking his thumb in the direction the mule and rider disappeared.

“I think that was Sarah Chism,” she said. “Yes, it looked like Sarah Chism.”

“Hmmm,” he said. “A woman riding a mule. I wonder what that signifies?” He came and sat back down in the chair he had vacated some time ago.

“Sarah Chism riding her mule signifies Sarah Chism riding her mule,” she said. “Though I’ve never seen her out at night before.”

“Hmmm,” he said. “Is that a fact? Then it must signify something.”

“Maybe the mule needs exercise,” she said. “The way she was running it, she really looked to be giving it a work-out.”

“Hmmm,” he said again, and seemed to be in deep thought.

After a while, she asked, “Well, did you reach the Lord?”

“I did,” he affirmed. “But He sure didn’t have much to say to me.”

“Who can blame Him?” she said. “The poor Fellow’s trying to get some rest in preparation for His big day tomorrow of listening to billions of church services.”

“Now you just might be right,” he said. “Leastways He didn’t seem much inclined to give me any of His time.”

“What did He say?”

“Strangest thing,” he said. “I presented the case to Him just like you suggested. But He just said one thing. All He said was, and I quote, ‘Straightway will I show thee thy true vocation.’ That’s all. Now what do you make of that?”

“Oh, come on, Every,” she said. “You’re just making that up.”

“No, now,” he said. “I swear. I heard it in me as clearly as I’ve ever heard Him in me. And that’s what He said, word for word. Straightway will I show thee thy true vocation. As if I hadn’t already found my true vocation a long time ago. What do you reckon that could mean? That He was going to give me some kind of sign right away? Then what kind of sign is Sarah Chism riding a mule?”

“Maybe He wants you to be a muleteer, maybe, or a mule trader,” she said, thinking, I’d lots rather be married to a mule trader than to a preacher.

“Why would he want that?” Every said, in an obvious turmoil of perplexity. “What does He mean by ‘true vocation,’ anyhow? I’ve got a true vocation, darn it, and why doesn’t He know it? Unless…maybe now…yes!…maybe He knows I’ve got a true vocation, and he’s going to prove it to me by putting temptations in my path to see if I can withstand them. Yes now, that’s it, I bet! He’s going to have you tempt me and try me to see if I can stick to my true vocation.”

“Now I know you’re just making that up,” she said. “You just made that up so you could get yourself excused from having to make love to me.”

“I tell you, I swear, just as sure as I was born, that He said those exact words to me. ‘Straightway will I show thee thy—’” Every suddenly sprang up out of his chair. “Land o’ Goshen!” he cried, pointing. “Yonder she comes again!”

Sarah Chism on the mule came back up the main road, riding not as fast as she had headed into the village.

Latha said to him, “Maybe the Lord wants you to be a veterinarian.”

Sarah caught sight of them silhouetted against the light of the windows and turned her mule toward them and rode up to the porch.

Sarah squinted at him and asked, “Is that you, Every? Is it shore-enough a fact what they say, that you’ve become a preacher?”

Every seemed reluctant to answer, as if to do so would bring down upon him that awful sign he anticipated. Finally he mumbled, “Yeah, Sarah, that’s right.”

“Then pray fer us all!” Sarah wailed. “My man Luther’s done went and shot a revenuer! I’ve went to git Doc Swain, and he’s a comin to try and fix him. He aint kilt dead, but he’s all full a buckshot. Pray fer im, preacher! Pray fer us all!”

She jabbed her heels into the mule’s belly, and rode away.

“Tarnation!” Every exclaimed.

“That’s it, Every!” Latha said to him. “That’s your sign. That’s what the Lord wants you to be.”

“What, a revenuer?” he asked.

“No, a moonshiner,” she said.

“Aw, heck, Latha,” he said. “You can’t read signs. Don’t you know what this signifies? Sarah asked me to pray, didn’t she? That means the Lord is telling me that my true vocation is praying for folks! That means he wants me to pray for that poor revenuer, to strengthen my true vocation as a preacher.”

And Every knelt immediately on the porch and said, “Dear Heavenly Father, I thank Thee for this sign. With earnest heart I ask Thee to look after that afflicted revenuer and preserve his life. Grant, O Lord, swiftness and skill to Doc Swain. Show Luther Chism the error of his ways, but protect and deliver him from any trouble with the government. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.”

The closing words of his prayer were nearly drowned beneath the sound of Doc Swain’s car roaring up the road. The engine roared, then coughed, then roared again, spluttered, belched, roared, coughed: the car came into view, jerking and bucking. It came abreast of the post office, roaring, then spluttered and died. Doc Swain tried to start it again. It would not start.

Doc Swain jumped out of his car and kicked it viciously with his foot. “Goddamn scandalous hunk of cruddy tinfoil!” he yelled and kicked it again. “Sonabitchin worthless gas-eatin ash can!” Then he turned wildly about, yelling, “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

“Here’s your true sign, Every,” Latha said to him. “The Lord wants you to be a doctor.”

“Naw,” he said, “I’m afraid it’s something else.”

“A horse?”

“Get me a lantern, quick,” he said.

She went into the house and brought out a lantern. He took it and ran out to Doc Swain’s car. He gave the lantern to Doc Swain, saying, “Hold this.” Then he opened the hood of the car and bent over into the car’s innards. A minute passed. He said to Doc Swain, “Just set the lantern down on the fender and get in and try to start it.” Doc Swain did so.

The car started right up, and the motor ran evenly. “Hey!” Doc Swain hollered. “Thanks a load, Every! What’d you do to it?”

“Distributor cap had worked loose,” Every said.

“Well, lucky you were here!” Doc Swain said. “I got to get out to Luther Chism’s. He’s shot a revenuer, the damn fool.” Doc Swain let out the clutch and roared away.

Latha and Every returned to the porch and sat down again. Every was in a morose mood. She let several minutes pass before saying, “So that’s it. The Lord wants you to be an auto repairman.”

Every said, “Maybe,” and nothing else.

“Well,” she observed, “I guess it ought to be a good-paying line of work.”

“Oh, it’s good-payin enough, all right,” he said.

“You’ve done it before?” she asked.

“Worked my way through Bible College working nights in a garage in Nashville,” he said. “And I’ve had to do a stretch of car work hither and yon from time to time, just to make ends meet. Preaching don’t pay enough to be called a job of work, ’less you settle down in a good-sized city with a big congregation, and I wouldn’t care for that.” He was silent again for a while, then he threw his head back and raised his voice so loudly she jumped. “Lord, what’re You tryin to tell me, Lord?” he demanded. “Don’t You want me, Lord? Don’t you need me anymore? Have I not been living up to Your expectations? Do You honestly want me to be nothing but a grease monkey?”

He was staring so fixedly up at the sky that she let her own gaze follow his, as if she might find Somebody appearing up there. The sky was mulberry purple, and star-splattered. A star fell. Or a piece of one, a flaming fragment, leaving a trail. A falling star always means that somebody is dying. Maybe that poor revenuer. No, maybe it was—

“What’s that mean?” Every asked her. “You remember all those old-time signs and portents, Latha. What do folks think a shooting star means?”

“Falling, not shooting,” she corrected him. “Means somebody just died.”

“That revenuer,” Every said. “Why, if he’s dead, then it means that me fixing Doc Swain’s car didn’t do any good anyhow, so that wasn’t the real sign the Lord meant to give me. Maybe there’s going to be another sign, the real one. I just caint believe the Lord would want me to fix cars the rest of my life.”

“Maybe not the revenuer,” she said. “Maybe the one who just died was Preacher Every Dill. The preacher’s dead in you, Every.”

“Don’t say that!” he protested. “That gives me the creeps.”

“Do you still feel like a preacher right now?” she asked.

“I don’t feel like anything,” he said. “I’m numb. Plumb numb.”

“Let’s go into the house, and I’ll un-numb you,” she offered.

He did not say anything, nor move.

“Where are you going to stay tonight?” she asked.

“Same place as last night,” he said.

“On a pile of old dirty straw in the old home?” she said. “Why don’t you just stay here?”

“I didn’t know you had any spare room, what with Sonora,” he said.

“My bed is wide,” she said.

“No,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, “we’ll put a board down the middle and you can tie me up beforehand.”

“No.”

“I’ll even wear a nightdress for a change.”

“No.”

“Every,” she said in exasperation, “if you won’t sleep with me first I won’t marry you.”

“And I tell you again,” he said, “that I will not sleep with you until I’ve married you.”

“Well,” she said, “that’s that, I guess. Nice to’ve seen you again, Every. Come back again some time.”

But he did not leave. Nor did he say anything. They just sat and sulked, both of them, for many minutes.

Eventually he was the first to break it. He remarked, in a low voice, “I feel just plain miserable.”

“Me too,” she said.

They lapsed into silence again.

By and by Doc Swain returned, and stopped his car in the yard and got out. He came up and sat with them on the porch.

“Every,” he said, “the United States government ought to pin some kind of medal on you. Providing, of course, that that poor bastard ever gets back to tell them about it. Pardon my language, Reverend. Well, I declare, if you have learned to save souls the way you’ve learned to fix automobiles, I reckon it’s true enough that you’ve honestly been transformed and revamped.”

“Is he all right?” Every asked.

“Well, he won’t be sittin down for a right smart spell, but he can just lay on his belly. I dug about twenty 12-gauge shot out a his ass-end—pardon me, Latha—his backside is shore peppered up, but, all considering, he’ll live—though for what I don’t know, ’cause Luther still aint figgered out what to do with him.”

“Why did Luther shoot him?” Latha asked. “That was plain stupid.”

“Haw!” Doc Swain exclaimed. “Lost his temper momentarily, I imagine. Seems what happened was he caught that revenuer right in the old act of carnal congress with his gal Lucy. Caught him really with his britches down, and let fire with his shotgun before thinkin about it. Even nicked Lucy on the thigh too.”

“I thought the revenuer was tied up,” Every said. “How could he have seduced Lucy if he was tied up?”

“By dang if he aint still tied!” Doc Swain laughed. “He aint never been untied! Reckon Lucy had to unbutton his britches for him. But Luther claims the revenuer must’ve talked her into it, and that’s just the same as seducing her. I don’t doubt it, for that revenuer is shore a talkin fool; he could talk the hind leg off a donkey. No trouble talkin his own britches off. He come mighty near to talkin me into sendin him to a hospital, so he could get loose from Luther.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“And betray my own people?” Doc Swain demanded. “What do you think I am?”

“Well, Luther can’t keep him forever, can he?”

“Noo, but he aint about to let him loose before studying on the problem. Luther’s brains is kind of slow, you know.” Doc Swain stood up. “Well, I’m out way past my bedtime. Sure obliged to you, Every, for that quick repair job.”

“Doc,” Every asked, “are you still the justice of the peace for Swains Creek township?”

“I fergit,” Doc Swain said. “Seems like I am, but I aint jay-peed in so long I fergit whether my license is still up to date. But yes, come to think on it, I reckon it is. Why?”

“Can you issue a marriage license?” Every asked.

“Sure,” Doc Swain said. “Who for?”

“Us,” Every said.

“Who’s ‘us’?”

“Me and her.”

“By jabbers, it’s about time!”

SUB FIVE: Now

I am lost, O Bug.

Even if I wanted to go back, and I do not, I could not find my way. I must be a mile up Ledbetter Mountain, beyond your orchard. A moment ago an owl hooted at me, and I peed in my pants. I have taken them off to dry. I am not running any more; if the gowrows and jimplicutes don’t get me, I will turn into a snawfus at midnight, then I will go back and bite Aunt Rosie’s head off, and see how she likes that. You know what she did to me. I can hardly sit down. But I promised you I would never tell on you, and I will never.

Will you marry Every Dill? Then can I never be yours? When I become a snawfus, after I finish with Aunt Rosie, I would bite his head off too, but you wouldn’t love me for it, for he is dear to you. So I will just haunt these woods forevermore, protecting you, beheading with my teeth all your enemies. I shall immortalize you; you shall live forever, and when Every Dill must needs one day go to meet his Lord in heaven, you shall be mine.

I shiver, though the night is hot. My fingers feel the goose bumps on my thighs, and not because they’re bare. Bear? Are there bears in these woods, if not gowrows and jimplicutes? Real things? I fear no boogers; I believe Tull Ingledew and trust him; there are no boogers; but real things? Bears and panthers and wolves and foxes and snakes and spiders. Which way did I come? That way, or that way? I put on my pants and run. I trip over a rotted log and fall. I cry. I cry unto you, O my beloved, come to me.

You are abed, and hear me not. You are abed, alone abed, for all your blandishments and your cajolery and your admonition have failed to get him abed with you. He sleeps in the store, the next room, upon a pile of your bags of feed. He not alone sleeps but snores. Oh for crying out loud! you say to yourself, listening to his snores. This, then, you now enumerate as the third reason why you will not marry him, the other two being that he is so all-fired religious and that you have come to enjoy your independence—if you take him to husband, mightn’t he interfere with your operation of your business, for instance ordering Hershey bars in hot weather? At the moment, listening to his snores, Bug, the only good reason you can think for marrying him would be that it would increase the population of Stay More by one, and maybe one enough to dissuade the government from closing the post office.

I have stopped crying. I have cried so much tonight there’s no water left in my tear ducts. I snuggle into a pile of old leaves and think I’m in hiding. I notice there aren’t any lightning bugs, up this high. They must prefer the bottom lands, low meadows, yards, the creek. It will soon be midnight, and I will change into a snawfus. It’s your fault you told me about snawfusses. And gowrows and jimplicutes. I feel very drowsy. We stayed awake so late last night, you and I, I’m not caught up on my sleep.

Nor are you, and you awoke this morning long before I. But you sleep not, neither do you drowse. You attempt to listen to the night-noises of bugs and frog to blot out his infernal snoring. You would like to get up and go gag him. He gagged you once. Now we’re even, you could say to him.

What you should have done, you are thinking, was to have taken recourse to a special old Ozark folk potion: a drop of your menstrual fluid in his drink, perchance his iced tea. Guaranteed to give an erection even to an octogenarian. You laugh aloud, thinking of it, and say to yourself: I’ll put a drop in his coffee at breakfast, and then he can’t give his sermon because of the bulge in his britches. But you don’t menstruate. Maybe Sonora does. But then he would fall in love with her. That’s the way it works. A funny thought further amuses you in your insomnia: what if he had fallen in love with her without knowing she was his daughter, and have married her?

Thinking thus of Sonora, you are rather surprised to hear her own voice, outside your door, saying, “Mother?” You don’t reply. Then she says, a little louder, “Latha, are you awake?”

You get up and light your lantern. You don your houserobe and open the door. “Something wrong, honey?” you say.

She glances beyond you at the bed, and says, “No. I heard you laughing. And there’s somebody inside the store snoring something awful.”

“That’s Every,” you explain. “And it is awful.”

Sonora says, “Why didn’t you just tell him to sleep with you?”

You smile and confess, “I did, but he wouldn’t.”

“Gee,” she says. “That’s too bad. Maybe he can’t. Maybe he’s too old.”

“Or just too holy,” you observe.

“Me and Hank have busted up,” she declares.

“Come on in,” you say, moving out of the door. “You want to talk about it?”

She sits on your bed. “We had a spat on account of him, on account of Every.”

“Oh?” you wonder.

“Uh-huh,” she says, hanging her head. “I told him that Every is really my father, and he said if that’s true then he can’t love me any more, and I said why not? and he said because all the Ingledews are sworn enemies of Every Dill, and Hank’s dad and uncle would hate him if he married a girl who was kin to Every, let alone his daughter.”

“You shouldn’t have told him Every was your father,” you admonish, “that wasn’t right.”

“Maybe it wasn’t right, but it’s true,” she says. “Isn’t it?”

You don’t reply.

“Okay,” she says. “I ’spose they forced you to vow you’d never tell me. So I won’t try to make you. But I just want to say I’m glad. I want him to be my father. I like him a whole lot. Compared with him, Daddy is—Vaughn is a…a klunk…a jerk, a boob. Are you going to marry him?”

You answer, “I don’t think so. Probably not.”

“You don’t really love him?” she asks.

“Well—” you hesitate, “I’m not so sure. I haven’t had time yet to tell. Today’s the first I’ve seen of him in years.”

“Mother, was he really the one who robbed the bank?”

“I wish you’d not call me Mother.”

She hangs her head and mutters, “I caint call you anything else any more.”

You feel near tears again, but you bite your lip and hold back. You place a hand on her shoulder, and speak gently, “All right, honey, call me anything you like. But just don’t ask me if he robbed the bank. Nobody knows except the one who did it, and he didn’t look like anyone I’d ever seen before, because he was disguised.”

“Hank says his dad is going to make Every confess. But what if he offered to pay it back?…How much was it?”

“Around eight thousand dollars.”

She whistles. “My gosh, he’d never be able to raise that much, unless he robbed another bank. But you and me could help. When I finish high school next year I’ll get a job, and—”

“Sonora,” you say, “let’s not cross that bridge till we get to it. Let’s just wait and see what happens. Maybe Every will go away for good.”

“Oh, don’t let him do that!” she cries. “Please marry him.” She adds: “For me.”

You sigh. “We’ll see,” you promise. “Maybe soon.”

Abruptly she kisses you, then says, “Sweet dreams, Mother,” and leaves the room.

You return to bed, but you do not sleep. You meditate: Three good reasons for not marrying him, and now one great reason for marrying him. For her. But what could come of it? Mandy and Vaughn would never let her go. She could never be their daughter. Even if Sonora insisted on it, even if she told Mandy and Vaughn she wouldn’t live with them any more, she was a legal minor—Just like I was, when I had her—and couldn’t do anything about it until she was twenty-one. And even if it did work out, Sonora might be in for a rude surprise when she discovers what a strict father Every would be.

Oh, it was all so hopeless! Everything was so messed up it could never be untangled!

The utter complication of the situation, plus your exhaustion, is what finally drives you to sleep.

But your dreams are sweet, O Bug. Just as Sonora had bade you, your dreams are sweet.

Here I give you as a gift, my beloved, the sweetest of your dreams:

You wander in the wind in your orchard on Ledbetter Mountain, in the early eventide of a fine summer’s day, before gloaming. The wind holds your dark tresses aloft, suspending them in fluttering slow-motion. Your thighs tingle from the brushes of grass and flower-tops. You have reached yourself a peach from one of your trees, and the way it lusciously receives the bites of your teeth surpasses all sensuality. You can feel your stomach making love to it; your juices mate with its juices, and become one; that one imbues you, suffuses you with all its passion; you are sweeter than all peaches; your sweet passion leaves you convulsed with longing. You leap in the wind. You could open your thighs to anything that walks.

You say, I will snatch the first creature I see.

He comes now into view, walking down into the orchard from the mountain. He seems in no hurry to get anywhere, as if He were just out for a stroll. He catches sight of you, and approaches. He looks a lot like Every, you think. Yes, an awful lot—though His hair comes to His shoulders, and He is clothed in a white sheet, and barefoot.

“Howdy, Stranger,” you say to Him, and offer Him a peach.

“Howdy, ma’am,” He replies, and takes the peach and bites into it. “My,” He declares, “this sure is a mighty fine one. Elberta?”

“That’s right,” you tell Him.

“Mighty fine,” He says again, and quickly eats the entire peach.

“Where’re you from, Stranger?” you ask Him, although you know.

“Galilee,” He answers.

“Which part of Newton County is that in?” you ask, pretending ignorance.

“No part of it,” He says, “Haven’t you ever heard of Galilee?”

“Oh, you mean the one in the Bible,” you say.

“The same,” He says.

“You know, you remind me an awful lot of a certain fellow.”

“Who’s that?” He asks.

“Fellow named Every Dill,” you answer.

“Oh,” He says. “Him.”

“You know him?” you ask.

“Know him?” He says. “Why, the day never goes by that he doesn’t yak at me. He badgers me without let-up.”

You ask: “Was it you who told him that you would show him his true vocation?”

“That’s right. I figured I’d never be able to get him off my ear otherwise.”

“But which sign did you mean? What is it you want him to be?”

“Why, you were there, weren’t you? Didn’t you see the way I fouled up Doc Swain’s car so Every would have to fix it?”

“Then you really want him to be just an auto mechanic?”

“What’s wrong with being an auto mechanic? Some of my best friends were nothing but poor fishermen. Me, I’m just a carpenter by trade myself. Besides, in this day and age a good experienced auto mechanic stands to earn a really decent living. More than decent, really. Downright indecent, if he starts doctoring the service bills.”

“Why don’t you want him to be a preacher any more?”

“I never wanted anybody to be a preacher. It’s a crying shame the way the world is filling up with preachers, and every blessed one of them has his own half-cracked idea of what I said…or what I meant to say, anyhow. If all these preachers can’t start agreeing, I might just have to Come Again, and soon.”

“But Every claims you told him in that Nashville hotel room that you would make me well on the condition he became a preacher.”

“Did he say that?” He demanded. “Well, there’s just another good example for you of how I never can get anybody to even remember, let alone understand, what I say to them. I didn’t say a word to him about becoming a preacher. I just told him to follow me. I just told him to believe in me and follow me for the rest of his life. That’s all I’ve been telling anybody. You don’t have to call yourself a preacher just to follow me.”

“But did you really make me well because of that?”

“You look pretty good, I’d say. How you been feeling lately?”

“Pretty good, thank you. And you?”

“Tolerable,” He says.

“But if you were really in charge of all that situation, why did you rig it up so that he and I wouldn’t even see one another again for more than fourteen long years?”

“Don’t question my ways, girl. Let’s just say I’ve got a pretty good reason for everything I do. Some of it may not make any sense at all, but I never do anything just to be contrary or crotchety.”

“Well, tell me,” you ask, “did you really make me faint on account of he and I making love?”

“Yes,” He declares.

“You don’t approve of fornication?”

He shudders. “Oh, that word! What I was talking about—and my followers who recorded my words sure didn’t use any of that Latin gobbledygook—was unchastity and immorality without love or even affection. Marriage is in the heart anyway. I could name you several billion married couples who are committing fornication with each other as far as I’m concerned.”

“Then why did you punish me by making me faint?”

“Did you think I was punishing you, child? Did I say anything about punishing you?”

“But you just said—”

“You asked me if I made you faint on account of you and Every making love, and I said ‘Yes.’ Yes you fainted because you were making love, but I didn’t think of it as punishment. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it must be kind of a big thrill to pass out afterwards, isn’t it?”

“Oh,” you say. Then you offer, “Help yourself to another peach.”

“Thank you. Don’t mind if I do.” He reaches up and plucks one off the tree.

“Is it all right with you if Every and I make love?” you ask.

“Don’t ask me. That’s not for me to say. My Dad gave you folks free will in the first place, to decide for yourselves what you want to do.”

“But Every tells me that you’ve spoken out against fornication.”

“That word again! Look, let’s say I’ve spoken out against betrayal, I’ve spoken out against abusing and using others, I’m on record as opposed to uncleanness and dissipation, and I’ve taken a rather strong stand against cuckoldry, because in a triangle somebody’s liable to get hurt. But I thought I’ve made it pretty clear that my supreme commandment is ‘You better love your neighbor the same way you love yourself.’ And that means all neighbors, male and female.”

“But you don’t mean sexual love, do you?”

“I sure do. ‘Sexual’ is just another one of those fancy Latin words, and sometimes I wish I had never allowed the Romans to gaum up the language the way they have. But all love is sexual love.”

“Now wait just a minute,” you protest. “If you tell me to love my neighbor as I love myself, and you say all love is sexual, then you’re insinuating that I masturbate.”

“Ooo!” He cries, smiting Himself on the brow, “now that is absolutely the godawfulest ugly word that ever got squeezed out of Latin. Please don’t use that one around me.”

“Well, whatever you want to call it then. Is it implied in what you mean by loving myself?”

“I don’t know,” He says. “Is it? Some people do, and some people don’t. Loving yourself takes all sorts of forms and fashions. You love yourself when you eat one of these here peaches. Far’s I’m concerned, there’s not much difference between eating a peach to yourself and making love to yourself.”

“Then you don’t condemn it?”

“I condemn it if it’s not matched by your love for your neighbor.”

“Can I get into bed with all my neighbors? Do you want me to love all my neighbors sexually?”

“Now you’re beginning to sound like Every when he’s pestering me with questions. You’re asking me a big question I’m not going to answer because I’ve already answered it.”

“Is that why you refuse to give Every permission to make love to me?”

“My goodness, girl, don’t you realize I’m not in the business of granting permissions? If I had nothing better to do than grant permissions, all my time would be taken up in a more or less bureaucratic desk job, and that’s certainly not what Dad had in mind for me when He made me His only begotten son.”

“But what can I do?” you plead. “You know Every won’t make love to me unless I marry him, and you know I won’t marry him unless he makes love to me. So one of us has got to yield, right? Why can’t it be him, if you don’t disapprove of forn—of us making love?”

“Child,” He says tenderly, “my heart really bleeds for you, but there’s nothing I can do. I thought I’d done enough, by showing him that sign, by telling him to stop being a preacher. That’s all I can do.”

“Couldn’t you simply say to him, ‘It’s all right to make love to Latha?’”

“I’m sorry.”

You sigh. “Well,” you say. After a while you offer, “Care for another peach? The market’s low this year, and there’s plenty.”

“In that case—” He says, and helps Himself to another. You also have one. The two of you munch your peaches in silence.

“You know,” you remark reflectively, “there is something rather sexual about eating peaches, don’t you think?”

“You can say that again,” He agrees. “I think Dad wanted it that way, when he made them. But if you stopped to think about it, there’s something sexual about nearly everything.”

Straightway you ask, “Are you sexual?”

“Why not?” he says.

“Well—” you search for words “—after all, you’re somebody rather special, you know, and pure and holy…”

“I’m a man,” he protests. “Matter of fact, I’m not simply a man, but the Son of Man.”

“Have you ever had any girlfriends?”

“Have I!” he exclaims. “Why, there’s never been a man in history who’s had more than I.”

“But have you ever slept with one?”

“You can’t imagine the number I’ve slept with.”

“But I mean have you ever actually…you know, actually entered them?”

He smiles. He just smiles.

You say to him, “Look, you said all love is sexual, right? Well, maybe I don’t know what you mean by sexual, but didn’t you also say something one time about loving the Lord?”

“With all of your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your mind.”

“But not with all of your body?”

“That can’t be done,” He points out.

“Then how can you say all love is sexual?”

“Is sex only in the body?” he asks. “Isn’t it also in the heart and soul and mind?”

“All right,” you agree. “So let’s suppose I feel a great love, which is sexual, in my heart and soul and mind, for you, and you’re here in person, so why can’t you just make love to me?”

He smiles. He commands you, “Close your eyes.” You close them and become all excited, wondering what is about to happen. But nothing happens. He is playing a trick on you. He is mocking you. But you keep your eyes closed, until He says, “Okay, now open them.”

You open your eyes. But He is gone. You are alone. “Where are you?” you call out.

“Yes, that’s the question,” He says. “Where am I?”

“Oh, dear heavens!” you suddenly cry out.

“Where am I?” He asks again. “Am I in your heart or your soul or your mind or your body?”

“Oh, goodness gracious!” you exclaim, suddenly lying down in the orchard grass.

“Yes, that’s it,” He says. “Goodness Gracious. Gracious Goodness. How does it feel?”

“I…I can’t even begin to describe it…” you say.

“That’s right,” He says. “Not even those smart Romans could come up with a language that could express it properly. So you see the trouble I’ve had trying to get my message across? You see how you folks can’t even express feelings, let alone understand what I’ve been trying to say about love? There’s just not any way of—”

“Oh, don’t talk,” you plead. “Just—”

You are there, O Bug, not I; how am even I to describe it?

“Nobody will believe me,” you declare. “When I tell them—”

“That’s true enough,” He agrees. “So why bother to tell them? Nobody would believe me either.”

You moan, “I’m going to faint clean out of my skin.”

You hear Him chuckle. “Now that,” He says, “is the closest to a good description I’ve ever heard yet.”

“Hush,” you whisper, and you whisper faintly, “Could you…oh, could you make it work just a little faster?”

“Sure,” He obliges.

You faint clean out of your skin.

And awake.

It is still night; the room floats with the charged light of a stormy night sky; you find the sheet upon which you are lying is twisted into a landscape of wrinkles. Your breath comes in heaves.

You marvel, That was so real!

You declare, Oh, I can’t wait to tell Every about it!

You realize, Oh no, if I told him Who that was, he would really wash his hands of me.

You sigh.

You stare up at the ceiling for a long while, unable to fall back into sleep. At length you speak aloud, “I love you, Lord Jesus.”

It begins to rain. It is the first rain in five weeks. Like any summer rain in Stay More, it is a downpour. My wetness awakens me. I whimper, and crawl out of the leaves and in under a cedar tree. But even the thick boughs of the cedar tree can’t keep all the rain off me. Oh, I’m as wet as a dog.

The dog is Gumper. But when he comes sniffing and nuzzling up to me, I scream and thrash about, thinking he’s a wild beast. Then, just before I could panic right out of my mind, I recognize him by his smell. There is on earth only one thing that smells worse than Gumper, and that is Gumper soaking wet. I hold my nose and yell “Git!” and kick at him.

Then an idea occurs to me: if I told him to get for home, and he got for home, I could follow and find my way out of here.

“Git home!” I yell and wave my arms and kick.

I cannot see him in the dark. Has he gone for home? But I still smell him, unless it’s what he left behind.

Then a flash of lightning illuminates him. He is under the cedar tree, on the opposite side from me, sound asleep.

The only thing worse than a wet smelly dog is a wet smelly dog who’s stubborn and stupid.

A peal of thunder lifts me off the ground.

Lightning, Lightning Bug, of an infinitely brighter sort than yours.

You wish you could sleep again, could dream again, could talk with Him again, but the rainstorm keeps you awake. Not even your pillow over your head will muffle it.

It reminds you of the night you slept with Every; the rain poured down hard that night; you were eleven years old; he was twelve. You think to go remind him of it again.

You arise. Again you put on your houserobe. You have left the door from your bedroom to the store unlocked, thus you do not need to search for the key. You open it.

He is sleeping deeply, sprawled out on his back upon the gingham bags of Nutreena and Purina feed. He no longer snores. Not even the crash and boom of the lightning storm seems to disturb his heavy slumber. You sit down upon a nail keg beside him, and in the intermittent flashes of lightning you study him. You remember he said he got no sleep the night before. He is making up for it, you reflect. Deep, deep his sleep, and deep your longing. You study and admire his face; in sleep his hair is tousled. Your gaze wanders down the length of him and back, and settles upon his groin. You detect there a tight bulge. What is he dreaming? you wonder. You cannot resist reaching out and touching it. Then you are taken with an urge to lay it bare. Slowly your fingers undo the buttons. As the last button is opened, the bulge rises. The polka dot shorts come into view, overlapped upon the bulge. Gently your fingers spread open the flap, and of a sudden the thing stands.

You regard it lovingly and a little wonderingly, thinking, It’s sure changed since he was twelve.

You dub it, with a smile: His Every-thing. My Every-thing.

You ask yourself: Do I dare?

If you did dare, it would surely waken him, and then what would he do? Would he hate you for tricking him? You do not know of the time on the road in Tennessee when he took you in your sleep, for he had censored that from his narrative. Had you known, you could have said surely, if he woke, “See, now we are really even.” But not knowing this, you are reluctant, and afraid. I do not dare, you think.

So you merely bestow a fleeting kiss upon it, and return to your room and your bed.

But you did not replace it. As you fall asleep again finally, you are amusedly wondering, What’s he going to think when he wakes up and finds it hanging out? Oh, won’t he wonder and wonder!

“Please, Gumper,” I plead. “Please get up and show me how to get out of here.” But he just lies there. Exhausted I lay my head down on the wet earth.

Ending

From the woods, night, forever, Stay More, Ark.

IT WILL END:

we sleep. They will sleep.

In the morning, early, they will go out looking for him, all of them, first his aunt who will discover him missing and then will discover, while hunting for him at Latha’s place, Brother Every Banning Dill, who will be asleep in the store on a pile of feed bags with, to her profound shock and offense, his male member hanging from an open fly. Rosie will not be able to resist telling this to her husband Frank, and Frank in turn will not be able to resist mentioning it, during the height of the search, jokingly to Every himself, who forthwith will quit the search, and quit the town as well.

She will run after him. When Sonora will inform her that she saw him walking rapidly off up the Parthenon road with his suitcase in his hand, Latha will run after him, walking for a while, then running again.

She will go all the way past Jesse Witter’s place before she will spot him up the road ahead. Then she will slow to a rapid walk again. She will be panting hard, and sweating. “Every!” she will call after him, but he will neither stop nor turn his head. He will increase the pace of his walking.

She will run again, and she will catch up with him and grab his arm. He will shake her off and keep walking, his face grim. She will throw herself in front of him.

“Get out of my way!” he will snarl.

“Every, please!” she will say. “What are you doing?”

He will not stop walking. “I’m putting distance between Stay More and me,” he will say severely.

“You’re leaving me?” she will cry. “Can you leave me?”

“Easily,” he will say.

She will not be able to keep trotting alongside him. She will stop, and as he goes on past she will wail, “BUT WHY?”

He will stop, at last, and turn to her. “Because you’ve mortified me, that’s why! I caint ever show my face in that town again!”

“Just because Rosie saw you through the store window?”

“Oh, so you know about it too!” he will say fiercely. “Well, I wish you’d told me! If you’d told me, you’d’ve spared me the embarrassment I’ve done been put through!”

“What happened?” she will ask. “Did Frank bawl you out for it?”

“Naw, he laughed at me! He laughed and got downright sarcastic and told me I was sure gettin my revival off to a big start! Haw! As if I would even dare hold a revival after the word got around! I don’t even dare appear anywhere in this whole county again! Or this whole state, for that matter!”

“I thought the Lord had already told you to stop preaching,” she will say.

He will not say anything to that. He will turn and resume walking.

She will catch up with him again. “Is that more important than me?” she will ask. “If you really love me, or even care for me at all, can you just walk out on me like this?”

“If you cared for me at all,” he will answer, “you would never have done that to me!”

“I never dreamed you’d be seen,” she will say. “How was I to know that Rosie would be prowling around at six o’clock in the morning?”

“What if anybody had seen me?” he will say. “What if Sonora had seen me? What if the mail truck came, and everybody came to get their darn mail and saw me?”

“The mail doesn’t come on Sundays,” she will point out.

“It was just downright shameful of you!” he will say. “Your conduct has been astonishing me from the first moment I came back, and it got worse and worse until that was just the last straw! You might think it’s a big joke, but it don’t strike me as the least bit funny!”

“You’ll get over it,” she will say.

“Naw, I could never live it down!” he will maintain.

“Maybe Frank and Rosie won’t spread it.”

“Likely chance! It’ll be all over town before noon!”

“Well,” she will say, “so what if it is? Folks will just think that you and I were fooling around, and I don’t mind them thinking that.”

“That’s your whole trouble, you don’t give a thought to what folks think of your conduct. I just don’t care for that kind of wife.”

She will sigh. “Well,” she will say, “I don’t suppose we could ever have got married anyway, because you wouldn’t make love to me before marrying me, and I wouldn’t marry you before making love with you. So you’re going to walk right on out of my life, just after walking right on into it again for the first time in years.” She will sigh again. “I guess I’ll marry Dolph Rivett.”

“He’s your type,” he will retort.

“And you’re not?” she will ask, sadly. “Weren’t you ever?”

“Latha,” he will say gently, “come with me if you want to, but I’m not ever going back to Stay More.”

“And I’m never leaving it,” she will declare.

“Well, then, I guess it’s goodbye,” he will say.

She will say, “I think you’re being a dirty bastard to run off like this when Dawny’s lost.”

“The whole town’s out looking for him. One less won’t matter.”

“Then good riddance,” she will say. “I’m wasting my time arguing with you when I ought to be out looking for him.”

“Well, so long, then,” he will say.

“Goodbye,” she will say.

But neither of them will move.

“Get on back and look for him,” he will say.

“Get on up the road,” she will say.

“I am,” he will say.

“I don’t see you doing it,” she will say.

“I don’t see you doing anything either,” he will say.

“I’m waiting to watch you walk out of sight,” she will say.

“Why do you have to do that?” he will ask.

“It means,” she will say, “if you watch somebody walk out of sight, it means they will die.”

“You want me to die?” he will ask.

“You’re as good as dead to me if you leave Stay More.”

“Well, I’m not superstitious like you,” he will say. “I don’t believe it will work.”

“Go on, then,” she will say.

“All right then, I will,” he will say.

But he will not move.

“Well?” she will say.

“Latha, you don’t really have to do that, do you?”

“Do what?”

“Watch me walk out of sight.”

“Why not?” she will say. “What’s the matter, are you scared? I thought you didn’t believe in superstitions.”

“But it’s not going to be easy for me to walk out of sight, knowing that.”

“It’s not going to be easy for me, either.”

“Then don’t do it. Go on and get back to town.”

“You come with me,” she will say.

“No.”

“Then get on up the road.”

“Okay, but don’t watch me.”

“Why not, if you’re not superstitious?”

“It’ll just seem kind of spooky and make me nervous.”

“Then you are superstitious,” she will say.

“No, I’m not, neither.”

“Then go. I dare you.”

“All right” he will say. “I’m going. Goodbye, Latha.”

“Farewell,” she will say.

He will turn and begin walking away, walking slowly, swinging his suitcase by its handle in his hand. I will watch him, she will tell herself, all of the way out of sight. She will not think that is cruel of her. It is cruel of him to leave. It is cruel, and childish, and thoughtless, and sanctimonious, high and mighty, and downright mean. Let him die.

There will be a turning in the road ahead, and he will be near it. In a moment he will have been gone. Steadfastly she will watch him, her eyes burning holes into his back. Oh, how could he do that!

He will arrive at the turning. In an instant the trees will have hidden him from sight. He will seem to sense that he will have been immediately hidden from sight, for he will stop. He will stop and turn and look back at her. He will stand there for a moment, looking back at her.

Come back, Every! Oh, come back or you’ll die!

He will come back, walking slowly, hanging his head.

When he reaches her, he will lift his head and smile sort of sheepishly and say, “You know, maybe if I was just out in the woods looking for Dawny I wouldn’t have to show my face to a soul anyhow.”

So then, yes. He will stay. He would never, he will never, leave her again. So that is settled, done. He will rejoin the search, and, good as he is at searching, having searched for her three times and found her three times and lost her only twice, he will be the most apt to find Dawny. It will become like a kind of competition: Tull Ingledew, who can fling a flintrock straight up and tell by the direction it falls which way the lost boy is, Doc Swain who not only can organize and direct the other 112 people in their search operation but can also use his car to patrol every road and byroad in town and be ready with his gladstone bag to treat the boy in case he has suffered from exposure or any injury, Dolph Rivett who can go all the way home to Spunkwater to fetch a bloodhound [not realizing, however, that the heavy rain of the night before would have washed any scent away], and Every Dill who will throw his heart and his wits into the search because the lost boy is dear to her who is dear to him, and will be the most apt to find the boy, if anybody does, because he is most experienced at searching and finding and also because he as a lad of five-going-on-six was the spitting image of Dawny and had a mind just like his, and will even be able to guess where the boy might be hiding or lost, and who, in search of him, maybe is the one who most needs to find him.

[My intelligent friend from Andover, Mass., who was last heard from in the prelude with his view that the proper name for lightning bug is firefly, has now interrupted with the comment that “The allusion to Pirandello is too obvious.” Well, yes, my friend, maybe if you’ve read Pirandello. But I never did. And I doubt that Latha ever did. Or Every.]

Every will interrupt the search, just once briefly, during the late afternoon, at the request of Luther Chism, to perform what will be his next-to-last act as a minister of gospel: to officiate the quick nuptials of Lucy Chism and an agent of the U.S. Revenue Department, who has agreed, on condition that he be untied, freed and then hitched to Lucy for life, that he will never divulge the location of Luther’s still, or of Luther, to his employers.

Luther, losing Lucy, will gain permanent amnesty or immunity or at least franchise, to pursue his trade to the end of his days. “Great Gawd!” he will never tire of exclaiming to all his friends, “Thet thar was the best swop I ever made.”

Dolph Rivett will not fare so well. He will return with his bloodhound, to the admiring comments of other searchers—“Lookit the nose on thet dawg!” “He ort to do the trick.” “Thet’s a right fine snoop-dawg ye got, mister”—and will self-importantly begin to put the hound on Dawny’s trail, using for the scent a snotrag (hand-kerchief) thought to belong to Dawny, but which, as it will turn out, did not belong to Dawny but to his uncle Frank. After a spirited chase, Dolph’s bloodhound will lead Dolph and a dozen odd others to the Stay More schoolhouse, where Frank Murrison will be found in a compromising position atop Miss Estalee Jerram, schoolmistress. Frank, oblivious to the grins and leers and smirks around him as he hastily buttons his pants, will declare, “me and Esty figgered maybe Dawny was over here to the schoolhouse maybe.” “He aint,” somebody will observe.

Frank will be heard at various other times of that day remarking, to no one in particular, “Well, heck, aint none of us perfect.”

[And Frank will have said it. None of us are. Nor is it likely that the pot will be so inclined to remark upon the color of the kettle, that is, I doubt that Frank will be spreading any gossip about Every.]

As for Dolph, at just about the same instant he discovers the uselessness of the bloodhound, he will discover, with mingled anger and fear, a young man sitting upon a horse and pointing a shotgun at him.

“You, Purdy,” Dolph will say. “What you pointin that arn at me fer? Whut you doin here anyhow?”

The youth will reply, “I follered ye over, Paw, when I seen ye come and git ole Gloomy. Whut ye doin with old Gloomy, Paw?”

“Sheeut far,” Dolph will grumble, spreading his hands apologetically, “I jest taken him for to help find a pore tyke what’s lost from these good people. You aint aimin to use him today, nohow.”

“How you know I aint?” the one called Purdy will challenge. “You never ast me. You been comin and goin’ thout ary word to me or Duke or Mom even. I done stood for all I aim to stand. Now you jest fetch yore hoss, Paw, and let’s us jest git on back home.”

“Don’t ye be a-bossin me, Purdy Rivett!” Dolph will say. “You stop pointin that there arn at me, too! I’ll take ye to the woodshed! I’ll whale the tar outen ye! I’ll whop the soup outen ye!”

“Naw, Paw,” Purdy will say, noisily cocking the hammer of his shooting iron, “I don’t reckon I’d stand for that neither. I’d as soon shoot ye, you dawg-stealer.”

“I never stole no dawg, dammit,” Dolph will protest. “He’s a fambly dawg. Old Gloomy don’t belong to you, he sort of belongs to the whole fambly.”

“Lak hell,” Purdy will say, and will spit. “The whole fambly never paid fer im, nor fed im nor trained im neither.”

“Well sheeut,” Dolph will protest. “I never stole im nohow. I was just a-borryin him to help these good folks find that there boy lost. That’s a good cause, aint it? Besides, ole Gloomy aint been no good anyhow. You aint trained him right, maybe.”

“I aint?” the youth will challenge, and then he will turn to the dog and will make a noise, “Fftt!” and then will command the dog, “Sic im, Old Gloom!” and will point at Dolph, and the dog will leap at Dolph, striking him a blow with his forepaws that will topple Dolph backwards into the dust, and then the dog will aim his fangs at Dolph’s face and will have bitten off his nose if Purdy will not have snapped “Hold!” in the nick of time, and then “Back!” and then “Sit!” and then to his father “See?”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah,” Dolph will say, getting up amidst the howling laughter of the spectators. “But, boy, you jest wait till I git you alone by yorse’f. I’ll settle your hash! I’ll mop up the hills with ye!”

“You aint never gonna git me alone, Paw,” Purdy will return. “I aint gonna let ole Gloomy out a my sight again. You wouldn’t a got him offen me this mornin if I wudn’t out a doin your work fer ye. Me’n Duke are plum tard a doin yore work fer ye, Paw. So’s Maw. Now git on yore goddamn hoss, afore I sic ole Gloomy on ye again!”

“You son, now you jest lissen a me…”

“I’ll lissen on the way home, Paw. Git yore hoss, and git her now!”

Dolph will mutter a string of profanities under his breath, then turn and look at the folks gathered around, and will say to them, “I don’t aim to ’low this kid the upper hand fer long. So any of you folks happen to see Latha Bourne, you jest tell her Dolph Rivett will be back again jest as soon as he straightens out his brash young uns.”

Purdy will comment on that, “You aint never comin back over here to fool around any more, Paw. Not as long as me’n Duke are still alive.”

And Purdy will be right. By whatever coercion or debate or plea that he and his brother and his mother will employ, Dolph Rivett will stay home and be a semblance at least of a dutiful father and husband, and will resume, at whatever great effort, the life he had led before Latha reminded him what a man is. He will never find the lost boy.

[We should not miss him. We should feel as Latha will feel when somebody will happen to mention to her the circumstances of his forcible removal from Stay More by his own son—that he was, after all, for all his rampant virility, rather coarse, less than couth; Latha could never have married him, even if Every had never come.]

So those two, the revenuer and Dolph, will be eliminated. Who else? Well, although they were never here at Stay More to begin with, Mandy and Vaughn Twichell will be eliminated, when they come. They will come, later in the week, and find that Sonora refuses to go. They will create a scene; they will attempt force, as Purdy Rivett had in removing his father, but they will not be armed, except with words, angry words, and these words will be successfully countered by Sonora, and Latha, and Every too, who will give them pure hell. They will make threats, which, however, will never be carried out.

Sonora will not be eliminated. Upon graduation from Jasper High School, she will give her hand to John Henry Ingledew, although Every will not accede to her request that he momentarily re-enter the ministry long enough, just long enough to perform the ceremony. “No, honey,” he will say. “I guess if I was to do it, it wouldn’t somehow be official.”

“But you did it for your own self and Mother,” she will point out. “Do you call that official?”

“Back then,” he will explain, “I still had just enough of the preacher left in me; he hadn’t all got out; there was enough left over and I used up the last of it doing it. I spent the last and there wasn’t any more. But anyhow, I want to walk you down the aisle and give you away.”

John Henry and his bride will have a large family, interrupted by the war, in which he will serve with distinction and come home a captain.

After the war, they, like so many others, will move to California, and live for several years on John Henry’s high earnings as an electronics technician, but they, unlike so many others, will get homesick and come back, and John Henry will build a house on the side of Ingledew Mountain, and commute to Jasper, where he will service radios and will install the first television set in Newton County, and, eventually, all of the television sets in Newton County.

But these will be eliminated: Gerald Coe, who will die a hero with the Marines at Iwo Jima in 1945, and have a bronze plaque in his memory in a hallway at Jasper High School; his brother Earl, who will die, some will say, of grief; and the survivor of the triplets, Burl, who will never come back from California.

These also will never come back from California: Junior Duckworth and his brother Chester, Merle Kimber and the other W.P.A. boys who built the bridge (year by year the floods of Banty Creek will wash logs against the sides of that cement bridge, and to break the jam the cement crenellation of the sides of the bridge will be sledge-hammered away, so that eventually, when Stay More will become nearly a ghost town, only the roadway of the bridge will remain with one pier of the crenellation with its cement stamped like a tombstone forever: “Built by W.P.A. 1939”). Forty-seven other Stay More residents will make a kind of Stay-More-in-exile colony in Fullerton and Anaheim, California, and never come back.

Many people will simply grow old and die, without issue, or with their issue scattered. Doc Swain and Doc Plowright will die; Luther Chism will die; all of the brothers Ingledew will die, first E.H., then Odell, then Bevis, then Stanfield, and finally Tull will die—but he will live the longest, spending out the days of his seventies loafing at Every’s garage and chatting with Every while Every repairs cars and trucks, but the day the “Dill’s Gas and Service” sign is taken down for lack of business and because Every is working then for the Ford agency in Jasper, Tull will silently expire, sitting upright in an abandoned Ford pick-up behind Every’s shop, with, in his pocket, the very last installment of his share of the bank’s money that Every had finally managed to repay.

The “Dill’s Gas and Service” sign will be the last to go; before, sometimes long before, these signs will go: “U.S. Post Office,” “Stay More Public School,” “Ingledew’s General Store,” “Duckworth & Sons, Tomato Processing,” “Lawlor Coe, Blacksmith.” Every will train Lawlor to fix car engines, but will have to lay him off when business drops, and Lawlor will move to the city of Harrison.

There will be no signs in Stay More.

A traveler passing through will never know a town was there.

If they will have found me, they will have made a day-long project out of it, for with the coming of sunrise I will have risen up off the ground and sought to find my way home, only to have been lost deeper and deeper into the woods. Of course, the daylong search will have kept Every from beginning his revival meeting, even if he will have wanted to, after Latha had so shaken his faith, not in God nor Christ but in his calling as a preacher. So there will have been no services. The whole town will have gone out to look for me.

Sonora will have prepared and served a mass breakfast, serving it to the searchers from the front porch of Latha’s store, and later have acted as dispatcher at what Doc Swain will have referred to as “our rondy-voo point.” Doc Swain will have directed most of the search, although Oren Duckworth will have felt that he should have had this privilege.

The searching will have consisted mostly of small parties of two, three or half a dozen, who will have wandered more or less aimlessly around the Stay More countryside, beating the brush and calling out periodically “Dawny!” and “Oh, Dawny!” If the aggregate of these individual parties will have totaled over a hundred people, or the entire able-to-walk population of the town, then it will have been likely that every inch of the terrain will have been checked during the course of the day.

But still, because I shall have stumbled off into the remote reaches of Ledbetter Mountain, I shall have unwittingly managed to avoid being found.

If I should have known that so much fuss and bother will have been taken over me, I shall probably have been tickled in a way, secretly pleased, but more likely I will have been scared, knowing that when I will have been found at last I will have really gotten a thrashing from Aunt Rosie and Uncle Frank both for having put all those folks to such trouble. So I reckon it will have been just as well that I will never have been found.

Except that, if I will never have been found, what will have become of me? Will I have perished in the woods? If that is so, then how will I have come to have written this? Or will this ever come to have been written? Or shall I, will I, ever have been?

But the point is, my beloved Bug, that you shall have been searching for me, still, still searching, you and Every, who will have been the most likely to have found me.

Maybe, late in the afternoon, almost near on to lightning-bug time, it will have been Every who will have remembered that on the few times he had seen me I had been followed by a dog, and he will have inquired the name of this dog from Latha, and then he will have followed his “hunch” and will have climbed Ledbetter Mountain and probed deep into the woods, not calling out “Dawny” as the others will have been doing, but instead he will have begun to call out the name of the dog, Gumper, and maybe, just maybe, the dog will have come to him and he will have said, “Gumper, lead me to Dawny,” and maybe, just maybe, the dog will have led him to me. And I will have been found. And Latha will have hugged me to her warm breasts.

But then, when all of the people will have congratulated Every and then will have all gone back home, and I will have been alone again with Aunt Rosie and Uncle Frank, Aunt Rosie will have said, “Jest whut do you mean, anyhow, you rapscallion, puttin all them folks to such bother? I never been so mortified in all my born days!” And then she will have clobbered me all over again. And Frank too, with his razor strop.

So yes, it will have been just as well, it will have been nearly perfectly all right, that I shall never have been found. After a year or so, I will have been forgotten. Latha will have remembered me sometimes, with a sigh, or maybe even a tear, and she will have reflected, perhaps, that all of this would not have happened if she had not allowed me to have slept with her that night.

She will not ever have been able to forget me, completely.

There will be no honeymoon, nor even the traditional “shivaree”; in fact, it will be the first wedding anybody can remember that was not followed by that traditional ritual whose name comes from the French charivari and which consists of a riotous teasing and harassment of the couple on their wedding night. It will be felt that both the honeymoon and the shivaree are unbecoming in a time of bereavement. So Latha and Every will enter into married life without any fanfare, almost as if they had already been married since childhood, and in a way they had. And in a way this will console her, that she can remember that Every at the age of five-going-on-six was just exactly like lost Donny, and she will even be able to pretend that Every is Donny, grown-up. But still the early days of their marriage will be sad.

Sitting on the porch together one waning day in the waning of summer, Every will remark, “Maybe the poor kid just sort of gave up and walked clean on out of the country. Maybe he’s trying to find his way on back home to his real folks.”

“Maybe,” Latha will say, without much conviction, knowing he would not willingly desert her like that.

“Maybe his folks’ll send a letter saying he showed up there, all right. Or maybe somebody else will spot him and wonder what a six-year-old kid is doing on the loose. Or maybe—”

“Hush, Every,” she will say.

But she, later, will bend down a mullein stalk up in the orchard meadow, and wait to see if it straightens up, grows back up again. If it straightens, the boy is not gone for good. She will visit that meadow several times and look at that mullein stalk. She will even talk to that bent-down mullein stalk, plead with it.

Every will never cure her of her superstitions; rather he will absorb them himself. But it will be like a kind of trade: she will make him superstitious, he will make her religious, [for although he will give up being a preacher, he will never give up believing in the Lord].

The very last thing that Lola Ingledew will sell out of the big old Ingledew general store before closing it for good will be Latha’s wedding band, to Every, but Latha, being superstitious, will protest that they ought to just wait and order one from Sears Roebuck, because a store-boughten wedding ring might have been tried on by somebody else and have absorbed bad luck from her—but Every will poo-poo this, not knowing that the ring had in fact been tried on before, by Lola herself, who never married, who lost in the sawmill the arm of the hand of the finger on which she put the ring.

But Latha will never lose an arm. Superstitions don’t always work.

The mullein stalk will grow up again.

IT WILL END WITH THIS MOOD:

[Hell, what is the mood of an end, of an ending? Are all endings sad, because they are endings? Can there truly be a happy ending? If not, then better no ending at all, for your story is a happy one, Bug, and I would not for anything spoil it by my loss. So then it does not end. But anyway:] the porch again, and cowbells clapping faintly in the distance. They will have to sound like French horns, though, echoing up and down the valley. They will have to sound like French horns because only the French horn is capable of that particular poignant, mournful, wistful sound.

But the other instruments, the katydids and crickets and tree frogs and bull frogs, will have to play in adagio un poco mosso too, with an almost holy slowness. They cant do this, but they will have to. It will be necessary, to match the intervals of flashings by the lightning bugs.

The air will have to be thick enough, dew-laden enough, to hold aloft the drifting lightning bugs. The air will have to be all blue. All the air will have to be blue. And the blue air will have to be full of green things, strange wildflowers and magic weeds, creek-water, a trace of distant cow manure, a trace even of Gumper sleeping on the porch floor, a trace of the boy’s milk-and-honey-and-grasshoppers-and-skinny-skin-skin, and of the woman’s spicy creek-water-with-fish-in-it, and of the man’s musky sweat, and of the dew, especially of the dew, which is all the green and wild things essenced together.

The air will have to yield its fragrances in slow time, in pace with the music and the flashes.

Gumper, sleeping, will have to strike the porch floor with his tail in adagio un poco mosso. This sound will not lead to his eviction; it will blend with the other sounds; he will be left to lie.

The cats will not mind him; they will festoon the porch rail and the porch and the shrubbery, and will move, stretch, writhe, in tune to the music and the flashes and the air.

The man and the woman will be talking; they will have to keep their voices from being understood; their voices will have to be heard but not understood; their voices will have to be pure sounds playing also in adagio un poco mosso. If the boy will actually be sitting in the swing near them, they will not want him to hear what they are saying. If the boy will only be thinking that he is sitting in the swing near them, he will not want to hear what they are saying. He will want instead to listen to the theme of the music and the flashes and the air.

The theme will be of loss. Of loss and search, of losing and finding, of wanting. The cow wears the cowbell so she can be found; the distant dull thing-thang of the cowbell must now sound like a French horn, which sounds of loss and yearning and the always possible finding. The cow can be found. The cricket chirps, the tree frog peeps, the bullfrog croaks, to find, to search, to be found. In the finding-time, which is evening, night.

The lightning bug flashes to find, and finds by flashes and is found by flashes. But is lost until found. The flashing is of loss, and yearning.

The smells of the things in the air of the night are the calls of the lives wanting to be found. Why else are fragrances fragrant?

We see to find, we hear to find, we smell to find and be found. Until we find or be found, we are lost, and wanting.

The theme of the mood of an ending is of a loss or finding.

IT WILL END WITH THESE PEOPLE:

the man sitting on the porch, in the straight-backed chair, sweating because the night is hot and because he will have been spending the whole day tramping the hills, searching. It will have been his last search, he who has searched so, and lost, and found, and lost again. He will be thinking that he will not have to be a searcher any more, he will be saying to himself, “It’s over. I’ve done come home to roost. I reckon I’ve got what I want,” and he will be thinking Now if only I can figure out some way to get married to her proper without sinning beforehand. Which will be his biggest problem, bigger even than the problem of how he is going to pay back all the money he stole a long time ago. But this problem, this problem of marrying her before making love to her, he will solve, ingeniously, in just a few more minutes. His name will be Every. The way these folks will say it, it could be “Avery,” but it will happen to be Every. If this story will have a hero, it will be him. He will be the one male whose name will endure longest in the mind of the creator of this story. He will be the one male whom the creator of the story will identify with, will even confuse himself with, and will remember the longest, will even be so unable to forget that whenever he, the creator, happens to verge upon mindlessness, or helplessness, or intolerable loss or wanting, the very thought of those two words, “Every Dill,” like a magic incantation, will bring him back from the brink, will find him, will find him.

the woman sitting on the porch in the rocker, rocking some, who in just a couple of minutes will join her life forever with that man’s. She will have been the Bug who gave her name to the story, who gave her life to the man, and who gave her love to the boy who will become her lover and creator. Her name will be Latha, and she will come to look, in the eye of his mind, like Vanessa Redgrave, and she will come to be, in the heart of his soul, all womankind, and in the pit of his gut, all desire. She will converge all his wanting, all his searching, but she will never be found, not by him; his loss of her will keep him going. But for all these lofty sentiments, for all this love and lust and longing, the only thing that will be on her mind at this moment is how she can get that man into bed before marrying him. But she too will solve this problem in just about the same instant that the solution will hit him, in just another minute. She will think, “If there’s any of the preacher still left in him, he can use it to marry us at the same instant we marry ourselves with ourselves.” She will smile at this thought, and think, “And when he says, ‘I now pronounce us man and wife.’ I will faint,” and possibly she will even laugh, lightly, aloud, and he will look at her, and she will look at him and know that he knows what she is thinking. Then she will glance at the door which leads off the porch into her room.

the boy who will think that he is sitting in the porch swing, watching the man and woman yet listening not to them but to the theme of loss and search and finding being played in the grass and the air and the night, who will be lost. He will be called “Dawny,” but then he will not be called that, any more. He will think that he is sitting in that porch swing and brooding because the man will be going to take her away from him. He will think that he is listening to all of that adagio un poco mosso out there, and reflecting, Maybe they don’t want me around. Maybe I ought to whistle up old Gumper and head for home. She loves him now. She don’t even know I’m here. She and him are going to get up and go inside and do what she and that other feller were doing yesterday afternoon, that makes her smell like creekwater afterwards. She won’t wait till I grow up and do it with me. But that’s okay, I guess. When I get growed up, I’ll just marry somebody that looks just exactly like her. But it won’t be the same thing. Darn it, it won’t never be the same thing. He will think he is sitting there thinking these little-boy thoughts, but he will not be, for he will not be there, ever again.

IT WILL END WITH THIS SOUND:

the screen door pulled outward in a slow swing, the spring on the screen door stretching vibrantly, one sprung tone and fading overtone high-pitched even against the bug-noises and frog-noises, a plangent twang, WRIRRAAANG, which, more than any other sound, more than those other sounds, evokes the heart of summer, of summer evenings, of summer evenings there in that place, and ends the music, ends the song, on a last quavering tone of loss and search and finding, of an opened door about to close. WRENCH. WRUNG. WRINGING.

This book is for

Diana

…and also for Day,

in memory of Daniel

Then death, so call’d, is but old matter dress’d

In some new figure, and a varied vest:

Thus all things are but alter’d, nothing dies;

And here and there the unbodied spirit flies….

From tenement to tenement though toss’d,

The soul is still the same, the figure only lost:

And as the soften’d wax new seals receives,

This face assumes, and that impression leaves;

Now call’d by one, now by another name;

The form is only changed, the wax is still the same.

So death, so call’d, can but the form deface,

The immortal soul flies out in empty space;

To seek her fortune in some other place.

Ovid, Metamorphoses

In the John Dryden translation

I’d like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love….

Frost, “Birches”

Movements

Overture

One Diana Stoving Accidentally Sees Something That Interests Her

Two Some New Jersey Newspaperwoman Has Written an Article of Interest

Three Diana Stoving Changes Her Mind

Four An Interesting Hypnotist Is Visited

Five Day Whittacker Is Met

Six Diana Stoving Receives an Opportunity to Query the Subject

Seven A Conversation Is Had, Which Diana Finds Interesting

Eight Two Impetuous Young People Take It upon Themselves to Do Something

Nine Finding Dudleytown Proves to Be Difficult

Ten At Length Dudleytown Is Located and Partially Explored

Eleven Under a Rock in the Rain, an Exchange Is Had with Young “Daniel”

Twelve An Awkward Situation Is Encountered, Also a Disappointing Revelation

Thirteen A Rapport of Sorts Is Reached

Fourteen They Become Somewhat Better Acquainted with One Another

Fifteen Diana Goes Shopping, Suffers Some Bad Moments, but Prevails

Sixteen A Pleasant Day Is Had in Dudleytown, and a Pleasant Evening

First Movement

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

Second Movement (“The Unfinished”)

Begin Reading

Third Movement

Contents

MONTROSS: Selected Poems

I

II

III

IV

V

The Ghost’s Song and Other Poems

I

II

III

IV

Fourth Movement

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Finale

Overture

“All my towns are fallen….”

—Montross

One

Diana Stoving Accidentally Sees Something That Interests Her

Back out of all this now too much for us, as the poet Frost once began a piece called “Directive,” there is a town that is no more a town (there are, in fact, four of them, and in driving downstate after leaving one of them, to get to some other place, she passed one of those temporary red cardboard signs which proclaim “Frost Heaves,” and not having seen one before, and it being one of the states in which the poet had spent his last years, she thought it was some snide commentary about him, like the graffiti that insinuate, “Nixon Sucks,” and pointing this out to her companion, or consort, she wondered aloud if the poet’s regurgitation was his reaction to their story. Her companion, or consort, did not seem to get it…perhaps because he was dead).

But to begin at the beginning, or at least, since this may be thought of as a narrative account without any conventional beginning at all, for reasons that will appear, once it is started if not begun, this now-too-much-for-us of which the poet speaks: the day that the wobbly Wheel of Fortune, out of alignment, needing a retread, needing in fact a whole front-end job, happened to cross the paths of the hero and heroine, who could and might never have met.

Mid-June. Her new Porsche 911E, blood red, fate swift, had hit a pothole on a decrepit section of the Garden State Parkway, and Diana Stoving, 21, a graduate the week before of Sarah Lawrence (major: dance), had been required to proceed slowly and with many vibrations to the nearest exit, at East Paterson, and there scan a yellow pages in search of the nearest Porsche dealer, P.F. Gillihan, Inc. of Garfield, N.J.

Quivering with her car into the Garfield dealer’s shop, she learned that her left shock was fouled up and would have to be replaced. She was asked if she could leave it. Diana explained that she was just passing through, with her passenger, Susan Trombley, 22, also just graduated from Sarah Lawrence (major: printmaking), and was on her way to Susan’s home in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, for the weekend. The service manager pointed out that while a shock replacement is ordinarily the work of inside an hour, they were temporarily out-of-stock, or rather, not-yet-in-stock, of that particular part. When Diana and Susan looked dismayed and each groaned, the service manager said that he could send a boy some other place to locate one, if they wanted to wait, and they said please do.

It was already well into the afternoon, and Diana and Susan, sitting and waiting in the dealer’s showroom, wondered how far it was to the other place, and how long it would take the boy to get there and back with the part, and what means of travel he was using. They smoked cigarettes and had soft drinks from the dealer’s dispenser. Susan had a candy bar, as well, and thumbed through several back issues of Road and Track, indifferently. From the table Diana picked up a copy of the local newspaper and read the funnies and “Dear Abby,” reading aloud an item from the latter for Susan’s amusement, but the circumstances being what they were, Susan was not amused. She had arranged dates for the evening, with two particularly promising men recently graduated from Princeton, and home seemed a long way off.

“Why don’t you phone,” Diana suggested, “and tell them we might just be late? Your folks, I mean.”

“They,” said Susan, a bit archly, “don’t even know we’re coming. But maybe I should try to reach Larry. At least to find out what he has in mind. What if he has tickets for a play in Philadelphia or something?”

“What if?” said Diana, who was beginning to resent Susan’s tacit grudge. It wasn’t her fault the pothole was waiting there in the road.

“Okay,” said Susan. “I will.” She went into the dealer’s office to borrow a phone.

Diana resumed looking at the local newspaper, a thin daily with a neighborhood slant and too much regional coverage of golden wedding anniversaries, Elks’ meetings, church socials, and recent college and high school graduates. She read what little national news there was; then, because there was absolutely nothing else to do, she began reading the local news. Good grief, New Jersey! of all places to be stuck in.

She found herself doggedly reading a “local interest” article entitled, “E. Passaic Man Reveals Age Regression Experiments.” Suddenly her apathy took flight of her.

If she had not been on the right place of the Garden State Parkway that particular afternoon, if the pothole had likewise not been there, if her Porsche 911E had not hurt its shock, if she had not been required to locate this dealer, if the dealer had not been out of stock, if she had not had to wait, if she had not picked up this newspaper, if she had not begun reading it practically column by column, then she would never, never have

Two

Some New Jersey Newspaperwoman Has Written an Article of Interest

By Patricia Klumpe, Roving Reporter. Are you skeptical of age regression? Do you know what age regression is? I’ve just had the unsettling experience of spending an afternoon with etaoin shrdlu 2 col. p. 8 ETAOIN SHRDLU ington Road, East Passaic.

Mr. Sedgely, a teacher of English at East Passaic High School, has spent his off moments during the past three years delving into the mysteries of this phenomenon, with uncanny results.

Sedgely has met with some controversy at East Passaic High School, where he recruits “subjects” from among his students. A few parents have complained about the propriety of his experiments, but John B. Pitts, principal of the school, feels that “it’s all a lot of harmless foofaraw.”

Several of Sedgely’s students have been age-regressed by him, under hypnosis, not only back to early childhood, but also, supposedly, to their previous incarnations! One eighteen-year-old East Passaic senior, for example, told under hypnosis of being born in 1880 in Connecticut as one “Daniel Lyam Montross,” who later traveled to the south and west and met a violent end in the 1950s.

Although Sedgely has been unable to verify any of the facts about his subjects’ previous “existences,” he feels confident that with enough time and research, it might be possible to trace the “life” of such persons as “Montross.”

In another case, that of a seventeen-year-old girl who under hypnosis claims to be the wife of Thomas Jefferson, it has been possible for Sedgely to check the facts and ascertain that the girl, who knows little about Jefferson, much less his wife, has a truly remarkable knowledge about them while under hypnosis.

“Make no mistake,” Sedgely declares, “we are on to something.”

Three

Diana Stoving Changes Her Mind

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” said Susan, returning from her telephone call. Funny that she should have phrased it that way, for it was a ghost Diana had seen. “What’re you reading?” Susan asked.

Diana folded the paper and put it down. “Nothing,” she said. “Just some story about an accident.”

“Well,” said Susan. “Is my face red. I talked to Larry, and told him we’re stranded in this awful Jersey town, and guess what, he and his friend were going to take us to dinner at Three Wells and then to, you haven’t seen it, have you, the new Truffaut movie. So bye-bye lovely evening.” Susan stamped her foot and added, Oh shit.

“Why don’t you take a bus?” Diana suggested.

“Ha! Why didn’t we take a bus in the first place, instead of risking our necks in that…that beyooty-full new—”

“I drove over that hole on purpose, you see,” Diana said, “so I could get out of sitting through a Truffaut movie with a blind date from Princeton who will go into the army as a second lieutenant and spend the next year writing me tragic letters from Vietnam and—”

“Oh, you’re a scream, Diana Stoving,” Susan said, “and I think I will.” She screamed a small scream.

“Seriously, Suke,” Diana said, “why don’t you take a bus? There’s still time.”

“You keep saying why don’t I take a bus. Not we but I. What about you?”

“I’ll stay with my poor maimed car,” Diana declared.

“All night probably,” Susan said.

“All night then.”

“You don’t really want to go with me. You never did.” Susan’s right eye filled up and a teardrop hung precariously on the edge of the lower lid. “School’s all out, all over, and there won’t be any more. Any more.” The drop teetered off the edge and rolled an inch down her cheek. “And there’s nothing to do but have a good time, and I thought you would, if you went with me. So that’s why I asked you. And that’s why I asked Larry to ask his friend. So now what?”

“I’m sorry,” Diana said. “I guess I shouldn’t have said I would, to begin with.”

“So now what? What are you going to do? You can’t go back to Bronxville. They gave us our parchments and kicked us out forever.”

“Maybe I’ll go home too,” Diana said.

“To Arkansas?” Susan said. “After all the times you’ve bad-mouthed that place to me?”

“Well, maybe then I’ll go into New York and try out with Merce Cunningham, after all.”

“You’re a mixed-up kid, you are,” Susan said. Diana made no reply to that, and after pacing the floor for a moment Susan said to the floor, “But what about me?”

“Take a bus,” Diana suggested.

Four

An Interesting Hypnotist Is Visited

Susan Trombley took a bus home to Ardmore, Pennsylvania, arriving in time to shower and change and call a girlfriend to substitute for Diana as a date for Larry’s friend. When I located her the following spring, nine months later, working as a typist in a Philadelphia law firm, she told me, “Well, if you mean was I the last of her friends to see her after graduation, I guess maybe I was. She took my luggage out of her car and even rode with me in a taxi to this bus station, in Clifton, I think it was, and told the taxi to wait, so she could ride back to that Porsche dealer and wait for her car to be repaired. She told me she might go home, meaning Little Rock, or she might go into New York to audition with a dance group. But I just know she didn’t really want to do either one. Poor Diana. Maybe she did go into New York and maybe she got mixed up with some hippies and got murdered, for all I know. She was always an odd one. We were roommates the last year at Sarah Lawrence, and she was always doing funny little things, like—”

Like asking the Porsche dealer how to get to East Passaic. He, not the dealer actually, but the service manager, who had been kind enough to stay overtime and replace the shock absorber himself, finishing the job at half past six and declining her offer of a handsome tip, replied to her question by asking out of curiosity if she knew anybody in East Passaic. “Not yet,” she said. But he got a map from the front office and traced the route for her. It wasn’t far. A mile to Passaic, another mile to East Passaic. There she stopped at a telephone booth and consulted the directory, under S, for Sedgely. There was only one, a P.D. Sedgely, at 1244 Wallington Road. She thought of phoning, but decided to go there instead, and stopped at a Mobil station to ask directions.

It was a suburban community, of middle and lower-middle income families, identical to hundreds that speckle the flats amidst industries in that area. The Sedgely bungalow, save for its individual shade of gray paint, was the quintuplet of four other development houses on the block. Price Delmer Sedgely, “Del” to his few acquaintances on the faculty of East Passaic High School, lives there alone, as Diana discovered.

Ringing his doorbell, she was more than uneasy; she was queasy, and nearly frightened. She did not know what to expect, and thus prepared herself for the worst: a goateed Mephistopheles in a black cape, with a wand, who, like Mandrake, the only other hypnotist she had ever heard of or read about (in the funnies, long nearly forgotten, of her childhood), might put her into a helpless trance merely by gesturing.

She was surprised, then, to see that P.D. Sedgely looked like a high school English teacher, which he is. He is the epitome of the career high school English teacher: middle-aged, graying, dandruffed, bespectacled (steel rims), thin, a bit stooped. And it was he, not she, who was really nervous. He did not open the door fully but only a foot or so. One of his hands held the door ready to slam shut while the other hand tremblingly brushed supper crumbs from his mouth as he asked, “What do you want?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said, for she could plainly see that he was disturbed. “I would like very much to talk with you.”

“What about?” he asked, sizing her up. “Are you a reporter?”

Diana had not given any thought to what she would be, to him, beyond determining that she should not tell the man who she really was or what her interest in the matter was. Now his question provided her with a mask, although in her driving clothes—polo shirt and blue jeans—she knew she did not much look like a reporter. “Yes,” she said.

“There’s been too much publicity already,” Mr. Sedgely declared. “I don’t want any more.” He started to close the door.

“Please,” she said quickly. “I’m not going to print anything about you. I’d only like to ask a few questions about your patient, I mean, your subject, the one who is, uh, connected…with Daniel Lyam Montross.”

The man hesitated. Then he said, “Well, come on in,” and held the door open for her. She followed him into his living room, which was furnished in nondescript New Jersey taste. There were few books—mostly textbooks—in his bookcase. There was nothing in the room to indicate that he was a hypnotist. “Sit down,” he offered, and she sat in an overstuffed modern armchair not of recent manufacture. “I was just finishing my supper,” he said.

“Please don’t let me keep you,” she said, and realized that she had not eaten yet herself.

“That’s all right,” he said. “I’m ready for my coffee. Would you like a cup?”

The June evening was too warm, for her, for coffee. She shook her head, but then she said, “If I could have it iced.”

“Iced?” he said, pausing in mid-turn.

“Yes. Like iced tea.”

“Oh.” Clearly he had never tried it himself. “All right. How much cream? How much sugar?”

“None, thank you.”

While he was out of the room she turned her head and read the titles on the spines of the few books in his bookcase. There was nothing about hypnotism, nothing about age regression, not even The Search for Bridey Murphy. There was only one book which might be about reincarnation: Many Lifetimes, by Kelsey and Grant. She got up and removed it from the case and began flipping through it, but then she considered that her host might think it rude of her to pry uninvited into his library, so she put it back and returned to her chair just as he reentered the room.

He gave her the iced coffee—not in an iced tea glass, as she had expected, but merely in a coffee cup with two or three ice cubes thrown in. It was still warm, and the ice was quickly melting. He sat down with his coffee on the sofa across from her, and took a sip, and sighed, and said, “You wouldn’t believe all the trouble I’ve had today, on account of that piece in the paper. I guess you saw the piece.”

“Yes,” she acknowledged.

“Parents calling me up,” he said. “And kids. But that isn’t as bad as the nuts and crackpots, and people wanting me to find out for them who they were. One fellow offered me a hundred dollars to mesmerize him—that’s the word he used, mesmerize—and find out who he was in his previous incarnation.”

“You didn’t accept?” she asked.

“Of course not,” he said. “I refuse to commercialize, to allow any taint of money to…. Besides, the man was probably hoping to find that he’d been Napoleon Bonaparte or Jesus Christ himself, and he would have been disappointed to discover that perhaps he was just some lowly peon or stableboy or something.”

Diana decided that Mr. Sedgely, because of his sincerity, his manner, even the look in his eyes, was not himself a nut or crackpot. So she asked him, bluntly, “Do you honestly believe in reincarnation?”

“No,” he said. “Not quite yet, at least. There is too little proof, at this stage, for me to accept reincarnation without question. I like to think of myself as a scientist, young lady. Scientists are, must be, constantly skeptical. And of all phenomena susceptible to proof, reincarnation must be the most difficult to prove. But I’m trying. We’re trying. I’m not alone in this thing, you know. What most people don’t realize is that there are quite a number of scientists, all over the globe, who are actively engaged in this quest.”

Diana, satisfied, at least, that she was not dealing with an absolute absurdity, said, “I wonder if I might be able to meet the boy who…who apparently is…the reincarnation of Daniel Lyam Montross.”

“Sure,” the man said. “That’s Day Whittacker, he lives not far from here. I could call and ask him to come over.”

“If it’s all the same,” she said, “I wonder if you could simply tell me where he lives, and let me go and talk with him.” The man looked at her strangely, and she added, with a smile, “Just to be scientific. So that he isn’t under your influence when I’m talking with him.”

Mr. Sedgely laughed. “I see. Well, yes, but I’m afraid he couldn’t tell you much about his previous life unless he’s under hypnosis.”

“You mean he doesn’t know he was Montross when he’s awake?”

“‘Awake’ isn’t actually the word, because, you see, the hypnotic state isn’t sleep in the conventional sense. Actually, in fact, it’s a heightened form of consciousness, even beyond ‘wakefulness.’”

“Still,” she said, “I would like to meet him, alone. I mean, maybe later I would like to see him hypnotized.” At this stage in her adventure, Diana only wanted to look at the person, she was only curious to see what he looked like. “May I have his address?”

“All right,” Mr. Sedgely agreed. “Are you on foot? No? Well, I’ll tell you how to drive there.”

Five

Day Whittacker Is Met

Day Whittacker was not at home. His mother said that he had gone to a Boy Scout meeting, but would soon return, and invited Diana to come in and wait, but Diana said she would come back later. Then she drove into Passaic in search of dinner. She would have preferred a good restaurant but was not dressed for it and did not want to get her luggage out and change in her car or in a service station rest room, so she stopped at a roadside diner and ate with truckers, who ogled her and made remarks among themselves. Her meal was veal cutlet, not poorly cooked, and she had a beer with it, and rather enjoyed the informal atmosphere of the place, and the experience of eating alone, both in sharp contrast to the dining hall of Sarah Lawrence. She began to feel actually adventurous, instead of bored, for the first time in a good long while. What will he look like? she wondered, and tried to visualize a typical New Jersey high school senior. What will I say to him? or ask of him? She was not exactly on pins and needles, but the idea of meeting somebody who was the reincarnation of somebody else disquieted her who was so quiet. She was not unmindful of what a silly situation it was, of how ludicrous, how fantastically chimerical it was, but she did not at all regret giving up the trip to Ardmore with Susan, which would have been merely a duplication of many ways she had wasted her time. While she ate her dessert, a lemon meringue pie not poorly cooked, she thought about some of the questions she might ask the boy. I will really have to grill him, she determined.

But as it turned out, she herself was submitted to a grilling. When she returned to the Whittacker home, which was another ranch-style bungalow of the same anonymous kind as Mr. Sedgely’s, she discovered that the son had still not returned from his Boy Scout meeting, and was once again invited to come in and wait for him. Mrs. Whittacker was a flighty woman in her late thirties, who offered Diana coffee and then, when that was refused (because Diana decided against asking to have it iced), offered a “highball.” For Diana, it was an old-fashioned term and she could not remember exactly what a highball was, nor what it contained. She said a glass of water would do her fine, and Mrs. Whittacker brought it to her, along with a glass of what appeared to be iced coffee for herself, and they sat in the living room. “What kind of car is that you’re driving?” Mrs. Whittacker asked, and when Diana told her, she said, “I’ve never heard of that kind before. Are you from New York?” Diana said she was not from New York City. “But you have New York plates on your car?” Mrs. Whittacker said. Diana explained that that was because she had purchased her car in New York. “Are you in school?” Mrs. Whittacker asked, and Diana said no, she recently graduated. “Where from?” Mrs. Whittacker asked, and Diana told her Sarah Lawrence. “Isn’t that one of those ritzy high-tone places?” the woman wanted to know, and Diana agreed that it had a reputation for being rather high-toned. “You must be pretty well off, and with a car like that?” the woman had a habit of making questions out of declarative statements, so Diana felt some response was required, and modestly nodded her head. “What does your father do?” the woman asked, and Diana said he was in insurance. “My husband,” Mrs. Whittacker said, “is in chemistry?” again making a question of a declaration and thus requiring some response from Diana, who asked if he were a chemist and was told no, he was a “sales engineer” for a chemical firm in Passaic. “How old are you?” Mrs. Whittacker asked and Diana told her twenty-one and fought down the impulse to ask her how old she was. “You’re a very, very pretty girl?” Mrs. Whittacker said, and Diana didn’t know how to answer that question except to say thank you. “Is your hair natural?” the woman asked, and Diana confessed that although she was a natural blonde she did resort to a rinse occasionally to lighten it a bit. “How long have you known Day?” Mrs. Whittacker asked, and Diana said “What?” and then said oh, she didn’t know him at all and was just going to meet him for the first time. “What was it you wished to see him about?” Mrs. Whittacker asked in a suspicious tone. Diana wondered if she would jeopardize her chances if she admitted that it concerned the boy’s relations with Mr. Sedgely. Perhaps the woman did not like Mr. Sedgely, or did not approve of her son being used as a subject in age regression experiments. But Diana, thinking quickly, could not conceive a ready pretext. What did she know about the boy other than that he was a high school senior? Perhaps that was sufficient. So she told Mrs. Whittacker that she was a researcher from Life magazine and they were doing an article on a cross section of this year’s crop of high school graduates, and that Day Whittacker’s name had been chosen at random. Mrs. Whittacker, swallowing it, brightened. “Do you want to run some pictures of him when he was a baby? We have lots.” Diana said that wasn’t exactly the idea. Mrs. Whittacker protested, “But Life always runs everybody’s baby pictures? You don’t want to see his baby pictures?” Diana decided that she didn’t mind; in fact, she was curious to see what he looked like even as a baby, so the woman hauled out the family album and put it in Diana’s lap. She explained, “He’s an only child, that’s why we have so many of him?” and Diana nodded and glanced through the pages of his baby pictures. He looked like a baby. That was all. As much like Winston Churchill as like Daniel Lyam Montross, and she had never seen any baby pictures of the latter. But the pictures progressed from babyhood through childhood; the baby crawled, then teetered, then walked, and stood squinting in the bright sun with the photographer’s shadow thrown across his tummy. A thin lad, towheaded, still too unformed to resemble anybody in particular. Diana flipped quickly through the album, and the boy grew up, and up and up. He’s tall, Diana remarked and Mrs. Whittacker said, “Oh, yes, he’s past six feet now?” Diana tapped one of the pictures with her fingernail and asked if it were a fairly typical recent picture, that is, did he look like that? and Mrs. Whittacker said, “Well, he looks a lot better than that, but yes, it’s a recent picture, just last Christmas?” Diana studied it.

Diana looked at her wristwatch and said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t stay much longer….”

Mrs. Whittacker patted her shoulder and said, “Now you just sit right there and I’ll have him here in a minute?” and she quickly left the room. Diana heard her telephoning, in the hallway. “You said you’d be home by nine! What in heck are you doing? Huh, well tell him to finish his own bandage, and get yourself right home! There’s a lady here from Life magazine wants to see you! You hear me! I’m not kidding you! Life magazine! You get yourself right home!” She hung up and returned to the living room, saying to Diana, “Don’t you worry, he’ll come through that doorway in two shakes of a dead lamb’s tail?” Diana thanked her. While they waited, the woman recited a number of boastings about her son, his grades in school, his character, the fact that he was an Eagle Scout with forty thousand merit badges and all kinds of decorations, was also in the choir at church, and was going to be one of the head counselors at Scout camp this summer.

Mrs. Whittacker cocked her ear, hearing footsteps on the front walk, and stood up, saying, “And here he is! In person!” She made a dramatic sweeping gesture with her arm at the doorway, as the door opened and Day Whittacker came into the room.

Diana stood up also, to meet him.

He was not dressed in a Scout uniform, but simply in a white teeshirt, faded blue jeans, and loafers without socks. Although tall, he was very thin, and his clothes hung from him as if draped on a wire frame. His hair was not long, except a lock in front which seemed to be trying to hide what was actually a handsome face. He looked at his mother uncertainly, then briefly at Diana and then down at his shoes; he twisted his ankles sideways, standing on the sides of his feet so that his loafers came partly off.

“Day,” the woman said, “this is Miss—.” She turned to Diana and said, “I didn’t even get your name?”

“Diana Stoving,” she said and extended her hand to Day.

He gave her hand one quick and limp pump, withdrawing his hand and sticking it into his pocket. “I’m pleased to meet you,” he said to the rug.

“Sit down, sit down,” Mrs. Whittacker said to both of them, and pushed them toward separate chairs, where they sat. Then she herself sat down between them and said to Diana, “Now you just ask him anything you want to?”

Diana wondered how to get rid of the mother politely. She searched in her purse for a pencil or pen and a scrap of paper, to pretend that she was taking notes during the interview. She found an old ballpoint which she knew was dry of ink, but no paper except for an envelope, which however she took out and held in one palm beneath the useless ballpoint. “Now,” she said, and decided she would ask a few simple questions and then get out of there, “what we’re interested in, at Life, is the opinion of American high school graduates on a few topics, such as Vietnam. What is your own position, Mr. Whittacker, on the war?”

“He hasn’t had his physical yet,” Mrs. Whittacker said, “but I can tell you he will be proud to serve, like anybody else.”

Diana gave the woman an annoyed look, with a polite question, “Would you mind?”

“Mind what?” Mrs. Whittacker asked.

“I would very much like to get his answers.”

“Oh. Okay. Don’t mind me. You tell her, Day. Open your mouth so she can hear you say something.”

“I haven’t had my physical yet, as she says,” the young man said to Diana. The volume of his voice was so low that Diana had to lean closer. “If I pass it, and get inducted, I’ll probably immolate myself.”

Mrs. Whittacker nudged Diana and said, “Told you he was smart, didn’t I? Uses all those big words!”

Diana caught the trace of a smile on the son’s face and gave him a trace from her own. “Your immolation, Mr. Whittacker,” she asked, “will it take the form of the usual pyrotechnics, that is, incineration?”

“Pyrotechnic in the figurative sense of a spectacular display,” he said, “but not of combustion.”

“My, my,” said Mrs. Whittacker. “He’ll be an officer, I’ll bet?”

“What is your opinion of student unrest on the college campuses?” she asked, in further parody of an interview.

“I haven’t given it much thought,” he said, “because I’m not going to college.”

“He is too!” Mrs. Whittacker said. “Don’t you print that. He is too going, but he just hasn’t made up his mind which college. His father and I intend to see to it that he goes. Day, you watch what you tell her! Hear me? This is going to be in Life magazine, and you think I want my friends to know you’re a drop-out or something?”

Diana was thoroughly annoyed by the woman’s presence, and wanted to get away from here as soon as she could. But she was attracted to the son and still wanted to talk with him in some other place, without the mother present. She had an inspiration: “I wonder,” she said to him, “if I might have a look at your environment—the high school and the places where the students congregate, and that sort of thing. I have a car.”

“It’s too dark to see anything,” Mrs. Whittacker said, “but we can show you all the local spots in pictures in Day’s yearbook from the high school. Day, where did you put that yearbook?”

Diana sighed. She despaired of further ruses; she did not see how it might be possible to get him away from his mother. She even considered blurting out her true reason for being here, but decided against it.

She squandered another fifteen minutes of her time looking at pictures in the high school yearbook, asking a few polite questions and making a few polite remarks, and stifling several yawns. Then she told them that she had been happy to meet them, and told Day Whittacker that she would write to him if she needed to know anything else.

She stood up to go.

“You’re not going to take any pictures?” Mrs. Whittacker asked.

“Our photographer does that,” she said. “He might come later.” She shook hands with both of them, and said, “Thank you very much, and good night.”

She left their house and walked to her car. She turned and gave their house a long look, then got into her car and started the engine. She pushed the stick into gear.

Day Whittacker leapt from the steps of his house and ran to her car and around it to her open window and leaned his arms on the roof of the car and looked in at her. “My mother’s a pill,” he said. “I’m sorry. If you want me to, I’ll be glad to show you the high school and some other places, even if they’re in the dark.”

“That’s all right,” she said, and then she said, “I don’t care about the high school. I’m not really from Life magazine. I just wanted to talk with you.”

“Oh?” he said, and removed his arms from the top of her car. “What about?”

“Do you know me?” she asked.

“Should I?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Do I look at all familiar to you?”

He scrutinized her carefully. “You remind me of this movie starlet, I can’t remember her name.” He looked at her car, the redness of it, the sweep of its lines. “You aren’t her?” he said. “I mean, you aren’t a movie star?”

“No,” she said. And then she told him. “I’m the granddaughter of Daniel Lyam Montross.”

Six

Diana Stoving Receives an Opportunity to Query the Subject

“I can’t remember what she said her name was?” Mrs. Whittacker told me in the spring of the following year, “but that sounds like it, Diana Stoving? Anyway, she said she was from Life magazine, so maybe she’s not the party you had in mind? But, yes, she was here just a day or two before poor Day disappeared, so maybe there’s some connection? He ran out of the house after she left, and he didn’t get back in until sometime after midnight, but when I asked him where he’d been he said he had to go back to the Scout meeting? I believed him at the time? I didn’t think to make any connection with her being here? I didn’t see her again? When Day disappeared, I thought it was just another case of a crazy kid running off from home? I told his father, I said to him, ‘You just wait, and Day will come back when the Scout camp is over’? But maybe if you ever find her, she can tell you what became of him? I don’t think, I certainly don’t think he would have harmed her? He was a gentle boy, such a kind and decent boy…?”

It was nearly eleven o’clock when Diana knocked at Mr. Sedgely’s door, not using the doorbell because it might startle him more if he were asleep, as seemed likely because the lights were all off except for one which might be in the bathroom. While she waited to see if there was any response to the knock, she turned to Day and said, “I would rather you didn’t tell him. Let’s just pretend that I’m a historian or something, with some knowledge about Montross, and if he can arrange it so that I can ask you questions while you’re under. Just to check a few things, you see.” She waited, and knocked again. “I feel foolish,” she admitted. “Maybe we ought to come back tomorrow.”

Lights went on within the living room, and the front door opened to reveal Mr. Sedgely in his bathrobe. “Hullo,” he said, rubbing his eyes beneath his spectacles; Diana realized how much Day resembled him, as if they were father and son. “Hullo, Day,” he said. “And Miss Stoving. Don’t tell me, let me guess why you’ve come.” He ushered them in, and closed the door.

Putting Day “under,” as Diana discovered, was quick, nearly effortless, little more than switching an imaginary switch. Mr. Sedgely corrected her: “Not under,” he said in a whisper. “Over. Above. Beyond.” Then he said, “Don’t be deceived by the quickness of it. In the beginning, it takes ten or fifteen minutes to put the subject into a deep trance. But Day is an old hand at this.”

Day was sprawled limply and comfortably in the overstuffed armchair, his eyes closed, with Diana and Mr. Sedgely both sitting near him to one side.

Mr. Sedgely addressed Day, in a slow, even, somnolent voice: “You are going to go back, ’way back, back beyond your birth. On the count of three, you will be back fifty years. One…going back…two…’way back…three.”

Diana perceived no visible change in the boy’s expression.

“Now,” Mr. Sedgely said to him, “there will be another voice here, you will hear a voice other than my own, this other voice will ask you questions, and you will answer these questions.” He turned to Diana and whispered, “All right. Go ahead.”

Diana had her first question ready, but her voice broke as she began to ask it. She cleared her throat gently and tried again:

Where were you born?

There was no immediate answer. The gaps which Diana was to perceive between her questions and his answers led her to suspect that he was taking time to fabricate a reply. A few seconds passed, then his voice, which seemed not unlike his own voice, said

Dudleytown, Connecticut.

In what year?

———I don’t remember. Seventy-nine, eighty. Eighteen hundred and eighty.

How long did you live in Dudleytown?

———Until I was fifteen.

Why did you leave?

———Wanted to. I. I reckon. No opportunity there. And fought. Jared Story and Ferrenzo Allyn. Renz like to kilt me.

In what year did you go to Arkansas?

———

Although she waited a minute or longer, and repeated her question, there was no answer. Mr. Sedgely leaned over and whispered to her, “Perhaps he’s not there yet. I sent him back to around 1920. If it were later than that, he wouldn’t know. I’ll move him.” He said to Day, “You are going up through time, thirty years, it will be thirty years later.” To Diana he said, “Now ask him again.”

In what year did you go to Arkansas?

———Eighteen or nineteen years ago….

What year was that?

———Thirty-one, I reckon. His voice seemed to have changed.

Where are you now? What is the name of the town?

———Don’t live in town.

No? Then what is the name of the county?

———Isaac, it is.

Diana realized that she was beginning to breathe hard and audibly. She put her hand on her chest and took a deep breath, then asked her next question:

What is the name of the nearest town? Where do you do your shopping or trading?

———I don’t do any shopping or trading.

But what is the name of the county seat? Do you know the name of the seat of Isaac County?

———That would be Jessup.

Diana gave Mr. Sedgely a stare and shook her head. She was shaking her head in incredulity that he should know this, but Mr. Sedgely thought she was denying the accuracy of the answers she was getting, and he spread his hands and shrugged. Diana fought to control her voice for the next question

What is your wife’s name?

———Haven’t got one.

What? You don’t have a wife?

No.

Diana looked at Mr. Sedgely again and he leaned toward her and whispered, “Maybe he isn’t married yet. I’ll move—”

“No,” Diana said. “He has to have a wife. Unless…” She asked another question:

Were you ever married?

No.

But haven’t you ever fathered any children?

She waited a full minute and then asked again:

Didn’t you ever father a child?

———Yes, once, maybe.

How long ago was this?

———Oh, twenty years or more, back in Carolina.

Carolina?

Yes.

What was it, a boy or a girl?

———It was a girl.

Where is she now?

———I don’t rightly know, sister, tell you the truth. She left me.

Diana leaned toward Mr. Sedgely and asked, “Could you move him up again?”

“How far?” Mr. Sedgely wanted to know.

“Well—” Diana said, trying to calculate.

“How about up to the day of his death?” Mr. Sedgely suggested. “That’s customary.”

“Well—” she was reluctant and nervous. “All right.”

Mr. Sedgely said to Day, “Now it is later, you will go on, you are going on until your last day on earth. This is the last day you live on earth.” To Diana he whispered, “Ask him what you like.”

She asked:

Did you ever find your daughter?

Sure did. And hers too.

What is your daughter’s name?

Annie.

Where is she?

Out there.

Out where?

Somewhere. I don’t know. Just out there.

What is she doing?

Looking for me, I suppose.

Why is she looking for you?

Because I’ve got her little girl.

Diana closed her eyes and slowly inhaled. Exhaling, and opening her eyes, she asked:

Why do you have her?

I intend to bring her up right.

How old is she?

Reckon near about three or so.

Can she talk?

Some.

Diana was firing the questions rapidly now.

Is she there with you right now?

Yes.

Ask her what her name is.

She says it’s “Dinah.”

What is she doing?

Just sitting on a rock.

Is she frightened?

Not a bit. She’s laughing.

What are you going to do with her?

Already told you. I’m going to bring her up right.

What do you mean by “right”?

To give her a self of her own. To teach her how to read nature. To show her how to feel, and how to keep her mind away when it’s not wanted. To protect her from—Hark!

For the first time the boy’s immobile face registered an emotion, an expression of intense concentration. His eyes remained closed, but suddenly his brow twisted, his mouth twisted, and a low moan came from him.

Ow!

he said, and clutched his shoulder with his hand.

Winged me!

“Stop it,” Diana said to Mr. Sedgely. “That’s enough! Wake him up!”

“I can’t, just yet,” Mr. Sedgely said, “but I’ll do this:

“It’s later now, you feel no pain, it’s later, an hour later now, and you feel no pain.”

Then Mr. Sedgely asked him:

Where are you?

Floating.

Can you see yourself? Mr. Sedgely asked him. Where is your body?

Flat out on the ground.

Does your body feel anything?

Nothing.

Are there people there?

Yes. Officers, deputies, state troopers. What are they doing?

Just standing around, looking at my body.

Is the little girl still there?

No. They’ve taken her away.

What are you going to do now?

Hang around and watch them bury me.

Then what?

I don’t know. Maybe I’d like to come again.

“Any more questions, Miss Stoving? Anything else you’d like to ask?”

“No. Not now.”

“Very well.” He turned to Day and said, “Then on the count of three, you will be back to the present time. One…two…three.”

Day opened his eyes and smiled and said “Hi” at her and then he looked at Mr. Sedgely and asked, “What time is it?”

“Fifteen after twelve,” Mr. Sedgely said.

“My gosh,” Day said. “I’ve got to get home. I’ll catch heck from my mother.”

“I’ll drive you,” Diana offered.

Seven

A Conversation Is Had, Which Diana Finds Interesting

“I saw them only once after that,” Mr. Sedgely related, when I questioned him in March of the following year. “It was the next afternoon. They came together, and she asked me to teach her how to hypnotize. I told her, of course, that hypnosis was not easy to learn, and, since she seemed to be impatient, it was certainly nothing she could learn in one quick lesson. But—and I assure you I did this without any inkling of what ultimate use she may have made of it—I told her that if it was simply a matter of putting Day into a trance, I could condition him through posthypnotic suggestion to go into a trance any time she simply said, ‘Go to sleep, Day.’ I made sure that he himself agreed to that, and then I gave him the posthypnotic suggestion, and invited them to keep in touch, but that was the last I saw of them. I must confess, sir, that I was very curious, and hoped they would keep me informed of their further researches. Imagine my disappointment when I never saw either of them again. Blame me, if you wish, for having rediscovered Montross in the first place in the person of Day Whittacker, but I can hardly be blamed for whatever two impetuous young people take it upon themselves to do with their lives.”

Diana, after spending the night restlessly in a Passaic motel, kept her rendezvous with Day Whittacker the next morning—away from his home, away from his mother, at a park overlooking the Passaic River. Before meeting him, however, she visited several service stations until she found a road map of Connecticut. But she couldn’t locate Dudleytown on it. She then went to the Passaic Public Library and asked to consult some detailed atlases of Connecticut. Again she found no Dudleytown. She was unable, after her sleepless night, to accept without much skepticism the information she had learned from Day during his trance of the previous evening. Although he had revealed facts which only her grandfather could have known, she was far from being a gullible girl.

So when she met Day in the park later that morning, the first thing she said to him was, “There is no Dudleytown in Connecticut,” and the second thing she said was, “When were you last in Arkansas?”

He responded to these in reverse order. “I’ve never been west of Washington, D.C….if you can call that west.” Then he asked, “And what is this Dudleytown?”

“You don’t know?” she said. “Don’t you remember anything you said last night?”

“I never remember. I was ‘unconscious’ in a way, you know.”

“Aren’t you ever…aware, consciously I mean, of being Daniel Lyam Montross?”

“Oh, occasionally he talks to me.”

“Talks to you?” she said. “How can he talk to you if he’s supposed to be you?”

“Well, I don’t know, I guess it’s like, you know, somebody talking to himself, only with him it’s more like he’s my father or someone, giving me advice.”

“What does he say?”

“It’s…it’s…well, a lot of the stuff he says seems like platitudes. ‘Happy are they who’ve lost their expectation, for they shall not be disappointed,’ and ‘Wretched are they who want more than they have, for the one is never equal to the other.’ Stuff like that. But sometimes he kind of lapses into this country dialect and says things like, ‘A perkin’s not for jerkin but for ferkin.’ What does that mean?”

“Well—” Diana hesitated, and giggled.

Day blushed deeply and said, almost inaudibly, apologetically, “Uh, I thought I didn’t know what that meant, but maybe….” He quickly substituted another example: “When I was at the senior prom, a few weeks ago, he seemed to be there with me, and he was disgusted, or maybe I was disgusted and thought it was him, but anyway, when I was looking at all the girls and trying to decide which one of them to ask for a dance—I can’t dance, anyway—I heard him say, ‘The topwaters are a-shoaling but n’er a hoss in sight.’ I didn’t know what that meant, either, but somehow I had the idea that he didn’t consider any of those girls worth dancing with.”

“Day,” she asked, “do you honestly believe in all this? Do you really think you’re…well, possessed?”

He opened his palms and pushed them up to the level of his shoulders as if he were raising a weight. “I don’t know,” he said. “But sometimes I’m awfully uncomfortable about it. I won’t say scared, but close to it—no, not even that, because it’s as if he were protecting me, you know? And let me tell you about something else: last fall I had this little hickey on my finger here”—he showed her the side of his right index finger—“a wart, I guess it was, and I had had it for several months and couldn’t get rid of it, once I even cut it off but it came back. Well, one night last fall I was lying in bed at night, before going to sleep—at least I was certain that I hadn’t fallen asleep yet, although it did seem sort of like a dream—but anyway I had my eyes open, and I saw…I know you’ll think this sounds crazy, but I saw him, Daniel Lyam Montross, sort of lift himself up out of my body and sit on the edge of the bed. Then he spat on his fingertip, and rubbed it around and around on my wart, saying, ‘What I see increase, What I rub decrease,’ then he lay back into me and I went to sleep. The next morning the wart was gone. Not a trace of it, not even a scar. See?” He thrust the finger right under her nose and looked at her as if defying her to find any trace of a former excrescence. “And that’s not all he did for me,” Day said.

“But I wonder,” Diana said. “If reincarnation, or possession, or whatever it is, is an actual fact, why did he choose you?”

Day laughed. “It is strange, isn’t it? that I’m not like him much at all. From what I gather, Montross was a big, brawling sort of man, always in and out of trouble. We’ve discussed this in the group—Mr. Sedgely’s group—and it might have something to do with karma. Do you know what karma is? No? Well, the Indians—the Indians of India, that is, the Hindus and Buddhists, who believe in reincarnation like it was a simple fact of life—they think that what you do in this life is going to determine the kind of life you’ll have next time around. What it boils down to is that Montross is being punished, you might say”—Day laughed again, self-consciously—“for the wrongdoing of his life, by being forced to be me. He had no choice. He didn’t choose me. He was…sentenced to be me, condemned to be me. I am his damnation!”

Diana laughed too. “It’s so fantastic,” she said. “To think that you might be my grandfather….”

“Did you know him well?” Day asked.

“Barely. I was only three years old when he was…when he died, and I have just a vague memory of him. My family never once mentioned him. He has always been a figure of mystery to me.”

“So now you want to know the truth?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s incredible, but some of the things you said last night…I don’t see how you could have known them, unless…unless you were reading my mind. I would much sooner believe in telepathy than I would believe in reincarnation.”

“Me too,” he admitted. “But you don’t think I would be deliberately hoaxing you…?”

“No, but…” she said. “Other things…for instance, there is no Dudleytown in Connecticut.”

“What is Dudleytown supposed to be?”

“That is where you—or he—was born.”

“How do you know it doesn’t exist?” he asked.

“I checked several maps.”

“Old maps or recent maps?” he said. “What if it once existed, and doesn’t, any more?”

“That’s possible, I suppose….”

“One of the things he said to me, once,” Day declared, “was this: ‘All my towns are fallen.’ That’s what he said, like a lament, like he wanted my sympathy. ‘All my towns are fallen.’”

Eight

Two Impetuous Young People Take It upon Themselves to Do Something

Dudleytown does, in fact, exist, though fallen. It waited for them. Even though it has not appeared on any map for seventy years, and then appeared only under the last of its fragmentary cognomens, Owlsbury, it is still there.

Driving northeast out of New York on Interstate 95 the next morning, Sunday, the middle of June, Diana noticed that her passenger was chewing at a hangnail on one finger. “Nervous?” she asked him.

He stopped chewing at it and dropped his hand to his lap. “Not about that,” he said. “I was just thinking: right about this time I’m supposed to be standing in my robe in the choir of East Passaic Methodist Church.” In an excellent tenor, he roared:

What a friend we have in Jesus!

All our sins and griefs to bear…

“I’ll probably be excommunicated or something,” he said. “If not that, my parents will do something punitive, like cutting off my allowance or forbidding me to go to Scout camp this summer.” He began chewing his hangnail again. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

She saw that he was genuinely nervous. “Go to sleep, Day,” she said. And he did, at once.

She left him like that until they had crossed the state line into Connecticut. After slowing down for a toll booth and tossing a quarter into the hopper, then resuming speed, she said, “You are going to go back, oh, eighty years, until you are a boy, back home in Dudleytown, Connecticut.” She tested him: “Are you there?”

He nodded.

“Well then,” she said. “Where is Dudleytown? What part of Connecticut is it in?”

He took a long moment before replying. “The country part.” The voice was high, thin.

“Which section of the state?” she asked. “East, west, south…?” Again she had to wait for his answer, which was, “Par’me, teacher, please, I dunno.”

She sighed. “How old are you, anyway?” she asked.

“Nine, ma’rm,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “Then you are going to become older, you are older now, you are…fifteen. You are fifteen years old now. What section of Connecticut is Dudleytown in?”

“The hill country, ma’rm,” he replied. The voice was deeper, older. “That would be the western part, would it?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’rm.”

“What is the nearest city?”

“Never been there, ma’rm.”

“The nearest village, then?”

“That would be Cornwall Bridge, ma’rm.”

“Good.” She reached into the glove compartment and drew out her road map. Driving with one hand, she unfolded the map and consulted the index of towns, and found Cornwall Bridge, on U.S. Route 7, in the northwestern part of the state. “Which direction from Cornwall Bridge is Dudleytown?” she asked.

He thought a moment, then said, “To the east, ma’rm.”

“How far?”

“Just a few furlongs up the sound end of Coltsfoot Mountain, ma’rm.”

“All right, Day, you can wake up.”

He did not wake.

“Wake up, Day!” she said loudly to him. Suddenly she realized that although Mr. Sedgely had given her such a simple formula for putting Day into a trance, he had not bothered to tell her how to get him out of a trance, nor had she thought to ask. She slapped herself on the brow. Thinking of rumors she had heard about the danger of a badly hypnotized person sleeping forever, she drove the car off onto the shoulder of the turnpike and stopped. She turned off the ignition. She stared at Day. “Wake up, Day, please,” she said. Lightly she slapped his cheeks. He did not wake. She lifted one of his eyelids and looked at his eye. It stared unseeingly at her; when she released the eyelid it snapped back over the eyeball, covering it again. She shook his shoulder. “Wake up! Wake up!” she pled.

A cruiser pulled in behind her and a Connecticut state trooper got out and approached her. “Having trouble?” he asked.

She tried her best to sound calm. “No, we were just resting.”

“No place for that,” he said. “Stop only at the rest areas.”

“All right,” she said and started the ignition. “I’m sorry.”

The officer was staring at Day. “Your friend all right?” he asked. “Yes, he’s just sleeping one off,” she said, trying to sound cool. She drove away.

She decided that she had better stop at the first telephone and try to reach Mr. Sedgely and ask him how to waken Day. She didn’t want to bother Mr. Sedgely again, though; and what if Mr. Sedgely told her she would have to bring Day back to his house and let him do it? She couldn’t do that; if she turned around and went all the way back she would never get started again. “Oh, Day, damn you, wake up!” she said.

Then while she was puzzling over what might possibly be done, it occurred to her that she had not moved him back in time to the present before trying to wake him. She had left him stranded in 1895.

“Day—” she began but then she realized that that, too, was stupid: to be calling him Day. He was not Day. “Daniel,” she said, “you are going to move through time all the way back to the present. I will count to three and then it will be the present again, and you will be Day again, and you will wake up. One,” she said. Then she said, “Two.” She took a deep breath and said, “Three.”

His eyes popped open. “Stop,” he said. “Turn around. I want to go back.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“I’m worried,” he said. “Please. Let’s go back.”

“Maybe you’re just unsettled,” she said, “because I did a bad job of trying to bring you back from your trance. Maybe it was just a bad trip.”

“I’m sorry I changed my mind, but—”

“Let’s stop for lunch,” she suggested.

She drove off the turnpike at the first food sign and found a diner in Darien. But when they were seated inside, and she asked him what he wanted for lunch, he said he wasn’t hungry.

“Oh, I’ll bet you are, too,” she said. “I’m going to have a cheeseburger. Don’t you want one too? And a milkshake?”

Very quietly he announced, “I didn’t bring any money.”

“Silly!” she said. “This is on me.”

“You have money?” he said.

“Of course.”

He stared at her for a while with what seemed to be a kind of frown. She wondered if it seriously bothered him to be dependent on her. At length he made a wry smile and said, “In that case, and this being Sunday, I’ll have the roast beef dinner.”

“Sure,” she said. “Anything you like.”

But during the meal, he did not talk at all.

She waited until he was finished, hoping that such a heavy meal would soothe him, then she asked, gently, “What frightened you?”

“Not me, I guess,” he replied. “Him.”

“I should think he wasn’t the sort of person to scare easily.”

Day seemed abstracted, as if listening, not to her. Then he said, “‘There’s not ever any going back,’” and “‘All the bridges are burnt.’”

“Is that what he says?” she asked.

Day nodded.

“Then tell him—” she began, but did not finish. She felt ridiculous; she was not even certain that messages could be relayed in that fashion. “Let’s go,” she said. She paid the check and they went out and got into the Porsche. Before she started the motor, she said to him, “It’s your body. He can’t tell you what not to do. And you’re just as excited and eager as I am, aren’t you?” She waited, then asked again, “Aren’t you?”

“Oh yes,” he admitted.

Nine

Finding Dudleytown Proves to Be Difficult

United States Highway Number Seven at one time was the primary south–north route, all the way from Norwalk to Montreal. For this purpose it has been supplanted by New York’s Interstate 87, and its gift shops and motels are not frequented, as they once were. For much of its length in northern Connecticut and southern Massachusetts, it follows the Housatonic River, now on the left bank, now on the right; and it keeps to the trace of original dirt highway of the nineteenth century and before. It passes through some very pretty hill country, deeply wooded, above Candlewood Lake. Artists live around here; so do writers, and critics, and poets and dancers.

Above New Milford, drops splashed randomly on the Porsche’s windshield, beaded, and raced off. Soon Diana had to switch on the wipers. It was the beginning of what was to be one of the heaviest rains of the year, nearly three inches before the day was done, but at that moment it looked to Diana like a passing local shower and she hoped they would soon be through and out of it.

Around three o’clock, that afternoon, in a driving downpour, they saw a road sign: “Cornwall, Town Of. Inc. 1740” and shortly thereafter came into the small crossroads community of Cornwall Bridge. There was not a soul in sight; the rain had driven man and beast to shelter.

There is one general store in Cornwall Bridge, Monroe’s AG General Store with a Mobil gas pump, but Diana discovered it was closed on Sundays. She turned eastward from Cornwall Bridge, onto State Highway 4, and drove slowly for a while, looking for any sign pointing to Dudleytown. A mile out, she turned around and came slowly back. “See anything familiar?” she asked Day.

He shook his head. “I’ve never been here before.”

She liked that. He had never been there before. She wondered if it would help to put him into a trance again, but, apart from her reluctance to chance something that had already given her a few bad moments, she knew that he couldn’t see anything with his eyes closed anyway.

There is one service station in Cornwall Bridge, the Berkshire Garage, an Esso station, and she pulled into it, but discovered that it too was closed on Sundays. She stopped there anyway, turning off the motor and saying, “Well. Now what?”

He asked, “Don’t you even know which direction it is?”

“You said east,” she told him. “He said east.” She pointed “That’s east.” Apart from the State Highway 4, which they had just tried, there was nothing to the east but a high forested hill.

He offered, “I could just go and knock on somebody’s door and ask them.”

“You’ll get wet,” she pointed out. “Let’s wait a while.”

They waited a while, more than a while, fifteen, then twenty minutes, half an hour, but the hard rain did not slacken. If anything it became harder, curtaining all the windows of the car so thickly they could not see out. Diana wanted to smoke a cigarette, but in the stuff y atmosphere of the closed car she did not want to bother Day, who, she had discovered, did not smoke. Then, more than needing a cigarette, she realized she needed to find a toilet. She wondered if the Berkshire Garage’s restrooms were locked. She waited another ten minutes for the rain to let up. It did not. She waited until she could wait no longer, then said, “I’ll be right back,” and opened her door and made a dash around the side of the building, looking for a doorway marked “Ladies.” She found none. She looked all around her, and ran behind the building and into a clump of bushes. The damp branches scratched her and wetted her. She crawled on her knees as deeply into the bushes as she could get, then squatted and tugged her jeans down to her ankles.

When she returned to the car, her hair and clothing were soaked, and the knees of her jeans were covered with mud.

Day looked at her for a moment, then he said, “If you can get wet, so can I.” He got out of the car, and she wondered if he needed to go to the bushes too, but she watched as he ran swiftly across the highway to the nearest house and leapt onto the porch and began knocking at the door. Through the curtain of rain she could not clearly see what response he was getting.

When he returned, he was wetter than she. His shirt clung to him, his hair clung in matted bangs over his forehead, his ears and nose dripped raindrops. He said, “They never heard of it.”

She sighed.

“Are you sure,” he asked, “that this is the right place?”

“It was you,” she protested. “You said Cornwall Bridge. This is Cornwall Bridge.” Then she suggested, “Let’s just drive around some more.”

She started the car and drove slowly back down U.S. 7, watching the left of the road carefully for any side road. There was nothing but a few driveways. The village trickled out; she turned around and drove slowly back once again, and then again turned east toward State Highway 4, determined to follow it farther this time.

She had driven only a short distance when Day said, “Hey, look!” and pointed. She slowed the car. There, to the right of the highway, was a small asphalt road that did not seem to be a driveway. It had a signpost on it, an ordinary urban street sign, saying “Dark Entry Road.” She turned into it.

But only a short distance up this road the asphalt pavement stopped, or rather it curved into the driveway and garage of a large new ranch-style house with an immaculately kept lawn. There was, however, a continuation of the road at the curve: it became suddenly a rough, rutted trail of dirt turned by the rain into mud. Beside it had been erected a small hand-lettered sign, apparently by the owners of the ranch-style: “No parking within 15 feet.”

Diana eased the car into the crude trail, and kept going. All along the woods to the left were new signs nailed to trees, printed on yellow metal:

NO HUNTING

NO TRESPASSING

Under Penalty of the Law

—R. Wendell

The trail was steep, and the Porsche’s rear wheels began spinning in the mud; Diana realized the car would go no farther. Slowly she backed down the trail, steering with one hand and craning her neck to see through the rear window. She backed all the way to the broad asphalt driveway of the ranch-style, and there turned around.

Day gestured at the house and said, “I’ll go ask them if that goes to Dudleytown.”

Diana observed, “If the Wendells live there, obviously they don’t want anybody using their road anyway.”

There was one other house farther on down the road, near the highway, an old colonial saltbox nicely restored. “I’ll try that,” Day said, and got out of the car and ran off through the rain. This time she saw that the door of the house was opened to him, and he went in, and did not reappear for many long minutes.

He was smiling triumphantly when he returned to the car. “This is it, all right,” he declared. “I talked to a nice old lady. She even offered to have me dry my clothes. She says this is the original Dark Entry Road which goes on up the hill to Dudleytown. But listen, there’s nothing up there.” He paused to let this sink in, then he said, “That’s what she says, there’s nothing at all up there, and anyway you can’t drive a car up there, and she says you can’t even go on foot because a rain like this washes the trail out.”

“Well, darn it,” Diana commented in disappointment.

“But wait a minute,” Day hastened to add. “She told me something else….”

Ten

At Length Dudleytown Is Located and Partially Explored

“I told him there was a better way to get into Dudleytown,” Miss Mary Elizabeth Evans related to me, that bleary afternoon in March of the following year. She served tea. I showed her the two photographs. “Yes, that was him,” she said, pointing at one of the photographs. “He told me he was a Boy Scout from New Jersey. But I didn’t see her. Perhaps she was the other one in the car. He just told me that he and a friend had heard about Dudleytown and wanted to explore it. I said, ‘Young man, what kind of exploring can you do in a rain like this?’ but he said they weren’t in any hurry for the rain to stop. Well, anyway, I told him the best way to get into Dudleytown was to go back down Route 7, the way they’d come, for about a mile until they came to Route 45 on the left, and take that for about another mile until they came to the first road on the left. That’s the real Dudleytown Road, you see. I knew they wouldn’t get very far along it, either, not in that low-slung sports car they were driving, but at least the going on foot’s a lot easier from that side. More tea?”

I shook my head, and she went on, “Much later in the summer I heard that somebody was camping out up there, but I never thought to make any connection with them. I thought this Boy Scout just wanted to spend a couple of hours poking around amongst the old cellar holes, you know, and I thought a rain like that would probably drive them away. He seemed such a young man to be going into Dudleytown, even with a companion, so I told him, not just out of perversity but because I was concerned about him, he was a nice young man, I told him Dudleytown is haunted. That’s the truth, it is. I said, ‘Wait, young man, and let me tell you about the “Curse of Dudleytown.”’ But he just said, ‘Thank you, lady, but I’d rather find it out for myself.’ And he walked right out that door.”

The turnoff into Dudleytown was easy to find, and neatly asphalted, with a white center line at the intersection. Diana mashed the gas pedal to the floor and started up it; they passed several houses, first an old brown-shingled colonial, then a rustic brown-clapboard chalet of the general Swiss-modern type, then an even more modern house of gray shingles. People of means lived in these; this end of Dudleytown, at least, was well inhabited.

The asphalt road continued climbing, becoming wider and newer, all the way up to the top of the hill, where it ended in a broad turnaround. Although no houses were visible from here, it had all the earmarks of a housing development street. Beyond the turnaround, Diana noticed, the old road continued, a crude trail through the woods similar to the beginning of Dark Entry Road. She drove into it, the car hit a hole and bounced, and the undercarriage scraped a rock or something with a jarring rasp. She slowed to a crawl, and continued. The road here was level but then it began to descend.

At least there were no “No Trespassing” signs here; no signs of any kind. As the descent became steeper, and the car’s wheels began sliding, Diana braked to a halt and stretched her head forward to peer down into the declivity. She was not at all convinced the Porsche could manage such a road, and she told Day so; then she backed—or tried to back—out. After several minutes of spinning the rear wheels in the mud, she managed to back the car next to a level glade beside the left of the road, and to back the car into this glade, off the road, with a minimum of scrapes on the undercarriage. The rain had slackened some, but was still coming steadily down. They would walk from here; they were both so wet already, it didn’t matter.

Diana got one of her suitcases from the rear of the car, and opened it, not to remove her raincoat—because she did not want to wear a raincoat if Day had none—but to get a pair of hiking shoes to replace her sandals. After lacing them up, she closed and locked the car, and they continued down the rugged trail on foot.

The woods on both sides of them made a tunnel over the trail and sheltered them from the full brunt of the rain. Diana tuned all her senses to take in the experience; the first sense was of smell: the rich woodsy fragrance of the forest, enhanced by the wetness of the rain.

The downslope of the trail was abrupt and, because of the mud, slippery. Several times Diana stumbled but Day caught her arm. He seemed to be watching out for her. Now, at least, she was dependent on him.

Except for a great stone wall bordering the road in the woods to their right, there was no sign at all of anything left by man. The forest was all second growth—but a second growth which had begun growing seventy years or more before. The hardwoods were large in girth, and dense hemlocks and spruces filled the spaces between the hardwoods.

The ground cover, the carpet of the forest, was what she liked most. She asked Day if he knew what it consisted of, and he readily named the names for it, rattling them off his tongue almost mechanically: seven different kinds of fern, moosewood or striped maple seedlings with big green leaves the size of a baby elephant’s ear, and everywhere the low light-green diadems of the ground pine. She bent down and picked one of these and held it to her nose.

The stone wall was massive, a work of great effort and determination; large sections of it had been toppled by frosts and winds, animals and earth tremors—whatever there is that doesn’t love a wall.

They came to a broad gap in the wall which obviously was not a toppled section but an opening that had once been a gate. They walked through it, and looked for signs of a house but found none, and so came back to the main road and continued down it.

The rain fell without any thunder or lightning; if it had been an electrical storm, Day, a good Scout, would not have wanted to be out.

Vapors hung like low clouds among the trees.

The forest was dark; Diana realized she was still wearing her sunglasses and pushed them up on top of her hair; still the forest was dark.

An old road diverged into the woods at the right, in an avenue between the massive stone walls. They did not take it.

On the trail ahead of them they caught a swift glimpse of a small animal scurrying across the road. Diana asked Day what it was but he said he hadn’t seen all of it, just its tail. A fox, maybe.

At five o’clock they came to the first cellar hole.

Diana had never seen a cellar hole before, and did not know what it was. Day, pointing it out, told her. A large clump of white birch grew up out of it. They brushed their way through weeds and bushes to reach the edge of it, and stood on the edge looking down. In the dank hole Diana could see rubble: fallen stones, bits of rotted wood, pieces of thoroughly rusted iron, shards of old crockery. Diana wanted to ask him who had lived there. To get an answer, she would have to put him into a trance. It did not seem to be an important cellar hole. She would wait until they came to something else. They went on.

They passed the exact center of Dudleytown, some time later, without knowing it: the junction of Dudleytown Road with Dark Entry Road. They did not even notice, to their left, in the brush beside a giant maple, the dark exit of Dark Entry. They walked on past a turning of the trail before coming to another cellar hole. This one was larger than the first, but just as barren; a clump of gray-green poplars nearly filled it.

They hiked another quarter-mile without finding anything of significance, except another cellar hole. Diana did not know if they had reached Dudleytown yet; she did not know that they had passed it; but she was becoming a little tired of hiking. Her jeans were soaked and chafed her thighs. She felt like taking off her shirt and wringing it out.

There was no shelter. No roof remained in Dudleytown; no rock ledge to get under out of the rain. The nearest ceiling she knew of was that of her car—a mile? or more behind them. But then the rain ceased, for a while.

“You’re trembling,” Day told her. “I’ll make a little fire, and we’ll rest.”

She laughed. “With what? What will you make a fire with?”

“Do you have a match?” he asked.

From the pocket of her jeans she drew out a limp book of matches, showed him how wet they were, laughed, and threw them away.

He picked them up and gave them back to her. “Don’t litter,” he said. Then he fished in his own pocket and brought out a jackknife. It was a regulation Boy Scout pocketknife, even with the official crest on it. “I always carry this,” he said.

“I suppose it has a built-in Ronson lighter,” she said.

“Wait here a minute,” he said, and left her beside the cellar hole while he plunged off into the woods.

He was gone more than a minute, closer to ten minutes. When he came back out of the woods, he was holding something in each hand: in one hand what appeared to be some sticks, in the other hand a small mass of some fluff y-looking stuff and a rock.

“You’re just going to rub a couple of sticks together, I suppose, and presto!” she said doubtfully. “Where did you find dry sticks?”

“They’re not dry,” he said. He squatted beside a large flat rock and began whittling the pieces of wood into a pile on the rock. “I found them on a burnt white pine,” he explained. “It’s got so much pitch it’ll ignite in a downpour.”

“Ignite with what?” she asked.

“Just you watch,” he said. After making a small pile of the slivers of pine, he dumped the pile onto the small mass of fluff he had found. It seemed to be thoroughly dry.

“Where did you find anything so dry?” she asked.

“In a hollow log,” he said, and added, “of course”—somewhat smugly, she thought.

He placed the rock (“flint, of course,” he explained) besides the little pile of fluff and began striking it with glancing blows from the back of his pocketknife. Then he quickly knelt and began puffing at the pile. Soon she saw a tiny wisp of smoke curl upward from it, and, as he continued blowing, the shavings of pine suddenly ignited with a billow of thick black smoke. “Now,” he said, getting up, “anything you put on that will burn, wet or not.” He picked up several twigs and sticks from the ground and piled them on.

Within a few minutes, he had a crackling blaze going, and while she stood drying herself beside it he roamed the woods for more fuel.

After he returned, with an armload of sticks, she told him, “You are a perfect genius.”

He held up three fingers in the Boy Scout sign and said, “My good deed for today.” He put more wood on the fire, then rolled a small boulder close to the fire and patted it with his hand, saying, “Have a seat.” She sat on the boulder, and felt the heat already drying the denim on her legs and knees. “Comfy, now?” he asked. She nodded vigorously and smiled. “Welcome to Dudleytown!” he said.

She laughed. “Where is it?” she asked.

He swept his arms in a wide arc. “All around, I guess.”

“But how do you know this is the right place?” she asked. “Unless…does this seem at all familiar to you?”

“Very vaguely,” he said. “Not the sight of it, but just the…the spirit of the place.”

“Do you like it?” she wondered.

“It’s not bad,” he said. He squatted close to the fire and raised his arms, pinching the sides of his shirt to tug it away from his skin. Soon it was no longer stuck to him. “It’s very peaceful up here,” he remarked. Then he asked, “Do you hear anything?”

She listened keenly, a bit alarmed at his question, but heard nothing, except the dripping of drops from trees, and a distant bird call. “No. Why?” she asked. “What do you hear?”

“I…it just sounded like…” he said, and seeing her tensed expression, “it’s nothing. Do you know Beethoven’s Sixth? The Pastoral? The part toward the end, after the storm, when the storm has passed…?”

“Yes?”

“It just sounds like that,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. She stood up. She raised both arms above her head. She lifted high one leg. He stared. Slowly she wound into a grapevine, then, bent, broke at the waist, double, hearing the oboe form a rainbow, then, to the rustic yodeling of the clarinets and horns, she began to move, spinning, drifting, caracoling around the old cellar hole and around the fire. He could light fires in rain. What could she do but dance? Her one talent, in exchange for his: that is what you can do, see what I can do. She interpreted the post-tempest allegretto of the Pastoral: she wove a country jig and hornpipe of well-being: Hirtengesang, Frohe and dankbare Gefule nach dem Sturm. A saltatory shepherdess.

He watched, entranced, but then he rose and slapped her, smartly, his palm clapping the side of her neck.

Abruptly she ceased her dance.

He showed her his palm, the tiny smear of her blood around the crushed wings. “You had a mosquito,” he said.

She rubbed the spot it had bit. The magic of the moment was shot, her dance squashed like a bug. She smacked him on his ear, then showed him her hand, saying, “So did you,” but the bug she killed on him, at least, had not yet gorged itself; she’d killed it clean. Did Beethoven’s shepherds, gladsome and thankful after the storm, swat mosquitoes while they sang?

They laughed and walked on, a ways, waving their arms around their heads to keep the bugs away. The rain began again, to snuff their fire.

“You dance good,” he said, off hand, ungrammatical.

“You make fires good,” she returned.

They found a byroad, dropping off to their left and disappearing into the woods. They thought, mistakenly, that this was Dark Entry, and turned into it. It went down to a small swampy brook, one of the many narrow forks of Bonny Brook, its indigo water sloughing through bracken and wild blue iris. They stepped over it, the road ascended and they followed it up the hill to its end, in a glade.

Diana gasped. All around, all over this glade on the hillside, sprawling in rise after rise, were thousands of snowy white blossoms, large multi-floreted clumps stretching up from their dark green shrubs and raising their cups to the raindrops. Inhaling, Diana caught a smother of the sweet fragrance that pervaded the air. Exhaling, she sang a small “Oh!” in enchanted awe. She had never seen so many blossoms in one place, so white, so teeming, so sweet. She plunged among them, crying, “Look, look, oh look!”

“Mountain laurel,” said Day matter-of-factly, and then, as if to belittle their magic, “state flower of Connecticut. Pennsylvania too.”

“But so many of them…” she said. “Everywhere. All over. Didn’t anybody plant them, once?”

“I doubt it,” he said. “They grow wild.”

Diana swung around, a pirouette through the mountain laurel shrubs. “Wouldn’t this be a great place for a house?” she said. This rise of ground was open, a glade free of tall trees; uphill the forest of hemlocks became dark and deep again, but here, if the sun were shining, they would be in the light, and the dazzling white blossoms would be in the light too.

“Maybe there was a house,” Day said. “The road came here.” He began looking around for a cellar hole. She joined him, and they tramped back and forth all over the glade, but found no remains of any dwelling.

They wandered farther and farther away from the glade of the mountain laurel. Diana realized they had been strolling through the woods for some time, keeping to no road or trail or path, for there was none. She was surprised at how easy it was to drift at random through the woods, without obstacle or impediment—no briars or thorns to snatch at them, no quicksand to step into, not even very many fallen trees to climb under or over. But then she wondered why they were doing this, and asked him, “Where are we going?”

“I don’t know,” he replied with a shrug. “Where are we going?”

“We could get lost, this way,” she said.

“I’ve never been lost,” he said.

“Is that you speaking?” she asked. “Or grandpa?”

“Just me,” he said.

What they needed to find, she decided, was a cemetery, the Dudleytown cemetery, wherever it was, and what she needed to find was a headstone or two engraved montross, his parents or relatives. But a cemetery out in the middle of a dark and haunted forest would have unsettled her, would, in fact, have terrified her. She didn’t need a cemetery.

Nor did she need the next thing they found: a trail. A clearly marked trail winding around through the woods with the trees on either side of it blazed with small painted white triangles.

“Aha,” said Day.

“Aha what?” she said. “What is this?”

“This,” he said, pointing at one of the painted white triangles on a tree, “is the blaze mark of the Appalachian Trail.”

“Oh, drat!” she said. The Appalachian Trail! The main thoroughfare for hikers, all the way from Maine to Georgia, running right through the middle of their Dudleytown! She looked both ways up and down the trail, expecting to see a safari of back-packing Alpine-clad hikers come trudging cheerily along.

“Well, let’s follow it a little way,” Day suggested. “Probably it rejoins one of the Dudleytown roads.”

The Appalachian Trail does rejoin the Dark Entry Road at one point, but not in the direction they turned. Thus they walked on up the trail for a considerable distance without finding a road, while in the upper atmosphere high above their heads new winds blew new combinations of air and cloud into a mass that was statically charged. They did not see the first flash of lightning, beyond the hilltop, but they heard the distant rumble of thunder.

“Uh-oh!” Day said. “Now we’re in for it.” He began to trot.

“Wait for me!” she cried, trying to keep up with him.

The trail began to descend, and Diana hoped that by some wondrous luck it might suddenly come out onto the Dudleytown Road right beside the safety of her car. She did not know that they were running in the opposite direction.

The woods were for an instant illuminated by a nearer flash of lightning, and the following report of thunder sounded like cannon fire.

“Well, there’s an old saying,” panted Day over his shoulder at her, trying to sound flippant, “‘If you heard the thunder, the lightning did not strike you. If you saw the lightning it missed you. If it did strike you, you would not have known it.’”

“You cheer me up enormously,” she said.

As the trail mounted the crest of a small knoll, Day suddenly stopped and pointed. “Look!” he said.

A huge boulder, large as a grounded yacht, seemed to be perched upon a group of smaller boulders at one end of the knoll. Dark crevices showed on its underside: a tiny cave, a shelter. Day took her arm and ran toward it.

The niche, the snug den, was just large enough for the two of them to sit side by side, half-reclining. Diana did not feel completely secure, thinking of the tremendous weight of the boulder balanced overhead.

Day read her thoughts. “It would take more than lightning to crack this rock,” he said and gave it an appreciative rap with his knuckles.

They were, then, safe. Except for having to swat at mosquitoes now and then, they were cozy. Evening was coming on, and Diana did not want to stay there after dark. But it was a nice temporary refuge from the storm.

Cloudburst, thunderclap, downpour, were so noisy as to make conversation difficult, had they not been placed, by the confines of the den, so close beside one another, mouth to ear. They talked.

Diana conjectured that such a large boulder, rare for the area, must have been there a long time. She knew little about geology, but as she told Day, she knew the boulder must have fallen off a bluff, yet there were no bluffs in sight. The point was, she said, that the boulder must have been there when Daniel Lyam Montross was young, and, if so, he would probably recognize it as a landmark.

She asked his permission to find out. A formality.

He readily consented, but reminded her that with his eyes closed he could not see the boulder, and asked her to open his eyes. It could be done, easily, he said. He told her of a time he had watched Mr. Sedgely open a girl’s eyes so she could see an eighteenth-century chamberpot he had found and correctly identify it for what it was. A test.

“Well then,” Diana said. “Go to sleep, Day.”

He did, and she moved him back to the fifteenth year of her grandfather, and told him he was in Dudleytown, Connecticut, reclining beneath an enormous boulder in the woods. Then she told him to open his eyes and see the boulder above him.

Eleven

Under a Rock in the Rain, an Exchange Is Had with Young “Daniel”

Do you know where you are?

———Sure. Looks to be ole Landlocked Whale.

Is that what you call it?

What I call it. Some jist call it The Rock.

How far is your house from here?

As near as no matter.

How near is that?

Two whoops ’n a holler.

You’re looking at me. Can you see me?

Naw, I’m blind a one eye, ’n caint see out th’other.

Really?

’Course I can see you, nimsky! Who are ye, anyhow?

You don’t know me?

You aint Violate, less ye blanched yer hair.

Violate? Violate what?

T’aint what but who.

Violate who, then?

Violate Parmenter.

Is that a name?

Naw, it’s a gull! Hoo.

Who is she?

Eph Parmenter’s gull. Who are you?

I’m just…a friend.

Friend a whose?

Yours.

Do say? Are you a Thornback?

No. Who are they?

T’aint they but them. It’s a what.

What’s a thornback?

Maiden gull. Aint you past marrying age?

Well…maybe by your standards I am.

What in tunkit are ye doing here in the belly of the Landlocked Whale?

Waiting for the rain to stop. And I’m lost.

Lost from where?

Dudleytown.

Huh? It’s not but right down the hill, yender. How’d ye get lost?

I just…went the wrong way…in the woods. Do ye want I should show ye the way?

Please, thank you.

Soon’s the rain quits. Which house ye going to? Well…I guess the Montross house.

Huh? That’s my house. What’re ye going there fer?

I…I’d just like to meet your father.

Why? Are ye some kin a his?

Yes…distantly…on my mother’s side.

My father’s dead. Didn’t ye know that?

No. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to hear that. When did he die?

Few months back. Fell in one a the charcoal pits. ’Least that’s what people think. I shouldn’t wonder but what he uz pushed.

Who do you think pushed him?

Ferrenzo Allyn, that skunk.

Why would he have pushed him?

Pure spite. Dad bested him, once.

Do you just live with your mother, then?

Yep. Just me and her.

No brothers or sisters?

They’ve all flew the roost.

Where’d they go?

Ohio. Illinois. Nick’s all the way out to Montana, last we heerd a him.

Why did you stay here?

Huh? Somebody’s got to look after Ma, don’t they?

Is she not well?

Not so’s she can manage on her own. She has spells frequent. Able to set up ’n eat a few porridges, though. Say, you wouldn’t be looking fer a place, would ye?

A place?

A position. Hire on fer your keep. Only wondered, happen but what ye was, Ma’d be glad to take ye in, and…I could go off some’ers and look fer me a good job a work. But naw, I cal’late you’re too pindling fer chopping wood and such, aint ye?

Do you want to leave home?

Who wouldn’t, on half a chance? Dudleytown’s all pegged out, dead to your navel. Weren’t fer Ma ’n Violate, I’d a been back a beyond long since.

Is Violate your girlfriend?

Some has been known to say so.

Do you plan to marry her when you grow up?

Grow up? Dear me suz! Aint I growed enough yet fer ye? Naw, prolly Eph Parmenter won’t ’low it. ’Sides, Renz Allyn’s done staked her out.

The same one who pushed your father…?

Yep, ’n Satan git’im.

Is he bigger than you?

Naw, but a good sight older.

The rain is slacking. Could we go now?

Yep, let’s hyper out! Come on, it’s not far, ’n Maw’d be proud to meet ye if you’re some kin a Dad’s. Jist a piece down the path, yender….

———

What’s the matter?

That tree. Don’t reckerlect it being there. And somebody’s been pushing stuns off Jenner’s stun wall. He won’t like that.

———

Now what’s wrong?

Right peculiar. I could swear this here’s our gate, but look at all the weeds! I just mowed the durn thing last week.

———

Great keezer’s ghost! Would ye take a gander at that! If I aint slipped a cog, the mountain laurel bushes has eaten up our house, be jiggers!

Are you sure that’s where your house is?

Sure? Why, sure as God made little green apples! Them laurel bushes has swallered up the house! And where’s Ma? Ma!

All right, Daniel, close your eyes. You are coming back, you are moving on back to the present, and on the count of three you will be back in the present time. One…two…

Twelve

An Awkward Situation Is Encountered, Also a Disappointing Revelation

“I thought we were under a big rock,” Day said. “How did we get back here?”

“You led me back here,” she said. “Or he did. He claims this is where his house was.”

It was strange, more than strange, Diana thought, that he had led her back to the same glade of mountain laurel where previously she had exclaimed, Wouldn’t this be a great place for a house? Could it be that in his subconscious (or even his conscious, if he were only feigning his trances) he knew that she liked it and would consider it an ideal site for a house? The skeptic in Diana was stirred. A beautiful and seemingly authentic conversation she had had with “Daniel,” but she could not quite dismiss the possibility that it was only the product of Day’s imaginative mind.

“It’s getting awfully late,” Day observed. “Shouldn’t we…don’t you think we ought to be getting out of here?”

“I just wonder where that cellar hole is,” Diana said, looking around.

“Maybe all the houses didn’t have cellars,” he said.

“That’s a fortuitous explanation,” she said. “And gratuitous too.”

“It’s too dark to search any more now,” he said. Then, as if in consolation, he added, “We could come back….”

“When?” she wanted to know.

“Well…” he scratched a mosquito bite on the back of his neck “…whenever you want to, I guess.”

She turned her back to him for a last glance at the lovely mountain laurel. Without facing him, she asked, “Did you want to go back to New Jersey tonight?” She might have been alone, asking the question of the woods.

“Well…” he stumbled, clearly uncomfortable, “I…I didn’t know what you had in mind. I guess so, yes. I thought we were just coming up here for the day, and now the day’s almost over. I…”

She turned. “Let’s go find something to eat, and then we can talk about it. I’m famished.”

Full dark settled on the woods before they reached her car. Hiking back up the Dudleytown Road in the dark was difficult; she tripped on rocks and stepped in mudholes up to her ankles. From a tree overhead an owl hooted like a horn out of hell and momentarily petrified her. Day, too, jumped, but then he laughed and told her what it was.

The dark bulk of the car loomed in its glade like a welcome oasis. She was so glad to be back to it that after getting in she just sat for a moment relishing the comfort of the soft bucket seat and letting the cool evening air dry the sweat on her brow. She found a pack of cigarettes in the glove compartment and lighted one, and never had a cigarette tasted so good. If only she had a drink. She decided to find one as soon as possible. She started the car and drove quickly out of Dudleytown.

In the village of Cornwall Bridge, everything was dark and closed; the Bonny Brook Motel did not seem to have any restaurant attached. She wondered where the nearest eatery was. If she had crossed the bridge, she would have found on the opposite bank of the Housatonic the “Elms Restaurant,” a small Coca-Cola-type roadside cafe where they could have had, if not drinks, a decent supper, but she did not know that, and would have to find some other place. She pulled up alongside an outdoor phone booth next to Monroe’s General Store, and consulted the yellow pages, looking under “Inns.” The first entry was “McDonough Motor Lodge, Cornwall Bridge.” Where was it? Had they passed it on Route 7, coming into the village? She believed they had, and drove out that way.

It was a mile back down Route 7. She pulled into it and parked. The inn was a pretty, almost lavish place, converted from a colonial house, freshly painted red, and having the general appearance of an expensive country restaurant.

“We can’t go in a place like that looking like this,” Day said.

“Oh, why not? It’s Sunday night and nobody dresses up,” she said.

“They’ll throw us out,” Day said. “Did you ever read about what happened to Justice Douglas of the Supreme Court and his friends when they tried to stop at that inn in Maryland after hiking in the rain?”

“I don’t care, darn it,” she said. “I’m hungry and thirsty. I doubt if they have curb service, but maybe they could put up something to take out. Look, you just wait here and I’ll go see what I can see.”

Diana got out of the car. She noticed that the motel units of the inn were in a separate row of red buildings topped with cupolas to look as if they had been converted from a carriage barn or stables. She went into the inn and found one room marked “Dining Room,” another marked “Bar”; she took the latter. There were only a few customers in the room, which was opulently decorated in colonial motifs with a militaristic aspect: guns and drums and wall decorations of soldiers and Indians. She caught sight of herself in a mirror: her stringy wet hair: she looked like a drowned Angora kitten. A man sitting at the bar began to stare at her. The bartender, or proprietor, or innkeeper, was nowhere in sight. She waited, as inconspicuously as possible, at one end of the bar. While she waited, she thought.

Hunger and thirst often inspire one with desperate and even uncharacteristic stratagems. When a man finally appeared whom she took to be in charge, she asked him if they had any rooms.

“Yes, we do,” he said pleasantly, looking her not in the eye but at the top of her wet hair. “Single or double?”

She kept the ringless fingers of her left hand in her pocket to keep them out of sight and said, “Double.” For an instant she had wanted to say, “Two singles” but that would have seemed rather unusual.

The man produced a card for her to fill out and sign. On impulse, she wrote “Mr. and Mrs. D.L. Montross.” She hoped that there weren’t any relatives or Montrosses still living in the neighborhood.

“That your Porsche out there?” the man asked.

“Yes it is,” she said.

“Nice,” he said. “Very pretty.”

“Is it possible,” she asked, “to have dinner in the rooms?” When the man looked up at her, she said, “You see, my husband and I have been out picking mountain laurel, and we got caught in the rain, and my husband twisted his ankle, and—”

“Oh, certainly. Certainly,” the man said, and he handed her a key, and said, “that will be Unit 5. Just across the way there.”

“Thank you,” she said and turned to go.

The man stopped her. “Here’s a menu,” he said. “Just phone in whenever you like.”

“Thank you,” she said again and returned to her car. She got in and backed it out of its parking place.

“No curb service, huh?” Day said.

“No,” she said and turned the car around to drive it close to Unit 5 of the motel wing on the other side of the lot.

“Well, there’s bound to be a truck stop or something on down the highway,” Day said.

“I’d rather eat here,” she said, pulling to a stop outside the doorway of Number 5, and hoping she wouldn’t have to do any explaining to Day, and hoping even more that he wouldn’t have any objections, or put up any argument, or have any scruples or whatever. If he got difficult, she told herself with a smile, she could always just put him to sleep with a few magic words.

“What’s this?” Day said, as the car stopped, and she got out.

“Our private dining room,” she said. “Come on. And just in case anybody’s looking, you’re supposed to have a twisted ankle, so limp, will you?”

Day obligingly limped. She put the key into the lock and opened the door. It did not, unfortunately, look very much like a private dining room. It looked like a bedroom. There were twin beds, at least, amply separated. On the whole, the room was a very pleasant one; it was spacious and looked both comfortable and expensive, both of which it was.

“Well well,” said Day, looking around. “Money will do anything, won’t it?”

“That’s a boorish remark, sir,” she said. Then she sat on one of the beds and reached for the telephone. “The first thing I’m going to do,” she told him, “is have a drink. Do you want one?”

“Sure,” he said. “I’m so thirsty I could drink a barrel.”

“Of what?” she said.

“Pepsi Cola?” he said.

“I’m going to have a big, double, frosty gin and tonic,” she said. “Wouldn’t you like one?”

“Pepsi Cola is okay with me, if they have any,” he said.

She picked up the phone and ordered one gin and tonic and one Pepsi Cola.

Then there was the problem of dry clothes. Would it be fair of her to change, if he could not? Did she have anything he could wear? He was at least five inches taller than she, and, though thin, at least fifteen or twenty pounds heavier. Would anything fit him? Her raincoat, at least?

“Would you bring in my luggage?” she asked. “No, I’m sorry, I forgot about your poor ankle, dear. I’ll get them.”

“I’ll get them,” he said. “What’s supposed to be wrong with my poor ankle dear?”

“You twisted it on our hike in the rain,” she said. “That’s why we have to eat in our room instead of the dining room.”

“Oh, ow!” he said, rubbing his ankle. Then he took off his belt and began wrapping it carefully around the ankle in what seemed to be an official Boy Scout sprain-brace.

She laughed. “That’s the wrong foot.”

“Huh?” he said. “Did you have to specify which foot?” He laughed too, and wrapped the belt around the other ankle. “There,” he said. “That will hold it until you can get me to a doctor.” Then without levity he asked, “Did you tell them…did you have to say that I’m…you know, pretend that we’re…that…”

“Mr. and Mrs. Montross,” she said. “Mountain laurel pickers.”

There was a knock at the door, and a blonde waitress brought in a tray with their drinks. Day turned away from her and limped toward the bathroom. Diana searched her purse for change to tip the waitress, but decided to wait and put it on the larger tip for dinner.

The waitress put the tray down and took out her order book. “Are you ready to order dinner?” she asked.

“We just got here,” Diana said. “I’ll phone it in.”

“Certainly,” the waitress said, and went away.

Diana sipped her gin and tonic, lighted a cigarette, and studied the menu. She heard the toilet flush in the bathroom, and in another minute Day came out, and, still limping, went out the front door. He returned carrying both of her suitcases. “You want all that other junk brought in, too?” he asked.

“What other junk?” she asked.

“There’s a box of books, and some pictures and stuff…”

“Oh, that’s just from cleaning out my room at the college,” she said. “Never mind that.”

Day sat down across from her, on the other bed, and while she studied the menu he seemed to study the back side of the menu. Suddenly he said, “Well damn.”

She looked up from the menu, astonished to hear his first cuss word. “Damn what?”

He jerked the menu out of her hands and turned it over, showing her the reverse side. “Look,” he said. “Just look.”

On the back of the menu was a map, a black and white spider web of roads and trails and streams. Upon the map was printed: “Dudleytown, 1747–1920.” Beneath that in large letters was:

LEGEND OF DUDLEYTOWN

followed by four paragraphs of text, with faulty punctuation and syntax:

Supposedly doomed from its beginning, Dudleytown, located in Cornwall today consists of cellar foundations barely seen through forest growth. In its time Dudleytown supplied charcoal for the Salisbury Iron works a booming industry in the early 1800’s. The settlers were hard-bitter Puritan people who toiled ceaselessly at their charcoal pits. With the coming of improved Iron making techniques, Dudleytown days were numbered, but, it has been said that for more than economic factors were responsible for the death of the town.

The Dudleys were a family of no little importance in England. The beginning of the 16th century, they had recurring periods of bad luck in which English Monarchs beheaded them. For the next 125 years misfortune plagued the inhabitants of the doomed town. The last American Dudley went mad and disease and famine depleted the population. When Horace Greely failed to win the Presidency the cause was rumored to be his Dudleytown bride.

In 1901 the town was deserted and the area was called Owlsburg by the people of Cornwall because of it’s haunting sounds. The road leading to it is called Dark Entry.

Today houses fringe its borders and hikers report nothing menacing inside it. If the Dudley curse is finally dead, or if it ever existed at all is a matter of question—some people disclaim talks of ghosts and the Dudleys doom, but the fact is that as yet nobody has tested it. Some surprises might be in store for the man who lives on the ground Abiel Dudley trod before him.

“Makes it look like the local tourist attraction, doesn’t it?” Day remarked.

Diana nodded. It was a shock, and a revelation for her, to see that the town which they had “discovered” after so much trouble was already discovered and exposed to anybody looking at the menu of a local inn. It dampened her enthusiasm. She could take the dampness of the rain but not this. Day as well seemed disappointed, and she found herself apologizing, “But we didn’t see any tourists or hikers.”

“Of course not,” he said. “Because of the rain. But on clear days, you probably have to stand in line and buy a ticket.”

“Oh, I doubt it,” she said. “We didn’t see any footprints or any sign of anybody having been there.”

“The rain too,” he said, “would have washed any footprints away.”

“Well,” she said, feeling somewhat exasperated, “shall we just forget the whole thing?” It was a rhetorical question and he did not make any reply. She reopened the menu and handed it to him. “Here,” she said, “we might as well salvage something out of this. What do you want to eat?”

As he studied the menu, his eyebrows raised, probably at the prices. At length, he said, “I believe I’ll have the roast beef.”

“You had roast beef for lunch,” she reminded him.

“You’re right, I did, didn’t I?’ he said. “Well, hmmm. I guess I’ll take the veal scallopini.”

“I will too, then,” she said. “Shall we have a wine? Or do you prefer Pepsi Cola?”

“Iced tea,” he said.

She phoned in the order. For herself she ordered a half-bottle of Antinori Classico, a Chianti.

Then she opened one of her suitcases. She announced, “I’m going to shower and change into something dry.”

She took a quick shower and put on one of her better summer dresses. For such a fancy dinner, even in your room, you ought to dress. Especially if your dinner companion is a poor teetotaling Boy Scout who has nothing to dress in. When she came out of the bathroom, she plugged in her hair dryer and put the net over her head. Then she reached over and took her London Fog raincoat out of the suitcase and tossed it to him. “Here,” she said. “See if this fits. You ought to get out of those wet clothes.”

Thirteen

A Rapport of Sorts Is Reached

It was an excellent dinner, if a peculiar one. Day would not come out of the bathroom until the waitress and her cart were gone. Then, when he did appear, Diana tried hard not to laugh. Several inches of wrist protruded out of the sleeves of the raincoat, and he had to hold his breath to keep the front buttons from popping. Then he had to be careful how he sat, because he had nothing on underneath.

They ate leisurely, but did not talk much. Diana remarked that her wine was a superb one, and wouldn’t he like to sample just a sip of it? He did, but did not seem to appreciate it very highly.

At one point, he confessed, “I drank a beer, once.”

“A whole bottle?” Diana said in pretended awe. “Did you pass out?”

He frowned at her. “My parents drink,” he said. “But in New Jersey, you know, the legal age is twenty-one.”

“I see,” she said. Boy Scouts take a pledge to be honest and trustworthy and all that. And Methodists take The Pledge, period. Probably Daniel Lyam Montross had been a drunkard, and was paying the price for it in his present incarnation.

“I took some speed once, too,” he boasted.

“Really?” she said. “Well, that’s something I’ve never tried.”

“I didn’t like it, though,” he said.

“I hear it’s sometimes quite unpleasant,” she said.

“Yes. I’ll bet you’ve smoked pot, haven’t you?”

“On occasion.”

“Is that much fun?”

“I’m not sure ‘fun’ is the word. I didn’t particularly like it, but on the other hand it didn’t seem to do much for me.”

“I was offered some, once,” he admitted, “but I don’t smoke.”

“I doubt you missed anything,” she said.

So went the tenor of their table talk. When they were finished eating—or rather, after Day finished his dessert, strawberry shortcake, which she did not have—she asked if he would care to find out if there was anything interesting on television. He turned the set on, and they watched the last twenty minutes of a variety show—acrobats, a talking dog, a weightlifter and two singers—then the eleven o’clock news and weather report. Clearing tomorrow.

A late movie came on, but Diana turned the set off. “Let’s just talk,” she said. The gin and wine she’d had were making her feel very sociable.

“Okay,” he said. “What about?”

She sat on her bed, her back propped against the pillows and headboard. She lighted a cigarette, and after blowing out the match she looked at him and asked him, “Who are you?”

“Me?” he said. “I’m Day Whittacker. Who are you?”

“Diana Stoving,” she said. “I just graduated from Sarah Lawrence and I don’t know what to do. And I’m nearly twenty-two.”

“I just graduated from East Passaic High School,” he said, “and I don’t know what to do either, although there’re lots of things I could be doing and should be doing but won’t because I can’t. I’m nearly nineteen.”

“How do you do?”

“Fine, thank you, so far, I guess. And you?”

“When I was a little girl,” she said, “just three years old, my grandfather, whom I had never met before, abducted me.” Diana realized that the gin and the wine had made her just a little giddy. “He never harmed me,” she said, and realized that her eyes were wet, “but they had to kill him to get me back.”

Day did not say anything, although his face was full of compassion. Diana knew that the only way she could keep the tears from leaving her eyes and rolling down her cheeks was to laugh, so she laughed, as hard as she could, and then said, still laughing, “So now I’ve abducted him. Isn’t that priceless?”

Day did not seem to find anything funny about it. He stared at her with a puzzled expression, and then hesitantly he asked, “You mean…you aren’t going to take me home?”

“Oh sure,” she said. “I’ll take you home right now, if you want me to.” He did not say anything.

“Well?” she said. “Shall we go?”

“It’s up to you,” he said.

“No,” she said. “No, it isn’t. Because, you see, since you’re concerned about legality and you’re a good Boy Scout and all that, you’re still a minor. I’m not. I don’t know what the laws are, but—”

“We aren’t doing anything wrong,” he protested.

“No,” she agreed, “we aren’t.”

“Okay,” he said. “If you want to know the truth, I don’t really want to go home.”

“Fine,” she said. “And if you want to know the truth, I don’t really believe in reincarnation, not for one minute, and I don’t believe in hypnosis either, and I certainly don’t believe you’re my grandfather, and I don’t believe his house was in that grove of mountain laurel up there. I don’t believe any of it. But—” she qualified what she was saying “—I would like to believe. I would like to find out. Wouldn’t that be marvelous, to be able to believe?”

“I guess it would,” he said.

“The trouble with me is,” she said, “I don’t believe in anything. I would like to find something to believe in.”

“Me too,” he said. “I sort of feel like that, myself.”

“Are you with me, then?”

“I’m with you,” he said. “All the way.”

Fourteen

They Become Somewhat Better Acquainted with One Another

Diana Stoving and Day Whittacker did not have sexual relations in their motel room that night. Undoubtedly the possibility must have crossed their minds, but they slept chastely in their separate beds. Diana, for her part, was certainly not unmindful of the fact that he was a male and she female and that they were spending the night together. All questions of incest aside, and rightly so, for the time being at least, Diana presumed that a clean-living Boy Scout who neither smoked nor drank and was, although not at all bad-looking, a somewhat timid and reserved young man, was in all likelihood a virgin, and thus, even if she had felt like it, which she did not, it might have created awkward moments for both of them if she had introduced a romantic note, or even a nonromantic sexual note, into their relationship at this point.

They did, however, before putting out the lights and going to sleep, talk for well over an hour, getting acquainted. Here, more or less, is what they learned about one another:

Diana Ruth Stoving was born twenty-one years ago in St. Vincent’s Hospital, Little Rock, to B.A. (Burton Arthur) Stoving and Annette M. Stoving. She was their only child. A Libra, she took a short-lived interest in astrology while in college after reading that Harper’s Bazaar’s horoscopist had correctly predicted that she as a Libra would have “unlimited quantities of money to spend as you please,” but after being told later in the same “Eye on the Sky” column that she should spend her money for “idealistic causes” she was unable to think of one, and unable to sustain her interest in astrology. Her other qualities, as a Libra, according to the horoscopes, were a “great imaginative capacity” and “an inclination to take the lead in any endeavor.”

Her father had met her mother while on army maneuvers as a captain, in the Ozarks. Her mother had been a country girl; Diana’s father, after his discharge from the army following the war, had spent some time trying to find her again, and, succeeding, had eloped with her. She was twenty when he married her in a lavish church wedding in Little Rock, befitting the social background of the Stovings but scaring the wits out of a poor country girl of obscure origins. Anne Stoving apparently adjusted to her new life without difficulty, however; Diana did not learn that her mother had been a country girl until she, Diana, was almost ready to go away to college and her mother, after several drinks, confessed her rural origins. It helped Diana understand, for the first time, why her mother had been in the habit of using certain quaint words and expressions, but apart from that it meant little to her.

The episode involving her grandfather was a vague memory; she had to reconstruct it with the aid of a newspaper clipping which she had discovered in (and stolen from) a shoebox in her mother’s closet. This was during a Christmas vacation when Diana was home from her final year in prep school. She had never been told that the man who abducted her was her grandfather. To her, at the age of three, he had been simply, as her mother put it, “that bad old man who came and got you but now he won’t bother you any more.” The newspaper clipping told her that the bad man had wounded three sheriff’s deputies and two state troopers; apparently the rifle wounds had been inflicted with uncanny accuracy meant to disable rather than to kill, but the lawmen had come to believe that the only way they could conquer the bad man was to kill rather than to disable.

Diana could remember the sound of gunfire, and the sight of the bad man falling; it had disturbed her, because she had been thinking of him not as the bad man but as The Good Man.

Although Diana’s earliest memory was of the week she had lived with him at his yellow house in the Ozark woods, at the age of three, she did not recall much of her childhood before the age of eight, when she was transferred from Forest Park Elementary School (public) to St. Andrew’s Day School (private, parochial, Episcopal). She remembered this transfer because she had had to give up several friends who were classmates at the public school. The remainder of her schooling was in private schools. For the ninth through twelfth grades, she was sent away to Margaret Hall, an exclusive Episcopal girls’ school in Versailles, Kentucky. She graduated third in a class of forty-two, and was accepted at Sarah Lawrence not so much on the basis of her grades and college boards as on the recommendations of her teachers, all of whom agreed that Diana was “highly original and creative, and lends contrast and color to any group.”

During the years of her preparatory schooling, her father, B.A. Stoving, advanced rapidly to his present position, chairman of the board and president of National Community Life Insurance Company, headquartered in Little Rock, with branches throughout the south and mid-west. He also serves on the boards of two banks, six industries, three colleges and an airline. Diana’s mother is active in social, cultural and charitable work.

Mr. and Mrs. Stoving were spending the current summer in Europe; their flight for Paris had departed the day after they attended Diana’s graduation from Sarah Lawrence. It was to be both a grand tour and a second honeymoon for the Stovings; consequently they had not wanted to invite Diana to accompany them. As a substitute or consolation, Mr. Stoving had offered to send her on her choice of several other tours of Europe, and, when she rejected this offer, even to send her on an unguided tour alone or in the company of whichever friends she might like to invite along. When she rejected this too, he gave her as a graduation present the automobile of her choice and an exorbitantly large sum of money in traveler’s checks. She chose the Porsche on the recommendation of some of her college friends. “Keep in touch,” her father had said in parting, and had provided her with their itinerary, a list of famous hotels in all the major European cities.

When Diana had entered Sarah Lawrence, she had entertained a general notion of becoming some sort of writer. During her sophomore and early junior years she had studied under Kynan Harris, that imp of black humor, who was also her don (advisor) and also, very briefly, her lover (she did not tell Day this; “We were close” is the way she put it), who, however, gave her his frank opinion of her writing, which was that it was much too conventional. “Pedestrian” was his word, and the word stuck in her mind; a pedestrian literally is one going on foot, and she decided that since she was going on foot she would not walk but dance, and spent the rest of her junior year and all of her senior year studying with Bessie Schönberg, the dancer. An unusually large number of Sarah Lawrence students seemed to be taking dance during her senior year, and the competition was severe. While she was assured, by Miss Schönberg, as well as by Mr. Redlich and Mrs. Finch, the other dance teachers, that she could dance professionally after graduation (they encouraged her to try out with Merce Cunningham), she was not confident that she was all that good.

These are Diana’s interests:

Martha Graham, of course, particularly her Appalachian Spring. She danced the principal role in the Sarah Lawrence production of this work.

José Limon, Betty Jones, Doris Humphrey, and Ruth Currier, particularly the latter’s Search for an Answer, which she also danced, to acclaim, at Sarah Lawrence.

She does not like classical ballet very much, although the movie of the Fonteyn-Nureyev Romeo and Juliet made her cry.

In music: among the moderns, nobody later than Tschaikovsky except possibly Aaron Copland and Charles Ives. Among the ancients, Telemann and the anonymous composers of English Country and Morris Dancing as recorded by John Playford during 1651–1728. As her senior project, she choreographed a modern adaptation of eight Playford dances.

In art: the early Venetian school and Giorgione, particularly his “Tempest.” Among the moderns, only Kokoschka.

In literature: she enjoyed reading the Greek tragedies as a requirement, but would not have read them on her own. Among the moderns, she has read most of the novels of what she calls her “five Johns”: Updike, Barth, Cheever, Fowles and Hawkes; as well as Kynan Harris, Donald Harington and her special favorite, Nabokov.

Other miscellaneous interests: the films of Stanley Donan. Although she does not particularly care for rock music, being over-exposed to it by her roommates’ phonographs, she does not object to it. In sports, she has played some tennis, which she likes, and some lacrosse, which she doesn’t. She has watched a few football games on television. Politics holds no interest for her at all. Nor does religion; although raised an Episcopalian, she has attended church only a few times since leaving prep school.

If she were forced to choose a career, she would probably—but she would never be forced to choose a career.

Charles Day Whittacker was born nearly ninteen years ago in San Diego, California, where his father, Charles J. “Chuck” Whittacker, was stationed before being sent to Korea. After the Korean War, Chuck Whittacker returned with his wife, Jane Billings Whittacker, and their infant son, to his home town, Rutherford, New Jersey, where he found employment as a salesman for Lang Manufacturing Company, makers of asphalt roofing and siding. Young Day, who from birth was called by his middle name to distinguish him from his father, attended Antonio F. Calicchio Elementary School until the third grade, when his parents moved to Wood Ridge, New Jersey, after Chuck Whittacker took a position as salesman for Hendrie Products, distributors of sulfur and mineral pitch. Day finished elementary school in Wood Ridge and attended Hackensack Avenue Junior High School for two years until his father moved to East Passaic after becoming a sales engineer for Rohn Refining Corporation, makers of a diversified line of solvents. Day finished junior high school there, and attended East Passaic High School, graduating twenty-sixth in a class of 456.

One of the very few things Day Whittacker had in common with Diana Stoving was that he was an only child. His mother had had ovarian cysts requiring surgical removal.

While attending elementary school in Wood Ridge, Day joined Cub Scout Pack 16. He became a Tenderfoot Scout in Beaver Troop 22, advancing rapidly to Second Class, then First Class Scout, then Heart, then Life, and finally Eagle during his sophomore year in high school. In the process, he earned merit badges in archery, astronomy, beekeeping, bird study, bookbinding, botany, camping, canoeing, citizenship, cooking, first aid, fishing, forestry, gardening, geology, hiking, Indian lore, insect life, lifesaving, nature, personal fitness, pioneering, radio, reptile study, safety, scholarship, signaling, swimming, weather, woodwork and zoology. One of the very few merit badges he failed to earn, after two trials, was that for public speaking.

For three summers past, he served as a cabin counselor at Camp Whanpoo-tahk-kee near Lake Hopatacong in northwestern New Jersey. He also attended the Valley Forge Camporee and the International Scout Camporee in Nova Scotia.

After lengthy consultation with his vocational counselor in high school, Day decided that he wanted to become, first choice, a forester, and, second choice, a national park ranger. Neither of these choices, however, matched the aspirations Mr. and Mrs. Whittacker had for him. Mr. Whittacker hoped the boy would enter a premed or predental course in college, while Mrs. Whittacker clung to a long-cherished wish that he prepare for the ministry, even after she learned of his second failure to pass the public-speaking merit badge examination. Dutifully, Day applied for admission to Rutgers, Monmouth, Newark State and nearby Farleigh Dickinson; the last three all accepted him but he had taken no further steps to enroll. None of the three offered programs in forestry.

Apart from disputes over the matter of college attendance, Day’s relations with his parents were, if not ideal, harmonious and unstormy. He strove to be a good son. Perhaps because he was an only son, their yardstick for his measurement was a bit warped. Mr. Whittacker, particularly, exhibited great disappointment at anything less than excellence, and his strict discipline had caused Day, at the age of only five, to run away from home (the police found him within eight hours). Curiously, at the same time that Mr. Whittacker demanded excellence, he was resentful of Day’s intelligence. Mr. Whittacker himself was not terribly bright, but he prided himself in having “horse sense,” which, he often reminded Day, his son did not have. In other ways, too, there was little resemblance between father and son. Day was taller than his father but nowhere near as muscular. His father liked to “go out with the boys”; Day did not, except for Scouting activities. His father had a mechanical bent and could repair anything from a washing machine to an automobile; Day had little mechanical aptitude.

Other than his Scouting accomplishments, Day had not produced a strong extracurricular record. In his sophomore year, at his father’s urging, he had tried out with the track team and was very good in the short dashes and hurdles, but what the coach needed was a distance man.

P.D. Sedgely was Day’s English teacher in both the eleventh and the twelfth grades, and Day attended several discussion meetings of the Psychic Research Club, as Sedgely’s small group of after-hours students called themselves. He himself did not volunteer to become a subject until the spring of his senior year. He had been thoroughly suspicious of the proceedings, but the first time he listened to a playback of his voice under hypnosis and age regression, he knew that he had identified the source of the voice that had been “bothering” him for years.

His parents were not unaware of his relations with Sedgely and the Psychic Research Club. He never kept anything from his parents. His mother arranged for him to have a chat about it with their minister. He did. It turned out to be not so much a chat as a sermon. The minister, Rev. Eugene B. Dobler of the East Passaic Church, talked to him about Christ’s promise of a second coming and a last judgement, but pointed out that there is nothing anywhere in the Bible about reincarnation.

But Day read all he could find on the subject. Still, he was never ready to dismiss the possibility that Daniel Lyam Montross was only the invention of his own imagination, or the imagination of his subconscious.

Then he met Diana, who said she was the granddaughter of Daniel Lyam Montross. He believed her, and knew then that such a man had actually existed.

These are Day’s interests:

Scouting and camping, of course, but he likes back-packing on long hikes more than fixed camping.

Wood. He likes everything about wood and its uses. He knows the scientific names as well as the familiar names of every American tree; he knows their ecology, habits, growth rate, life span, and economic value. He knows how well or how poorly each wood burns, when green as well as when seasoned. Although he has no great civic pride in New Jersey, he is proud that Joyce Kilmer was a New Jerseyan.

He does not think that “Trees” is a great poem, but he likes it. Actually, his taste in poetry runs to W.H. Auden and e.e. cummings. He can quote three or four of the latter’s poems from memory.

He has not read much fiction. An aunt gave him a complete set of Jack London for his sixteenth birthday, but he read only part of one volume and did not like it. In high school, he was required to read Lord of the Flies and The Catcher in the Rye; the boys in the former were too young for him to identify with, while the boy in the latter was too smart-ass (he did not say this to Diana; “too Huck-Finnish” is the way he put it, although he had never read Huck Finn). His candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature is Walt Kelly; he has read all the Pogo books, and reread them several times.

He had a course in art appreciation in high school, but very little of it remains with him. He remembers liking Hobbema’s “The Avenue of the Middelharnis” and Rembrandt’s etching “The Three Trees.” In modern art, he likes Van Gogh’s cypresses and Rousseau’s jungles, but thinks Picasso is a joke.

Despite the closeness of his region of New Jersey to Manhattan, he has never seen a stage play, much less a dance performance. He has visited Manhattan only a few times, once for an extended tour of the Museum of Natural History, once to attend a Scout Council meeting, and once to see a movie on West Forty-second Street. The movie was a “skin flick,” which he found both stimulating and tasteless.

He has had few dates, of a formal nature, with girls. He took his minister’s daughter, Lila, to a high school football game. He escorted another girl from the church to a hayride sponsored by the Methodist Youth Organization, but after the haywagon (actually just a flatbed truck) was already out in the moonlight he discovered that she was several years older than he. He took a fellow member of Sedgely’s Psychic Research Club, who had been an Eygptian slave girl in a previous life, to the junior picnic. For the senior picnic he chose a girl who lived on his own block, and who was a Girl Scout, but he learned that most of her merit badges, as well as her interests, were not in the outdoors but in homemaking, nursing and child care.

One of his favorite subjects in high school was American history, and he has visited almost all the historic sites and battlefields in New Jersey.

In contemporary music he likes the folk singers but not rock. His taste for classical music, particularly Mozart and Beethoven, is the result of listening to WQXR for several years on a homemade fm set which he awkwardly but painstakingly constructed as part of the requirements for his merit badge in radio.

All in all, he considers himself a reasonably average and normal young man. There are only two abnormalities he is aware of: one, of course, is this reincarnation business; the other is that, for as long as he can remember, he has had a feeling of being lonely, more so, he thought, than most average, normal people.

Fifteen

Diana Goes Shopping, Suffers Some Bad Moments, but Prevails

Diana did not sleep well. Several times, waving on the outer strand of slumber, she came awake to wonder: what am I doing here? Each time, to go back under, she had to explain it patiently to herself, but with a different explanation every time. Never could she answer to her satisfaction who it was bothered her most, herself or him. Nor could she interpret the tatters of certain dreams that clung to her stubbornly when she surfaced from sleep, yet these seemed somehow more real than the reality of trying to sleep in a motel in Cornwall, Connecticut, in the same room with the reembodied remains of her grandfather. In time she could not distinguish: did she wake to sleep? or sleep to wake?

Did she rise up when dawn came? Or was this just one more dream? It seemed she rose, and was sitting on the edge of her bed. It seemed some light seeped through their window, the aquamarine light of early dawn. The hills were too high to let the sun up yet. It seemed she sat awhile, and was looking at him. He slept deeply, it seemed, his mouth open, his upper lip swollen, his arms akimbo, one leg nearly off the bed, as he lay face down covered by a sheet only, only to his waist; sometime in the night he must have removed the tight raincoat of hers he was wearing. It seemed he seemed very young, a child, his sleeping face empty of any guilt or care or even experience. He seemed to have no soul, neither his own nor another’s.

It seemed she sat a long time, absently looking at him and waiting, waiting not for him to wake but for herself to. Did she wake? He would not, for several hours yet; but did she? In this dream that seemed awake, or this wakefulness that seemed dreaming, she rose up and dressed, realizing she could sleep no more…nor stay awake longer. She would have to go out. It seemed she began hunting for something to write with, to leave him a message. Did she find a pencil or a ballpoint? No, it seemed she searched through her lipsticks. They were all too pale, but it seemed she found one which was a redder pink than the others. Would she write with it upon a piece of the motel’s stationery, or use the mirror in the bathroom? It seemed she chose the mirror, and it seemed she wrote: “Going out. Going shopping. Order breakfast. Back soon. Diana.”

Then it seemed she was in her car and on the highway, and she decided, If this is a dream, I’ve never had one quite like it, before. She drove into Cornwall Bridge and stopped beside the same telephone booth whose yellow pages she had used to locate their inn the evening before. This time she looked under “Camping Equipment,” but the first entry there was a store in New Britain, which, she discovered after consulting her roadmap, was a long way off. The second and only other entry was for Llewellyn’s Sporting Goods of 521 Elm Street, Torrington. She located Torrington on the map. It wasn’t very near, either, but it was much closer than New Britain, and the day, of course, was young.

When she reached Torrington, after a thirty-mile drive through nearly unpopulated countryside, she found that it was still much too early for the stores to open, but she located a Dunkin’ Donuts shop on South Main which had just opened for the day, and she had a breakfast of orange juice, French crullers and coffee. Then she had another cup of coffee, and smoked a cigarette. After the second cup of coffee, she became reasonably certain that she was not asleep and dreaming.

“Getting an early start?” remarked the manager of the sporting goods store as he unlocked the door and let her in. Then he said, “what can we do for you?”

“I need two of everything,” she said.

“Sure,” he said. “Two shirts, two pairs of jeans, two belts….”

She saw then that most of the stuff in the store was clothing. “I was interested in camping equipment,” she said.

“That’s downstairs,” he said, and switched on a light and led her to the basement.

It was fun. She picked out a pair of sleeping bags with bonded Dacron filling, a pair of air mattresses of tufted rubber, a pair of Coleman gas lanterns, a pair of battery lanterns, a pair of aluminum mess kits, and a pair of folding camp chairs. She selected a large umbrella tent, with aluminum poles and suspension, which had a floor space of twelve feet by twelve feet. “What else do I need?” she asked herself aloud.

“A camp stove?” suggested the merchant, and she picked out a Bernzomatic propane stove with double burner.

“An ice chest?” he said, and she chose a Cronstrom with a capacity of ninety pounds of ice.

“How about a portable john?” he said, and showed her several models. She picked one that used chemicals.

“You’ll want a good first aid kit,” he suggested, and she took one.

“A hand pump for the air mattresses?” he said. “A rope hammock? Extra propane cartridges? Skewers for kebabs? Salt and pepper shakers? Spray insect repellent? Clothes hooks?”

She added these items to her equipage, and said, “Well, I guess that does it.”

“An inflatable boat?” suggested the merchant. “A folding picnic table? Charcoal brix? Paper plates? Snakebite kit?”

“No, thank you,” she said. “I believe I’ve got enough.”

“A fly swatter?” he said. “Binoculars? A telescope? A compass?”

“I believe I’ve got all I can carry,” she said.

“Carry?” he said. “That your car out there? You’ll never get all of this into it.”

“Well…” she said.

“What you need is a roof rack,” he said.

“Where could I get one of those?” she asked.

“Well, we have the small aluminum carrier, the deluxe two-tone luggage rack, and also the suction-cup bar carrier which you don’t want because the suction cups will leave rings on the finish.”

She selected a carrier for her roof, and the manager offered to put it on for her and adjust it. While he was doing this, with some difficulty because of the slope of the Porsche’s roof, she realized she ought to pick out some clothes for Day. But she didn’t know his sizes. That could wait.

She asked the merchant if he would accept traveler’s checks. He did, gladly. He helped her load all of the equipment into the back of the car and onto the roof rack. “Come again,” he said, and stood on the curb waving as she drove away.

It was nine-thirty when she got back to the motel room, and she could hardly wait to see Day’s face when she showed him all this stuff. But Day, she discovered, was gone.

A maid was cleaning their room. “Did you see my husband?” Diana asked her. The maid, after giving her a strange look, shook her head. Diana walked to the dining room of the inn, but he was not there. She wondered if he had seen the message she had left on the bathroom mirror. She returned to her room and looked at the mirror, but there was no message on it. “Did you erase my message?” she called to the maid, but there was no answer. She stepped out of the bathroom. “Did you—” But the maid was gone.

Had Day ever been there? The bed was made, his clothes were gone, there was no trace of him behind. Had she dreamt that too?

She got into her car again and drove down the highway, south down Route 7. Monday morning traffic had commenced; there were cars ahead and behind. She had not driven far when she spotted him, up ahead, standing beside the highway with his thumb in the air. But before she could reach him, a car ahead of her stopped for him, and he got in. Whether he had seen her or not she could not tell. She followed. The car ahead accelerated, and she had to drive fast to keep up with it. She followed for more than a mile before coming to a straight stretch of road where she could swing out into the other lane and pull abreast of the other car. She rolled down the window on that side; the driver of the other car was a young man about Day’s own age; Day was sitting beside him. “Day!” she yelled, and both boys turned to look at her. She started to ask him if he wanted to go home, but a car coming from the other direction forced her to slam on the brakes and get back into the proper lane. The car in which Day was riding pulled off onto the shoulder of the road and stopped, and she stopped behind it. Day got out, but the car did not leave. He came toward her car. She got out and went to meet him. “Day,” she said. “Are you going home?”

His eyes were still puffed from sleep; apparently he had not been awake very long. “I thought you had already left,” he said.

“You didn’t see my message?” she said.

“No.”

“But my luggage is still in the room. Didn’t you notice?”

“No.”

“You didn’t think I would go off without you, did you?”

“I didn’t know.”

“Well, I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”

“I just saw the car gone, and you gone, and I thought—”

“Well, I’m here.”

Day turned and walked away. For a moment she thought he was going to get back into the other car, but he only stuck his head in the other car’s window and said, “Thanks a lot anyway. That’s who I was looking for. Thanks a lot. Sorry to bother you.” Then he waved at the driver and came back and got into Diana’s car.

She made a U-turn and drove back toward the inn. Day asked, “Where did you go?”

“Shopping,” she said, and pointed toward the roof of the car. Day said, “What’s all that stuff up there?”

“Just wait’ll you see,” she said. “I’ve got everything.”

She parked beside their motel room. She asked him if he had had breakfast yet. He said no. She suggested the inn’s dining room, but when he seemed hesitant, she said they could order something delivered to their room.

Then she showed him her purchases. Of course she didn’t unfold the tent, but she lifted a corner so he could see the strong stitching and the mosquito netting and the sturdy aluminum poles. She opened the propane stove and removed the lid from the ice chest. She showed him everything.

He did not say anything.

“Well, what do you think?” she asked.

Still he did not say anything. He seemed to be half-asleep. Perhaps he thought that he was dreaming. Or maybe he was disappointed because she had not asked for his advice in selecting the things. She wished she knew what was going through his mind.

“Don’t you like it?” she asked.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Pretty good outfit. First class, in fact.” “Well—?” she said.

He asked a shy question: “Is it for us?”

“Of course,” she said. “Who’d you think?”

“Let’s go, then,” he said. “Let’s get away from here. Breakfast can wait, can’t it?”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ve already had mine, anyway.”

“I’d rather have mine,” he said, “with wood smoke in it.”

Sixteen

A Pleasant Day Is Had in Dudleytown, and a Pleasant Evening

Day had his breakfast with wood smoke in it. Eschewing her Bernzomatic propane double-burner camp stove, he constructed, with rocks and sticks and a small excavation of earth in the glade of the mountain laurel, an Official All-purpose Boy Scout Campfire, and proceeded to fry bacon and eggs, bake biscuits and make coffee. She watched him. It looked so good her appetite came again, and she had a second breakfast.

They had stocked up on groceries at the general store in Cornwall Bridge, enough for several days at least, with Day doing the picking, so that even if he really did feel piqued because she had selected the equipment without his advice, this must have helped make up for it a little. On the first portage from the place where they had to leave the car, the same as the day before, to the site in the glade of mountain laurel, they had carried only the cooking and eating utensils and part of the groceries.

After breakfast they began a series of portages to carry the rest of the gear from the car to the glade, a distance of perhaps a mile. They each together made two additional trips to the car and back before they were finished; so it was that their morning hike covered a total distance of about five miles. By noon Diana was fatigued, and, after a light lunch, she inflated one of the air mattresses and took a nap. While she napped, Day finished the setting up of their camp, and when she woke around three o’clock she found he had cleared a large area of brush, weeds and ferns and erected the tent with its awning on poles and a drainage trench dug around the perimeter on the uphill side; the camp chairs were unfolded and set up on either side of the fire, the utensils hung in a neat row on a rack of sticks. Everything, despite its newness, seemed to have been settled there for a long time. Diana laughed in surprise when she saw that Day had added a few “decorations”: apparently he had made one more trip to the car and brought back the stack of framed pictures which had been in her room at Sarah Lawrence, and these he had hung from tree branches on the perimeter of the camp: her reproductions of Kokoschka’s “Bride of the Wind” and of Giorgione’s “Tempest”; photographs of Martha Graham in Appalachian Spring and herself in Search for an Answer; and even the “Make-Love-Not-WAR” poster which had been Susan Trombley’s, not hers.

“No place like home, huh?” Diana said.

“Yeah, but I don’t like that tent,” Day said.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It looks like it belongs in ‘Shady Acres Kozy Kampground’ inhabited by a fat butcher and his fat family on their first trip out of the city. I would rather make a lean-to out of sticks and brush.”

“And let the mosquitoes bite us,” Diana said. “And let the rain trickle down our necks. No thanks.”

“You might at least have got a green one. Or even a gray one. But a yellow one, for gosh sakes! The tourists will think we’re a concession booth and want to buy something. What can we sell them?”

“Bouquets of mountain laurel,” Diana suggested. Then she said, “What tourists? I still haven’t seen anybody in these woods.”

“Just you wait.”

Diana rose up from her air mattress, and had a good stretch. The air mattress had been surprisingly comfortable, but it had left a few kinks which she had to stretch off. While she was stretching, she looked around her, unable to find something which she realized she needed at once.

“Where did you put the john?” she asked him.

“The what?”

“The john. Our portable privy. The chemical comfort station.”

“Oh, that.” He pointed. “It’s right over there.”

“Where? I don’t see it.”

“There.”

She looked. She looked again. Then she realized why she had not seen it: it was nearly covered with a profusion of wildflowers that had been arranged into an artful bouquet springing out of its hole. “Lovely,” she said. “But I need to use your flower vase for something else.”

“Use the woods,” he said. It was not a suggestion but a command, and in the same peremptory voice he added, “Lady, I can live with all this other superfluous junk of yours, but I refuse to desecrate God’s earth with an unnatural chemical contraption. Use the woods.”

She used the woods. Or, rather, the bushes, threading her way through the dense mountain laurel shrubs until she was well out of sight. Then, when she was finished, she realized she had forgotten something. “Day!” she called out. “Did we get any tissue paper?”

After a moment his voice came back to her. “Are you wrapping presents?”

“Day?” she called. “Didn’t we bring any toilet paper?”

She waited. His shout finally came: “I can’t find any.”

“Any Kleenex?” she called.

“No.”

“Well,” she called out, “do you have two fives for a ten?”

After his laughter, Day’s voice bellowed, “God didn’t make leaves just for photosynthesis!” His sibilant esses ricocheted through the woods and echoed back, like snakes rustling through dry leaves.

When she returned to camp, Diana gave Day a little look, a moue, and said, “I wish you’d leave God out of this. I don’t need Him around as head counselor.”

“All right,” he said. “I will be head counselor.”

“Yes sir,” she said, and saluted, not with the three-finger Scout salute but with one finger, the middle one. “Sir, what shall we do this afternoon? Have you planned the afternoon’s activities, sir? Knot tying? Basket weaving? Calisthenics? Or a séance?”

“Do you want to see if we can find Dark Entry Road?”

They spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Dark Entry Road. It was not hard to find. She had torn off the little map from the back of the Cornwall Inn’s menu, and they used that as a guide. They followed the branch of Bonny Brook that ran below their mountain laurel glade, and it crossed under Dark Entry Road right alongside the cellar hole of what had been the Dudley house itself. The stream did not merely cross under the road any longer but through it, having long since washed away the small bridge; and it tumbled on down a narrow, winding cataract in its wild urge to meet and join the main course of Bonny Brook, which ran parallel to Dark Entry at this point. They followed Dark Entry, which was indeed dark, sheltered everywhere from the sun by a canopy of trees, down its length, past the foundation of the old mill, to the dam. The dam was an impressive work of dry masonry, its center section washed out by the brook but the two ends still standing in neat courses of huge slabs of stone: the most monumental structure remaining in Dudleytown.

A short distance below the dam they found the falls, identified on the map as Marcella Falls, named perhaps for some settler’s daughter or wife, a spectacular cascade of water rushing off a ledge and dropping eight or ten feet into a foaming vortex. Rainwater from the day before had filled the brook and increased the rush of the falls. It was the prettiest spot Diana had seen yet in Dudleytown, even prettier than the glade of mountain laurel; in fact it was the prettiest spot, the freshest spot, she could ever recall having seen.

It would make a fine natural showerbath. Diana, perspiring freely after the hike through the warm woods, wanted to walk right down into the falls, clothes and all if need be, but preferably without. She wished she’d brought one of her bathing suits along on the hike. She stood so long staring at the falls with longing that Day began to fidget; he tossed pebbles into the pool of the falls; then he looked at her and, seeming to read her thoughts, said, “I’m going to go on down the road and look for the place where the charcoal pits were. You could come along later…after…when…if you want to, you know, if you want to take a skinny dip or something, you know, I’ll go on down the road and you could catch up later.”

“How did you know what I was thinking?” she asked.

“Well, I just thought…” he began. “I mean, after all, anybody would, wouldn’t they? It’s a nice watering place.”

For a moment there she was about to attempt to persuade him to join her, but even if his modesty would crumble she wasn’t positive her own would. “Thanks, Gramps,” she said. “I believe I will.” Day turned and continued walking down Dark Entry—or what remained of it, a steeply descending trail spilling over ledges and boulders that not even a jeep could take. She waited until he was out of sight beyond a turning in the road, then she climbed down the bank to the edge of the pool. Waist-high in ferns, she took off her clothes. She tested the water with one toe. It was icy cold. Hugging herself, she waded into the pool, to the depth of her calves, and began shivering. She didn’t think she would be able to brave stepping under the falls. Even its spray, flicking her, chilled her to the bone. She cupped her hands into the pool and raised a few handfuls to spread upon her arms and ribs, and that was all she could stand. She splashed some on her face, then waded out of the pool and stood in a spot of sunshine and breeze for a few moments to dry.

Had the women and girls of Dudleytown ever come here to bathe? Probably not, if Dark Entry had been a public highway then, exposing any bathers to view. No hard-bitten Puritan would have been seen indecent, but only a hard-bitten Puritan could have endured the sting of the icy water.

Diana suddenly had an intuition that she was being watched. She scanned the woods all around for a glimpse of eyes, but saw none. “Who’s there?” she asked, but received no reply. Quickly she dressed, then climbed the bank to the road and went off in search of Day.

It took her a while to find him. He had said he was going to search for the charcoal pits, but she passed these without seeing them, and he was not there. She went on, following Dark Entry almost to the edge of the forest where it begins to rejoin civilization, before she heard a “Hey!” behind her and turned to see him following her.

Catching up, he asked, “Where are you going?”

“Just looking for you,” she said.

“You didn’t stay in the water very long,” he said.

“How do you know I didn’t?”

“Well, I mean, you’re here, aren’t you? You wouldn’t be all the way to here if you were still in the water.”

“Where were you?” she asked.

“I was…just off in the woods…looking at things.”

“See anything that interested you?”

“Just some more cellar holes.”

“Let’s go back to the camp,” she said. “I’m not used to all this walking.” They hiked back up Dark Entry toward home. As they passed Marcella Falls again, Day asked, “How was the water?”

“Cold,” she said. “You must try it some time.”

“I will,” he said.

Back in camp, as the cool of the late afternoon came on, the mosquitoes began biting. They took turns spraying each other with the aerosol can of insect repellent. It smelled like decaying lemons. But it was effective; the mosquitoes hovered over them for a while, then went away. Day began preparing supper. He built a fire, then scooped out a small hole in the ground and put two large potatoes into the hole, then shoveled hot coals on top of the potatoes. “Can I help?” Diana asked. He told her to make the salad if she wanted to. She wanted to. She opened the ice chest and got out the lettuce, tomatoes, pepper and cucumber. While she had the ice chest open she got a can of beer. “Want one?” she asked, and held the can up when he turned to look. He shook his head. Then he turned and walked off into the woods.

She sighed, thinking, Well golly gee I didn’t mean to off end you just by offering you one. She popped the top off the can and took a sip. The poor guy didn’t know what he was missing, a frosty cold beer on a summer afternoon in the woods. Still, she wished she had picked up some Schweppes and a bottle of gin.

Day came back out of the woods with his fists full of weeds. She wondered if he had been out tearing up weeds in his rage or shame or anger or whatever adolescent emotion he was having. He thrust the weeds at her. “Here,” he said. “Put these into the salad. And I changed my mind. I will drink some beer.” He dumped the weeds into her hands and then got himself a can of beer out of the ice chest.

She held the pile of weeds as if it were bug-infested, and made a face and said, “What’s this?”

“Watercress,” he said. “And purslane and wood sorrell and chickweed and a sprig of wild garlic. How do you open these damn things?”

“Just put your finger through the ring and pull,” she said.

He broke the ring off. “Now what?”

“Try another one,” she suggested.

“Hell,” he said, and took his pocketknife out and gouged the rest of the top off. Then he raised his can toward her and said, “Here’s!” then drew the can to his mouth and took a large swallow. He smacked his lips, said, “Good stuff,” then coughed for a while. Then he said, “I saw a lot of mushrooms. Do you like mushrooms?”

“If they’re not poisonous,” she said.

“These aren’t,” he said. “I know.”

“Boy Scout honor?”

“Boy Scout honor.” He raised three fingers.

So they had a supper of potatoes baked in coals, a half-wild salad, and a grilled London broil steak smothered with sautéed mushrooms. It needed a good Burgundy, but they had beer instead. She would remember to pick up a few wines on the next shopping trip.

“This is nice,” she commented, after the first few bites. His mouth full, he only nodded.

After supper they just sat in satiety. “That was awfully nice,” she said.

Birds sang. Frogs croaked in the marsh. A jet airliner passed over, reminding her that there were other people in the world. But the first day had passed without anyone coming into their woods.

They sat, still and quiet. Evening fell. Eventually Day spoke. “Are you bored?” he asked.

“No,” she answered. “Are you?”

“Not at all,” he said. “I just wondered if maybe you were.”

“I haven’t been so unbored in a long time.”

“That’s good. There’s nothing to do.”

“No place to go.”

“Nothing happening. This is where it isn’t at.”

She laughed. “I like the way you put that. ‘This is where it isn’t at.’”

Then after a while she said, “But you’re wrong, you know. This is where it is at.”

“Yes,” he said. “It surely is.”

“Go to sleep, Day.”

First Movement

Landscape with Two Figures

For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?

Job 14:7–10

1

This is where it is at. Where I am born. That I am born, beslimed and puling, onto the straw tick of life, is not a come-off for joy in the faces of those watching. Black looks from my audience are my first sight in this new world. I am to blame. The withy blob of me’s the harvest of my sire’s last fumbling. His hands boggle out what his perkin boggled in. He should learn. But I’m his last. I slither from his grasp, like a fish, like an eel, and bounce on the straw tick, a bouncing babe, clumsily caught on the rebound, upended, clumsily spanked, his hands all thumbs. I squall: whose fault? whose fault?

If I were a dog I would bite him. The woman is crying, but not from any sorry upon my plight. “As much pity,” says the man, “to see a woman weep as a goose go barefoot,” then he fumbles me into her arms. Her catch is good. But her breath is bad, and her vision worse. Every mother thinks her duckling a swan. My mother has not seen a swan. She thinks her duckling a hoary bat. Her first word at me: “Bleach.” My first word at her: WHY?

Before I am put to breast, my nakedness is hid in a white dimity dress. Then I am named. My first for the prophet, he of the den of lions, my second for my mother’s father Lyme. Born in poverty the last of a rowen crop of children, last and unneeded, all I have is this dimity dress and this knit link of my name, the three sounds bonded at two junctions of end and beginning: Daniel-Lyam-Montross. God bless Daddy-pa and Mother for some small jot of mother wit.

Before I am put to breast, the older children are herded in, to peer at baby brother. Ethan, the eldest, stands at the foot of the bed with his hands folded solemn and his face folded solemn as if he were viewing the remains in a coffin. Nathan and Nicholas prod and poke each other, to force the other to look first. Emmeline the older girl has been studying in school a lip exercise for young ladies: to look proper upon entering a room first recite “Papa, prunes and prisms.” Emmeline has been saying over and over to herself, “Papa, prunes and prisms,” and her lips look as if she has been eating prunes. Charity, the younger girl, the baby but for me, does not know any lip exercises; her mouth hangs open. To all of them I cry: why? why?

Before I am put to breast, my father leads us all in prayer. God is thanked that I am whole. We are obliged to Him that my delivery had no hitches. He is enjoined to keep it that way. He is asked to look after me. He is requested to see to it that I do my share of the work. He is called upon to make me strong and lend me a long life. He is told that my personal happiness matters naught, that my life is to do His bidding, and if His bidding be to chasten me, Praise His Name. We are all grateful, amen. Why? I wail.

Before I am put to breast, my father says to the older girl, “Now then, Em, say your pome.” Emmeline opens her schoolbook, whispers to herself, “Papa, prunes and prisms,” then with those pursed lips she recites:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness

And not in utter nakedness

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

My sister reads on and on and on, until my father says, “Shouldn’t wonder but what that’s enough, now, Em,” and she closes her book and prunes and prisms her mouth once more before she leaves the room. It is, in truth, enough. My sister has told me why. But I am not still. I cry, not so much from hunger of the guts as hunger of the soul. Cheer! I cry for. Ease! Peace! Eats! Feed!

Before I am put to breast, my mother sends the other children from the room, and sends my father too, first stopping him to make him promise that he will never lie with her again. He complains, “Wal, where in Halifax will I lie, then?” “You know what I mean,” she says. My parents have a lengthy tow-row, before I’m put to breast.

My father leaves. Now I am given a brown teat, one pap for the other. There is no milk. I am too tired to care.

I am the dead spit of my father. This too comes between the woman and me. It does, for all that she does not know it. She does not know why she does not dote on me, except that I am too many…and perhaps I seem not a swan but a hoary bat. Her name is Hopestill, no fault of her own, a good virtue name her mother gave her. But she does not know what she should still be hoping for. Not me, for sure.

But though I’m the spit of him, the dead spit of him, my father too does not dote on me. He knows more than she, though. He knows why. His name is Clen, is how he’s known by all, a clip nicked off of Clendenin. His grandfather was he who emigrated from England, Glendenning “Mountain Horse” Montross who fought with General Heman Swift at Valley Forge in the War of Independence. Clen Montross has seen no battles but for those of bed and board. Nature herself does not do battle with him. He makes a living from the wood of the woods. He has lived all his life in Dudleytown, as did his father before him. His grandfather was the first. And I am the last.

An itinerant parson, a pedlar of the Word, named Asenath Prenner, came upon Dudleytown by happenstance one day in 1819, having lost the road between Litchfield and Sharon. Mountain Horse told this to his son Murdock who told it to his son Clendenin who will tell it to his son me. Asenath Prenner lodged the night with Eliphalet Rogers and, hearing from his host the chronicle of Dudleytown’s misfortunes and the legendary curse that purported to be upon the village, decided to bide a while, for the town’s pleasure if not its redemption. As well as hawking the Word, Asenath Prenner also hawked books and miscellaneous appurtenances for the home and farm. Also he gave demonstrations of ventriloquism and legerde-main. Also he exhibited the first kaleidoscope seen by any man in these parts, which, he claimed, could reveal the future.

Asenath Prenner played Dudleytown for one week, departing with considerable of the town’s pin money, and leaving behind several newly spiritual-minded folk, a wagonload of books and trifles, and a whole schedule of divers prognostications. One of these, bought by Mountain Horse’s wife Sophronica in a ninepence session with the kaleidoscope, was that if any Montross ever had as many as seven children, the seventh child would be the last. The last Montross of Dudleytown.

Mountain Horse himself did not swallow this, but Sophronica believed it, and stopped at six. Of those, only two, Murdock and Jared, were boys. Jared begat only three children, while Murdock begat five, all sons, three killed during the war against the rebels, two surviving, Uriel, a bachelor, and Clendenin.

Clendenin is not of a superstitious turn, but the old prophecy of Asenath Prenner has survived in the family such a long time that he has respected it enough to keep it in his own confidence. Hopestill has not heard it; for aught she knows, she might not care a straw about it.

The third child of Clendenin and Hopestill, Patience, a girl, died in infancy of thrush. Had she survived, there would be seven of us. I the seventh.

My mark will I learn, this stigma. A babe is the innocent butt of all stigmas, the ready mark of all marks. Mother, your milk is the decoction of all thy bitter draughts, boiled in the fire of thine ire.

Colicky are my wakings, fidgety my sleep. I need each dream to clear up all these puzzles. Gnawing of the bowels, knowing of their scowls. My study is of their faces. In dreams I try to read their meanings. A mean mien in a dream is both scrutable and monstrous. Always I wake crying.

Of those so near around me, my kin, whose face is soft? Aptly she’s named, sweet Charity. She can’t be twenty months my senior, but they let her hold me. They would make her hold me, but she volunteers. Emmeline will hold me too, but briefly, her face no longer soft as Charity’s, her face pruned and prismed. Spittle flecks from her lips and splatters me when she practices her prunes and prisms.

Charity thinks I’m her dollbaby. There is her one flaw. Charity is feebleminded. Mother and father do not know this, yet, she is too young. I read it writ large as milestones in her eyes. But love needs no mind, nay, wants none.

She admires a live coal in the fire like a jewel and plucks this ruby from the fire to gift me and adorn me. Lover and loved alike are burned, from playing with what charms the heart but needs a mind. Mother banishes her from me. Her bandaged fingers no more will cradle my blistered head.

I did not cry. But I cry when she comes close, comes close, and cannot hold me. She fears me more than the fire.

Alone, I learn to play alone. My ten fingers, lords and ladies, frolic, antic, bow and curtsey, trip and curvet. Things fall into my cradle I clutch: a trinket, playpretties, the arm off a doll, a flower, spray of mountain laurel, moonbeams and stardust and dust motes. All I can touch I can suck.

Or I learn to lie quietly, watching the plaster fall, learning gravity and the weight of me, my body a stuff, a chunk of flesh, this clod: my head bigger than my trunk, my rays four bent spokes with saps surging noisily through, I hear these humors, and the throb of their pump, my brain is bathed, and keen to all these coursings and hummings, these thrummings and ripples, these burbles and dronings, these stirrings and settlings, these quivers and driftings. This tone and tune and time: I live, I draw the breath of life.

I mire my dydees, and wait a long time to be changed. I’ve learned it doesn’t help to cry.

My father, once, holds me to a mirror in the hall. I know I live; I do not need this proof. But I like the eyes. The outlook from my eyes is more solemn than any of theirs. Solemn and silent. Speech is all I lack. But who will look into my eyes?

When weather’s warm, I’m taken out to sun. The laurel burgeons in the yard. I gaze into the sun, and clamp my eyes. I’m blind to swarming gnats and bright green flies. My swisher’s gone up to the well to get a drink. Wings and feelers flick my touchy skin. I am pinked. Aeolus wafts a gust to drive my pests away. The elements care for me. I’ve found my true kindred. I sleep my first true sleep.

This is all I know of my first year unto heaven.

2

Nor did Diana and Day do it that night either. In a tent twelve by twelve, it is possible to position the air mattresses and sleeping bags so that there is a space of at least six feet separating them, and this, because a tent is a condensation of a house, enables you to feel almost as if you have your own room. You could share such a tent without discomposure with your mother-in-law. Or even your grandfather. Diana waited until the gas lantern was extinguished before putting on her pajamas and getting into her sleeping bag. She zipped the bag up snugly, for the night was cool.

From his side of the tent, Day’s voice said, “I’m sorry about what I said about the tent. It’s a nice tent.”

It was. The canvas still smelled too new, but already the smell of it was becoming submerged beneath the smell of the woods and the night air and the mountain laurel.

His voice said, “Tomorrow let’s do some archaeology, and see if we can’t excavate some remains of the Montross house.”

“That would be fun,” she said.

“Well, good night, Diana,” he said. It was the first time he had called her by name.

“Good night, Day,” she answered.

They would sleep a good night for eight hours. Except for a time, at midnight, when Diana would be awakened by some strange noises outside the tent, they would sleep a good sleep.

And while they slept those eight hours in their tent in Dudleytown, Connecticut, that night of June 21, elsewhere in the country: 3,823 babies were born; 632 old people died, of natural causes; 721 died of heart disease, 310 of cancer, 202 of stroke, 52 in motor vehicle accidents, 27 of cirrhosis of the liver, 21 of suicide; of the latter 11 were by firearms, 5 by poisoning, 3 by hanging, 2 by sleeping pills; firearms also accounted for 17 homicides and 3 accidental deaths.

A family of seven died in a fire in their sleep in Nebraska.

Two carsful of teenagers met head-on on a desert highway in Arizona, killing nine.

In Manhattan, two, in the Bronx, three, in Brooklyn, one, and in Queens, three young drug addicts died of overdoses, infected needles, or other related causes.

In San Francisco, two persons, one male, one female, died as a result of injuries sustained in multiple rapes by multiple persons.

In Beverly Hills, a movie idol died of lung cancer. Elsewhere, sixty-one others died of the same injury.

A father of six, in a Chicago slum, took a last look at the luxury apartments rising across the park, then put away each member of his family by strangulation, himself by hanging.

The inventor of the contrate wheel died in Sandusky, Ohio.

Near Harlan, Kentucky, a G.I. on furlough shot and killed his fiancée and her father, mother and sister.

Nationwide, eighty-nine infants died in childbirth, twenty-two taking their mothers with them.

Twelve babies were born to heroin-addicted mothers; one of them mercifully died at birth; the other eleven babies began immediate painful withdrawal.

A woman in Texas gave birth to quadruplets.

As contrasts, a son was born to a fifty-eight-year-old woman in Pendleton, Oregon, while in Beaufort, South Carolina, a girl was born to an eleven-year-old woman.

There is only one way to come into this world; there are too many ways to leave it.

After breakfast, cooked and eaten amid wood smoke and morning mist and a heavy fallen dew, they began a meticulous search of the mountain laurel glade, hunting for any relics of the Montross house, any vestige of a former abode. All morning they tracked the ground and beat the bushes, without finding anything, until Day declared that he would have to have some sort of shovel.

She invited him to accompany her on the shopping trip, but Day declined, saying that since he had retreated from civilization he had no wish to return to it again so soon. Diana wondered if his real reason was that he was uncomfortable being seen with her in public. She told him she wanted to get him some clothes, and didn’t he want to pick them out? No, he did not care what they looked like. With a shrug, she got him to give her his sizes.

He did walk with her the mile to the car, as though she needed an escort in broad daylight. Before she left, he said, “While you’re at it, we could use a good axe. A short-handled tomahawk axe will do. And if they have it, see if you can get the kind of folding shovel that also has a pick and mattock on it.”

“All right,” she said. “Would you like for me to pick up a tape recorder so I can play back for you what he says?”

“Where would we plug it in?”

“There are battery models.”

“No,” he said. “It would seem out of place. Besides, I’ll take your word for it, what he says.”

She drove to Torrington in good time and was able to do her shopping and return to Dudleytown within the space of a couple of hours. The man at Llewellyn’s Sporting Goods had been delighted to see her again, and he had asked if everything was going okay in her camp. Then he had asked her where she was camping, but she had answered only, “The woods.”

When she returned to camp, her arms laden with packages, Day was not there. She called for him, and waited, then called again, louder. She thought she heard some answer, but it was only a distant echo of her own call. She collapsed into a camp chair and rested for a while, then opened a beer and drank it and waited. She wondered if Day’s adolescent instability had gotten the better of him again.

But he came at last. She heard him whistling before she saw him. He came, whistling some snatch from a Beethoven quartet, into the glade, naked to the waist, his shirt swinging from his hand. When he saw her he stopped and began putting his shirt back on.

“Wait,” she said. She opened one of her packages and took out a shirt, a bright cotton plaid of yellow and lime green and azure blue. “Here,” she said, and gave it to him. He tried to unfold it but it was stuck with pins. He fumbled with the pins, but could not find the right ones to pull out, and the shirt started to twist up. His mother must have opened all his new shirts for him. “Let me,” Diana said, and took the shirt back.

When he had his new shirt on, she opened the other packages and showed him what else she had bought for him: four more shirts, two sweaters, two pairs of blue jeans, a pair of dress slacks, a pair of hiking boots, a pair of sandals, a pair of slippers, a bathrobe, bathing trunks, and shorts, undershirts, socks, belts, handkerchiefs. “Gosh,” he said. “Merry Christmas.”

She gave him the new camp shovel, which, true to his request, had a combination pick and mattock built into it, and he put it right to work, excavating around a pile of rocks enclosed by the mountain laurel shrubs.

He spent the rest of the day digging. She did not know what she could do to help, and as he seemed to be finding nothing she grew tired of watching him, and went to lie in the hammock and read a paperback book she had found on a drugstore rack in Torrington, Reincarnation for the Millions, by Susy Smith.

Late in the afternoon he called to her, “Hey, come and look.”

She found him up to his knees in a hole he had dug, and around his feet a litter of objects, rusted metal pieces. He held up something which she recognized as the bit from a horse’s bridle. The rest of the stuff she did not know.

“Well, it proves there was something here,” he said. “Maybe the barn.”

“What are all those things?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, and picked up a large metal object that looked like the sort of semicircular bucket filled with water that garage mechanics use to roll tires in, to hunt for air leaks. “We could find out, though,” Day said. “I’ll bet he would know.”

“We’ll see,” she said, and she put him to sleep and moved him back to one of Daniel Lyam Montross’s years in Dudleytown, then told him to open his eyes. Then she asked, “What are you holding in your hands?”

He looked down. “This?” he said. “It’s an oil trough, it is.”

She asked, “What is an oil trough for?”

He said, “This’un’s fer nothing. Too weather-wasted and rust-cankered.”

“What would a good new one be for?” she asked.

“Fer greasin’ wheels, a course,” he said.

“Wagon wheels?” she said. “How do you use it?”

“Jist prop the thimble skein on something and lower the wheel so the felloe’s covered, then you roll her slow through.”

She thought he said “fellow,” and she thought it quaint to refer to a fellow as “her.” She asked him about this.

“Felloe,” he said. “The felloe’s the wood rim a the wheel. Not her nor him but it.”

“I see,” she said. She pointed at something by the toe of his shoe. “What’s that?” she asked.

He picked it up and examined it. “A clevis,” he said.

“What’s a clevis for?”

“You sure don’t know chalk from cheese about wagons, do ye? A clevis is fer hookin’ the harness to the whiffletree.”

“Whiffletree,” she said. “That’s a lovely word.”

“It is,” he agreed, smiling. “Whiffletree’s what the wagon says when it’s moseying through the grass of the meadow.”

“That’s nice,” she said, and thought to make a game of it. “What else does the wagon say? What are the other parts of the wagon?”

“Wal now,” he said, warming to her game, “there’s the king bolt. That’s what the wagon says when it hits a bump, ’less the bump’s a real thank-ye-ma’rm, then the wagon says HAWN! ’Course there’s front hawns and there’s hind hawns. Hind hawn is what the wagon says if it’s a buggy. If the wagon’s a sled, it don’t hit the bump, but just says rave!”

“What’s a rave?”

“Part a the runner on a sled.”

“Do you have a sled?”

“You bet ye. A good ’un.”

“Where is it?” she asked, and realized, too late, it was a perverse question.

He was turning around, searching. “Uh…” he said. “Aw…it’s…” He was looking bewildered and hurt. “Aw, jeepers…”

“Never mind,” she said. “What is your horse’s name?”

“Got two of ’um. There’s Boneyard, and there’s Mistress, she’s the off horse.”

“What’s an off horse?”

“Huh? Where do ye hail from, anyhow? Don’t ye know the first thing ’bout horses? The off horse’s the right one in a span.”

“Oh. Your horses make a team, is that it? They’re not riding horses?”

“Mistress leaves me ride her, if I want. Boneyard’s too spiney. Craunches my witnesses.”

“Your witnesses? Who are they?”

“Aw, now, dang, ma’rm…” He was blushing. “You and your fool questions.”

“Oh,” she said. Then she asked, “You don’t use a saddle?”

“Can’t spare the price a one. Lief as not hitch the wagon, anyhow.”

“You know all about wagons, do you?”

“Like a book,” he said. “Backwards and forwards, and right down to the ground. The wagon’s not been made that will flummox me.”

“I believe you,” she told him. Then she told him to close his eyes and she brought him back to the present and woke him. “What’s a whiffletree?” she asked.

“A whiffle-what?” Day said.

“A whiffletree. Think very hard, and tell me what a whiffle-tree is.”

He pondered. “Some kind of hatrack, maybe?” he said.

“Day,” she said. “Look me in the eye and swear on your Boy Scout honor that you don’t know what a whiffletree is.”

“I’ve heard the name, somewhere,” he said. “I just don’t remember what it is. I know it’s not any kind of tree. Not a tree tree, anyway. Maybe something like a shoe tree.”

“Have you ever ridden in a wagon?” she asked.

“Well, I went on this hay ride, one time….”

“You told me.”

“But it wasn’t actually a wagon, just the back of a truck.”

She reached for his hand and pulled him out of his hole. “Come here,” she said. “I want to read you something.” She led him over to the hammock where she had left her paperback book, and she opened it and read him this paragraph:

One of the things known for sure about hypnosis is that some entranced subjects will make every attempt to please the hypnotist, and often carry out what is expected of them. The hypnotist’s own beliefs about what he is doing, the tone of his voice, his manner, and his mode or procedure cause the subject to enact faithfully the role thereby handed to him. This is then taken by the hypnotist as evidence confirming the correctness of his original belief. Because this is true, age regression is complicated, and past life regression is problematical, to say the least.

Day took the book from her and looked at its cover with disdain. “Where did you get this?” he asked.

“I found it in a drugstore in Torrington,” she said.

“‘Reincarnation for the Millions,’” he quoted its title with a slur. “An appropriate title. For amateurs. And look at this picture on the cover. Like a flying saucer.”

“I just thought I’d like to read something on the subject,” Diana protested.

“I could give you a bibliography of more respectable volumes,” he said. “But what you just read is, in fact, the truth. It’s the major defect in hypnosis. The hypnotized person—not all of them, mind you, but a lot—will say what he thinks the hypnotist wants him to say. Like a Pavlovian dog. If the hypnotist thinks his subject is the reincarnation of George Washington, the subject is going to do his best to please the hypnotist and sustain him in that belief.”

“But how can you lie under hypnosis?”

“It isn’t exactly lying. Have you ever seen a stage hypnotist performing? If you hypnotize me and tell me I’m the world’s greatest violinist, even if both my arms are gone, I am going to stand up and do a virtuoso pantomime of a violinist.”

“But you couldn’t do something you didn’t know how to do. If I gave you a real violin and told you to play it, you wouldn’t sound like the world’s greatest.”

“Probably not. Or not to you. But to myself I would. I am the one who is deluded.”

“But I still don’t understand how you could know something you didn’t know. I mean, like just now when you were hypnotized, you mentioned all these words—whiffletree and clevis and hawn and I forget what all—parts of wagons—so how would you know these words if you didn’t know anything about wagons?”

Day shrugged. “I could have been reading your mind,” he suggested.

“But I don’t know these words myself!”

“Well, have you ever heard of what they call ‘genetic memory’?” he asked. “Maybe there’s something in each of us that knows everything.”

She frowned. “You sound like you’re trying to eliminate Daniel Lyam Montross.”

He laughed. “If he can be eliminated, then he doesn’t exist. If he exists, then he can’t be eliminated. You know something? I would eliminate him if I could. Sure I would. Sometimes I’ve wanted to kill him. But I don’t think I can…short of killing myself, of course.”

3

Oh, I am, I am. If I were not, who then would I be? Would I were another, would I were even you, but there is not a pin to choose. I am what I be, and I be what I am. Who else would be me?

Who else would choose Castroline, four spoons daily after feeding? Emulsion of Norwegian cod liver oil? Who else would choose worm syrup, would choose my worms? Even if once she fooled me with worm cake instead, saying it was candy. Paregoric? Laudanum? And that sham of shams, Lactopreparata? Who would choose spirits of nitre? These bitter draughts she doses me with, in the stead of milk.

I drool chemicals when I drool. At one I’m weaned, the way they do it: suddenly and completely, to “cry it out.” Notwithstanding she has broken five and one-half infants before me in this way, my mother twinges at the size of my crying. All these draughts I take dope not my guts but her guilt. My worm medicine is for her wormy heart.

Early I learn to walk, as if to get away. Soon I learn to run, as if to get away sooner. The white dimity dress of my first year has been changed for one of pale blue chambray, the easier to clean, and for me the easier to run in and fall in.

It’s queer about the twigs and pebbles of the ground: if I walk slowly on them my bare feet hurt like time, but if I run, scorning them, pounding upon them as with the pads of a rabbit, they never hurt at all. I run, I run.

My fears are small. The dark does not scare me, nor the woods. Animals do not frighten, except those I imagine, which are not, which I create only to frighten me because there is a need of it. Why is this need? All that’s to fear is fate, which is not seen. Fate takes seen form in the things I imagine: I denizen the skirts of Dudleytown with tigers and lions, leopards and crocodiles. They never get me but I know they’re there. Fate waits, luck lurks, destiny rests in ambush.

One thing I fear that’s real: one day unseen I follow my father to work at the sawmill. I have heard this screaming before, but imagined it the death throes of those fate-beasts being slain by others. I find it is the screaming of the tree, the tree screaming as the great sawblade whirls whirring through it. Before, I did not know that trees could feel. In pity I wail my heart out. My father sees me now, and yells something at the other men, and they stop the saw. They look at me and laugh. My father sends me home. They do not wait until I’m gone before they start the saw again. On the road home I stop to hug a tree. Oh, tree!

Tonight I dream bad dreams. My father wakes me. His great heavy hand on my hair: “Scairt, little feller? Wha’sa matter ’ith ye, lad?”

“Saw cut me open.”

“Saw don’t never cut folks. Jist timber.”

“Hurts. Timber hurts.”

“Thunder no, boy. Timber don’t feel nothing.”

“Heard it scream.”

“That wa’nt the timber. That were the saw. Nothing but the metal a the sawblade, made that. Why, if timber could try and talk, it’d jist say how happy ’tis, being squared inter nice lumber.”

“How come? Then it’s dead.”

Scratches his hair. Scratches mine. “Not at all, son. Jist changes fer the better. Tree standing in the woods, it aint good fer but shade and birdroost. Don’t live very long, even if it aint hit by wind or lightning. But you take a tree and make good charcoal outen it, and that charcoal helps ’em make iron in the furnace, and iron, boy, it lives forever.”

“Don’t like iron.”

“Well, never ye mind, jist now. You get to sleep and hush your tossin’ and turnin’. Your poor mother’s got dyspepsy, and neuralgy on top of it, and you’re keepin’ her awake. Now shut them eyes and drop off the deep end.”

His great heavy hand presses my head into the pillow and holds it down a while, then lifts, I am lightened, and he is gone.

But the trees redeem, they redeem! Day unto week I watch them do it. By their own law, nature’s unwritten writ of replevin, they take back what was theirs. Even if their numbers are sacrificed to the making of iron, they will outlast all iron. My father is wrong. The trees deceive him. They will outwait and outwit their users. Already the alders are reclaiming half of Parmenter’s meadow; though he curses them and cuts them, soon they will have it all. Alders breed faster than rabbits. I see a litter which wasn’t there yesterday.

I hear the men talk, I listen to their idle grousings. The news is that the Mount Riga ironworks in Salisbury, closed since ’47 may never reopen, and the Sharon works may soon shut down. This is the beautiful irony of iron: that the furnace of Mount Riga helped make the iron horse, and the iron horse made Mount Riga extinct. Dudleytown’s own furnace, down at The Bridge, where the railroad runs, may soon go. The men talk of selling their charcoal for common stove fuel, a disgrace.

The men talk about “this biggity Britisher, Bessemer,” who has found a way to make steel out of pig iron, and to use cheaper ore, at that. The men have a favorite thing they say, each of them, every day: What is the world coming to?

The world comes, for me, to these lairs and aeries that are my range: my lodges in bushes and beneath the house, my nests in certain trees that let me climb them. These are my diggings, my restings and roostings: my theatres and gymnasia: my courts and pleasances: I will do what I like here. Or I will do nothing at all.

Or I will do nothing at all: I will just sit here in the half-dark and stillness. And when they call to me, if I do not wish to I will make no answer. And when they come close and speak to me I will make like I am not here. If any or all of them tell me that dinner is ready I will not be hungry. I will say they cannot if they say they can see me.

I will just sit here in the half-dark and stillness. When they say it is time for my naptime, I will make like I am napping. I will say nothing. I will say they are wrong if they say I am sickening. If they bring spoons and bottles I will clamp my lips tight. If they force my lips open, I will not swallow but spit later. Because I am me and no one else will be me, I will be what I wish, for I have to. I will not eat my turnips, neither my greens. If they say this will make me spindly and pindling, then I will wither and waste to nothing and become a wisp, drifting on air too high and far for them to reach.

If I choose, I will just do nothing. In the half-dark and stillness I will just sit here.

My father yawps: “You shinny down outen that tree ’fore I let loose on ye, you little dickens!”

I climb to a higher limb.

“I’ll give ye a dose a strap oil!” he bellows. “Light down outen there, you devil!”

I climb to a higher limb.

“Get your little tail back down here!” he yells. “I’ll clobber ye silly, you brat!”

I climb to a higher limb.

“Want I should come up arter ye?” he shouts. “Don’t think I won’t! If I have to climb up there, I’ll truly thrash the sauce outen ye!”

I climb as high as I can go. It is an old chestnut, high as time, and I’m near the top. He can’t even see me, though I can see him: he leaps for the lowest limb and grabs hold but cannot pull himself up. He twists and dangles and says terrible bad words. He yells: “How’d ye get up there, anyhow?” He drops back to the ground and goes toward the barn. I think he has given up, and I start to climb down, but then he comes back, bringing a ladder. “Wal now,” he says, “jist let me get my hands on you.” He climbs and climbs.

Can I fly? Oh, I’ve had dreams of flying! I dream full many a time of taking the air! The air is easy to take: you just take it into your arms and climb over it, kicking your feet. Slow it is, and thick, but lighter than a leaf, down, lighter than a fluff of seed puff, up. Up.

He’s climbed as high as he can go. His hand gropes up for my limb and my ankle.

I take the air.

Oh, I soar! Oh lovely I mount the air and drift there one lovely instant, hovering free. But then I fall. The air denies me. Down, down I plunge, through branches, the hard earth waiting.

I ask the tree to save me. And she does. Her lowest arm she puts beneath me, and when I hit it it bends gently with me and stops me, and I hold it. It lowers me slowly to the ground.

I stand a moment, getting back my wits, and then I run, leaving my father in the tree. He is yelling, “Wal I’ll be hanged!”

4

Her third day in Dudleytown, Diana began to keep a diary, of sorts. More a journal in some respects, more an annals in others, it was casual; she did not intend to keep it faithfully and regularly. It was something to do, when she felt like it. It was something, she realized, with long foresight, which she could read again in her old age, when there are no longer any adventures.

These are her first entries:

June 23

Today we found that chestnut tree, the one he supposedly climbed and jumped out of. It was dead, it had been dead a long time (Day says a “blight” killed every chestnut in the country back in the early part of the century) but it was still standing.

It looks like it will stand a long time. Its limbs are mostly gone, the limb that caught him is gone, but the sturdy trunk endures.

Dead a long time but still here.

I had to explain the significance of the tree to Day. He choked up. There is something curiously similar between his love of trees and his love of trees. Suspicious too. They aren’t supposed to be alike.

Big question: is Day projecting into the “other” parts of himself, or, if this is for real, is the “other” somehow shaping Day?

We had an imu for supper. He began preparing the imu early in the afternoon and condescended to explain it to me: he dug a hole and lined it with rocks, then built a fire in the hole and let it burn down to hot coals, then shoveled the coals out, and took a whole chicken and some potatoes and carrots and wrapped them in wet leaves and put them on the bed of hot rocks in the pit, shoveling the coals back in on top, and covering the pit with dirt.

He left it, his imu, like that for 3 or 4 hours, while we went off exploring. Then at suppertime he just dug it up and we ate it. I’ve never tasted better chicken.

I’m going to learn to do these things myself. He does so much, I ought to do the cooking.

Oh, and I nearly forgot, the eggs at breakfast, the way he did them, poached them or coddled them or whatever: after we had eaten our oranges, in halves, he broke an egg into each half-orange shell and laid them directly onto the fire coals for about 10 minutes. Delicious! and just faintly tasting of orange.

I wonder how much of all this he learned from his Scout handbooks, and how much he learned from Daniel.

Daniel, at the age of 4 or 5, ran away from home, after getting out of that chestnut tree, and was lost for nearly 24 hours. Of course, when they found him, they gave him a severe beating.

June 24

Our temperatures are about the same. Which is to say that both of us are more on the cool side. I don’t have much energy, and here in the woods with this idleness I would seem indolent to anyone but Day, whose temperature is as slow and cool as mine.

Daniel, on the other hand, seems to have the highest temperature possible. Today I felt his pulse, and timed it, and then afterwards when he was just Day again I felt Day’s pulse and timed it. Results Daniel, 110; Day, 75. But maybe it’s only because Daniel is still only a child and children have higher pulses.

Yet everything he says has a higher pulse. Day’s words just trickle out. Daniel’s erupt. It makes me understand that old-fashioned word referring to speech, “ejaculate.” I used to be confused or embarrassed, in reading old novels, to come across “He ejaculated,” or, worse, “She ejaculated.”

Today we found the location of Bardwell’s store on Dark Entry Road. Every Sunday afternoon Daniel got a penny from his father; his older sisters each got two pennies; his brothers, three. They went to Bardwell’s store, the only store in Dudleytown, and bought candy. It is one of Daniel’s favorite places. He is sorry about all the things in the store which he can never afford to buy, but he has so much fun standing in front of the glass showcase and trying to decide which candy he will spend his penny on.

There is no trace of the store now except its stone steps, leading up into air.

Wild greens for supper, and a kabob on a spit pit: the spit a long green stick strung with lamb chunks, onions, peppers, tomatoes and mushrooms, turned slowly over a pit of coals. It took Day two beers to finish his share of it. He was almost a little tipsy.

June 25

Occasionally, but not terribly often, I have to justify all this for myself. The past couple of days I’ve found myself wondering, Am I doing my own thing? But it doesn’t bother me. The answer is always yes. I might be lazy, but I am never incurious or indifferent.

Daniel fascinates me. I want to learn as much about him as I can. Over Day’s mild protests, I bought a tape recorder, and I’m recording on tape everything he says, his whole life from beginning to…how long will this take? At this rate, months, maybe. But it is a fascinating life, at least the way he tells it. It is a life I could never imagine, and sometimes I find it nearly impossible to believe that Day could imagine it either.

But there is always that suspicion. Last night I did some gazing at the stars. Exposed to them, on a clear night, to the zillions of them, I just gazed at them for a long time, until bedtime. I felt the way I always do, gazing at the night sky: the sense of personal insignificance. Stars die. Even stars. When a thing on puny earth dies, it is dead. For good. Isn’t reincarnation a preposterously vain and arrogant dream, a selfish foolish delusion?

Well, isn’t it?

Today we found the site of the schoolhouse, south up Dudleytown Road, very near the place where I’ve been parking the car. Nothing there, of course, although Day excavated a funny little tin contraption, like a telescope, which Daniel later identified as a collapsible drinking cup. Why collapsible? So it would fit into the child’s lunchbox.

The teacher’s name is Abigal Fife. Now that certainly sounds like a made-up name. I pretended I was Miss Fife, and followed Daniel through his daily school routines. Apparently he is the only child in his grade. Whether he was the last child born in Dudleytown is not known; at any rate he was apparently the only child born that year, and the only one in the first grade.

For supper, four small poached trout, which Day claims he caught in Bonny Brook with grubs baited on a hook fashioned from chicken bones. I didn’t see him do it but I believe him because how else could he have got them? (I ribbed him about not having a Connecticut fishing license.)

Hot rocks have it all over Teflon as a cooking surface. We honored the fish with a domestic white wine, a Pinot Chardonnay from California. I explained to Day the niceties about white wine with white meat and red with red. I believe he is beginning to appreciate wine.

June 26

Intruders today! I heard them while Daniel was talking and had to bring Day back. We listened. Voices from the woods in the distance. They did not come any closer, and we didn’t go to investigate; whoever it was has as much right to be here as we do, I suppose, but I couldn’t help resenting them. There was laughter from time to time. Later, after a few hours, the voices went away. We went and found their encampment or picnic spot or whatever you could call it: near the Caleb Jones cellar hole they had built a small clumsy fire and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, leaving behind their considerable litter of napkins, and paper plates with imitation walnut grain printed on one side. Day demonstrated that he actually knows some strong curse words.

But it is Saturday, and this was the first time anyone has been here but us, and we did not see them nor they us.

I asked Daniel to tell me what he looks like, at the age of seven, but it was hard for him to do. I pretended I was Miss Fife again and his “assignment” was to describe himself without looking in a mirror. He has long dark bushy hair (Day’s is short and light brown), that’s about all of interest I could determine. And he wears short pants.

I asked him to locate the church or meeting house but apparently there isn’t one and never has been. That seems strange, because it had been a town of religious people, Puritans in the beginning, later Congregationalists. Daniel doesn’t go to church. But every night at bedtime he says the “Now I lay me” prayer, ending with, “And God bless Papa and Mama and Charity and Emmeline” and all his brothers and relations and friends. “Friends.” That’s funny. He has none. None his own age.

The menu this evening: just plain old ordinary prime porterhouse steaks! Grilled on charcoal which he made himself. Steaks black on the outside, bright pink inside. With a bottle of Chateauneufdu-Pape. For dessert: wild strawberries. It took us nearly two hours this morning to find and pick less than a quart of them, but it was worth it.

June 27

More visitors. Seen this time, as well as heard. Dudleytown was uncomfortably overpopulated today. Sunday traffic. A man and his wife, middle-aged, with back-packs, who had apparently been hiking on the Appalachian Trail, detoured through our glade this morning and paused to ogle us. The man scowled as if in disapproval of our obvious sinning, and started to say or ask something, but his wife tugged him on. This afternoon two boys in a jeep came driving up, stopped, backed, and over the roar of the jeep’s motor they tried to make conversation, but I couldn’t hear them. They were Day’s age, I guess. They smirked and leered at me, and nudged one another, then drove away laughing. Day gave evidence that at some time in his life he must have overheard some sailors swearing. Or maybe Daniel taught him those words.

Still later this afternoon another group of Appalachian Trail hikers, five altogether, of various ages but wearing identical red-white-and-blue nylon back-packs, came through our glade. One of them stopped to ask me if I didn’t know that this was a haunted ghost town we were camping in. I said I knew it was a ghost town but we have been here nearly a week without being haunted. “Nervy,” was all he said before moving on.

I was beginning to feel paranoiac, with all these people coming into our glade, so we went for a walk, just to get away. But on the Dudleytown Road we met a whole family on an outing. First we saw the boys, throwing rocks at something in the woods and generally raising hell, fat little brats. Then the fat father, who looked like a plumber or a cook or something, carrying a fat baby, and the very very fat mother, puffing. Politely we said “Hello” as they passed, but they only stared at us, as if we were strange specimens of wildlife and this their first trip to the woods.

For supper tonight he agreed to let me do the cooking. I did the one thing I’ve had some experience with: spaghetti. I did it nicely, too, but somehow the meal seemed out of place, not a woods thing.

Guess what, dear diary. Romance! Tonight he held my hand.

5

Girl. Why’s a girl? I have seen Charity and Emmeline. Why the bare groin? Both are blank there. A congenital defect? But Reuben Temple says they all of them are. Rube’s a year older than me, but I tore it out of him when he tried to tell me how I was born. Laced his jacket, I did, and sent him bawling home. Nobody can say things like that about my mother and father.

Still I studied it, afterwards, and I bethought me: maybe he was right. I have never seen a stork. I have watched, and once I saw a bird, but it was some kind of crane, not a stork. We come from God, but how? I don’t believe in angels either.

I guess I thrashed poor Reuben because he told a truth I didn’t want to hear. As if you know, because of the thunderheads, that a storm is coming, but still you stay out, and when the storm hits you it seems a surprise.

They tease me in school, that I do not have a girl. All the others, olders, have a girl. Felicia is Jonathan’s girl. Alvina is Hector’s girl. Violate is Renz’s girl. My own sister Charity is Seth’s girl, even if she doesn’t know it because she doesn’t know anything. What do you do to have a girl?

Danny, Danny, little manny

Pink ears and purple fanny

Never had a girl but Granny

Never can he, never, can he?

is what the boys chant, ringing round me but keeping their distance because if they come near I will clobber them. I am not little, my ears and rear are neither pink nor purple, and both my grandmothers returned to dust ’ere I was born. All taunts are false and unfair.

And I would have a girl if there was one. But all are older, and taken.

Yet now there is one who, though taken, and though older, seems to decide to become mine. It is all in sport, of course, or seems to be, the way this afternoon when school is over she comes and sits upon my desk, the others around her, behind her, and she rumples my hair with her hand and smiles, and says to the others, “I’m going to be Danny’s girl.”

The others titter and giggle; this makes me think she is just joshing, but she says to them, “I mean it. I am.”

She must be two or more years older than me, though she’s not any bigger. Her name is Hattie Rose Pearl Bardwell, least daughter of Storekeeper Bardwell. Nobody calls her just Hattie, because Miss Fife doesn’t. Miss Fife always calls her Hattie Rose Pearl.

“Hattie Rose Pearl,” I say, “you leave me be.” She is too old to be my girl, past eleven at least. But she’s a pretty one, I have to say.

“Oh, Danny,” she says, and rumples my hair some more, then she sits beside me at my desk and puts one arm around me. “I want to share your desk,” she says. Nobody shares my desk; all the other desks are shared, two and two; not mine. I’ve never had a deskmate.

“You’re Zadock’s girl,” I remind her.

“No more, I’m not,” she says. The others are still tittering. “Miss Fife won’t let you share my desk,” I say.

“She will if I ask her pretty-like.”

Close as she is, her girl-scent is a new thing to me, and rife, and sweet, even her hair, like mowings.

Girl. Why’s a girl? Her arm around me tightens, hugs.

My face is hot as time, my tongue frozen.

When the others keep tittering, she says, “Scat!” to them and hugs me even tighter as if to protect. “Danny’s my boy. Have off!” They leave us. The schoolhouse is empty but for us. It’s even harder to be alone with her. I fidget.

“Put your arm around me,” she says, “and I’ll be your girl.”

“I have to go and do my chores.”

“Not yet you don’t.”

“I do.”

“I’ll walk you home.”

Outside in the schoolyard the others are still waiting, even Zadock, whose girl she is, who makes a lip. He’s big enough to eat me up. He doesn’t join the others, who join hands and ring round us, singing

Danny, manny, little squirrel

Got himself a pretty girl

Hattie’s Danny’s rose and pearl

Dance her, Danny, with a whirl.

I do not dance her but run. One thing at least, I’m the fastest runner in the school. I outrun them all. Except her. She hangs on my heels, until all the others have dropped back. I’m nearly home. Still I run, until I’ve reached the marsh path to my yard. Here I stop for breath, and here she catches up with me and, panting, asks, “Don’t you like me?”

I, panting, accuse her, “You are only trying to make Zadock jealous.”

“No,” she says. “I truly want to be your girl.”

“Why?” I ask. “Why me?”

“Because you don’t have one.”

“Then Zadock won’t have one.”

“Yes he will. He’s after Felicia.”

“I don’t know as what I need a girl.”

“If I’m your girl, I can snitch you some candy from Papa’s store.”

Now this sounds to be the square thing. A toothy lure. But what’s my end of the deal? What does having a girl require? Why’s a girl? I’ve never had one. I’m only nine.

My breath is back, I’m not panting but just unsteady: “Well, if you want to.”

My chores can wait. We walk together to her father’s store. She asks me what’s my favorite? Jujubes, I tell her. She has me wait outside while she goes in. She returns, later, empty-handed. I am disappointed. We walk on back toward my house. But where the road goes into the woods, she draws me into the woods, behind a screen of cedars. She lifts the hem of her dress high, I see the length of her pantaletted legs. From beneath her dress she takes out a whole paper bag of jujubes. We laugh and share them, one by one.

She walks me on home. Our swinging arms brush, our hands touch, then hold. Shivers shive me. The holding of hands’s a thing of wonder. Trees hold hands. I’ve never, except in play. A hand’s a nice thing. Animals don’t have them. All the pads of her palm cup and suck the pads of mine. A hand is for holding.

I have a girl.

6

Then there were certain matters which she did not record in her diary.

Diana slept well every night. With the exception of a few occasions, early on, when she was not accustomed to the normal woods noises of the night and had awakened in fear at the strange sounds (once, investigating with the flashlight, she discovered it was merely a raccoon trying to break into their food chest), she generally slept better than she ever had. The combination of the fresh and fragrant night air, the comfort of the air mattress and sleeping bag, in short, the sheer relaxation of the whole situation, made her nights deeply restful.

But Day, on the other hand, was a fitful sleeper, every night flouncing around on his air mattress, groaning in his sleep and occasionally even grinding his teeth. She supposed it was because he was “possessed.” Once, after a particularly rough night, when he appeared haggard and sleepless at breakfast, she asked him about it. He told her that he had just been through “a double-feature nightmare.” She asked him if the dream involved Daniel Lyam Montross. No, Day said, it had nothing to do with him. Well, she had asked, who was in it, then? His mother? His father? Anybody he recognized? “Just you,” he said.

For all her intelligence, Diana was embarrassingly slow in coming to grasp or guess the possible source of Day’s affliction.

One night, after she had easily dropped off to sleep, she came awake again—or rather her eyes snapped open, not to any sound or audible disturbance—she wondered later what in fact had actually wakened her—her own dream? or a telepathic summons or something?—her eyes came open and saw, in the dim light that a crescent moon cast through one of the mesh windows of the tent, Day lying face down upon his bag and mattress, seeming to embrace them, his pajamas removed, his pelvis writhing. He made no sound but he was violent. She nearly spoke, but didn’t. Finally he stopped, sighed, then seemed to go to sleep. She was not even certain that he had been awake. The next day, while he was away fishing, out of curiosity she investigated his sleeping bag, and found starched places on it.

It was the evening of that day that he had held her hand. It had been spontaneous, apparently; they were sitting with their chairs side by side before the campfire, in the early dark, some time after she had been listening to Daniel telling of his first “girl,” Hattie Rose Pearl. Day’s arm and Diana’s arm were close, on the arms of their chairs, and their hands suddenly touched then clasped; she wasn’t certain which of them had instigated it; perhaps it was simultaneous; she had been thinking about it.

They merely sat for a long while, in silence, holding hands. Several times she came extremely close to blurting out, “Day, would you like to make love?” She even considered being more matter-of-fact or even blunt about it, and saying, “You can screw me if you want to.” But she just couldn’t. And even if she could, could he?

She tried to rationalize her way into it by thinking, It’s bound to happen sooner or later. But was it?

We aren’t here on a date, she reminded herself. We are explorers, not lovers. And besides, after all, he was three years younger, more like a kid brother.

And then of course the biggest hitch of all: he could be her grandfather. That would be incest, wouldn’t it?

But these were all excuses, she realized. Then what was her real reason?

If he asked me, I would. Or if he even made the first move. There. That was it. There was only one man she had been to bed with, and she had practically asked him; that is, she had pursued him, played upon his vanity as teacher and writer, made herself available, schemed and plotted, and then, when it finally happened, she didn’t think it was particularly enjoyable. At least not very satisfying. Not the kind of thing the books made it out to be. She was nagged by the suspicion that it would have been better if she had not been aggressive, if she had waited and let the man court her.

Would Day ever ask her? Or make the right move? She hoped, when they held hands, that it would lead to something. But it didn’t. Later, when they were getting into their sleeping bags, she nearly forgot her resolve again and decided to go ahead and make the first move, to get into his bag with him. But she didn’t. She couldn’t.

Now here comes the one incident she would never, could never, record in her diary: the next day, in the afternoon, once when he went off to “use the woods,” she impishly and stealthily followed him, to spy on him. Out of simple curiosity? Or out of some unformulated suspicion? He sometimes seemed to take an inordinately long time when he went to use the woods. At a distance she hid behind the mountain laurel and spied. She almost gave herself away stifling a giggle at the sight of him peeing. He spouted a thick stream; that must be the beer he had for lunch. She thought she was going to choke trying to swallow her giggle when he was finished and was shaking it. Then he began doing something that made her cover her eyes with both hands. But then she had to peek through her fingers. She could not help herself. She had to watch. Once she had tried to imagine how boys did it, but couldn’t quite. So this was it: the fist, the fist as surrogate.

Now this is what she would never be able to put into her diary: this is the strange thing: for a while, watching him through the fingers of her hands that covered her face, she was partly fascinated but mostly just embarrassed and ashamed of herself for watching. But then suddenly she realized that she was becoming very much aroused. She was breathing very hard. I’m no voyeur, damn it! she tried to tell herself, trying to fight it. But there it was: this passion coming on her in sight of his passion.

“Save that for me!” she almost called out, but didn’t. If he saw her he would die. If he saw her she would die. Sharply she inhaled and the waistband of her jeans slackened; she thrust her hand down inside, and did what he was doing, not his way but hers. If he sees me I will die.

His eyes were closed; was he thinking of her? She closed her eyes and thought of him. But then she had to open her eyes and look at him again.

This would have been pretty, if she could have brought herself to record this in her diary: “We had simultaneous orgasms.”

Then she ran away, and kept running. She felt terrible. She had never had any problems before, but this…. When she was twelve she read in a book that everybody does it, so it never bothered her. But this…. She was both ashamed to face Day again and angry with him. Damn him, why did he waste it on himself? Why couldn’t he get up his nerve and ask her? Maybe he didn’t even like her. Maybe he wasn’t attracted to her. Now she felt rejected, as well as ashamed, and she kept running.

She ran all the way to her car. Possibly, when she started the motor and backed out into the road, she fully intended to get out for good and keep going, and certainly the way she scraped hell out of the car’s underside driving over the rough road would have indicated this haste and determination, but after she was out of Dudleytown and on the highway she had cooled down a bit and realized that she only wanted to restock their supplies. The food was nearly gone, they had had the last of the beer with lunch, the ice had long since melted.

But still, when she returned to Dudleytown again, she couldn’t face Day. All by herself she portaged all of the new groceries from the car to camp, without trying to find him and ask him to help. She even lugged two fifty-pound blocks of ice, one by one, the long distance into camp. She worked up a good sweat doing it, and took a long bath in the pool at the falls. This time the icy waters didn’t bother her in the slightest.

When she finally saw Day again, at suppertime, she couldn’t look at him. She busied herself with preparing supper and didn’t look at him. They ate supper without looking at each other.

Finally he asked, “Is something wrong?”

She looked up and looked into his eyes for the first time, but then looked away again.

He kept looking at her, and she thought she might have detected in his eyes some glint of…of something. It couldn’t be possible that he had known she was watching him.

She couldn’t look at him. And she didn’t want his eyes on her. “Go to sleep, Day,” she said.

7

Violate’s her name. Without disregard. Is what her people called her. Prettier, in sound, than Violet. No transgression nor harm meant in it. We’re some kin, her ma a cousin of my ma, and I’ve known her since I was old enough to know. But it is late in my eleventh year now before I come to know her well.

The older boys tattle about her. This summer they have let me into their club. It’s called “The Oatsowers,” they haven’t told me why. They will. I had to do some things to be let in. Then with pokeberry ink they dyed my perkin reddish purple and it still hasn’t come off and I wonder when it will. Then I was told I would have to collect a lock of hair from Hattie Rose Pearl, and I did, but they told me that wasn’t the hair that was meant, and told me what was meant, and Zadock who’s in the club too told me he would kill me if I did, and I didn’t know what to do. But I wanted to be let in the club, so once I asked her if she had hair there, and she said not much but some, and I asked could I have a lock and she slapped me, but later she said she’d misunderstood me and thought I’d asked to have a look instead of a lock and she’d been thinking about it and decided I could have a look and a lock both if I’d do the same for her, but I didn’t want to because I was dyed with the pokeberry ink.

What would she think? But I wanted in the club. So I did. And I got a snip of a curl of a lock of her hair there, but when she saw mine covered with the reddish purple pokeberry ink she shrieked and ran, and isn’t my girl any longer, and then when I took the snip to the club I got in a fight with Zadock and he nearly killed me but I got in a few mean licks on him too and he decided to let me live. Then the last thing I had to do was drop my trousers and stand and keep the stand hard without touching it for one half of an hour while Seth timed it on his pocketwatch.

Now I am in the club. The club is for secrets and mysteries, and for finding out things. For watching bulls and stallions do it, and even roosters. For showing off and measuring. Renz has the longest, twice at least the size of mine. But I’m bigger than Reuben and Seth, and twice at least the size of Jonathan, though I’m the youngest.

We have to tattle on our girls. Since Hattie Rose Pearl is Zadock’s girl again he has to tattle on her, but we don’t believe him, the things he’s claimed to’ve done with her. She told me once she knows that babies come through the navel. Since I have no girl now I have to tattle on my sisters. I have seen Charity embrace a tree.

It is Renz who tattles on Violate. He brags they were but seven the first time he drove his perkin through her vale. The others have large eyes and open mouths when they listen to him tell this, and they believe him. At seven, he says. And then at eight, several times. At nine, often. All these were dry. The first wet funicle was at ten, and, he says, it gave him a turn, struck him all of a heap, he thought he’d bursted a vein or thew.

What is this wet? Dearly I would I knew. Once I thought it was only tinkle, and some others did too, Reuben’s brag is of a peefunicle with his girl. But we are wrong.

Wetness is each and every. The maple tapped in March seeps its sap. The pine oozes resin. The earth itself pours out its water through its springs. The spider spews a sticky strand. Grab a grasshopper and he’ll burb a bubble of tobacco juice. The dew at night is the weeping of the stars. My eyes weep. My nose runs. My sisters have their monthly courses. Cows milk. Snow melts. The fish milts, or roes, in spawning. All is burble and surge, and spurtle and spume, and steep and jet, and dissolving and flowing.

My witnesses are a pair of pools, and heavy, I fathom that. Round reservoirs. Wetness in my witness. But how draught them off? I’ll ask at the club.

My chance comes. “Renz,” I say, “what is it that makes the wet? I mean, when you’re he-ing and she-ing, like you told, how come it comes out? Do you have to grunt and bear down or what?”

Renz twinkles at the eye. He pops my shoulder and says, “Why, aint you ever drew water up a pump? Same principle. Just work the pump handle up and down. Like so.” He makes a grab, as if at a pump handle, and raises it and lowers it.

As soon as I’m alone, I try it. It’s awkward, pumping the handle of yourself, you have to turn your hand around or else your elbow’s in the way. I pump and wait, anxioused up, wondering what it will be like when the wet comes. But nothing comes. I pump a bit harder. It’s stiff and hard to bend down; on the downstroke it pains me some. But I keep on. For nigh on to an hour before I quit.

At the next meeting of the club, I say, “Renz, you tole one. It don’t work. You were just pulling one over me.”

He laughs, and says, “Why, did you try it on yourself?”

“I did,” I say, “and not a thing come of it.”

Some of the others are laughing too, and this makes me think that Renz is making a fool of me.

“Don’t you know,” says Renz, “that a pump won’t draw before it’s been primed? You aint been primed yet.”

“How do you get primed?” I ask.

“That’s what a girl’s for,” he says.

This is how I come to get in over my head with Violate.

I think they’ve put her up to it. But I can’t be all too sure. How did she know I was in the corn? I am in the corn, high of midsummer, just lying on my back and watching the clouds break up into white wisps on the blue. But lately pretty nearly everything I see makes me think of he-ing and she-ing, and the way pieces of corners of clouds break and tear away is like the wet in my witnesses wanting to pull loose and get out. And above my head the corn has tasseled, and I am tasseled, and the tassels spill their pollen on the waiting silky silks. I stroke a silk and it reminds me of the lock from Hattie Rose Pearl.

The corn is high and I am deep into it; I don’t know how she finds me, even if she was looking for me. It might be an accident. “Oh, hello, Danny!” she says, nearly tripping over me. “Dear me suz, what are you doing here?”

“It’s Pa’s cornpatch,” I say. “Can’t I set in it if I’ve a mind to? What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I’m just gadding about,” she says. “Such a fine afternoon,” she says. Then she kneels and says, “I’ll just set with you, I will.”

She does. I don’t gainsay her. She’s my cousin, and she’s two, maybe three, years older. But she’s a girl.

She is looking me up and down and all over, as if she’s never seen me before. Maybe she hasn’t, in a way. “My, you’re getting to be withy and big,” she says, as if she’s not noticed before. “And you’re not even twelve yet, are you?”

“Will be soon,” I declare.

“I hear you’re in the club now,” she says.

“Yup,” I say, not trying to sound too self-proud.

“We have a club too,” she declares.

“I know it,” I say, and I do. The girls call themselves the SS, which I think stands for Secret Society. A pink hair ribbon is the badge, and Violate is wearing hers.

“And,” she says, with a kind of a leer, “Hattie Rose Pearl told what you did.”‘

“I was bounden,” I tell her. “The club obliged me to do it.”

“Also,” she says, “Hattie Rose Pearl told that your perkin is purple as a plum.”

God rot that Hattie Rose Pearl! Now my face must be purple as a plum. “That…that’s the club’s doing, too,” I say. “They did it. It’s not but pokeberry stain, is all it is.”

She smiles. She says, low and quiet, “Let me see.”

Damn me if I will. I’ve already frightened one girl off, showing it, I’m not going to scare another. “It’s not fit to be seen,” I say.

She pouts. “You’re just afraid to show me.”

“No, I’m not, neither. I’d show you if the stain was off.”

“I’ll wager it’s bonny and sightly, even with the stain.”

I shake my head.

“I’m not squeamish like Hattie Rose Pearl,” she says. She puts her hand on my leg, up on the upper part. I have never had a girl’s hand on my leg. Hattie Rose Pearl never did that. It is as if she is showing me that she’s not like Hattie Rose Pearl. Now she says something else, too: “I’ll do anything you want me to, if you’ll show me.”

Will you prime my pump for me? I nearly ask, but she might think that’s too forward. Instead I say, “Fair enough.” Then I show her. I watch her face closely. She does not blanch. Her eyes glitter and her mouth beams. “See?” I say. “All over it’s purple.”

“No,” she says. “Violet. Like my name.” She laughs. “They’ve made it violet for Violate!” She gives me a hug. My violet starts rising. She looks at it again. “It won’t come off?” she says. She wipes her fingertips across her mouth and dabs at my violet, as if to rub it off. It won’t rub off, but the stroke of her fingers gives me a quick stiff stand. “Good heavens!” she says, and leaps back a little, as if from a snake. Then she asks, “Is that for me too?” And then she asks, “Danny, have you ever been primed?”

Now this is when I begin to smell a dinge in the stovewood; this is when I hunch that maybe they’ve put her up to something. But the trouble is, I don’t care. I’m too excited. I shake my head.

“Do you want I should prime you?” she says.

I nod, I nod.

“All right,” she says. “Just lie back down.” I lie back down ’twixt the corn rows, and she kneels between my legs. She takes hold of the pump handle and starts lowering it and raising it. She giggles and covers the giggle with her other hand. The giggle is suspicious too, but I make one myself, it is all kind of silly, this girl pumping the pump handle of me. She pumps the handle up and down, the downstroke is even more painful than when I tried it myself, I’m afraid it will break off. She raises and lowers, and lowers and raises. But nothing happens. My skin is crawling and my heart is thumping like a runaway wagon and I am sweating. But all her pumping brings nothing out of me.

After a long time she stops and says, “Well well, I guess you’re just not man enough yet.” The way she says this is like she has rehearsed it, as if someone has told her to say it. I am bilked and cast down.

But she is not grinning. She is staring at my perkin, which stands as before. Her face is empty and absent, save for a twitch at one corner of her mouth.

Suddenly she is falling on me, hiking her dress hem, whispering in my ear, “Danny, will you promise never never to tell in the club what we did?” I nod, I nod.

And then down below I feel the hair silks of her vale brushing down on me, and I know then why it’s a vale, a valley, a dell down riding, up through the vale riding, my perkin, my violet perking perkin caught and taken, up through the vale riding.

I knew it, I tell myself I knew it all along, that this was the way it was really supposed to go.

“If you tell Renz, he’ll kill me,” she says. “He’ll kill you too.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” I say, “I won’t tell a soul.”

And on me she rides, and I riding with her, and she panting, and saying, “I wasn’t supposed to do this,” and saying, “But I am,” and saying, “I had to,” and asking, “Do you like it?” and me panting, and saying back, “Pretty fine,” and then both of us not saying anything more because we can’t talk.

And there in the corn with the breeze dancing the corn leaves over us, in tune to the dance of our thrashing, I begin to become a man, knowing the wet is going to surge and break out, feeling her vale milking me, waiting, working and waiting for it.

But then she does a strange thing: she stops. Of a sudden she stops thrashing and lies hard upon me, squeezing me, hugging all heck out of me, as if she is trying to mash me right into the earth. I cannot move beneath her. For a while her vale itself alone goes on milking and stripping, but then it too is stilled and tight, in the long still squeeze that goes on until I cry for breath.

At last, when I cry for breath, she eases up and rolls off me, and lies there beside me smiling and looking dreamy-eyed, so I know she hasn’t really been hurt. I am relieved, for I thought I’d broken something in her, but she isn’t hurt at all.

I pant my question: “Why did you stop?”

“Why—” she pants back at me, giving me an odd look, “why, I finished. Didn’t you?”

“Finished?” I say.

She looks down at my perkin. It stands taut as ever. It is wet all over, but I think it’s hers, not mine. I’m pleased to see that some of the poke stain has been scrubbed away. “Lordy goodness,” she says. “I thought you’d fetched. Didn’t you fetch?”

“Fetch what?” I wonder.

She looks closer. “Well, I ’spose I didn’t prime you, after all, did I? Fetch is when you’re done and your quid spurts out. Maybe you don’t have any.”

“I do too,” I protest. “I bet I do. It was on the way, you just didn’t give it time enough.”

She is doing some thinking, and I am hoping that she is thinking about trying again. But then she seems to get nervous, and says, “I wasn’t supposed to do this. And now if you tell on me I’m going to be in for it.”

“I told you I won’t ever tell.”

“You’ll forget, and brag.”

“Cross my heart,” I cross my heart.

But she stands up, and smoothes down her dress. “You had better not,” she says, and she turns to leave me, but turns back to say one more thing: “They wouldn’t believe you if you did.”

Then she disappears through the corn.

I try to follow her, but my witnesses are so sore I can’t walk. I sit down in the corn again, and wonder if she’s done some everlasting harm to them. Maybe I am too young. I’m afraid to touch them for fear they will fall off. But I sit and study their stinging, and at last it comes to me that this is not pain of overwork but ache of unfinishment, as when you swing an axe at a sapling and miss it and your arms and shoulders twinge and suffer with the empty missing. I have missed. I’d like to catch Violate and throw her down, I’m big as she. I need a vale. I funicle the air, and imagine, but it’s no good.

Now I discover again my hands. I line one hand with cornsilks. It is a poor and sorry make-believe, but it is all I have. I am furious and impatient. I close my eyes to see Violate.

I fetch alone, and when at last I do, and have become a man, it hits me on the chin. I wipe it off and study it. She’d called it quid, but it isn’t anything at all like a quid. Like the milk in a kernel of corn if you pierce it with your thumbnail. My man-slick. I’m proud. More, I’m lightened and eased, happy as an earworm in a cornpatch.

At the next meeting of the club, Renz pops me on the shoulder and says, “Well, have you got yourself primed yet?” “No,” I say. “I guess I aint man enough.”

8

A single entry in Diana’s diary, that for June 31, is somewhat longer than those before it:

I have been rereading what I’ve written here so far, and it strikes me that I’ve placed undue emphasis on what we’ve been eating, as if all of this is only one big glorious picnic and my chief interest is in the menu. Well, it is true that sometimes I’m having such fun at mealtime that I forget what we’re here for. And I’ve put on a little weight. And Day, who needs it more, has also. But I don’t want to leave the impression that food matters all that much. (Occasionally I’ve wondered if perhaps the food is a replacement—or displacement—for sex.)

If I were required to list formally my (I should say our) concerns or interests or involvements, food wouldn’t be very high up the list. I suppose the list would look something like this

1. The life of Daniel Lyam Montross.

2. The death of Dudleytown, Conn.

3. The possibility of the actuality of reincarnation.

4. Nature—the woods and everything in it.

5. Amateur “archaeology”—exploring what is left.

6. Day Whittacker as a person (he grows on me).

7. Fresh air and sunshine, and stillness and peace.

8. Sex (some of Daniel’s exploits titillate me).

9. Food (oh be honest, Diana, it comes before #8). [No it doesn’t]

But take Number Four for example. I’ve never before had much interest in “nature study.” Before, I could identify birch trees because they’re white, but that’s about all. Now I’m getting a new education…from Day, who seems to know everything. He’s always pointing out things and explaining things.

Like this morning he showed me some cocoons, and gave me a little lecture. Of course I knew that moths and butterflies go through a caterpillar stage, but what I didn’t know is that the larva itself goes through several successive changes—sheddings of its skin—before becoming a caterpillar. Day injected a little allusion to the idea of reincarnation, or karma, the idea that the person goes through successive incarnations on the route to perfection, to the butterfly stage. The Greeks, he says, identified the butterfly with the goddess Psyche. I remember pictures and sculptures of her, she is beautiful. I’d like to be a butterfly.

Much of Day’s nature teaching seems filled with subtle and not-so-subtle allusions. An example of the latter: I was admiring a green carpet of lichen the other day, and Day explained to me that lichens aren’t one plant but two: the “symbiotic” union of two completely different plants, alga and fungus. They (or it) couldn’t exist without each other: the fungus furnishes the support and the water, and the alga provides the food. In a sense, they’re parasites on each other.

I caught the allusion quickly (or thought I did), and in jest I’ve nick named him “Fungus” and he’s nicknamed me “Alga.”

“Fungus,” I will say, “the water bucket’s empty. Haul some more.”

Or he will say, “On your next trip to the store, Alga, pick us up another bag of flour.”

But it’s not just water and food, not just sustenance. He’s giving me an education (and of course he’s “giving” me Daniel, too), and I’m giving him…well, I’m giving him companionship. And I bought him a radio. Or, I should say, I bought us a radio. But it was his idea. A four-battery portable, which, at night, will pick up WQXR. Our woods are full of music now.

Now I will tell about our first kiss. (Apparently all courtships go through three stages: first, holding hands, second, kissing, and third, sex—and it seems strange that Daniel missed the second stage; whether or not we ever get to the third stage remains to be seen, and I’ve promised myself that if he doesn’t make an overture before long I’m going to have to start something myself.) Well, tonight after supper, with the radio turned up full blast to a baroque recorder ensemble (with no neighbors to disturb, it’s better than stereo, it’s like being in a concert hall), Day asked me to dance for him. So I got out my black leotard and changed into it (I didn’t go into the tent to change, and I didn’t care whether he was watching me or not), and then, while the radio was playing something by Telemann, I improvised a dance, our mountain laurel glade for a stage, our Coleman lanterns for footlights, throwing my shadow against the trees. The dance of that shadow was like nothing seen before, and it inspired me. It awed Day, too.

Afterwards he modestly asked me to explain what I had done, to interpret it for him. So it was my turn to lecture him, and I laid on a glib elucidation about how Telemann’s music, to me, seems to have something important to do with the body-mind relationship, and how, in my dance, I was trying to evoke both the conflict and the accord between mind and body. Day thought it over for a while, and seemed to understand.

The baroque ensemble had finished, and the announcer said the next selection after the station break would be Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Pastoral Symphony—I half-expected to hear him add: “at the request of Miss Diana Stoving and Mr. Day Whittacker,” it was so right, so perfect. “Come and dance with me,” I said to Day.

“I can’t dance,” he said. “I never tried to learn.”

“Forget that,” I said. “Come on.” I took his hand and pulled him out into the open space of the glade. He stood awkwardly with his hands in his pockets. “Now,” I said, with a large smile, “we are going to perform ‘The Symbiotic Affiliation of One Alga and One Fungus in a Pastoral Setting Furnished by Vaughan Williams.’” He laughed.

As the languid first movement began, molto moderato, I began to drift and sway, my arms floating. “I am air,” I said to Day. “I have air, I exist in air.” I danced a while through air. “You,” I said, “by just standing there like a bump on a log, symbolize support…roots…inertia.” He shifted his weight from one foot to another. “Just stand,” I said, “while I do my dance. The first movement is mine.” I danced. “In the air is food and sunshine,” I said and kept my mouth open as if to infuse the food and sunshine from the air. “Wherever I go I can effortlessly find it. Nature provides. The country is mine. But I am lonely.” My dance was of searching, of a drifting search. “What do I yearn for? I am thirsty and need water. And I am loose and need roots.” I executed a series of leaps. “I relish my freedom!” But the leaps took me nowhere. “But I yearn for a toehold, for a home place.” I finished my dance. “I am air, and food, and yearning.”

The first movement ended, and the second began, sluggish but lithe, lento moderato. “Now all of this movement is yours,” I said to him. “You are water. You are fluid but listless.” He began making a slow swimming breaststroke with his arms. “Oh, no, Day!” I said. “Too literal!” He stopped and stuck his hands into his pockets again, and glowered at me. He was too self-conscious. “Turn around,” I said. He did. “Look at your shadow up there on the trees.” He looked up at his giant shadow projected by the Coleman lanterns against the trees. “Now just listen to the music,” I said, “and watch what that shadow becomes.”

He just stood there for a while, his back to me, just listening to the music—which was all right, for he also symbolized support and roots. But then he began to move. And it was beautiful. Truly beautiful. I was astounded. He was watching his shadow, and at first it was as if he were only moving his body to project a shadow dance, but that shadow dance was the essence of water, flowing and coursing. After a while I said, “But you are yearning too. Though you have roots and water, though your water is lovely and pastoral, you are starving. For air and food.” And believe me, diary, that water starved for air and food! It was an abstraction, of course, nothing whatever literal about it—Day moving with studied aimlessness and searching, around the glade and around, his long body just as lithe as the music, and in nearly perfect time to the music.

In the third movement, moderato pesante, we danced together. This was the happy meeting of water and air, of roots and food, of—oh, I can’t describe it. (The nice thing about the dance is that, like music, it is so nonverbal—is that why I switched, at college, from writing to dancing?) I didn’t have to give Day very many instructions. “Don’t touch me yet.” “You’re a little too slow there.” “Now, pick me up!” “Am I too heavy?” I was not, and he held me aloft with his hands on my waist, and I continued my dance up there, really in the air now, the alga attached to the fungus, the fungus anchored to the earth and holding, and sending up “water,” and the alga breathing the air and its food.

We never finished. That strange vocal descant in the fourth movement was just too glorious. That wordless song, like an echo heard from a distant hillside, it was the love song of the air, of the alga, the air singing through the alga, singing its love for the fungus. I don’t see how Day held me up there so long, his arms straight up over his head, unless the sheer beauty of that song was giving him some uncustomary strength. He held me up there while I finished my dance, which ended as he lowered me slowly down to him and kissed me—or did I kiss him?—his face was waiting there, and his mouth was in the way of my mouth, which met it, and for the last minute or so of that spine-tingling vocal descant the only movement we were making was of our mouths together, the alga and the fungus completely wedded at last.

Then he lowered me on to the ground, and we just stood there for a while looking at each other. He put his hands back into his pockets. “I guess,” I said, awkwardly, “that I don’t know how to do the rest of it. But there’s just a minute or so left until the end.”

“You were beautiful,” he said, “while it lasted.”

“So were you,” I returned.

“We’ll have to make up some more dances, sometime,” he said.

“You’re good,” I said. “You make a perfect partner.”

“Are any of your books about dance?”

So now, while I am writing this, he is reading my copy of Havelock Ellis’ The Dance of Life. That won’t tell him anything about the modern dance, but it’s a good beginning on dance in general. I hope he notices my notes and underlinings (I’ve a long habit of “talking back” to my books) and I hope he notices those places where Ellis discusses the relationship between dance and sex.

Yesterday he consented to listen to a playback of several of Daniel’s tapes. Before, he had been resistant, had said he didn’t want to. I don’t think it was because he wasn’t interested in Daniel. I’m not sure just what it was. Perhaps he was afraid of finding that Daniel’s life had been so exciting in contrast to his. Anyway, he listened with full attention, and I watched him with full attention. Day’s blushes are a sight to behold. If, as I am never completely able to discount, Daniel is only the creation of Day’s imagination, or of his subconscious, then he is a beautiful dreamer. But I can’t conceive how he could fabricate some of that language. For instance, those sex words—“perkin” and “vale” and “funicle” and all that. I’ve read a lot of historical fiction, and I’ve read some of the so-called pornographic stuff too, Fanny Hill and My Secret Life and the Life and Loves of Frank Harris and all that, but I’ve never seen any of those words before. I wish I could find some scholarly study of Connecticut Yankee colloquialisms and try to check out some of his expressions.

“Got an early start, didn’t he?” was Day’s only comment about the tapes.

“Early start, late finish, they always say,” I said.

I’m sure he envies Daniel, there’s no question of that. On reflection, this might reinforce the idea that Daniel is the creation of Day’s fancy. Maybe Daniel in some ways is what Day would have liked to be.

I see I’ve neglected to mention what we had for supper tonight. Well, just for the record, it was….

I have to stop now, Diary. It’s past bedtime. Just now Day turned in. Before he went into the tent he stood a moment behind my chair with his hands on my shoulders, and to my back he said in a low and funny voice, somewhat hoarsely, “Diana, do you know what I want to do?”

I nodded.

“All right?” he asked.

“All right.”

9

She turned off the Coleman lanterns. Then she went into the tent. She She blows out her hurricane lamp. Now she comes into the barn. could not see in the dark, whether he was on his mattress or hers. She She cannot find me in the dark; she whispers “Danny, where are knelt at her own mattress and gently touched it; he was not in it. She did you?” “Over here,” I say, and she gropes her way through the hay not like it that he expected her to come to him, but it didn’t matter. Slowly to me. She says, “I didn’t know as how you’d really be here, as how she removed her leotard. Then she knelt at the other mattress and put out you’d dare.” Now she lifts her dress up over her head. “Are all your her hand; it touched his chest, which was bare, and trembling as if chilled, folks fast asleep?” she asks me. “Long since,” I say. Now she drops though it was hot. She stretched out alongside him, crowding him over so down and lies beside me in the hay. We wrap our arms about one that she could lie upon the air mattress too, then she embraced him, but another. She is trembling. “Are you cold?” I ask her. “No, just a bit his shivering increased. “Are you cold?” she asked him. He shook his head skeert, sneakin’ off from home of a dark night like that,” she says. but went on shaking. “Then what’s the matter?” she asked. His answer “Nothing to be skeert of,” I say, bold and brave though scared some was a choked whisper, “Just sort of nervous, is all, I guess.” “Relax,” she myself. Now it occurs to me she might be scared of what she’s getting said. But he didn’t, and her gentle stroking of his back only seemed to make into, or what’s going to get into her. “Didn’t you and Zadock it worse. “Haven’t you ever done this before?” she asked. “Oh sure,” he never do it?” I ask her. “He never tried to,” she says. “He never said, but he didn’t sound convincing. She asked, “Then why have you asked me.” I wonder why that is, but Zadock’s a kind of hidebound waited so long to ask me?” He replied “I thought you might be off ended. fellow. “Do you know what we’re supposed to do?” I ask her. “Do I mean, I didn’t want to spoil a good thing by making the wrong move.” you know how it’s done?” She says, “All the girls in the club know His talking seemed to slow his trembling. “I wondered if perhaps Daniel that. Violate told us. She told us it hurts the first time, a little, so was holding you back,” she said, and impishly added, “Do you think he I’m a bit uneasy about that, I guess.” would approve of this?”

Oh, certainly I approve. Let’s get on with it. All this gab takes the fun out of funicle.

“Funny you should mention him,” Day said. “I was just wondering how you were taking the idea of going to bed with your grandfather.” “Don’t say that!” she said. “Are you trying to make me nervous too? After all, it’s not his body. It’s your body.” And as if to reinforce these words, she put her hand on his penis. It was not, she discovered with some surprise, in sufficient condition, and her touch seemed to start him shivering again.

Now in my hand, the hand that first held hands with hers, I cup her warm vale, and fondle it. Violate’s is much larger, I think. The touch of my hand makes her shiver. I am eager and ready, near to bursting with impatience. I pull her up onto me where Violate had been.

“Well,” she sighed, “you don’t seem to be very much in the mood.” She found his mouth and tried kissing him. She held him tightly to her and mashed her mouth all over his, and wiggled against him. She thrust her tongue between his teeth. I hate myself for doing all the work, she said to herself. But he was beginning to respond. He crawled over her, on top.

Now that’s a notion, it is. To be on top. More likely to get somewhere. Odd I never thought of it. Violate’s way seemed natural. I ease her off, and down, and now I mount her. The neb of my perkin prowls her vale in search of the flume. But finds none. I’d like to strike a light and have a look, I can’t find it. My fingers are better for feeling and I grope in the dark. Is this it? No, too far back. Then this? Is this the right place?

She had, finally, to guide him with her hand. She was convinced now that he’d never done it before, he had no idea where to put it. She guided him home. He was still shaking, and once he was inside at last his shaking grew worse than ever. She reflected wryly that it was a novel sensation, being laid by a vibrator.

She moans, and trembles. “Am I hurting?” I ask. “Some,” she says. I try to be gentle, but gentleness doesn’t get me in. Now I must shove, but when I do, she shrieks. “Shhh,” I say. I hope she’s not roused the whole house. Now she is crying, and I still haven’t made a dent in her vale. “Stop,” she tells me. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to.”

Then it was all over. He didn’t even need to begin moving. The tremors of his convulsion merged with those of his nervous shaking, but she could separate them, and knew that he was having his. She sighed, and salvaged some small pleasure from the pressure of his throbbings inside her.

“Aw, Hattie Rose Pearl,” I say, “is it all that bad?” “I want to go home,” she says. “Aw,” I protest, “if you could jist stand it a little bit longer….” She is shoving against my shoulders. “Get off en me,” she whines. “I’ll tattle,” I say. “I’ll tell Violate and she’ll tell the others in the club that you couldn’t do it.” “I don’t keer,” she says, “you’re killing me this way.”

But he went on shaking. Wouldn’t anything calm him? “Now what’s the matter?” she asked. He didn’t answer, at first. Then he said, “I’m scared.” “Of what?” she asked. “You might get pregnant,” he said. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” she told him. But he kept on babbling. “You could, you know,” he said. “Do you want to?” “No, it’s all right, don’t you worry about it.”

“Are you scairt you’ll have a baby?” I ask her. “No,” she says, “that don’t bother me. Violate says you have to wait until the right time a month, and it’s that time, but I never dremp it was going to hurt so. Please get off me.”

He seemed to quit worrying about that, but he went on worrying. He lay beside her, still shivering (maybe, she thought, it was the air mattress that magnified his vibrations), and went on babbling. “Oh, hush,” she said. “No,” he said, “I lied to you. I’ve never done it before.” “All right,” she said, “forget it.” “I guess you didn’t enjoy it much, did you?” he asked. “Hush,” she said. “Let’s just lie still and relax.” “But I don’t want you to get the impression that—” “Oh, go to sleep, Day!” she said, and “Oops!” she said, but he was already under. She started to bring him back, but suddenly she was struck with a wild idea. Perhaps, if she had not been still so heated up and left with her unfinished desire, she would not have done this, she would not have brought Daniel into it. Perhaps it was some tantalizing curiosity, more than simple desire, which made her do it. At any rate, she made him into Daniel, and with her hands she reincarnated his perkin.

Well, how come you’re cosseting it so, if you don’t want it?

What? Why do you think I don’t want it?

You just said ye didn’t, you nonny!

I did?

Hattie Rose Pearl, are you befooling me again?

I’m Hattie Rose Pearl? Oh. I thought perhaps I was Violate.

Huh? What’s got inte ye, girl?

Nothing, yet.

Ha! Aren’t you the sauce, though! Did Violate put you up to trifling with me? Have you jist been holding out, of a purpose?

Am I holding out? Here I am, Danny.

Now you’re talking. Well, here goes. I wish you hadn’t frittered away till now. How’s that? Hurt still?

No. Go on.

Well I’ll be blest! You sure loosened up awful fast.

You talk too much, Danny.

I aint going to be able to say a word, in the twinklin of a bedpost.

Then don’t. Hurry.

And she, this suddenly willing fickle funicler, enfolds me, arms and vale alike enfold me, I’m held round and swallowed, the shaft of my back in the clench of her arms and legs alike, the shaft of my shaft in the clench of the strong valves of her vale, and we are balmed and bathed in the wets of our sweating and the damps of our clamping, the dew of her slew and the drip of my tip, we slip and we skid in the sluice of our juices and I’m happy as a frog in his bog or a hog in her wallow, a fish in its swishes, a snake in a lake, or a planetree in the rain. I want to ask her how she feels, but she’s told me not to talk, and I needn’t ask, the way she moans and moves.

She was not thinking about grandfathers, at all. As a mere point of logic, Danny could not be her grandfather, at least not at this time, because he did not exist, and not at that time either, for she was not born then. What then was she thinking? Oh, that was just it, that she was not thinking, of anything at all. That was what was so nice about it, to have such pleasure without any interference from the mind. If any thought ever crossed her mind, in the minutes and minutes following, it was only a brief bemused reflection that a thirty-year-old well-known writer was being put to shame by a twelve-year-old Connecticut farm boy.

She’s far better than Violate, she is, is Hattie Rose Pearl, she is, oh. And I know she’s going to be my girl again, oh. With a hey in the hay and a hey nonny no, oh. Her throes don’t startle me as Violate’s did, for I know what they are. “You’re fetching,” I tell her, whisper in her ear. “It’s called fetching.”

Oh hush, and fetch yourself. She says, in her long sigh.

I try. Oh, I try to, and I’m fast as a jackrabbit in a forest fire, fast as the foam-flakes drift on the river, fast as music from a trumpet, fast as a thunderbolt, as a hawk, as a shadow, as a thought, as a falling star. I’m fast as time.

It’s taking him, she reflected. But that could be simply a matter of body chemistry. It was, after all, Day’s body, and she knew from her brief affair with her don that the second time takes longer. But good Lord! how he was going on! Now she was ascending again. She tried to hold back, out of fear he would get there before she did, and leave her. But he didn’t get there.

It’s news to me, girls can fetch twice. And nice. Nay, more than nice. And yea, more than twice. But she says I’m going to make her sore. Soon, soon, I say. Yea, more than twice: thrice, and thricest is nicest, her throes so mighty they tear my fetch right out of me at last. I think I’ll die. I’ll die right out of myself. Nice to die, knowing you can come again.

In his arms she drifted off to sleep, forgetting to retrieve Day.

Now I find she’s gone to sleep on me, and I didn’t even get to ask her if she’ll be my girl again. But I think she will. I would wake her, but I’m terrible sleepy myself, and her head’s on my chest. It’s still a long way to dawn.

10

Hypnotized subjects, if left in their trances, will eventually fall into deep sleep, and eventually awaken, themselves again. But Diana did not know this. Thus, when sunrise woke her, and she saw that she was beside Day, and began slowly remembering, she wondered if he, in deep sleep still, was still Daniel, and, if so, what he would do when he woke up and saw that she was not Hattie Rose Pearl. She woke and wondered this idle wonder in a state of warm and dreamy euphoria. She felt good and happy and cozy, and she snuggled closer against him. In doing this, her bottom wiggled, and the dull ache there told her that she was going to be sore all day, but she didn’t care.

She fell back into sleep, and came out of sleep, several times, one time thinking or realizing, I am in love with Daniel.

Then she was finished with sleeping. She lay there and looked at him. He was sleeping on his back. Day always slept on his stomach. His penis—his perkin was not limp; it canted in a long tough curve; if she could bear it she could have it again. But she was too sore. She could only hold it, and did.

It even had his pulse in it, which the tip of her forefinger could feel and take in the dimple of the ogival arch on the underside of the crown’s rim. She tried to time it, without a watch. It seemed to be slow, not the pulse of Daniel, but then of course a pulse is slower in sleep. It was quickening, though, beneath her touch.

Then he woke. She didn’t see him wake, because her head was on his stomach and her eyes on his perkin, which she was giving her full contemplation. In the light, in the daylight, she had not seen one so close before. Nature study, she said to herself. Part of my education. But she’d not seen anything in nature with quite the resemblance. Not red like rhubarb, nor green like asparagus or okra, nor gray like a stallion’s, nor pink like a cat’s, nor vermillion like a dog’s. The closest resemblance was to a certain mushroom she’d seen recently while exploring the woods with Day. “What’s that?” she had asked, pointing, and then, joking, “Did you drop something?” He had blushed scarlet. “Mutinus,” he’d said. “Just a worthless mushroom.” “That means it’s a fungus, doesn’t it, Fungus?” she’d twitted him. Oh, she oughtn’t to tease him so. Besides, the mutinus had a rather sharp-pointed tip, whose flesh color made it all the more formidable and suggestive. His tip wasn’t sharp at all, just pleasantly pointed, enough for entrance. It looked like a soldier’s helmet, no, a fireman’s hat, with a dent in the top. It was cute as a popsicle, cute as a—

“I’ll make you a present of it. It’s yours.”

Her head snapped back so suddenly she bopped him on the chin. She said, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and stroked him lightly on the chin and looked sympathetically into his eyes. But he wasn’t hurt; he was smiling. She “replayed” his words in her head, and tried to decide if they were Day’s or Daniel’s. She couldn’t tell. The expression on his face wouldn’t help her; he just looked dreamy and a little lascivious, a little bedroom-eyed.

She couldn’t very well ask, straight out, “Who are you?” so she just tried to make conversation. “Did you sleep well?”

“Like a log,” he said. But Daniel could have said that.

“What would you like to do today?” she asked.

His eyes got bedroomier, and he put his arms around her. “Funicle,” he said.

So then he was Daniel! She was both delighted and a little nervous. But he could see her plainly; wasn’t he able to see that she was neither Violate nor Hattie Rose Pearl?

Now he was pressing her down and clambering upon her. She resisted. “No,” she said. “Really. I can’t. I’m much too sore. You really used me up last night.”

He looked at her strangely. “You’re being sarcastic,” he said.

Was this actually Daniel, after all? Well, maybe he was Day. Or a little of both? “If you’re not used to it,” she said, “if you haven’t done it in a long time, then you have to get used to it.” She added, by way of consolation, “I’ll get used to it. But not now.”

He fell off of her and lay beside her, a pout on his mouth like an eleven-year-old boy’s. “But look what you did,” he said, pointing at his still stiff perkin. “I saw you playing with it.”

“It was already up,” she said. “I didn’t make it do that.”

“Well, you can’t go off and leave it looking like that.”

She knew he was Day, and somehow, because he was Day, his perkin lost its handsomeness. It was not a perkin but just a penis. She wished he’d cover himself.

She crawled over him, getting up from the air mattress and looking for her panties.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“It’s time to start breakfast, Fungus,” she said.

“Please,” he said. “Don’t go.”

“What do you want me to do?” She tried to sound patient, but her words came out irritably. She found her panties and stepped into them, as if to close off what he could not have.

“You could…you could come and…and play with it some more.”

She hesitated, half-willing, half-repelled. Then she unzipped the mosquito netting in the tent door and stepped out. She turned and said through the tent door, “Play with it yourself.”

Then she began preparing breakfast. Bent over the cooking fire, brushing smoke and her hair out of her face, she wondered: Was I unkind? And decided: Yes. And then wondered: Why? and tried to ponder this ambivalence: that it was the same body, that it was Day’s body, but that the person she had fallen in love with was not Day but was in a sense imprisoned in Day’s body. And thinking of bodies, she abruptly realized, with some surprise, that she was going about the business of getting breakfast ready, still clad only in her panties, nothing else. It was a warm morning, and the air felt wonderful on her body, and the sunshine. She felt a kind of freedom, a liberation, but then a twinge of self-consciousness. Was Day staring at her from the tent? Well, let him.

She had finished the bacon and was cracking eggs into the frying pan, when his voice came from the tent, mock-ominous, almost light, “If you don’t put some clothes on, I’m going to come out there and rape you.”

She laughed. Then she said, “You couldn’t.”

“Wanna bet?”

“I’m busy. You won’t get any breakfast if you rape me.”

“I’d rather have you than breakfast.”

“Then come and see what happens!” she challenged him.

He emerged from the tent, his silly penis leading the way. He formed his hands into claws, and warned, “You’d better run.”

She stood her ground. He came on toward her, and grabbed her shoulders. “Go to sleep, Day,” she said.

But as soon as he did, she brought him back, and said, “See? You’re helpless against my weapon:”

“That’s not fair!” he protested.

“My one defense,” she said. “What’s a poor girl going to do to protect herself out in the woods alone with a lecher like you?” She turned back to her cooking.

“You’re mean,” he said. “You’re heartless. And I know why.”

She looked at him. “Why?”

“You don’t want to make love with me again because I disappointed you last night.”

Now that might be true. But she shook her head, and said, “No, I don’t want to make love with you because I’m still sore and you’ll just have to wait until it’s not sore.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know.”

“An hour? A day? A week?”

She sighed. “Maybe tonight.”

“Promise?”

She thought about it. It was…oh, it was like being unfaithful to Daniel. But she decided that was silly, because Daniel didn’t know it was her. What was sillier was that she felt jealous of Violate and Hattie Rose Pearl. The relationship was not an ordinary “triangle.” It had begun as a simple dyad, Day and herself, and then become a triangle, and then a quadrangle, a quintangle, a sexangle, a—

“Why are you counting on your fingers?” Day asked. “Are you figuring how long I will have to wait, or enumerating your lovers?”

“I was just trying to count our dramatis personae,” she said. “It’s getting complicated.”

“Oh,” Day said. “You’re thinking of him.” He said this with jealousy, as if he were referring to her other lover. Come to think of it, he was.

“Let’s eat our breakfast,” she said, “and then get on with the story.”

11

The birch lashes down into the bed I sit on, SNOCK! Missed me by a foot. “THIS’LL LEARN YOU, YOU SCUM!” my father shouts. Again he raises the birch. Again he misses me. On purpose he misses? In a quiet voice, behind his hand, he says, “I told your Ma I’d chastise ye. Holler, why don’t ye?” I holler. “WENCHING IN THE SIGHT A GOD!” he yells at me and smacks the bedclothes with the birch again. “Ow! Stop! Don’t!” I holler. In his low voice he says, “Din’t ye have sense enough to git her outen the barn afore cockcrow?” and then yells, “GITTIN TOO BIG FER YUR BOOTS, YOU VILLYUN!” and whops the bed with his birch. “Quit! Help! Leave off!” I holler. “How’d ye like it?” he asks. “Is that Bardwell gull a fair funicle?” “Oh, fair enough,” I allow. “I’LL LEARN YE TO PESTLE AROUND AT YOUR AGE, YOU BLACK SHEEP!” and whops the bed. “No! Ouch! Let up! I’ll never do it again!” He says, quietly, “I’ll wager ye made a woman of her. Was it heavy sleddin’?” “No, I had a right soft time of it,” I tell him. “FER SHAME! YOU SINFUL DEVIL! FIE UPON YE!” He whops the bed several times, SNOCK! WHUMP! THRICK! “Now mark me, Dan’l,” he says, low, “you want to be tendin’ to what you’re about. You could git a gull with a come-by-chance, don’t ye know? You wouldn’t have no use fer siring a come-by-chance at your age.” I tell him, “She said it twa’nt the time a month fer that.” “NOW HOW’S YER HIDE FEEL, HUH? THAT’LL MIND YE TO MEND YER WAYS!” He gives the bed a few more blows. “Well, good,” he says. “That’s a careful lad. But another thing. You don’t want to let ole Bardwell git wind a this. He might could cut off our credit, ye know.” My father laughs, and winks. Then he says, “Now dab some spit around yer eyes, to make ’em look wet, and go out a here holdin’ yer bottom.”

Passing my mother in the buttery, I whimper and complain, “He whomped the whey outen me.”

“Sarves ye fair!” she cries, and clutches herself for support. “My soul and body! Don’t ye ever let me catch ye at that again!”

I go on out. She has said it. I will never let her catch me, I will never be caught, again. If what I do is wrong, I will never be caught at it.

But soon it is known, to all in the Oatsowers and the SS alike; Hattie Rose Pearl has bragged there to the other girls, I have bragged here to the other boys.

Zadock doesn’t seem to mind.

Renz taunts him, “You going to jist stand there and let Danny git away with it?”

“I don’t care,” Zadock says.

“You don’t care,” Renz says. “Haw. How come ye don’t care? Aint ye able to do it to her yourself?”

Zadock blushes, but says, “Don’t matter anyhow. I’m leaving. Pa says we’re leaving bright and soon tomorrow morning.”

“Huh?” says Renz. “How come ye’re leaving? Where you going?”

Zadock shrugs. “I guess out westwards where it’s flatter. Pa says fifty acres could stand a family in the flatlands but not up here in these hills.”

“What’s the world coming to?” Renz says.

“I won’t see Hattie Rose Pearl ever more,” Zadock says. He begins to cry. “So I don’t care what she does.” I have never seen a big fourteen-year-old boy cry before. “She can funicle all day and night for what I care.”

“What’s the world coming to?” Renz says.

One of my first jobs of paid work is taking apart Zadock’s house. Nobody else’s gonna move in, I guess, my father says, might as well salvage the lumber and nails. All day, for weeks, I remove nails from boards, and straighten the nails and save them. I am paid eight cents the hour. My hands become too raw to hold Hattie Rose Pearl.

“Did you hear Zadock’s gone?” I ask her.

“I heard.”

“What’s the world coming to?” I say.

My work takes weeks, and when it’s done there are four cellar holes in the village now. I made one of them. It seems like making a grave. Zadock’s ghost lies there, but is not buried; the grave will not be filled. We miss him, for all that he was my rival. I’d give up Hattie Rose Pearl to get him back.

She misses him too, and once when my perkin longs for her vale she denies me, saying she can’t help believing that Zadock left on account of what we did. Aw, I protest, it was Zadock’s dad who did the leaving, not him.

Still she denies me. And it doesn’t matter, long, for soon, in the waning of summer, she is the next to go. Bardwell closes his store. There is no business, he says. Bardwell is a cousin of Mary Cheney, who left Dudleytown and married Horace Greeley, who said, they say, Go West. Bardwell is thinking about that.

Bardwell goes west, taking Hattie Rose Pearl.

She says she will write, and I say I will follow. But she doesn’t, and I don’t.

There is no store now in the village. We have to walk or ride to The Bridge if we want something.

Violate says to me, “I guess I’m all you’ve got in the way of a girl now.”

I study her face to tell if she’s joshing. “You’re still Renz’s girl,” I say.

“He can’t last as long as you,” she says.

“Is he leaving too?” I ask.

“That’s not what I mean,” she says.

What she means, I find, in a field atop Dudleytown Hill one fine brisk Indian summer afternoon, in a dell of the field out of sight of all but autumn birds, for beyond an hour and then beyond another hour, is the way it takes me, the way I stay, and the way I can recur.

Dear me, she says, dear her.

Wake up, she says into my ear, in the fading light. You’re not tired, are you?

No, just resting. Her eyes are green; I had thought they were brown. She rumples my hair and puts my hand upon her breast, inside her dress; the hard nipple is like a perkin funicling the vale of my fingers.

She pulls me onto her again. How many, she says, so far? Three, I say, You? Five, she says.

But I must have lost it all, there seems to be none left, she’s taken all the quid there was. Six, she says. I keep on, but can’t get there.

My hips ache from their constant speed. I slow, but when I do she hurries.

Seven, she says, and then: Do you like to kiss?

I never have.

Then kiss me.

I do, and the feel of her soft wet mouth against my mouth gives me my fourth, along with her eighth, and that’s more than enough for today.

She says, I’d like to have a baby. I’d like to have a hundred.

You’d better not, I say.

Then someday can we? she says. Pretty the way she puts that, then someday can we? Sure, I say. A hundred? she says. All you want, I say.

Now school days are upon us again, although Miss Fife is not. She has gone too, there’re not enough pupils to keep her here. First day of school we stand and sing the school song, “Happy School, Ah, From Thee Never Shall Our Hearts Long Time Be Turning,” beautiful, but it is not Miss Fife who leads us. It is a mother. The mothers are taking turns doing the school.

The schedule is the same, with two quarter-hour recesses, one at ten-thirty and one at two-forty-five. Violate and I go to the woods each recess, although fifteen minutes is scant and hurried.

But one recess, Renz follows us and catches us at it.

“I’m going to kill you, Dan,” he says.

“You’ll have to catch me first,” I say.

And he can’t. I can outrun them all.

12

One afternoon in July, driving home from a trip to the liquor store in Cornwall Bridge, Diana passed an old man, walking along the highway. She stopped and backed up, and asked him, “Can I give you a lift?”

He raised his craggy wrinkled face and stared at her for a moment, then said, “Just up the road.” Did he mean that she could give him a ride just up the road, or that it was not necessary because he lived only a short distance away? He was a very old man, perhaps in his late eighties or early nineties.

“Get in,” she offered, “and I’ll take you.” She opened the door.

“Thank you,” he said, and got in. “Right hot day, aint it?”

“It is,” she agreed. She drove on. Then she asked, “Have you lived around here very long?”

“Long enough,” he said. “I cal’late nigh onto ninety years.”

“You were born around here?”

“Right up in Calhoun Corner,” he said.

“Where is that?”

“Just up the road, way you’re heading.”

“Oh. Where Route 45 branches off?”

“That’s it.”

“I didn’t know it had a name.”

“’Taint much of a place, is it? Never was. But it’s Calhoun Corner, and here we be.” He pointed. “Second house on the left, yender.”

She pulled off the road beside his house and turned off the motor. “Have you ever been to Dudleytown?” she asked him.

“Sure I been there. Not lately, though. Aint a tormented thing left of that place.”

“When you were young,” she asked, “did you know any of the people who lived there?”

“A few.”

“Did you know anybody named Montross?” she asked.

“Montross, ye say?” He scratched his head, and wrinkled his brow in concentration for a long moment. “Might’ve,” he said. “I’ve knowed so many people in my life their names have fled my mind.”

“Daniel Montross would have been about your age, maybe a few years older,” she said.

“Daniel Montross,” he said, and became silent again for a while before continuing, “now, that does seem to kinder ring a bell, but I jist couldn’t say.”

She tried out other names she knew: “Ferrenzo Allyn? Violate Parmenter? Hattie Rose Pearl Bardwell? Zadock Savage? Reuben Temple?”

“Where’d you hear all them names?” he asked.

“I’m doing genealogical research,” she said.

“Well, I was only a kid when that town died out, and that was a mighty long time ago. But Bardwell, now…wasn’t he—?”

“The storekeeper?” she suggested.

“Yeah, now, mebbe you’re right. I seem to reckerlect there was a store there, run by a man named…well, yeah, I guess it could’ve been Bardwell.”

“Do you remember any definite names?” she asked.

“Well, I knew the Jenners,” he declared.

“The Jenners?” she said, and tried to recall if “Daniel” had ever mentioned the name, but could not.

“That was one of the biggest families still there when I was a kid.”

She made a mental note of the name, and then she tried a different tack, “Do you know what a whiffletree is?”

“Whiffletree?” He looked at her. “You wouldn’t be meaning whipple tree, would ye?”

“Like on a wagon,” she said.

“Sure, that’s a whippletree, ’cause it whips back and forth. It don’t whiffle.”

“Nobody around here ever called it a whiffletree?” she asked.

“Wal, mebbe them east Connecticut folks might call it that, but I’ve never heard that anywheres about here.”

She tried another word, bravely: “What is a perkin?”

Did she detect a hesitancy, a slight look of embarrassment? “Oh, there’s lots of Perkinses between here and Litchfield.”

“No, not a family name, a common name. You don’t know what a perkin is?”

“No, I do not, I’m sorry,” he said, and seemed tired. Was she annoying him?

She tried one more, one last: “What does funicle mean?” and watched him closely for any suggestion of a blush.

But he was only annoyed. “Herod all handsaws!” he exclaimed. “Is this some kinder quiz contest? Thunder, no, I never heard of no funicle.”

She had heard that “Thunder, no,” from Daniel, but she had not heard the other. “What does ‘Herod all handsaws’ mean?” she asked.

“It just means you’re pestering me no end,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to. I’m just interested in Dudleytown and trying to find out some things.”

“You ever been up there?” he asked.

“I just came from there,” she told him.

“Huh?” he said. “You did?” He began shaking his head back and forth. “A young thing like you, all by yourself? Crimus, don’t you know there’s a powerful curse on that place? Don’t you know it’s haunted?”

“I’ve read something about that,” she admitted, “but it didn’t scare me.”

“Well let me tell you—” he began, and he told her all he knew about modern manifestations of the Curse of Dudleytown. At one time early in this century there was only a single resident remaining, a Pole, living by himself at the old Colonel Rogers place, but even though he was a strong man, sturdy and stolid, not easily frightened by anything, his constant subjection to the weird noises of the forest broke him down and forced him to seek out human company in some other place. He was followed by an Irish laborer, who with his wife and two sons took title to one of the abandoned farms on Dark Entry Road because he liked solitude, and because, being Irish, he was no stranger to fairyfolk or little people or whoever habited and haunted the place. He pastured sheep on the hillsides, and kept losing lambs without finding out to what or to whom. His sons became outlaws and were chased out of the country by the local constabulary. His wife took over the sons’ work, and overworked herself and died of consumption. He himself stubbornly clung to the place, like the lonely Pole before him, fortified by his pride and the courage of his race that could not be daunted by the dreadful hooting of banshee owls. Patrick, as he was called (but not by the villagers of Cornwall, who gave him wide berth when he occasionally came into the village, in his rags), lived from one year’s end to the next without seeing a living person in Dudleytown other than his own reflection in the millpond. To get him out, the fairyfolk—or fiends or whoever—had to burn down his ramshackle house, on a wild night in August. He tried to save the house, or at least save his clothes and meager possessions, but he was denied even this. No one knows where he went.

Nor was he the last. There were two more (before the two of Diana and Day); these were city people, a professor of medicine from New York, Dr. William C. Clarke, and his wife, who knew nothing of the Curse and were attracted by the wild woodland. With his own hands the professor chopped a home site out of the forest, then chopped hemlocks and hewed them to make a cabin. He wondered why he was unable to hire any people from the village nearby to help him. When the owls hooted at him he knew what they were and was not frightened. The Curse must have been dormant, for it permitted the professor and his wife to come every summer for several years and live happily until autumn. But one summer he was called suddenly to New York on business and had to leave his wife overnight, and when he returned he found his wife had gone mad; soon she took her life, and he moved to some other place.

“Consarn it, you couldn’t pay me cash money to get me to go into that tormented place,” the old man concluded.

Diana wanted to tell him that she had been living in Dudleytown for several weeks without any trouble, but she decided it wouldn’t do to have the local people knowing that she and Day were camping up there. So she merely remarked, “It’s a very pretty place.”

“Yeah, pretty as the fire of Hades,” he said.

Diana drove slowly home, thinking about the old man and what he had said. She wasn’t certain that his irritated response to her questions about such words as perkin and funicle wasn’t simply an unwillingness to discuss the subject with a female.

As soon as she got back to camp, she found Day and turned him into Daniel, and asked him, “Who are the Jenners?”

The Jenners?

Yes, the Jenners. Who are the Jenners?

———Oh, that’s just some of these folks.

Which folks?

———Well, there’s Enos Jenner and his wife Arvilla, and his brothers Theron and Belding, and Belding’s wife Cate and their sons Girshom and Gurdon.

You’ve never mentioned him to me before.

Don’t know ’em too mighty well. The Jenners is quality folks, you might call ’em upper crust. They never have the time a day for us Montrosses.

Where do they live?

Big house right this side of the brook, on Dudleytown Road.

I thought you said that was the Jones place.

Well, it used to be. The Jenners bought it from ’em.

Let me ask you something else, Danny. Why do you call a whippletree a whiffletree? Everybody else calls it whippletree.

Yeah, I know. I guess ’cause Grandpa Montross called it that, ’cause his folks called it that. Old “Mountain Horse” Montross was a downstater, you know, and they talk different. And anyhow, whiffle means suffle, you know, the whiffletree sort of suffles and plays, that’s how it got the name.

All right, she said, and woke him up.

Then she said, “I met an old man.” Then she told Day everything the old man had said.

When she finished, Day said, “Well, as for the Curse of Dudleytown, I would be more inclined to believe in something as fantastic as reincarnation before I could make myself believe that these woods are haunted by fairyfolk or ghosts. As for the old man’s ignorance of such words as perkin and funicle, well, possibly, of course, the fact that you are a girl….”

“But he couldn’t remember any of the people Daniel has been mentioning, except the Jenners, whom Daniel never mentioned, until just now I asked him—I asked you—and you seemed to take a long time to remember them, almost as if…as if you were making them up.”

Day nodded, then hung his head. “I’ve been thinking about this,” he said. “A lot.” He looked sad. “What if,” he said, hesitantly, “what if all of it is nothing but my imagination?”

“That’s what I’m dying to find out,” she said. “What are we going to do if we can prove that Daniel Lyam Montross never lived in Dudleytown?”

“Even so,” he said, “even if we should ever be able to prove that, I want you to remember this: I still love you.”

13

Oh, he loves you, he does. In my stead. For I cannot. Though I would if I could, incest be damned. You are the spit image of your fair grandmother, whom I loved more than any other woman in my life, who gave birth to your fair mother, without whom you would not be. But I can’t talk to you, now, of love, for you don’t yet know what it means, and you can’t say to him what he said to you, that you love him. I’m not sure he knows what love means either, though perhaps he knows it better than you. But I intend for the two of you to find out what it means, just as I had to find out, painfully if need be. This is my gift for you, in the stead of the love I cannot give you.

Sometimes Day sang to her. It made her terribly self-conscious, at first, and she found it difficult to look at his eyes when he was singing to her. But he had an excellent tenor voice, which resounded through the woods, and he held his high notes well, and the high notes tolled and tinkled off the trees. He sang to her love songs, things like Beethoven’s “Ich Liebe Dich” and in time she overcame her embarrassment and was flattered by his singing. She wanted to sing something for him too, but the only love song she knew all the words to was “Danny Boy,” and when she sang this for him, meaning it for him, he wouldn’t believe that she didn’t mean it for Daniel, and his feelings were hurt.

I could never sing a note. Except for that old school song, “Happy School, Ah, From Thee Never Shall Our Hearts Long Time Be Turning” just squawking it more than singing it. So I envy that boy, I do, and I wish he knew it; it might make up for all his confounded envy of me. No, I couldn’t sing. But eventually I learned to play a real decent fiddle. And he will too. In time, after your travels to some other place, you will buy him a fiddle, and I’ll play it for him, or teach him to play it himself.

Also he knew by heart all the love poems of e.e. cummings, which he must have been saving up for the time when he would meet his first true love and get a chance to use them. He recited all of them, to her, several times. His particular favorite was “Somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond,” and after reciting it to her, he even explicated the poem, showing her how well it fit her, and him, and how well it fit this situation that they were in, almost as if cummings had written it for her, for them, just as Vaughan Williams had written the Pastoral Symphony for their fungus and alga. Diana was very moved, but at the same time she felt extremely guilty, because she could not feel such depths of emotion toward him. It bothered her greatly that he loved her so much. But although she couldn’t give him her love in return, as a substitute she choreographed a dance to cummings’ poem, a dance of traveling somewhere gladly beyond, and of silent eyes, of frail gestures, of unclosings and openings, of death and forever with each breathing, and she danced this dance with him and their shadows projected against the trees, and it was almost as good as being in love.

Why are your pretty dancings, your pretty singings and poetry-recitings, and your pretty funiclings, never disturbed by the ghosts of Dudleytown? Why does the Curse never curse you? I wish I could boast that it is because I, over here on the Other Side, have the power to keep them from it, to make them let you love and play in peace. But that would be a vainglorious contention, because I haven’t the slightest power over them. Perhaps you are amusing them, or entertaining them, and they are waiting until your dance is over before driving you away.

Diana realized that she and Day were getting to be “old friends” when they reached the point at which they no longer felt the need of “using the woods” in order to use the woods; that is, eventually they were able to “use the woods” in each other’s presence, without much modesty or embarrassment, although sometimes, when she watched Day peeing, the fact that she was watching him gave him an erection, which wouldn’t go away, and sometimes made peeing difficult, and always made an immediate funicle mandatory. They funicled a lot. Sometimes in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, in the middle of the night. They bathed together in the pool below Marcella Falls and enjoyed some interesting underwater funiclings.

Unfortunately, he nearly always fetched before she did, and sometimes she couldn’t fetch at all. But only on rare occasions did she find herself left feeling so keyed up that she had to turn him into Daniel again.

Diana discovered that Day was a better lover after several drinks, and so was she. Perhaps they did drink more than was necessary, and Day made a rather sloppy “Daniel” when he had been drinking. But Daniel himself, Diana found, took up drinking at a relatively early age, homemade beer and, less frequently, rum and hard cider.

There was one period, in late July, when the weather seemed to turn against them: a spell of damp, humid days when everything seemed to be wet and wouldn’t dry out, and the mosquitoes became worse. It was times like that when she needed a lot of beer, wine and gin just to bear the atmosphere.

Toward the end of that month, Day wrote a postcard to his parents, which Diana mailed from a box in Torrington. It said: “Dear Mom and Dad—I’m all right, so don’t worry about me. In fact, I’m fine, and having the best time of my life. But I’m not coming home. And don’t try to find me, because you can’t. Day.” Diana considered, briefly, writing to her own parents at Rome, but decided against it.

They never bought a newspaper. They had no desire to. But they could not help hearing occasional news broadcasts between the music on their radio, so they were not ignorant of that summer’s lunar expedition by the astronauts.

The moon itself, Day explained to her, is an ancient symbol of reincarnation—its appearance, increase, wane, disappearance, followed by reappearance after three nights of darkness.

One day he came to her, all excited, and said, “Come and see what I’ve found out!” and took her hand and led her toward their campsite. She thought maybe he had finally found part of the foundation of the Montross house, but what he had found, she discovered with a laugh, was that their two sleeping bags could be completely unzipped and then zipped together to form one double sleeping bag. In celebration of this momentous discovery they had a bottle of champagne before trying out their new bed.

That night they lay together and listened to a radio broadcast about the progress of the moon exploration.

“Think about it,” Day said, hugging her closer. “Just the two of them alone up there on the moon. Just the two of us alone down here on the earth.”

“Nice,” she said, but then she corrected him. “No, there are three. Three of them up there. Don’t forget the guy in the command module, orbiting around them.”

14

All my brothers are gone. And one of my sisters too. Ethan has written once from Cincinnati, Ohio, where he works in a factory and has taken a bride. Nathan is in Illinois, where he clerks in a store. We do not know yet where Nicholas is; Nathan has said that Nicholas was intending to go farther west, out to the high mountain country. Emmeline has followed Nathan to Illinois, but not the same town, she is near the big city, Chicago, and says she is going to marry the man she works for, in a dry goods store. She wants us to come out for the wedding, and my mother dearly wants to go, but my father says How? We have no money for such a long way.

I think he’s afraid that if he went he’d never come back. And he keeps telling me, Dudleytown is our home.

What town? There is no town here now.

Charity’s the only one left but for me. And she will never leave. She stayed in the first grade for three years, before they knew she couldn’t do school. She can milk the cow, is all, and that slowly. The pity’s she’s so pretty, now that she’s full grown. Any man would want her if she had a mind. She was Seth’s girl a year or two, in a way, because Seth was none too bright himself. But even he is gone now.

For some time now, my mother has tied Charity’s hands behind her back, with a handkerchief.

Why? I asked.

So she can’t harm herself, my mother said.

My mother unties her hands five times each day, three times for meals, twice for milking the cow.

Charity cannot talk, but she can make noises, as she does in her bed at night with her hands tied. A wonder she can sleep that way. My room is too close to hers.

I think a lot: can she think? Do any thoughts invade her mind, or is she all feeling only? Can you have emotions without a mind? And if you can, are your emotions stronger than smart people’s? I wonder a lot: is Charity better off than us?

Once I try to reason with my mother: But you can’t go on tying her all her life, and all your life too.

I will if I have to, she says.

But what if she outlives you?

Daniel, what a thing to say! she rebukes me.

Long time now I have not been with Violate. Renz told her dad on us, and old Eph birched her within an inch of her life and said he’d take the other inch if she ever came near me again. Eph Parmenter’s a mean and terrible case.

There are no clubs now, neither SS nor Oatsowers, nor need of any; there’s nobody here who doesn’t know all the facts of life and more. Except Charity, who knows nothing.

Who knows nothing except that her vale burns her and that the hands which cooled it are bound in a handkerchief behind her back. This much I calculate.

I’ve tried to get to her, to ask if she knows why her hands are tied, but her speech is only noises, for all that she’s a full-breasted woman of sixteen. I wonder a lot: is she maybe really smarter than all of us, but has no time for talk, or doesn’t care to talk in the kind of noises that we make?

Mother never leaves her go from sight, except at milkings, and then she times her so she’s not gone for long. I hide in the cowstall and talk to her for ten minutes at morning and evening milking.

How much can you say in ten minutes? The weather’s nice today. Your hair is done up pretty. Bossie seems good and full this morning, don’t she? Your eyes are larger than all time. Have you heard there’s only four of us left at school? Renz quit out last week. I’d give my arm to give you a mind. Both arms. Hear Bossie looing. Do you reckon she’d like a calf? If anything could physic you, I’d buy it with a mountain in my arms. ’Pears Dad broke another wagon neap. If you could but speak and say that having no mind keeps you from ever thinking that you’re lonely, then I’d wish I had no mind too. Sometimes I get so lonesome. I wish we’d go to Ohio or Illinois or some other place where a lot of people are. Dunno’s I know we ever will. Me and you are gonna rot away together on the vine. You’re all I know.

Once, one evening in the cowstall, I say first thing: Do you want I should milk the cow for you? I’ll milk her for you if you want. But she doesn’t understand. I take the pail from her and sit on her stool so she can’t sit on it and I commence to milk. She just stands there watching. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands.

But then she does know.

That’s right, I say, trying not to watch. Go ahead. Mother may think it’s wrong, but I don’t. Everybody does it, I guess, except Mother. If you weren’t my sister, we wouldn’t have to use our hands.

Often now I milk for her. In her bed at night she doesn’t make her noises so much any more.

Often now I think and ponder and wonder: why would it be wrong? Cattle and dogs don’t care if they’re blood kin. Bulls and boars and billies funicle their sisters without giving it a thought. Because they don’t have thoughts to give. And neither does Charity. Does she even know that I’m her brother?

In the Oatsowers club they used to say that if your sister had your baby it would be feebleminded. But funicling’s not just for having babies; funicling’s for fun, and for not making noises in your sleep at night.

But I’d never have a chance, anyway, except at milking, and even if we both milked together we’d never get it done in time.

Yet now one bright and fair Saturday morning, early, my father hitches the wagon and says he and Mother are driving into Cornwall to see some of Mother’s kin. My mother says to me: Now listen, as soon as she’s done with the milking, you get that rag tied back on her hands right away. You hear me?

I nod.

Promise? she says.

I promise. They are gone.

Charity comes back from the barn with her pail of milk. She leaves the pail in the buttery. I hold the handkerchief in my hands. She puts both hands behind her back, crossing her wrists there; she’s done this so often she doesn’t think. She doesn’t think anyway. I hold the handkerchief. But I did promise. So I tie her. She doesn’t bat an eye.

Come, I say, and lead her to her room. I’ll do it for you. Lie down. She does, on her side, because her hands are behind her back. I do with my hands what I’ve seen her do with hers. She closes her eyes, there is almost a smile on her mouth.

This is something new for her, somebody else’s hands, better than her own. Her fetch is wild.

Now she’s had hers, I want her to give me mine. But she can’t understand, because she can’t understand. And her hands are tied behind her back. I won’t break promises. I lie behind her and lay my perkin on her near palm. She grasps, those hands that can so milk a cow. But the milking stroke is downward; I need an upward too. After a time, I turn: my feet where my head was: now her stroke is upward. I wrap my arms around her thighs.

Too late, as my quid begins its rise, I know I’m going to blotch her bedcovers or her dress. I look around for something else. There is nothing but the handkerchief on her wrists. I get it off just in time.

She doesn’t need it anyway, I’m going to watch her all day. As good as a promise. That I will stay with her all day and watch her and see to it that she never touches herself. I will touch her for her.

But hands are not enough, there’s the hitch. Near noon, whilst she milks me yet another time, as we lie facing side by side, she seems to show a first real thought, she seems to think: now maybe this was meant to be inside me, and she draws nigh, urging her vale nearer, and yet nearer, and higher, until her hands cannot move for being in the way, and she removes them.

I think: if I hadn’t lost Violate I wouldn’t do this.

But I do it. And oh! great Caesar’s ghost how she carries on, as if this was all she were ever meant for, as if all her life she had waited for this, as if all her mind could do was make her ready and ripe, as if, since she had to live, she lived for this.

Near the end I ask her if it’s the right time of month, and somehow I even expect an answer, so I’m a bit put out when she won’t or can’t. I’ll take no chance. When she’s seized by her fetch, and the valves of her vale commence milking mine out of me, I pull away and use her handkerchief once more.

Then there is the afternoon, after we have eaten, and the bed again.

When our mother and father return at supper, they do not seem to notice that it is a different hankerchief she is tied with.

Tonight, late, I learn I am wrong to have hoped that I could have done enough to hold her for a while.

She falls into my bed, her hands still tied. I whisper: if we get caught. Will she have to be tied to her bed? Our folks are fast asleep, but the straw tick of my bed rustles and crackles with our flouncing.

You can’t sleep with me, I tell her afterwards. Go back to your charmber. But she won’t. I have to lead her. I tuck her in. Now you go to sleep and don’t get up again. I kiss her goodnight, on her mouth.

I love Charity. Once I was her dollbaby, now I am her love. I understand this first fact about love, that there must be some part of pity in it, that love is not just passion but compassion. I love her because I weep for her, and I weep for her because I’m all she has for love.

I dream and scheme of taking her away.

Especially must I dream and scheme when her belly begins swelling. I’d thought I was always out in time; there must have been some left over one time.

All day my mother screams at her: Who was it?

I think my father guesses but he doesn’t say, and my mother would never think such a thing.

Night after night my mother conjectures: Ferrenzo Allyn? Reuben Temple? Maybe Seth came back in the middle of the night? A passing stranger? The Jenners’ hired man? And she keeps raging at Charity: Oh I wish you could talk! Who in Sam Hill was it did it?

Charity’s kept in her room all the time. I do the milking now, and while I milk I think: I will just take her and we will go far away, where we can’t be found, and nobody knows us, we will just escape to some other place where we can live and be happy evermore, and if the baby is an idiot….

If the baby is an idiot I would have to let it die.

In the middle of the night I will saddle the mare Mistress and snitch some victuals from the larder, and Charity and I will ride away and be in Massachusetts before morning.

But I sleep through the night, exhausted by my thoughts and held by my dreams, dreams of flight, of flying. Only the sun wakes me and then it is late. There is nobody in the house but me. I wait. Soon the wagon comes back, my father alone on the buckboard. “Had yer breakfust yet?” he asks me. “I guess you’ll have to fix yer own. Me and you’ll have to fend fer ourselfs a while.”

“Where’s Ma and Charity?”

“I jist put ’em on the train, down to The Bridge. They’re goin’ clear out to Illinoy, to stay with Emmeline a spell. Took ever blasted cent I had to my name to pay fer the fare. Guess me and you’ll have to look fer some job a work, or eat nought but beans.”

The sawmill has been closed for some time, the charcoal pits have been cold a long time, there isn’t much work. Trees for charcoal have to be at least twenty-five years old, and most of those are gone.

My father humbles himself to ask Enos Jenner if he’s got any work for us to do. Jenner at first says no, but then he bargains with my father and gets a good price for a new shingle roof. I’m taken out of school to help. There’s only three in the school now, and the school closes, the three left have to walk more than a mile to the school down at The Bridge. One of them is Violate, and I wish I were still going to school so I could walk her there and back.

Once, on Jenner’s roof, while we’re working, out of nowhere my father spits out his mouthful of nails and says to me, “You know, if ye wa’nt near ’bout big as me, I’d beat yer hide off.”

But that’s all he ever said about what I did to Charity. Living alone together, the two of us, hauls us closer together. We are good friends. I’m all he’s got left. I’ve always felt closer to my father than to anybody else, except Charity, we’re so alike. As he says, I’m near about big as him, and he is big.

He talks to me many a time and oft, he who is not a talking man, as if in this solitude without a carping wife to check his tongue he must say all that he has left unsaid. Although the charcoal pits have long been cold, sometimes he goes and lights one, and makes a small bit of charcoal because this was all he’d ever known to do and doesn’t know how to quit for good. Sometimes I go with him, and listen to him, and he says, once, “I’d train ye how to keep a good charcoal pit, jist as my dad trained me, but what good? Better ye learned a more timely trade.”

When he says he doubts that I will stay in Dudleytown, I protest that I’ll stay as long as he. Now he tells me of the ancient prognostication of Asenath Prenner, that the seventh child in a Montross family will be the last. But there were only six of us? I say. No, you had another sister who died young. But I don’t believe those superstitious things, I say. Well look, he says, already you’re the last.

Already I’m the last. I learn from him of this town and its past and its Curse. His grandfather, old Mountain Horse Montross, talked to him in his dotage of seeing and knowing, at the end of the last century, Abial Dudley, the last of the Dudleys. “Old Bial” in his nineties considered myself to be “Mayor of Dudleytown”; the dignity of this office helped him obscure the fact that he was penniless, that the town kept him alive by farming him out, each year, to the lowest bidder at the pauper auction. Some said, later, that it was Old Bial who brought down the Curse upon the town for this indignity. But the Curse had been there from the beginning, when Old Bial’s father and uncle had founded the town, in 1747. No, the Curse had come with them, from England, through generations of ill-fated Dudleys going all the way back, in some medieval time, to the very first, whose name was given him “from the dodder lea.” A lea is a meadow. A dodder is a parasitic vegetable. Old Bial was a parasitic vegetable in his last days, pretending he was a mayor guiding the town to greatness, for which the town owed him his existence.

The better sons of Dudleytown always left, and some found their way to prominence elsewhere, as soldiers, statesmen, judges, professors. Why don’t I leave? Because I’m not a better. Those who stayed were those who can work the land. Like my father. Like me. Oh, I have thoughts of being a soldier, I would like to be a statesman or a judge, I might even be a professor. No, I’m not in school more. I can’t even finish school. What would I like to be? I’d like to be mayor of Dudleytown and keep it from dying.

But its illness is already fatal. Two epidemics hit the town, in 1774 and again in 1813, and killed off large sections of the people. A town must grow to live, and this town has not grown since it was born. A blight has fallen on the land itself: the hardwoods have reclaimed these former pineries. The little pine still remaining is too little, and the hardwoods take its sun and water.

I brood on dodder lea: that dodder lea, that Dudley, that Dudleytown itself has been a parasite on this land, and this land has rejected it, with violence. We are not wanted here. It bothers me that my father goes so often to brood over the cold charcoal pits and to light small fires in them, out of memory.

The few of us who’re left ought best cleave together in our isolation and infirmity. But we do not. Shipwreck survivors on a sinking raft sing songs and hold hands. But we do not. We are all strangers here. These few families live on their islands and speak to no one, or speak sharply. Once, my father says, the men used to work together at cider making in the fall, and beer making in the spring. For the great beer making, one man would raise hops, another wintergreen, another would gather sassafras root and twigs, another prince’s pine, another birch and spicebush, and in the spring they would bring all this together and make their wonderful beer and have their great beer spree. I sampled it more than once myself. But now the men brew their own, each his own, a second-rate suds, and drink it all alone.

And they drink it faster than they can make it. There’s not a sober man around. That means my father too. That means me as well, more often than not. The gas in the beer highs the head and holds off the horrors of this life.

My father comes home with a nosebleed and drinks a pint to stanch the flow. I ask him how he got it. Ferrenzo Allyn, he says.

“Renz?” I say. “Renz hit you? Where is he? I’ll even the score for you, with more than just a nosebleed!”

“He’s down at the corners,” my father says. “But you’ll have ter wake him fust. He’s clobbered cold. Nothin’ wrong with me, I jist tripped in the way of a lucky punch.”

“What’d he hit you for?”

“Aw, I hit ’im fust. Him and his mouth, scallionin’ me. Cal’late mebbe he’s miff ed on account a that gull Violate a his is still holdin’ a torch fer you, son. Mighty snide he says to me, ‘It ’pears yer family keeps gettin’ smaller, Mister Montross,’ says he. And says he, ‘Why’nt you’n Dan git out and make it smaller yet?’ So I says, ‘Whut’re ye so het up on the subjick fer? Whut business a yours is it?’ And then he says, ‘I hanker to see ye both gone. Dan aint good fer but mischief, and you aint good fer but nothing nowadays.’ ‘I aint, huh?’ says I. ‘Wal, mebbe I’m still good enough to learn the likes of Ferrenzo Allyn a mite of respeck fer his betters!’ And he snorts and says, ‘Haw. ’Twant fer ye bein’ sech a old codger, I’d make ye eat them wuds!’ So I says, ‘I aint so old as ye figure.’ And I hit him. Knocked ’im clean off his feet. He got up quick, and swung a few at me, but he missed ever time. So I knocked him off his feet again.”

My father pours himself another pint. I tingle at his telling, proud of him. His nose has stopped bleeding; he touches it lightly and says, “He’d a never got in that one good lick ’cept I tripped. Sort of fell into his fist. Made me mad as hops, then. So I really laid him out. Guess he’s still laying there, havin’ bad dreams.” My father laughs, a short one, an ironic one. “One thing about this town bein’ so small,” he says, “aint much traffic on the roads more. Guess he’ll lay there a good while before anybody stumbles on ’im to pick ’im up.”

“I’d like,” I say, “to go down there and wait till he wakes, then put him out again.”

“Naw,” my father says. “Guess the poor bastard’s had enough fer today. Have some beer.”

But I should have. Oh, I should have. I should have beaten him meek and unmanned that very day. I should have pounded him into the next county. Renz Allyn is a big bully who will come to no good, who will become the town’s rowdy, who will torture small animals, who will afflict old men, who will anguish old women, who will beat his wife, who will be Violate. He will beat her to death and be sent to jail, and then Dudleytown will be empty. But that is some years ahead yet. It is not what I know but what I dream.

Yet I dream this too: my father burning. How did I dream it? The terror of the dream wakes me. I wake, and rise, and search the house. I light a lantern. The Eli clock reads half past twelve. My father’s bed is empty. This is no dream now. But there is nothing burning. I call him. Perhaps he’s only out to the privy. I go there, and it is not burning, but he is not there. I call him loudly, I call him east and west. Only an owl answers. In the black night I see no smoke nor fire nor burning. My dream said, there are stones all around. Said my dream, the brook is near. My dream had it, a pit, a pit with coals. I run, the moon abreast and mocking me that I cannot outrun it. Down to the branch, and leaping, the lantern flying in my thrashing hand, across the branch, cloth ripping and I knowing I’m still in my nightshirt and not caring, up to the road, and down the road to the corner, and there into the mill road, the pit road, and down it, the soles of my feet scorning the sharp pebbles. Ahead in the road, out of reach of my lantern, a figure. “Pappa!” I call to the figure, but the figure scurries into the brush, and out of sight. Maybe only a deer. But on two legs? I run on, on my two legs, leaping. Past the Bardwell store, dark and boarded up. Past the Bardwell house, falling. Past the place where Zadock’s house stood until I took the nails out of it. The road levels, then drops again, steeply. Past the sawmill, its big blade broken and propped against a tree. Then I smell the smoke. The smoke which is not just smoke, not coals alone smouldering. Burning cloth, and hair, and something other, so foul I slow and pause and nearly stop, and nearly turn to run the other way. But I go on. To the pit. Leaving the road and crashing down to it through brush. There is no light, no light from it. Just smoke. I raise my lantern high. The smoke pours and rolls from a long loglump lying on the coals. A loglump with arms and legs. I set the lantern down. There is no way to climb down into the pit. Beside the pit is an oak bucket, old, which the pitkeepers drank from. Empty. I fill it in the brook. I pour it into the pit. I fill it again and pour it again. Steam hisses and sizzles and the smoke billows more. I fill the bucket again and pour it into the pit. I fill it again and pour it into the pit. Until the coals are out. Steam still rises from the figure, but the coals are out, out enough for me to walk on them with my bare feet, though still they burn. I grab the figure and roll it over. It is black as pitch but the very shape of it I can recognize, in my own image. Owls say Who. I answer them in screams. I hear laughter. Owls do not laugh. I rage against the dark. These stones have been here too long. Yell at the dark: I’ll get you for this. Owls say Who. Drag the figure out of the coals, into the cool grass, listen for a heartbeat, ear to hot scorched breast. Hear heartbeat, but is my own. The heat of the body chills me. I’m cold. I’m cold and all alone.

Where are you? Come out and show yourself and let me kill you. But only laughter. I run. I’ll race him home. I’ll beat him home, and then I’ll beat him. I can outrun anybody. I can outrun them all. His house is high up toward Dudleytown Hill, but I can run faster uphill than most can run down. But I am out of breath when I reach it. I pound on the door until his old mother comes with her lantern, but I can only pant at her. She stares at me and says my name and asks why I’m out of breath. I can only pant at her.

At last I grab my heaving chest with both hands and get enough air to say, but weakly, “Where’s Renz?”

“Fast asleep like every decent soul at such an hour,” she says.

“I don’t believe it,” I pant at her. “He’s not here.”

“What do ye want with him at this time a night, and you in your nightshirt at this time a year?”

“I want to see him. I don’t believe he’s here. He’s not here.”

“You tell me whut ye want ’im fer, and I’ll fetch him,” she says.

“I just want to see if he’s here,” I pant at her.

“Then come,” she says, “and see.” She with her lantern and I with mine go into the house and through the parlor to a chamber. There is a bed in the chamber, and someone beneath the covers. I pull back the covers. It is Renz. His eyes are closed, he seems fast asleep. But his brow is damp. Is that sweat on his brow? And isn’t his breathing hard? “See?” says Mrs. Allyn. “Now d’ye want to wake him?”

I stare a while longer. Is that sweat on his brow? Is he breathing hard? A bad dream? He could have run around the back of the house and come through the back door quietly while I was panting at his mother on the front stoop.

“Well?” says Mrs. Allyn. “Do ye want to wake him, or no?”

“No,” I say. “I’ll see him later.”

I go home. I despise myself. But there’s nothing I can do until the first light. The empty house haunts me. Father, why did you go to the pits so much? And did he club you over the head before he pushed you in? You did not trip and fall, did you? Or have a stroke? Or faint? You felt hands pushing you in, or you felt a stick breaking over the back of your head. I hope the stick blacked you out so that you did not feel the burning. I hope you did not feel the burning.

I talk to him until the first light. Then I hitch the wagon and drive to the pit for him. I back the horses and the wagon to where he lies in the early light, blackened and cold. I lift him, I lift my father up, up from the ground, and into the wagon. I take him home.

Then I search the house for any money. I have not a cent. In the burnt pocket of his jacket I find a burnt purse with a few pennies in it. Not enough. I search their chamber, the drawers of my mother’s bureau. Nothing. I could ask the Jenners for a loan, but I don’t. I unhitch the wagon and put the bridle on the mare Mistress and ride her at a trot, back down the road past the pits, on down the mountain to The Bridge. At the railway station, I say to the telegraph man, “My father’s died, and I must send for my mother in Illinois, but I have no money except this.” I show him the pennies. “No other kin?” he asks. They are all gone too, I tell him. But my mother will pay you when she comes. “I’m not allowed to give credit,” he says. “Government law.” He looks at my pennies. “You’ve got enough there for postage, haven’t ye?” he says. I frown at him. “Wal, tell ye whut,” he says. “You could work it off. Sweep out the station, and dust everything. All right? Now what do ye want to say in the message?”

FATHER WAS BURNED IN THE CHARCOAL PITS LAST NIGHT AND DIED. DANIEL.

The morning I spend in sweeping the station until every bit of dirt and dust is up. Then with an oilrag I began dusting the benches and counters. The telegraph man stops me before noon. “That’s enough,” he says. “You can go.” Then he asks me, “Can you read?” I nod, and he hands me the slip of yellow paper. “Just came in,” he says.

BODY WONT KEEP TILL I GET THERE. SEE HE IS BURIED PROPER. MOTHER.

I go home. Father, do you want a box? You felled trees, Father, and you cut them up, and you burned them to make charcoal to make iron, and the charcoal burned you. Do you want a box of wood? The box will rot, and you will too. You don’t need a box of wood, do you, Father? I bury him on the hill behind our house, in a hole as deep as I can dig. Before I fill in the dirt, I fetch the family Bible from his chamber. On the family page, where it says Clendenin Murdock Montross, Born April 24, 1843, I write: Died March 30, 1895, and then I carry the Bible up to the grave on the hill, and open it, and try to find something in it that will do. I don’t know the Bible well. Most of the things I read in it make me feel like laughing. It takes me a long time to find something appropriate. But there is no hurry. I keep reading, until I find this, which is what Job said:

For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up: so man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep. O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me! If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time I wait, till my change come.

I speak these words over him, then scatter some pieces of his charcoal over him, then fill his grave with the dirt. I make his marker of wood, of pine, he who lived by wood and died by it. With my pocketknife I carve his name and his dates, and this: “The last Montross of Dudleytown, but one.”

Now I go looking for Renz. But he is scarce. His old mother says he has gone to work for a man in the next town, Goshen. What man? She does not know his name. How long will he be gone? Who knows? she says. When he comes back, I say, tell him I am waiting for him.

Should I see the constable of Cornwall? Would it do any good? Could he find any evidence, or force a confession? No witnesses. An impoverished middle-aged man, drunk on beer, falls into a charcoal pit and burns. Who would care?

My mother takes five days to come. A boy from The Bridge brings me a message: your mother has arrived on the train but is not able to make it home. Come for her. I hitch the wagon again and drive to the railway station. She is lying on a bench, her eyes closed. She has not brought Charity back with her. I put my hand on her face and feel her fever. She opens her eyes. “I’m ill, Daniel,” she says. “Take me home to die.”

The train men help me get her into the wagon.

15

One afternoon in August with already a hint of autumn in the air, Diana took Daniel up the hill in search of his father’s grave. She did not expect to find a headstone—the marker had been made of wood, which would have rotted long ago—but if she could only find a mound of earth that looked like a grave in the right place, it would be something to believe in.

But even a mound of earth settles and sinks after so many years, and the woods gave no bearings to Daniel in his search for the site of the grave. They could not find anything. Diana heard laughter, and for a moment she was certain it was Ferrenzo Allyn laughing at them, and she quickly brought Day out of his trance. Day listened too, and heard laughter. “Just another intruder,” he said.

The laughter was coming from the direction of their camp. They went back downhill, away from the unfound grave, to see who was laughing in their camp.

They found their camp occupied, by a group of seven persons. These persons at first glance were indistinguishable as to sex, for the males among them had shoulder-length hair. All of them were young; no older than Diana, no younger than Day; a few years earlier they would have been called hippies. It was the older of the males, also bearded, who was doing most of the laughing, and when he caught sight of Diana and Day he laughed again and said, “For joy. Thou art children, and blessed. Glorious sight.”

One of the others said, “Behold, thy dwelling place is fair.”

One of the females said to another, “For I am persuaded of good chimes here, Rebekah. Dost thou hear good chimes?” and the one addressed as Rebekah said, “Glorious.”

The laughing one, the original speaker, turned to Day. “What is thy pilgrimage, brother?” he asked Day. When Day did not immediately reply, he continued, “Art thou settled? Or abidest thou here only for the eventide?”

Day exchanged looks with Diana, and she declared, “it isn’t exactly a pilgrimage.”

“All men pilgrimage,” he said. “What is thine?”

“Nature study,” Diana said.

“Glorious!” said several of them at once.

“But,” said the laughing one, “what dost thou study nature with?”

Diana gave him a puzzled expression and shrugged her shoulders.

“Acid?” he said.

She knew that word. She shook her head.

“Thou are not a head, then,” he said. “So how dost thou swing with nature? What is thy potion? Grass?”

“No,” she said.

“Bennies?” he said. “Crystal?”

“No,” she said.

“Art thou shooting smack?” he asked.

She shook her head.

The boy who seemed closest to the laughing one, always keeping near him and occasionally grasping his elbow as if to hang on, said to him, “This brother and sister walk the straight path, Zeph. They are pharisees.”

“Verily,” said the laughing one.

One of the girls said, “Let’s crash here, anyway. I get good chimes in this place.”

“Verily,” the laughing one said. He asked Diana, “Couldst thou nurture these thy brethren with any morsel from thy table?” There was no trace of beggary in his voice; he sounded as if he were offering to do her a favor.

“Sure,” she said, and walked over to the ice chest and opened it. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

Diana found a package of ground beef, but not enough to go around. Enough, at least, for spaghetti sauce. “How about spaghetti?” she suggested to the laughing one.

“Glorious,” he said, and the others echoed him.

Day filled their largest pot with water and built a fire to boil it. Then he went off into the woods to gather greens and mushrooms for the salad. He did not seem terribly pleased at the prospect of dinner guests, especially these.

There were not enough plates to go around, nor enough forks, but this did not hinder the guests, who shared plates and who, forkless, ate with fingers. Diana passed around a large bottle of Chianti, and the guests drank from the bottle. They seemed to be extremely hungry and thirsty, and all of them had second helpings; some had thirds. The bottle was soon empty, and Diana, lacking another, opened a domestic Burgundy and passed it around.

The guests were appreciative. They frequently said “Glorious” during the meal, and after the meal they lay on the ground holding their stomachs and chanting “Glorious” and “Rejoice” and “Exceedingly Glad.”

The laughing one decided to introduce himself and his friends. He was Zephaniah, he said. Had they ever heard of Zephaniah, formerly called Mu, formerly of the rock group called The Grape Group? No? Well, here beside him was Esaias, also formerly of The Grape Group, formerly called The Flake. The other brother over there, he hadn’t belonged to The Grape Group, they picked him up in Massachusetts. His name was Barnabas. The four “sisters” were: the larger blonde, Bathsheba; the lesser and lighter blonde, Zeresh; the brunette, Vashti; and the auburn-haired, Rebekah.

Rebekah and Vashti were dressed in shirts and jeans; the two blondes wore daishikis; all, like the men, except for the one called Barnabas, were barefoot, and all had scarred and scabbed soles.

Diana asked Zephaniah how they had happened to stumble upon this camp. He explained that until recently they had been communards in The Fellowship of The Vital Flesh, up in Massachusetts, where they had discovered their saviour Jesus and his wonderful teachings, but the fellowship had become too crowded and they had been evicted for holding heterodox interpretations of the Divine Message. Since then they had been wandering, and just last week had discovered the Appalachian Trail and decided to follow it.

“And behold, it brought us here,” he said. “So how long hast thou dwelt here?”

“About nine weeks,” she answered.

“Wondrous!” Zephaniah exclaimed. “Nine weeks! Glorious! But why?”

“It’s a long story,” she said.

“So?” he said. “Time is long.”

Diana had already been asking herself if she should reveal to these people the true nature of their “pilgrimage.” It might impress them, especially the part about reincarnation. But she didn’t know how Day would feel about it; he would probably be reluctant to demonstrate for them. He wasn’t comfortable with these people, she could see that. As for herself, she respected flower children or Jesus freaks or whatever they were, even if she could never be one, and she welcomed company after such a long time alone with Day. At least she thought she did. She told herself she did. But their “pilgrimage,” hers and Day’s, was a private thing and she didn’t want to tell them all about it. So she merely answered, “There used to be a town here, and we’re exploring it.”

Zephaniah looked around him. The others looked around. “Where?” several of them said. “Yes, where?” said Zephaniah.

“Out of sight,” Diana said.

Zephaniah laughed, but then he gave her a look that questioned if she were mocking. “Verily,” he said. “Verily.”

“You didn’t notice any of the cellar holes?” she asked.

“What is a cellar hole?” Zephaniah asked.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

Slowly they all got up off the ground and followed her in single file down the trail toward the center of Dudleytown. Zephaniah caught up with her and walked beside her. Day brought up the distant rear. She gave these people a guided tour of Dudleytown, pointing out the cellar holes of the houses of Parmenter, Jones-Jenner, Dudley, Bardwell and Temple, the yards around still growing long-ago planted clumps of locust, lilac, rose and tansy.

“Verily, a forsaken place,” Zephaniah said. “A forsaken place. Why did they leave?”

“Various reasons,” Diana said, and gave the group a short history of Dudleytown and its decline.

“Man, they just lucked out!” said the one called Barnabas, and got a frown from Zephaniah.

The girl called Bathsheba held her arms out as far as they would reach from her sides and exclaimed, “Hey! Wouldn’t this be the right place for a commune!”

The one called Rebekah agreed. “Yeah! Let’s start a commune. I really get good chimes in this place.”

Several others said, “Glorious! A commune! Verily! Let’s start our commune here!”

Day gave Diana a most pained look.

Zephaniah cocked his ear and said, “Hark. Is it the sound of water mine ears heareth?”

Diana pointed. “There’s a waterfall right down the road there.”

“Glorious! Let us go there!” Zephaniah suggested and began to trot down the road toward Marcella Falls. The others trotted after him.

Day and Diana followed together. Day said to her, “It looks like we’re stuck with permanent guests.”

“No,” she said. “They’ll move on if we ask them to.”

“And what if they won’t?” Day said.

“They will. One thing about these people, they’re considerate for the feelings of others. It’s part of their code.”

As soon as the group reached Marcella Falls and saw the pool below it, all of them began undressing. “Let us exalt the flesh,” Zephaniah declared. “Let ablutions in this glorious water cleanse our vital bodies and refresh our spirits.” Several others said “Amen.” Soon they were all naked and jumped into the pool with whoops of “Glorious” and a few screeches from the girls because of the cold water.

“Come join us and be cleansed, brother and sister!” Zephaniah called to Day and Diana.

Diana hesitated.

Day asked her, “Do you want to?”

“Yes and no,” she said. “I will if you will.”

“I don’t see the point,” he said. “We just had our bath here a few hours ago.”

“On the other hand,” she said, “they’ll think we’re awful squares if we don’t join them. Come on. It’s a very innocent thing. And when I’m an old lady I can tell my grandchildren about the one time in my life when I went for a communal skinny dip.”

Day laughed, but with some discomfort. “Go on, then,” he said, “but I’ll tell our grandchildren that Grandpa was a chicken and just sat on the bank and watched while Grandma had her fun.”

“Oh, Day,” she said, disappointment mingled with delight at his picture of them talking to their grandchildren. She quickly kissed him. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s don’t be prudes with these people.”

The others seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves. They were having water fights and playing tag and in general romping and flouncing around in the water without any trace of self-consciousness or modesty. The girl called Vashti had very large breasts which bounced a lot. The blonde called Zeresh was definitely not a blonde in her pubic hair, as Diana was. Barnabas and Esaias were circumcised, she noticed, but Zephaniah was not. Esaias had an erection, but was not self-conscious about it, and none of the others seemed to notice. Well, Diana thought, at least I can tell my grandchildren that I watched a communal skinny dip.

“Go on, if you want to,” Day said. “I don’t care.”

“Are you sure?” she challenged him.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll probably get a kick out of watching you.”

“Voyeur!” she said. But she discovered that her fingers were unbuttoning her shirt.

“If it weren’t for us voyeurs,” he said, “you exhibitionists wouldn’t have any fun.”

She continued undressing. “I’ll tell our grandchildren you said that!” she said, laughing, and then, fully naked, turned her back to him and climbed down the bank to join the others.

“Welcome, sister!” Zephaniah exclaimed. “Thou hast a freedom unknown to thy fainthearted friend.” And he took her hands and waltzed her out into the water. The other boys were giving her admiring looks, while the girls were giving her green looks. She knew that her figure was as good as any of theirs.

She joined their play, and splashed back at them when they splashed her, and participated in their game of water tag. But the sport, she noticed, was becoming not-so-innocent. The one called Esaias, who had an erection, had apparently decided to use it. He grabbed the one called Rebekah and dragged her down into the water and got himself between her legs. Rebekah squealed with pleasure and said “Glorious!” Diana felt suddenly embarrassed and realized she was blushing; she quickly sat down in the water, covering herself to her neck.

Zephaniah came and sat down beside her. Indicating with a nod of his head what Esaias and Rebekah were doing, he asked her, “Art thou aghast? Dost thou not know that our saviour commands it?”

She felt his hand, under water, on her thigh. She brushed it off. “Your saviour,” she said. “Not mine.” She glanced over her shoulder to see if Day was watching. He wasn’t. He was in conversation with a stranger, a middle-aged man in khakis.

“Thou must not close thy mind to the message,” Zephaniah said, and put his hand on her thigh again.

“We’ve got company,” she said, and pointed toward the stranger. Zephaniah squinted at the man talking to Day on the bank. “Pig?” he said.

“Maybe a game warden or something,” Diana said.

The girl called Bathsheba came over and seized Zephaniah’s erect penis and said, “Hey, this is mine, not thine,” and gave Diana a look both defiant and catty. Then she sat down into Zephaniah’s lap.

“Cool it,” Zephaniah said to the girl. “The Man is watching. If he’s not a pig, he could be a narc.”

But the man, after a few more words with Day, turned and walked off. Bathsheba began bouncing up and down in Zephaniah’s lap, and Zephaniah wrapped his arms around her and groaned, “Oh, glorious!”

Diana got out of the water and climbed the bank. She asked Day, “What did he want?”

“He’s just some local landowner,” Day said. “He asked me what we were doing here, and why I wasn’t in the water too and how come I didn’t have long hair like the others, and then he said, ‘Why, it looks to me like those two kids are fucking,’ and I said, ‘Yes, that’s what it looks like to me too,’ and then he said, ‘Well, I don’t own this land but if I did I would put a stop to this fucking,’ and he asked me again what I was doing, and I said I was just watching, and he said, ‘You like to watch that fucking?’ and then he asked, ‘Why aren’t you out there fucking too?’ and I said, ‘I like to do my fucking in private,’ and he said, ‘Me too,’ but then he just gave me an odd look and walked on off. Diana, what if we just went on back to the tent? Do you think they would follow us?”

“Maybe not,” Diana said and quickly dressed. She took Day’s hand and they walked up the road toward home. “Maybe,” she said, “they will get the hint.”

Back at the tent, Day asked her, “Do you find that Zephaniah character very attractive?”

“Well,” Diana said, and pondered the question. “There’s something sort of instinctual about him which probably draws girls to him. Sort of an animal magnetism. But no, he’s not my type.”

“Am I your type?” Day asked.

She gave him a playful kiss. “No, but I like you a lot better.”

As dusk fell, it began to rain. They took their radio into the tent and turned it on to WQXR. Diana and Day searched the camp for anything else that should not be left out in the rain, and discovered two guitars and seven assorted packs, satchels, and blanket rolls belonging to Zephaniah and his friends. She asked Day to help her move this stuff into the tent and out of the rain. Day said, “They’re bound to come back for these things.”

“Yes,” Diana said with a sigh, “and they’re bound to seek shelter from the rain, and we’re bound to give it to them.”

These words were scarcely out of her mouth before she saw them coming, laughing and leaping in the rain. Zephaniah thanked her profusely for having the foresight to move his guitar and bag in out of the rain, and to show his thanks he tuned his guitar and played a rousing rock-spiritual number for her, first turning off the Sibelius that was coming from WQXR.

The nine of them sat in a tight circle inside the tent, and Esaias opened his bag and took out a pipe and filled it with marijuana and lighted it and passed it around. Diana knew that she was more or less immune to the stuff, so when her turn came she took the pipe and inhaled. To her surprise, Day did not pass up his turn, but he had a bad coughing attack on the first round. The second round he was more careful.

Esaias joined Zephaniah with his guitar, and the two of them played their repertoire of rock-spirituals. The marijuana pipe was refilled and recirculated. For a while the group attempted to continue speaking in their biblical language, but eventually most of them, especially the girls, lapsed back into obsolete hiplingua: “Right on.” “Do a number.” “Far out.” “Spaced.” “Turn his head around.”

All of them except Diana herself seemed to be high on the marijuana. Day was glassy-eyed but restless. Zephaniah and Esaias stopped pounding on their guitars. The conversation trickled out, but the pipe continued on its rounds.

Day stood up. He spread his arms wide. He announced, “I am a tree.”

“Go to sleep, Day,” Diana said.

16

Fush to Bungtown! Day unto day, my mother lies abed but she is not dying. All her talk is of what a pretty place Emmeline has in Illinois. Once, irked, I blurted, “Why didn’t you stay there?” And she wept. And a little harder I had to harden my heart. The tree of me grows around a stone in its bosom.

I haven’t told her it was Renz. I haven’t told a soul. But I wait for him. Before the April rains came, I went back to the charcoal pits and searched all the ground around; in the mud were my own bootprints and at least two of my father’s bootprints, but one bootprint which was different. I mixed a plaster and poured it in and let it harden, and now I have this cast of it, this print, and I am waiting, and if it matches his boot I warrant me I will kill him.

It’s time to plant peas, my mother says. If I could just get up long enough, she says. If you won’t tend the garden, she says, we’ll sure to starve. I’ve never done a garden, but she tells me how, and watches from her window. But something tells me that we won’t be here to harvest it.

I beg the Jenners for a job of work, but though they have plenty of work they say they have nothing to pay me. It comes, in time, to my begging to do their work for the pay of five pounds of flour and ten pounds of dry beans. Old Eph Parmenter pays me a pound of salt pork to shovel the dressing from his cow stalls and spread it on his fields; it takes me two days, and twice I have a glimpse of Violate but I calculate old Eph has given her to know that she can’t even come out of the house and speak to me.

I can cook a fair bait of beans, but Mother gets tired of it, and so do I. She tells me to use Dad’s gun. Three days in the wood bring home a partridge, a gray squirrel, a red squirrel, and two pigeons, and I’ve used up all the shells but one. One. One to save.

Most days I can find no work. Sometimes I fish in Bonny Brook or go beyond the mountain to the river, the Housatonic, which means in the Indian tongue “beyond the mountains.” Mostly, though, I just walk the woods and roads, waiting for Renz to show again. I plan a lot about how I will knock him down and take off his boot and take the boot home to see if it matches the cast. Once while I’m walking in the woods it comes on to rain and I get myself under the old big boulder in Parmenter’s back pasture, and there is this girl there, this stranger, prettier than Violate, with light hair, but older than Violate; I guess she is just hiding from the rain too, and right off she asks me if I know where I am.

Sure, I say. Looks to be old Landlocked Whale.

She asks me, Is that what you call it?

What I call it, I say. Some jist call it The Rock.

Very talky she is, and asks, How far is your house from here?

As near as no matter, I say, fooling with her.

She keeps on. How near is that? she asks.

Two whoops an’ a holler, I say.

Then she says something so peculiar I begin to wonder if she is touched. You’re looking at me, she says. Can you see me?

So I say, Naw, I’m blind a one eye, ’n can’t see out th’other.

Really? says she.

’Course I can see you, nimsky! Who are ye, anyhow?

Then she says, You don’t know me? as if I should.

Well, I say to her, You aint Violate, less ye blanched your hair. Violate? she says. Violate what?

T’aint what but who, I tell her.

Violate who, then? she says.

Violate Parmenter.

I know then she must be a stranger from way off, because she asks, Is that a name?

Naw, it’s a gull! I say and laugh.

Who is she?

Eph Parmenter’s gull, I tell her and then I ask, Who are you?

But she won’t tell me her name. We keep on talking, and I ask her how she happened to be here in the belly of the Landlocked Whale and she says she’s waiting for the rain to stop and she’s lost. I ask her where she’s lost from and she says Dudleytown and I tell her it’s not but right down the hill and I offer to show her how to get there, if she’ll tell me which house she wants, and then she says it’s my house she’s looking for, and I wonder what she’s going there for, and she says she wants to meet my father, she’s some distant relation of his.

My father’s dead, I say. Didn’t you know that?

No, she says. I’m sorry to know that. When did he die?

Few months back. Fell in one a the charcoal pits. ’Least that’s what people think. I shouldn’t wonder but what he ’uz pushed.

She asks me now, Who do you think pushed him?

I haven’t told a soul this, but for some reason this girl makes me tell her, so I say, Ferrenzo Allyn, that skunk.

“Stop, Daniel. Are you really under that rock with that girl?”

Stop, Daniel, she says. Are you really under that rock with that girl. My head feels peculiar.

“Open your eyes, Daniel. Now look at me. Am I that girl?”

Open your eyes, Daniel, she says. I didn’t know they were closed. Now look at me, she says. Am I that girl? she asks me.

Yes, you are that girl. You make my head hurt.

“Tell me what I’m wearing.”

Tell me what I’m wearing, she says. I wish I had never met you Now you’re making my body hurt too. You are wearing some man’s denim trousers and a lady’s waist with the sleeves cut off.

“Do other women in Dudleytown dress like this?”

Do other women in Dudleytown dress like this? she asks me. Not generally, no.

“Then how can I be in Dudleytown, in this year of 1895 or 1896? Are you sure that you met me under the rock? Are you really remembering me?”

You make my head hurt so, with your questions.

“Who are these other people here?”

Who are these other people here? she asks me. I don’t know, I’ve never seen them before, except those two, that one’s Jared Story, and that one’s Renz Allyn and I’m going to kill the sonofabitch.

Him? He’s Renz Allyn? Are you sure? Does Renz Allyn have a beard and long hair?”

He could easily of growed it while he’s been gone to Goshen these three months, to try and disguise hisself so’s I wouldn’t be able to know him when he comes sneaking back to Dudleytown.

“Daniel, look at me. Are you absolutely certain that you met me under the rock called the Landlocked Whale when you were fifteen years old?”

I aint absolutely certain of nothing any more.

“Go on, then. Forget me. You didn’t meet me under the rock. It was something you dreamed, maybe. Go on, until it is later, until you meet Renz Allyn again. Did he come back to Dudleytown? Did you meet him again?”

I do meet him again, yes, though he has disguised himself with a beard and long hair.

“No, Daniel. This isn’t Renz Allyn. Close your eyes and quit looking at him. This isn’t Renz Allyn but somebody you don’t know, whose name is Zephaniah.”

He is too Renz Allyn or my name aint Dan Montross. That disguise of his don’t fool me a bit.

“Close your eyes, Daniel. Now, tell what happens. What happens when you meet Renz? Where do you meet him?”

Where do you meet him? she asks me. I see him here in the belly of the Landlocked Whale.

“No, you’re confused. You didn’t see him under that rock, did you?”

No, you’re confused, she tells me. Yes, I am confused, but I know I see him in the belly of the Landlocked Whale because he has come here to lie and wait for Violate to sneak out and meet him, probably, but probably Eph Parmenter won’t let her out of the house, and so Renz has fallen asleep while he’s waiting for her, and I know it’s him even though he has let his hair and beard to grow, so I tear off for home as fast as I can run, and I haven’t even run that fast the time I tried to beat him home but I’m not running out of fear of him, no, but to get my cast of the plaster I poured into the bootprint and to get my father’s old gun with the one shell left in it, and then I run back as fast as I can tear toward the Landlocked Whale but when I get there Violate has come up and joined him and the two of them have already begun funicling as fast as they can funicle, as if old Eph has just let her leave the house for two minutes to go to the privy or something and she has to get it over with and get right back, so I know that I can’t kill him there while she’s around because I can’t have any witnesses, but at least I can sneak up and try matching the print with his boot, him funicling her without even taking off his boots or even dropping his trousers but just poking his perkin through his fly and into her, the two of them so busy funicling with groans and grunts and gasps they don’t even notice me sneak up and match the plaster with the sole of his boot, which matches like a key fits a lock, no mistake whatever, and I nearly went ahead and put the bullet through both of them but I still loved Violate some who was the only thing even like a girlfriend or a girl or a female I had in all the world, so I waited for her to leave and go back to the house but when she did go back to the house Renz got up and went with her, at least as far as the pasture gate and by then he was too far for me to get a good shot at him and too close to the house anyway so I cut off through the woods to meet him on the road and hope that he would come and get a good look at me and know who it was that was going to put a bullet between his eyes or into his wretched heart and maybe even listen to him beg for mercy before I shoot him down like a dog, but when he comes, around a bend in the road, I see he’s not alone but walking with his old chum Jared Story and rubbing himself in his crotch and bragging to Jared, Boy oh boy I funicled that gull so hard she was fartin holes in the ground, and Jared laughing fit to be tied, until the two of them catch sight of me and stop, and just look at me standing there holding the rifle, until Jared says, What are you huntin, Dan? and I should say something like partridge or squirrel not to give myself away, but I can’t help it, I say, murderers.

And Renz still hasn’t said anything; maybe he’s hoping I still don’t recognize him in that beard and long hair but I’m looking him right in the eye and pretty soon he knows I know who he is, and he says, You wouldn’t be callin ole Renz Allyn a murderer, would ye? And I say, I would call him a lot worse than just that. I would call him a lowdown shit-eating chicken-hearted killer. I have lost my temper something terrible and forgotten I’ve only got one bullet and not enough to kill Jared too, but I will kill with the bullet whichever one makes the first move and kill the other one with my bare hands. Now Renz blusters, Well, if you aim to kill me, you’d best do it right now. And he takes out a segar and strikes a sulphur match to it and stands there just smoking his segar cool as Christmas. But Jared Story is nervous and kind of walking backwards waiting for the right moment to turn and run. You Jared! I yell at him, just hold on. I don’t want him running off and being a witness that I shot Renz. But I can’t kill him too and he seems to know it. I aint murdered a soul, he says, What do you want to shoot me fer? And he keeps edging backwards. I up the rifle at him. He’s near the bend of the road. Stop, Jared, I say. But he bolts and ducks and runs. I fire. He falls. But hits the dirt and springs up and runs on. Renz still smoking his segar, hasn’t moved, says cool, You’ve missed him and lost him. Better load again, he says. Then he starts walking toward me. I don’t have anything to load with even if I had time. He grabs the rifle by the barrel and yanks it out of my hands and throws it into the road. Then he draws back his fist. But before he can swing I pop a jab into his jaw, another into his gut. He bends, staggers, straightens, lashes out and gets me on the ear. Then on the nose. I punch his body and his face, not aiming for any place, just slugging him wherever I can land. He blocks my fists and slugs back at me. I block some too and get in a good one on his face, a better one on his shoulder which spins him back. For a dirty killer no clean fight: I slam my knee into his crotch and grab him by his long hair and throw him into the road. Jared! he hollers, Come back and help me! I jump on him and stomp him, my feet and then my knees pounding into him.

“Hey, dig the cat zapping that baddie!”

“Shhh, don’t hassle him, man.”

Now I…now I lay…now I lay me down on him and wrap my fingers around his neck and squeeze for all I’m worth. Oh, he purples and will choke and die. No struggle. My fingernails pierce his skin. Father, here he comes.

Eph Parmenter raises my chin with his rifle barrel and says, Whoa, Dan, let up now, and Jared says, See, I told you he was killing him.

Up, Dan, says Eph, or I’ll fire.

“Down. Oh man, what a bummer!”

17

From Diana’s diary

August 24

Oh, I wish, I wish that when he had asked “Couldst thou nurture these thy brethren with any morsel from thy table?” I had answered in a lie, “I’m sorry but we barely have enough for ourselves,” or even given him some money and told him how to find the Cornwall Bridge general store. I want them here but I don’t want them here. I wish they would go away but I wish they would stay. I have asked them to leave, twice today I have asked them, but they haven’t, and maybe won’t. I can’t blame them for liking this place so much, but if they really intend to start a commune here then Day and I will have to leave or else we’ll have to revise our life styles to match theirs, and I don’t think Day could do that. I’m not even sure I could do it.

They aren’t as dumb as they seem on the surface. The girls are, for the most part, mindless, giddy sex machines, although the one called Bathsheba is a Vassar drop-out, and the boy called Barnabas had a scholarship to M.I.T. and Zephaniah himself (I almost capitalized “Himself”) keeps bragging about having an I.Q. of 155. Most of them didn’t realize what Day was doing when I hypnotized him; I guess they thought that he was simply “freaking out” on all the pot he’d smoked. I didn’t say anything to them about reincarnation. I just told them that Day “believes” that he used to live here in Dudleytown back in the 1890’s under the name of Daniel Lyam Montross, and I filled them in on a little of Dan’s history. Some of them were too high on pot to really care or seem interested, but a few of them, including Zephaniah and Esaias (oh, I hate their phony names!) paid close attention.

After I brought Day back from his trance, the girl called Vashti began to take a new interest in him. I guess she was impressed by his “freak-out” or felt that he needed to be comforted or guided through his bad “downer” or whatever. Anyway, she got pretty affectionate with him, and sometime during the middle of the night she crawled into his sleeping bag with him, and it looked to me as if he made love to her.

The reason I know this is that I was awake at the time. Yes, all nine of us, after all the pot smoking, slept together, “together,” in our tent. It was still raining, after all; I couldn’t very well make them leave, even if I had wanted to. I guess I’m more susceptible to marijuana than I thought I was. I was surprised our tent was big enough for all nine of us. But it was rather crowded. “Crowded.”

Day hasn’t confessed anything to me about what he did with Vashti (maybe he was too stoned to know what he was doing), but in a way I hope it’s true because then I wouldn’t feel so guilty myself. Because when Zephaniah crawled into my sleeping bag, I was past caring what he did. Maybe it was just the effect of the pot, but he was a terrific lovemaker, and I could understand why all these girls have attached themselves to him, although there was something rather dispassionate, even mechanical, about the way he did it.

But now I’d like for them to leave, and it’s more complicated because Zephaniah knows that I enjoyed that. He said that they didn’t want to freeload and would just find some nuts and berries to eat, but I drove into Cornwall Bridge and loaded up on food and the other girls helped me cook supper. Tonight, though, since it has cleared up, I’m going to insist that they can’t sleep in the tent with us.

And I won’t make Day demonstrate Daniel for them again. In retrospect, I was just doing it to show off, to entertain them, and perhaps out of curiosity to see what effect the marijuana would have on “Daniel.” It was a disturbing experience for Day, I think. That business about “Daniel” remembering a conversation he had had with me, which couldn’t possibly have happened to the real Daniel, reawakened my suspicions about this whole matter of reincarnation and Day’s imagination. The fact that he “thought” that Zeph and Esaias were Ferrenzo Allyn and Jared Story, which was an obvious projection of his hostility toward the two boys, was all the more grounds for suspicion. I want to play that section back and have Day listen to it and confront him with these ideas, but he refuses. He seems to have been avoiding me all day, maybe because of his guilt. Would it make him feel better if I told him that he isn’t the only one who is guilty?

Now he and Zephaniah are arguing because Day wants to listen to WQXR on the radio but Zeph wants to pick up a rock station. I will have to stop here and intervene.

August 25

They’re still here. Five pounds of pork chops for supper. You’ve got the money, Diana. But kid, you don’t want to marry them forever. I even had a little chat in private with Zeph this afternoon, trying to explain to him that Day’s and my “trip” (or “pilgrimage” to him) is a private thing and I wished they would at least go off and pitch their camp in one of the cellar holes or some other place, but Zeph just gave me a “sermon” about “the beatitude of togetherness” and how “glorious” we all are together; then he used the occasion of our being alone together to try to seduce me and I had to tell him that I didn’t want to get involved with him, but he just said “So who’s getting involved?” and tried all the harder to seduce me, and I gave in, because this morning Day and Vashti went off into the woods together; he said he wanted to show her how to identify edible mushrooms, but I’m sure that’s not all they were interested in. I think he has gotten over his aversions to these people even quicker than I did, but he absolutely loathes Zeph, and the feeling is mutual. Zeph keeps saying to him, “Get thee behind me, pharisee.”

Late this afternoon we had brief but very unpleasant visitors. Four men in a jeep painted with the sign “Bill’s Wrecker Service” came driving into our camp, and tried to get their kicks out of harassing us. They were urging us to let them “see some fucking,” and when we refused they seemed on the verge of getting violent, but even though they were brawny roughneck types I guess they sensed that we outnumbered them by nine to four, so after calling us every foul name in the book they drove away.

Tonight I’m insisting that the tent belongs to Day and me alone. Unless it rains or something. The nights are getting very cool, I hate to make them sleep out on the ground, but you have to stop somewhere.

August 26

It didn’t rain, but after the pot pipe had been circulated long enough it didn’t matter so we all slept in the tent. I think I slept with all of them. Once I felt his head to see if I could tell who it was that was on me and he was short-haired. Day. Vashti must have been showing him some tricks.

I confess that I’m jealous of her. She is closer to Day’s own age, and she’s a very pretty brunette. I’m half expecting to hear Day announce that she is the reincarnation of Violate, and then the two of them will live happily ever after.

Today I’ve been trying to get these people interested in doing some group dances that I’ve choreographed, but without much success. As Zeph says, “Why ball the air?”

They have discovered the only remaining standing building in Dudleytown, west of here, the remains of what was probably the modest shanty or cabin of that couple who were the last residents, the doctor and his wife who went mad. It is not so much standing as leaning at a precarious angle. All of the roof and doors and windows are gone, but Bathsheba has persuaded the boys to straighten it up and fix it up and use it as the first building for their commune. They haven’t started work on it, but I think they’re serious.

August 27

Zephaniah is gone. For a while at least. Last night we used up the last of their supply of marijuana. Today they asked me if I knew where we could get some more, and I said I’m afraid that I didn’t know anything about sources of supply. Zeph said he knew a guy up in Stockbridge, Mass., who had a lot of it. He asked to borrow my car. He assured me that he was a good driver and that he would just be gone overnight and back in the morning. Although a couple of girls wanted to go with him, he insisted that they stay here as “hostages” in security for the car. He intended to go by himself, and take no one. It all looked completely aboveboard, but I still made a “deal” out of it: I told Zeph that he could borrow my car on condition that he and his friends leave as soon as he got back. I said that they could fix up the old shanty if they wanted to, since it’s at least a mile away from our tent, but that in any case they were to leave our tent for good and leave us alone. If that’s the way you feel about it, he said. Promise, I said. Okay, he said, I promise.

So now he’s gone, overnight, in my car. The others seem completely listless and disoriented with him gone. They’re just sitting around, as if they’re in a waiting room waiting for him to get back. I’m thinking of taking a little walk with Day some other place so we can have another session in private, to find out what happened between Daniel and Renz Allyn. I doubt I could get him away from Vashti, though, darn it.

Oh-oh. Here comes that jeep and those men again. I’ll have to stop. No, two jeeps! Three! God help

18

Seven months later, in March, I located and interviewed Felix G. Spofford of West Cornwall, age 39, who gave his occupation as truckdriver for the town of Cornwall and volunteer fireman.

I showed him the two photographs. “Her,” said Mr. Spofford, pointing to Diana Stoving’s photograph, “I didn’t much notice. There were lots more girls than boys, maybe five or six girls but only three boys, that’s what made some of the guys mad, you know, the thought of those three boys getting all those girls to themselves, like a, you know, a goddamn harem or something. But him—” Mr. Spofford jabbed at the photograph of Day Whittacker, “I remember distinctly, one, because he didn’t have girl’s hair like them other two boys, and two, because he put up the worst scrap, I mean, hell, he dislocated poor Billy Evans’ shoulder and he knocked several teeth out of Lou Posolski, and poor Jim Burland was in the hospital nearly a week with a goddamn hairline fracture of his goddamn skull, and me, hell, I’ve still got a scar or two myself.”

Here Mr. Spofford unbuttoned his shirt to show me a scar remaining from a minor chest laceration. “We never did get him, neither. I mean, we couldn’t lay him out. Finally, Sam Rompiello got his shotgun out of the jeep and I think he was really gonna use it on that kid, but I stopped him and said that would be murder, you know, and so we just told him—we told all of ’em—to get the hell right out of there and if they were still there the next day we would have state troopers in there and lock ’em all up for public indecency or something, and then we hung around, you know, to make sure they weren’t coming back, and they took off in every direction and never did come back. We kept what was worth keeping, ice chest, lanterns, folding chairs. But Lou Posolski had already ripped up that yellow tent with his hunting knife, so we burned what was left of it and threw in the fire some of the other junk they left behind, a pile of books, and them blankets that smelled so strong of cunt and come that you could hardly stand it and smelled even worse when they were burning. Holy Jesus.

“But don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t part of that bunch of guys that went up there solely for the purpose of making those kids fuck right in front of ’em. No. That was George Zim and his bunch. Sure, we were all together, in three jeeps, but like I say, me and Lou was going up there just to run ’em off for public indecency and not because we had anything dirty in mind like George and his bunch. But when George and his bunch started trying to make the kids fuck right in front of ’em, me and Lou didn’t want to interfere, I mean, hell, mister, if they did fuck, that would be proof of public indecency, wouldn’t it? and if need be then we could testify against them that we saw them do it. And sure enough, when George and his bunch kept putting the pressure on ’em, one of the two long-haired boys asked for a girl to volunteer and one of these big-tit blondes volunteered and took her dress off right there in front of all of us, and laid down on the ground too, but Holy Jesus, that poor boy must’ve been so scared he couldn’t get him a hard-on.

“That girl kept rubbing at it and telling that boy that if they couldn’t do it we were going to beat them up or worse, and that maybe we’d leave ’em alone if they did it, but that poor boy could never get it in. So that other long-haired boy tried, but he couldn’t get him a hard-on neither, ha ha! So then old George says well, by God, those boys are probably fucked out but George says he has a nice big stiff one himself and, so help me, he yanked it out and nearly started screwing that girl himself, but that’s when the other boy, this short-haired one here in your picture, he got mad or something and started fighting. He should of known better, him against twelve of us. But he was a real devil, and like I say, we never could lay him out, although we conked the shit outa those other two, the long-haired ones. Maybe just goes to show that if you keep your hair cut proper you can still keep your strength and can still put up a fight, but if you let your hair get long like a girl’s you can’t fight no better than a girl, though I got to admit, those girls were putting up a good scrap themselves, I got a hank or two of my hair pulled out by the roots, and old George nearly got his dick pulled off. But we laid out a couple of those girls too. I don’t mean, ha ha, laid ’em, but laid em out, you know.

“Anyway, that’s one bunch of kids that probably thought twice before they ever went swimming without their clothes again in public. I bet they went back to New York where they came from. But anyway they never showed up in Dudleytown again. You know, some folks say there’s a curse on Dudleytown. Far as I’m concerned, those kids and their immoral ways was the curse, and we wiped it out. But far as they were concerned, ha ha, we were the curse on them. And the cursed wiped them out. You could go up there today and not find a trace of ’em. The only thing left behind, and this is funny, was a few days later me and Lou went up again, just to check to be sure they hadn’t come back, and we saw this fancy red sportscar parked off the road on the other side of Bonny Brook. At the time we figured it just belonged to some of these rich artists that live around here, although it had New York plates. But three days later it was still parked there in the same place. After a week and it was still there, we got the state troopers in to check that maybe it belonged to somebody who had killed himself in the woods. But they searched all over the woods and never found any bodies. So they checked the registration in New York and found it belonged to some girl only twenty-one years old, and that’s when I figured it must have been one of those hippie girls, but if that’s so, how come she didn’t drive off in it? Unless maybe they were all so scared, and ran the other way. Yes, come to think of it, our jeeps were parked between their tent and that car, but you would think they might have tried to circle back around us to get their car, or maybe come back in the middle of the night or something.

“That was a real expensive type of sportscar. Finally, it was towed off to the town garage, and matter of fact that’s where it still is, and after twelve months have passed, if it isn’t claimed, the town can auction it off to the highest bidder. Some of the guys are suggesting that the money we get from it ought to be used to have a patrol of citizens to check all of the woods regularly to make sure we don’t get any more undesirable hippie-types running around without their clothes and misusing our property. Me, I think that’s a good idea myself. God should have blasted those kids out of there with a lightning bolt or something, but God seems too busy elsewhere these days, so us citizens have got to do some of His work for Him.

“Mister, how come you’re interested in these two, anyway? Are they more special or important than the others?”

19

Diana and Day spent the night holding each other in the niche in the underside of the rock called the Landlocked Whale. They didn’t know where the others were. Bathsheba, Zeresh and Rebekah when last seen were dragging the still unconscious Esaias into the woods, in the general direction of the old shanty, although Diana did not know if that was their destination. Barnabas and Vashti had been talking about finding the highway and hitchhiking to Boston. The Landlocked Whale was far enough from their camp so that the men couldn’t find them, yet near enough so that they could hear the distant voices and the sound of the jeep motors, and smell the burning of the tent and blankets. Diana and Day had grabbed up all that they could carry before fleeing: their sleeping bags, most of their clothes, a small sack of food, and the only thing that really mattered to Diana other than her purse with her pills and traveler’s checks: the tapes and the tape recorder. They didn’t have a free hand to carry a lantern, and thus had to find their way in the dark, and, when they reached the tiny cave under the Landlocked Whale, in the dark Diana had to rip up one of her shirts to make bandages to wrap the bleeding knuckles on both of Day’s hands. She was still in a state of shock from their ordeal, but also in a state of awe and admiration over the way that Day had done battle with those men. She took a deep breath and said to him, “That must have been Daniel fighting for you.”

Day said only, “Yeah. It must’ve.”

“I think you nearly killed two of them,” she said.

“If I could get them one at a time, I would kill them all,” he said.

Late into the night they could still hear the distant sound of the men’s voices, and finally, exhausted, they drifted off to sleep holding each other tightly in their sleeping bag in the den below the rock called the Landlocked Whale.

At dawn Day woke her and said, “I’m going to check around.”

“Don’t,” she said. “What if they left a guard?”

“I’ll be careful,” he said.

“Come right back,” she called after him.

He was gone for only half an hour, and returned to report that all the men were gone but that everything in their camp had been destroyed. “Nothing left,” he said. “Not a scrap, nothing.” Then he said he was going through the woods to see if the others were at the old shanty.

“Why?” she said. “What if they are?”

“Maybe they need help or something,” he said.

“Or maybe you just don’t want to lose Vashti or something,” she said with a frown.

“I just want to see if they’re okay,” he insisted.

“Please don’t bring them back with you,” she said.

“I won’t,” he said, and went away again. This time he was gone longer, nearly an hour. She was hungry, and looked into the small sack of food they had saved. There was a loaf of bread, and a jar of strawberry jam. There was no cutlery; she used her finger to spread the jam on a slice of bread. While she was eating, she heard the sound of a motor, like a jeep’s motor, and hoped that Day would hurry back. What if the men sent a search party all around through the woods to make sure that nobody remained? The motor seemed to stop in the vicinity of their former camp. She rolled up the sleeping bag and stuff ed it and their other things and herself into the innermost corner of the den. Day almost didn’t see her when he came back. “Hey!” he said. “Are you hiding from me?”

“Shhhh!” she said. “I think there are men around. I heard a motor stop at our camp.”

He crawled into the den beside her, and said, “There’s nobody at that old shanty. Nobody anywhere. They must have all left Dudleytown completely.”

“I don’t blame them,” she said. “We ought to leave too.”

“What is Zephaniah going to think when he gets back and finds everybody gone?” Day said. “He’ll see that pile of ashes where the tent was and he’ll wonder if we burned ourselves up, or, if he’s smart enough, he’ll figure it out that we were raided. And then he’ll keep your car.”

“Or maybe,” she said, “Esaias might be lying in wait for him somewhere in the woods on the Dudleytown road, and he’ll intercept him and tell him what happened, and then they’ll make a getaway.”

“In your car,” Day said.

“Well, what can we do?” Diana said.

“That’s a good question,” Day said, and they spent most of the morning huddled together in the den, talking off the tops of their heads about what could be done, about all the various possibilities and eventualities, such as perhaps that Zephaniah would come at the wrong moment and be caught by some of those men. At one point, they had to stop talking, because they could hear voices coming nearer, and they waited in fear for several long minutes before the voices went away. “I guess they’re looking for us,” Day said.

The morning dragged on.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Day said. “Let’s listen carefully, and if we hear a motor that sounds like your car, I’ll sneak around through the woods and try to reach Zeph.”

But the morning passed, and the afternoon passed, without any sound of the motor of Diana’s car, although they listened carefully. It was not a noisy motor anyway; that was one disadvantage of an expensive Porsche. Day conjectured that the place where he would have to park the car was too far away for them to hear it, and suggested that they go find a hiding place nearer the place where he would park the car, but Diana insisted that they wait until dark. So they waited. For supper they had cheese sandwiches, and that was the last of their bread.

Day spent some time after supper brooding. She had learned to detect those moments when he would become distant from her, even though he was right beside her. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Do you miss Vashti?”

“No,” he said.

“Really?” she said, trying to draw him out. “Not at all?”

“She didn’t mean anything to me,” he said.

“Then what are you thinking about?”

“You,” he said.

“That’s nice,” she said. “What are you thinking about me?”

“I’m just wondering,” he said. And then he turned his face to hers and said, “Listen. Tell me the truth.” And she prepared herself to have to confess her various peccadillos with Zeph and Esaias and yes, Barnabas too. But he said, “Did you really have a grandfather named Daniel Lyam Montross?”

She laughed, partly in relief that it was not the question she was expecting. Then she said, borrowing an expression used by their recent friends, “Oh wow.”

“Well, did you?” he persisted.

“Here all along I’ve been suspicious that you are just inventing him out of your fantastic imagination, and now I learn that you’re suspicious that he never existed at all.”

“Answer my question, Diana.” He had begun to tremble; he was getting very overwrought. “I need to know. Did you or didn’t you?”

She could have answered him easily enough, but it disturbed her that he was so insistent, so lacking in faith. Did he think she was a liar? Worse, did he suspect that she was just some thrill-seeking spoiled rich girl, at loose ends, who had stage-managed this whole summer just for kicks? Worse yet, did he even suspect that she was perhaps in cahoots with Zephaniah and his friends, or even, for that matter, the men who had invaded them? Money will do anything, won’t it?

“Go to sleep, Day,” she said. He did, and she got out her tape recorder and put a fresh tape into it and switched it on. Then she told him that he was Daniel Lyam Montross and she told him to open his eyes. He did, and she smiled at him and said sweetly, “Hello.”

“Howdy, girl,” he said, smiling back at her.

“You do know who I am, don’t you?” she asked.

“I reckon I do.”

Say my name.

He said her name.

And what relation am I to you?

My daughter’s girl.

And where are you?

Right now? Back in the belly of the Landlocked Whale once again.

But what year is this?

He named the present year.

Really? How can that be if you died nearly twenty years ago?

Nothing ever dies.

Do you know why we’re here under this rock?

Sure. You and that foolhardy boy got yourselves into a scrape with the local yokels, and it took me nearly every punch I know to get you out alive.

So you have been watching out for us.

All the time, pretty near.

Can you read the future? Do you know what’s going to happen to us now?

What does “future” mean? It’s just one of those meaningless words. The future is past.

Can you tell me what Day and I will do now? What will become of us?

Even supposing I can tell you, I won’t. It would take all the fun out of finding out for yourselves.

Do you think this is “fun,” hiding here in this hole?

If it would make you feel any better, yes, I do. It’s exciting and suspenseful. High time, too, that something commenced happening. Things were becoming pretty dull and boring there for a while.

You’re funny. If you know so much, can you do anything to prove that you exist?

Holy Jehoshaphat, that’s a tall order, young lady! Can you do anything to prove that you exist?

Well, I’m here.

So am I. I’m here as much as you. Maybe more so.

No, you’re just Day. You’re just a bunch of synapses in Day’s fantastic brain.

All right, if you want to believe that. I don’t mind being anything but that. To choose between being and nothingness, I’d choose that. Some people are worse off.

I wonder if you could tell me why Day has suddenly started suspecting that I just made you up, that I’m not really your granddaughter?

Well, who’s to blame him? For all I know, since you claim that I don’t exist anyway, perhaps you did just make me up. It’s you, not him, who’s all full of doubts.

I guess there’s no way at all that I could ever prove that you are real, so I might as well forget it.

Suit yourself, girl. But I would be disappointed if you chose just to “forget it.” Haven’t I entertained you enough, so far? Hasn’t the story of my life in Dudleytown been worth your while, been worth your stay here, been worth, even, this ordeal you’ve suffered? There’s quite a lot more to my story. You’ve got only fifteen years of it. If you don’t want me to exist, then I’ll go on being nothing but synapses in Day’s brain, but that would make me terribly sad….

Oh, Daniel, I want so much for you to exist!

Good. Then let me.

“Oh, I’ll let you! Go on back, then, back where we were, in 1895 or ’96. You were telling me about you and Ferrenzo Allyn….”

Yes.

“Did you kill him?”

I haven’t yet.

“Where are you now?”

In my house. I am talking to my mother. And I remember my infancy, that heaven was told to lie about me but would not, that she did not want nor need me though she needs me now like a leech. Hopestill is still hoping, else she would die, but perhaps death is all she is still hoping for. On and on she talks of what a pretty place Emmeline has in Illinois, a white cottage, a garden of flowers, bowers and arbors and a fine carriage, an Acme Royal surrey, the latest Acme Queen parlor organ, a Gem graphophone talking machine, and plumbing in the house! Mother, why won’t you go back? Emmeline has written and asked you to. There’s more than plenty of room, Emmeline says in her letter. Because I intend to be buried beside your father, she says. But mother, you’ll live for ages yet. The wagon’s hitched, all’s to do is for you to pack your trunk, I’ll do it for you if you can’t stand, and then down to the station we’ll go. Daniel, are you trying to get rid of your poor old mother? No, but I want to get shut of poor old Dudleytown, it’s carrying me into its grave. The wind creaks the boards in Bardwell’s dead store. Moss grows on the rocks of Temple’s cellar hole. Mildew blooms on all our cloth. Spring never sprang this year. And I can’t leave you behind when I go off to seek my fortune. You could go, she says, to Illinois with me. No, that’s too far and Emmeline says it’s pretty much all flatland. I don’t like the flatland, Ma. My mother thinks, and sees in the glow of her mind the white gleaming earthenware washdown siphontrap closet bowl, with a chain to pull afterwards, instead of the old cold bailed chamber pail I have to dump each day. And she says, Where would we get the money to buy my ticket? You just let me take care of that, I say. And she thinks some more, dreaming of the bowers and arbors, and says Yes, yes, I shouldn’t wonder but what that might be best. So I pack her trunk for her and hoist her into the wagon and hoist the trunk and drive her down to the station at The Bridge, and say, Wait here. Then I drive the wagon and the team to the nearest farm and ask the man, How much for this fine team and wagon? Them horses ’pear mighty old, says the farmer. Boneyard’s not but nine and Mistress is just past ten, I tell him. Wal, he says, fifty’s the most I could ever hope to give ye and I don’t need another team anyways. Sold, I say. The ticket’s only thirty-eight, so I’ll have twelve left over as a nest egg to get me out of here. Goodbye, Mother. Goodbye, Daniel, you must be sure to come and visit. I’ll try. And Mother…I never asked you, but I’ve just been wondering, whatever become of Charity? We put her away, Daniel. In a state home. The state of Illinois has relieved us of the burden. Well, I guess that’s best. Goodbye, Mother. Goodbye, Daniel, and don’t forget, when my time comes, I still want to lay my head down beside your father.

Now at the store in The Bridge I buy a box of .38 longs for my rifle, only forty-three cents for a box of fifty, more than I’ll need. Then on foot I hike up the mountain toward home. Dusk settles on Dark Entry Road. Who would know this was a town? The charcoal pits are grown up in weeds. In school I learned there are lost cities in Peru, lost kingdoms in the sea, an empire of the Romans fell. Here in the dirt below this lilac tree I once built villages and wiped them out. Through this grove of mountain laurel I built roads and meandering highways and drove my toy wagons through them. And here are the trees I climbed. And there is my father’s grave.

Who would have my house? Enos Jenner, will you buy my house? Why, he says, where are you going? I’m leaving. He says, No, I don’t think anybody’d want that place. But I’ll give you five dollars for the hay in your barn.

I close the house, taking nothing, save the clothes I wear, and my rifle. Now in the dark I lay me down in the woods across from Renz’s house. Everybody will know it was me who did it, but they’ll never catch me. I know a way through the woods northward that will get me out of the town unseen.

One lamp burns in the house, Renz’s old mother sits alone, she bred the devil, I ought to shoot her too. But I’ll wait for Renz. He’s probably off some other place fooling with Violate. I’d halfway like to ask her to run off with me. I doubt she would.

It is nigh on to midnight when at last he comes, carrying his lantern, so I can see to shoot him.

I fire twice, hit him with both. He falls and dies. I don’t wait to see if his old mother wakes and comes to find him. Into the woods I run and turn northward, stumbling in the dark but making steady tracks.

“Daniel, did you really kill him?”

Oh, I killed him deader than a doornail!

“But wait a minute. You said before—Let me see if I can find it, I’ve been looking for one of my tapes, and I think this is it. Listen to this”:

…should have pounded him into the next county. Renz Allyn is a big bully who will come to no good, who will become the town’s rowdy, who will torture small animals, who will afflict old men, who will anguish old women, who will beat his wife, who will be Violate. He will beat her to death and be sent to jail and then Dudleytown will be empty. But that is some years ahead yet….

“That was a few months before. Of course, you said it’s not what you know but what you dream. Still, it conflicts with—”

Who is that talking? Whose voice is that I hear?

“Yours. Your own. When you were fifteen.”

Where did it come from?

“My tape recorder. Don’t you know I’m using a tape recorder? And I want to know: did Renz Allyn become the town bully and get jailed for killing his wife? Or did you kill him?”

What difference does it make? I never saw him again.

“You left Dudleytown that night and never came back?”

That’s right.

“Where did you go?”

Upcountry. The bigger mountains. Vermont.

20

On the first day of September, Diana Stoving and Day Whittacker, hungry and tired and chilled, took leave of Dudleytown, Connecticut, on foot, having given up hope of Zephaniah’s returning with the Porsche, and weary of constantly dodging and hiding from the jeep drivers who returned periodically to make sure that they weren’t there. They left Dudleytown as they had found it, leaving no trace of themselves except the ashes of their tent. The mountain laurel had long since stopped blooming, but the floor of the woods still wore its carpets of ground pine and fern, though some of the ferns had faded from deep green to yellow and tan. Diana tossed a late-blooming wild rose into a cellar hole as they passed. Silence hung around them, and though they strained to hear they caught no trace of the country jig and hornpipe of the shepherds and shepherdesses. There was no wind, in the early morning; morning mists hovered above the lower trees. The road rose ahead of them in its tunnel of still trees, and they climbed the road to leave the dead town resting in its uneasy slumber. Maybe, said Diana, someday they will cover it with asphalt and make a shopping center there.

Still, said Day, after all was said and done, it had been the best summer he’d ever had.

And now, she asked, what are you going to do?

Maybe it’s time, he said, that I ought to be thinking about going off to college.

With an imagination like yours, she said, you ought to study to be a writer.

He laughed. I would need you around to “turn me on,” he said. And laughed again. But she saw that his eyes were wet, and then that the wetness was trickling down his cheeks.

Day, she said. Oh, Day.

She took his hand, and held it tightly as they walked.

I hear, she said, that Vermont is truly beautiful in the autumn. I wouldn’t know, he said. I’ve never been there.

Boy Scout honor? she asked.

He raised three fingers, then used them to wipe his cheeks.

Well, would you like to see it? she asked.

Sure, he said. Would you?

There are lots worse things that we could do, she said.

If you don’t mind walking, he said.

I don’t, she said.

The tunnel of trees opened, and let them out of Dudleytown, toward some other place.

Second Movement

(“The Unfinished”)

Vanished Life among the Hills

People aspire to love. Their Its aspire to love. Few people ever achieve it. To put it crudely, the two-hole privy is man’s aspiration to love. As few people ever truly use two holes together as ever really achieve love together.

—Henry Fox

Why do lovers quarrel? It is the battle of their Its fighting down to that level from which they might spring up to loving again.

—Henry Fox

When I think of what you have meant to me for all these years, sometimes it’s more than I can stand not to tell you so.

—Old Vermont farmer to his wife

Was Eve bored? Is that why she ate the apple? Once when nothing at all was happening I asked Diana if she were bored and she told me that most women in general are going to be bored throughout their lives anyway and that as far as she was concerned she would rather be bored in this way than any other way she could think of. I thought that was a very nice thing to say.

I always wanted to see Vermont, but my parents’ idea of a vacation was usually Atlantic City or Cape May. There are trees in Vermont that are really trees. And there are a dozen or more little ghost villages and nearly-ghost villages scattered all over the state, tucked away in haunted hollows and lost dells. I guess I picked Five Corners because it was the only one I had actually read something about—in an old issue of Vermont Life that I had found once in the library of East Passaic High School. Daniel Lyam Montross could have lived in Five Corners, for all I know. For all I know, he might have lived anywhere. Anywhere you find the right place, where a village once was and is no longer, there’s probably some trace of him he left behind. Anyway, he told us that he had lived in Five Corners, for about eight years, from 1896 to 1905. But I didn’t tell Diana that I had read something once about the place and the gold mines that were there. I hadn’t told her I had been to Dudleytown before either, but I had, during a hike that Scoutmaster Pelton took the guys on, a couple of years before, on the Appalachian Trail; we just happened to pass the place and I just spent half an hour at the most poking around in the cellar holes and wondering about what sort of town it had been. But I swear I never read up on the subject, and I truthfully did not know how to find it from Cornwall Bridge or from the public highway, because, as I say, we went into it via the Appalachian Trail. I just knew it was there.

What if, after all, Daniel Lyam Montross is just my imagination? But if that is so, how would you account for this: when we were invaded by the “bad element,” those Jesus freaks, Zephaniah and his crowd, I thought it would be a good idea to “parallel” the past and present by concocting or fabricating some sort of “invasion” of Dudleytown by undesirable elements during Daniel Lyam Montross’s time—perhaps religious evangelists or the nineteenth-century equivalent of Jesus freaks—and I actually willed this to happen in his narrative, but for some reason he refused to include it. Most of the time I don’t think I have the least bit of control over what he is saying.

Or what if, as far as that goes, Diana just told me that she was Daniel Lyam Montross’s granddaughter, just for kicks, or just to “play along” out of curiosity? I can’t discount this, but I have seen him clearly in my mind, usually when I’m asleep but sometimes when I’m awake too, and there is a distinct family resemblance between him and Diana. And besides, I don’t think that Diana has the talent to be a good liar. I know what kind of talent it takes. For one thing, as she said once, you have to have an excellent memory to be a good liar, so you don’t get things mixed up.

What if, then, Daniel Lyam Montross not only actually existed—and still does, for that matter—but also that he has such power, because he’s from “the Other Side,” that he can do things like dig holes in the Garden State Parkway so that Diana’s car will hit one of those holes and have to be fixed in a local repair shop so that she will have to wait and while she’s waiting she will discover the story about me and Sedgely in the newspaper, and then come and find me, so that Daniel Lyam Montross can regain what he lost eighteen years ago when they had to shoot him to get her back from him? How about that? It’s spooky as hell, but I draw the line at just how much you can be expected to believe about “the Other Side.”

There’s one more “what if,” and this what if is the only one which I could believe in, because it’s the only one which I can’t explain away or prove unfounded or incredulous. And that is: what if I have just imagined Diana too? If I’m crazy enough to think that I’m “inhabited” by the soul or ghost or spirit or essence of a guy named Daniel Lyam Montross, then maybe I’m crazy enough to daydream (or Day-dream) that I have met this really good-looking blonde who’s got loads of money and a fancy car (damn, I wish I hadn’t dreamed that car away; I wish we still had it), and she’s good to me sexually, better than a succubus anyway, and here I am wandering around all alone by myself in these ghost towns that I wanted to explore, and making myself believe that I’ve got this absolutely first-rate companion and girlfriend. As a matter of fact, she isn’t the first girlfriend I’ve imagined I had. It seems like ever since I can remember, ever since my first wet dream at the age of eleven or twelve, I’ve been pretending convincingly to myself that I’ve got one girl after another. And they’re always blondes. So what if Diana is just my best “creation” after years of practice?

Sad, in a way, to think that. But what does it matter, so long as I believe it? Whether “Diana” really exists or not (and I’ve wondered about the little coincidence that my first name, and hers, and Daniel’s, all begin with the same letter), I know this much:

“She” went to Vermont with me.

On foot, most of the way, although she could easily have afforded to take a bus, or even hire a taxi, or even, for that matter, buy another car. (Once when she wasn’t around, just out of curiosity I counted the traveler’s checks in her purse. And she must have God knows how much in a trust fund she inherited when she turned twenty-one—inherited from her paternal grandfather, not from Daniel Lyam Montross, who never saved a cent.) Well, if you’re going to invent a girlfriend, you might as well make her a rich one. But anyway, we walked most of the way to Vermont, because I wanted to.

Which doesn’t mean we didn’t spend any money. We stopped at this sporting goods shop in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and Diana asked for my advice in picking out two complete outfits of back-packing equipment: knapsacks and pack frames and bedrolls and a light tent and cooking gear and everything—I think she paid more for this stuff than the first time for our Dudleytown gear, and we spent most of the first two weeks of September hiking toward Five Corners, Vermont, pitching our small tent each night in some other place. That’s the way I like to travel; you can see a lot more that way, and we passed all kinds of cellar holes and some abandoned houses and stores, and two or three genuine remains of ghost villages. Every so often, Diana would make me into Daniel Lyam Montross in order to find out what route he had taken when he had emigrated from Connecticut to Vermont, and for the most part we kept to his original route. We had to stop for a few days in a ghost village called Glastenbury, Vermont, because Diana had a bad case of foot blisters and needed some time for them to heal. I liked Glastenbury, and considered the possibility of staying there, but apparently it had never been much of a village, just a scattering of houses and a logging camp. So we went on.

The last good-sized town we passed through was Manchester, Vermont, and Diana stopped there and said to me, with this kind of wistful expression that she wears half the time, “You know, this time of year I’m always picking out my back-to-school fall wardrobe, but this is the first year in sixteen years that I’m not going back to school. Still, I think we ought to have a fall wardrobe anyway, don’t you?”

So we spent a day going through these shops in Manchester, and she spent I don’t know how many dollars on as much stuff as we could stuff into our packs and still have to carry some in the hand—all of it mostly stuff we needed for cool days and nights in the woods: wool things, wool and flannel mostly, plaid shirts and sweaters and new boots and everything. Gee, when I took a couple of twenty-dollar Pendleton shirts I knew I must be dreaming her up.

Vermont is quite a lot different from Connecticut. Most people wouldn’t notice too many differences except that Vermont’s mountains are bigger, but I noticed all kinds of differences. For one thing, there’s a greater range of color, and I don’t mean the autumn color, which hadn’t really got started yet—a lot of the maples on the higher slopes were already red but nothing like the real riot of color that would come later on—but just the greens, for instance. Somebody (maybe me, eventually) ought to work out a list of the forty-seven different shades and tints of green that you can see in Vermont, whereas they’re only about twenty-six in Connecticut. And even the wildest parts of the Housatonic country, like Dudleytown, don’t begin to compare with the really wild wilds that you can get into here in Vermont. I saw a few stands of trees which I could have sworn are genuine virgin timber, and you hardly ever find any virgin timber in New England.

We had a good time. Late one afternoon around the middle of September we climbed a steep hill and came into one of the prettiest little villages I’ve ever seen, called Plymouth Notch, which would have certainly become a ghost village except for one thing: it was where a President was born and buried. We found this out when we stopped at the little store there, and they had these leaflets that tell how Calvin Coolidge was born in the house across the road and sworn in as President in that house by his father when Harding died, and where he’s buried in the little cemetery back down the road. Diana and I walked back down to the cemetery and looked at his grave, a very simple and modest piece of granite with just his name and the presidential seal and his dates: 1872–1933. He would have been just eight years older than Daniel Lyam Montross, and right away we started wondering if maybe he had known him, because Daniel Lyam Montross had told Diana that Five Corners was in this same township of Plymouth, just a few miles from Plymouth Notch.

Plymouth Notch is a store, a church, maybe three or four houses, a cheese factory, and that’s all, all of it painted white and set like a huddled toyland on this high valley, with range after range of green hill and bluegreen mountain and blue peak rising and rising behind it. Something about the place really got to me, especially while I was looking at old Calvin Coolidge’s humble grave and reading his words printed in the leaflet about him—he was talking about Plymouth and he said, “It was here I first saw the light of day; here I received my bride; here my dead lie pillowed on the loving breast of the everlasting hills.” I know he wasn’t a great President, just a good President; still the idea that this was his home, the idea of a homeland, where people lived simply and honestly, and had devotion to work and to duty and had faith in democracy…well, hell, it raised a lump in my throat. And I wished that Plymouth Notch was Five Corners, even if it wasn’t quite a ghost village. But I hoped that Five Corners, because it was in the same township, would look just exactly like Plymouth Notch…only be abandoned.

We went back to the store to ask how to get to Five Corners but the store was closed for the day, so we had to knock on a door, and the man told us to take the road that goes up through Calvin Coolidge State Park, but he said we’d never make it on foot before dark and why didn’t we just spend the night with him if we cared to, but we were in a hurry and thanked him and went on.

The state park swarms over the crest of a high and steep hill, and consists of a number of platforms for tents, and a number of rustic brown shelters—they call it an Adirondack shelter everywhere except Vermont, and here they call it a Green Mountain lean-to: a windowless log cabin with one side open to the air, the floor just about twelve or fourteen feet square. Nobody was staying in the park, this late in the season, so we just decided we would like to see what it’s like to stay in a log lean-to, and since it was late in the day and lightly raining we just picked out one of them, that had a fine view overlooking the mountains. Each of the lean-to’s had the name of a native tree, and for no particular reason other than the view, we picked the one called Hornbeam, which is a tree of the genus Carpinus with smooth gray bark and hard whitish wood—the tree, not our lean-to. There was a supply of cut wood, so we started a fire right away in the brick grill which fronts the open end of the lean-to. Just as supper was getting hot, a truck came along and this crusty old Yankee said he was the caretaker of the park and the camp was closed for the season and what did we think we were doing camping without permission or without paying the fee, which was four dollars a night. We offered to pay the fee but he just kept saying the park was closed for the season. He was standing there with the rain running down his neck, and we were standing there with the rain running down our necks, and Diana, she began this act, rather convincing I thought, of breaking down and crying. It must have got through to his granite heart, because he finally said we could stay, and took our four dollars, and then said as he was leaving, “You kids aint even married, I bet.”

A lean-to in the rain is quite different from a tent in the rain. With a tent, if it’s raining pretty hard, you’re just plain miserable. You can only sit there and listen to the drops splat on the canvas and know that regardless of how good the tent is, you’re still going to get a little wet, and anyway you’re all cooped up. But with a lean-to, you can sit there out of the rain and watch the fire roaring like mad and keeping you warm, and still feel that you’re out of doors without getting wet at all. It’s very nice. So maybe that’s when I decided that when we got to Five Corners I would build us a lean-to to live in. It was getting too cold for a tent anyway.

In the cozy lean-to that night, Diana got pretty affectionate. I can tell the difference between when she makes love because she really wants to, and when she makes love only because I want to, and that night was of the former variety. We played and teased and laughed a lot, which is always good for setting the right mood. She ran her fingers through my hair and teased me because my hair was getting nearly as long as a hippie’s, which was true; I guess the only thing about those Jesus freaks that rubbed off on me was the idea that long hair is okay on a boy if you want it that way, and besides, when would I have had a chance to see a barber? But I told Diana she could cut it if she wanted to. She said she didn’t really want to, even if the long hair made me look so “un-Day.” Anything that makes me “un-Day” is just fine with me.

It ought to be plain that she doesn’t really love Day, and probably can’t, and probably never will. But she likes me, and tolerates me, and occasionally, like that night in the lean-to, she will get very affectionate, and then we will make love and if I try very hard and don’t let myself get carried away I can hold out long enough for her; then she will be happy, and for a while afterwards, at least until she goes to sleep, I think she really does love me, for a while.

That night a raccoon got into our knapsacks and ate up all of our food, even the bags of dried and dehydrated stuff, which must have given him a bad case of dry-mouth, unless he took it to some nearby brook.

So the next morning, when we packed up and started off on the last stretch toward Five Corners, I told Diana that we ought to try to live off the land for a while. I know how to do it. We could thrive on berries and nuts, and jerusalem artichokes and arrowhead tubers and acorns and other wild things, and catch fish and small game.

The only thing the raccoon left us was our coffee, which must have been a brand he didn’t care for, so we had coffee for breakfast at least, and I found enough wild raspberries to keep our stomachs from growling at us.

The old road to Five Corners leaves the state park and drops and turns and dips and twists…and it branches too, at least three times, and the third time we took the wrong branch and followed the road to its end at a compound of old buildings with a big sign tacked up: “Road’s End Lodge.” There was an old car parked there, so we knocked on the door to ask for directions, but nobody was home. We poked around the other buildings, including one with a skylight that looked like a studio or something, but it seems that nobody was living there. Off in the distance on a knoll, however, we could see what looked to be the tops of a long row of tombstones, so Diana immediately made me into Daniel Lyam Montross and when I woke up she said that he had told her that, sure enough, that cemetery off in the distance, across a wide meadow and on a knoll, was the Five Corners cemetery. So we started out for it, finding the remains of the road through high grass, two ruts that not even a jeep could take.

The Five Corners cemetery is quite an operation (or I should say set-up or lay-out instead of operation, because it hasn’t been “operating” for at least seventy years). This is an interesting contrast with Dudleytown, where we never could find any sign of a cemetery or even a private family plot—I think they must have buried them without stone markers or else they had hauled them off to one of the cemeteries in Cornwall or some other place. The Five Corners cemetery is a big one; I didn’t bother to count but at a rough guess I would say there are at least three hundred headstones in the cemetery, and footstones too, because each grave had a small marker at the foot too, I suppose so that you wouldn’t chop off somebody’s feet when you were digging a grave in the next row. I don’t mean to be funny, because the Five Corners cemetery made me very sad. Nobody was taking care of it. Here were all these three hundred people, lying, like Coolidge said, “pillowed on the loving breast of the everlasting hills,” but that breast was all covered with brambles and weeds and wild useless vegetation that I couldn’t even identify, and second-growth trees were growing right up out of half of the graves, their roots probably tangled all up in the skeletons, and the thought that this was once a neat breezy lay-out in this picturesque bowl of a knoll nestled in this bowl of a valley and visited by folks at least on Memorial Day with flowers and where once preachers hollered to God to rest the souls of the departed, and now all abandoned and forsaken and uncared for. We just stood there misty-eyed for a while and then we pledged that we would come up here often and try to clean away some of this overgrown brush and straighten up the toppled stones.

But even while I was standing there brooding I had the presence of mind to memorize a lot of the names on the tombstones in case Daniel Lyam Montross needed to have his memory refreshed or something. There were a lot of common names that didn’t need to be made up: Johnsons and Butlers and Browns and Adamses and Allens and Smiths, but a lot of names that were a little bit unusual: Headles and Slacks and Earles and Braddocks and Claghorns and Spooners and McLowerys and Rookes, with a lot of unusual first names too: Alpheus and Adelphia, Joel and Melissa, Potie and Kermit, Jeems and Lavinia, and so forth.

The fact that the cemetery was completely run-down and forsaken prepared me in advance to expect that the town itself was probably not taken care of. Since I was halfway hoping that Five Corners would resemble Plymouth Notch, it’s a good thing that I was prepared in advance to expect the worst.

Because there’s absolutely nothing in Five Corners.

I mean, nothing. It’s even worse than Dudleytown in this respect. We could have walked right through it without noticing a trace of anything, and we probably would have, too, except that when we reached this old wooden bridge crossing a roaring brook down in a deep hollow completely surrounded and locked in by the hills around it, we happened to stop in this little glade beside the brook where there were the ashes and burnt logs of some camper’s or hunter’s or fisherman’s fire, and there we just barely managed to detect that there was another abandoned road branching off that way, and another branching off that way, and still yet the faintest trace of a road branching off up that way. Five. Five roads, counting the two of the road that we were coming in and going out on. Five Corners. So Diana immediately put me to sleep again, and when I woke up she told me that this was really the right place, Five Corners. After I got over the disappointment, she took me around and showed me the places that Daniel Lyam Montross had just finished taking her around to and showing her. Here where the five roads converged had been the school, which had been called “Five Corners Academy,” where Daniel Lyam Montross had taught for two years. But there was no trace of it, no foundation, no cellar hole, nothing. And here, where the brook was now spanned by a simple bridge of wooden planks, had been a covered bridge, a “king truss” affair that had washed away in a flood toward the end of the time that Daniel Lyam Montross had lived here. And here, beside the covered bridge, was a very large cellar hole, so overgrown with weeds and trees that we would never have found it without the help of Daniel Lyam Montross. This had been Glen House. Glen House had been a hotel. On the second floor of Glen House Hotel had been a ballroom, famous all over because the whole ballroom floor was mounted upon large rubber balls to make it springy for dancing, and over eighty couples could dance there at one time. It staggered my imagination—me, who’s supposed to have such a great imagination. And down there was the big sawmill. And here the millpond, which William Hankerson had paid $1000 for the privilege of sluicing and draining in hopes of finding sediment of gold washed down from the hills, a gamble, which paid off, to the tune of $7000. And up there beyond the sawmill was the cider mill. And over there, on the rise, almost in a row, were the four neat white houses of the Earles and Headles and Spooners and McLowerys. Now nothing.

Why had Daniel Lyam Montross settled here? What drew him? To come from one dying town and wind up in another…. But maybe it wasn’t dying when he came. We had plenty of time to find out all the answers. First, we had to get settled. I thought it would be appropriate if, as in that glade of laurel in Dudleytown, we made our camp on the location of Daniel Lyam Montross’s home in Five Corners. But Diana, after putting me under again and having a long session with him, shifting him back and forth through different months and seasons and years, discovered that he had never had his own house here. He had lived for a time, a brief time at first, in a room at the Glen House Hotel. Then he had a miserable room on the second floor of some kind of handyman’s hovel. Then he had a room in a farmhouse high to the south of the village. Then he lived in a kind of shed out back of the McLowery house in the village.

“So finally,” Diana said, “I just asked him which of these places he had liked the best, and he said the last one, the shed behind the McLowery house, and he showed me where it was.”

She said also that Daniel Lyam Montross was very sad, really terribly sad, to see “what a sorry plight” the village had fallen into. “Yes, all my towns are fallen,” he had said, “but none like this.”

We began construction of our lean-to on the very ground where the McLowerys’ shed had stood, which wasn’t a bad spot, at all. It was high, on a slope to the west of the village, with a great view of the village (or what was left of the village, namely, nothing) and far enough back from the road so that if any hunters or forest rangers or anybody came along they probably wouldn’t spot us.

But building that lean-to wasn’t such an easy task. First of all, I had to hike about six miles north down along what was called the Hale Hollow Road and then along the state highway into Bridgewater, the nearest village where they had a grocery store that carried some hardware, so I could buy a good axe and saw and a hammer and some nails and other things. (And while I was at it some groceries too, because I wasn’t doing such a really complete job of demonstrating that we could find enough to eat in the woods and stream and fields. So far we’d had only a couple of small bullheads, one scrawny squirrel I caught in a snare, berries and more berries until we were burned out on berries, and large loads of cooked wild greens of all kinds.) Then felling enough trees for the logs, and cutting and trimming the logs, took me about two solid weeks of sunup to sundown labor, and I was always in such a sweat from it that I never needed to go near the fire until late at night when it got cold, and Diana was always criticizing me for neglecting the fire, because she was cold.

The chipmunks. I’ve nearly forgotten to mention the chipmunks. They were all over the place. Little, nervous, long-tailed furry creatures with white stripes and freckles on their brown and tan backs. They’re worthless to eat, even if you could bring yourself to kill one of the cute little things. But they will eat anything you throw at them, and even come up and eat out of your hand and sit in your lap after they get to know you. They sit up on their hind legs to eat. I guess they were trying to store away enough for hibernation.

I noticed one thing about the chipmunks’ movements. Five Corners. The pattern of their darting resembles a map of the five roads coming into the village. They will run out into our camp, stop, run a few leaps one way, stop, run a few leaps the other way, stop, and so on, until they’ve made five runs in different directions. I mention this because I think it’s interesting.

Also, there were deer everywhere. After two weeks, they lost their fear of us, and whole families of deer would browse right up to the edge of our camp.

We finished the lean-to at just about the same time that the trees began to change color, and that color…. Diana is wrong in suggesting that I ought to be a writer, because I can’t possibly think of any way to describe the autumn color of the foliage in our woods. If you haven’t seen it, you just haven’t seen it. I remember in the tenth or eleventh grade liking this somewhat cornball poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, I forget the exact title, but the first line was “O World I cannot hold thee close enough” and there was this other line about “Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag and all but cry with color!” Well, our woods didn’t just cry with color. They sang.

The seeds of the sugar maple ripen in the fall. I pointed out to Diana that the seeds of the sugar maple come in pairs, and they are winged, and they ripen in the fall.

But enough about us. After all, I’m supposed to be telling the story of this part of Daniel Lyam Montross’s life, those eight years in Five Corners. I’m not sure I can do it. This “assignment” is a tough one, too tough for me I think, but I might as well try. I’ve got limitations, and I’m aware of them: for one thing, most of the time I’m more interested in what’s happening to me and Diana, even if it’s nothing, than in what happened to Daniel Lyam Montross; for another thing, I can’t even begin to compete with that voice of his, and I don’t intend to try. Diana was giving her tape recorder a workout just about every day, and we were steadily accumulating another stack of cassettes. One of the things that we had already discovered, back in Dudleytown, is that I’m able, apparently, while under a trance, not only to “play” verbatim everything that Daniel Lyam Montross ever said, with all its idioms or slang or what not, but also I’m able to “play back” anything that anybody ever said to him. So a lot of these cassettes that we were making in Five Corners were not of that fabulous voice of Daniel Lyam Montross but of other people talking to him, and what I would like to do, as “editor” of this story, is to show (or “play”) some of those other cassettes, occasionally. If Daniel Lyam Montross thinks that I’m doing this just to get his own fabulous voice off the air, he’s probably right.

Well, here goes his story. It was nearly autumn when he first came, too. In 1896. He hadn’t meant to come to Five Corners especially. That summer after leaving Dudleytown, after killing Ferrenzo Allyn or anyway thinking he had killed Ferrenzo Allyn [what does it matter? Allyn must be dead] he just wandered about from one place to some other place, heading generally northward, pretty much along the same route Diana and I had taken, stopping in one place and chopping wood for somebody to get a free meal, stopping in some other place for a week of work, until finally he wound up in this small industrial town south of here, called Ludlow, and looking for a job, at least a temporary job, he discovered that the post office needed a mail carrier to drive the mail wagon each day on the new Rural Route 6, which went up through Tyson, Plymouth Union, Plymouth Notch, then Five Corners and back through Reading and Cavendish. Well of course Daniel knew how to drive a wagon, but the job had a minimum age of eighteen and he was still short of seventeen. So he had to lie about his age. He at least looked eighteen, or older. They gave him the job, which wouldn’t pay a whole lot, but he thought he could get by. The first day, he had to get up at five-thirty in the morning and go to the post office and spend two hours sorting out the mail, and getting it all straight, and then loading the six big leather bags into the wagon, and a couple of paying passengers who wanted to go to Tyson and Plymouth, then he cracked his whip and started off.

When he arrived with his mail wagon at Five Corners he was surprised to find a big welcome celebration waiting for him, because, as it turned out, this was the first day that Five Corners became a rural delivery route. Although it had been a village for many years, all the way back to the 1830’s, people had always had to go to Plymouth Notch or Bridgewater to get their mail but now apparently the post office department thought that the village was important enough to have rural delivery. At any rate, everybody in town had turned out for Daniel Lyam Montross’s arrival, and they had even hung red-white-and-blue bunting across the road, and there in front of the Glen House Hotel were tables covered with white damask and pitchers of cider and all kinds of homemade cakes and cookies and what not, and they introduced Daniel Lyam Montross to everybody, and several big men of the town made speeches, and somebody shot off some fireworks, and the village dogs chased their tails, and you never saw anything like it.

Diana has this bug about psychologizing everything. I think she must have taken a course or two in psychology when she was in college. She had a lot of fun making psychological theories about this episode. Daniel Lyam Montross, she says, had been a complete “nobody” back home in Dudleytown. He had been the last child, the unwanted child, in a large impoverished family. His childhood and adolescence, except for a few sexual escapades, had been dull and lonely. Now, suddenly, with the big welcome that was given to him in Five Corners, even if it was really not him but the U.S. Mail that these people were so happy to see, he began to feel that he was “somebody” instead of “nobody.” Diana calls this one of the first big turning points in his life. She calls it a “happy trauma.”

Anyway, it must have gone to his head, to hear him tell it (or to hear the tape recorder tell what he told me to tell Diana). It took him nearly three hours to get away from the celebration, during which he met several pretty girls, including one, Rachel McLowery, who really turned his head, love at first sight and all that. Rachel was a redhead, the same age as he, although if anybody asked, he said he was eighteen, just to be safe. He told Rachel that as soon as the weekend came and he got off work, he would come and visit her, and she said that he could take her to the contra-dances at the Glen House where they dance on a floor mounted on rubber balls. And he could hardly wait for the weekend. But when he got back to the Ludlow post office, three hours late, they gave him hell for being so late, and even though he explained that he had been held up by the big celebration in Five Corners, they told him he should have had sense enough not to hang around for three hours for any celebration that interfered with the prompt delivery of the United States Mails, and they fired him on the spot.

And so (or this is what Diana says, psychologizing again), being fired from his new job like that so abruptly, he left Ludlow and went at once, on foot, to Five Corners, gravitating (Diana’s word) toward the one place in the world where he had been made to feel welcome, the right place. When he got there (it took him two days to walk the distance) he used his day’s pay that the post office had given him to take a room overnight in the Glen House. The people who ran the hotel were sorry that he had lost his job because of the celebration Five Corners had given him, but apart from that, as Daniel Lyam Montross was rather dismayed to discover, now that he wasn’t the mail carrier any more he wasn’t important to them. He was a nobody again.

Even Rachel McLowery, when she discovered that he wasn’t the mail carrier any more, was cool to him, and although she kept her promise and let him take her to the contra-dances on the rubber-ball-mounted floor of the Glen House, she wasn’t much fun, especially when she discovered that he couldn’t dance well. In fact, he didn’t know the first thing about dancing, and tried to pick it up by eye and ear, with very limited success. Rachel said she was busy when he tried to set up another date with her.

Here it was late August, and he was out of a job, and he liked Five Corners very much even if the people no longer thought he was the most important man in the world. He still wanted to stay. So he began asking around about the possibilities of employment, saying he was eighteen and able-bodied and lost his last job through no fault of his own.

Mrs. Peary, who ran the Glen House, asked him if he had finished his schooling, and he lied and said he had. She told him that the Five Corners Academy across the road from the Glen House hadn’t found a schoolmaster for this year. He thought he was smart enough to pull it off; even if he hadn’t finished school himself, he knew how to read, and he could read the textbooks and keep a lesson ahead of the pupils. Mrs. Peary told him to go see Judge Braddock, who was the chairman of the school district.

He saw Judge Braddock, who hired him on the spot (apparently for lack of other applicants) and then told him to meet him at the school the following Saturday afternoon at two o’clock for an “auction.”

Now here’s my first example of the cassettes in which it isn’t Daniel Lyam Montross doing the talking (in fact, in this case, he never gets a chance to open his mouth) but somebody else talking to him. This is Judge Braddock, talking to him on the day of the “auction”:

Shall we stand in the shade of this venerable maple whilst we wait? This tree’s got a history as long as my winter underwear, but I won’t bother you with it just now, young man; it’s too long, and I see the first of the folks coming yonder. There’ll be time enough, I suppose. I suppose you’ll be seeing more than enough of me, days to come. I don’t judge any more—Mrs. Peary was only being polite when she called me that—I did judge once, though, and I hanged a man from this very tree—remind me to tell you about that one. No, I don’t judge any more, and I don’t even auctioneer but once or twice a year, but I’m here. You’ll see enough of me, time to time.

Now those two, hitching up by Glen House yonder, that’s Jirah and Livia Allen, they hold a two-hundred acre farmplace up Gold Brook, and enough livestock to keep your table brimming. They’re not grudging with the meat, either. But the problem there is, they’ve got a son, a big boy named Marshall, who’ll be one of your scholars, and he’s the meanest scamp that ever lived, and practically a halfwit, which proves you don’t have to be smart to be mean. No, I don’t think you’d want to live with them. Seeing him in school each day will be enough for you.

Oh, but isn’t it a fair and frisky morning? And see how there’s already a spot of red amongst the maple leaves. You have to relish this season, my boy, when the sun’s still hot: Three or four weeks, and it gets blithering cold up here in these mountains. Which reminds me, I have to get after Jake Claghorn about stocking up the wood for the schoolhouse. Only part of this job I don’t like, being chairman of the school district, is asking Jake Claghorn seven or eight times before he gets around to cutting that wood. Lately he’s been agitating to have it made part of the schoolmaster’s job, but don’t you worry about that. Not as long as I’m still holding the whip.

Now here come the McLowerys, Joel and Melissa. A handsome team and wagon, isn’t it? Befits their circumstances, you could say. They’ve got the biggest herd of sheep in the county. Pure Merinos, a few Cheviots. Can you imagine that absolutely your only problem there would be a surfeit of lamb chops? Ha, ha! But on second thought, they have a daughter, who’ll be one of your scholars, and she—well, you must remind me sometime to tell you about her.

And right behind them there are the Tindalls, that’s Adelphia driving because Aaron fell off the buckboard and broke both wrists. I hate to say it, because they’re my own blood relations—he’s a third cousin and she’s a first—but you don’t want them. Cross your fingers. Aaron is able to put away a half gallon of applejack in a single day…and he often does. I fail to see how he gets any work done…and he often don’t.

Year before last, they had the schoolmaster, and I’ll be switched if he didn’t develop an overpowering taste for the stuff himself. I hope you’re moderate yourself, young man. Not abstemious, I didn’t say. Just moderate. A man can’t get through these winters without a little liquid warmth. But mark me, it’s my experience that you young fellows can too easily succumb to excess, particularly about the end of February or during March. I take it this is your first position, isn’t it? It always is. So just let me say that there’s nothing you can do that will surprise me. I’m not going to be watching you every minute, and I don’t want you to feel that I am, but if you ever get the urge to do something to surprise me, then put it out of your mind, for nothing will. I guess the only thing that would be sure to surprise me would be to find you standing here beside me at this same time next year.

Look the other way there, coming afoot by the Plymouth fork, that’s Matthew and Sophronica Earle. Now there’s a fine family for you. Townspeople, you might almost call ’em, if you want to call this little hamlet a town. Live in that big old white house up the hill yonder. Matt used to be schoolmaster himself, many a year back, that’s how he met Sophronica, who was one of his scholars. He’s the only former schoolmaster who ever stayed. Now he’s a town selectman. Two of their own children will be your scholars, if you wouldn’t mind them underfoot at home. Nice, big, airy room of your own upstairs. I’ve seen it, and it’s got a view. The drawback there is the water isn’t any too good. Well’s too close to the stable, I think.

Here’s Jake Claghorn, dang his bones! YOU, JAKE! WHEN’S THAT WOOD GOING TO BE CUT? HUH? WELL, IT BET? TER BE, IT JUST BETTER BE, YOU LAGGARD! Looks to me like he intends to bid too, but you certainly don’t want him, my boy. He’s a bachelor. Lives in a dirty three-room shack down by the blacksmith’s. Probably make you cook your own victuals. But you just leave it to me. I’ve been manipulating these things for years. Some folks have urged me to go professional, and travel the state. But I don’t like traveling.

I’ve heard rumors that some of the towns down in the valley are giving up their auctions. Well, that’s nice, but nobody has told me what they are doing for a substitute. Has the legislature passed some new laws that we haven’t heard about? We get the county newspaper up here every Thursday, and I read it front to back. I haven’t read anything yet about the legislature passing any new laws. I served a term once myself at the state house, and I can’t conceive of any good substitute. It’s been a tradition in this town all the way back to the day it was founded. Well, maybe not all the way back, but Seth and Hiram Earle established the tradition on the very same day the legislature passed the law that school districts have to pay the board of their teachers.

It’s picking up, it’s picking up. Here come the Johnsons and the Headles, and there come the Spooners, the McIntyres and the Slacks. Good people all. Not a miser in the lot. The Headles especially. Why, they’ll even buy you a new pair of shoes! I see Joel McLowery is looking a bit impatient, so I suppose we had best get started.

Now, you being raised on a Connecticut farm, I guess you know that farm prices have a bad habit of what is called fluctuation. Some years are good, some years are bad, so you can’t ever tell. This year seems to be rather on the bad side, but you can’t ever tell. I just thought I would mention that, because it will probably be reflected in the bidding.

One other thing. I think it would be advisable to let that smile off your mouth. Now hold on! I don’t mean you have to scowl, but, you see, it’s been my experience that if you are standing up here with a smile on your face while I’m crying you, it somehow don’t go over too well with the crowd. I know you just mean to look pleasant and personable, they all do, but for some reason, it seems to annoy the crowd. So my advice is, just look properly solemn and serious.

And finally, I might mention that this auction, under the official auspices of a duly elected school board, is completely fair and square. If you know your auctions, you know about “air bids” and “dumb bids” and “straw bids” and all that. Well, we don’t tolerate that. We don’t have shills or signals or freezes. It’s all a straight Dutch auction, fair and square.

Now, sir, if you’ll just step up on this little box here, so the folks can have a better look.

ALL RIGHT, FOLKS! WILL YOU COME IN CLOSE? GET OUT OF THE HOT SUNSHINE AND GATHER ’ROUND!

Here he is, folks! Most of you’ve met him before when he brought the mail. Poor feller lost his mail job on account of that little festivity we threw. But he’s young and bright and eager! I’ve not read his record, folks, but he looks bright as a whistle, don’t he? If he’s good enough to bring the mail, he’s good enough to keep the school. And a big fellow like him, you know he can keep the youngsters in line! And swing a stinging ruler! But big as he is, he don’t look like a big eater, now does he? No! I doubt he ever asks for seconds!

So how about it folks and are you all ready? So how about it and let’s get to town! So how about it folks and let’s go! I’m gonna start at three hundred and how about that folks I’m gonna say three hundred and look for a hand do I see a hand do I see a hand at three hundred what’s the matter with you nobody likes the sound of three hundred then how does three-fifty sound to you? Three-fifty three-fifty I’m saying three-fifty and THERE’S A HAND! I’ve got three-fifty now who says three three three, who says three? Come on and let me see a three! and there’s a three! thank you, Joel. Joel’s no skinflint, he can do it for three. Who wants to beat him? Who says two seventy-five? Do I hear a two seventy-five? Aaron says two seventy-five and who’ll top him? Where’s my two fifty? Do I see a two fifty? Come on now, you know you could feed a whole district of schoolteachers on two fifty! There’s my two fifty, and thank you Jirah and who says two twenty-five, and I feel it coming up, that two twenty-five, and sure enough Joel here says two twenty-five, and who’ll top him? Who says two, who says two, two says who, who says who, AND THERE’S MY TWO! Now let’s whack it down, folks, we have to whack it down and down and down and who says one seventy-five, and there’s my one seventy-five but I’m telling you he’s going for one fifty and where do I see that one fifty? Let’s see you again, Joel, you’ve got him for one fifty. Then where’s Jirah now? Let’s see you at one fifty, Jirah. Come on now, boys, let’s see that one fifty. There she is! Headle says one fifty and who’ll top him? Let’s get on down to that one twenty-five. One twenty-five and you can take him home. One twenty-five and he’s all yours. I’ve got one twenty-five spot cash right here in my pocket to give you if you’ll feed him for that, and you know you can, with a little economy. Where’s my one twenty-five? For one fifty you could feed him roast lamb every night. Where’s that one twenty-five? I don’t see it. Are you all done, folks? Knocking down at one fifty? Why, I could feed two of them myself for that. Who says one twenty-five? Nobody? Am I obliged to knock it down at one fifty? Are you all done folks? One fifty? All right, one fifty gong twice, going twice one fifty, one fifty going twice…AND NOW I SEE YOU, JOEL, THAT’S A GOOD SPORT! Joel’s get him for one twenty-five, folks! Joel’s got him unless there’s one of you says a hundred…. Anybody want a hundred? One hundred big fat dollars, who wants one hundred even? Well it looks like Joel has got him, then. One twenty-five going once, going once, one twenty-five going twice, and going thrice, and now it’s g—

Seventy-five? What idiot said seventy-five? Jake Claghorn! Why, Jake, you don’t mean that! Have you been drinking? You don’t mean seventy-five, we haven’t been down to a hundred yet. Joel here has bid one twenty-five, that’s low bid right now, and I’m still looking for a hundred. Somebody with a good farm and a good garden could keep him a year for a hundred, but you Jake, for seventy-five you couldn’t buy his flour and salt. So I’m still seeing Joel’s bid at one twenty-five and unless there’s a responsible person who says a hundred….

Now wait a minute, Jake. I know a bid’s a bid. Yes, and I know the rule says low bidder gets him. But you can’t….

Listen to me, folks. Am I right or not? Does any man of you believe that Jake Claghorn could honestly room and board this fine young schoolmaster for the piddling sum of seventy-five dollars a year?

Yes, I know I’m supposed to be saving the school district’s money, but I’ve got principles, dang it!

Well, a rule’s a rule, if that’s the way you feel about it.

So all right then, Jake bids seventy-five and who’ll top him? Who’ll rescue the poor young man? Who says fifty? Do I see a benevolent fifty? Where’s your charity? Who says fifty? Nobody? Then sixty, who says sixty? Who’ll say seventy, just to keep this young man from starving? Don’t I see a seventy anywhere? Seventy, seventy….

You’re breaking my heart, folks, but I’m going to have to say seventy-five once, seventy-five going once, and I’m going to have to say seventy-five twice, this is killing me but seventy-five going twice and won’t somebody please help…but seventy-five twice and seventy-five thrice, and thrice seventy-five…and this is just plain terrible, folks…but it’s seventy-five going thrice…and GONE.

Boarded to Jake Claghorn at seventy-five.

Our diet in Five Corners wasn’t nearly as bad as his, but it certainly wasn’t anything to brag about. One of our first rough quarrels was on the subject of food. Diana began reminiscing about what a good steak tasted like, trying to make my mouth water too (and it did), and then she tried to reason with me, saying that pioneers and primitive woodsmen must have had steak just every once in a while, and couldn’t I possibly bring myself to hike into Bridgewater or some other place where there was a butcher? and buy just a teensy pound or two of sirloin? or even some chuck? No, I didn’t mind the long hike, it was just the principle of the thing; we had to prove that we could live off the land. Well then, she said, why didn’t I just go off and find a stray cow or bull and do the job myself? That would be illegal, I said. That’s when she lost her cool and started yelling. She called me “impossible” and “stubborn” and “stupid” and “thoughtless” and “mean” and “pigheaded” and a bunch of other things. And when she yelled at me like that, I found myself yelling back at her, calling her “soft” and “spoiled” and “unprincipled” and “indulgent” and “greedy” and “pampered” and everything else I could think of. And we didn’t speak or look at each other for the rest of the day. And at bedtime, even though the night was very chilly, she unzipped the combined sleeping bags and separated them and moved hers over into the corner of the lean-to.

Daniel Lyam Montross was lucky to get a sliver of some rancid meat in his beans once a week when he was being fed by that tightfisted Jake Claghorn. So he did pretty much the same thing that I was doing: finding whatever could be eaten from the woods and streams and fields. We had some fine butternut pies. And he learned how to make hard apple cider. And he showed us how.

Alcohol was something else. Of course we didn’t keep stocked up on booze the way we had in Dudleytown, and Diana repined about that too, but whenever I hiked into Bridgewater for staples I usually packed in a couple of six-packs of beer on the way back, because, as I saw it, beer wasn’t something you could find flowing out of springs in the woods (later, Daniel Lyam Montross did show us how to make beer too). I guess we were both dependent on a little bit of alcohol just to loosen us up and to relax with at mealtimes, and although that little bit was never enough for Diana, she learned to make do with it. Another thing: without even thinking about it, she gradually gave up cigarettes. It wasn’t something she had planned, as a conscious effort to kick the habit. It just happened, spontaneously you might say.

She just said to me, one day, “Funny. Do you realize that nearly a week has gone by since my last cigarette? And I haven’t even thought about wanting one.”

If you’re trying to kick the habit, I guess there are worse things you could do than live off in the woods six miles from the nearest dealer.

Here is Daniel Lyam Montross’s “recipe” for making a really wonderful hard apple cider: First you find some wild apples, truly wild apples. There were plenty of these around Five Corners in Daniel Lyam Montross’s day, and there are still plenty now, but you have to be careful to distinguish between the abandoned orchards, the runout tame apples, and the really wild apples. These wild apples are really hard, and you don’t throw away the wormy apples, because a few worms sort of give “body” to the cider. (Diana was just a little squeamish about this, at first.) Then you get your cider pressed at just the right time, right after picking them. Daniel Lyam Montross always took his to the Five Corners cider mill on a cold night when there was a full moon. We used a full moon too, but we had to press the apples by hand with a kind of homemade gizmo that I tacked together myself, and it took all night, until the full moon set. Daniel put his cider into a charred oak cask holding fifty gallons. There aren’t many of those around anymore, but I saw a smaller one, a twenty-galloner, sitting on some person’s porch in West Bridgewater and he sold it to me for five dollars and I carried it half the way home and rolled it the other half. Daniel kept his cider in the cool cellar of Jake Claghorn’s place, a cellar with a dirt floor which is just right for the proper dampness, to age the cider at earth temperature. We didn’t have any cellar, just a cellar hole, which proved to be all right if we kept the barrel shaded from the sun. When you get the cider cask into the cellar, you have to let the cider “work off” in the cask, with the bung hole open, until it stops “boiling.” Then comes the tricky part. You have to take a small tube—Daniel and I fashioned ones from wood but you can use plastic or rubber—and poke it through a hole into the barrel, making a snug fit and then run the tube over into a bucket of water. And then you bung the barrel. This lets the gas get out of the cider without any fresh air getting in—fresh air would make vinegar out of the cider in no time. When it stops bubbling in the water bucket, you wait about another week—Daniel usually waited a month or more, but we couldn’t wait that long—and then it’s ready to drink.

You can’t buy this stuff in stores anywhere, but it’s just about the best alcoholic beverage you ever tasted, and it’s much more potent and satisfying than beer.

As soon as our first run of cider was ready to drink, Diana and I had a “cider bust”—one of our really happiest and wildest times. It was sort of like the ancient Bacchanalia, only with apple wine instead of grape wine. It was one of the warmer, sunshiny autumn days, when the autumn color was at its peak, and after drinking a lot of the stuff, we took off all our clothes and ran around in the woods and leaped and danced and chased each other and had a real time. Then we made love in the falling leaves and went back and drank a lot more of the stuff and then ran around in the woods and made love again—it was one of the few times that we did it more than once in the same day. Then we got real chummy and Diana asked if she could read what I’ve been writing, and I said sure, if she would let me read her diary, and she said sure. And we spent the rest of the day sitting around reading each other’s writings and sipping more of the cider, until we were zonked and had to stop reading and go to bed, where we tried once more to make love, but were just too far gone.

The next day, after our hangovers had partly cleared up, we had another quarrel, a real spitting squabble this time, and I guess it was my fault for starting it, this time. Some of the things she had said about me in her diary had put me in an awful sort of self-pitying mood, I guess, and I was asking her things like Why the hell did she have to go and get herself laid by all those Jesus freaks? and she came back Well, wasn’t I having a great time with Vashti myself? and I yelled Maybe, but that was just one! and she yelled What kinds of things were you doing with Vashti? and I yelled Nothing that you weren’t doing with all three of those guys! and she yelled Oh yeah? and I yelled Yeah and I bet you thought all three of them were better fuckers than me! and she yelled What if they were? and I yelled Then why the hell didn’t you just go off with them? Yeah! she yelled There’s one place you’re wrote in what you right! I mean—(she was so mad she couldn’t talk straight)—I mean there’s one place you’re right in what you wrote! And that’s where you said you think that I’m just your imagination! Because I am! What else could I be??? What would a nice girl like me be doing in a place like this??? No girl in her right mind would get stuck all alone with you way off in these god-forsaken places!! So you had to dream me up! Why don’t you undream me??? Why don’t you let me go out of your mind???

And she carried on like that for a while, until I was feeling perfectly miserable, but she didn’t stop. She accused me of being “devious” with her, by never mentioning the fact that I had been to Dudleytown before. AND WHAT THE HELL DID YOU MEAN BY SAYING THAT YOU “PICKED” FIVE CORNERS???? Oh boy, she was really sore. But the worst was yet to come. After she ran out of things to yell at me about, she started talking about what a lousy writer I am. She said my writing was deliberately stupid, as if I were trying to hide my intelligence. She said that was “devious” too. She said that I was trying to fool the reader into thinking that there was an impossible gap between Daniel Lyam Montross’s “sensitivity” and my own “boorish, pedestrian, weak-imitation-HoldenCaulfield style” and I yelled back at her that I never read Holden Caulfield, goddamn it, and she yelled THAT’S ONE MORE OF YOUR SHITTY LIES, BECAUSE YOU TOLD ME YOU DID, DON’T YOU REMEMBER???? And I yelled WELL LISTEN, KID, THE PROSE IN YOUR DIARY ISN’T EXACTLY THE WORLD’S FINEST!!! And she yelled WELL I DIDN’T MEAN FOR ANYBODY TO READ IT AND I MUST HAVE BEEN OUT OF MY FUCKING MIND TO LET YOU OF ALL PEOPLE READ IT!!! And I yelled MAYBE ONE THING YOU FORGOT, SWEETHEART, IS THAT IT WAS YOUR IDEA THAT WE READ EACH OTHER’S STUFF, AND ANOTHER THING YOU FORGOT IS THAT IT WAS YOUR IDEA THAT I OUGHT TO TRY TO WRITE! PERSONALLY I DON’T GIVE A FUCK FOR WRITING AND IF YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE CRACKS ABOUT MY WRITING THEN I

I don’t mean to intercede in a lover’s quarrel, no. Or any other kind of quarrel for that matter. In fact, I think it’s good for you and Diana to “let it all out” once in a while, and I’m sure you will. But I’ve got to stop you here, Day, and remind you that you’re using up too much space which I feel is rightfully mine. I don’t care about your prose style; getting the story told is the thing. You shouldn’t think I’m being swell-headed, but I honestly believe that the story of my experience in Five Corners is more important than what you and Diana were quarreling about. And at this rate, I’m afraid, you’ll never get it told.

Well, anyway, she stomped off into the woods going one way and I stomped off into the woods going the other way and I spent a lot of time brooding about what she had said, and I decided that I’d make an attempt to “dress up” the prose a little bit when (and if) I ever got back to telling more about Daniel Lyam Montross. One thing Diana accused me of was that the only two adjectives in my vocabulary are “very” and “really,” so I took a vow to watch out for those.

But my writing is comfortable at least, and reasonably easy, and I like to think of it as similar to Vermont speech in a way. I think the native Vermonter deliberately plays down his language, that he deliberately uses unsophisticated words and grammar which he knows are not considered “proper,” as if to show that he’s not of the aristocracy but just good common folk. Diana was right, in a way, in thinking that my use of simple writing was maybe a reflection of my wish to be accepted. If there’s one thing I want, terribly, it’s to be accepted.

We patched it up later, of course. We didn’t see each other again until bedtime, and each of us was determined apparently to wait and let the other be the first to go to bed and go to sleep before the other came in. So we tried to outwait each other, sitting in the woods on opposite sides of the lean-to, shivering in the cold, until after midnight, when her voice called, petulantly, “Aren’t you going to bed?” and I answered sternly, “Not before you do,” and she said, “Well then, you might be up all night,” and I said, “That suits me fine,” and she said, “But it’s cold, damn it!” and the chattering of her teeth came through her words, so I waited a while longer and then I said, “Let’s kiss and make up,” and she said something that sounded like “Blecchh!” so I waited and then

Blast you, boy! Go to bed, so you can get on with my story!

First I have to mention that when we finally did patch up and went to bed, Diana snuggled up and got a little bit affectionate, and she did a funny thing: she took my middle finger and put it into her mouth, and sort of rolled her tongue around it. I don’t know why she enjoyed doing that, and at first it seemed rather infantile to me, but it was kind of sensuous in a way, and it led me to believe she wanted to make love, but when I tried, she wouldn’t let me, and turned over and went to sleep.

Well, Daniel Lyam Montross had a hard time becoming a schoolmaster. It wasn’t the lessons that gave him trouble. He could read well, and every night in the beginning he stayed up late reading the next day’s lessons, until Jake Claghorn gave him hell for using up kerosene in the lantern, so he used candles, but Jake Claghorn gave him hell for using up candles too, so he had to do all of his reading in the late afternoon before it got dark. But he kept up with the lessons, and knew how to parse a poem pretty well, although he had a little trouble with arithmetic because he didn’t know any algebra and some of the more advanced pupils were already well along in algebra. But what really gave him the most trouble, at first, was that he was expected to play the school organ and lead the pupils in song. The school had an old cottage organ, a reed organ that you pump with your feet, which some school committee years before had spent twenty dollars for in a moment of uncharacteristic extravagance.

“I neglected to ask,” Judge Braddock said to him on the first day of school, “but I hope you can play this thing.” Daniel Lyam Montross said that he’d never seen one before, but he would try to learn. So every day when the pupils were sent outside for morning and afternoon recess, Daniel would sit down on the organ stool and fiddle around with the organ, trying to pick out tunes by ear because of course he had never seen a sheet of sheet music before, much less learned to read one.

Daniel Lyam Montross could never learn the different stops; Diapason and Dulciana sounded just alike to him, and the stop marked “Flute Forte” embarrassed him because its name, and its sound, suggested the breaking of wind. He found one stop, Celeste, which seemed to sound a little bit better than the others, so he concentrated on that, and in time he could pick out a kind of off-key largo rendition of “Happy School, Ah, From Thee Never Shall Our Hearts Long Time Be Turning,” his old school song.

But after going to the trouble of mastering a fairly competent and presentable version of this song, and attempting to lead his nine pupils in the singing of it, he discovered that they had never heard it before. He asked them if they didn’t have a school song, and the eldest pupil, who by the way was that same redheaded Rachel McLowery, volunteered to sing for him, in a self-conscious and whispering soprano, her body swaying from side to side in tune to the slow melody, the “Five Corners Academy Song.”

Listen to Rachel singing:

Windows are few, and none of them new

And the roof it may leak in a rain

Benches are hard, no grass in the yard

And using the privy’s a pain.

The other pupils joined her for the chorus:

Down in a dell is a school we love right well

Where five little roads come together

’Tis not a jewel of a fancy country school

But you’ll never find any better.

And Rachel continued:

Stove gets so het up you burn if you set up

Too close, but too far and it freezes.

Sometimes the master gets mean and naster

And gives us each the bejeezus.

Down in a dell, etc.

Lunches are cold, and the water is old

And tastes like somebody’s fingers

Air is so fusty, whenever we’re musty,

It lingers and lingers and lingers.

Down in a dell, etc.

But this is our schooling, and we say without fooling

Five Corners Academy, we love you!

Our dedication to this eddication

We’ll pass on to our children too.

Down in a dell, etc.

Daniel thanked her, and them, and assured them that he would try his best to learn how to play it on the organ, and then he asked them who had written the song. They said Henry Fox did. He asked them who Henry Fox was, but they just exchanged glances with one another and smirked, as if they knew something he didn’t know. Maybe this gave them a feeling of superiority over him, which is a feeling any pupil would like to have toward a teacher. Children aren’t as easily fooled as adults, sometimes, and Daniel suspected that his pupils knew that he wasn’t all of eighteen years old.

Although he learned to use the organ, he did not learn to use another standard piece of school equipment: the ruler, which was intended not for measurement but for punishment. In a corner of the schoolroom beside his desk, he left untouched the long ruler and the long birch cane indicated for more serious offenses. He never learned how to “ferule” an unruly student; he preferred verbal persuasion to physical force. This uncommon approach led to his first conflict with a parent.

Here, from the tapes, is Jirah Allen, talking to Daniel Lyam Montross one afternoon at the schoolhouse, after school is over, about three weeks after Daniel had begun teaching there. If you listen carefully, you can notice a slight but distinct difference between the speech of rural Vermont and that of rural Connecticut.

Hwarye, schoolmaster? Spare a minute? Suthin’s on my mind ’baout my boy Marshall, like t’ discourse with ya on it. Fust day a school, Marshall come home with his sis Florianna, and she says, “Guess what! Marsh pulled Agnes Headle’s hair, but the new schoolmaster never feruled him!” Secont day a school, they come home and Flori says, “By jimminety! He never birched him today neither, an Marsh was caught peekin in the gull’s privy.” And thud day a school, they come home and she says, “I don’t cal’late he ever means to start ferulin’ Marsh, and today he bustid a winder and put a toad-frog in teacher’s desk!” And later on, she told as how Marshall tortured poor little Ira Spooner, and threw chalk at yer back when ya wa’n’t watchin, an pissed in the water bucket, an he put a tack where Agnes Headle’d set on it, and she sot on it, an what with one thing an’other his gen’ril cussedness near ’baout tore up the schoolhouse!

Said to Flori, I did, “By judast! That new schoolmaster orter should’ve flailed him alive! He must be scairt a him.” And Flori says, “No, he aint scairt a him. Dunno as he’s scairt a nothing. But he’d jest ruther not use the ruler or the birch.” “Whut?” says I, “mebbe he jest never seen Marshall do any a them things.” Says Flori, “No, he seen him all right.” “Whut?” says I. “Don’t he do a blusted thing to ’im?” “Wal,” says she, “he talks at him.” “Talks at him?” says I.

Yeyyup, says she. Now, sir, you’re the schoolmaster, not I, but I kin tell ya it don’t do a mite a good fer to talk t’that mis’able whelp. His brains is so slow, he don’t unnerstand talk anyway, that’s the reason he’s been in the fust grade fer six years. Only talk he unnerstands is whut the birch says to his backside. A reg’lar dose, too. Me, I whup him twice a week, on schedule, whether he’s good or bad, jest to keep him in line.

Whut’s thet ya say? He’s behavin lately, is he? Wal, don’t be fooled, don’t be fooled. Calm before the storm. Horse pullin the plow and waitin fer a chance t’ kick ya.

Mebbe the trouble’s yer such a young one, not much more’n a boy yerself. Mebbe yer own backside still remembers too many birchin’s. But let me tell ya, there’s no way on earth to keep school proper ’thout a birch, so y’orter learn to use one, ’caise if ya don’t, yer going agin the childring’s upbringin, yer going agin their own folks, an we won’t stand fer it.

But Daniel Lyam Montross, it seems, never learned to use the feruler or the birch. It wasn’t that he had any modern notions against corporal punishment, nor even that he considered verbal reasoning more effective than physical chastisement, but that he had never administered a flogging, and was afraid to start, was afraid, perhaps, that if he started flogging people he might develop a taste for it. As he told himself, “I don’t cal’late to start any new hankering. Got too many now I’m not able to satisfy.”

One of these was for hard cider. He discovered, after sampling the first batch from that recipe I mentioned, that he could practice his organ playing with less awkwardness under the influence, and it became his habit for a while to go home after school, pour himself a couple of quick ones, then return to school and spend the balance of the day pounding away at the organ.

One afternoon while he was belaboring the organ for all it was worth, and even accompanying himself vocally—although his voice was terrible—he threw his head back on one particular high note and happened to see, sitting on one of the rear benches, Rachel McLowery, the redhead, his oldest pupil. She was listening and smiling. He stopped playing immediately. He wondered if her smile was amusement over the atrociousness of his singing and the fervor of his playing. He was embarrassed no end, but he managed to ask her how long she had been sitting there listening to him.

Here’s Rachel, from the tapes, or rather here’s Daniel, or rather here’s me saying what Daniel said that Rachel said. Incidentally, these monologues from the tapes, and there are quite a lot of them, might seem to contradict the conventional idea of the taciturn, tight-lipped Vermont Yankee. Judge Braddock, certainly, was not your ordinary laconic Vermonter, nor was Jirah Allen, and certainly not Rachel. Could it have been that these people of Five Corners were exceptions to the rule of silence? Or is the rule a myth? Possibly, part of the truth is that Daniel Lyam Montross was the sort of person who naturally drew people out, the sort of person who makes you want to talk to him. Well, here’s Rachel, replying to his question, “How long have you been sitting there?”

Not long. Jest a twink. Your playin gets better’n better, Mister Montross. Honest it does. Few weeks ago you couldn’t barely play a note, and now listen to ya.

But I didn’t mean to listen in. Not why I came here. I need some help on my lessons. Geography is all right, haven’t had a bit of trouble with China or Japan. History too. And arithmetic, you know I kin run circles ’round ya, doing algebrar. But hygiene. Hygiene’s suthin else again.

Even if we don’t give but fifteen minutes a day on hygiene. Even if we don’t but listen while ya read a page or two. Even if we don’t have no homework but to mem’rize the bones and muscles and such. I kin do all that.

But I wonder, what’s hygiene for? Book says tobacco will stunt your growth and alcohol will blind ya, but everybody knows that anyhow. Book says we orter wash reg’lar, and keep clean, but Mum says that anyhow. Book says we ortent spit on our slates, it will spread germs, so we keep little bottles filled with water. That’s a lot to know, is it?

But the book’s ’sposed to be ’baout takin keer a the body, aint it? Aint hygiene ’baout the body? Well, then, my lands, why don’t the book tell ’baout the body, ’sides washin it and keepin germs off it and not givin it any tobacco or alcohol? Book says we got four systems, one takes keer a the blood that runs through ya, one takes keer a the nerves that run through ya, one takes keer a the air that runs into ya, and one takes keer a the food that runs through ya. Now is that all? Is suthin wrong with me, or is that all? It aint that you’ve not got to the right lesson yet, ’caise I’ve borried that book orf yer desk when ya wa’n’t watchin, and read it cover to back.

How come there’s not a word to that book ’baout how folks get made and borned? Aint there any system fer that? Aint there suthin that runs through the body fer that? Don’t ya laugh at me, Agnes Headle’s jest as dumb as me on the subjick. She says same way as cows and mares and ewes, and hens and sows and gyps, but I knew this feller, he said them were animals and everybody knows that people are different. That’s what he said, everybody knows. But I don’t know. And that book aint no help.

People, this feller told me, have got souls, and animals aint got souls. How come there’s nothing in the book about souls? Don’t the soul need any hygiene? No, then why does the soul bleed out of a girl’s velvet each and every month? Not a word to the hygiene book ’baout that bleedin. I cal’late that feller must’ve been right ’baout souls, ’caise I’ve watched cows and mares and ewes, and hens and sows and gyps, and I’ve never seen one of them bleed. They don’t bleed. No souls.

Well, the book says bleeding’s bad, and it tells how to stop bleedin and how to make plasters and bandages and turnicuts. Last time I got to bleedin I tied a turnicut ’round my waist but all it did was give me a stummick ache. Rags won’t stop the bleedin but jest soak it up. I know Agnes Headle bleeds too, she told me she did. And why don’t the book tell at least why it’s each and every month, reg’lar as the moon? Does the moon cause it? Aint a word to the book ’baout the moon.

But what I’d really keer to know is, how come fellows don’t bleed too? Don’t they have souls like girls? Or do you bleed, but it’s not red but that white sirup? But the moon don’t cause that. And how come there’s not a word to the book about the white sirup? That would tell how you can tell if it’s got seeds or not. So you could tell if you’d get a baby or not. When it’s in your belly. Or is it always white? His was. Maybe if it’d been red. Maybe red means seeds. He didn’t. Book talks about red cells and white cells. Not a word on white sirup. Is yours? Teacher, what do you know that the book don’t say?

If Daniel Lyam Montross had been embarrassed by her eavesdropping on his organ practice, it was as nothing compared with his embarrassment over the subject she had raised. She must have mistaken his nervous laughter as a mocking of her ignorance, but she did not seem to notice that his face was nearly the color of her hair and that his respiratory system was on the fritz. He nearly blurted out, “Wal, heck, I’m not but seventeen myself,” which might have cost him, possibly his job, certainly her respect. But in truth those matters which were mysteries to her were largely mysteries to him. He did not know why the human female is the only creature who menstruates. And her questions were terribly pregnant to him, that is, they set him to brooding and pondering about these matters himself. What if, after all, that substance which he had known as “quid” was only blood with white cells instead of red? At length he allowed as how he didn’t know anything that wasn’t in the book, and if it wasn’t in the book it either wasn’t important or else it wasn’t meant to be learned.

But the nature of this subject had aroused in Daniel Lyam Montross a new interest in Rachel McLowery. At the first opportunity, he sought out Judge Braddock and reminded him that he had told Daniel to remind him to tell him something about Rachel.

Listen to Judge Braddock again:

Ah, yes. Suspect you’ve been around that red hair long enough to want to see it on the next pillow when you wake up. Schoolmasters and schoolmistresses are just alike, every one of them. They always fall for their oldest scholars. And she’s your oldest. And not a bad looker, I might say. We even have an expression. You haven’t heard it? You will. “Red as Rachel’s hair.” Yes. A week ago the maples were nearly “red as Rachel’s hair.” Aaron Tindall painted his barn this past summer and it was “red’s Rachel’s hair.” Matt Earle gashed his arm on his harrow and it bled “red’s Rachel’s hair.” Sit around the fireplace in Glen House, and you’re bound to hear someone remark that the coals are “red’s Rachel’s hair.”

But, my boy, I think you ought to know about her, and I’m surprised you haven’t yet. I suppose Jake Claghorn don’t talk much, does he? And you’d be the last person the other scholars would tattle on her to. If your heart’s running a temperature over her, you’ll likely not take me kindly that I’m the one who told you. But if I incur your disfavor, it’s better than if you didn’t know. What if you were to run away with her and not find out until later?

Because she ran away, that’s the story I’m trying to tell you. Couple of years back. She wasn’t but fourteen then, yet already bloomed out the way she is now, and those locks like fire around her head. She attracted the attentions of a pedlar, a man from Rutland. I knew the man, at least I’d bandied words with him, I’d taken his measure. A shameless lecher, I’d say.

Now, nobody knows for certain that it was him she ran off with. That’s to say, nobody saw them leave together and I doubt that Joel McLowery has been able to beat a confession out of her. But he was here one day, hawking his goods, and he was gone the next day, and so was she. It doesn’t take a genius to make the connection.

Well, she was gone near on to three months. We had given her up as gone for good, although there’d been some talk of getting together a delegation of a few of us to go over to Rutland and look for them. Just as well we didn’t bother, for when she returned finally, it was learned that it hadn’t been Rutland she’d been to, but Springfield. That’s all that was learned, though. Joel couldn’t beat the story out of her, nor even find out why she had come back.

She just told how it hadn’t been what she’d expected, and led us to think she’d come back out of disappointment. Joel got Doctor Beam up from Bridgewater to look at her, and Doctor Beam claimed that her maidenhead seemed to be intact, which got some folks to wondering how she’d preserved it—I’m just mentioning this to you, young man, because some fellows are strict about the condition of their bride’s virginity—anyway, that was Doctor Beam’s report, and at least it was some comfort to the McLowerys that she wasn’t with child.

But the important thing, it seems to me, is that she did run off, and was gone three months with the fellow, whether or not his instrument was of sufficient caliber to sever her membrane. He was not, I might mention, a very attractive or even presentable man. He was not rich. He was not intelligent. As far as I can see, he had nothing in his favor except Rachel’s lust, which could have been wanderlust but was probably simple heat mixed with curiosity perhaps, which you would think she could have satisfied with any one of the boys here in Five Corners…or even an old gentleman like myself, ha, ha! Pardon my levity, I wouldn’t consider such a thing.

Now, if my telling of this little tale hasn’t quite stuck in your stomach or turned you away from her, and you have in mind to pursue her, you might possibly, in time, learn the true facts of the matter. If that should come about, I would appreciate it considerably if you’d pass along to me whatever you learn. Not that I’m a busybody, and I’m certainly no scandalmonger, but for my own satisfaction I like to know what’s going on in this world, and this business of Rachel is a skeleton in the cupboard that I’d like to see some clothes if not flesh on, you might say. Have you ever heard the old saw, “There’s not much happening in this town, but what you hear makes up for it”?

Maybe she would never breathe a word of her past to you. But if she does. If she does. I think it would be worth your while to make me your repository.

Well, how are things at Jake Claghorn’s? He feeding you well enough?

No, Jake Claghorn was not feeding Daniel Lyam Montross well enough, but as I have mentioned Daniel was able to keep from starving by foraging for himself whatever could be found in the woods and fields and streams…although now that winter was coming on this became increasingly difficult. Claghorn rarely if ever served meat, although on one occasion some relative of Claghorn’s gave him a goose, or rather an elderly gander, and beginning on a Saturday they had meat regularly, on Sunday, cold gander for breakfast, for supper one leg of the gander heated up, on Monday the other leg, and so on, but by the following Saturday, with the gander still holding out, Daniel decided he would just as soon not have meat on the table.

Rachel McLowery noticed at school during lunchtime that Daniel’s lunch pail contained only stale bread and apples. Thereafter she began, without asking him, to bring a lunch for him from home, things from the McLowery’s comfortable larder, slices of ham, fresh carrots, hard-boiled eggs with some salt wrapped in paper, and a jar of real tea to replace the swamp tea he’d been drinking. Daniel was at first embarrassed by this charity, but then touched by it, and eventually quite grateful for it. Rachel was careful that the other pupils not discover it and learn that she had become the teacher’s pet.

She was his pet indeed. Sometimes he played the organ and she sang ballads, alone together in the schoolhouse at the end of day. She made him a present of a nice little mirror she had stolen from home; Jake Claghorn’s house had no mirror; Daniel had been in the habit of pausing by the millpond on his way to school in the morning and looking at his reflection in the still water to see if his hair was combed and his face clean.

They talked a lot too, or rather Rachel talked a lot and Daniel was content to listen. She told him who the mysterious Henry Fox was, whose name he had heard mentioned several times. Henry Fox was an assayer from some foreign country—some said Switzerland—who had come to Five Corners way back in the 1860’s during the height of the gold rush that had occurred on all the streams between Five Corners and Tyson. Fox bought his way into the Rooks Mining Company, the major operation, and became superintendent, and when the company curtailed its operations he bought it out for a mere $12,500 and still lived, all alone, practically a hermit, in the house at the mine entrance. Rachel offered to take Daniel and show him where it was, but she didn’t want to introduce him to Henry Fox. Everybody knew that Henry Fox was crazy as a loon.

It didn’t bother Daniel Lyam Montross too terribly much that his pet had a past, that she had run away with a man two years earlier, but he wanted to know about it. He took his time in bringing up the subject, meanwhile talking frankly with her—or listening to her frank talk—about sexual matters. She had not, he discovered, ever heard of such words as “perkin,” “vale,” and “funicle”—not because of innocence or ignorance but because those were the local idioms of Connecticut or at least of Dudleytown. Here in Five Corners, he learned, the equivalents were “picket,” “velvet,” and “fuse”—although the latter had a connotation, for her at least, which did not correspond with his notion.

Now the following is a part which I very much dislike transcribing from the tapes, but without it there wouldn’t be much understanding of the story, and Daniel Lyam Montross would not respect me if I omitted it. So even though it’s distasteful to me, I hold my breath, you might say, and shut my eyes and plunge in. Listen:

Quit callin ya teacher, I will, if ya don’t watch out. As lief call ya Dan, Dan. Gettin so’s I’m with ya half the time, and the other half I’m thinkin ’baout ya. Papa’s started teasin. Says t’me, “Don’t ya run off with this one.” Says t’me, “You run off with this one, we won’t have no schoolmaster.”

Oh, shouldn’t tell ya, no, shouldn’t, shouldn’t, but once ’pon a time I absquatulated, I run off from home. Don’t ya hold it agin me, neither, I was a fool-headed butterfly lookin t’see th’other side a the mountains, I’d never been as far as to Woodstock. This feller told me he’d show me all the big towns, but he only showed me one and I didn’t keer too much fer that one, Springfield, jest lots of big factories and such. Wouldn’t’ve flew off with him t’begin with, ’ceptin he told as how he had this big house in Rutland that I could live in an be a princess, but he didn’t tell me till later, when we never got to Rutland but this other town Springfield, that he already had a princess in that house that he was married to. That’s when I up and left him quick, and come back home, but by then he’d already done me like a prince does his princess every night. More’n two months, it was.

You won’t hold it agin me, will ya, Dan? I was fool-headed an callow, I didn’t know the fust thing ’baout all the things I would wonder and wonder ’baout, and he promised to teach me. He did. I’d still not know the fust thing but for whut he taught.

Like he was the one told me how people are different from animals because they have souls. When animals, say like sheep, fuse to make their lambs, the ram has to work his picket into the ewe’s velvet, and that way his seed has to pass through all her stuffings before it can reach her belly, and it’s all so messy and awkward-like. But when God made people and gave them souls, he fixed it so’s the man wouldn’t have to use the woman’s ugly velvet but could use her pretty mouth instead and that way the seed would go direct to her belly down her gullet.

Thinkin I was his princess, young as I was, I got t’thinkin whut fun t’have a baby, so I let him fuse me like he told. Fust time was terrible hard fer me, but he says fust time allus is. Nearly choked, I did. But it didn’t give me a baby. Never swole in the belly the way you’re ’sposed ta. Even though he did it every night, and sometimes when he got home from his day’s peddlin, he’d jest take out his picket and I’d take it in and swaller.

Ast him why my belly wa’n’t swellin the way it orter’ve, but he jest said some girls naturally can’t make babies, which made me awful sad, but he went on tryin anyway. I got to thinkin ’baout it, and once, once I didn’t swaller but waited till he’d gone and then I spit it out and looked at it. It was white, and I got to thinkin maybe it orter’ve been red instead a white, and it was his fault not mine that I couldn’t make a baby. But I never said anything ’baout it to him.

What bothered me the most, though, was that he seemed t’get such a hull lot a pleasure out a fusin, I mean, he’d do it so often and allus with lots a jerkin and cooing when the sirup commenced shootin, it must’ve been a sight a pleasure fer him. But not fer me. How come, I ast him, if God made people with souls so they could fuse this way ’stead a the nasty way animals do it, how come only the feller gets all the pleasure out a it, and none fer the gull? Wal, that puzzled him some, I tell ya. And he ast me, didn’t it give me no pleasure to gobble that nice fat picket and feel that hot sirup pourin down my throat? And I told him, not much it didn’t. He said, Wal, some women was that way, that they didn’t get no pleasure from anything. That made me feel awful sad too, but try as I could, I couldn’t get no pleasure from him, and I begun to think maybe that was his fault too.

I got to thinkin it was on account of he wa’n’t very gentle. Would you be gentle, Dan? He wa’n’t, he’d commence by gettin this look on his face, this kind a slit-eyed look with a fleer on his mouth and he’d yank out his picket and say things t’me like, “Come on, gull, I got a hot gift fer ya,” or, “Open up, sweet, here comes yer supper!” You wouldn’t talk like that, would ya, Dan? And then whilst I would be doin him, he’d sometimes swear at me, and say, like, “Watch yer goddam teeth, kid!” or like, “Faster, you little bitch!” You wouldn’t swear at me, would ya, Dan? And he’d get rough, and grab holt the back a my hair and act like he wanted t’poke a hole out through the back a my neck. You wouldn’t be rough, would ya, Dan? Would ya?

There’s one thing I certainly can’t admire very much about Daniel Lyam Montross, and that is that he neglected, right then and there, to straighten that poor girl out of her hideous misconceptions about intercourse. He could so easily have given her the true facts of life, right on the spot, but for a moment he wondered if maybe she were right, if, after all, the correct way for man the “higher animal” to fuse was as she described it, and what is more, her telling of this revolting story, instead of repulsing him as it should have, actually caused him to have an erection, and caused him to want to “fuse” with her in that horribly incorrect fashion.

Diana and I had another quarrel, over this. It seems as if, at times, we were quarreling every day, over anything. She was playing back on her tape recorder this part of the tape, so that I could listen to it, and my shock must have been amusing to her. Then, after Rachel’s monologue, came the part of the tape where Daniel Lyam Montross began telling about his first “fusing” with Rachel.

“Turn it off!” I said to Diana. “I’d just as soon not hear it.”

“Oh, don’t be a prude, Day,” she said. I seem to recall that she had called me that a few times or several times before.

“Prude, hell!” I said. “It’s not a matter of prudishness. It’s a simple matter of good taste and restraint. Daniel could screw his idiot sister all he wanted to, back in Dudleytown, for all I cared, but when it comes to taking advantage of a poor, ignorant—”

“But don’t you see?” Diana said. “It wasn’t exactly a matter of taking advantage of her. Because he was gentle. Very gentle. He was everything that that lecherous pedlar had not been. In fact, she even had an orgasm for the first—”

“Shut up! Shut up!” I yelled at her. And for the rest of that day, I was unable to allow myself to listen to any more of the tapes. I thought: I’m going to have to kill you, Dan, if you don’t watch out.

The new assortment of epithets which she thought up to toss at me includes: “straitlaced,” “intolerant,” “narrow” “parochial,” “small,” and, interestingly enough, “uninteresting.”

I called her a few things too.

The next time we were in bed, and she pulled that playful little stunt again, of putting my finger in her mouth, I jerked it out and called her a few more things.

But Daniel Lyam Montross, whatever might be said against him in regard to this episode, was at least kind and considerate enough to lose no time in explaining to Rachel, afterwards, what little he knew about the true facts of life, which wasn’t much. The poor girl was at first shocked and refused to believe him. Then when he made it sound so logical that she could no longer quite disbelieve him, she cried for a long time.

The odd thing, the terrible thing, is that she still thought that natural, true intercourse was somehow bestial, dirty and perverted, and even though, eventually, after months of his trying, she let him have her once in the natural way, let him have her natural virginity, you might say, the experience disturbed her so much that she actually vomited and was sick at home in bed with a fever for several days, missing school, which was just as well, as far as Daniel was concerned, for he needed several days to recover from the experience himself. During these days, he made his first trip up the mountain to see the hermit-home of Henry Fox, and even to meet and to talk with the man that everybody said was crazy. This meeting was one of the important things that happened to him in Five Corners. In fact, getting acquainted with Henry Fox was one of the most significant events of his life.

I should have known better, after my previous experience with an overdose of hard cider, which had led to our worst quarrel, but I liked this beverage more than a lot, and sometimes it was hard to know where to stop. Anyway, the weather was much too chilly, now, for us to take our baths in the brook any more, even on sunshiny days. We usually heated water in pots and kettles on the fire at our lean-to, and instead of soaking we would just use a washcloth, like they do to hospital patients. Diana called this a “spit bath”—an inelegant expression if ever I heard one. Well, sometimes I would scrub her back and she would scrub mine, but this time, because we’d been making inroads on the cider barrel, she didn’t stop with just my back. And later, when we were toweled off and drying beside the fire, and drinking more of the cider, I didn’t object when she started doing what she did, although it still seemed to me, even in my tipsiness, an infantile if not a perverted thing to do.

Oh, this has been the story of a boy who loves ghost towns, of a lonely boy who goes off into the woods by himself, or with a nice girl if he’s lucky, oh, this has been the story of a ghost town where nobody lives anymore, where once there was living, and loving, and singing and laughter, oh, a story of things lost that will never be again, of people who are gone, of buildings built and vanished, of dreams dreamt and faded, oh, this has been the story of man’s little pleasures and of his foibles and afflictions, a story of wild places, desert woods, of great trees in breezes, oh, and this has been the story of a boy bathed and naked, dreaming of a pretty girl on her knees.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

Henry Fox was born in 1849, coincidental with the California gold rush, not in California but in Zurich, Switzerland, to Heimerich Voecks, an Austrian dentist, and Lillibet Holbein, a Swiss beauty. His parents were not married; he never met his father; his mother took him in his infancy to England, where she anglicized his name to Henry Fox and later attempted unsuccessfully to have him enrolled in one of the better public (that is, private) schools. Resenting the exclusive class system of England, she took him to America in search of equality and opportunity. Finding New York too large for her tastes, she lived in, and sent him to public (that is, public) schools in, successively, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Terre Haute, Indiana, and Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

One thing Henry Fox had in common with Daniel Lyam Montross was a precocious maturity; he ran away from home at the age of fifteen and went to South America to seek his fortune, earning his passage as a steward on a steamship. Three years of hard labor in the gold mines of Argentina taught him all that he knew about gold mining but failed to make him rich, and he returned to America at the age of nineteen nearly penniless, working first as a dishwasher in third-rate Manhattan restaurants, and then as a newshawk on the streets of New York. One day when nobody was buying his newspapers, he sat down on a curb and read one of them and happened upon a small article to the effect that gold had been discovered in Vermont.

He arrived in Five Corners billing himself as a professional “assayer” and offering to make, without charge, an appraisal of any gold that had been found. He quickly surmised two things of importance: one, the gold which had been washing into the streams around Five Corners probably was coming from rich mother lodes in the surrounding hills, possibly even a vein of pure gold quartz; and, two, none of the men engaged in the gold search knew the first thing about mining, other than simple stream panning. One of the men was a local farmer, another a government land agent returned from Indian territory, another a shoe store proprietor from New York. None of these men had ever mined gold before.

Only one of them had capital, the former land agent, Charles Rook, and because of this the company which Henry Fox helped them to organize was called the Rooks Mining Company, although everybody in Five Corners called it the Fox Mining Company because Henry Fox was superintendent.

To add drama or at least showmanship to his work, Henry Fox fashioned a weird contraption out of metal rods, which he called his “divining rod,” and set about trying to locate the mother lode. The contraption was worthless, but it fascinated his associates and the crowds of local people who would come each day to watch him hunt. What he was really using was his keen eyesight, trained in Argentina to detect telltale outcroppings indicative of gold deposits. Within a few days of searching, he found a gold-bearing rock on a hill some miles to the south of Five Corners, and after shouting “Eureka!” he claimed that this was the location of a vast mother lode of gold quartz.

The trouble with Henry, perhaps attributable to his youth, was that he stuck to his guns, even if the guns were out of ammunition. Although he had a talent for spotting possible digging sites, he had no talent, indeed, nobody had any talent, for determining just how large the vein might be. Ever afterward, Henry Fox would refuse to believe that this spot he picked was not the right place, that the greater part of the gold, if there was any, lay hidden in some other place.

Everybody was so impressed with Henry’s discovery that endless capital for the operations began flowing in from eager investors. A boardinghouse was built on the spot, and large crews of men began digging a shaft according to Henry’s instructions. When the shaft was finished, construction began on a large compound of buildings: a large mill for the quartz, shaft houses, several dwellings for employees in addition to the boardinghouse, and even a special residence for Superintendent Henry Fox, a two-and-a-half story dwelling which he called “Gold Brook Chateau.”

Diana and I made a hike up the mountain to locate the place. The buildings are all gone, except for one fallen wall of “Gold Brook Chateau.” The mine entrance has caved in, but rusty iron tracks still lead to it, and mossy timbers jut out of it. I had a kind of strange feeling that if you were to dig into the shaft, you might still find a lot of gold.

But they didn’t, Henry Fox and his associates. The shaft ran for 365 feet back into the mountain, where it joined a vertical shaft that rose 300 feet to the top of the mountain. Somewhere back in there Henry found some gold. On October 27, 1883, against a backdrop of flaming autumn color, Henry Fox proudly displayed to visitors and newspapermen the first ingot of gold produced by his operation. It was 6 × 1 × 3/4 inches and weighed fifty-one ounces and one penny-weight. It was, he declared, 97/100 fine and was worth $1021. News of this was reported as far away as San Francisco, where the newspapers made envious and invidious comparisons between Vermont gold and California gold.

More investments poured in, and a Boston banker bought control of the company, established himself as president, and appointed a board of directors to incorporate the company. The board made plans to quadruple the capacity of the operations, to earn faster profits, and the equipment was dismantled and packed away to prepare for this expansion. Henry Fox had wisely returned all of his own earnings and salary into the company, and now owned several thousand dollars’ worth of stock. But the directors, inexplicably, were slow in commencing the expansion, and Henry Fox suspected that this delay was related to a visit by a team of assayers and geologists hired by the directors.

Three years went by without any more action at the mine, and Henry Fox ultimately was forced to sue the directors for his back salary. The court decided in his favor and ordered all of the mine property to be put upon the block at a sheriff’s sale in Ludlow. The directors bid $12,000 to get their property back, but Henry Fox raised it by $500 and it was struck off to him.

At the age of thirty-eight in 1887, Henry Fox began his long years as hermit mine owner, panning the brooks for a flake here and there. He was forty-eight when Daniel Lyam Montross first met him ten years later.

How is all of this relevant? Why have I devoted so much introduction to this man who wasn’t even a native Vermonter and therefore doesn’t have one jot of “local color” to add to our story? Simply because Henry Fox had more influence on Daniel Lyam Montross, for good or for bad, than anybody else he ever met in his whole life. And Daniel Lyam Montross himself, in his old age (if we ever live that long, and get that far), will become a kind of hermit like Henry Fox, in some other place.

Henry Fox looked foreign; he did not look like a Vermonter. He was a thin, sharply boned man with hair already turning yellow-white and a large flowing moustache, also yellow-white. His house was yellow-white and his dog was yellow-white. The dog was the one that Daniel Lyam Montross met first.

The dog was a large, muscular creature, some indeterminate species of mostly hound and partly bulldog, husky, shepherd and fox terrier. The dog had strayed into the yard of Gold Brook Chateau one day a few years previously, and Henry Fox had thrown at it the only hard object handy at the moment, which was a stale biscuit. The dog ate it in one swallow and attached himself for life to Henry Fox. Henry Fox named him “Pooch.”

When Daniel Lyam Montross came walking up to Gold Brook Chateau, big Pooch did not snarl nor growl nor bark nor snap like most dogs; instead he “yolloped” (Daniel’s word). Daniel’s imitation of this sound isn’t easy to transcribe from the tapes; the dog sort of opened wide his jaws as if inhaling sharply; on the inhale he said something that sounded like “Yower,” on the exhale a louder and more forcible “FROWER.” Thus yowr FROWR! and again, yowr FROWR! The third time that Pooch said yowr FROWR, Henry Fox came out the side door of Gold Brook Chateau with a shotgun.

Between the dog’s yolloping and Fox’s brandishing the shotgun, Daniel got pretty nervous, and when Fox demanded, “What’re you here for?” he could not think of anything to say. He couldn’t very well say that he had come out of curiosity. Strangely, what he found himself doing was breaking suddenly into song, and singing “The Five Corners Academy Song” about the leaking roof and hot stove and old water and fusty air and all. Singing this song calmed his nerves at the same time it gave him an entry, which was to ask Henry Fox if he had written that song.

“What if I did?” Fox answered. He was quite surly. The dog Pooch said yowrFROWR! a few more times.

Daniel explained that he was the new Five Corners schoolmaster and said that he thought the song was the best thing he’d ever heard.

“So?” said Henry Fox, and Pooch said yowrFROWR!

Daniel said that he just wanted to tell him how much he liked that song and how much he admired the words, and that he had heard Fox’s name mentioned several times by different people, and just thought he’d like to meet Fox and tell him how much he had admired that song and that he had heard his named mentioned by different people several times.

“So?” said Henry Fox, and Pooch said yowrFROWR!

Well, Daniel said it had been nice meeting him and he was sorry if he had bothered him or interrupted him or anything and that if Fox ever happened to pass the school he ought to drop in and say hello or something, and anyway he was pleased to have met him.

“I never visit the school,” said Fox, “or the village,” and Pooch backed him up on this.

Well, said Daniel, that was too bad, and he was sorry to hear that, but that he figured he must have his reasons, and that Daniel didn’t want to give the impression of butting in or being nosey or anything and anyway he was pleased to have met him, and goodbye, pleasant day to you, goodbye. Daniel backed off from the dog and then turned and walked off.

Behind his back he heard Pooch say yowr and Fox say, “Wait” and Pooch say FROWR and Fox say, “Hold it.”

Daniel turned.

Fox said, “You didn’t tell me your name.”

Daniel told him his name.

“How old are you?” Fox asked.

Daniel told him that he was only seventeen, and said he hoped Fox wouldn’t tell anybody that, because if he did, it might cost him his job because schoolmasters are supposed to be at least eighteen and besides Daniel hadn’t even finished school himself, so he hoped, he said again, that Fox wouldn’t tell anybody.

Fox said, “You could pass for considerably more than seventeen,” and then he asked, “What was it you said you came all the way up here to see me about?”

Daniel said that he had just heard Fox’s name mentioned several times by different people and just thought he’d like to meet Fox and tell him how much he had admired that school song.

“Thank you,” Fox said, and permitted himself a small chuckle. “I’m rather proud of that song, myself.” Then he said, “Sit,” and gestured toward a tree-stump chopping block. Pooch hopped on the block and sat. “Not you, you dorg,” Fox said to the dog, and kicked it off.

Daniel sat on the chopping block and Fox squatted on his heels beside him. Fox didn’t say anything more, and Daniel tried to think of something to say or to ask him, without seeming nosey. Nearly ten minutes went by, in silence, before Daniel thought up something, which was to ask Fox why he had written that song.

“You should have heard the one they had before,” was all Fox said.

Another ten minutes drifted by, Daniel swallowed and asked Fox if he really enjoyed living by himself all alone.

“Well, there’s Pooch there,” Fox said.

Ten minutes later Daniel asked him if he knew many of the people in Five Corners.

“Know them all,” Fox said.

Another ten minutes and Daniel asked him what he thought of Judge Braddock.

“Perfidious,” said Henry Fox, and then the interview sort of petered out. Daniel Lyam Montross did not know what “perfidious” meant, but he made a mental note of it, and as soon as he got back to the schoolhouse he looked it up in his dictionary. This was but the first time that Daniel would have to consult his dictionary regarding a word used by Henry Fox; there would be many and many more such occasions; eventually Daniel would even take the dictionary with him when he went to visit Fox. For although Henry Fox’s casual speech was sparing of words, and those words usually Vermontish with just a trace of a foreign accent (or an amalgam of several different foreign accents), as Daniel got to know him the man revealed ever greater depths of diction and sententious wisdom. Within six months Daniel’s dictionary was worn out, falling loose from its spine. But by that time Daniel knew almost all the words that Fox would use. He knew what “plebeian” meant in relation to Jake Claghorn. He knew why Aaron Tindall was “bibulous” and what connotation “secular” had for Matthew Earle. He understood Fox’s coinages: how he could take the name of a Frenchman named de Sade and make it into a word, “sadist,” to describe the mean simpleton Marshall Allen, who disrupted the school and pulled wings off of flies. He understood how both Joel McLowery and the weather could be “inclement.” And he collected a whole wardrobe of dressy last words for Rachel McLowery: “nubile,” “rufescent,” “sirenic,” “muliebrile,” “hoydenish,” “artless,” “orificial,” etc.

Daniel liked to tease Rachel with his newfound locution. He would call her a “gamic gamine” and she would pout and pester him to tell her what that meant, and she would refuse to have anything further to do with him unless he told her what it meant, and finally in the end he would explain that gamine is a kind of tomboyish girl with elfin appeal, and gamic means sexual, and she would laugh and mock-slap his face and love him all the more because he was so smart and knew such fancy magic words. She knew that he went often to see Henry Fox, in winter on a pair of snowshoes he spent all of his first salary on, but she did not know that Fox was the source of his rhetoric. Nor did she suspect that Fox was the reason that Daniel suddenly seemed to know the answers to all the riddles of life and sex which had eluded him before. He was able to fill in for her the gaps gaping in the hygiene book. She was comforted by his explanation of why human females have their menses. She learned that the manufacture of a baby, although commenced in an instant of abandon, is a nine-month-long toil ending in agony, and she decided it was just as well that that pedlar hadn’t given her a child, it was just as well that she was emotionally unable to permit a picket to enter her velvet, it was just as well that, as Daniel assured her, it is impossible for male sirup to reach the womb via the stomach. Henry Fox told him this. With chalk on a piece of slate, Henry Fox diagrammed the female esophagus, stomach and intestines, and demonstrated how they are discrete from the ovaries, oviducts and uterus. Then, to “normalize” or at least define Rachel’s misconception about fusing, to clarify such orality, Henry Fox told him a new word derived from the Latin past participle of fellare. Daniel didn’t like the new word because it rhymed with “ratio,” which for some reason (probably related to his distaste for mathematics) he couldn’t stand the sound of. So Daniel coined his own substitute, near enough in sound as well as meaning: felicity, and Henry Fox agreed that this was a splendid byword for it.

Daniel Lyam Montross was slightly bothered by the fact that, although Rachel would perform felicity on him whenever it suited her whim or his, he was not able to take her to the dances on the rubber-ball-mounted floor of Glen House, because somehow it wouldn’t look proper for the young schoolmaster to be seen escorting one of his scholars to the village dance. Rachel went to the dances regularly (as did every single soul in Five Corners…except Henry Fox) but was always required to choose, as her partner in the squares or reels of the contra-dances, a boy other than Daniel, while Daniel had to be content with swinging and sashaying old and middle-aged ladies, the youngest of whom was Rachel’s mother, Melissa, a somewhat heavy substitute for the daughter, although Melissa McLowery had the same wondrous It as her daughter (“It” being one of Henry Fox’s more sophisticated syncopes, syncope being one of Henry Fox’s more sophisticated cuttingwords, cuttingword being one of Henry Fox’s more sophisticated synthetic copulations, synthetic copulation being one of my own less sophisticated attempts to deal with Fox’s terminology, synthetic in the sense of both “hybridizing” and “artificial, man-made,” and copulation in the sense of both “linking” and, since Henry had no women to screw, he screwed words, like cuttingword derived from the fact that syncope comes from the Latin for “cut,” and means, in relation to It, that It is a cut or shortened form of a longer word, namely, Identity—more about this later). Melissa McLowery had a real yen for Daniel Lyam Montross (Henry Fox explaining that yen comes from the Chinese yin which means both “addiction” and the moon, shade, femininity, or the passive female cosmic element complementary to yang) but Daniel didn’t have much of a yang for Melissa; for one thing she was his girl’s mother, and for another thing she was a little bit overweight, although the excess fat had accumulated mostly in pleasant female places like her breasts and thighs and mouth. At the dances, and elsewhere, Melissa always seemed to be trying to get Daniel off some other place, or at least making feints in that direction. She was still this side of forty, but her hair was not red like her daughter’s, rather more on the auburn side. She loved to dance, and did the contra-dances with great vivacity and flourishes, and taught Daniel all he ever learned about dancing, hopping and skipping on the bouncy floor mounted on rubber balls, he looking over her shoulder to see whose partner Rachel was, and always wishing it was him but knowing it could never be, unless he quit being schoolmaster, which he often contemplated quitting being, especially as harsh, inclement winter dragged on, and his perch at the front of the schoolroom too far from the stove to keep from freezing, and his stomach not lined with enough nourishment to warm him until the noon hour and Rachel’s fine lunches, and the education he was getting from Henry Fox making him have a yang for better things than schoolteaching.

What happened was, Melissa McLowery, who had developed such a moony addiction for the sun of Daniel, and who had no inkling that her daughter had been carrying on, after a fashion, with him for quite some time now, espied them at it. Lots of mothers undoubtedly have stumbled by accident upon their daughters petting or even screwing on the living room sofa after a date, or something like that, but how many mothers have gone into a schoolhouse and discovered their daughters squatting in front of the teacher’s open fly? Melissa McLowery probably had an urge to flog them both on the spot, but she tiptoed out, unseen, and Daniel didn’t know he had been seen until several days later, when he was invited to “call” upon Mrs. McLowery at her house, for “tea and talk.” Even so, Daniel figured she just wanted to talk about Rachel’s progress in school, or something, and he went to her house equipped with a standard “certificate,” his ink on it still wet: “This certifies that Rachel McLowery during the past week has been punctual at school, commendable in deportment and perfect in recitations.”

Now Melissa, even though she was only a sheepfarmer’s wife, fancied herself one of the better bred ladies of Five Corners—as a matter of fact, it was for this very reason that she invited him to tea instead of sending for the town constable or reporting him to Judge Braddock or to her husband. She even served tea in the parlor, that room which Vermonters so seldom use, usually only for funerals or weddings, the room in her case filled with furniture hardly touched, let alone worn, and of, for the most part, the latest mode, bought from mail-order houses: carved and decorated china closet, French marquetry parlor table, dainty golden oak ladies’ writing desk, imitation mahogany pier mirror, a deep-tufted Roman divan couch (upon which Melissa sat), a matching Roman reception chair (upon which Daniel sat), the walls hung with colored photographs of rustic scenes and artographs of same, in gilt ornamented frames, the four corners of the room with whatnot shelves and their varied contents, echoing the centerpiece étagère with its four shelves covered with rare, curious bric-a-brac of colored glass, smoked glass, porcelain, and silver. As far as Five Corners went—and Five Corners didn’t go very far—it was one of the nicest parlors in town.

Here, if you can take it (Daniel scarcely could), is Melissa:

Sweetening for your tea? Long or short? And try one of these cakes, you’ll like it, fresh baked this morning myself, I doubt if Jake Claghorn ever bakes, does he, tee hee. Now here I go making light of what’s a tragedy, you getting stuck with Jake and all. Dunno as ya knew it, but I was mad as hops that Joel wouldn’t underbid him. Was ya paying mind, you probably noticed that Joel near ’baout got ya, he went all the way down to a hundred and twenty-five, he did, and he’d’ve gone even lower if I’d had my say, but he wouldn’t listen to me, a hundred and twenty-five was the lowest he’d go, even though I begged and pleaded and even told him I’d make up the difference out a my pin money. Joel’s so tightfisted, he is. Why, one time Sophronica Earle borrowed a couple dozen eggs from him, and told him she’d return him some eggs soon as her biddies got to layin, but Joel says, “It’ll be better t’pay me cash fer ’em. No tellin but the price might go down by the time you come to return ’em.” Just goes to show.

But I’ll let ya in on a little secret, young man. And that is this: Who do ya think has been fixin those lunches fer ya? Rachel? Oh, ’scuse me, I have to laugh. Soon’s school started up, I told Rachel to keep a eye out and see whut ya was eatin fer lunch. Then of a morning I’d get up and when I went to fix Rachel’s lunch, I’d fix two a everything, but stuff it all in together so’s Joel wouldn’t ever notice. Weren’t fer me, y’ud be all skin and bones.

Looks like yu’ve kind a bit the hand that fed ya. Never did I dream that y’ud fall fer Rachel on account a them lunches, or else I’d’ve gave her instructions to tell you that it was her own mother and not her who fixed ’em. And her not but sixteen. And you the schoolmaster. What’ve ya got to say fer yourself, young man?

Wal, cough and stammer all ya like, I know whut yu’ve been up ta. No, Rachel’s not let out a peep ’baout it. You think she would? You can’t beat the tongue loose from her head. But I found out anyhow. That gull’s been in hot water before, and I don’t plan to see her in it again. Not with any schoolteacher, anyhow. Oh, how well I do remember when me and Sophronica were school chums, and what a beauty she was and could’ve married a governor or a senator if she liked, but she fell fer the schoolmaster, who was Matthew Earle, and he swept her off her feet, and now look at her. He’s worse’n Joel, most ways.

My lands, dunno jest whut I want t’say t’ya, young man. But ya orter know I come to the academy th’other day to invite ya t’call fer tea, and when I opened the door I saw whut my poor eyes can’t yet believe, and I closed the door and came home and wet up five or six handkerchiefs ’fore I could stop. Fer all I know, or fer all she’d ever tell me, that sweet little gull’s not yet been deflowered, ’less ya want t’count the flower of her rosey lips, tee hee. Aint I awful, laughin this way when I feel like screechin and tearin out my hair.

Wonder. Ofttimes wonder, last couple a days, and many’s the time then, wonder whut a picket ’twixt the lips would feel like. If ya dislike my brash words, I don’t keer, there’s no way else t’say it ’cept for prissy mincing. Yer big thing between her pretty little jaws. Where it don’t belong. Aint ya afraid she might could get absentminded and bite it off? tee hee, oh my soul an body listen t’me laughin when I orter squall.

Wouldn’t undertake to turn ya in, like ya desarve. Wouldn’t undertake to mention it to the Judge. Wouldn’t even undertake to let on a word to Joel ’baout it. Wouldn’t even undertak t’say to Rachel whut I seen. Jest me’n you’s the only ones that know. Jest me’n you. And whut’ve ya got t’say fer yourself? Nothing. Too shamed t’open yer mouth, I bet.

So whut d’ye think I orter do? Keep Rachel out a school? Lock her up? Try an get her to promise not never to open her mouth again? Ha. Oh, my.

If I had the sense God gave to a chipmunk, I’d up and get Joel’s gun and shoot ya. But I aint. So stop yer pantin. I’ve thought and I’ve thought. Aint able to get my mind orf it. It’s drivin me mental.

Whut I wonder. Whut I wonder is, if you’re so hipped on that pertic’lar fancy, if you’re so pickin pertic’lar ’baout gettin yer sirup tapped in such a fashion, why’nt ya use a growed woman ’stead of a innocent young gull?

Young man, you’ve got me to wonderin awful whut a picket ’twixt the lips would feel like. And I mean to find out. And you aint got a ghost of a choice, neither. Yer only choice is fer Judge Braddock to lynch ya, or fer Joel t’thrash ya dead. Or mebbe even fer me t’shoot ya.

Want to pick one a them choices? Then nobody’s t’know but you’n me. So latch that door yender, boy, and come here to Melissa.

If Melissa McLowery, in her blackmail-seduction of Daniel Lyam Montross, had only been curious to see what the act of felicity is like, she would not have been disappointed, but as it turned out, she was not willing to stop there; felicity was only, you might say, an entrée. She wanted to do everything, and, as long as she was able to coerce him with the threat of punishment for his moral turpitude with Rachel, he did her bidding. Not long after that occasion when she first felicitated him, she requested, and received, that awful experience which Henry Fox, noting Daniel’s failure to nickname it suitably, was to coin conic licorice, the first part referring both to the shape and movements of the tongue, the second part to the taste. Henry Fox was the only person Daniel ever told about Melissa McLowery. Henry Fox told Daniel that he had long known of Melissa’s yen for sexual adventures (he didn’t tell Daniel, then, that he himself had been her lover sixteen years before). Fox’s advice was that if Daniel didn’t mind it, and did not feel he was being “kept” by her, then tant mieux—a French expression meaning, said Fox, don’t stare a gift horse in the mouth.

Winter, with its five-foot snows and fifteen-foot drifts, usually isolated the inhabitants of Five Corners, from each other as well as from the outside world. There were people back in the hills who would not be seen again until the first March or April thaw, although their children managed to get to school, on foot or snowshoes or barrel-stave skis. The grown-ups seemed to enter into a kind of hibernation: a minimum of each day devoted to the chores of the barn and house, the rest of the day in a kind of tuned-out lethargy. There were people, especially among the older generations, who could sit in a chair by the stove for ten or twelve hours, fully awake, without doing anything at all except getting up to eat or go to the privy. But not Daniel. In fact, the helpless idleness and isolation of the Five Corners populace made his own activities seem all the more lively. He never stayed indoors at Jake Claghorn’s except when he was sleeping, and sometimes he would be invited to spend the night at Henry Fox’s Gold Brook Chateau and would arise early to get back in time for school. When he wasn’t visiting Henry Fox or exploring the white countryside on his snowshoes or out setting traps for game, he would be meeting Rachel at the schoolhouse or Melissa in her parlor. There was no need to wait until Joel McLowery went out to tend his flocks of sheep; Joel never under any circumstances entered Melissa’s parlor, and besides that he was rather hard of hearing. And only once did Rachel discover Daniel sitting in the parlor, and then he told her that her mother had invited him to discuss Rachel’s progress in school. But sometimes Melissa would be restless or impatient, and would go to the schoolhouse after hours. Occasionally Rachel on her way home would meet her mother on the way to the schoolhouse, and her mother would say she was going to visit somebody at Glen House.

Winter would pass and spring would come before Rachel would find out; it was early May before Rachel discovered that her mother was fooling around with her boyfriend. Although Melissa took delight in both felicity and conic licorice, her major pleasure was, unlike her daughter’s, ordinary old fusing, and she would perch upon Daniel’s desk in the schoolhouse, leaning back on her hands, with her eyes closed and her teeth clenched and her throat saying yum-yummy yum-yummy to the rhythm of the punctures of her velvet. Oh, Daniel was quite a stud. I hate his guts. And at night in his dreams he would confuse Rachel’s red hair with her red monthly blood, and confuse all the orifices, red and pink and auburn and crimson. One of the big questions which he had to have Henry Fox answer convincingly was whether or not such an excess of fusing and felicity might not be injurious, whether or not it might shorten his life or sap his strength or wrinkle his skin or turn him green or something. Henry Fox, womanless these many years, seemed to take vicarious pleasure in listening to Daniel tell of his fusings and felicities. “Get all you can while you’re young,” was his answer to Daniel’s questions, “because when you’re my age you might have nothing left but all the recollections.” Now to hear Fox tell it, a recollection can be nearly as good as the real article, if you know how to remember—and Fox apparently did, although he never revealed to Daniel the specific amours of his past. It was his theory that, since mankind was the only breed of animal who “fused more often for pleasure than for procreation,” God or Mother Nature or The Evolution of The Species had seen fit to insure that fusing could never be injurious or harmful, regardless of how often indulged. This made Daniel feel a good bit better.

There are so many dozens of cassettes of tape with Henry Fox’s words on them that it’s difficult for me, as “editor,” to make a good selection, but one of my early favorites is this one, Fox’s reply to Daniel’s musings about the particular quality which attracted him to both Rachel McLowery and her mother. Listen to Henry:

It’s their It, Dan. Eye Tee, It. Everybody’s got an It. Look up It in that dictionary of yours, what do you find? It’s one of the words with no definition. Can’t be defined. All they do is give examples of how it’s used. No definition. But It’s a word, all right. Short word, syncope. Syncope’s from the Greek, cut off, a cuttingword, means shortening a word by taking out letters, like sailors say “bos’n” for “boatswain” or “foc’sle” for “forecastle.” Sailors have a lot of syncopes, probably because when a boat’s in a storm you don’t have time to say the whole word. [Fox pronounces “whole” as “hull” like other Vermonters, but I’m not trying to reproduce the inflections of his speech—“Ed.”] Well, It is a syncope for Identity. And what does your dictionary say about Identity? One thing it says is that identity is what you’ve got that makes me recognize you as an individual. But another thing it says is that identity is what you’ve got that makes you exactly like all other men. Sounds like a contradiction, don’t it? But it’s not. Every human creature has an It, which nonhuman creatures don’t have, and every human creature’s It is just like every other human creature’s It, at bottom at least.

But people, because they have Its, keep doing things to their Its. Sounds peculiar, I know, but the It does things to the It. Let me see if I can think up an analogy. Well, take a drinking man, there’s an obvious one. I don’t mean a fellow like you, Dan, who’s just pleasantly pickled on cider half the time. I mean the real serious belch-guts bottle-a-day toper, the inebriate like Aaron Tindall, for instance. Tanking up like that is self-destructive, and he knows it, but that don’t stop him. But that’s just drunkards. All Its are self-destructive, in different ways. It changes and alters Itself, for the worse, from cradle to grave. And the changes It makes on Itself are what gives the It its Itness. It’s what makes your It your It alone, unlike my It or any other’s It. It’s Its It that It is. Pardon if I splattered you with spittle.

Now you take women, females. What is the basic ingredient of the female It? Look up woman in your dictionary, look up female. Wo-man. Fe-male. Woman means “wife of man,” means “person,” means “It,” means “It who is for man.” Female, “It who is for a male.” Did you know, by the way, that the Latin root of female means “she who sucks”? Watch my mouth when I begin to say “female” or when I begin to say “fecund” or “fertile” or your “felicity.” My mouth makes a kind of sucking posture, don’t it? Well, all of those words come from an old root meaning “suck.” So the basic ingredient of the female It is sucking, not necessarily your specific felicity, because the velvet in a sense sucks the picket, does it not? And the female suckles as well as sucks. Why else is a grown man attracted to a woman’s bosom? It is all, sucking and suckling alike, the core of a woman’s It.

Her It, for some reason, like the drunkard drinking, makes her cover It and keep It covered. Fashion these days dictates that a woman not even permit her garment to demonstrate that she is bimammillate—that is, that she’s got two of them. Fashion—which itself is the creation of her It—dictates that she wear a painful corset which squeezes her poor belly—the home of her womb—and squeezes her two breasts into one unbroken bulge with no evidence of the bifurcate cleft dividing them. It has not always been so, but that’s what fashion has come to in this day and age.

But while her It requires her to cover It, her It also urges her to symbolize, nay, even to advertise It. The most obvious is the painting of the lips. Always red. Never green or blue or yellow or some other color. Less obvious is the bodily adornments. The necklace hanging in paraboloid curve from her neck forms the shape of that chief entrance into her It. If she wears a bow instead, it will have two strands, slightly parted, like the lips of her velvet. Or her fancy cape will part down the center with another O-shape around the shaft of her neck—and the edges all trimmed with fur, as her opening is trimmed with hair. Why, incidentally, do you think that women, alone of all animal creatures, have longer hair than their males? Think of male lions, think of the peacock. I won’t pause to digress on this subject. Why do women top their hair with fancy feathered hats and bonnets, whereas the man’s plain cap or bowler resembles the tip of his picket? And when the fe-male loses her male to death, the fancy leghorn hat is replaced with a close-fitting bonnet with a veil that covers and closes the face and the painted lips.

The It of female Itness makes all females female, one velvet like another, all, all alike. So that part is covered, and replaced by the individual It which allows a woman a hat or bonnet of her own choosing, a hair style of her own choosing, a cape or necklace or dress of her own choosing, an It of her own Itness.

I’ve spoken only of the sight of woman and her It. There is touch and smell and taste and sound as well. On one hand, the It sees to it that the Itness parts of a woman, her breasts and lips and velvet, are most pleasant to the touch, but on the other hand, the perverse It is able, when It wishes, to make her velvet the most malodorous place in all creation. Again, the It will douse her with fine colognes and still let her mouth have an effluvia like rotten eggs. Have you had enough experience with women yet to notice that there’s some kind of perverse correlation between the intensity of her ardor and the foulness of her breath? Or again, take sound: a woman’s voice is dulcet and lovely, but in the throes of fusing her mouth utters raucous yelps and grunts and croaks and gurgles and mewls and brays. And have you ever had the disquieting experience of your girl breaking wind while you fused her?

Strange are the ways of the It. The It knows what It is, and tries to ignore It, or disown It, or subdue It, or hide It, or disguise It. Consequently, most women’s Its are imperceptible. Still, there are women like Rachel and her mother. As far as I can detect, there is nothing extraordinary about the sight, or smell, or touch, or sound, of Melissa and Rachel.

Do you suppose, then, that God or Mother Nature or The Evolution of The Species, having endowed woman with such a cantankerous and fickle It, an It capable of self-denial if not self-destruction, saw fit to give the It a sixth quality, an intangible quality, which It could not tamper with? A quality that we cannot see nor taste nor smell nor touch nor hear, but a quality all the same which we can somehow perceive, a quality that shouts, “Here I am, and I’m an It, and I’m all Itness! Come and get It!” a quality that looks, invisibly, like all that man’s eyes have coveted, a quality that sounds, inaudibly, like the orgasmic melodies of the master composers, a quality that smells, indetectibly, of the most exotic and alluring fragrances, a quality you can touch, intangibly, like being pressed all over by tingly eiderdown, and a quality that tastes, ingustably, like rich ambrosial flavors, but a quality which, above all, is perceived by that sixth sense not of sight nor sound nor smell nor touch nor taste so much as what I might call the sense of have: the wish to have, as one wishes to touch or taste, but a much stronger and more relentless wish.

The sense of have objectifies the It. The It is the sole focus of all having. Like the other senses, the sense of have could be used metaphorically. As we say, “She looks like a princess,” we could say, “She has like a nymph.” Or as we say, “She sounds like an angel,” we could say, “She has like a maenad.” We should never say “She is had” but always “She has”—the former implies that having her It is taking It, ravishing It. Are you following me?

To have is not merely in the matrimonial liturgic meaning of “to have and to hold.” That implies some duration, some permanence. Like the other five senses, the sense of have is temporary, often fleeting, as fragrances fade and sights vanish. But having is all the more sweet for being transitory. Can you imagine how tired you would grow of roast lamb if you had it in your mouth all the time, forever? Your taste buds would atrophy, just as your picket would atrophy if you left it in a velvet for more than an hour or so. Erections are transitory, but also cyclic. Are you still with me?

The It, both the woman’s It and the man’s It, realizes that It is subject to cyclic, transitory fluctuations. Its wish is to have constantly, but it cannot. So what can It do?

It can, and does, perversely it would seem, make Itself deliberately less haveable, make itself inhaveable, in periodic recurrent intervals between having, or, in the case of those few men and many women destined never to have, constantly, regularly.

Why do lovers quarrel? It is the battle of their Its fighting down to that level from which they might spring up to having again. Do you see that?

The It, then, has two stages, two forms. The right place for the It is in having. But since It cannot constantly have, it must return periodically to some other place, the place of not-having, of, even, anti-having. Only mankind has an It, and must shuttle perpetually between the right place and some other place.

And the trouble with mankind is that, because the right place can be found only in transitory, cyclic moments, mankind is always hunting for, and finding, some other place.

Whew. It’s easy to see why Daniel Lyam Montross was sometimes nearly inclined to agree with the people of Five Corners that Henry Fox was crazy. He was never able to grasp fully the fine points of Fox’s theories, and anything that he could not understand he suspected was meaningless if not insane. He was just seventeen when he got to know Henry Fox, and he was destined to know Fox, to be Fox’s protégé, for nearly eight years.

Diana claimed that Fox’s ideas were perfectly clear to her, and that she knew exactly what he meant. In our idleness we would spend a lot of time listening to the “Fox tapes” and discussing his ideas, philosophically you might say, and she would try to explain or interpret them to me, because truthfully a lot of what he said was way over my head.

I have to tell something about Diana. Just as I feel guilty and inadequate for doing such a poor job of moving the story of Daniel Lyam Montross through his Five Corners period (I’ve used up all this space and covered less than a year of his eight years in Five Corners), I also feel guilty for not really showing Diana as a person. Often, in these pages, she seems to be just a figure in the landscape, or a blur of a formless female who’s always either arguing with me or felicitating me or whatever. Of course, this could lend substance to my gnawing doubt that she really exists and isn’t just the product of my imagination. But—and this is rather strange—just at the point where I began believing in her, began, in fact, almost to take her for granted, she herself started having what she called “the It jitters,” or an identity crisis.

It was of course that “sermon” of Henry Fox’s which started this business. Diana got to brooding about whether or not she really had an It, a female Identity of the kind Fox described, and she kept trying to get me to reassure her. “Do you really think I have an It?” she would ask. “Are you really attracted to my It?” she would ask. “Do you have a sixth sense of have which perceives my It and is drawn to it?” she would ask. “You don’t really think I have any It at all, do you? You just think that I’m a convenient velvet you dreamed up for your own use. I’m really just a kind of masturbation for you.”

This led to another one of our bitter quarrels (I guess maybe there’s some truth to what Fox said about the de-having or anti-having nature of a quarrel). I told her to stop talking like that. I kept telling her that her It was very real to me and very important to me, and for her to stop brooding about It. “Then why,” she asked, “if you really think I have an It and you really are attracted to my It, why is it that you like for me to do you, but you won’t do me?” I didn’t know what she was talking about, and I told her so. But then she starting hinting around, and making allusions, and roundabout innuendoes, and I didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that she was referring to what Fox had called conic licorice. “Is that what you mean?” I asked. And she said that she loved that expression; that it put her in stitches. So I came right out and said that as far as I was concerned, there is a world of difference between felicity and conic licorice, I mean, after all, it’s not an equal proposition at all, because…well, because the former is at least similar in a way to actual intercourse, and therefore natural, whereas the latter is probably rather unnatural, not to say unsavory, and in any case it wouldn’t make her very feminine to me, it wouldn’t attract me to her It, not that It. I was very logical about this, but she got angry, and off we went on another storm of insults and taunts and complaints, and the worst thing she said was that if I admired and envied Daniel Lyam Montross so much, why then was I unable to do something that he not only did but also liked to do? To which I replied that I was beginning to admire and envy him less and less, that I was beginning, in fact, to resent and despise him.

But one thing, at least, I had in common with Daniel Lyam Montross during those days in Five Corners, is that he was never able to get Fox’s ideas out of his head, and neither was I. He would be leading the pupils in a recitation of “Barbara Frietchie” or “Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight” when suddenly he would be aware that he wasn’t listening to the pupils but puzzling over something that Fox had tried to explain to him. And I would be reading a book or something—I had made a trip on foot into Woodstock once, nearly twelve miles, just to stock up on a pile of paperbacks, mostly murder mysteries and other light entertainment—I would be reading some gripping thriller when suddenly I would lose interest in the plot because my mind was pondering over something that Fox had said to Daniel Lyam Montross.

Even in sex. Before, sex for Daniel Lyam Montross had been a purely emotional experience, but now, right in the middle of fusing with Melissa or felicity from Rachel, he would sort of stop and intellectualize the experience according to Fox’s theories. Needless to say, this took part of the fun out of it. I know, because the same thing happened to me. It was getting to where Diana and I weren’t making love very much any more, because every time I tried, I would start thinking about Henry Fox’s theories, and then I couldn’t last more than a few seconds.

One afternoon, after waking up from one of my “sessions” with the tape recorder, I found a piece of paper in my lap. “What’s this?” I asked Diana. “Read it,” she said. It was titled, “Knowing”:

I knew a man, who taught me all I know.

My mind is like a kingdom of the sun.

What use is knowing, if the heart’s in tow?

Our prize is wisdom. But with what a show!

I watch my wits cavort in unison.

I knew a man, who taught me all I know.

Of all his teachings I could not outgrow

The best and worst are now reduced to one:

What use is knowledge, if the heart’s in tow?

Mind saps the heart; I think of this with woe:

His life had left off where his wits begun,

This man I knew who taught me all I know.

Good living is a simple row to hoe

Until that question comes and kills the fun:

Of what use knowing, when the heart’s in tow?

This madness like a boil is touch-and-go

Until it festers. A phenomenon.

I knew a man, who taught me all I know:

What use is knowing, if the heart’s in tow?

“Well,” said Diana, “what do you think of it?”

“I recognize the form,” I said. “It’s a strict classic French form, called a ‘vanillelle’ or ‘vallinelle’….”

“Villanelle,” she corrected me. “Never mind the form. What do you think of the content?”

“Where did you get it?” I asked.

“I wrote it,” she said.

“Obviously,” I said, because the sheet of paper was clearly in her handwriting. “But what did you copy it out of?”

“I ‘copied’ it,” she said, “out of Daniel Lyam Montross’s head. Daniel is the author of this poem.”

I puzzled over this. To be perfectly frank, I didn’t believe it. Whether or not the idea that Daniel Lyam Montross is only the creation of my imagination, or even of my unconscious, is acceptable, I know this much: I didn’t write that poem. I wasn’t equipped to write it. I can conceive that all other aspects of the “persona” of Daniel Lyam Montross might possibly have come up out of my unknown inner resources, but I know that isn’t where that poem came from. I began to suspect something very disturbing to me: Diana herself was the author (or authoress) of this poem, even though I wouldn’t have given her credit for that much talent. She had been brooding about her identity, and perhaps had decided to assert her It or identity by writing poems which she “attributed” to Daniel Lyam Montross. This suspicion was reinforced when she went on to tell me something which she claimed that “Daniel Lyam Montross” had told her during the recent “session”: that he was disappointed in the way that I was telling his story, and that if I didn’t do a better job of it, he was going to “take over” and do the job himself. And in verse, yet! This made me feel terrible, even if I didn’t believe it. It was as if Diana, in order to assert and prove her own It, first had to destroy my It. Can’t two people have equal Its which can get along together in harmony and cooperation? Goddamn you, Henry Fox, there’s a question for you!

October 18 was Diana’s birthday, her twenty-second, and I decided that if she was having such an identity crisis, it might help or even cure her “It jitters” if I made her birthday into a really special occasion. So I used our reflector oven to bake a big cake for her, with twenty-two irregular candles that I had hand-dipped with string in tallow. Also I killed a fat partridge with my slingshot, so our main course for the dinner was a delicious partridge roasted in an imu pit in the ground. Also, I had spent several days making for her a handsome, colorful necklace, which I fashioned laboriously from bright-colored pebbles found around the brook, each pebble drilled slowly with a hole by heating a nail red hot; it took a long time, and I did it in secret, hiding long hours off in the woods by myself, and the finished product was something to be proud of.

But after supper, after she made her wish and blew out the candles on the cake, although she said “Oh, thank you!” when I presented the necklace to her in a box lined with dark green moss to set off the colors of the pebbles, she didn’t seem awfully happy with it specifically or her birthday party in general. I wondered if she had expected me to take some of her own money and go to Woodstock and buy her something fancy and expensive, but I couldn’t ask her if this is what she had been expecting, and even if she had, I couldn’t have done it, I mean, I couldn’t have spent her own money on her. I thought it was more appropriate to give her something I had made myself, like the roast partridge, and the cake, and the necklace. Anyway, I asked her why she was brooding. Was she still having “It jitters”? Did the fact of becoming a year older, and having a birthday, aggravate her identity crisis? Not exactly, she said. Well then, I said I wondered if it was because all of our chipmunks had gone into hibernation. There had been six of these chipmunks that had practically lived at our place, they had eaten out of our hands and had even jumped into our laps, and we’d even given individual names to each of them, although they were kind of hard to tell apart, but now they had disappeared, almost as if they were waiting for Diana’s birthday to go into hibernation. Yes, Diana said, she was sad about that, but that wasn’t what was on her mind. Well, what was, then? I persisted and pestered. Finally she said it was the wish she’d made when she blew out the candles. What was the wish? I asked. She said she couldn’t tell, that you aren’t supposed to tell what your wish is, because then you’re sure not to get it. Well, I said, sort of playing around as with Twenty Questions, did it have anything to do with me? Yes, she said. Well, I said, did it involve something between me and her? Yes, she said. Well, I said, was it perhaps in some way related to our previous argument? Yes, she said. Well, I said, was she really so preoccupied with it as to make it the object of her birthday wish? Yes, she said. Well forget it, I said.

And that ruined the rest of her birthday, I guess. But I was annoyed, even if birthday wishes and all that are a lot of kid stuff, that all she could think of for a birthday wish, after I’d gone to such trouble to make that necklace and bake the cake and find that partridge and hit it with my slingshot and pick its feathers and clean it and cook it all day in the imu pit, was some trifling unnatural itch of hers.

When I woke up, it must have been after midnight, the fire was still blazing bright and hot, I was sitting in one of our Adirondack chairs and she was sitting in the other. She had a kind of ironic but satisfied smile on her face. I assumed that she had been having another regular session with Daniel Lyam Montross, and that now she would play back the tape for me if I cared to hear it. But I felt very strange, and it took me a moment to identify the source of my uneasiness. The particular perfume that she wears sometimes, Réplique I think it’s called, was very strong in my nostrils…and in my mouth, along with it, under it or over it or both, that singular exciting piquance which is the carnal tang of her sex, not really like licorice but with the same acridity. I sat there for a while staring at her smile or smirk or whatever it was, and ruminating upon these twin odors in my nose and mouth, and then I said,

“Damn you.”

“It wasn’t you,” she said. “It was him. And he made me feel for a while that I might really have an It, after all.”

“It’s my mouth, damn you,” I said. And I got up and drank at least a pint of cider, trying to forget. And then I said, “I think your It is positively disgusting and loathsome,” and then I went off to bed. And tried to sleep. But my dreams were bad and wild.

Three days later we had our first snow. It was not a hard snow, nothing like the ones to come later, but it was our first snow. It began in the late afternoon, when the heavy sky flaked and dusted our woods with white feathers slow-falling and silent as time. We moved the Adirondack chairs into the lean-to, and sat in them for a long time wrapped in our blankets and watching the snow fall, and saying to each other things like “Oh isn’t that lovely!” and “Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?” and “How wonderful!” and all kinds of gushing stuff like this. And the way it fell, so gently but deliberately, as if it had a job to do and was going to take its time and see that the job got done properly. Within an hour, all the ground was white, all the trees were covered, and some of the trees still had a few clusters remaining of their scarlet leaves, now like blood on snow, like Rachel’s hair on her pillow. “Let’s dance in it,” Diana suddenly suggested, and we threw off our blankets and threw off our clothes and spontaneously choreographed a Snow-Welcome Pas De Deux, to the music of her humming and my whistling, all very slow and white and drifting. Once before we had been air and water, alga and fungus, in a thing she rigged up to a piece by Vaughan Williams. Now to our own impromptu music we were earth and snow, she the snow, I the earth, and this was symbiotic too, the one needing the other. In the happiness of this time we forgot our little grudges and prejudices, we transcended ourselves, I guess you could say, or I guess Henry Fox would’ve said that our Its found the right place and abandoned some other place that was anti-having or de-having because what we finally did was not, to me then at least, unnatural, but part of our dance, the end of our dance, the snow stopped, and resting upon the earth, the snowfall ended, the earth covered, the white blanket resting, and although the feel of the snow was icy and nipping on our naked skins, it did not seem long, it seemed fleeting and transitory, that new right place, but it did seem right, I swear it did, that the snow lay with the earth, the snow’s soft head upon the earth’s groin, the earth’s head buried beneath the crotch of the snow, all soft touchings and strokings.

Oh, this is a story of a lost place in a snowfall, of a boy and girl symbiotic and devoted and lost together, oh, this is a story about a wise philosopher who sought gold and lost it but found wisdom and shared it, oh, this is the story of his sharing, of his sharing his wisdom with a young schoolteacher with an empty head ready to be crammed (oh, how’m I doing, Daniel? is this any better? Could your poetry beat it?), oh, this is a story of a boy who looked for the right place where people had lived simply and honestly and had devotion to work and to duty, but found instead some other place of unnatural behaviour, a story of some other place that became for me the right place because there are Its and I have one and so does she, even if she doesn’t think so, and so do you.

Oh, It is.

One of the few pictures in Henry Fox’s Gold Brook Chateau was a painting, or rather a good copy of a painting which had been painted not by a master but by a nearly unknown late-nineteenth-century academician named Adolphe William Bourguereau. The good copy, which possibly surpassed the original in its pristine clarity and naturalism, was signed only by the initials D.H. The copy of the painting was quite large, over eight feet tall and nearly six feet wide. During the Five Corners gold rush, when there was a saloon among the buildings in the compound at the mine entrance, this large painting had hung over the bar of the saloon, where drinkers could admire it and receive stimulation or at least amusement from it. When the mine operations folded, Henry Fox removed the painting and hung it in his sitting room at Gold Brook Chateau, to serve, as he explained to Daniel Lyam Montross, as a “mnemonic device” to help him in recalling and reliving the lost, passionate Its of his youth, although Daniel doubted that the particular experience depicted in the painting had ever happened to Henry Fox. The title of the painting, Fox told him, was simply “Nymphs With A Satyr,” and Fox explained to him what a nymph is and what a satyr is. Daniel thought the painting should have been called “The Reluctant Satyr,” for that was the essence of its subject: a muscular, tanned satyr, with a goat’s legs and ears, in the lush woods, trying to put up a great resistance as he is being pulled, tugged and pushed by a quartet of extremely luscious and contemporary looking nude nymphs, who with great abandon are determined to get him to go off some other place with them and serve their fancies. Two things about the painting impressed Daniel Lyam Montross, apart from the sheer lushness of the woods and sunlight and dappled voluptuous bodies: the face of the satyr, except for the goat’s ears of course, was remarkably like his own face; and the idea that four women, together, would so hungrily pursue this obstinate fellow. It was a complete reversal of the usual role in which man is the pursuer and woman the pursued. This made it both comic and flattering to the male ego. Henry Fox, expatiating about this painting to Daniel, conjectured that it was an ancient prophecy, as translated by a contemporary man in 1873, of what the world might be like in that distant twentieth or twenty-first century when the Its of man and woman became equal, having was equalized, and man became pursued as well as pursuer, and therefore ended all his wars and other aggressions. The importance of this vision, so central to Fox’s thought, was somewhat lost upon Daniel, however, because Daniel already enjoyed that rare privilege denied to most men: being pursued by women, by more than one. Looking at the painting, sometimes, Daniel could see not only his own countenance in the face of the satyr, but also a good likeness of Rachel in the nymph who tugged his left arm and neck, and a good likeness of Melissa in the broad-hipped nymph who was pulling his right arm.

Daniel was happy, complacent, and a bit smugly self-satisfied with his life, so that even though Henry Fox warned him prophetically that he would have to learn eventually to live upon the memories of this life Daniel saw no reason why it should ever end. His success as a schoolmaster, due in no small measure to the crash course in brain expanding that Henry Fox was giving him, made him something of a figure in the community. Judge Braddock personally congratulated him, expressing surprise that he was doing so well, and offered him a small raise to continue for another year. The parents who had opposed him for his failure to flog his unruly charges were eventually won over by his success in making the unruly charges ruly without use of the ruler. The pupils loved him almost as much, but not in the same way, as his eldest pupil Rachel loved him. He had become a proficient organ player, and he was able, because of his friendship with Henry Fox, to give his pupils instruction in worldly matters not covered in their textbooks. The only bad time in the whole year happened to occur in early May when Rachel found her mother and her schoolmaster/lover celebrating spring together out in the woods. Rachel hated him for weeks, even months (or years?) afterwards, and hated her mother even more. Daniel reasoned with her and argued with her, to no avail, for the female It, as Henry Fox could have told him, is totally immune to reason or logic. Daniel’s primary argument was that since Rachel was constitutionally or emotionally unable to fuse with him in the “normal” way, that he was required to do this with Melissa, and that besides, there was more than enough to go around, wasn’t there? No, Rachel believed. It defiled him and it defiled her mother to do that dirty thing like animals do it. And what bothered her most was that the more of himself he shared with her mother the less of himself did he have to share with her. She would no longer bring lunches for Daniel. She seemed to become unhinged. She began to act peculiar in school, and embarrassed the teacher and the other pupils by noisily sucking her thumb a lot. At the end of the term, in June, she failed all of her examinations, so miserably that, even though Daniel wanted to pass her anyway, his conscience as schoolmaster would not allow him to overlook such a poor performance, so she was destined to have to repeat the school year, to be his scholar one more year if he chose to accept Judge Braddock’s offer.

Daniel was glad when summer came and school was over and out. He got a job, in return for room, board and a tiny wage, as a farmhand for Jirah Allen. The only disadvantage of this arrangement was that he had to share a room with the boy Marshall Allen, the same simple but evil-minded hooligan who had disrupted the school all year long. As roommates, they lost no love on each other. Marshall had only a little more mentality than Daniel’s poor sister Charity had possessed; he could communicate, at least, but usually only by replying “Yeyyup” or “No-hup” to direct questions. As his roommate, Daniel had to suffer being witness to the boy’s sadistic nature, his fondness for pulling the wings off of insects and watching their helpless struggles, his subtle torturing of the Allen family’s dogs, cats, and livestock, his gross habit of tying up his sister Floriana and fusing with her in her velvet, navel, armpit, mouth, and ear. Daniel considered reporting this behavior to the father, Jirah, but the father already was in the habit of flogging the boy every day, and Daniel saw no point in increasing the lashes. Instead, he got away, as often as he could.

The large Allen farm was several miles south of Five Corners, which put him much closer to Henry Fox’s place, an easy couple of miles, in fact, so that even though the working hours on the Allen farm were long and hard, sunup to sundown, he was able, in the evenings, to see more and hear more of Henry Fox than he had during the school year. And he found a favorite spot, halfway into the village, a glade surrounded by thick spruces, where he often met Melissa for a few minutes of pleasure. He didn’t see Rachel all summer long. Melissa never mentioned her, and he never inquired of her to Melissa. Personally I think he was being a complete bastard for dropping Rachel like that.

In late August, Daniel went into Five Corners village for the first time that summer, not to visit Rachel but to see two other people: Judge Braddock and Jake Claghorn. He told Judge Braddock that he was agreeable to serving a second year as schoolmaster. Then he found Jake Claghorn and told him that if Jake placed a bid in this year’s auction Daniel would kill him with his bare hands.

At the auction, conducted once again by Judge Braddock (for what was to be the last time; a Plymouth town ordinance would abolish the practice the following year), after the bidding had reached an unprecendented low of fifty dollars, which was the Allens’ rock-bottom offer, Daniel Lyam Montross was struck off for forty-five dollars to a terribly scowling Joel and a terribly jubilant Melissa McLowery. Joel even lost a little face among his neighbors for such a rash offer, and the neighbors began to gossip that Melissa had forced him to it, not, however, they thought, out of a wish to have him for herself but out of a wish to “line him up” for her daughter Rachel, whom everybody assumed (and hoped) that the handsome young schoolmaster would eventually marry, because the poor girl seemed more and more to need “straightening out” by a strong, firm and smart young man. Rumors of her conduct during the past summer had circulated among the villagers, and her few younger playmates or girlfriends had stopped seeing her. Someone said he thought he had seen Rachel, under a full moon, running naked down the road and through the covered bridge. Someone else claimed that Rachel was often seen to go into the schoolhouse at four o’clock in the afternoon and not reappear until suppertime. But since Daniel Lyam Montross had never been seen in the village during the summer, none of these rumors connected him with her.

When Daniel was taken home by the McLowerys, he found that his quarters were not to be in the rather modest McLowery house but instead one of the outbuildings, a roomy shed which Melissa had decorated (with the grudging help of Rachel) tastefully into a homey, cozy bedroom with its own stove and a good large mirror and a washstand with stoneware pitcher and basin. This was to be his home for most of the next six or seven years…and the site of our home, as I’ve mentioned previously our lean-to was erected on the same spot, in nearly the same exterior dimensions, as Daniel’s shed. From the opening of the lean-to, we could look down the hill to the spot where the McLowery house had stood, with tangled clumps of lilac still around its foundation, and now in November the dead stalks of perennial peonies that Melissa must have planted some long time ago. A few of the immense stone slabs of the barn’s foundation are the only other evidence left behind, although there is a spot, the other side of our lean-to, where the gate to the pasture stood, where the ground is still worn in a trail by the hooves of Joel McLowery’s sheep. I often thought I could hear sheep baa-ing somewhere up the hill behind us, and Diana swore that she could hear them too, but we tamped all over the hill without finding any sheep, so it must have been only the wind. They were Cheviots and Merinos, a wrinkled type with more surface of wool, the meat secondary, and a stronger flocking instinct than most sheep. Joel had several hundred of them, and Daniel’s help was needed at shearing time. Although Joel would sell surplus lambs in the spring, the McLowery’s income was almost exclusively from the sale of the abundant wool, bought by the textile mills at Bridgewater.

Except for the big stone slabs, which were part of the barn’s foundation, the only other trace remaining of the McLowery homestead is a slight depression, a trench about five feet long and a foot deep, in a clump of sumac saplings about fifty feet to the northwest of our lean-to. Although I dislike mentioning such mundane matters as routine body functions, Diana and I had already been using this trench as our latrine before we discovered that it was in fact the foundation of what had been the McLowery privy. I mention it now only because that privy played an important part in the subsequent story of Daniel and Rachel. The trench then was a good bit deeper than it is now, and over it was a small building of pine planks, containing a knee-high shelf or bench cut with two holes large enough but not too large to accommodate the adult buttocks. Furnishings and decor were few: a chromolithographed picture of a small girl rolling a hoop with a stick, a recent calendar (as if the privy user were inclined to stay more than a day!), a bucket of wood ashes in one corner for the purpose of covering the waste, in the other corner a board with its smaller hole to be placed over the larger holes by a child—this not used since Rachel was five years old.

Just why this privy, like most others of the time, was what was known as a “two-holer” is a mystery to me. Perhaps in an emergency, if the privy was occupied, there was a “spare” hole for the impatient, but this must have been very rare. Most users of the privy eventually developed a natural inclination toward one hole or the other, and never alternated between them. And without any spoken rule or principle to the effect, one hole was customarily used by males, the other by females. In the present instance, the north hole was used by Rachel and Melissa, the south by Joel Mc-Lowery, Daniel Lyam Montross, and the McLowerys’ hired man.

Now, Daniel Lyam Montross had been living in the McLowerys’ shed for several weeks and had never seen Rachel except at school, where she always sat quietly with lowered eyes and hardly ever responded if he called on her to recite, which he soon stopped doing. The window in Daniel’s shed commanded a view of the path between the house and the privy, but he had never seen her on the path and supposed that perhaps she used instead a “thunder mug” inside the house. But one evening in late October, after supper, Daniel Lyam Montross was attending a call of nature at the privy, meditating at length upon some theory or other he had recently picked up from Henry Fox, when the privy’s door (it had no latch) slowly opened and Rachel slipped in and closed the door behind her. She did not look him in the eye, and he wondered if, in the half-light of early evening, she could even see him. But when she lifted her ankle-length dress and lowered her calf-length ribbed cotton drawers and sat down on the other hole beside him, her arm brushing his arm, he knew that if she didn’t know he was there beside her it was because she was in a trance or something. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t exactly mind, I mean he didn’t have any great modesty, and his embarrassment was no greater than his surprise. In fact, one of his idle musings or fantasies while sitting on one hole of a two-holer had been to wonder what it would be like if two people, preferably of opposite sexes, sat side beside together there—a contingency which never occurred, as far as he knew. He was afraid that if he spoke, if he even said quietly, “Hwarye, Rachel?” she might disappear into thin air. So he jut sat, not looking at her. He heard the faint tinkling of her water. Then the two of them just sat there meditating for a while before she finally spoke.

And this is Rachel, in the outhouse. Listen to her:

Rachel’s bad, she is, Rachel’s bad, bad, she is, she is, oh, is she? she is yup. Rachel’s tryin t’be a creeter, she is, she’s wantin t’be a creeter, she’s tryin t’be a varmint, she is, ’caise her Dan wants her t’be, he does, he does, so they could run thu the woods and be creeters and do like creeters, breathin a the air a the woods that no human creeter e’er breathe-it, the air a dead leaves and spruce boughs and rotten wood, and the air a skunk even, yes, skunk’s not bad from afar, smells of the woods, and mink too, all musky, and weasel and fox, all musky, musky, the woods’s perfum’ry, wild creeter’s perfum’ry, smells a the wild, of woodsy wild waftins and the wind a-sythin thu putty Rachel’s hair, her a weekit, weekit, wild and weekit creater rompin in the musky perfum’ry a-waftin from her Dan-creeter, him a creeter-smellin creeter musky and weekit too with his creeter-pink picket poking out twixt his legs whiff y and salty and sharp t’make putty Rachel’s head dizzy and heady, seem’s ’ough she’d flung wide her arms and spun round and round in a circle to make her head stagger her and drop her but wild creeters can’t stand and spin julluk dizzy putty gulls so she’d need the smell of his creetermusk t’spin her and drop her, inter the dead leaves and spruce boughs and rotten wood, where she’d turn and wiggle waitin, twist and squirm and give off her wild creeter perfum’ry, till he spun and dropped too inter dead leaves and spruce boughs and rotten wood and wiggled with her while the musk a-wafted round ’em, and she would be bad and weekit julluk he allus wanted, and take him inter her weekit velvet julluk he allus wanted ’stead of her putty mouth. But now I will only hold it, I will, like so, in Rachel’s putty fingers, and hang on a little, jest t’touch and hold a little, so’s when nightfall coops up putty Rachel in her lost bed far from the musky woods wild waftin’s she kin lay her weekit head dizzydown on these same fingers and have dreams a woods and creeters if ever sleep takes her and if it don’t then in wakey rest she’ll lie breathin of her fingers and thinkin still of her Dan-creeter and his woods whiffings. I thank you kindly, sir.

She fled then, and though he called after her he did not pursue her. She did not pause nor turn when he called but ran down the path into her house, leaving him there transfixed by her words and wearing a bothersome erection from the brief grip of her fingers. He was convinced almost beyond doubt that she was not “right in the head” (his words; I’m not making a pun) but he desperately wanted a wiser opinion, so even though it was evening and he had to teach school the next day he took his lantern and hiked all the way up to Gold Brook Chateau to tell Henry Fox what Rachel had done and what she had said. Henry Fox, who rarely laughed, laughed. But then he told Daniel that the incident perhaps signified that Rachel, who considered normal fusing animalistic, was trying to become an animal in order to become “normal.” And also that she was trying to show him, by sharing the intimacy of the privy with him, that she wished to share the privy places of her It with him.

“Too bad,” said Diana to me, after another of her psychologizings, “that this Austrian Henry Fox, with all his insight, did not have the techniques which his fellow Austrian was developing at the same time for treating mental and emotional disorders.” I told her to take Freud and shove him.

The girl needed help obviously (Rachel I mean, not Diana, although come to think of it…), but the only help Daniel could give her was to be as nice as he possibly could and to try to understand the weird turnings of her wandering mind. If she really wanted to pretend to be an animal, he was more than ready to join her in the play-like. But she didn’t really; she just wanted to fantasize about it. The uninvited and unexpected call which she paid upon Daniel in the rest room was not her last. She began regularly visiting there, as if she watched from the house to see when he went in, then quickly joined him. He did not mind, although he did not consider the atmosphere particularly “salubrious,” and her talk bothered him, and even her presence beside him, even if she did not touch him, was enough to give him such erections as made difficult the business he was there for. All she ever did was talk and touch him; she was not interested in having him nor allowing him to have her. Day after day, she sat silently in school with her head bowed; evening after evening, she sat beside him in the two-holer, talking her wild head off. Once Joel McLowery in obvious need of quick relief barged in on them, but just as quickly backed out, muttering “’Scuse it,” and never bothered them any more. Sometimes she would fantasize aloud that they were king and queen, sitting on their throne together. When the weather grew cold in November, they would wrap an arm about one another while they sat. It is a picture, if a crazy picture, and I will leave the picture hanging in this gallery for a time, while I tell what happened to us.

One thing I’ll have to say for Diana, she did not begin insisting that we use the latrine together. Not then, anyway. Perhaps that would have been going too far. But all along she had kept wanting to “try out” or “act out” or “play” the various things that had happened to Daniel Lyam Montross, so I was a bit surprised that she didn’t start joining me at our facility, which, however, was quite primitive in contrast to the McLowery outhouse.

By the first of November all of the leaves had fallen from the trees, and only the carpet of the woods still had some color to it. For nearly a week in early November we had a lot of rain; it was a very drippy time. But whoever said that November is an ugly month didn’t know what he was talking about or had not seen Five Corners at that time. Though the trees were bare, their bareness revealed the intricate etching filigree of their branches. November is thought of as a gray month, but not much of it in Five Corners was gray; there was a play of colors: black trees, blacker in the rain that soaked them, white trees—the birches—set off against them, and whiter because of the rain that soaked them, green trees, deep green trees, the thick evergreens, and the rich warm browns of the leaves still clinging to some trees. November is a more mature vision than other months, and more mellow, but no less beautiful than the color riot of October.

And yet, despite the beauty I found so easily in November, I was becoming very much aware that I did not like Five Corners, that I would rather be in some other place. Why was this? I asked myself. Had I grown tired of the place? Was I dismayed by Daniel’s behavior? I wasn’t sure what it was. One afternoon, I was just leaning on a low tree limb, gazing at the rain-washed beauty of deep blacks and high whites and greens and browns in the woods, and trying to figure out why I wanted to leave, when behind my ear Diana’s voice said, “I suppose that sensitive gaze of yours means you think you’re more aware of the beauty of these woods than I am.” I turned and looked to see if she was just ribbing me, but I think she meant it. Anyway, it led to another one of our quarrels, this time I arguing that I didn’t consider myself the least bit more sensitive than she was, and she arguing that it was terribly condescending of me to say that, and soon there we were again flinging epithets at each other, which ended up with my saying that if she really wanted to know what I had been thinking at that moment she accused me of looking so “sensitive,” it was that I thought the woods were lovely, dark, and deep, and all that, but that I had miles to go before I sleep, and all that, in other words, I was thinking that we had been here too long and that this place, even more than Dudleytown, seemed to have some kind of curse on it, and that if we continued staying here something bad was going to happen to both of us. And all this quarreling and bickering, I said. I said I wondered if she was maybe getting sick and tired of seeing so much of me and only me, and that maybe she needed to go away to some other place for a while or even forever.

She lay her hand on my brow for a few moments and said, “I think you’re running a temperature. And you’ve been blowing your nose a lot lately. I was just about to say that we’ve got some unfinished work to take care of here. For instance, we were going to clear brush out of the cemetery. Remember?” She bundled me up in blankets in an Adirondack chair beside the fire, and made for me a hot toddy of cider, and then gave me my notebook and ballpoint, and a huge stack of cassettes for the tape recorder, for me to listen to, and told me to see how much of Daniel Lyam Montross’s story I could write down as quickly as possible without worrying about any “felicities of style.” Then she took my axe and said she would go up to the cemetery by herself and start chopping the brush out of it. She seemed more cheerful to be “taking command.” I sat here and listened to the tapes and tried to write a few more pages about what happened to Daniel and Rachel, but I would read a page after I had written it and then tear it out of my notebook and crumple it up and throw it into the fire. I don’t know if my trouble was that I was ill, or that I had some kind of “Writer’s Block,” or that I just wasn’t able to face the “reality” of what happened to Daniel and Rachel. Probably the latter; for example, I tried unsuccessfully five or six times to write the description of a scene where that sadistic idiot Marshall Allen meets Rachel McLowery out in the woods. This is recorded in Rachel’s crazy words on the tapes, and I just couldn’t straighten out all the details. It seems that Marshall Allen, with his warped half-brain, had been watching farm animals mate, and had developed the fixation that the bull or ram or stallion always comes up behind the cow or ewe or mare and grabs her from behind and enters her velvet from behind. There were some rumors and jokes circulating around Five Corners about what had happened to dumb Marshall when he tried his approach on a couple of girls. But one day he came upon Rachel in the woods. She must have been pretending to be an animal, a doe from what I can judge she says on the tapes. She was bent over, eating a flower, or pretending to eat a flower, I couldn’t tell which, when Marshall came sneaking up behind her and….

I just couldn’t write it. When Diana came back from the cemetery some time later, saying that the work of chopping brush had been discouraging and that being alone in the cemetery had made her very nervous, I asked her to read my last attempt to tell about Marshall and Rachel. She read it and agreed that I wasn’t doing such a good job of it. I half-jokingly suggested that it might help if we “acted out” that scene, but she didn’t think this was funny, and in fact wasn’t interested in sex at all, not then, and not the next day, and not the day after. She just wasn’t having anything to do with sex, all of a sudden. I thought it might have something to do with the repulsiveness of Marshall’s “affair” with Rachel, which became eventually a regular and wild sort of relationship, but it wasn’t exactly this which accounted for Diana’s sudden disinterest. In fact, I think that even this sordid business excited her. One afternoon she was sitting in her Adirondack chair beside me, listening to a playback of one of Rachel’s terrible tapes, and her legs were crossed, and the foot of the top leg was swinging, swinging so steadily that it made her hips and thighs move. I figured at first it was just restlessness, or that kind of nervousness you see when girls are doing that while they’re taking final exams or something in school, but there was also a distinct sexual quality about it which has led me to wonder if some girls can even masturbate by swinging their foot like that. Anyway, I asked her, off hand and casual, if she would like to make love, even though my fever seemed to be worse and I didn’t really feel like it. “Oh, don’t put yourself out,” she said. It took me a moment for the pun to sink in, and when I got it I tried to laugh but couldn’t. But as it turned out she didn’t really want to make love. The next time she went off to the cemetery to cut brush, I sneaked a look in her purse and found out why. She was out of The Pill. The package had twenty-eight little empty holes. I wondered why she didn’t want to tell me.

On November 20, a day of light snow, I became nineteen years old. I was still technically a “teenager,” but it seemed to me that there is something special about being nineteen; it is the last year, the biggest year, of the teens; it is close to entering the twenties; it put me just two years away from the age Diana had been before her recent birthday; it made me feel, for one day at least, older and wiser and taller. But Diana, after all the trouble I’d gone to for her birthday, seemed to have forgotten mine, although she had clearly marked it on our calendar. I didn’t want to remind her of it. I was really too ill to care, very much; I began to wonder if I had pneumonia or something. But what got me, more than her forgetting my birthday, was that she didn’t even seem to care how ill I was, and she made me “work” hard that day, that is, she held a very long session, seven or eight hours, with the tape recorder and Daniel Lyam Montross. I thought how ironic it is to spend most of your birthday in a state of trance. She seemed to be in a hurry to get all the rest of his story out of him, which I thought was a good thing, although it made me very jealous to feel that on my birthday she had spent more time with him than with me. In bed that night I tried to snuggle up to her, but she turned her back to me. That stung me, so I came right out and told her that it was my birthday. She reminded me that I had insisted that she not buy me anything. All right, I said, but couldn’t she just be affectionate, for a change? No, she said. Why not? I asked. I just can’t, she said, and then she turned over toward me and said a very crude thing: Well, come on and I’ll blow you, if you want.

I took a long walk. Without a lantern or flashlight. It was an extremely clear night sky, and the stars themselves provided nearly enough light to see by, although once I stumbled upon a family of resting deer and gave them a fright as bad as the one they gave me, leaping up and crashing off into the brush, a buck and two does and four or five fawns. I called out to them to come back, and was very sorry I had scared them.

I kept walking, my boots sometimes sinking ankle-deep in the new snow. Although I stopped now and then to study the spectacular star patterns, I seemed to be walking in a definite direction, I seemed to have some destination in mind. I’ve studied the stars quite a lot, and never failed to be impressed with the stupendous infinity of space and the thought of all the infinitude of possible galaxies and constellations and suns and worlds, but never until this night had the sky-spectacle had such an overwhelming effect on me, not necessarily obliterating my own problems but making me think of how unlimited are the problems of the universe, whole stars dying and exploding and worlds taking billions of years to reach perfection before being snuff ed out like candles. I resolved that night to take up a closer study of astronomy; although I could recognize all the stars in the Pegasus constellation, the Andromeda constellation, and Cassiopeia, Pisces, Aries, Aquarius, and many others, I had a very vague notion of just how large and how far away each star was. But I knew that in the time it took for the light from any one of those stars to reach the earth, all the towns and cities of America had been born and would vanish. In all that empty space out there was more than enough room to harbor the transient souls of every creature who had ever lived in all the habitable worlds of the universe.

My walk took me, near midnight, to the fallen ruin of Gold Brook Chateau. Until I got there I had not been fully conscious that this was my destination. But as soon as I got there I knew it was. And I began yelling at once, “Henry! Henry! Henry??” My voice may have frightened night creatures. “Henry Fox!” I yelled. “Henry, where are you? I need you!” I waited and yelled louder, “Henry, I’ve got to talk to you!” There was never any answer. I felt no “presences.” For all I knew, Henry Fox had been just an ignorant and even illiterate gold miner whose name I had read about in that article on the Five Corners gold mines, but I did not feel the least bit silly, yelling for him. I needed him, as much as Daniel Lyam Montross ever needed him. Sometimes I used to try to talk with God, but I’ve outgrown that. Being nineteen years old now, I could much more easily believe in Henry Fox than I could believe in God.

But like God, Henry Fox would not respond. So I began trying to “reach” Daniel. He did, he began trying to reach me, although he should have known I won’t ever come at his bidding. Lately, when I thought of Daniel, it was not as if he were something inside me, inside my chest or head or elbow or little toe, but rather that he was something around me, exterior to me but always with me, around me, maybe just a fraction of an inch away from my skin, like—if you’ve ever seen photographs of the earth taken from outer space, you know how incredibly thin the layer of the atmosphere is around the earth—like that, like a very thin layer of something around me. Now I reckon that’s as good a way as any to tell it. Anyway, I knew I couldn’t hypnotize myself (I’ve tried it; it won’t work; I’ve tried saying, “Go to sleep, Day” but only Diana can do that) and even if I could it wouldn’t do me much good to try to talk to Daniel if I were in a trance. Still, I needed to contact him, even if he were nothing but a figment of myself. When I was younger, the minister of our church used to tell me that the reason God wouldn’t talk to me was that I might not have had full faith in his existence, that possibly I could not “surrender” wholly to belief in Him. Well, this was my problem with Daniel too: there I was at the desuetude and desolation of Gold Brook Chateau trying to get in touch with a person who was nothing but the creation of my unconscious fantasy. Haven’t you ever had an imaginary playmate? Well, that’s what Daniel was (and Diana too, of course), but I desperately needed this imaginary playmate to tell me what was wrong with the other imaginary playmate so that the three of us could go on living in peace and harmony.

“Talk to me, Daniel,” I said, almost in a whisper. “Henry’s gone, Dan. He won’t talk to me.”

Then it seemed as though he I stood stood there there looking looking at at the the remains remains of of Gold Gold Brook Brook Chateau Chateau and and sorrowing sorrowing upon upon this this ravage ravage of of time time.

He was a great man.

“He was a great man,” Daniel seemed to say then, of Henry Fox, who would not come to my bidding.

All I ever knew, I learned from him. But you don’t need him, son. As I said in that poem, everything I learned boils down to knowing that learning’s no good if the heart’s in tow.

“What would he have told you,” I asked, “if you had been me and were having the problems I’ve got with Diana?”

I had to laugh.

It was silent in the woods, there was no sound whatever from any night creature, but then I heard laughter, I clearly heard laughter, then realized that it was myself, that at least it was coming from me. Why was I laughing? Trying to make light of my problems? Embarrassed at myself for standing alone way off on that desolate mountainside and trying to talk to spirits? At any rate, there I was, laughing, and it had sort of a curative effect on me, I mean, it was the first time I had felt like laughing about anything in a long time, and it did make me feel a lot better.

Day, there’re two or three things bothering that girl. One is the same thing that’s bothering you: she’s developing a dislike for my story, but, unlike you, she feels obliged to go on with it. Another thing bothering her is that you, with all your talk of living naturally and living off the land, have made her disinclined to go and have her pill prescription refilled, but she’s left torn between letting nature take its course or, as she’s been doing, abstaining. And finally, there’s her “It jitters” again; she broods a lot about having no identity, except through you, except through me. That’s why I let her believe that she’s the author of my poem…and those to come. And maybe she is, in a way. As for you, you really ought to get to know her better. Despite all this time you’ve spent together, how much do you actually know of her story, of her childhood, of her person, of the things that have kept her from feeling that she has an It? That’s just as important, I think, as your attempt to tell my story. The end of my story in Five Corners is tragic, and your premonition is correct that the end of your story in Five Corners is going to be pretty bad too, if not tragic. So you might as well skip the rest and get on with these endings…. And Day. One more thing. Happy birthday.

So I left that place and started back for camp. But I wasn’t exactly feeling like laughing any more, I don’t know why; I had the feeling that I knew something I hadn’t known before, and it gave me a mixed feeling of determination and nervousness. When I got back to camp, in the wee hours of the morning, I discovered that Diana had waked up, or had never been asleep, and she gave me pure hell for going off and leaving her all alone like that in the middle of the night, and said she’d been scared nearly out of her mind, and that I had damn well better think twice before I ever did anythink like that again, and just what the hell did I mean, anyhow, was I trying to prove something? But I just crawled under the covers with her and held her until she hushed, and then I told her where I had been and what I had “learned.” She chided me, saying I had made my fever worse, that I was very hot, that I should have had better sense than to take such a long walk on a cold night in the condition I was in. But she kissed me and said how sorry she was that she had ignored my birthday, and that she would make up for it, and that things were going to get better. Yes, I said, things always got better before they got worse. What do you mean by that? she asked. Something’s going to happen to us, I said. Of course something’s going to happen to us, she said; if it weren’t, what would we have to live for? I decided not to say anything else about my premonition, but I still felt a sense of urgency, and knew that I could never possibly go to sleep, even though it was getting close to dawn.

Let’s talk, I suggested. All right, she said, not feeling sleepy herself, What about? You, I said. I don’t really know you. Tell me about your life. I don’t know where to start, she said. Tell me about your father, I suggested. My father’s a bastard, she said, And that’s all I know to say about him. But I kept drawing her out, asking questions, and pretty soon she was telling me everything about her father, that bastard, and her mother, that meek, lost creature, and her childhood, uneventful, as it was, and her school experiences and her schoolteachers, and everything. I kept her talking until morning, when she got up and fetched for us a “breakfast” of raisins and nuts and apples and came and got back into our sleeping bag with me and we ate our breakfast while she went on telling me the story of her life, which took all morning, and left her feeling both happy for the chance to tell it and sad for how dull and uninteresting it was. Then after lunch, she declared, “That’s all of my story. There isn’t any more. That’s all there is.” And she took the axe and went once more to clear brush out of the Five Corners cemetery. I really had to admire her for her energy and determination in cleaning up that cemetery, and I lay there nursing my pneumonia and thinking what a wonderful person she was, and how much I loved her, and I lay there remembering parts of her story that she had finished telling me, I thought of her father and what a bastard he was, how he had been so busy trying to make his goddamn fortune that he never took much interest in his only daughter, that he thought he could discharge his duties as a father in terms of affection by occasionally permitting his lap to be sat upon or permitting his neck to be hugged—when of course it didn’t inconvenience him.

And I thought of something else. I remembered her very words. “When I was six,” she had said, “I made him a valentine. I don’t remember making it, but years later he was cleaning out his study and I found it in the wastebasket. It wasn’t too artistic, and rather trite, with hearts and flowers and all, you know. But I told him in the valentine that I loved him, and then I wrote on it a question: ‘Daddy, do you think why I am me?’

“I’m still not sure,” she had said, “just what I meant by that question. ‘Do you think why I am me?’ But whatever it means, I’ve been asking it all my life.”

And however long it takes, I determined, I will help her find her answer.

Oh, this is a story of—you know it, don’t you?—a story not of ghost towns but of lost places in the heart, of vanished life in the hidden places of the soul, oh, this is not a story of actual places where actual people lived and dreamed and died but a story of lost lives and abandoned dreams and the dying of childhood, oh, a story of the great ghost villages of the mind, a story of untold stories, oh, of lost untellable stories, of a boy who loved a girl whose villages had been abandoned, of a boy who took a girl on a long outing to the town of lost dreams, of a boy who wanted to help her find her hidden It, oh,

a story of a boy who tried but then lost her.

But then I lost her. The goddamn gods or fates get all their kicks by plotting absurd ironies. Just at the point where I determined that I would help her find out why she was she, I lost her. She did not return from the cemetery. Late in the afternoon, I began to think admiringly that she must have a lot of perseverance and dedication, to be staying there and working alone in the cemetery so long. But then I began to get uneasy. I began to wonder if maybe she had cut herself badly with the axe. Or if her fear of the cemetery might have caused her to faint or something. As dusk started to settle on our woods, I knew I would have to go look for her. Was this what my premonition had been about? I got out of the sleeping bag and got dressed. When I stood up to put my trousers on, I felt dizzy and had to stop and hold on to the back of the chair for a while until my head cleared. Then I began shivering with a violent chill, until I could get my jacket on, but even with my jacket on I was still shivering, and not just from my sickness. It is less than a mile from our camp to the cemetery, but it is all uphill, and my breathing was terrible, I had to stop every fifty yards or so and get my breath back. I tried calling for her, but didn’t have much voice. Do you think why I am me? Yes, I said aloud, I think why you are you. And I will know why you are you, I said aloud, to give me enough strength to get on up there to the cemetery.

Where I found her. Lying in the brush she had been cutting, the axe beside her, dropped into the snow. Beside the Allen family headstones. She was lying on her side, but with her face down. My first, strange thought was: “I have only dreamed you up, and now I am undreaming you.” For I knew she must be dead. She lay so still. I knelt beside her. There was blood on the snow around her. I opened her wool jacket and saw the blood. All over her side. I wondered how she could have hit herself with the axe that far up on her body. But she had not hit herself. Somebody had shot her. Why? A goddamn stupid or drunk deer hunter who would shoot at anything that moved? Nobody had any reason for shooting her!

I was crying, I was sobbing, and at the sound of my sobs her eyes half-opened and she tried to look at me but could not raise her head. She tried to speak but couldn’t. I tried to tell her it would be all right but I didn’t know how. I had to do something. I had seen too many movies where somebody dies in somebody’s arms, and I wasn’t going to just kneel there and hold her while she died. What if I left her there and ran for help? But I couldn’t run. And what if she were dead when I got back with help? I should have stayed with her. And if I couldn’t run away, I ought to try to take her with me.

GODDAMN ALL YOU LOUSY “SPORTSMEN”!

First I had to find if she could be moved. If the bullet were lodged near her backbone I couldn’t risk any moving of her that might hurt her spinal cord. I dabbed away some of the blood and found the hole where the bullet had gone in, just below her rib cage on the left side. I couldn’t find anywhere where the bullet had come out in back. But there was blood all over her back too, maybe it had come out, or dribbled over there from the wound in front. I knew I had to try to get her out of there. I had learned in the Boy Scouts the “fireman’s carry” but it wouldn’t work; for one thing, the position of it would force more blood out of her. So I had to get her up on to me in a sort of modified piggyback carry: draped over my back with my arms under her knees, my hands grasping her hands over my chest to keep her from slipping. It was difficult. I didn’t think I could do it. But I tried. I guess Daniel Lyam Montross must have been helping me, but I wasn’t thinking of him, I didn’t call on him or anything. The only thing I was thinking of, that might have helped me, was the awful beautiful question: Do you think why I am me? Out of the cemetery and down the hill I went staggering with her on my back, going downhill and thus letting gravity get us out of there, but still I slipped a couple of times, in the snow, and had to be careful how I fell so that she would not be hurt when I fell. I reached the road with her and soon passed our camp. I wished I had a drink of water or of cider; my mouth was dry as a bone, and burning, but I didn’t stop. Down into Five Corners and across the bridge I went with her, my feet clattering on the wooden planks of the bridge like distant gunfire. I wondered if whoever had shot her had gone to find out what he had bagged and then ran off as fast as he could when he found that his game was a girl. Could I ever find him and kill him if she died? Was she, even now, still breathing? I couldn’t tell. Her body was inert and lifeless upon me. I tried to remember which of the nearest houses, on the Hale Hollow Road into Bridgewater, still had people living in them, who might have cars. Most of them that were not completely abandoned seemed to be only summer places, no permanent residents. But there was one, freshly painted white, which I had passed whenever I had walked to Bridgewater, which I seemed to remember had people living in it. It was full dark now; I had to feel the road with my feet, to keep my feet steadily in the rut of a wheel track, my eyes straight ahead searching for the first sign of a light. It seemed I walked forever like that, blind in the rut, wondering how soon I would have to put her down because I could not bear the weight of her upon me much longer. Then I rounded a bend in the road and there, far down below, was a pinpoint of light. I stopped for just a moment or two, to do some deep breathing and get my lungs in shape again, and then I walked a little faster toward that light. But the harder I walked, the farther away that light seemed to be, and I wondered if it was only a star I was following. If it were, then I would follow that star into eternity. I went on and on. I began to think that maybe if I put her down now, gently, I could walk even faster and reach that light before the light went out. But I couldn’t let go of her. I had to keep her. So I went on. Was the light a little brighter now? Was it a little closer? Now the light was not any longer round and clear, but blurred into a star-shape, with four cross-rays flaming out from it; I realized it was blurred because my eyes were full of water. The blur got bigger and bigger, and I knew I could reach it. But then suddenly the blur of light—or I—darkened and went out.

I recall a kind of dream I had: in the dream I was carrying her too, piggyback like this, and there was a man following us, who had been following us all along, but he was smiling at us, and she was alive, and laughing, and it was not nighttime but broad day, in some other place where we had finally gone, the Ozarks I guess it was, and not winter but springtime, and she was not hurt but whole, and the dogwood and redbud were blooming and the wind was warm and lifting her hair and her laughter, as I carried her piggyback through that strange and distant but magic woodland, some other place that seemed, in the dream, to be the right place.

When I woke up and came back from this pretty dream, I found that I was in a room, alone. The room was white, white tiles halfway up the walls, and instruments: I guessed it was a hospital; I hoped it was the right kind of hospital, not the funny farm. The walls and instruments had blurred shapes and I realized they were blurred because I was viewing them through the undulating plastic of an oxygen tent. In my delirium I imagined that there would be, somewhere, a button for my finger to press, in want of help, and I searched around the headboard of my bed until I imagined that I found a button to press, and imagined I pushed it, and imagined that because I pushed that button eventually a woman came in, a nurse. I imagined she said, I imagined her lips outside the oxygen tent saying, “Hi. How are you feeling?” and her imagined hand reached inside the tent and felt my brow and then felt for my pulse and took it. I wanted to ask her, “Where am I?” but that imagination would have sounded corny, like the movies. There was something much more important I had to imagine that I asked her:

“Where’s Diana?”

“The girl?” I imagined the nurse saying. “She’s in surgery.”

“Will she be all right?”

“We hope so, of course,” the nurse imaginatively said. “But it’s much too early yet to know for sure.” Then she asked me if there was anything that I imagined I needed. Did I imagine needing something to eat? I said no, but I imagined I needed a drink of water. She got an imaginary glass for me, and some imaginary pills, and told me to pretend that I was taking them. Then she said that she imagined a doctor would be coming in soon to see me, and meanwhile, if I needed anything, just to push the button. Then she vanished. Later a man seemed to materialize at the foot of my bed, and appeared to introduce himself. I did not hear his name, but it seemed to me, unless I was mistaken or confused, or both, or delirious, or all three, that he said his name was Doctor Henry Fox. Anyway, this Doctor Fox told me where I was, he said that I was in Woodstock Hospital, then he told me how I had come to be there, he said that I had collapsed with “the girl” (as he called her) on the doorstep of a farmhouse south of Bridgewater, and that the noise of my collapsing had roused the occupants from their TV set and they had driven us, “the girl” on the rear seat of their car, I on the floor, into Woodstock. Now, said this Dr. Fox, he needed to ask me a few questions. First, what was “the girl’s” name? It seemed to me that I answered him by saying, Diana Whittacker. And it seemed he asked then, And what is your name? Day Whittacker, I think I replied. She’s your sister? he seemed to ask. I’m almost sure I said, She’s my wife. It seemed that he was giving me an unnecessarily long and skeptical look, but that he said simply, Oh. And then he asked, Do you carry Blue Cross-Blue Shield? I imagined successfully what the blue cross and shield were, and I said, Insurance, you mean? No, but don’t worry about that. She’s got—we’ve got—plenty of money. Then I imagined that he sat down in a chair beside my bed and in a friendly voice asked me to tell him about the accident. So I found myself imagining how it might have happened, that she had gone up to the cemetery to cut brush and when she didn’t come back I had gone up there and found her. This doctor said that he imagined that it was rather late in the year to be out camping in the woods like that, but I just said that my wife and I imagined ourselves to be ardent and dedicated campers and naturalists. He appeared to be smiling. Then I took what I thought was a deep breath, and conceived a question which I conceived that I asked him: “Listen, tell me the truth: is she going to live?”

“I imagine so,” he exhibited the semblance of saying, making an effort to sound gentle. Then he contrived to tell me that she was still in surgery, and that he, being my doctor, not hers, could not even tell me how long she would be in surgery. In addition to the severe wound, there was also apparently shock, which had delayed the surgery. All that he could permit himself to seem to say at the moment was, he said, that her condition appeared to be quite serious.

Then this Dr. Fox seemed to wave his hand and cause another woman to materialize. This one did not seem to be a nurse, although she was apparently dressed like one. Now, Dr. Fox seemed to be saying, We will have to fill out admission papers for you and your wife. Mrs. McLowery here [I thought he said] will ask you a few questions. I’ll check back with you later. I stopped him as he appeared to be vanishing and asked him, When can I get out of bed? We’ll have to see what can be seen, he said. Not for a while, it seems. Not for several days, I should imagine, he said. What seems to be wrong with me? I asked. Your temperature, apparently, is 103°, he said. You have suffered apparently from exposure, from what is thought to be fainting, from seeming overexertion and from God knows what else. Both of your lungs appear to be inflamed. The doctor looked as if he were smiling, though. I think perhaps your brain is probably inflamed also, he said. He appeared to give my shoulder a gentle punch with his fist. See you later, he said.

The woman whom I had thought was introduced as Mrs. McLowery had some forms to fill out, and seemed to want to know our full names and our home address and a lot of other stuff. I had to do some quick thinking and use my imagination to fabricate most of it: changing the date of my birth so I would be older than Diana, making up the names and addresses of my parents and hers, and so forth. Then the woman told me that they apparently had not been able to find anything in the way of seeming identification in my clothing or Diana’s clothing. I said anything we had in the way of identification would conceivably be back among our ostensible possessions in our ostensible camp, and she would just have to take my word for it. Then the woman told me that because Diana had not appeared to be wearing any wedding rings, she, the woman, did not frankly believe, accept, swallow or allow, the appearance or semblance that Diana was my wife.

“Have you ever tried to use an axe with rings on your fingers?” I thought to ask her. “No? Well, I can tell you you have to take your rings off before you can use an axe, or else you get blisters, and that’s what my wife was doing when she was shot, cutting brush with an axe.” The woman appeared to be momentarily uncertain or even abashed, and I told her that I resented the apparent insinuation that this lovely girl who might be dying this very minute if not already dead was not in fact my beloved wife. So the woman contrived to apologize and then finished filling out the imaginary admission papers. Before she vanished, I thought to ask her, “Is this going to be in the newspapers?” She said that apparently Woodstock didn’t have a newspaper, but the story might conceivably appear in the Rutland Herald, and might even be seen and picked up by the wire services, and she personally hoped it would be, because she thought it was a shame the way somebody always appeared to be getting killed by careless deer hunters, and the more people who knew about it, the more pressure would be invented to do something about these phantom hunters.

She disappeared then, and I took on the semblance of lying there in dread, imagining that any moment now somebody else would appear with the bad news that Diana had not seemed to survive the operation. I knew I wouldn’t be able to take it if somebody materialized with a sympathetic frown and started to speak. I would go unconscious again. I would shut it out and not listen. I would imagine I was deaf. I seemed to be trembling all over. What if they forced me to accept the fact that Diana was dead? What if I were unable to keep fleeing from reality? What would I do then? What will I do when they tell me she is dead? If she dies, I seemed to be telling myself, I will kill myself. If she dies, I will go back to Five Corners and hang myself from a maple tree.

What seemed to be hours later—I had drifted off to sleep and other dreams and come back again, I thought—it was Dr. Fox, or whatever his name might seem to be, who appeared. Dr. Fox did not seem to be wearing a sympathetic frown when he materialized, but on the other hand he didn’t seem to be smiling either; I fancied that his years of breaking bad news to people must have taught him how to keep an expressionless image. “It’s over,” he said. Did I faint again? I must have, because I seemed to remember other dreams that appeared to go on for a while before I came out of them, to this other dream, to feel something that felt like he was shaking my shoulder and saying, “The operation, I mean. The operation’s over. She still seems to be unconscious, and is needing one hell of a lot of transfusions, but I believe the operation appears to be successful in terms of patching up the damage.” Then he attempted to tell me in detail a vision of what the damage had appeared to be; I don’t remember everything he said, but I visualized this close-up interior view of Diana’s right side with fragments of metal and blood scattered all over. Then he did not vanish but stayed and chatted with me a while, his hand exhibiting the appearance of patting my shoulder from time to time. It turned out that he seemed to be something of an outdoorsman himself, when he could get away from his practice, and we appeared to have several interests in common, particularly trees. But he started asking more questions, just trying to be conversational, but causing me some trouble, like where I had gone to school and what I was doing for a living and how long Diana and I had been on this “honeymoon” of camping out. I contrived to answer as best I could. I never mentioned anything about Daniel Lyam Montross. Then, as he was vanishing, I asked him where Diana was now. He appeared to hesitate. He said he was given to believe that she was in the recovery room. I asked him if there was any apparent possibility that Diana and I could share a room when she got out of the recovery room. He said he would see what could be seen.

Later that day (night? I never knew just what time it was), after I’d been taken away and given some injections and chest X-rays and then wheeled back to my room, Dr. Fox seemed to be waiting for me along with two other men, one of whom appeared to be wearing a state trooper’s uniform with sergeant’s stripes, the other ostensibly a deputy sheriff. I felt as if I might be panicky at first, but Dr. Fox told me that they were making an investigation of the shooting, as required by law, and hoped to find some clue to the identity of the hunter who had shot Diana. They just wanted to ask me some questions, he said, but the next hour was an unpleasant fantasy for me. I think they were even a little suspicious that I might have shot Diana myself, and anyway they wanted to fingerprint me in case the weapon were found, and I think they did, at least I looked at my fingers later and saw what appeared to be smudges of ink on the tips. Then they asked for permission to search our camp. I wondered about that, trying to visualize if there was anything lying around loose which might be incriminating, or which might give away the fact that we weren’t married. Did Diana have her driver’s license or something in her purse? They would see the empty Pill package. And where was my draft card? I hadn’t even thought about it lately; for all I knew, it was in my stuff that got burned back in Dudleytown.

“We’d just like your permission, fella,” said the state police sergeant. “If we didn’t have your permission, we’d get a search warrant anyway, no trouble, but if you don’t have anything to hide, why not?”

“Okay,” I said, and they disappeared.

The next day (the next night? the weather outside my window was dark), the next day, the next night, I had a nice vision, a sweet dream: the door of my room seemed to open, and a table was wheeled into my room, and on the table was the body of my ideal concept of a girl, but the body appeared to be alive. Dr. Fox and another doctor, and a couple of nurses, also materialized. One of the nurses strapped an imaginary face mask on me so that I wouldn’t be able to give Diana my imaginary pneumococcal germs, so I couldn’t kiss her. “Well, here she seems to be,” said Dr. Fox, “but we can’t leave her with you, just now. So have a look, and a few words, and then we’ll have to wait until you’re well enough so she won’t catch anything from you.”

The four of them vanished for a minute to leave us alone.

“Hi,” I think I said. “How do you seem to be feeling?”

Apparently she could not lift her head but she could attempt to turn it toward me, and give me a semblance of a smile. “Hi, Day,” it seemed she said. “You saved my life, didn’t you? I’m going to live, aren’t I?”

“You’re going to live a long, long time,” I said.

She seemed to smile. “Do you think why I am?”

“I know why you am,” I said.

“Her story conflicts a bit with yours, I’m afraid,” said Dr. Fox to me later. “She claims the two of you are married, all right, but she says you are Mr. and Mrs. Daniel L. Montross.” He shrugged. “Well, I don’t care what your names are, but I don’t think you’re really Mr. and Mrs., now are you? I don’t care about that either. Still, I’d just like to know, for my own satisfaction, what you imagine that you’re doing. Two kids don’t camp out for ten weeks in a place like Five Corners at this time of year, regardless of how much they like the outdoors. Do you feel like talking to me about it?” So I told him. Again, I didn’t mention anything about Daniel Lyam Montross; a cool doctor like Fox would be the last sort of person to swallow anything along that line. I just told him that Diana and I had a great interest in American ghost towns and were doing research now into Five Corners. He said, “I shouldn’t think it would take that long to find out all there is to know about Five Corners. Have you talked to Mrs. Peary in Bridgewater?” When I said no, he told me about this old lady, Mrs. Peary, who had been born and raised in Five Corners and whose family was one of the last families to leave the place. He told me how to find her house in Bridgewater, in case I wanted to interview her when I got well enough to leave the hospital. Then, before leaving me this time, he gave me a copy of that day’s issue of the Rutland Herald, which carried this brief story:

WOMAN IN PLYMOUTH SHOT BY DEER HUNTER

Mrs. C. Day Whittacker, 22, of Dudleytown, Conn., is listed in critical condition today in Woodstock Memorial Hospital after receiving an apparent gunshot wound at the Five Corners cemetery in Plymouth. State Police have found no clues to the identity of her possible assailant.

Mrs. Whittacker, who was said to be camping with her husband in the area, had apparently been clearing brush with an axe in the abandoned cemetery when the injury was thought to occur. She was discovered there later by her husband, who carried her on his back a distance of some four miles to the nearest house, that of Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Tindall of South Bridgewater, who transported the couple to Woodstock Hospital.

Mr. Whittacker is also in Woodstock Hospital, where doctors say he is recovering from exposure, bronchopneumonia and what is said to be nerves.

Mrs. Whittacker was hit in her right side with what appeared to be a 30–30 bullet fired from an apparently considerable distance.

Mrs. Lucille Johnson of Pomfret, speaking on behalf of the Windsor County Gun Control Society, remarked, “This senseless killing should serve to renew our efforts to have hunters in this county submitted to more rigorous tests and licensing procedures.”

Quite often Dr. Fox would drop in for a visit, not just to check up on my condition but because he really seemed to enjoy talking with me. We became good buddies, and talked about everything under the sun. I was almost sorry that I would have to leave the hospital and might never see him again. He seemed to be an extremely intelligent person, and was a storehouse of information on any subject. I had no reservations about expressing all my real feelings to him, and I almost decided to tell him about Daniel Lyam Montross. I felt that he would probably understand, and wouldn’t laugh at me. But somehow I still felt that Daniel Lyam Montross was something private between Diana and me, and shouldn’t be shared with anybody. So I never told him anything about that subject. I did tell him about our time in Dudleytown, and how the presence of those Jesus freaks had caused us to get evicted. And I told him that it was our intention to go on exploring other ghost towns. He said I’d better pick one down south somewhere because winter was coming on.

One time I asked him if he had ever had the feeling that he was the only person in the world, that is, that he was the only “real” person and everybody else was imaginary. This was an idea that had been bothering me a lot, I said. He laughed and said he imagined that everyone must have had that notion at one time or another, including himself. Then he told me about a philosophical theory called “solipsism” which derived from Descartes’ famous “I think, therefore I am” idea, and which could be expressed as “I think, therefore I am. But because I am, everything else is only what I think or imagine.” In a joking mood, Dr. Fox even coined an imaginary disease, “solipsitis,” and he gave me that familiar mock-punch on my shoulder and said, “That’s your real affliction, Day. Solipsitis. And we can’t cure it.”

But soon after that, Dr. Fox apparently decided that I was well enough not to be quarantined from Diana. “I should imagine solipsitis isn’t contagious,” he said, and he arranged for another bed to be put into my room, and for her to appear in it. She still seemed to be very weak, and because of gastrointestinal damage could not have food, and had to have her nourishment intravenously. Ironically it was Thanksgiving Day, and our first meal together was Thanksgiving dinner, but she just had to lie there and watch me eat my turkey because she couldn’t have any. She was still often in pain, and had to take injections when the pain got bad, and in order to sleep. But she told me that just holding my hand was better than an injection. There was a television set in our room, but we never turned it on. When we didn’t feel like talking, we just lay there in our beds, not far apart, holding hands. I knew that we were often thinking about the same thing, but she was the first to put it into words:

“Do you miss Daniel? Have you been thinking about him?”

I said of course and she asked if I would mind if she put me to sleep in order to “reestablish contact” with him, and I thought it would be stronger proof that both he and she existed if she could do it under the circumstances. So I said all right.

When she brought me back, Dr. Fox was standing in the room, giving me a rather puzzled look, and he said to me, “So that’s how you wake up.” Then he said, “There’s a man on the telephone, long distance from New Jersey. Says his name is Chuck Whittacker, and a friend of his called him about the story in the newspapers of the shooting, and he wants to know if by any chance you might happen to be his son who ran away from home early last summer. Says his son’s name is C. Day Whittacker and he would be nineteen years old. Says his son is tall and skinny and brown-haired. And do you happen to have a birthmark on your left thigh?” Dr. Fox lifted the sheet and lifted my bedgown and looked at my left thigh. “Well,” he said. “So what shall I tell the man?”

“Would you mind telling him,” I asked, “that I’m short and fat and blond, and that the birthmark is on my right shoulder?”

“I hate to lie to people,” Dr. Fox said.

“But don’t you often have to?” I asked, reminding him.

“Yeah,” he said. “I often do.” And he gave me that familiar mock-punch on my shoulder and walked out of the room.

“My doctor won’t tell,” I said to Diana. “He’s a good guy.” But she wasn’t there, she must have fallen asleep, it seems.

When I got out of the hospital, the first thing I did, although I was still pretty weak and didn’t feel like doing much walking, was hitchhike back up to Bridgewater to locate the house of the Mrs. Peary that Dr. Fox had mentioned. It was a very modest green frame house on one of the hills behind the village. She lived there alone but told me she had a son and daughter and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren who often came to visit, so she wasn’t lonely, she said. She was eighty-eight years old, she told me. Yes, she was born in Five Corners, she said, one of the Headle girls. Was she related by marriage to the Mrs. Peary who had operated Glen House? I asked her. Where did you learn that any Mrs. Peary run Glen House? she said. I said, Oh, I knew quite a lot about Five Corners back in the old days. Well, she said, she was sorry to inform me, but she had never heard of any Mrs. Peary who run Glen House. Glen House was run by a couple name of Johnson, far’s she could recollect. Was she in school at the Five Corners Academy? I asked. Yes, but dropped out in the seventh grade to help her mother keep house. What year? That was ’ninety-five. Did she know the new schoolmaster who came the next year? No, but she’d seen him. What was his name? She didn’t remember.

Did she know Henry Fox? I asked. You mean the doctor in Woodstock? she said. No, I said, the man who ran the Five Corners gold mine. Oh that Henry Fox, she said. No, she’d never known him, never even seen him, but she’d heard plenty of him. He was just a lonely old hermit, crazy as a coot. What had become of him? They had taken him off. Who was “they”? The authorities or whoever. Seems they must’ve taken him off to the bughouse.

Had she ever heard of Daniel Lyam Montross? The old woman mulled that over for a while, admitting the name sounded familiar but saying that so many people had come and gone during the years she lived in Five Corners that she just couldn’t remember all their names. I told her that Daniel Lyam Montross had lived there for at least eight years, and had been a carpenter after having been schoolmaster at the academy for a couple of years. I told her that he had lived most of the time with the McLowerys. Joel and Melissa? the old woman said. Why yes, she said, she remembered the McLowerys, they always had a hired man or two living on the place, but she couldn’t recall knowing the names of any of them. What happened to the McLowerys’ daughter, Rachel? I asked. Oh, that poor thing, the old woman said, she drowned herself in the millpond, but everybody knew she hadn’t been “right” for several years.

Then the old woman got out an ancient scrapbook which was also a photograph album. She had one photograph of the schoolchildren at Five Corners Academy, taken a couple of years before Daniel would have arrived. That one’s me, the old woman said, pointing to a pubescent girl in a pinafore, and this one’s Rachel, pointing to another pubescent girl in a white dress. The photograph itself wasn’t large, and had twenty or more kids crammed into it, so that Rachel occupied only a very tiny piece of it, but even so I could tell, by squinting close at the photograph, that she had been a beautiful girl. I asked the old woman if she didn’t know anything about Rachel’s lovers, but she said that she had the impression that Rachel during her last years didn’t have anything but “phantom lovers”…although there’d been rumors that a certain half-wit named Marshall Allen had “fooled around” with her. What had happened to Marshall Allen? Somebody had shot him. She didn’t know who? No.

She showed me another picture. “That’s the first day the mail came,” she said. The town was having a celebration because the mail was being delivered for the first time in 1896; in the photograph you can see Glen House on the left, part of Five Corners Academy on the right, several freshly painted houses up on the hill in the background (“That one’s where the McLowerys lived,” she said), a mob of people and horses and wagons in the foreground surrounding the mail wagon. The driver of the mail wagon is standing up in his wagon and shaking the hand of some prominent-looking citizen, but in doing so his head is turned nearly around and about all you can tell about him is that he has heavy black hair and is tall and youthful. Even so, this might be the only picture in existence of Daniel Lyam Montross. I asked the woman who this was. “Oh, that’s the feller who brung the mail that day. Young feller out of Ludlow.” She didn’t remember his name. Would she possibly consider giving me—or selling me—this picture? Well, she said, she’d like to, but it was the only one she had, and she was sort of attached to it. So I took another long look at the picture, and the old woman put it back in her scrapbook-album and I thanked her very much for her time and for helping me out.

My interview with Mrs. Peary left me feeling pretty good. Even if it hadn’t proved definitely that Daniel Lyam Montross had lived in Five Corners, there were so many other details that were just perfect, and it helped quite a lot to ease the pains of my “solipsitis.” Back in Woodstock again, I visited the library of the Windsor County Historical Society in an old colonial brick building off the square. I told the very nice lady who waited on me that I wanted to find out whatever I could about the village of Five Corners. She poked around through her card files for a long time and then she brought to my table several things: an atlas with a map of Five Corners, showing the location of all the buildings and the gold mine camp with its various buildings, a copy of the Vermont Life magazine article about the gold mine, which I had already seen back home in the high school library, and, from a defunct magazine of 1928, a story called “Vanished Life Among The Hills,” about the village of Five Corners. Also assorted newspaper clippings and town histories of Plymouth. I didn’t learn very much from these things. None of them mentioned Daniel Lyam Montross. I did learn, however, that Henry Fox in his old age had come down with Bright’s Disease and had been taken to a place in Brattleboro, Vermont, called The Retreat, where he died in 1919. I asked the librarian if she knew what The Retreat was. Yes, she said, it was—and still is—the largest privately maintained mental hospital in the country. You mean insane asylum? I asked. If you want to call it that, she said. I wondered how long Henry Fox had been kept there before he died; in 1919 he would have been about seventy years old, and that would have been some fourteen or fifteen years after Daniel Lyam Montross last saw him. I wondered what Daniel Lyam Montross would think if he knew that his old mentor, that sage preceptor, had died in the funny farm. If I told Diana, I would have to make her promise not to tell Daniel.

After leaving the historical society, I went to the Woodstock Public Library and tried to do some research on ghost towns in warmer climates. The only thing in the card catalog was about ghost towns out west, and the image of the western ghost town is so stereotyped that it just doesn’t appeal to me. I’ve never had any desire to go out west. I tried the Reader’s Guide, and found an article about a ghost town in Florida, but when I read the article I discovered that all of the country around that particular place was very flat, and Daniel Lyam Montross only liked mountain country, so I doubt very much that he ever went to a place like Florida. The trouble was, almost all of the really warm parts of the south, both on the Atlantic coast and the Gulf coast, are very flat. There’re probably some ghost towns in the mountains of Georgia, though, but I couldn’t find anything in the Woodstock library, even though I asked the librarian to help me. What we would probably have to do, if it came to that, I decided, is go on down to Georgia and I could leave Diana at our motel while I went off and tried the local libraries. But before leaving the Woodstock library, I did get a surprise, though: the librarian showed me this book called Ghost Towns of New England. I told her I was interested mainly in ghost towns down south, but since we couldn’t find anything on that subject I thought I might as well browse through this book. The guy who’d written it had just sort of scratched the surface, but he’d found something like fourteen or fifteen genuine ghost towns in all of the New England states except Rhode Island. Five Corners wasn’t included, but Dudleytown had a whole chapter on it, which I read, without learning anything I didn’t already know. There were several places over in New Hampshire that I wanted very much to look into, but we really couldn’t go off exploring any more places in New England until the late spring or summer.

After the Woodstock library closed for the day, I had my supper at the corner cafe, and then just killed time around Woodstock while waiting for evening visiting hours at the hospital. I thought a lot about Georgia, trying to picture it, and wondered what the trees look like down there. I wondered if Daniel Lyam Montross would have any problems in picking up a southern accent.

As soon as evening visiting hours began, I went back to the Woodstock Hospital. But I couldn’t find Diana. I mean, she wasn’t in the room where I had left her. I located Dr. Fox’s office, but had to wait while he finished talking to somebody else. Then when he saw me, he said, Oh, it’s you again, Day. I thought we cured you. Yes, I said, but I had just come to visit Diana, and she wasn’t in her room. He just looked at me for a while, puzzled, as if he didn’t know anything about where they had moved her. He wasn’t her doctor, after all. But he was my friend. He stood up and said, Come on, and I’ll help you find her. He took me down several corridors and turned a corner, and left me in a waiting room, saying, Wait here just a sec, and went through some swinging doors. The doors had glass in them, I could see him down the corridor, talking to a nurse. In a little while he came back and said, Yes, she’s been moved. Room 128. Right down the hall there on the left. I thanked him, but before I could go on he asked me if I could drop by his office on my way out for a little chat. Sure, I said.

Then I went on to Diana’s room. A nurse stopped me and tried to give me an injection. Hey! I said, I’m not a patient any more, I’m just a visitor. Yes, she said, but she had to give me this so Diana wouldn’t catch anything from me. She said it was the same stuff they’d been giving before when I was with Diana. Okay, I didn’t mind needles, I said. Good boy, she said and gave me the injection and became very chatty, wanting to know what I’d been doing since I left the hospital, and did I think it was going to snow tomorrow? and so on. I chatted with her a couple of minutes, but I was impatient to go on in and see Diana.

Finally the nurse opened the door and said, Have a nice visit, and let me go on in. Diana seemed to be sitting up, or rather her bed appeared to have been cranked up so she was sitting. She had something in her hands, which I recognized as a ball of wool and two knitting needles. She said she was trying to learn how to knit. A nurse had shown her, she said. She was trying to knit me a sweater, but was wondering if she should settle for just a scarf. I thought that knitting must be more boring than watching TV, but she said it gave her something to do with her hands. She said she was dying to get out of the hospital, and the doctors had told her she might be able to leave tomorrow or the next day. Where shall we go? I asked. Five Corners, of course, she said; we’ve got some unfinished business there, don’t we? But aren’t you uneasy about going back to a place where you nearly got killed? I asked her. Lightning never strikes the same place twice, does it? she said. That’s an old myth, I said. Well, the hunting season is over now, isn’t it? she asked. I don’t know, I said, Maybe. Well, what would you rather do, Day? she asked, Don’t you want to go back to Five Corners? Not especially, I said, I’d rather go on to some other place, to the next place where Daniel Lyam Montross lived after he left Five Corners. And where is that? she asked. Georgia, I said. Really? she said, How do you know? I told him, I said. Oops. I mean, he told me. Diana smiled her smile. That’s a long way off, she said, but I suppose it’s probably a lot warmer than Vermont, and we would have an early spring. So I’ll ask him. Go to sleep, Day.

Soon enough she brought me back. She was smiling and shaking her head, and she said, Not Georgia. It was North Carolina. Shit, I said, North Carolina? I’ll bet it’s a lot warmer in Georgia. What part of North Carolina? I asked her. The mountains, of course, she said. And the name of the place is “Lost Cove.” How’s that for a good name for a ghost town? And it will be a ghost town, won’t it, Day? Yeah, I said, it probably will. But listen, she said, we simply can’t abandon Five Corners, just yet. Daniel won’t let us. I think he’s rather disappointed that you want to go off to some other place without making any effort to finish his story. He doesn’t feel that you have to tell all of his story, but he says you ought to at least give it a final chapter. I told Diana that that final chapter must be a very sad one, even a tragic one, and then I told her about the old woman I had met and the picture she’d shown me of Rachel, and what she said had happened to Rachel, and I told her what I had found out about the ultimate end of Henry Fox. But was it Daniel’s fault, Diana wanted to know, that Rachel drowned in the millpond? I don’t know, I said. Maybe. But we have to find out, Diana said. We have to. Don’t you imagine? We just can’t help it, can we? And I shook my head and said, No, we probably just can’t help it, it seems.

On my way out, I stopped by Dr. Fox’s office, as he had requested. He offered me a chair opposite his desk. It was a very nice room, with all his various diplomas and internship certificates on the wall. He lighted his pipe and leaned back in his swivel chair, looking me over for a moment before he said, “Well, how’ve you been feeling since you got out of the hospital?” I told him that I felt just fine, although sometimes I would get dizzy if I stayed on my feet too long. “You’re looking pretty good,” he said. “You’ll still be rather weak for a while, as a result of the pneumonia, and you should stay off your feet as much as possible for a couple of weeks, and certainly not attempt anything strenuous. Which brings up my question: What are you going to do now? What are your plans? You obviously have no intention of returning home to New Jersey.” I told him that the first thing I had to do was go back to Five Corners for a little while, maybe just a couple of days or so, and then we intended to go explore another ghost town down in North Carolina, where it would be warmer. That was your suggestion, remember? I said to him. You told me I ought to pick a warmer ghost town for the wintertime. “Yes,” he said, “but I don’t see why you need to go back to Five Corners. In fact, I don’t think that’s such a very good idea, at all.” There’s some unfinished business there, I told him. And besides, I had to go back at least to retrieve all of our stuff, all of our clothes and books and expensive camping and back-packing equipment. “All right,” he said. “How would you like for me to give you a ride up there in my car?” I started to protest that it was awfully nice of him but I didn’t want to put him to any trouble. Then I realized that when Diana got out of the hospital she wouldn’t be in any condition for walking or even hitchhiking. So I told Dr. Fox that I would appreciate that very much. “Good,” he said. “Tomorrow morning, then? About ten o’clock?” If Diana’s ready to leave the hospital at that time, I said. He looked at me. “Oh,” he said, “you have to take her with you, is that it?” Of course, I said. “Well,” he said, and gave me another one of those mock-punches on the shoulder, “tomorrow morning at ten.”

Oh, this is a story of some unfinished business, a story uncompleted about life and death in a lost town, oh, this is a story of living and loving and dying that never quite finished happening because it was entrusted to me who couldn’t tell it, oh, this might have been a fabulous, lurid, gripping tale rife with fine figures and strange turnings, if only there had been somebody else to tell it, oh, if somebody better than me had told it, he could have told the whole story of living and loving and dying, oh, he could have given it an end and a finishment, he could have wrapped it all up with a grand spine-tingling climax, but oh, there is nobody but me to tell it, and there are no spines tingling, because there is nobody, there is nobody, there is nobody some other place, but me.

And I’m nervous as hell.

So here we are back at “Reality Ranch.” And this is the final chapter. Some great writer, I forget who just now, once said that “reality” should always have quotation marks around it, because there isn’t any such thing. How true. But I discovered that I was glad to be back in Five Corners, and I immediately noticed that it seemed much more “real” than that hospital in Woodstock had seemed. I felt almost as if I had put myself together again, after being drawn out into “civilization” where I had been disoriented, confused and even sometimes frightened. I felt that I had come “home” by coming back to Five Corners, and home is a place of security, the right place. Woodstock had been some other place which seemed now like a nightmare. I discussed this with Diana, and she agreed with me. She had been feeling pretty much the same way herself, she said. Her injury and her operation and her recovery had seemed very “unreal” to her. There had even been moments when, she said, laughing, that she had begun to doubt whether or not she was really “alive.” But now, even though it was very cold in the woods, and getting colder, she was glad to be back. We mustn’t stay long, she said, but for now let’s enjoy it. It was a nice place, even an enchanted place, with all the ground covered with snow.

Dr. Fox himself had seemed reluctant to leave. I think he secretly wished that he could just stay here with us and share with us in the mood and atmosphere and experience of this place. He had had some difficulty driving his car all the way up into Five Corners; it was a sturdy Mercedes but the snow on the road became gradually deeper as we approached Five Corners, and he was worried about getting stuck. Then when we got here, I showed him our camp, feeling proud of it, although I was a little embarrassed to discover that the lean-to I had spent so much time building was not such a great piece of workmanship; the weight of the snow on its roof had caused it to sag and even to lean a little bit to one side. But Dr. Fox liked it here so much that I had a hard time getting rid of him, and when he finally did leave, it was only because I had promised that he could come back soon and visit. He said he would.

As soon as he was gone, I went to Diana and tried to wrap my arms around her, but she wagged her finger in my face and said, Don’t touch. Then she reminded me that she was still not in any condition for “romance,” and we had better take it “easy” for a while. So she got into our sleeping bag in the lean-to to rest and keep warm, while I chopped some firewood and fixed a lunch for us. I built up a good fire, and then threw into it some of the trash that had accumulated before we had had to leave, along with spoiled food and a few articles that had been damaged by being left out in the snow while we were gone. Most of our possessions were still in good shape because they had been left in the lean-to where the snow couldn’t get them. This included the most important thing: the collection of tapes, and the tape recorder. Our first day or so back in Five Corners, Diana just rested in the sleeping bag while replaying a lot of her favorite tapes so she could “pick up the pieces” that we had sort of left scattered behind us. I decided that instead of rushing her back into “romance,” I would devise a rather imaginative “program” for our slow and gradual but systematic return to lovemaking. Being a program and being systematic, it wasn’t very spontaneous, of course, but it was better than leaving well enough alone, and it was, at least in the first stages, a lot of fun for both of us. The beginning, or first step, was what I called “eye-fusing” or what Diana jokingly referred to as “eyeballing.” We just looked at each other. That’s all. But it wasn’t as simple as it sounds. If you stare deeply into someone’s eyes for long sustained periods of time, and just let your mind run free, you can have all sorts of fabulous thoughts and feelings. It’s also a good cure for “solipsitis,” if you suffer from it. The best way to convince yourself that somebody else exists is to look deeply into their eyes for a long time. As Diana said, being funny again (she was often very amusing, which is another good cure for solipsitis), on a clear day you can see forever. Well, almost. Sometimes I thought I could catch glimpses of her whole life, past and future, in the depths of her bright blue eyes. I think her eyes are the part of her that I like the best; much more exciting to me than her female parts.

This long session of eye-fusing wasn’t necessarily done in silence. We talked occasionally, telling each other what we could “see,” and after about half an hour of looking straight into each other’s eyes, without even blinking, much, I started talking to her. Come live with me and be my love, I said, and we will all the pleasures prove that hills and valleys, dales and fields and all the craggy mountains yields. There we will sit upon the rocks, and see the shepherds feed their flocks, by shallow rivers to whose falls melodious birds sing madrigals. And I will make thee beds of roses with a thousand fragrant posies, a cap of flowers, and a kirtle embroidered all with leaves of myrtle; a gown made of the finest wool which from our pretty lambs we pull; fair lined slippers for the cold, with buckles of the purest gold; a belt of straw and ivy buds, with coral clasps and amber studs and if these pleasures may thee move, come live with me and be my love. The shepherds’ swains shall dance and sing for thy delight each May morning: if these delights thy mind may move, then live with me and be my love.

And when I finished, Diana smiled at me and, still looking straight into my eyes without ever losing them, said: If all the world and love were young, and truth in every shepherd’s tongue, these pretty pleasures might me move, to live with thee, and be thy love. Time drives the flocks from field to fold, when rivers rage, and rocks grow cold, and Philomel becometh dumb, the rest complains of cares to come. The flowers do fade, and wanton fields, to wayward winter reckoning yields, a honey tongue, a heart of gall is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall. Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses, thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies, soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten in folly ripe, in reason rotten. Thy belt of straw and ivy buds, thy coral clasps and amber studs, all these in me no means can move, to come to thee, and be thy love. But could youth last, and love still breed, had joys no date, nor age no need, then these delights my mind might move, to live with thee and be thy love.

We both laughed then, in self-consciousness, and for the first time had to break the hold of our eyes. It was all I could do to keep from kissing her, but that had to wait for a later stage in my program. That was the third stage. The second stage, on our second day back in Five Corners, after the stage of eye-fusing, was a session of imaginary kissing. As in the first stage, we stared into each other’s eyes, but up very close this time, with our heads tilted to clear our noses out of each other’s way, and our lips just a fraction of an inch apart, almost but not quite touching, and in this position we pretended that we were having a long session of kissing, and imagined what it was feeling like without ever feeling it, actually. At first this was kind of frustrating, and both of us wanted to quit pretending and start doing, but after a while, if you let your mind run free, it’s almost as good as the real thing. In fact, in one respect it’s better than the real thing, as we discovered after moving on to the third stage on the third day, the stage of actual kissing, which seemed rather anticlimatic after the stage of imaginary kissing. If it’s actually happening, you know it is, and tend to take it for granted. But if you’re only pretending that it’s happening, you get more of a charge out of it because of the extra effort you have to put into the pretense. By God, I didn’t learn that from Daniel’s Henry Fox, nor from my Henry Fox either. I learned it from me…. And of course from Diana too, who agreed with me. She was ready, on the fourth day, for the fourth stage, more intimate. I had planned this too, but it didn’t bother me in the slightest to do it, and I was even sorry that I had given her so much trouble about it previously. Conic licorice, although I still don’t find that expression as amusing as she does. I did it very slowly at first, trying to stretch it out, and also because I didn’t want her to start writhing or squirming, which could have aggravated her injury; she was still wearing bandages on her side. But at the end she started writhing and squirming anyway, and asked me to go faster, which I did, and she had a very powerful climax which, I was relieved to learn, hadn’t really bothered her wound very much. That led me to hope that she would be ready for the sixth and final stage, which is actual fusing. But we still had the fifth stage to go through, which is felicity, and I discovered on the fifth day that for some reason she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, do this. It bothered me, and gave my solipsitis a turn for the worse. Her only excuse was that she was becoming tired of our “game” because it was only a “game,” and that she wasn’t going to “perform on schedule.” This left me so disappointed that I went off into the woods by myself and used my hand and tried to pretend it was her mouth, but this pretense just didn’t hold up, and afterwards I felt very ashamed of myself, and more solipsitic than ever.

I don’t want to leave the impression that during those first five days we were only playing games. That was only our recreation, or re-creation, as I saw it. It was a diversion from our main business, which was to continue recording on tape the story of Daniel Lyam Montross’s life in Five Corners. This was Diana’s first concern…and I should say mine too. But during those days I slept an awful lot, that is, she kept me in a trance so much of the time, that once again I started feeling jealous because she was spending more of her time with Daniel Lyam Montross than she was spending with me. But it was harder on her, too, because something went wrong with her tape recorder, and she had to use a kind of shorthand in her own handwriting instead. After our first session with the recorder, on the first day back in Five Corners, she brought me back from my trance, and said, Listen to this, and pressed the Replay button. I listened for a while, and said, I don’t hear anything. That’s what I mean, she said. There’s nothing coming back. It won’t replay. So I took the tape recorder apart, that is, I took the back off of it, and looked at it closely to see if any of the connections had come loose or unsoldered, but I couldn’t find anything wrong. I said maybe she had forgotten to push the right button, but she said she had enough experience with the recorder to know what she was doing. So I turned it on and spoke into the microphone, “Testing. One…two…three…four” and then rewound the tape and pushed the Replay button and the recorder said “Testing. One…two…three…four.” There, I said. Nothing wrong with it. You just must’ve forgotten to push down on the little red “Record” button. But after our next session with Daniel Lyam Montross, she brought me back from the trance again and she was very irritated. There’s still nothing coming back, she said. It still won’t replay. This began to seem pretty spooky to me, as if Daniel Lyam Montross was no longer actually with us, as if he had abandoned us, or as if Diana were no longer able to summon him up. But she claimed that she could hear him just fine, only something was wrong with this goddamn tape recorder and it wouldn’t replay his words.

So from then on, she stopped trying to use the tape recorder and instead attempted to get most of it down on paper in a kind of shorthand that she used. Several years of Daniel Lyam Montross’s life in Five Corners were condensed into these jottings. Here’s one of them, for example:

’01–’02. Fundmntlst relig. reviv. held 2 wks 5 Corn. summer ’01 by itin. evang. using ballroom Glen House, causes several to “get relig.,” includ. Melissa McL. who after getting relig. refuses further relations w/D.L.M., also puts stop to “sinful” commun. sharing outhouse by D.L.M. and Rachel. “Belated punishm. frm. God,” says Melissa McL when winter ’01–’02 all Joel McL. sheep die of staggers. A famine year.

I’ll confess that I simply don’t have any enthusiasm for trying to make a narrative out of stuff like that. But for whatever it’s worth (and to persuade D.L.M. that I haven’t made a complete botch of things), I’ll summarize, briefly, the essential information about his remaining years in Five Corners. We know that he stayed here until 1906. We know also why he left, finally. There had been a number of times when he had felt like leaving. At one point, when the United States was at war with Spain over the possession of the territories of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, and the state of Vermont was recruiting a regiment to be sent against the Spaniards, Daniel Lyam Montross almost joined up, and several years later regretted that he hadn’t. Henry Fox had talked him out of it, or rather, Henry Fox had given him a monologue on the subject of home, of home as the right place (Tape #176b, if anybody’s interested), and Daniel Lyam Montross began to feel disinclined to leave what had become very much his home. His life for the next several years was not very interesting, but that itself was what he liked about it, because, according to another of Henry Fox’s theories (revert to Tape # 153c), the ideal life is the settled life, the tranquil life in which nothing “happens,” or in which nothing happens that would be worth making a story out of (so don’t blame me, Daniel, if I can’t put anybody on the edge of their chairs with your last years here). At any rate, most of his life here until right near the end was what Vermonters would call an “accommodation.” Even his relationship with Rachel became an accommodation. Why didn’t he marry her? Well, he had tried to, at one point. He had even sent off to a mail-order house for a $13.75 diamond ring, and she had even worn it for a while, for a long time, in fact, without definitely saying yes or no. But then that business about the half-wit Marshall Allen had happened, and when Daniel found out about it, it had almost driven him as crazy as Rachel was. It certainly “soured” him on her. And Rachel began neglecting her appearance, as if that too would make her into more of an animal. Then Melissa McLowery “got religion” and everything seemed to be going downhill for Daniel as well as for the town of Five Corners. I don’t see any direct connection between the decline of Five Corners and the decline of Daniel’s life there, although Diana disagrees with me on this. The decline of Five Corners, from my point of view, dates from the time when, in 1903, Henry Fox for some perverse reason of his own (Tape #181a) decided to reveal the fact that there wasn’t any gold in Five Corners and never had been any. The bad economy of the famine year of ’01–’02 had caused the creation of a citizen’s committee, led by Judge Braddock, who tried to persuade Henry Fox to reopen the gold mines and continue operations. And when Henry Fox let out his secret, things just started to fall apart. It was as if the only thing that had kept the town existing there was the possibility of gold, not the actual mining of it, but just that possibility, that dream, and now that that dream was vanished, there was no longer any excuse for the existence of a town here. Naturally, Henry Fox’s unwise (or wise?) disclosure convinced the people of what they had guessed all along: that Henry Fox was crazy. Another group of citizens banded together for the purpose of burning down Gold Brook Chateau and driving Henry Fox away, but when they got there they found Daniel Lyam Montross standing with his rifle on the front porch, threatening to kill any or all of them. They retreated, but this incident didn’t help Daniel’s standing in the community very much.

The decline of the community was rapid, once it got started. A lot of people simply packed up and moved away. Glen House Hotel closed for lack of business, and because nobody was coming to the Saturday night contra-dances any more. The mail route was discontinued and most people had to get their mail from Bridgewater or Plymouth Notch. Several suicides occurred among old people who didn’t care to move away. Jake Claghorn was one of these. The covered bridge burned down, or somebody set it on fire, and Daniel Lyam Montross as the town carpenter (did I neglect to mention that he took up the trade of carpentry after giving up schoolteaching?) wanted to rebuild it exactly as it had been, but Judge Braddock told him to build the cheapest, simplest plank bridge, without any cover. This, incidentally, turned out to be the last job of work for Daniel Lyam Montross in Five Corners. His relations with Rachel, strangely enough, were beginning to take a turn for the better at the same time everything else was taking a turn for the worse. She had apparently been sane enough to realize that she wasn’t getting any younger, and she cleaned herself up and broke off her crazy “affair” with that half-wit Marshall Allen, and she even showed signs of becoming normal again, at least in the sense of being able to have a rational conversation with Daniel Lyam Montross (Tape #194c, the last one before our recorder stopped “working”) in which she told him that she had “come to her senses.” They talked about the idea of wedding. But then Daniel Lyam Montross made—or tried to make, it isn’t clear yet—love to her, and shortly after that Rachel was discovered drowned in the millpond. Daniel was certain that her drowning was the work of that sadistic half-wit Marshall Allen. Shortly thereafter Daniel Lyam Montross shot and killed Marshall Allen and left Five Corners forever.

Recently (yesterday afternoon, in fact) Diana brought me back from a trance, and I found her sitting there in her Adirondack chair holding a piece of paper in her lap and looking at it very sadly, with tears rolling down her cheeks. She just kept on looking down at it for a while, then she sniffled, and without a word handed it over for me to read. I recognized at once that it was a poem, even though it had no rhyme and not much meter, and I didn’t want to read it, because I’ve already agonized over this business of Diana asserting her own identity by writing poems which she claimed came from Daniel Lyam Montross. But it occurred to me now that I very much wanted Diana to assert her own identity, I needed for her to do it, even if it meant writing poems for “Daniel.” So I read the poem. It is called “For Rachel, My Woodscreature, Killed in a Millpond.”

Listen:

She approaches the millpond, still and dull as silver;

And her eyes dart, a sheep-eyed left-and-right glance

As if, when warming up to boys, the right looks could draw love to her,

And love rescue her in this eleventh hour,

A loon, diving, deep into the pond,

Her laugh shaking the dead but clear water.

The fish laugh with her!

The water, its ripplets rise to sighing

As her feet make of the surface one final sight.

No, there are no boys, who catch her last lorn glance and come to help her;

Only a lover could have helped her:

Stopping her run before this;

Hearing the laughter’s meaning.

Her lover, he is not there,

Holding to her dress, grabbing for her red ringlets.

The grasp of cold water cannot replace her

When he comes, groping for her hair.

If only he had grabbed her in a time

When grasp mattered, when ravenous touches

Might have in right breaths taught her the depth of his love,

Or, if no touch be to teach her:

Find her, hold her, and reach her.

I got sort of choked up myself, reading this, and might even have brushed away a tear or two, I guess, although it bothered me considerably, too, and it led to the first angry argument or quarrel that we had since getting back from Woodstock. My feelings were really all mixed up. On one hand, this simple poem almost single-handedly wiped out my solipsism for good, once and for all. I mean, I know I didn’t write that poem, I know I couldn’t have. And I don’t think Daniel Lyam Montross could have, either. Because he’s my creation, after all. So that leaves only Diana. And if it leaves only her, then she is. She has to be. But on the other hand, while I was so pleased with this proof of her identity, I couldn’t help resent it, I couldn’t help being envious of her poetic style, and, above all, I couldn’t help but be annoyed that she was messing around with my story of Daniel Lyam Montross…and couldn’t even get her facts straight.

That’s what led to our argument, our quarrel. “It’s a beautiful poem,” I allowed. “Truly beautiful. And I really hate to tell you this, but I’m afraid you’ll have to rewrite the poem. Because Rachel McLowery didn’t jump into the millpond. She was pushed. By Marshall Allen.” Oh yeah? Diana challenged. Says who? “Says me,” I said, and then there we were, yelling at each other again for the first time in quite a while. I couldn’t very well come right out and admit that I had been creating Daniel Lyam Montross’s story all along, but I tried to reason with her, saying (or yelling, because we were talking very loudly at each other), WHAT OTHER REASON WOULD DANIEL HAVE HAD FOR KILLING MARSHALL ALLEN? HUH? YOU TELL ME THAT! IF YOU’RE SO SMART, HOW ARE YOU GOING TO JUSTIFY HIS SHOOTING DOWN THAT IDIOT IN COLD BLOOD? and Diana came back at me with, BECAUSE HE WAS MISTAKEN! BECAUSE HE JUST JUMPED TO THE WRONG CONCLUSIONS! RACHEL WASN’T MURDERED, SHE KILLED HERSELF, AND THAT’S WHAT MAKES IT SO MUCH SADDER AND POIGNANT! and I yelled back at Diana, OH YEAH??? SINCE WHEN IS IT SADDER TO KILL YOURSELF THAN GET MURDERED BY A HALF-WIT BULLY? LISTEN, SWEETHEART, YOU’D BETTER JUST STICK TO BEING A REPORTER OR RECORDER AND STOP TRYING TO INTERFERE WITH THE PLOT! and she yelled back at me, WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THAT YOU KNOW MORE THAN I DO??? WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THAT YOUR IMAGINATION IS ANY BETTER THAN MINE??? and I answered that one, all right. BECAUSE, DEAR HEART, I’M THE PYGMALION WHO CREATED YOU AND WHO LOVES YOU, GODDAMMIT, BUT YOU AREN’T ANY MORE CAPABLE OF CREATING ME THAN YOU ARE CAPABLE OF LOVING ME!!!! And that shut her up for a while, I guess, because I was right, after all. I don’t think she loves me, or ever will. I thought that after I had saved her life the way I did, she would be so grateful that she would have to love me, but instead I think it just makes her feel guilty; she knows she owes me some kind of debt, but she can’t love me, so she hates me because I make her feel guilty for not loving me. I was ready to go on arguing as long as she wanted to, but she didn’t want to. She put me to sleep. She left me asleep a long time, while she went off and had her fun with Daniel. When she brought me back, I don’t know how many hours later, she “announced” that she and Daniel Lyam Montross had been discussing this matter, and that Daniel Lyam Montross agreed with her that he must have been mistaken in jumping to the conclusion that Marshall Allen had pushed Rachel McLowery into the millpond and drowned her. He hadn’t had any real evidence, she said. He was contrite and sorrowful, she said he said, even if Marshall Allen was a worthless creep who didn’t deserve to go on living, but he was sorry he had killed him without knowing that Marshall wasn’t responsible for Rachel’s death. Furthermore, she said, she and Daniel Lyam Montross had “agreed” that when we got to Lost Cove, North Carolina, Daniel should be given the opportunity to tell the story of his life there, in verse, because he could do it more effectively in poetry than I could do it in prose. I felt, I felt—what’s the word? I felt just awful.

She loved him more than she loved me, that was clear. And it wasn’t just the filial love of a girl for her grandfather. I didn’t believe that “grandfather” business any more, anyway. Daniel Lyam Montross had been my creation, and she had only latched onto him…and not only latched onto him but taken him away from me. I felt excluded and unwanted and unnecessary. I felt that maybe I didn’t even love her any more, and this set me to wondering again about what love really is, and it reminded me that Daniel Lyam Montross, when he had been my age, nineteen, had been for a while preoccupied with this subject (listen to Tapes #134a through #139c). He had thought, at the time, that he was very much in love with Rachel, and because he couldn’t have her he loved her all the more. And because that idiot Marshall Allen could have her, it nearly drove him mad with love for her. And he wondered, was this love only desire? Finally he had put the question to Henry Fox. He and Fox were just sitting in the yard one day, watching Pooch gnaw his fleas, when apropos of nothing Daniel had asked Henry Fox, “Henry, do you believe in love?” But Henry Fox, looking away from him in pain, would not answer him, and even Pooch stopped chomping his fleas and gave Daniel a mournful look. A week or so later he had again sought an opportunity to broach the subject with Henry Fox, and asked, “Is there such a thing, Henry? What is love? Or is there only desire?” But once again Henry Fox could not—or would not—speak. Convinced that he would get no answer from Fox, Daniel had begun to look elsewhere. He asked Melissa. Melissa said that love is to like as applejack is to cider: love is merely a more potent form of liking. But this answer, for Daniel, only raised two larger questions: Is it possible to love without liking? and, Is it really possible to like without loving? So he put his question at the next opportunity to Rachel, thinking perhaps her weird woodsy mind knew answers to unfathomable questions. He asked her bluntly, one evening when they were sitting together in the privy, “Do you know what love is?” And after a moment she replied, Yup. “Then tell me,” he said. “I need to know.” And she gave him this definition of love: “Love is when you want for something to happen to you and know that it won’t, but want it because it won’t.” Daniel mulled this over for a considerable length of time until he thought he grasped what she meant, and so the next time he visited Henry Fox again he repeated Rachel’s definition to him and asked, “Is she right, Henry? Is that it? Is love only expecting something that won’t come?” But Henry Fox only looked more mournful than ever, and changed the subject, asking Daniel how he was getting along in his new trade of carpentry. Finally Daniel had to ask his question of the only other person in Five Corners from whom he might expect a clear answer: Judge Braddock. Since Daniel had resigned the schoolmastership, he and Braddock were no longer on regular speaking terms, but occasionally they had coffee and a moment’s chat in the lobby of Glen House, and on one of these occasions Daniel steered the conversation around to popping his question. Judge Braddock’s first reaction was suspicion or evasion, or at least uneasiness, that this serious topic was so casually thrown into a mundane and civil conversation, but then Braddock drew himself up and delivered himself of a rather pompous monologue (Tape #138c) on the subject, declaring that love was, among other things, the elevation of the baser instincts, the substitution of purity for grossness, the triumph of the mind over the body, the aspiration for perfection, and the appreciation of true beauty. Daniel sat out this monologue and took leave of Judge Braddock no wiser than before. He returned yet again to Henry Fox, and reported Braddock’s oration to him, which Fox regarded as “a lot of flatulent buncombe.” Then Daniel said, “Henry, if you won’t tell me what love is, at least tell me why you won’t tell me.” And Fox answered, “Because you are much too young. A man only learns the answer, if ever, when he’s gone through years of loving or trying to love, and years of trying to be loved and not being loved. Forget it for now. Love is like a ghost: everybody talks about ghosts, but not many folks have ever seen one, and those who did see one never could believe what they were looking at. Come back when you’re thirty-five or forty and if you still haven’t learned it, I’ll tell you.”

Have I said enough about you, Dan, for the time being? May I, please, say a little about Diana and me? Our sixth day back in Five Corners was supposed to be the day, according to my “program,” when we could finally make love again, “fuse” again. But of course she had rejected my program as a “game.” That was all right; I began to realize how artificial it was. If she were going to love me, it would have to be spontaneous. But still I thought—and hoped—it might happen on that sixth day. It was a good day. Diana seemed more interested in me than usual. After supper, she said she wanted me to talk about myself. She reminded me that I had made her tell me all about her childhood and her relations with her father and so forth. Now, she said, it was my turn. Tell her about my life, she said. Talk about my father. How did I get along with him? Was he very severe or disapproving, etc.? I didn’t very much enjoy talking about my father, or even thinking about him at a time like that, but I was flattered she was taking an interest in me, and she kept asking me questions to draw me out, just as I had done to her. Did he punish you? she asked. Yes. How? With his belt. You mean he just took off his belt and lashed you with it? Yes. Where? Not on your face? No, just on my butt. Sometimes, on my back. He just took it off and hit you? He didn’t say anything? No. He would just unbuckle it and slip it off and start swinging. It got to where, eventually, that even when he was undressing or changing his clothes, or even, you know, unbuckling his belt so he could slip his shirt back down inside his pants, I would think he was getting ready to clobber me and I would shriek and run. Like those dogs of Pavlov. That used to give him a laugh. Sometimes he would deliberately unbuckle his belt just to get a rise out of me.

“Oh, Day,” she said, and pressed my hand. Why did he belt you? What sort of things did you do wrong that he belted you for? Well, I said, the worst I can remember was, when I was about nine years old, I had this toy wagon, big enough to give a dog a ride in, sort of an old beat-up toy wagon, and I was fixing it up, I was painting it firehouse red, out on our front walk. I had newspapers spread so none of the paint would get on the walk or the steps but I was careless, I guess, and a few drops had splattered on the cement. Well, he came home from work, and when he saw that paint he really went into a rage and took off his belt while I was down on my knees painting the toy wagon and he started lashing me for all he was worth and I tried to crawl up the steps and into the house to get away from him but he just kept at it; I guess he must’ve had a bad day at the office and was taking it out on me, but anyway he kept belting me all the way up the steps and through the door where I crawled and kept crawling down the hall to the kitchen where I hoped my mother was, who might make him stop, but she wasn’t there for some reason, so he just went on belting me, me lying on the kitchen floor, until I guess his arm got tired and he had to quit.

Diana was very affectionate that night, and I think she might even have made love with me if I had kept talking and told her the story about the worst thing that ever happened to me. I had put her in a pitying and affectionate mood, but I stopped too soon. The reason I stopped was that I suddenly remembered that it was right after Diana had been telling me about her own childhood that she had been shot, and I had this very nervous feeling, not a premonition but just a sense of caution, that if I kept on telling her about my childhood something terrible might happen to me. So I stopped, just short of telling her about the worst thing that ever happened to me, which I couldn’t’ve told her anyway, because it would have embarrassed me too much: about when I was twelve years old and my father had opened the bathroom door and found me playing with myself, and I had locked him out and tried to hang myself with my belt from the shower-curtain rod, but the shower-curtain rod had bent, and he later beat me up with his belt for bending the shower-curtain rod even if he couldn’t beat me up for playing with myself. Maybe if I had been able to tell Diana about that, she might have felt affectionate enough to make love with me that night. But because I couldn’t, she didn’t. We held each other in our arms in the sleeping bag and went to sleep, and that was all. But sometime in the early morning, before dawn, I woke up and discovered, as I often do, that I had an erection. What is there about dreams that does this? The dream I had been having at that particular time didn’t seem to have anything to do with sex. It was something about climbing trees. Is climbing trees a sexual thing? Anyway, there I was with a very stiff and itchy erection, and a very bad case of solipsitis. I decided: Now I must determine if she is really real. She was sleeping on her side, with her back to me. Turned away from me even in sleep. She was wearing her ankle-length flannel nightgown because it was a cold night, a very cold night, a dozen degrees or so below freezing. Very gently I worked her nightdress up from her ankles until it had cleared her bottom. She wasn’t wearing any underthings. I embraced her back gently and moved my picket beneath her bottom and to her velvet. She didn’t stir, but the folds of her velvet involuntarily moistened at the touch of my picket and eased my going in. And oh, I knew she was for real, then. Perhaps only because such a long time had passed since I had been there before was the reason that I didn’t last very long, just a few gentle strokes, before everything blew out of me and I felt as if I had climbed the highest tree I ever climbed, and leapt out of it, and died a nicer death than a real death would have been, and was buried in the earth of her body, and rested there in peace.

Later that morning, she woke up, looking happy and innocent as if she didn’t have any idea what I had done. She got out of the sleeping bag and went off to use the latrine. But very soon she came running back, holding out her fingers and looking at something on them, and all at once she began yelling at me, DAY, DID YOU FUCK ME IN THE NIGHT??!! DID YOU, DAY??!! YOU DID, DIDN’T YOU, DAY!!?? OH, GOD!! OH, OH, GOD!!! and she showed me her fingers smeared with my still-wet seminal fluid and then she smacked me across the face with those fingers, and began yelling some more about whether I’d forgotten that she was out of pills, and this was absolutely the very worst time of the month for her, and she was almost certain that she would be pregnant. HOW COULD YOU DO SUCH A THING??!! HOW COULD YOU BE SO THOUGHTLESS??!! THIS IS SIMPLY FURTHER PROOF, IF ANY WERE NEEDED, THAT YOU DON’T HAVE ANY THOUGHT FOR ME AS A PERSON!! YOU JUST USE ME TO MASTURBATE WITH!! THAT’S ALL YOU WERE DOING, WASN’T IT??!! JUST MASTURBATING WITH MY SLEEPING BODY!!!! I wanted to die. I wanted to kill this whole goddamn story, right then. I wish I had. Why prolong the misery?

But later Diana seemed to be sorry that she had hit me and that she had said such ugly things to me. I’m just not myself, she said. We’ve got to get out of here pretty soon. We’re just about finished, aren’t we? And she added, If I’m pregnant, don’t worry about it; it’s very easy to get an abortion in New York.

Later, in the afternoon of that same day, we were pleasantly surprised by a visit from Dr. Fox. Maybe I shouldn’t say “pleasantly surprised,” because I’m not certain just how I felt when I saw him coming. He was on snowshoes, and was carrying an extra pair under his arm. He explained that he had been required to leave his car a mile back down the road when the snow got too deep. He asked me how I was and then said, “Don’t you think it’s about time to go? Don’t you think you’ve been here long enough?” Not quite, I said. But soon. Any day now. There was still something I had to find out, I said. Dr. Fox stayed a while and chatted, but I didn’t feel very talkative at that particular time. I decided I would walk him back to his car, on the other pair of snowshoes. I told Diana that I had always wanted to get the hang of walking on snowshoes, so I strapped them on and walked him back to his car. Walking on snowshoes is really pretty simple, once you get the hang of it. Hang hang hang of it. At his car, Dr. Fox said, very earnestly, “Come with me. Now.” What? I said. And leave Diana? Doc, your solipsitis is worse than mine. Very well, he said, and told me to keep the snowshoes. “But I’ll come back again in a few days,” he said, “and if you’re still here I’ll drag you out. Bodily.” He got into his car. Doc, I said, there’s something I’ve been trying to find out. Maybe you could tell me. What is love? Do you know what love is? He just looked at me. I think I stumped him, for once. He mumbled something about he hadn’t given it much thought, not lately, at least, and he had always tended to take it for granted that the subject either needed no definition or was incapable of one. Then he said, “If that’s what you’re trying to find out, I’m not sure that this is the right place for it.”

Now this is the next day, the last day, the last Day. That was yesterday that Dr. Fox was here. Doc, you were a good guy but you couldn’t tell me what love is. Maybe you were right, though, that this isn’t the right place for it. I’ll have to seek it in some other place. But I found out what it is. Yes I did. Diana discovered that there was nothing wrong with her tape recorder after all. Maybe she had forgotten to push the little red Record button. Last night she made a recording of Daniel Lyam Montross’s last night in Five Corners. It was after Rachel’s death but before he killed Marshall Allen. He went up to Gold Brook Chateau for the last time, to say goodbye to Henry Fox, but also to demand that Henry Fox finally tell him what love is. I want to play this tape (Tape #199b) of Henry Fox’s last monologue to Daniel. There are sounds of Fox blowing his nose occasionally, and sniffling, but he wasn’t crying.

Hear Fox’s Last Tape:

She was my daughter. You didn’t know that? She didn’t know it herself. Joel doesn’t know. Melissa married him when she was already pregnant but refused to marry me. Maybe Rachel inherited from me my insanity. You know everyone in Five Corners thinks I’m crazy. They’ve thought it so long that I think it myself. I know my father was insane, so if Rachel didn’t inherit it from me she got it from him on the bounce. Heimerich Voecks was a mad Austrian dentist who mesmerized my mother in order to fill one of her cavities while filling another one of her cavities. He did a thorough job on both, but she never saw him again.

So you want to know what love is. Do you really think you loved Rachel, and didn’t simply desire her? Do you know why you didn’t love her? Because it takes two. It takes two to make a love. No, I don’t mean because she didn’t love you. Maybe it was the other way around. Let’s start with back in the days when she used to share the privy with you all the time. Why do you think she did that? Just because she considered it wicked or bad or animalistic? Perhaps, but that’s only part of the answer. What does “privy” mean, by the way? It’s another one of our syncopes. Syncope for “private,” also maybe a syncope for “privity,” which is a word you’d do well to learn. Yes, I know you’re getting tired of words, but words are all we have to reach each other with. “Privity” means what two people together know between themselves, a shared secret. So why do you think Rachel wanted to share the privy with you? Because she had a secret she wanted to share. Because she had a million secrets she wanted to share. Her whole It she wanted to share, so It would be your It too, and yours hers.

That’s not all there is to it, though. It’s not that simple. To know the rest of it, you’d have to know why it didn’t work, why you couldn’t share your Its the way you shared the privy. Why didn’t you really enjoy sharing the privy with her? Because it was “embarrassing” you said. But which embarrassed you most, her calls of nature in your presence, or your calls in her presence? Your own, if I’m not mistaken. So you barred them. The origin of the word “embarrassment” means “to bar,” to put behind bars. I want you to see that the reason you couldn’t have true privity with her, and thereby true love with her, is that you barred yourself from her.

The reason she wouldn’t let you love her is precisely that, your barring yourself from her, requiring her to bar from you the only thing she could bar, because she couldn’t bar her It from you. Why did she let Marshall Allen have her? Maybe because he wasn’t barring anything from her. Being a half-wit, maybe he didn’t have anything to bar. Maybe we should all be idiots, so we wouldn’t have anything to bar. Did you know, by the way, that the Greek origin of “idiot” is related to privity, that idios means “private,” means “one’s own”? But you are disgusted with my endless origins. I will give you no more.

You’ve had more than enough of me. Now you’re going. You’re leaving Five Corners. But you came to me this time because you wanted to learn what love is, so you can be burdened with the knowledge of it wherever you go from here. You’ve learned some other answers, but never the right answer.

Why are they all two-holers, Dan? I keep asking you questions, and never giving you a chance to answer them, and this is my biggest question: why are they all two-holers, every privy you’ve ever seen? Have you ever seen a one-holer? Or better, have you ever seen, or known of, or heard about, any two people other than yourself and Rachel, who ever used a two-holer together? No. Then why do they make them that way? Since you’ve been a carpenter, I suppose you’ve built a number of two-holers yourself, haven’t you? Did any of your customers ever tell you to make two holes? Did you ever stop to ask yourself why you were cutting out two holes? Why not three? Or one?

Yes, it’s just “traditional.” But why? Most things traditional are the invention of necessity, but if people don’t use two-holers together, it’s not necessary, is it?

No, I still haven’t told you what love is. All I can talk about is privies. Maybe privies are easier to talk about than love. But here’s what I’m driving at: People aspire to love. Their Its aspire to love. Few people ever achieve it. To put it crudely, the two-hole privy is man’s aspiration to love. As few people ever truly use two holes together as ever really achieve love together.

You never achieved it with Rachel because of the impediment of your embarrassment. Not just over your calls of nature. But over yourself, your It, as it really is. You couldn’t let Rachel share that. You couldn’t let her see you as you really are. So she couldn’t let you have her as she really is. Here it is, Dan: here’s your long-sought definition: Love is the condition of two people—two identities, two Its—being able to see themselves as they really are.

But that’s not quite complete. I’d have to elaborate a bit, if you’d let me. Love is the condition of two Its being able to see and to accept themselves and each other as they really are. Love is the condition of being able to tell someone what you really mean and feel. Love is the condition of having no secrets. Love is the condition of sharing Its, of sharing the privity of the soul.

It sounds pretty near impossible, I know. And it pretty near is. If you ever achieve it, in some other place, send me a postcard.

Goodbye, Dan.

The next day Daniel Lyam Montross found and killed Marshall Allen, and then he left Five Corners for good, and headed south. Daniel thought back over the previous years, and remembered what Rachel had said when he had asked her what love is. “Love is when you want for something to happen to you and know that it won’t, but want it because it won’t.” And he thought: What she wanted was for me to share my It with her, as she tried to share hers with me. And he realized: But she knew I wouldn’t. And he knew: But she wanted me to because she knew I wouldn’t.

This morning Diana showed me another one of “Daniel’s” poems. Apparently he has been writing poetry like mad lately. But she claims that this one is the last poem he will write about Five Corners. The rest of his poems, she says, will be about Lost Cove, North Carolina. This last poem, called “Of A Lost Town,” is probably his best; in fact, it is so good that it almost persuades me Diana couldn’t possibly have written it herself. She’s talented, all right, but not that much. Reading that poem made me feel that Daniel Lyam Montross really does exist. But not in me. I refuse to include that poem here. I refuse! I refuse!

This morning also Diana reminded me of the time when I had tried to get her to “act out” the scene between Marshall Allen and Rachel, when Marshall sneaked up and fused her in an animal way while she was bent over eating (or pretending to eat) flowers. Diana said she was ready, if I still wanted to “act out” that experience. She said it might help me understand how Marshall really cared for Rachel in an animalistic way and therefore would not have pushed her into the millpond. This started another argument on the subject of whether Rachel had jumped or been pushed into the millpond, and I told her that nothing would convince me that Rachel wasn’t pushed into the millpond by Marshall Allen. I pointed out how necessary it was for Daniel to have that justification for killing Marshall Allen; otherwise Daniel would become a villain himself. But I was still kind of excited by the idea of acting out that particular situation, and I said, All right, sure, although I wondered if she wasn’t still worried about getting pregnant. She said she was certain that she was already pregnant, so it didn’t make any difference. So we acted out that scene, Diana pretending she was Rachel, I pretending I was Marshall, both of us pretending we were animals without any human intellect or feelings. I have to admit I enjoyed it. I also have to disclose the fact that I lasted longer than I ever had, that because I didn’t have any human mind to worry or get anxious about what I was doing, I held out, I endured, I even lasted longer than she, for the very first time. And I hoped that in my next incarnation I could be a buck deer or some other kind of animal.

But that wasn’t the last instance of “acting out.” She had one more idea in mind. There was one more, one last thing which she wanted to do. And that was act out the scene of Daniel’s and Rachel’s last moments together. Diana made me listen to Tape #197b. Rachel had come into the privy again while Daniel was there. The last sharing of the privy. The last privity. She had reverted again to her crazy way of talking. Her words and her presence aroused him. In desperation, he suddenly rose and lifted her bodily up from her hole and tried to empale her upon his picket, and when she violently resisted he tried to have her in the old way that was familiar to her, which she resisted even more violently, even biting him painfully, at which he, having gone without any sort of fusing or felicity for such a long time, asked her if she at least wouldn’t mind relieving his passion with her hand, but she refused him this too, she refused him all of her, waiting, perhaps, for him to become an animal like her before he could have her. All he had left to him, it seems, was his own hand, and he was so tense and desperate that just a few strokes might bring relief, and that maybe he wouldn’t even mind that she was there with him, because if he didn’t mind that she shared the privy with him, why should he mind this? So he did. He had to. And just as he approached the point of relief, she began cooing, “Daniel’s bad, he is, Daniel’s bad, bad, he is, he is, oh, is he? he is, yup,” which made him stop, but too late. I think she must have been trying to tell him that now he was really sharing himself with her, but then it was too late.

I wish, I wish to hell he had never done that. Or I wish, at least, that Diana hadn’t made me listen to the tape. Or I wish, if nothing else, that she hadn’t been so determined to have the two of us “act out” that particular scene. Which, of course, I wouldn’t even think of doing. I couldn’t possibly jerk myself off while she was watching. I told her I would kill myself before I could do something like that. She kept on, though, about what a simple and innocent thing it was, and I got angry and demanded to know what kind of perverse pleasure it could possibly give her, was she some kind of goddamn voyeur or something? and she reminded me of the time back in Connecticut when I had been the voyeur myself, watching her swim naked, and then she said that this particular experience had to be acted out in order to help her understand Rachel’s mind at that particular moment and help her understand why Rachel killed herself. I became very angry that she was stubbornly refusing to accept the obvious fact that Rachel had not killed herself but had been pushed by Marshall Allen. Maybe, Diana said with a kind of smirk, maybe if you could bring yourself to do this very simple and relatively innocent thing, it might help you understand the situation better. I’ll pretend I’m Rachel, she said, and I’ll tell you everything that’s going on in my mind while I watch you. I told her she might as well put the whole business out of her mind because she could talk until she was blue in the face and I would still kill myself before I could do something like that. Then she said I didn’t really love her because according to Henry Fox’s idea of love, it meant sharing our Its, and I ought to share my masturbation with her. I don’t masturbate, I said. She got a kind of smug look on her face and said, I’ve seen you do it. WHEN!!?? I yelled at her. WHEN THE FUCKING HELL WAS THIS??!! So she told me about the time back in Dudleytown, back before we had become lovers and I was going crazy trying to live with her without any sex, and she told me about how the sight of me doing it had made her do it too. I was so flushed and embarrassed I could hardly breathe. And that’s not all, she said, I’ve seen you do it lately too. And she laughed, and whipped her hand mirror out of her purse and shoved it up in front of my face and said, Goodness, look how red you are! Red as Rachel’s hair! and I knocked the mirror out of her hand and turned my back to her and fumed for a while, wanting to just evaporate or fall through the earth or die. GODDAMMIT, I said, IF YOU’VE ALREADY SEEN ME DO IT SO GODDAMN MANY TIMES WHY DO YOU HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN??!! and she said that it made a big difference if I knew that she was watching, just as Daniel had known that Rachel was. If I wanted to she would do it for me too, she said. If we’re going to share our Its, she said, we have to share our masturbation. I said that was something that you simply don’t share. My solipsitis was beginning to act up something awful, and I began to wonder if I had been out here all alone in the woods by myself all this time, jerking off all the time, and now my conscience was catching up with me. Masturbation, after all, is the ultimate absolute solipsism. Please, Day, she said. No! I shouted. Can’t you stop thinking about it?? Can’t you at least stop talking about it??

Then she began searching through the pockets of some of her clothes until she found an old, half-empty pack of cigarettes. She sat down in one of the Adirondack chairs and put a cigarette in her mouth, the first time she had done this in a long while. “I guess,” she said, and lighted her cigarette, “that not only do I not love you,” she inhaled deeply and held the smoke in her mouth, then let it filter out with these words: “but maybe I don’t even like you very much. In fact, I don’t think I can stand you. In fact,” and then she delivered herself of the most horrible piece of “psychologizing” that I had ever heard: that she supposed the real reason she wanted to watch me masturbate was that it would justify the contempt she felt for me.

That did it. I kicked her tape recorder as hard as I could, knocking it clear up under the lean-to. Then I grabbed up my coil of rope and ran out of our camp, to the nearest big maple tree. I gave that tree a big hug and then I began to climb her. “Stop, Day! Please stop!” Diana yelled after me. I climbed as high as I could go; the water started pouring out of my eyes so I could hardly see to tie the rope. Good thing I studied knot tying in the Boy Scouts. Diana was yelling her head off and even trying to climb the tree, which I knew she couldn’t do. I tied a pretty good hangman’s knot in one end of the rope and then tied a clove hitch around the limb I was on, and then I stood up on the limb and slipped the noose over my head and pulled it snug around my neck. I began thinking that suicide was sort of like masturbation, that suicide is to murder what masturbation is to coitus. Did I say that masturbation is the ultimate absolute solipsism? Then I amend that. Suicide is. If it would give Diana a big thrill to watch me jerk off, it ought to give her a bigger thrill to watch me jerk my whole body from this tree. Maybe she would cream her jeans. I knew I would cream mine, because that’s what hanging does to you, I’ve read about it. It made me laugh, as well as cry. And suddenly I realized that when I was dead, Daniel Lyam Montross would be “dead” too, at least as far as his present wretched incarnation was concerned, and that probably Diana would mourn his loss more than she would mourn the loss of me, but then I realized that Diana too would be dead. I had allowed her to live, just as I had allowed Daniel Lyam Montross to live, and now I could kill them both in one stroke. Diana was still trying to climb the tree and still yelling her head off, trying to take back the things she had said, trying to claim she hadn’t really meant them but was just acting them out as part of the “script.” I didn’t want to listen to her. I couldn’t wait. So I yelled at her, “I HOPE YOU SUFFER FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, YOU BITCH! SEE HOW YOU LIKE HAVING LOST COVE ALL TO YOURSELF!” and then I yelled one more thing: “I HOPE YOU NEVER FIND OUT WHY YOU ARE YOU!” and then I began walking out the limb toward its end. She raised her hands in a kind of praying gesture and screamed I LOVE YOU, DAY! I REALLY DO! PLEASE BELIEVE ME! to which I responded by clenching my fist and stiffening the middle finger upwards and jabbing it in her direction as viciously as I could, three or four times, and then I looked for an instant to judge how hard I would have to jump in order to clear a couple of limbs that were below the limb I was standing on.

Oh, this has been the terrible tragic story of a boy who loved a girl very much but was not loved by her at all, oh, this has been a story of a search for the right place where love could be, oh, a story of searching and not finding, oh, this has been a miserable story of sharing privies and jerking off, of loving oneself for not being loved, and of killing oneself for loving oneself and not being loved, oh, this

I closed my eyes and jumped.

It was not until April of the following year, four months later, that I managed to determine which of Vermont’s several ghost villages the couple had chosen for their autumn episode. After the trouble I had gone to in locating Five Corners, I was more disappointed in not finding them there than I had been in not finding them in Dudleytown. Day Whittacker’s lean-to had fallen, perhaps crushed by the weight of heavy snows in January and February. I found nothing in it, although beneath it I found Diana Stoving’s tape recorder, with one cassette in it. Searching elsewhere around their former camp, I found the grave. The grave had no headstone nor even a modest marker, save for a single scrap of paper weighted down by a rock. The paper was almost disintegrated but the handwriting in pencil was still legible, and is the poem I have appended.

I must confess that I had no heart for digging into that grave to find out which of them was buried there. It was Diana Stoving, of course, whom I was searching for, not Day Whittacker, and I knew that I couldn’t bear it if I were to find her in that grave. But by careful investigation elsewhere around the vicinity of their camp, I was able to spot a rope dangling from a maple tree, and to allow myself to believe that only a good Boy Scout could have tied the perfect hangman’s noose in the end of the rope. That was small comfort, but enough to make me hope that I might still find Diana Stoving in some other place.

In April, with the trees bare and patches of deep but dirty snow still in all the shady places (and there are many, many shady places), Five Corners is not a pretty place. But I could imagine how beautiful it must have been during their autumn, and I could imagine how beautifully decayed it must have become during their November. Imagination is both a wondrous and a terrible thing. As Chaucer said in his “The Miller’s Tale,” people can die of mere imagination. Reading the poem which follows, I began to imagine that this place, Five Corners, had never been inhabited by anything but sylphs and, briefly now, myself. Such a feeling can be conducive to a bad case of, to coin an imaginary disease, solipsitis, and I did not stay long there. But somebody, I knew, some identity corporeal enough to hold a pencil and paper, had written that poem. And to me, a good analyst of handwriting, that identity was a female.

Of a lost town, there’s little one can say.

I lived my seasons by their seasoning spell;

I knew my neighbors by their popular names,

A friend of all, and friendlier than they.

I moved among the wicked and the good,

Tried to distinguish them but seldom could.

Are towns created naturally of folks

At variance with themselves? Sure enough.

I never really lacked sufficient proof.

Myself against the self of me provokes

Itself into a Town of One. Or Few.

Or Several, but none of whom is you.

A town is but a tournament of two!

A tilt without lances, a horseless joust,

And arms at passage, arsenals unloosed!

A town is but a passage, passing through.

Death of a town is the end of the fight.

Our arms do not touch passing in continual night.

Lost, lost this place, as gone as I myself.

My town, those several of me who fought,

Is emptied now of all but afterthought:

An Itless town is less a man than sylph.

Yet sylphs are less ephemeral than man.

I’ll be a sylvan sylphid if I can.

Third Movement

There and Here

The abundance there is longed for, in contrast to the emptiness here; yet participation without loss of being is felt to be impossible, and also is not enough, and so the individual must cling to his isolation—his separateness without spontaneous, direct relatedness—because in doing so he is clinging to his identity. His longing is for complete union. But of this very longing he is terrified, because it will be the end of his self.

—R.D. Laing, The Divided Self

Montross: Selected Poems

Daniel Lyam Montross

Copyright by Diana Ruth Stoving as Administrix of the Estate of Daniel Lyam Montross

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

Contents

One

Whooptedoo

Driving South in December

Why Did I Go There?

Entity

No Road

Getting There

On First Viewing the Place

Now That We Are Here, Where Are We?

Founding

Housewarming

Post Coitum Triste

Two

First Sight

On Being a Furriner

Identity

Communication

The Curing

1. “I ‘took down sick’”

2. “Their ministrations failed”

3. “How right she was!”

The Outcast

Befriending. Brief Ending.

Three

Relative

Getting a Good Fire Going

Additional Gratuitous Advice from Mrs. Flossie Fay Salter on Their Use of Her Hearth

Cutting Her Water Off

The Ghost’s Outrage

Two Reasons

Strategy

The Exorcism

Christmas Coming

Mistletoe

Four

Hospitiful

Presents. Presence.

Virtue

Enters

You Can’t See Me, but I’m on My Knees

Unverminous

Synopsis so Far

Five

A Ballit of Amenities

Problem

Elements

The Mistletoe Revisited Yet Again

Turning It Around

The Wind, the Wind

What Do You Give a Ghost for Christmas?

Calendar: January

Idyll

Warming Up

The Ghost’s Song and Other Poems

One

Contents

Contents (cont.)

Still-Hunt

Still-Fire

Still-Life with Stallion

Strains in the Stillness

Stills in the Stereoscope

Distilling the Sticky Installment

Epistle to the Pestle

Still More

Girl, Still, on a Pedestal

Forestalling

Still in the Sticks

Two

Their Dance

Fade-Out

Bale and Woe

Double Take

The Return

Words

Venue (Vulgar)

Three

Audience

Negative

Thought versus Sense

Emulation

The Summons

Four

The Ghost’s Song

1. The Opening

2. There and Here

3. The Arrangement

4. The Birthing

5. The Duel

Old Woman’s Last Words

The Dreaming

MONTROSS:

Selected Poems

I

Whooptedoo

I hold my It’s debut.

A party’s being thrown.

A livelong whooptedoo,

With favors for your own.

Refreshments frequently.

Get drunk on these with me.

It’s not all fun and games.

Some speeches should be made,

Some highfalutin claims,

A screed, harangue, tirade.

You’ll keep from being bored

By all the drink you’ve stored.

Why must a drinking bout

Accompany a fête

Such as my coming-out?

Because it may off set

The horrors of the sight

Of quenchless appetite.

Driving South in December

The migratory birds have gone

Ahead of them. They follow fast

On numbered highways close upon

Unperceived airways of the last.

The cold pursues them but the snow

Abandons them in Delaware

Thereafter all the way they go

The sky is clear and weather’s fair.

The rising sun from off the sea

Shines on their left. Their lefts are gold.

This is the farthest south that he

Has wandered since my time of old.

Occasionally they traverse

Some trail or road I took before.

But seldom do they ask my course.

Such slights as this I can’t ignore.

How can one’s destination reach

Without advice? They seem to feel

Those migratory birds have each

Their own peculiar steering wheel.

Why Did I Go There?

Of all the places I have been,

It had enough to please:

The highest mountains I had seen,

The toweringest trees.

Was that enough to make me stop?

There’s more some other place.

Yet there I had a surplus crop

Of extra breathing space.

Entity

Extreme, how often he thinks her but his fancy’s figment

And grieves because he’ll never know for sure.

O how terrible to feel she’s only a segment

Of himself, who is so deeply insecure.

Little does he know she’s just as daft as he is,

And catches herself disbelieving in him.

She thinks he’s what a girl as silly as she is

Would fantasize, sweetly, on hysteric whim.

Faun and nymph sit in the wood so close together

They cannot see the forest for the trees,

Nor persons for their selves, and know not whether

Their vision is disorder or disease.

If it is true that one tree suffices to a woodland,

One person makes an entity, perhaps.

Therefore the burning question is: which one could stand

To let a vision of the other first collapse?

No Road

O my children the chagrin you felt when you got there

Or, rather, failed to get there in your car.

There never was a road for cars or anywhere

A way of ingress save for railroad car.

You had to leave the rented car there at Poplar,

And walk four miles to reach Lost Cove proper.

In Ought Six when first I found the Cove,

Leaving the Clinchfield train stalled in a grove,

The first few cars that people drove

Were on the market, but none would ever find

Access to that recess of humankind.

Getting There

Walking the trestle scared her.

High above the Toe River.

No handrail to hold to, and gaps

Between the ties. Oh! she gasped

And teetered, and he, holding, tottered.

The two swayed in the cold breeze.

Nights, blind, I used to skip along

This same trestle, and drunk to boot;

The river in its gorge roaring

As loud as I; nearly as liquid.

Care keeps us from dying.

Haste keeps us from caring.

The trestle is waiting, and daring.

On First Viewing the Place

The oblivescence came as no surprise.

This seasoned pair had learned not to expect.

And therefore they could not believe their eyes

On finding most of Love Cove still erect.

No house still stood with all its panes intact.

But still they stood. And they must stand and stare

Enrapturedly, and marvel at this fact:

The town exists without a person there.

If one could say a “town.” It never had

A grocery store or such concessionaires

As drugstore, bar, cafe; and that is sad.

But twenty families called it theirs.

Now That We Are Here, Where Are We?

Close, Tennessee’s east border,

Less than a mile in fact,

Or maybe even shorter,

I never paced it off.

A Yancey County quarter

Once but a water trough

In primitive disorder.

Steep, mountains are its warder,

Its solemn sentry mute.

Thick forests fast emborder

All corners of this glade,

Three-hundred-acre larder

Of air and sun and shade.

These elements transport her.

Rough path’s a mean retarder,

A crooked climbing hike.

No access could be harder

To any town on earth.

And as the town’s reporter,

I say for what it’s worth:

It takes a perfect ardor.

Founding

Who cleared it? Some of it was clear

When Morgan Ailing came the year

Of eighteen forty, looking for

Some other place ulterior.

For years he’d been a mountaineer.

He knew he’d found the right place here.

But Indians had made a stop,

To fell the forest, plant a crop,

And call it home. This bothered him

Whenever he discovered grim

Reminders of their tenancy.

The land, his bride, could never be

A maiden lady any more.

Instead, she was, he thought, a whore.

And so he used her. All his sons,

Except the very youngest ones

(When twelve were born he lost his count),

Upon their father’s whore would mount

And plant their seed. She took them each.

They stripped her far as they could reach.

Today her garments give the lie,

Reclaiming her virginity.

Housewarming

Touring, but hardly knowing which to choose,

They picked a house in fair repair to use.

It was a place that recent vandals spared,

The ancient Salter house of timbers squared.

The vandals must have brought along their girls,

Their rubbers left behind in twisted curls.

The walls were crudely crayoned with remarks

“Loretta sucks,” and “Ethel’s pussy barks.”

Amused by all this evidence of sin,

Our couple warmed their house by joining in.

Post Coitum Triste

Charged hearts beat time in tune.

The quick caught breath unbends.

Light leaves the afternoon.

It cools these friends.

Such love of loving dulls,

As when a lengthy drought

Hits a small town and pulls

The people out.

The flesh dispeopled lies.

Before all else expire,

This emptied pair must rise

To light a fire.

II

First Sight

Young winter there was not as black or bleak

As in Vermont or in Connecticut.

The rhododendron, everywhere in glut

Of green, kept winter fresh week after week.

When I arrived, the first few folk I met

Were three young ladies washing clothing in

The waters of the creek. They were all wet

And cold, but customed to this discipline.

The youngest girl among this comely three,

A blue-eyed blonde, a charming specimen,

Was destined when she came of age to be

My love. I wish I’d known it even then.

Because if I had told her on the spot,

It would no doubt have overwhelmed her less

Than my mere coming did. I’ve n’er forgot

Her open-mouthed bedazzled bashfulness.

Instead of saying, as I did, “How are

Ya, gulls? How can I find the Ailing place?”

I should have said to her alone, “My star,

Your light has led me here; now let’s embrace.”

On Being a Furriner

A dark outlander rarely showed up there.

To be a stranger takes a certain style,

A mixture both of artlessness and guile,

Or else he’s “fotched-on,” native folk declare.

No move was made to make me feel apart

Nor welcome either. Like the weather, I

Was looked upon the way they scan the sky

To see what ill the elements would start.

They asked not what I did but what I could.

To be a stranger and a carpenter,

Gave them a choice of evils to prefer,

Unless their statements I misunderstood.

But Jotham Ailing left behind a will

Decreeing how he wished his coffin made.

If I my skimpy welcome overstayed,

They let a stranger show a useful skill.

Identity

By name and by byname the populace called

My presence among the close kin and the cohorts who keep tight breath,

As I walked through their midst in their hard blank gaze unenthralled,

Like some poor doomed convict marching to his death.

“The Yankee,” first they called me when I came,

Or “Muntruss,” they sounded the name of my clan,

Or then “MONTrust” or then “MintROST” their tongues would tease

my name.

Most just said “Him.” Scarcely anyone knew me as “Dan.”

Communication

Our difficulties sharply underline:

Their way of speech, or maybe it was mine.

I loved the lilt with which their voices sang.

Their ears were grated by my nasal twang.

My road as “rud,” my four-syllable “cow”

Would make them snort and laugh, I don’t see how.

“I wonder—” I would say in accents stiff,

Whereas those folks would sing, “I wonder me if.”

“How are you?” was just “Hwarye?” on my tongue.

“Heigh-ho! God-proud to see ya!” they all sung.

My cow had “loo’ed”; a cow of theirs now “moo’ed.”

But “Bossie” gave our tongues similitude.

The Curing

ONE

I “took down sick” the second week.

So early did I lose repute.

I lost my voice and couldn’t speak

To boast I’d not been sick before.

What agony, that I was mute

And could not rail against death’s door.

The nearest doctor miles away,

And no one cared to take me there.

If I had known that he was not

Their doctor anyhow, it may

Have eased my wretched mind a lot.

Days passed before they were aware

That I was sick. They seemed to think

Me idle. “Law,” my hostess said,

“He don’t git up to eat nor drink,

Jist lies the day long in that bed.”

“A lazybones,” her man replied,

“Molasses won’t run down his laig.”

I wonder if I would have died

Had not a neighbor lady found:

“I do believe he’s got the plague.”

TWO

Their ministrations failed to help.

I was beyond the reach of such

Poor remedies they dosed me with.

Daniel Lyam Montross

They shook their heads and spoke of “yarbs,”

Their medicine to me a myth.

“I reckon best we’d better fetch

Aunt Billie Ledyard right away.”

They had the kindness to explain

That she could “doctor” me with “yarbs.”

I was too weak to doubt them sane.

She came. Her face relieved my fears

A woman older than her years

But handsome nonetheless, and sage.

She plunged right in to treat my case.

There was no fever she could not assuage.

She said I’d live to ripe old age.

THREE

How right she was! I’ll never know

Just what my diagnosis was.

She didn’t say. Perhaps I had

Some malady indeed death-throe.

A dose of “yarbs” like magic does

The curing. Herbs she used on me

Were pennyroyal, creosote,

I think, and balm of Gilead,

And Jimson root and foxglove blue.

For days my head was kept abuzz.

My heart was kept ablaze because

She cared, and worked so hard for me,

This woman of good antidote.

All doctors should be given pause

By wondrous rural pharmacy.

The Outcast

Although Aunt Billie’s herbs were welcome there,

I learned her husband wasn’t on good terms

With any of the Lost Cove folks, who were

Displeased with what they thought his downright harms.

It seems he’d lighted up the woods to burn,

And not just once, though this was years before.

He’d only meant to clear off brush and fern

To graze his cattle on the forest floor.

The townsmen warned him twice to quit his ways.

But Carlisle Ledyard was a stubborn soul.

His third burn took off miles of trees for days.

They’d not forgive such lack of self-control.

Befriending. Brief Ending.

If they put Carlisle Ledyard on the shelf,

I stood in threat of banishment myself.

There’s hidden meaning in the woods above:

The thing we both alike most lacked was love.

Reluctance was a sin I’d overcome,

To be his friend despite opprobrium.

But when I greeted him, he was, I fear,

Beyond the reach of sympathy or cheer.

Prospective friends to outcasts, do beware:

My good intentions led me to despair.

III

Relative

Both “towns” where they had lived before

Were swallowed up by wood.

A change it was, to have a door

In open neighborhood.

And yet these distances seclude

With loneliness diverse.

They wondered if such solitude

Was better or was worse.

Getting a Good Fire Going

Fires soon took much light toil from them, to find

A way to start them that they hadn’t tried.

Pathetic, how indoors his woodsman’s mind

Built bad-draught fires which sputtered, ebbed, and died.

Too long to learn to leave the fire alone:

Not to observe it closely while it’s weak.

All hill folk know facts which were unbeknown

To them, who’d not give me a chance to speak.

We “Other-Sides” do not believe in ghosts,

But Flossie Salter “’peared” to them, and they,

Hearing her cry, who had become their hostess,

“A watched far won’t burn!”, turned their eyes away.

Additional Gratuitous Advice

from Mrs. Flossie Fay Salter

on Their Use of Her Hearth

Don’t let the far burn out, by night

Or day! A far once lit keep bright

As long as you’ns intend to stay!

Bad luck, bad luck, to leave it lay

Untended! Shun the wood of peach

And sassafras! The fars of each

Could cause yore mothers both to die!

And Satan on the roof to lie!

If yore lit kindlin pops and cracks,

It means a snow will bear yore tracks!

And if the far should fry and sing,

You’ll find yoreselfs a-quarrelling!

Cutting Her Water Off

Old Flossie ranted on.

The boy got up and fled.

Her Flossie turned to, “Hon,

Incline to me yore head:

“A private word to heed:

If monthly you require

Some rags for when you bleed,

Don’t throw them in my far!

“It’s turrible bad luck!”

The girl replied, “Don’t fear.

I won’t be monthly struck

As long as I am here.”

The Ghost’s Outrage

She’d been a Baptist, Primitive,

The hideboundedest kind who live.

(Although to say she’s still “alive,”

Puts glosses on how souls survive.)

The way our couple misbehave

Has brought her running from the grave.

(If such a thing you can’t conceive,

Then you, like they, must make believe.)

As doleful as a mourning dove,

She watched them make their frantic love.

(At all events, I think them brave

To choose a spot where ghosts might rave.)

Alas, if only he’d connive

At showing her he meant to wive.

(Do dead folk have much thought to give

On marriage as imperative?)

Two Reasons

Yes, I will grant it’s rather odd

They’d met no ghosts in places past.

And Flossie, yes, is such a clod,

She leaves one numb if not aghast.

My theory is no jest or taunt

But uncontested fact, I vow:

A ghost desires a house to haunt,

And they’d not had a house till now.

Let’s lift away the other gauze:

Your flying saucer seems a “ghost.”

You “see” it. Is this not because

You see it when you need it most?

Strategy

O they had need of her!

To teach them country ways,

The use of juniper,

The meaning of the days.

As sharp-eyed as a hawk,

She was nobody’s fool.

And when she spoke she’d talk

The hind leg off a mule.

Her meddling and her chat

Soon drove them up the walls.

They wished sometimes she’d scat,

At least when nighttime falls.

They found a plan unique,

So strange it made me laugh:

They asked that “I” should “speak”

To her on their behalf.

The Exorcism

“Flossie,” I began, “it’s me, Dan Montross, here.

I’d like a word or two with you, I beg.”

“Eye Gawd a mighty! Dan! Pull up a cheer!”

Who’d think a ghost would hop on just one leg?

“How are ye, Floss? How’s ever little thing?”

“Jist fine, jist fine,” she said, but then she frowned.

“Exceptin they is always underwing,

And make it hard for me to git around.”

She carried on: “Is this some kind of joke,

That they are livin here? It aint got rhyme

Nor reason! No, it’s my own house!” I spoke:

“It is your house, but it is not your time.”

Then she was sad. “But tell you what,” I said,

“It’s Christmastime, almost; then you and I

Can visit here and share their board and bread.”

She smiled, and bade the pair a fond goodbye.

Christmas Coming

He tried to get her to agree:

No presents by their Christmas tree.

Or else no presents bought with cash.

A festoon, garland, homemade crèche

Would do to brighten things a bit.

No spending for his benefit.

Some holly on the mantel shelf;

He’d go and pick the greens himself,

And bag a turkey with his sling.

But please, don’t buy him anything.

She wouldn’t buy this argument,

And all the way to Burnsville went

To shop the stores for him and her.

O gold! and frankincense! and myrrh!

To give is like to thieve, he thought,

Regarding all the things she’d bought.

The giving to the got transfers:

Her lavish presents make him hers.

And yet, he thought, by getting such,

What you get free may cost too much.

Mistletoe

Up overhead an oak where mistletoe was swishing.

He thought that finding it right in their yard was refreshing.

He climbed high up and got some of it; everything was meshing

To make of their Christmas a joyous and sightly show.

But nervously he understood that it was not just for kissing.

From such, the science of botany is missing.

On some dark cold Yule night when the fireplace was hot and hissing,

He’d lecture to her on the parasitic mistletoe.

IV

Hospitiful

My permanence showed through everyone’s grin:

I was a stranger, and they “took me in.”

And when Yuletide came and I was still their stranger,

A wonder that I wasn’t made to sleep in a manger.

Presents. Presence.

The Day, the “younguns” think, to gift

Is on December twenty-fifth.

The oldsters feel that they should mix

The day of January six.

Although I cater to tradition,

I liked the young ones’ definition.

And so I worked with that in mind.

That Day the children rose to find

Someone had come and left behind

Assorted wooden toys and things:

Doll houses, Shoo-Fly rockers, swings.

The younguns cheered; the oldsters stood smirking

Because they guessed who did this woodworking.

Virtue

Christlike, the carpenter who scatters his gifts,

Stays out all night walking in high snow drifts,

Hopes to ingratiate himself to his neighbors,

This point of such handsome Christlikeness belabors.

Enters

Now my Magdalene drags in with feet bare and palms which are clammy,

And stage-center stands with a look that would melt any heart,

A girl-child of twelve, the Ledyard’s “leastun,” named Ammey,

The one I had overlooked, distributing my art.

Had the Ledyard place been too far for me to walk on that mission?

True, he, when I’d sought his friendship, sent me away.

Was that it? Or was it a matter of precognition:

I knew already she’d become my Magadalene some day?

You Can’t See Me, but I’m on My Knees

Forgive me, Ammey, had I known

That you were not already grown

But still a child despite your size,

I’d quickly go apologize.

What penance or amends could right

The wrongness of my oversight?

The giver was “unknown,” you see.

Acknowledge anonymity?

So here, to cancel out my debts,

I send anonymous regrets.

Unverminous

If thus far I have given a whitewashed picture

Of Lost Cove folk, and not revealed the squalor,

It hasn’t been from blindness or from stricture.

Like them, I disregard the almighty dollar.

There was no money there but stuff to barter,

And precious little stuff for even that.

The typical inhabitant was martyr

To poverty that wouldn’t keep a rat.

To bear his miseries would take an Atlas.

Why bother throwing out the trash and litter

Except into the yard? He was not bitter

He had the solacement of being ratless.

Synopsis so Far

I drifted in like mistletoe:

Birds shit the seeds where’er they go.

A stranger, like a wolf, laments

The natives’ false indifference.

I saw Death’s face when I was sick.

My fever was the candlestick.

When well, if gratitude allows,

Befriend your nurse but not her spouse.

Some wood and labor sacrificed

At Christmas make you feel like Christ.

My gifts were hooks I wetly dipped.

The fish I prized the most I skipped.

V

A Ballit of Amenities

Old Flossie’d been their hostess, and now that she had left,

They felt relieved at evening, but mornings felt bereft.

Too lightly they had taken the wisdom of her years.

Too bad she comes so quickly, then disappears.

“In retrospect, I miss it,” the girl would sigh anew.

“It was a thrill, her watching, when we lay down to screw.”

Their fireplace has been mentioned, their other things have not.

There’s more to daily living than keeping bodies hot.

The Salter house was cozy, because it was so small:

Two bedrooms, kitchen, parlor, four rooms in all.

The furniture they’d gathered, by “borrowing” around

From other empty houses, whatever still was sound.

They slept upon a mattress they’d found some other place.

’Twas filled with downy feathers, if not enough air space.

Few trips to town they’d taken, to stock up on supplies,

For “perishables” only; nothing else dies.

And then they’d finished shopping, returned to home, and O!

The thick wet flakes cascaded, and bound them in with snow.

A week he spent in chopping, to gather all their wood;

The seventh day he rested, and saw that it was good.

Content they spent their winter, no creature comforts missed,

Except perhaps a bathroom, and such did not exist.

There was a two-hole privy, they called their “country seat.”

They often went together, to pool their body heat.

I smile to see them sitting, as I did years ago.

They share their isolation, their privity, their glow.

Problem

Of creature comforts I was quick to speak.

I meant those of the body, not the mind.

He had a healthy, excellent physique,

But felt that circumstance was so unkind.

Nightly or daily they engaged in sex,

As any two such people are like to do.

As like as not it left them nervous wrecks

For having their cake and eating it too.

On his part complication took a wry turn:

He had the strength to make great effort, but

He seldom lasted long enough for her.

This is the paradox, the unkind cut:

Release is what exertions finally earn.

He used all his exertions to defer.

Elements

From the woods came the spring, its waters erupting a fountain

Which coursed to a pool almost right beside their door.

They lived on the northern slope of Flat Top Mountain,

Altitude, 4,954.

The rarefied Air and the clear pure cold Water

Were the two basic elements most dear to know.

The Fire is only the Air’s sultry daughter,

And Earth’s all covered by Water’s grandson, Snow.

Water and Air are the innate symbiotic pairing.

Like their lichen, whose pair uses a little of both.

As the atmosphere purifies by giving the Water an Airing,

Water gives Air its clouds, its mists, its vapors: its growth.

The Mistletoe Revisited Yet Again

But that’s so much poetry. And the metaphor’s ailing.

The lichen is outmoded, shopworn and bare.

One night when they’d finished their Christmas wassailing,

He plucked some old mistletoe out of her hair.

“Behold!” he exclaimed as if finding a spider,

And drunkenly started to lecture on how

An innocent tree gets this sponger inside her,

This free-loading guest who will drop in for chow.

This hanger-on may or may not be malignant.

So why is it license for lovers to kiss?

And “mistletoe’s” origin leaves one indignant:

It comes from the Latin word meaning “to piss.”

Turning It Around

She said, “I think a tree at least

Has some identity Its own,

And doesn’t mind if that’s increased

When spongers come and settle down.

“You’re not a sponger anyway.

It’s false, the way that you compare.

Reverse your precious figures, Day,

And see which selves we really are.

“The tree is you, the sponger I.

Your various selves are mighty boughs

To bear my slight identity.

The sponger has no earthly house.”

The Wind, the Wind

Often they hear the wind

Howl, howl around the eaves

And ’twixt their timbers pierce.

Thinly and pregnably skinned,

They shiver in their sleeves

And listen long to hear

Horn, flute, pipe: winds so fierce.

Their house the instrument

Weather rehearses upon.

The fipples are the cracks

That all the timbers vent.

Windows with panes near gone

Become the vibrant reeds

The wintry blast attacks,

Like some bewailing prayer

That wheedles ’round their heads.

In the Sanskrit, nirvā: “blow.”

Thus, a Nirvana’s where

One’s blown away from care.

This music wafts them off

Free, free in the whistling air.

What Do You Give a Ghost for Christmas?

Look now: in January he’s using stuff

She gave him at Christmas, more than enough

To while hours of time when weather is rough.

—In the corner there Flossie sits dipping her snuff.

She gave him a fiddle, that is, violin,

Because I had said that a fiddler I’d been.

His terrible practicing makes such a din

—That poor Flossie is needing some aspirin.

And while he’s preparing for his first concert,

He’s casually wearing a fifty-dollar shirt

Of French velour, quite plush, the color is vert.

—And there’s Flossie repining in homespun old skirt.

His cheeks are a-tingle with fragrant cologne,

Some after-shave lotion that playboys have known

On special occasions when oats are to be sown.

—And is Flossie’s aroma entirely her own?

But the gift he most prizes is his girlfriend’s dearness.

More treasured than gifts is the fact of her nearness.

And Flossie’s content with what seems such a queerness:

—That the gift which they gave her was only her hereness.

Calendar: January

Now in this spare month they become

Surveyors of their journey. Months

Have passed since first they started out.

Eventually the venturesome

Have miles of days to gad about.

In our peculiar minds, the year

Is like a landscape, and our days

A journey through geography.

Into December, peaks uprear

On Calendar’s topography.

But January’s all plateau.

They stand and look behind them, down

Upon the slopes they steeply scaled:

A rugged trail where gaps still show,

A path less traveled than travailed.

Ahead of them the view’s obscure,

The valley’s hung with fog and mist.

And yet it leaves them unafraid.

They’re comforted by being sure

That all the path is slow downgrade.

Idyll

Days are becoming longer but are still all too suddenly short.

The full night drops in before supper; they eat in half-dark,

And then have long hours to pass in some new game or sport.

My poetry’s not enough to entertain them much, they remark.

I suggest that they put to use one of Flossie’s oldest skills:

I remember how in the old days, hour upon evening hour,

She kept the children spellbound and breathless with scary tales:

Of spooks and ha’nts and specters white as flour.

It’s marvelous enough that this young pair has had such travels,

Their idylls, treks and outings, north and south.

But how wondrous: they can listen as a long tale unravels,

A ghost story which comes right out of the horse’s mouth.

Warming Up

Night after unearthly night,

She runs her repertoire:

The Cemetery War,

The Feud of Ancient Dead,

And How the Spirits Fight;

The Skeleton in Tree,

The Pool of Flaming Hair,

And Shades of Yesternight;

The Dog Without a Head,

The Spectral Jamboree,

And The Spotted Booger Mare,

The Critters of the Wild;

The Crying Baby Born

To Feebleminded Child;

The Succubus in Corn

Who Primes the Virgin Lad,

And What the Hermit Said,

And Many, Many More.

Each night, until their bed,

She told them all she knew.

And then she winked at me

(I think she winked, but he

Didn’t notice). Anyway:

“Now listen, younguns, while

I git this tale acrost!

A tellin-story old,

The Tale of Dan Montrost.”

The Ghost’s Song

and Other Poems

I

Contents

“Sticks-out-of-sack!” she intoned, her incantation

Beginning each new sequence.

They thought such conjuration some witchery, but it was only

A self-charm, a private joke.

These magic wands,

Sticks in a sack, knapsack

I’d packed around with me,

Just to have something to fill it.

Her knuckle-knobbed hands snapped the first stick.

Their ears if not their eyes perceived it.

Or was it just the crackling fire?

Dry, its pop splintered into kindling.

Now that stick, she commenced, were the carpinter.

And pinter! pinter! pinter! faded down the hall.

No use much fer carpinters hereabouts.

Sawyers, maybe. There wudn’t nary bitty need

Fer a carpinter.

Is how come I bustid that’un.

Then she fetched from the sack a second.

Still-Hunt

This’un hyur now, she said of the second stick, this’un’s

His rifle-gun. Crackerjack stick-out-of-sack!

Swear to Josh-way, he could crimp the tail of a razorback

At a hunurd yard or more!

Or shoot at a target from a hunurd feet

Six times and not leave but one hole!

How he kept body’n soul on speakin tarms them winter months

Was huntin was this hyur gun, fer squar’l and bar

And other beastes. Come time in the sprang

Fer the shootin-match, shootin fer the beef,

Couldn’t nobody best him ’ceptin Walt Ailing.

And me, I ’spect Dan jist ’lowed Walter top shot

Fer a politeness

Because he was still The Stranger.

Dan’s ways with a shootin-arn was what got

Him mixed up with the blockaders.

I won’t break this stick yet, no.

But bye and bye I’m gonna.

Still-Fire

Third stick’s a puny stave, aint it?

Fit for nought but burnin,

So I’ll chunk it in the far.

Burns puny too, don’t it?

That’un stands fer the far what lit the still,

The still fer bilin corn,

Fer cookin up the blockade brew,

The roastin-ear wine, ole mountain dew.

That’s what Dan got into,

Shining the moon.

The moon on the hemlock screen

Where the still is hid,

And Dan all night on his knees,

Pokin sticks under the biler,

Keeping the far jist rat,

Jist rat.

Still-Life with Stallion

Call this stick, the fourth’un, a hitchin-post.

A sourwood saplin he ties his horse to.

Oh yessiree, he’s got him a horse now.

A stallion black as a crow,

He swapped Mack Ailing twenty gallon for,

Out of his first big run of high wines.

Hear the stallion whinny?

He aint restless, nor hongry.

He jist caint tolerate the smell

Of the sour mash swill, the still-slop.

Cows’n pigs jist plumb crave the stuff

But horses do despise it.

Dan don’t know this yet.

“Henry,” says he (fer that’s the name he give it),

“What’s ailin you, anyhow?”

The stallion’s nostrils quiver.

Strains in the Stillness

Two sticks she fetched together from the sack

And scraped one upon another beneath her chin,

Rolly trudum, trudum, trudum, rolly day!

She sang, stamping her foot.

Rang tang a-whaddle linky day!

Fifth stick and sixth’un, one’n’other,

Make up his fiddle and his bow.

Swapped a gallon to Philo English fer’em.

Sattidy nights he listens to them old-timey fiddlers

And watches their fingers, till he knows by heart

The tunes and timin and fingerin.

Th’other six nights of the week,

Alone at his watch at the still,

Keepin the far, he learns him his fiddle.

Folks tease him about it.

Say he’ll give hisself away.

Stills in the Stereoscope

He give hisself away, he did. I mean that more ways than one.

The seventh stick she held out from her nose, like so,

And said, This hyur contraption, this thingumajig sortathing,

Fergit what he called it, a “Stars-Cup” or somethin.

Anyhow, see, you stick these double photygraphs in hyur,

And then you look through hyur, and it’s real as day!

Makes you think you could walk rat through the pitcher!

Dan swapped a travelin pedlar half a gallon fer it.

And then he took it ’round, and showed us all

Faraway places, some other places, palaces and wondrous cities;

Didn’t nobody even guess there ever was such places.

But now, younguns, stick yore eyes to this thing and I’ll show ye

Pitchers that wasn’t faraway but rat hyur at home.

Distilling the Sticky Installment

Now with that magic viewer,

Showing in three dimensions

Five more sticks, all but the last:

See them fellers in their khaki shirts

A-sneakin up the hill? Them’s gov’ment men.

Long arm of the law.

Our eighth stick hyur’s a long one, that long arm

Comin to raid Dan’s still and git him.

But his horse warned him, and he lit out

Ahead of the law. I hid him.

Me, Flossie Fay Salter, I’m the ninth stick

Tall, thin and ugly stick.

In yan barn I hid him and his horse

Nigh on to two weeks afore the law cooled down.

Now look at this hyur pitcher:

That’s my eldest darter, Frankie

A-fetchin Dan his vittles to the barn.

He got to teasin her and callin her

His “lick-wish stick.” She’s the tenth stick,

Tart as lickwish maybe, not as black.

See this next pitcher, the eleventh stick:

The cob pipe stuck in Swinn Brashear’s mouth.

Never saw him without it. Years later,

Atter Frankie wedded up with him, she used to tell

As how he often wore his pipe to bed.

But Swinn, he was a goodern, and come to be

Dan’s bestest friend, him who nearly stole his gal,

His Frankie, my Frankie.

They fought, Dan and Swinn. Dan won the fight,

But Swinn won Frankie anyway.

Twelfth stick was Dan’s motto, learned it from

This fat man in this pitcher, our Pressy-dunt:

“Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

There’s not but one stick left.

Epistle to the Pestle

Some say thirteen is unlucky, and maybe it is,

Maybe it is. ’Pends on which way you like

Your luck to run. Thirteenth stick, last stick,

Thick stick, stout stalk of a stick.

Aint gon tell y’uns what it is, no.

Couldn’t breathe it to save my soul.

But riddle ye, riddle ye: What would be

A man’s, Dan’s, mostest master stick?

To give him half of all his trouble

And half, leastways, of all his pleasure.

Now the bag is empty.

Still More

The magic sack had ejaculated

All its sticks, standing

For several years of my living

Until I was almost thirty,

And courted a girl named Frankie,

Not yet even knowing of Ammey

Except as a child still growing

Whom I greeted sometimes in passing

With a smile because she was pretty

But never got a word in return.

Who can say of any five years of his living

That the total images of his memories

Are any sharper than these sticks?

Yet she knew she’d left them bewildered

And casting screwed glances at one another

And wondering if she was touched in her telling

Or if they were touched in their believing.

So she said, Allrighty, you scoffers,

I’ll dump all the sticks in a mixing,

And one of y’uns shet yore eyelids

And pick a stick at random,

And I’ll take it as my text.

Girl, Still, on a Pedestal

Then Day, he shut his eyes, and groped to pick a stick

And Flossie cried, Eh, law! You got his bow, the sixth.

Caint fiddle with jist a bow, so leave it lay aside

And let yan other fiddlers play while Dan

Turns from the barn-stage to scan the crowd

And sees, knees wrapped ’round a stanchion, the girl,

The Ledyard’s leastun, listening, but her eyes on Dan.

Forestalling

Knees shapely as geese,

Arms dangling their form,

Whole hanks of blonde hair outreaching,

Blue eyes of a size amazing,

Lips, lobes, bare toes,

Swells of a stung long hanging

Twined with herself,

Lone and drawn in upon herself

Only her eyes let outward

Where he could catch them

And take them as signals

For her hidden hands

Which he sought and found.

Still in the Sticks

I’ll dance with you, my lady, Dan bowed before her.

Her curtsey was the step she took to flee.

She tripped, and headlong nearly fell, into his arms,

Who caught her up and laughing drew her

Out among the other dancers, who stopped

And watched, who tried, but couldn’t

Remember the name of this humble girl.

II

Their Dance

The moonshine on his breath

Soon shared with her his fever

As if a whiff of death

Would chill but wouldn’t grieve her.

They spun until the moon

Had dropped far out of sight,

The other dancers strewn

To homeward by starlight.

His arm around her waist

Would try to pull her nearer.

She shied before such haste

And wouldn’t let him steer her.

But he was all she had

In all this world of harm,

And so she felt right glad

To hang upon his arm.

Fade-Out

He waltzed her home that e’en.

This thirty-year-old soak

With a girl just past sixteen,

Who never spoke.

Her mouth he tried to kiss

While she was unaware,

But dark caused him to miss

And get her hair.

He reached to find her face

But touched the empty air.

She’d slipped some other place

He found not where.

Bale and Woe

He has known this inevitable lonesome home-walking,

With only the wry face of the moon his fellow-traveler,

Between trees that say, We are anchored

And don’t have to move with you in your homing

Nor swing our limbs to keep our balance.

Our drunkenness, the sap we suck, is extracted

Out of the same soil that holds our roots so firmly

And keeps us, unlike you, from awkwardly staggering.

Your sway is ours, your sweat is ours, your swearing

Is not unlike the soughing of our boughs

But your lament is of the girl who sends you homeward

While ours is of this race of men we share the earth with

Who walk between us without our sense of staying.

Double Take

He cursed the trees and stopped his walk, to curse.

They wrung their limbs in mock-fright at his oaths.

But one of them, among their lowest growths,

Mocked not, but beckoned, and that was worse.

Was she a tree? Or was this tree a her?

A sapling shrub, or second-growing brush,

In silhouette against the moon’s cold hush,

As thin as any tree, but lithesomer.

Her limbs outstretched. And all her fingers splayed.

He couldn’t help but rush toward that embrace

And soon perceive that this tree had a face

Whose lines were Ammey’s, but were Ammey unafraid.

The Return

Why had she changed her mind?

Or had her mind changed her?

She still wouldn’t speak, and he

Was too far past cheer to care.

They went back arm-in-arm

Along this trail he’d solo’d,

Back-tracking footprints of his

She’d steadfastly followed.

Until her house they reached,

Dark, and no one up,

And no one caring where

She took him, or let herself

Be taken. Yard, barn, shed, tree,

Any place would be her lair.

Words

Attempt at talk. Social preliminaries.

One last futile essay on behalf of humans

Who talk before or even in the process,

Who feel to pay these words for admission

Like gentling a cow while milking.

O hear me! O reply to my soothings.

She kissed him quick to close his rambling

And held him close to ramble his quickness

And quicked her clothes to kiss his ramble,

Give him a word! Any word! O wordless word!

Venue (Vulgar)

Pestle trying clumsily to find her vale…velvet…

Vault is the word, as pestle names his virile verge,

Which vibrated voraciously in search of home.

He had no view, in this light of Vesper,

But only feel, in these ventral places.

My verse deserts me in this wanting version.

Her parts were vague, and in his vertigo,

His pestle slipped away from her vestal vault,

Unto her void, that variant vent,

Some other place. The wrong place.

III

Audience

Diana whispered to Day,

Oh, see, that’s my grandmother.

O see her! Just sixteen,

Loving our Dan at last,

Even if with the wrong place.

Day said, I see her. Now I

Want to hear her. She hasn’t

Spoken a word, not one.

Negative

She was not mute. For a fact,

Beautiful was her tongue

Whenever she chose to speak.

But now there was only one

Word which she needed use

For all my questions: Does it

Hurt? Should I stop? Is this

Too fast? Or far? Do you

Not mind this kind of way?

To all these, her tongue behind

Her upper teeth, said, No.

Thought versus Sense

I studied for a while the strange new impressions.

Type of erotic meeting I’d never attempted.

Took me a while, took more than a taking,

To sort out the feelings, distinguish the differences:

Squirmings and nips

And interior squeezings.

Strokings unlike a vale can do.

But then I quit studying,

And that was the greatest difference:

That my study dissolved into feeling.

I was pure feeling only.

Emulation

Bright embers, in their fire,

Which make no crackling sound,

No sound at all but wind.

In silence look around,

Stare now at their desire,

They did. And now they grinned.

Their eyes eyed each other then.

No benefit of speech.

O they have copied me

Often enough, and each

Has often wanted to be

Myself, or her, again.

Daniel Lyam Montross

Even in this. Yes, this.

They sought to probe what proving

Or prove what probing could

Copy us, mime our coupling.

They sealed it with a kiss,

Rose, and joined hands.

The Summons

They went and hid

(Or thought they did)

From Flossie, so

She wouldn’t see.

She waited long

Until they finished.

Anything wrong

Must take its time.

When they were done

And reappeared

She said, I’d feared

Y’uns’d plumb gone.

But now yo’re here,

We’ve got a chore,

A small affair

These times require.

So Day must play

His fiddle. You

Must dance your dance.

I’ll sing my song.

We three. And Dan.

Dan will call his story.

We’ll hear him call,

But we’ll be busy:

You in your dance.

Day on his strings.

Me with my voice.

To Dan’s tune and tale.

IV

The Ghost’s Song

ONE. THE OPENING

Lo lee lo-oh, lo lee oh!

Hearken to my sad, sad story.

Lo oh lee-oh, lee oh lee lo!

Of a love, and a brief glory.

Oh lee oh, lo lee-oh, lee lo lee-oh lo!

Of a girl of joy, who was the village hoor.

And the man she loved, a drunkard sure.

Lee lo, oh lo lee-oh, lo lee oh!

Ring of flesh, muscle-ring:

With this ring I thee wed,

To take me in and keep me

Even when I am limp,

To draw me, to pull me,

Swell me like a summer squash.

Ring a round a rosey.

She loves me like a locket.

Locked in liquored lacking,

Mired in more mere merriment,

I didn’t know,

I didn’t know she had a price.

Her father’s notion,

Sad father, poor father,

Shiftless wretched son of a bitch,

Son of a bastard too.

Nobody had money.

But there was barter.

I’m a human omen, Ammey,

Aim at home and hominy,

Ham omelets, ample amenities,

Harmony and empathy,

Images impossible.

The first time you asked me

For a gallon of my rakings of the hills,

I thought you wanted it

All for yourself

And thought you were too young.

Now “nay” means no or neigh not nigh.

He who knows how to hoe the hay when high

Can keep his cap and cup caped in a coop,

But a dope who’ll dip to such a depth is but a dupe.

Amen. O Ammey, my Omega,

Omphalos of my homing,

Amaze me with your amber hair,

Embarrass me among your emblems,

Amuse me with your ample impishness,

Embower me in your ring’s embrace.

But don’t ask me for barter.

I think the old bastard

Had taught her himself,

Had told her,

That this way was safest,

Would keep her from bigging.

And keep them from begging.

Keep him in liquor,

Keep them in food.

Keep her incapable

Of bearing a child.

I drank more than he did.

Only once, by accident,

I sobered up enough to learn

Lost Cove was laughing at me.

Too late.

I was in love.

TWO. THERE AND HERE

Oh lee lo-oh, lo lee oh!

Oh see the pore thing, a-settin

All by herself in yan meader,

A-pluckin daisy petals, one by one,

Lo oh lee-oh, lo lee-oh, lee lo lee oh!

He loves me,

He don’t.

He’ll have me,

He won’t.

He would if he could,

But he can’t.

He said for me

To run away

With him and go

Some other place.

It scares me so

To think of it,

Of what’s beyond

These mountains, where

No one is kin

Nor blood of mine.

What’s left of my life

Is here at home,

Is all I’ve known, or can.

This place is me.

I am this place.

Is what I had to say to Dan.

If my father says,

Go milk the cow,

It’s all the same to me as when he says,

Go milk them men.

We do what we’re told, to live.

But oh, there is a me

That’s only his.

And he knows it.

The other of me

That opens for him.

More than one opening.

He knows a word he calls it.

It, he says. It’s what he calls it

My heart I called it, or my soul.

A me that nobody’s ever known.

I am Ammey. Am me. I am

Me alone.

Oh, to them other fellers

And their quick-shootin pestles,

I’m just a hole

Where they poke and squirt,

And pay, a chunk of pork,

A plucked chicken, or a turn of meal,

A bushel of corn, leastways,

Or at least a peck.

Ass, they call it,

Gettin all slaunch-eyed and drooling,

Up your sweet asshole honey-babe!

They don’t last long, a minute.

A bushel of corn for a minute.

But they are there,

And him, he’s here.

In love of him I smile

From ear to ear.

He knows my heart,

That names it It

And seeks to find

Its deepest part.

I know his too.

We tell, we share

The thoughts we bear

Until no wall

Is left between.

He loves me,

He don’t.

He’ll have me,

He won’t.

He would if he could,

But he can’t.

THREE. THE ARRANGEMENT

Lo oh lee-oh, lee oh lo lee!

O many a year went by, went by,

And many a day, lo lee oh!

The drunkard he drank and didn’t try.

Oh lo oh lo oh lo oh lo oh lo lee-oh!

He lost his gal to another man

And she was sad it wasn’t Dan.

Oh Jesus Christ lo lee-oh!

Walt Ailing.

His wife died on him.

Worked to death, more than likely.

So he bargained with Carlisle Ledyard:

Corn and more corn, in perpetuity:

Get that girl off her ass:

Take her into my house:

Take her away from that drunkard:

Make her my second wife-woman, sort of:

Keep you in all the corn you need,

Fair deal?

And Carlisle Ledyard dealt her.

She cried.

I held her.

Rage held me.

God help me.

There’s no God.

Please, Ammey,

Go with me,

Is that worse

Than living

With Ailing?

She said no.

But going

Is much worse

Than staying.

She lived with him. But stayed by me. An odd policy.

Wedded we were, as much as man and wife. I was glad that

Ailing took her off the “streets.” (There were no streets

Except those in her father’s mind.) She was a wife now,

Not a whore. Though neither mine. Six children by him,

By his first wife, became hers. Were her hard labor.

He wouldn’t give her one of her own. Even if he could.

On hunts the squirrels mock me:

Who are you? Stump? Stump?

Not a stump? What the deuce!

Lawk! the cuckold! Lawk the drunk!

Run, run, run! Lawk, the booger-man!

He’d been a “customer,” was how he knew of her.

And now he liked to take his pleasure whene’er he liked.

She didn’t mind. He was just one. There were no more.

Except the one who was not one of them, but me.

I stayed her love. I kept that part of her

That Walt Ailing never knew. He never knew.

Until the end.

Ammey Ammey Ammey

My nice, my neat, my neither.

Oh me, oh my, Ammey,

There is no other, either.

FOUR. THE BIRTHING

Lo lee lee lee! Lee lo lee-oh lo!

That gal she bigged and bore,

Or tried to bear, you see.

Lo lee-oh, oh lo lee-oh lee!

Her own dear mother was midwife,

But her man was gone, and her love was drunk,

And she died to birth that girl-child.

Lo lee-oh lo-oh, oh lo, boo hoo boo hoo.

She tried to keep it hid from him. That swelling belly, beltless.

She told him she was only getting fat. He believed her.

Only her mother knew, and me. Her mother, the “yarb doctor,”

Aunt Billie, was called, to bring strong doses of hot pepper tea

To “fetch on the child-thing.” And before the night was over,

Aunt Billie had used every herb she ever tried.

Nothing worked. (The village wags later said the pore creeter

Must’ve been tryin to git out the back way.)

Somebody came and told me, and I sobered up on black coffee

And rode ole Henry twenty miles at a hard gallop

To fetch a real doctor, and bring him back.

He saved the baby,

But not the mother.

She lived just long enough

To see it, and to name it

Annette, or Annie.

I lived for months, drunk, beside her grave.

And then I sobered up, for good.

FIVE. THE DUEL

Lo lee to-oh, lo lee oh!

A year went by, and another year,

While Walt got worse and worser,

His grudge it festered in his heart

Until he knew that Dan must die.

Lo! Lee! Lo! Oh! Oh! Lo! Lee-oh!

He kept telling his friends it wasn’t his fault.

He never lost a chance to tell anybody who’d listen

That he’d never been inside of Ammey’s vault,

That in fact he’d not even known she had one.

Oh, he got himself a third “wife-woman,” easy enough.

But he went on brooding. And giving me hard looks.

And he and his new wife-woman both mistreated the baby.

In time it came to this:

Get lost, or ready to die.

All the Ailings backed him.

He wouldn’t take me on

In a fight, man for man.

But he still thought

He could outshoot me.

I spent an hour at Ammey’s grave before giving him “satisfaction.”

And then I met him on the Clinchfield railroad tracks

On a straight stretch: the distance was three hundred yards.

Yes, we agreed on it: the distance had to be three hundred yards.

It takes a terrible keen eye just to see anything that far.

Swinn Brashear stood halfway and waved his red handkerchief.

My first shot missed him.

First time I’d ever missed.

But his first shot missed.

Whistled past my ear.

His second shot missed too.

Went through my shirt sleeve.

I cried for Ammey and I aimed

And hit him in his heart.

Old Woman’s Last Words

To want to git some other place.

I know that wish.

Hit was lately Feb’wary, and winter done gone.

I ast’em, When d’you’uns reckon you’ll be lightin out?

They’d a heap sight git a soon start, they tole.

I ’member me right well their last and final night:

Me tellin the last of the tale:

How Dan, after he kilt Walt with his rifle-gun,

Stole that girl-baby Annie and lit a rag

Fer some other mountains, some other place.

Didn’t nobody never lay eyes on ’em again.

Then that gal, Diana, she called to me in despair,

I can’t find Day! He’s lost! Or gone! Or hiding!

Or maybe, says I, he wudn’t never here to begin with anyhow.

Which sot her to cryin powerful miserable.

And so I said, Shush, chile, I was jist a-twittin ye.

Come, says I, I’ll holp ye to fine him.

We looked and we looked, high and low, all over.

But I found him way out a-settin under a sourwood tree.

Jist settin thar kindly wishful-like.

We called him to home for their last night.

He said he’d jist been thinkin on how he’d done

Jist as good a job of tellin Dan’s story

Back in the place they were before they come here.

Diana said, You did. I apologize, Day,

For thinking that these poems could do it better.

Dan’s wrong. Maybe nobody can tell his story,

Least of all himself.

And then, afore they went to bed, I tole as how

I’d not see ’em, come day-bust, so we’d best say our goodbyes.

I tole as how I’d had a right smart of enjoyment.

They said the same.

Don’t brood on Dan, says I. We didn’t used to know nothin

Up hyur in these mountains…except that we was alivin.

We warn’t a town, jist a place, godforsaken.

Dan made us a town, for a little while.

And now, younguns, goodnight and far thee weel. Live long.

When they went to bed, I took Dan’s second stick,

His rifle-gun, and broke it, chunked in the far.

All his sticks I chunked into the far.

Their last far, that last night, hit blazed and popped

Turrible loud and turrible hot. The sparks got out

Of hand, and lit the house. The house, my house

Commenced to burn. I cried and tried to

Wake them, but they were fast asleep,

And couldn’t never hear me.

They must a been dreaming,

Deep dreams.

The Dreaming

We dream our lives, and live our sleep’s extremes.

The one is to the other not as real.

We fabricate our future in our dreams.

The present moment isn’t what it seems.

Experience is only what we feel.

Our lives are dreamt. In sleep we live extremes.

The past is prologue, as the Bard proclaims.

It made us what we are. Let’s turn the deal

By fabricating future in our dreams.

Our night will wake to day from sound of screams.

But so our day will yearn for night to heal.

We dream our days, and live our night’s extremes.

The future enters us in bits and gleams

In order that its brightness may reveal

How we can learn to make it in our dreams.

The past is history’s. The present, schemes

Of chance or temporality can steal.

We dreamt our lives, and lived our sleep’s extremes.

We’ll fabricate our future in our dreams.

Fourth Movement

A Dream of a Small but Unlost Town

Happy are they who are happy; for there is no one to give them what they haven’t got.

—The Second Beatitude of Daniel

1

I’ll call you “G.”

Let it stand for Gumshoe, for Guide, for Guru, for Gardener, for Guzzler, for Gallynipper, for whatever you like. I’m in a hurry; out of your respect for secrecy and my disinclination to cast about for some such ludicrous anagrammatization as “Danian Goldthorn” or “Hondio Grantland” or—in a hurry, I said—“Thorndolan Gandi,” I’ll simply call you “G.”

When you were a little guy, oh five or so, you saw a movie, on one of the weekly Saturday afternoon trips when your uncle took you into the small county seat of “Jessup” [I have to shade all of them, don’t I?], a movie about the capture of kidnappers by government men, and on the way home you announced to your uncle, self-importantly, that it was henceforth your intention to be a “G-man” when you grew up. Whenever your uncle saw you after that, he would grin and call you “G.” The nickname stuck, replacing that auroral diminutive they’d all of them known you by, although, when you did manage to grow up, you never became anything remotely resembling a G-man.

But, just possibly, that sleuthing urge yet smolders in the wings, gratifying you when, for example, you discover from thin clues that a genre painting attributed to William Sidney Mount is actually the work of Frank Blackwell Mayer, even if not more than a dozen people will really care. Your credentials for the little job I’ve got for you are good enough: you have a knack for looking at the overlooked, a sharp art historian’s eye, a hungering after truth…and a stagnancy of soul. The perfect devious devil’s advocate. Besides which, you know the country almost by heart.

There’s one other thing, G. [Those dulcet iambics of that last movement are a tough act to follow; but maybe this prose will come as a breath of fresh air…or a sip of strong French roast coffee after an oversweet gulp of Cointreau or Chartreuse.] That same uncle of yours—“Wick,” I’ll shade him—there was another vocal use Wick had for “G”: when he was plowing or driving with his team of mules, Wick would say “Haw” to make them stop, and, to make them go, “Gee.” So, hoss, gee! Go!

2

You will go. Your eye is the “I” briefly glimpsed in the Overture and then heard interviewing Felix G. Spofford near the end of the First Movement. But then, except for your brief sad appearance at the end of the Second Movement, you seem to lose the trail; at least we haven’t caught another peep of you since then; although we’ve somehow had the feeling that you are still following us, closing in on us, about to catch us. It is as if you are deliberately hanging back, dawdling as it were, giving me a chance to get a good head start, all the more to dramatize the speed of your catching me. Now here you come.

How it all will happen: in January, during what they call “intersession” at the small New England liberal arts college where you work, while you will be teaching what you like to call an “intercourse” [you kill me, G], a small seminar, “George Caleb Bingham and Other Painters of The Frontier,” the president’s secretary will bring word that he would like for you to drop by his office at your earliest convenience. You will go at once. The president [since the first three letters of his name are the same as the first three letters of the college, no mean coincidence, and if I were to shade the college “Winfield,” could I then shade him “Winston”?] President Winston is a friend of yours; he personally had hired you seven years ago; although you aren’t drinking buddies or anything like that, you always speak to each other candidly, man to man, as if, like long friends, you understand fully each other’s hearts, those hearts which are cold. His would be because the pressures of administration make him a businessman first, an academician second. Yours would be because…well, we’ve time enough later for that. You and President Winston never mince words or bother with pleasantries. He will tell you now to have a seat, a good twelve feet from him across his immense moon-shaped desk, necessitating that you make minor adjustments to the controls of your “aid,” as the audiologists and salesmen would shade it.

Then he will say, in that voice which you have likened to the rattling of gravel in a tin can—or is it just your aid?—“Six years ago, G, after finishing your first year with us, you asked me to tell you if I’d caught any negative feedback from the students about your success as a teacher. Do you remember my answer?”

You will say: “You said, ‘Don’t worry, mister. I’ll tell you the minute I hear anything, you’d better believe it.’”

“And I never have,” he will say.

“And you never have,” you will agree, then ask, “Why?”

“Because I never heard anything,” he will say with impatient patience, as if explaining the obvious. But then will add: “Until lately.”

“Oh,” you will say, and on pretext of scratching your ribs give a slight turn to the volume control. “What have you been hearing?”

“One,” he will say and grab the thumb of his splayed hand, “that you haven’t been hearing. The students say you can’t hear them any more. Or, two,” he grabbed his index finger, “that you haven’t been trying to. Because, perhaps, three,”—the middle finger—“you haven’t been much interested in your students lately. Which could be the result of, four,”—the ring finger—“a loss of interest in your subject, or even in the business of teaching. Due to, I suppose, five,”—“some kind of disenchantment with yourself.” He will make a fist of those enumerated fingers which have so neatly encapsulated you, and will bang the fist lightly on the papers atop his desk. “You’re washed out, G.”

“You can’t fire me,” you will remind him. “I have tenure.”

He will laugh one of those devilish cackles for which he is so well noted, and fix upon you that sardonic eye so remarkably like that of the actor George C. Scott. “You know me a lot better than that!” he will say, and point a long finger at the door, or at the world out there, the cold Outside. “I could get you out of here so fast and so cleanly the A.A.U.P. couldn’t find a trace of dirt left behind! You know it!”

You will have known it.

“But,” he will hasten to add, “I’m not so hasty. I’m not thinking of throwing you out for good. You’ve been around as long as I have; you’ve become a kind of fixture. That’s it. Fixtures don’t do anything. They’re just fixed there. Maybe you need a rest, a rejuvenation, is that it? What the hell are you teaching intersession for, anyway? Do you need the money?” He will pause, and when you don’t say anything, he will ask, “Did you hear me? Is that thing turned up?”

“It’s up,” you will acknowledge, and say, “Yes, I need the money. My wife and kids have…they’ve left…for a while; they’re out visiting my wife’s mother in Arkansas, and it takes extra money to support them away from home. You know.”

He will have known. The president himself not too long ago has undergone the unpleasantries of a protracted divorce proceeding. The eyebrow he lifts will be sympathetic. “Everything all right on the domestic front?” he will ask.

You will shrug. “That’s for her to decide. I’ll have to wait and see. But she said she didn’t want to live with me any more.”

The president will grimace as if to ward off further news of matters both painfully familiar and irrelevant. “Well, I’m sorry,” he will say. “Maybe you should take it to a counselor or somebody. But couldn’t it be related possibly to this other thing? You’re a tired man, G. You smoke too much. The janitors tell me your ashtrays are overflowing. They also tell me you make an urn of coffee in your office every morning and drink most of it yourself. Ten or twelve cups a morning? Incidentally, the janitors have complained of the mess in the lavatory, when you clean the coffee maker and leave wet grounds in the wastebaskets. A minor detail, surely, but I’m the only one who will listen to their complaints. And act upon them. From the look of you, I’d hazard a guess the reason you need all that coffee is to sober up in the morning. Right? Okay, these things never get any better. My point is: your business is your business, but where it encroaches on this college, then it becomes my business. My advice is: take a rest. Get things in perspective. Straighten out your family problems, if you can. Get some help. See your doctor. Have a chest X-ray while you’re at it. Get some exercise. Take up cross-country skiing. Or, better yet, get out of this snow for a while. Beachcomb the Bahamas. But do something, man!”

He will stand up, his signal that he has nothing further to say, except the terms: “You’re on official leave of absence. All of the spring semester. At full pay.” He will slap you on the back and usher you out the door.

3

So you will be cut loose and cast adrift, in the middle of the winter. The same cold nights that find us living it up in the splendid isolation of Lost Cove, endlessly entertained by the unearthly chatter of a spook named Flossie, these same nights will find you alone, at loose ends, incarcerated in the emptiness of that big white-brick New England colonial house of yours. You could not have left it; it is home; home is the right place, although you will think, wryly, of Frost’s definition of home as “the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in,” and there will be nobody there but you to take you in. You will not begin talking to yourself…yet; that will come later. Mostly you will just drink and read books, trying to get caught up on all the unread volumes in that ostentatious library of yours. You will drink and read books. You will drink books and read the labels on your bottles. You will drink your labels and read your bottles. In time, whether from ennui or intoxication, you will discover that page after page of your reading has left not a line imprinted on your consciousness. You will try lighter reading, novels successively “easier,” until you will be all the way down to Harold Robbins, and when you cannot even follow him, you will resolve to quit. You never succeed in sticking to your resolutions, but you will stick to this one. You won’t read another book for a long time.

As a diversion, to take your mind off the evil habit of bookreading, or at least to prevent you from holding a book in your hands, you will take up chair caning. It is difficult to learn, but, once mastered, relatively easy, and automatic. Your wife had several years previously purchased a set of six Thonet bentwood dining chairs, old and used, with all of their cane seats punctured or ruptured or torn. If you were to recane all of these seats, mightn’t she come home? No, but it will be something to do. It will fill the hours. Several days of steady labor to cane one chair. Vocational therapy is it called? Your fingers will be nimble enough, dexterous enough, at least until the sixth or seventh bourbon and branch. But, in time, as a mnemonic device to aid you in the endless braiding or weaving of the cane, to remind your fingers to go over this strand and under that one, the involuntary phonograph of your mind will begin playing an old cigarette commercial: “Over! Under! Around! And Through! Pall Mall travels the smoke to you!” You will not be able to turn it off. There are several thousand over’s and under’s in the caning of any one chair, and this ditty will be like to driving you sane. Even though, eventually, you will try for diversion a German translation (Über! Unten! Rundherum! Und Durch! Pall Mall reisen zu Ihnen der Rauch!), the monotony will be enervating. Day by day, the integrity of the ditty will disintegrate into drivel (Hover! Hinder! Hound! And True! Pell Mellie’s smelly smoke is blue!) until any ordinary mortal would have been soured on any cigarette, let alone Pall Malls, forever. Yet you will smoke more than ever, three packs a day (yes, Pall Malls), and keep on caning. Lover! Plunder! Unwound! And Toodle-oo! Paw’s Maw unravels her joke’s last clue!

At last you will recall President Winston’s suggestion that you take up cross-country skiing. You will squander eighty dollars on a set of skis and poles and books and wax and torch and instruction book, and get out of your house, into your back yard. A shameful disaster. You will blame it on the weather (it will be only 10° above zero), but the real reason the mild acclivities of your back acres suddenly become steep mountain slopes is that you will be in such abominable condition: twenty or more pounds overweight, weak of lung, weaker of knee, bronchitic and asthmatic and possibly emphysematous. Less than twenty minutes after you will have started out, your cries for help will summon a neighbor lady on snowshoes to drag you home, your eyes blinded by their discharge, your beard and moustache caked with the discharge of your nose and mouth, your extremities all five frostbitten. You will be laid on the floor register of your antique coal furnace to thaw out.

You will make an immediate appointment with Dr. Ricardo Barto of Brattleboro [copyeditor: I let the shade slip, but leave it stand] and, longing for the balm of summertime and the peace of your lush vegetable patch, you will begin a premature indoor implantation of various seeds, in windowsill pots: tomatoes, lettuce, even corn, even muskmelons (!), even okra (!!) and black-eyed peas (!!!).

In time, the combination of cold, your foolhardiness, and fumes escaping from your antique coal furnace, will kill everything except the lettuce, which will struggle weakly on.

Dr. Barto will probe your various orifices, send you to the laboratory for nine X-rays of head and chest, and four blood tests, send you to an allergy specialist forty miles distant in another state for a full series of tests, and then send you to bed for a week to await the results. Your bed rest will be an incomplete imposture: you’ll have to get up thrice a day to stoke the antique coal furnace, and, since you’ll have no one to wait upon you, and have therefore set up your bed in the kitchen between the refrigerator and the stove, the one for your ice cubes and TV dinners, the other for heating the latter, you’ll still have to get up to reach the sink faucets, not to mention the bathroom.

Loneliness and bed rest play grievous tricks upon one’s perspective: you will bring to your land of counterpane little hills of family memorabilia: scrapbooks, photo albums, old letters and such; poring over these, you will systematically delude yourself into believing that your wife had never actually nagged you, or, if she had, that you deserved it; you will forget all the unkind things she has said to you; you will forget that she had been indifferent to your needs; you will even forget that she left you of her own accord. You will begin to miss her most miserably. Then you will begin to write to her, day by day, long eloquent endearing letters, showing her how wise and sound it would be if she were to come right on home. She will never answer.

4

“How old are you now?” the good Dr. Barto will ask, at the beginning of your return appointment. “Thirty-six, would it be?”

“Thirty-five,” you will minutely correct him.

“Ah,” he will say, and pretend to consult your folder while framing his next words in his mind. You will have known that he would be blunt; you admire him for his bluntness as you admire it in President Winston and others. And he will be blunt: “Dr. G,” he will say, shaking his head slowly back and forth, “you are going to have a heart attack in the near future. If it fails to kill you, something else will. Pneumonia, possibly. Throat cancer. I won’t discount tuberculosis. You need an operation on your sinuses. You need also to have removed two quite enlarged nasal polyps, as big as this—” he will show his meaty thumb-pad. “Also, the allergist reports that you have, I quote him, ‘hit the jackpot.’”

“Jackpot negative or jackpot positive?” you will ask.

“Positive,” the doctor will reply. “You are allergic to virtually everything. Dust. Mold. Weeds. Trees, even. Dogs and cats. Brunettes. Bookpaper. Bananas. Babies….”

You will interrupt, “Am I allergic to bourbon?”

He will consult his folder. “No, unfortunately,” he will say. “But you must cut down. You must. I have said this before, and you have been deaf to me. Speaking of deafness, your hearing constantly deteriorates. The audiometer shows no hope. I have said this before, too: you will have to begin taking lessons in lipreading.”

“Pardon me,” you will say, “I didn’t catch that.”

Slowly and patiently, with exaggerated lip movements, the doctor will repeat himself. Then he will go on: “You must discipline yourself to an intensive program, a mass-ive program. You must take the lessons. You must cut down on destructive tastes and habits. You must dust-proof your house, particularly your bedroom. You must dry and de-mold your damp cellar.”

“My damn what?” you will say. “My damn salad?”

“Dampp cell-arr,” he will say. “Of your house. Your wet basement. You told me once you have frogs down there. They must go too. You must give up your mushroom culture. Avoid all spores.”

“Sports? But you said I need exercise….”

“Spo-errss,” he will enunciate. “As in mushrooms. But no, you must not avoid sports. You must find a sport, a strenuous sport, and you must cultivate it. You must give up the booze and the smokes. I mean it.” Then he will become silent and stern.

After a while, you will ask, “Is that all?”

He will hold up an index finger. “You must diet.”

“I know it,” you will say. “I know I must die. It’s why I drink and smoke and generally wreck myself.”

“Die-ittt,” he will correct you. “Get rid of your—” but then he will stop and study you quizzically for a long moment. Quietly and gently then he will ask: “Do you want to die?”

“Why not?” you will say. “It happens to the best of people, sooner or later.”

“Would you perhaps be willing to consider the possibility,” he will ask, “of having perhaps a small conversation or two with Dr. Sanderson or Dr. Fossett at The Retreat?”

“Psychiatrists?” you will say. “I couldn’t afford it.”

“The amount of their fee is commensurate with your ability to pay.”

You will shake your head. “I don’t need a shrink.”

Gently he will ask, “What do you need, Dr. G?”

You will nearly blurt out the one word which is the only answer to such a question, but it would have cost you some embarrassment; he is only a medical doctor, after all, and what you need is not anything he could have written a prescription for, so instead of that word you will substitute another of the same number of letters “Rest,” and then you will tell him that your college has put you on leave and that you hope to recuperate.

Then he will say that he hopes you would consider vigorous exercise a form of rest, and he will write you out two prescriptions, some green pills for your nose, some yellow ones for your lungs, and at his door he will say, “Don’t forget the dust.”

You will have misunderstood even that casual remark, but will nod, and go on home, idly wondering why you should not forget the toast. Had it been on his list of things to avoid? It doesn’t matter. You could have just as easily given up toast as you could have given up “the booze and the smokes,” which is to say that you could not have given up anything. The attic of your house is crammed with things that you cannot have given up. The attic of your mind is full to bursting with concepts, fixed ideas, delusions, that you cannot have given up. Your life is an omnium-gatherum of habits, routines, tastes, faults and follies, that you cannot have given up. It seems the only thing you will be willing to give up is, simply, your life itself.

In short, G, you will be like—I grope, I grovel, for the just-right metaphor—you will be like a town which is on the verge of becoming a ghost town.

5

By late February, after a blizzard which will dump three feet of new snow on top of four feet of old snow, you will have had enough: enough of yourself, if not quite enough to embolden the hand to tie the knot in the rope on the beam in the attic; enough of that house, enough of bachelorhood, enough of listening to and talking to such a dull, vain, obnoxious fool as yourself. Your wife will not come home. Very well. But you will be missing your children, you will lack those three lovely little ladies, the oldest of whom, at ten, will seem to be the only person in the world who would answer your letters. Mightn’t their mother be persuaded to permit you, perhaps, to spend a brief sweet moment or two in their company? You must see. You must go. To Arkansas.

Leaving an entrenched home requires not merely heart but also a head for attending to practical matters: you will have to have your Volvo checked and greased and oiled for the long trip; you will have to give the college secretaries a forwarding address; you will have to notify the post office and the milkman to stop deliveries; you will have to haul loads of garbage and trash to the town dump; and then a full day’s labor will be required to close the house itself: shut off the electricity, close the flues, drain the pipes, put antifreeze in the toilets and drain traps, lock the windows. Kill the furnace.

At the close of the day you will be tired, covered with cobwebs and dust, and feeling both satisfied that the house is sealed in good hibernation and slightly dejected that you will have cut off its vital functions, when you will hear a knocking noise and wonder if you have overlooked one of the pipes or if the house itself is barking in protest against this abandonment. You will turn up your aid and try to locate the source of the knocking. It will occur to you that it might be coming from the door. The door? Who would knock upon the door? Nobody knocks upon your door.

You will open the door. There will be standing a student of yours, or, rather, a former student of yours, Cassandra Laigle, wearing her most gracious smile.

“Sorry to bother you, Dr. G,” she will say. “But I guess you might’ve heard that Yellow House burned down yesterday.”

“No,” you will say. “I hadn’t heard. Won’t you come in.”

She will come into your house, for the first time [rarely, if ever, would you condescend to invite students to your home], and will glance around her at the furnishings of the living room: the exposed ceiling beams, your works of art, your enormous bookcase, although, with the electricity shut off, these things perforce will be illuminated only by the pale light of dusk, which perhaps enhances them. “Beautiful,” she will say. You will not offer her a chair; you will have no time for socializing at the moment. “Are you really living here all alone?” she will ask.

“I was,” you will say.

“Well, the reason I asked,” she will say, “was that, I mean, I don’t have anywhere to stay. The dorms are all filled up, and Yellow House is just a shell, you ought to see it, I think they’re just going to bulldoze it down. I was wondering if, you know, since you’ve got all this room, and nobody here but you, if you would consider letting me…I mean, I would pay you, if it’s not too much, and I wouldn’t be any trouble, just put me anywhere you like….”

Now, it happens that Cassandra Laigle is not at all a bad-looking girl, in fact quite pretty, breasts too small perhaps but otherwise most shapely, and more than once, in the past, G, you have coveted her in your fantasies. And the prospect that she will now be offering is fantastic. You are not a humorous man, G, rarely even smiling, but now you will laugh uproariously.

She will look at first puzzled, and then hurt. “Well, I was just wondering,” she will protest. “I mean, I didn’t know what you would think of the idea, and I certainly didn’t mean to intrude on you or anything.”

“No intrusion,” you will say, controlling yourself and letting your laughter trickle off. “Forgive me. You see, Cass, it’s just the irony. All day I’ve been working to close this place up, so I can get out of here. If you had come to me yesterday, or even this morning, I would have been more than happy to consider it. But now—”

“Oh,” she will say. “You’re leaving? Well, maybe…would you think about letting me keep your house for you while you’re gone?”

“The house could keep you, but you couldn’t keep the house. The furnace is impossible; I can’t manage it myself. Part of the reason I’m leaving.”

“Oh,” she will say, looking forlorn and lost. You will nearly give in, G. You will very, very nearly decide to stay and have her live with you. Would she, in time, move into your bed? She would certainly be someone to talk with, the long nights. Cassandra is a bright girl; never less than B+ in your art history classes; and she is a senior, at least twenty-one. Oh, G, the book you might have written of her life with you! “I’m sorry,” you will say. “Why don’t you try the Huddlesons? I think they have a couple of spare rooms.”

“Well,” she will say, “all right,” but it will be clear that she is disappointed; that she really desires to stay with you. You fool, G! Maybe Yellow House hasn’t even burned down. Maybe she is just looking for an excuse to move in with you and cure your loneliness. Maybe she has had a secret crush on you all these years. Maybe—“Where are you going?” she will ask.

“Arkansas,” you will say.

“Oh,” she will say, and smile. “Are you going to write another book about it?”

You will smile; you will feel flattered; you will remember that Cassandra has been one of the very few students who has brought copies of your books to you for your autographs. “Maybe,” you will say.

“Well, have a good time,” she will say.

“The same to you, Cass. And I hope you find a place to stay. Try the Huddlesons.” She will turn to go. “Oh, wait,” you will say, and as she pauses, you will ask, “Would you like some lettuce?”

“Lettuce?” she will say.

“Yes, I’ve been growing lettuce in pots on my windowsill, and I hate to leave it. If you keep it watered, you might have some big crisp heads in a few more weeks.”

“I don’t have a windowsill…yet,” she will say, almost apologetically, and once more you will waver in your resolve, but recover. “And no kitchens to fix salads in,” she will add, looking beyond you toward your kitchen. “And I wouldn’t much care to just munch on it plain. Thanks just the same.”

You will leave the lettuce to wilt in the window.

Driving out of town that night, you will notice that, sure enough, Yellow House has been consumed in flames.

6

No, Cassandra, thanks just the same, but he isn’t going home to write a book; that isn’t what he is going home for; there will be no more flyleaves for him to ballpoint “For my dear student Cassandra, with fondest regards and best wishes, G.” He is going home to die. You couldn’t have saved him, Cassandra; you must never fault yourself, girl. The salmon at sea, when it feels the time is ripe, fights its way inland to its birthplace, there to spawn and die. But no, dear, he will not spawn another book.

It is merely a question of whether he will be able to wait long enough to let nature take its course, or will have to give nature a little boost, say, by selecting an acute replacement for his chronic suicide: he might drown himself in Lake Maumelle, as James Royal Slater did, or in the Arkansas River, as Margaret Austin tried to do, or he could gain some long-wanted notoriety by being the first to leap from one of Little Rock’s new bank-building skyscrapers. The prophet without honor in his own country opts for dishonor instead.

Once, on his trip home, on the superhighway in western Tennessee, so close to the state line that he can already smell the muddy Mississippi, he will feel such a sudden and unusual tremor in his chest, a queer fibrillation, that he will have to pull the Volvo up quickly by the roadside and stop, and wonder if the final irony would be that he will die here in this alien state before being permitted to cross the state line into his homeland. But it will pass, and he will drive on, and cross the line. Even the squalid ugliness of flatland eastern Arkansas will seem lovely, lovely, to him.

You have wondered, Cass, why a man so infatuated with a rather backward and sparsely populated state that is too far north to be truly southern, too far south to be truly mid-western, and too far east to be truly southwestern, would have chosen to live, instead, in exile as it were, in a New England state so far removed from his homeland. I can’t give you a good answer, but I, who have lived in four different communities in four different states for long periods each, and have pondered much longer than your Dr. G the question of a sense of home, a sense of the right place, can tell you this much, although I’d hate to trample on your tender young sensibilities: the only right place, the only home, for any of us, is that place from whence we originated: nowhere, namely, nonbeing, namely, death. That, perhaps, is what he is going home to. One is never disappointed in going there; one never feels disappointment there, or, for that matter, feels anything. I can tell you, Cass. I’ve been there. The only alternative to that right place is, for as long as you care to stay, some other place. And some other place is never home. Does that answer your question, child? And does it, please tell me, explain why so many of your generation killed themselves with drugs?

G will not have appreciated that I address these remarks to you, nor that, further, I revealed to you the depths of his lump-in-the-throat infatuation with that humble state, an infatuation which, more than anything else, will postpone the ultimate moment of his untimely demise. After a brief and tearful reunion with his three daughters, he will rent for himself, for one month, a room with closet-kitchen on the tenth floor of the Albert Pike Hotel, which had been the most elegant hostelry in Little Rock in the days of his boyhood, but will now, as the pittance he will pay for his room testifies, be faded into demidesuetude. Yet for him it will have its advantages: the enormous, high-ceilinged dining room still serves excellent southern food, and he will have it practically to himself; the elevator is not self-service but still patiently manned by Blacks in livery working their way through college and reading their algebra texts during the long, long waits for passengers, a friendly and most-accommodating assistant manager, Mr. Ruschmier, an ice-making machine right outside his door, full maid service, the morning Arkansas Gazette and the evening Arkansas Democrat delivered to his door, a convenient distance to the best of old Little Rock, that part of town which stubbornly refuses to follow the suburbs to the six-miles-away malls and plazas of the west end. The main public library is a short two blocks if he should ever choose to read a book again or seek inspiration for the writing of one. From his window he can see across the street the enormous Grecian temple of The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, dedicated to the memory of the same man the hotel is named for, that great Confederate general and humanist who is one of G’s personal heroes.

He will live there a month, the month he will have paid for. The tenth floor is a suitable height for jumping out of, if the moment should ever have come. He will forestall that moment by reading carefully the morning and evening newspapers in search of anything interesting if not inspiring. He will spend as much time with his daughters as their mother will allow, taking them to the zoo, and for long drives in the country. Spring comes in March there, while his New England town is still buried beneath late snows. He will even take his wife to a movie, but it will be a John Cassavetes film that will bore them both to distraction with its ugly documentation of marital difficulties. He will invite his wife to the Albert Pike for a nightcap, but she will have to be in bed early to get up and take the girls for a dentist’s appointment in the morning.

The days and evenings of that month, he will walk a lot, by himself, down the old streets, and back, and meditate, much, about mortality. But most of the time he will stay in his room, occasionally watching local programs and news on television, but usually reading the morning and the evening papers cover to back, with considerable interest, for the most trifling item of Arkansas news has never failed to satisfy him with its newsworthiness, its sense of being of and by and for his people, his own people, though he is sometimes astonished to realize how few, how pitifully few, of these people he has ever personally known.

I tell you these things, Cass, to help you understand why he will have rejected the utterly beautiful offer of your sharing his hearth and his heart, in order that he could go home. I hope you will have found suitable accommodation at the Huddlesons’ house. If you are ever lonely or restless there, I will send to you this clipping, from one of the newspapers G will have been reading, to keep you company and whet your curiosity, until you have his ink on another flyleaf.

STOVING CASE CLOSED, NEW YORK POLICE REPORT

The search for Diana Stoving, 22, daughter of prominent Little Rock insurance executive, B.A. Stoving, has been discontinued by New York police officials, it was learned today by the Stoving family.

Miss Stoving, who disappeared shortly after her graduation from Sarah Lawrence College in June of last year, has not been in communication with her family or friends since that time.

New York police were asked to enter the case in September of last year, on the supposition that Miss Stoving may have taken up residence there.

The family also retained private detectives in the New York area, but without success. According to them, she was last seen, by her college roommate, in the New Jersey city of Garfield. From there, they were unable to trace her.

Miss Stoving, who grew up in Little Rock, was the only child of the President and Chairman of the Board of National Community Life Insurance Company, whose headquarters are in the Union Bank Building.

Keep in touch, Cassandra.

7

It will have been an excuse, G, for riding up the elevator in Little Rock’s newest skyscraper, but now, sitting and waiting in a plush futuristic armchair in the opulent waiting room (Mr. Stoving is in conference, his secretary will say; you should have phoned for an appointment; but you are not able to use a telephone), you will begin to have misgivings. Would he laugh you out of his office? Or call the state asylum to come and get you? You have never had any dealings with gentlemen of his station, save perhaps a father or two briefly greeted on Parents’ Day at the college. You will feel quite out of place in this room, in this building, the business world. You will have carefully donned your only good suit, but it is the big blue-with-yellow-striped tweed you’d picked up in Ireland and quite inappropriate to the business world. His secretary will have taken note of your suit, your long hair, your beard, your gold-rimmed glasses, the button stuck in your ear, and will have asked awkwardly, “What was it you wish to see Mr. Stoving about?” to which you will have mumbled cryptically, “It concerns his daughter.”

You will have to wait for nearly thirty minutes, but even that will not be long enough for you to compose and rehearse your little pitch. When the big inner doors will finally open and out file a half dozen very expensively attired and groomed businessmen, and Miss Secretary will say, “You may go in now, Mr. G,” you will want to say, “I’ve changed my mind. Cancel the appointment.”

But you will go in, into the sumptuous sanctum as big as a dance hall and commanding a fine view of all Little Rock and environs, and when the man gives you his hand and then with the same hand wordlessly gestures you into a chair, you will sit, and size him up for a moment. He is the formidable epitome of Big Business; not even the sympathy you will be feeling for him can quite cleanse the reek of Mammon. He will sit in his own enormous spaceship chair, and will say, “What can I do for you, Mr. G? Or vice versa?”

You will clear your throat. “I know you’re a businessman—I mean a busy man, Mr. Stoving, so I’ll come right to the point. I saw the item in this morning’s Gazette about your daughter missing. I’m a father myself, Mr. Stoving, three lovely little girls, and I asked myself, ‘How would you feel if, when your daughters grew up, one of them disappeared like that?’ And the answer was, I would feel pretty miserable. So I know how you must feel, Mr. Stoving. I’ve come to offer to find your daughter for you.”

“Yes,” Mr. Stoving will say, and begin giving his head a slow artificial nodding. He will take a Benson and Hedges cigarette from a package on his desk, tap the end of it on his wristwatch, put it in his mouth, then offer you one, but you will already have a Pall Mall burning between your fingers. “Yes,” he will say again, and slowly raise his desk lighter to his cigarette. “I see.” He will take a few puffs, inhale, and exhale: “How much do you propose to charge me?”

“I’m not interested in money, Mr. Stoving,” you will say. This is a grave mistake, G; if you discount the profit motive, you are not speaking his language; you are arousing his suspicions.

“What are you interested in?” he will ask.

“I told you, I have daughters myself, and—”

“Yes, three of them, you said. An improvement. The last guy who offered to find my daughter for me only had two of them.” Mr. Stoving will laugh at his wit, and say, “Now if I could only find somebody who has, say, six daughters, I might allow myself a little optimism. Ha! Yes, you said it, Mr. G, I’m a busy man, a very busy man, and I’ve already squandered untold hours of my time trying to find that girl. So now get your cards out on the table quickly, sir: who are you? Which agency are you from? What contract are you offering?”

“Mr. Stoving,” you will say, somewhat apologetically, “I know you’ll think this is most unusual, but I’m not from any agency or anything. I’m a free agent, you might say. I’m not even an ordinary detective as such, but I’d like to give it a try. I think I could find her. I’m not asking for any money because I don’t really need it. I’m on leave all semester from my college, at full pay, and I’ve sort of been at loose ends, you know. I need something to do. I need to get involved in something. I need a cause, you might say.”

“Have you considered the Peace Corps?” he will say. “Or the hospital volunteers?” Your eyes will sigh. “Which college?” he will ask you. You will tell him the name of the college, its location, what kind of school it is, the subject you teach. “How did you happen to be in Little Rock?” he will ask. You will explain that too. You will point out that both you and your wife are natives of Little Rock. Then you will boast,

“I’ve written three books about Arkansas. Maybe you’ve heard of them.” And you will name your books.

“My wife reads,” he will say, as if that explains or excuses anything. And then he will say, “I don’t think you know what you’re asking to get into, frankly, sir. And you strike me as rather presumptuous, if I may say so. You’re saying, in effect, ‘The New York police can’t find her, and the best detective agency on the east coast can’t find her, but I can find her.’ And you don’t even have any asparagus.”

“Asparagus?” you will say.

He will look at you oddly. “Experience, I said.”

“Oh,” you will say, and brush back your hair to indicate the button in your ear. “I’m hard of hearing,” you will point out.

Mr. Stoving’s shoulders will slump. You should realize, G, although he will never have told you so, that he has persuaded himself, by this time, that you are part of a diabolical plot. That because you come from the east, from New England, you have some knowledge of his daughter’s whereabouts, which you intend to keep secret until the appropriate moment when you can collect your big reward. He will decide that perhaps his only hope of seeing his daughter again would be to “play along with” your little deception about becoming a private detective.

So he will say, “Very well. I’ve got nothing to lose, have I? If you want to amuse yourself, playing ‘I spy,’ and if, as you say, you aren’t even going to charge me anything….”

You will brighten. “Then you mean you’ll let me do it?…”

“What if you do find her? Then, how much are you going to take me for?”

“Well,” you will say, giving the matter some thought, “if you’d care just to reimburse my expenses or something, if I have any unusual expenses, or traveling expense, or like that….”

Mr. Stoving will grip his desk and lean abruptly toward you. “Listen. I’m a businessman. Let’s not beat around the bush. Let’s talk in round figures, sir. How much do you want? Let’s put it down on paper. Fifty? A hundred? Two hundred?”

“Well, I suppose perhaps two hundred ought to cover the gas and oil.”

“I was speaking in thousands, Mr. G.”

“Oh,” you will say. “Oh, good heavens, please, I told you, I don’t want any profit….”

Mr. Stoving will push a button on his intercom and speak into it: “Louise. Bring your pad.” Then he will turn to you and say, “Now I want my secretary to draw up a little document, which you will sign, and I will sign, and she will sign as a witness, and I want this little document to stipulate exactly and precisely the total amount of cash money that will be transferred from my hand to yours upon the successful completion of your little adventure.”

“Dead or alive?” you will say. You will hate to be so blunt, but it is a minor technicality that has given you some thought.

He will stare at you. “If she’s dead,” he will say coldly, “forget it.”

“Of course. Let me say, Mr. Stoving, that I hope very much to find her alive and in good health. I was only asking.”

The secretary will come in and sit beside him. Mr. Stoving will begin to dictate a string of legal-sounding phrases which you will not be able to follow, catching only a random “party of the first part,” “in good faith,” “whereupon,” “notwithstanding,” “thereunto,” and then he will pause in his dictation. “Now mush, Mr. G.”

“Pardon?” you will say.

“How much?” he will say. “Name your figure.”

“Well…” your mind will have been trying swiftly to calculate the number of miles, the number of meals, the number of motels you might conceivably need. “Would two thousand sound all right?”

He will laugh and swat his secretary on her shoulder. “Bargain basement, isn’t he, Louise?” Then he will suggest to you, “Let’s call it thirty.”

“Dear me, no,” you will protest. “What about five?”

“Twenty,” he will say.

“Ten,” you will say.

“Fifteen,” he will say.

“It doesn’t matter,” you will say. “I really don’t care.”

To Louise he will say, “Make it fifteen.”

When Louise will return to her desk to type up the document, you will point out, “There are some things I’ll need to know. May I ask you a few questions?”

“Fire away,” he will say. But then he will glance at his watch, and say, “No, wait. I’ve got a meeting in five minutes. Why don’t you come to dinner tonight? I’m sure the little lady would be delighted to meet you too.”

8

You will meet her that night, G; you will meet my Annie…although she will not be exactly delighted to meet you, or at least her reserve will not permit her to express whatever delight she might feel at meeting the man who is going to find her lost daughter. I suspect she will be more suspicious of you than Mr. Staving will have been. That’s the way with ex-country girls: they have devoted so much of their energy to adapting themselves to city life’s Proper Society that they have overdone it, have become even less tolerant than natural city people of anything remotely unconventional or outside their ordinary purview, and you, G, will certainly be the most unconventional dinner guest she has ever entertained in her home before.

Her home. It is on Edgehill Road, which gets its name from being the crest of the Heights, the upper crest/crust of the Pulaski Heights as one ascends the steep wind of Cantrell Road. It is an older part of the Heights, much closer to town than the spanking new suburbs, but still the most fashionable address in town, and it is old enough to have enormous trees and lush shrubs, with greenhouses and gardeners. The house itself is a tasteful and authentic reproduction of an antebellum southern plantation house, with high columns and verandas and all. You will wonder why a family with only one child would need that many bedrooms—eight in all. I wondered too, and was sorely inconvenienced, trying to find, in the middle of the night, which of the eight rooms the little girl-child was sleeping in.

Mrs. Stoving, you will discover, does read books, but she has not read yours, nor heard of you, and you will doubt that she really believes you are an author, because, as she will say, she has never entertained an author before, has in fact never met one, unless you count Agnes Roundtree Mazzarelli, the well-known Arkansas poetess, and you do not count Agnes Roundtree Mazzarelli. Mrs. Stoving will ask you to tell her what your books are about, but you will find them hard to describe. Upon learning that you and your wife are native Little Rockians, she will want to know what your father and your wife’s father are in. Your father is in retirement; your wife’s father is in his grave.

You will find her a rather charming woman, nonetheless. There would be a fragility about her which you will find curiously endearing; you will feel that her shell is so thin you could crack it with your fingernail. And she is a lovely woman, for her years: very light blonde hair just beginning to turn white, high cheekbones, pointed chin, deep-set hazel eyes which seem continually wistful and baffled, as if she is not at all certain just where she is, or how she has come to be there, or what is now or ever going to come of it.

From the beginning, you will recognize that she is Mr. Stoving’s plaything, his pet, his slave. He dominates her completely. During the conversation at the dinner table, he will interrupt her so frequently and rudely that you will be tempted to cry in protest, “Please give her a chance to finish!” You will feel that you could learn more about what certain sort of person Diana Stoving had been if you got Mrs. Stoving’s analysis. But you will never have the chance. As soon as the dinner is finished, Mr. Stoving will literally dismiss her, and draw you alone into his study, where the butler will serve you Cognac and Cuban cigars, and Mr. Stoving will say, “Well, what else do you need to know, Sherlock?” He has had four whiskey sours before dinner, much wine at dinner, and now the Cognac, which he will keep pouring. But you have not been exactly abstemious yourself, old Guzzler.

“Would you happen to have an extra grotophaff—photograph—of her, which I could keep?”

“Sure thing,” he will say, and fetch a manila envelope from his desk. He will give you a 5 × 7 photograph. “That’s her latest college picture.”

You will study it, enraptured. “She’s beautiful,” you’ll sigh.

“You bet,” he will agree.

“May I ask, if it’s not too personal, why she didn’t have any brothers or sisters? If you’d rather not—”

“That’s okay. Nothing special. Why overpopulate the country? I don’t think Anne—my wife—needed to spend the best years of her life bringing up children. One’s enough. Nothing personal intended; if you and your wife wanted three, that’s your affair.”

“Well then, my next personal question: did you know whether or not your daughter might have been taking any drugs?”

“All of ’em ask me that,” he will say, shrugging. “It’s the first thing they want to know. All I can say is, she never took any that I know of, when she was here at home. And she visited here sometimes for long periods. I mean, if you’re hooked, you can’t go without the stuff for long periods, can you?”

You will look at the photograph again. Her hair was not unusually long. “Would you say she was ever inclined to be a hippie-type, or do you know if she ever consorted with hippies?”

“Not Diana,” he will say. “Not in Little Rock. And not in Bronxville, New York, either.” When you will not pursue the point, he will ask, “Any more questions?” You will have the feeling that perhaps he is impatient to get you off his hands.

“Could you sort of fill me in on any information, however insignificant, that the other detectives managed to dig up?”

Mr. Stoving will sigh and pour himself another glass of Cognac. Then in a bored and businesslike way he will tell you all he knows. You will take careful notes in your indecipherable longhand on 3 by 5 index cards. He will conclude, “…so that’s where the trail stops. Garfield, New Jersey. The service manager who fixed her car there said that she asked him how to find Passaic, or West Passaic, he couldn’t remember which, and he told her how to find it, and that’s the last anybody saw of her. It’s like…it’s like maybe a flying saucer swooped down and picked her up in Passaic or West Passaic and lifted her off the face of the earth. But you don’t believe in flying saucers, do you, Professor?”

“No,” you will say.

“Well, good luck,” he will say, and will begin struggling to lift himself up out of his deep leather armchair.

You will motion for him to stay. “There’s just one more question,” you will tell him. “If you don’t mind. Perhaps my most important question.”

“Well—?” he will say, not really settling down into his chair again. “Ask it.”

“Mr. Stoving, can you think of any reason, or reasons, why your daughter perhaps could be refusing to communicate with you, if she is alive somewhere?”

He will sink back into his chair, rub his hand over his eyes, and reach for the Cognac bottle again. He will pour and drink and begin talking, but he will not be talking to you; he will be mumbling, or grumbling, to himself. What little talent you have for lipreading will catch fragments of word formations on his muttering lips: “enough of this shit…” “more than a man can…” “how long am I…” “snotty little bitch….” Then he will stop for a long moment, and at length he will look up at you with glazed eyes, and will say, “That’s one they haven’t asked me.” Then he will straighten his shoulders a bit and answer your question.

“Who knows?” he will say. “Ask her that, when you find her, will you? I’d like to know. I really would. Maybe she thinks she’s too good for us. Maybe that thirty-thousand-dollar education she got at Sarah Lawrence put ideas into her head. It was her mother’s notion, sending here there. Personally I don’t see why the fucking hell she couldn’t’ve gone to U. of A. or Hendrix or even goddamn U.A.L.R. Spoiled brat! But damn it all, it’s not just her! No, sir! Not just my Diana! It’s her whole fucking generation! By God, a man can’t even pick up his newspaper these days without reading about some new stupid sonofabitching thing that these kids have done. They murder people for kicks, and don’t give a blessed shit for society and institutions, or trying to earn a living or anything! No, I can tell you, mister, Diana was sure one girl who didn’t need to earn a living! Oh boy, she was fixed for life! So now what do I read in the papers that these motherfucking psychiatrists are telling us? They’re telling us that the problems of the younger generation are our fault! They say we haven’t been strict enough, we haven’t been firm enough, we haven’t given our kids enough serious attention! Do you believe that bullshit? Do you? Not me, brother! I’m not buying that crap for one minute. Don’t you try and lay that one on me! I was a good father, goddammit! A good father! All a girl could ask….” Mr. Stoving’s shoulders will be shaking, his eyes will be wet, he will seem about to break down. He will begin mumbling to himself again. You will take leave of him now, G. You will thank him for the dinner, and tell him that you hope very much to be able to return his daughter to him in the near future. But as you are leaving, you will be thinking, I don’t really feel much sympathy for him. Whatever sympathy you will be feeling will be entirely for Diana. And you will suddenly realize that you have no intention, if you do succeed in finding her, of returning her to this world that she came from.

9

I wish I could enrich the comedy of your gallant chase, G, by tapping you on the shoulder and lightly pointing out to you that on the same day you will go roaring off out of Arkansas to begin your great hunt, on that very same day we will be crossing into Arkansas on our way to our final town. But the dates won’t coincide; there will be a gap of a week or so in between; we will already be settled in Arkansas before you will have first heard of Diana. As a little consolation, then, I’ll play on my fiddle this robust rendition of the “William Tell Overture,” as background music for your dauntless departure for places unknown. Tiddle-lump, tiddle-lump, tiddle lump lump LUMP!

First stop: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. You will locate Miss Susan Trombley, working in the steno pool of a large law firm. You will offer to take her to lunch, but Miss Trombley, a pretty redhead, will be at first reluctant to accept your invitation. “Look,” she will say, “I’ve told you guys all I know. I’m not hiding anything, really. I just don’t have anything else to say about Diana.”

“This is different,” you will say, mysteriously. “I’m different. I’m not one of those guys.” And you will take her to lunch, at a quiet and out-of-the-way coffee shop on Federal Street. During the meal, you will talk not about Diana but about yourselves. Upon learning that she had majored in printmaking at Sarah Lawrence, you will reveal that you are associate professor of art history at Winfield, and have done some printmaking yourself. You will discover that you are both admirers of the work of Antonio Frasconi; she will invite you to come up and see her wood engravings sometime. Then, over coffee after the meal, you will casually introduce your business: “I understand you were one of the last persons to see Diana before she disappeared.”

Well, she will say, yes, she was the last of Diana’s friends to see her after graduation. They were on the way home to Susan’s parents’ home in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, when Diana’s new car developed a problem in the shock absorber and they had to stop in Garfield. Susan had been concerned about being late for a dinner-and-theatre date she had set up for herself and Diana with two Princeton men, so Diana had urged her to go on home alone on the bus while she waited to have her car repaired.

“She told me she might go home, meaning Little Rock, or she might go into New York to audition with a dance group. But I just know she didn’t really want to do either one. Poor Diana. Maybe she did go into New York and maybe she got mixed up with some hippies and got murdered, for all I know. She was always an odd one. We were roommates the last year at Sarah Lawrence, and she was always doing funny little things, like going out on the lawn in the middle of the night to sit under a tree and ‘commune with the night,’ as she put it. The reason I know she didn’t really want to go to New York and join a dance group is that once, when we were talking about what we’d really like to do after graduation, if we could do anything we wanted, she told me a very strange notion she’d had to spend a year or more just driving along old roads that weren’t much used any more. She’d checked out this book from the Sarah Lawrence library, by J.R. Humphreys, I think it was called The Lost Roads of America, and she said she’d like to do something like that, traveling old roads.”

You will inform Susan Trombley that Diana’s father has mentioned to you that Susan had mentioned the book to the detectives from the agency he’d retained, and, at considerable expense, the agency has investigated the entire route described in the Humphreys book, from New Jersey to California, without finding anyone who had seen Diana or her car.

“Oh,” Susan will say. “Well, I could have told them not to bother. Diana was too…well, she was too original just to duplicate what somebody else had already done. She would have had to find her own roads.”

You will sigh, wondering which of the 132,796 roads of America Diana might be traveling on. But it is a lead, a slim lead, and you will have had no leads at all until now.

“Miss Trombley,” you will say, “I’d like to go over with you, sort of reconstruct, if you can, that last afternoon when you were with Diana. She intended to go with you to your home in Ardmore, but at some point during that afternoon, she changed her mind. Do you have any idea why she changed her mind?”

“Well, I think getting her car repaired was more important to her. She was very proud of that car, and it was going to take a while to get the part that was needed and have it installed, and I was impatient to get on home.”

“Were you with her constantly that whole afternoon?”

“Yes I was, until she left me at the bus station.”

“You didn’t see her speak to anyone, or do anything, while you were with her? I mean, she didn’t meet anyone, or see something, that you didn’t know about? I mean—I’m getting this kind of confused—but what I’m trying to find out is, for example, maybe while your back was turned, or, pardon me, you might have had to go to the Ladies’ or something, maybe she met somebody who, let’s say, asked her for a date or something.”

“No, I don’t think so. There was…yes, now that I think of it, there was a very brief period, ten minutes or so, while I left her in the waiting room to go and use the telephone. I wanted to call my friend Larry to tell him that we would be late. But I don’t think Diana met anybody. She was just sitting there in the waiting room, reading.”

“What was she reading, Miss Trombley?”

Miss Trombley will meditate a moment and say, “Oh, just a magazine or something. No, it wasn’t; I think it was a newspaper.”

“Please try to remember,” you will say. “This could be important.”

“Well, yes, I’m almost certain it was a newspaper.”

“You don’t know which newspaper?”

“No.” Susan Trombley will shake her head, but then her eyes will light up and she will snap her finger and point it at you. “Hold on now! I don’t know what newspaper she was reading, but I just remembered—maybe this is important—I just remembered that whatever newspaper she was reading, she must have seen something that startled her, or upset her, or, I mean, really grabbed her, because when I came back from my telephone call, she was sitting there holding that newspaper, and her face, her face looked like this—” Miss Trombley will ape an expression of astonishment—“and I remember asking her what she was reading and telling her she looked like she’d seen a ghost, but she just put me off, saying it was just a story about an accident or something. Hey! You know, maybe that’s a clue. Why didn’t I think to mention that to those other detectives? How did you get it out of me?”

“I’m different,” you will say, and reach for the check.

Second stop: Garfield, New Jersey. At the Gillihan Porsche agency, you will identify yourself, state your business, and say you have only one question: would they happen to know what newspaper would have been in their waiting room on June 16 of the previous year? The dealers will consult one another and their secretary and their cashier and will conclude that, unless some customer had left behind some other newspaper, it was either the New York Times or the Passaic Herald-Star, or both. You will groan inwardly over the prospect of having to comb through a thick issue of the New York Times in search of some clue, but the cashier, a bright-eyed lass who probably never misplaces a nickel or penny, will save you from this ordeal by remembering, at the last moment, that their subscription to the Times had lapsed for a period of three weeks during that month.

You will drive then to the offices of the Passaic Herald-Star and ask to look at the back issue for June 16 of the previous year. You will spend almost an hour poring over it with the fine comb of your eye.

ELKS TO FÊTE WIVES WITH CHICKEN BARBECUE. Would Diana have developed a sudden craving, perhaps, for chicken barbecue, and have run afoul of an Elk? Unlikely.

PASSAIC COUPLE CELEBRATE FIFTIETH. Would she have wished to help Mr. and Mrs. Dominick Pastorello commemorate their golden anniversary, and have been abducted back to the Old Country by one of their sons? No.

“DEAR ABBY: Here’s a new one for you. Every summer my husband and I take our kids for a two-week camping trip. My idea of camping is just to loaf around and enjoy the air and the sunshine, but my husband’s idea is to take long hikes. The kids love to go with him, and I feel left behind, but try as I might, I can’t work up the enthusiasm for hiking. Sign me, STUMPED.” “Dear STUMPED You ‘stumped’ me too, because I’m the same way.”

Did Diana, perhaps, develop a sudden desire to go camping or take a hike? Possibly, but you will remember, G, that Susan Trombley has said that whatever Diana had been reading left an expression of astonishment on her face.

YANKS STOP SOX IN SIXTH. NICKLAUS TIES TREVINO IN SECOND DAY. MOTORCYCLE WEEKEND PEACEFUL. RAINY WEEK AHEAD, FORECASTERS SAY. EAST PASSAIC HIGH GRADUATES 457. COUNCIL CHARGES MAYOR TAKES KICKBACKS. ROTARIANS SCHEDULE STRAWBERRY COOK-OUT.

Good grief, you will think. New Jersey! Of all places to be stuck in….

E. PASSAIC MAN REVEALS AGE REGRESSION EXPERIMENTS.

10

“I’ve given it up,” P.D. Sedgely will tell you. “It was taking up too much of my time; it was interfering with my job. I’m a schoolteacher, a simple schoolteacher, first and last. The day arrived when I realized that I could not go on, fooling around with the ‘occult,’ as it were, endlessly following up paths that led nowhere. I grew tired of trying to prove that any of my subjects had genuinely existed in previous incarnations. For a while I became more interested in teleportation—the ability of the mind to ‘travel’ to distant places—but that, too, was a time-consuming hobby. I have given it all up, sir. I have erased all my tapes. I have sold my tape recorder. I am a simple schoolteacher.”

You will show him the photograph. “Did you ever meet this girl?”

He will study the photograph. He will not answer your question. He will ask you a question, “Are you a relative of hers?”

“No,” you will say. You will smile. “Like yourself, I am a simple schoolteacher. This girl has been missing since last June. I told her father I would find her. I am trying to. Did you by any chance happen to meet her, last June?”

The man will look startled at your news, and then mumble to himself, “Day Whittacker….”

“Pardon me,” you will say, and tap the earpiece of your aid. “I am hard of hearing. Did you utter, perhaps, the expletive, ‘Gee Whillicker’ or something?”

“No,” he will say. Then, “Yes,” he will say, “I was just saying Gee Whittacker, I mean, I’m sorry to hear that some poor girl is missing. But no, I’m sorry, I never met her.”

“I see,” you will say. “I have simply been following up various leads, certain ideas that occurred to me. I am sorry to have bothered you. This girl, Miss Diana Stoving, was known to have been reading, on the day she disappeared, the June 16th issue of the Passaic Herald-Star, which, as you may recall, carried an item about yourself. It merely occurred to me that she might have read that item and become interested in you. She was a girl with a wide variety of interests, particularly in the off beat and perhaps also in the occult. Of all the items in that issue of the newspaper which might have attracted her, the piece about you seemed, to my mind, the most promising. I am sorry if I have put you out.”

“That’s quite all right,” he will say. “I understand. You say the poor girl has been missing ever since she was here? I mean, ever since that day in June of last year?”

“Yes. Her family, her poor father and mother, have heard not a word, have not laid eyes on the poor girl ever since.”

“Too bad,” he will say. “You haven’t been able to find any trace of her?”

“I am a simple schoolteacher, like yourself. I am not a professional detective. The authorities have abandoned the search. I am the only hope.” You will say these last words with dramatic emphasis, and then, with even more dramatic emphasis, you will add, “And you, Mr. Sedgely, are my only hope.”

Clearly, you will have nonplussed him. “But I said—” he will begin to protest, but perhaps he is, as you will have surmised and gambled, a man of conscience. “Won’t you come in?” he will invite.

“Gladly,” you will say.

Yes, he will confess, Diana had been to see him. He will tell you as much as he can remember about her visits with him, but it will only be with considerable reluctance, after much probing on your part, that he will reveal the figure of, the identity of, Day Whittacker, who is not an expletive after all.

Perhaps because you will be playing the “simple schoolteacher” to the hilt, G, you will open up his locked closets. But all he can remember to tell about this “Daniel Lyam Montross” is that he had been born in the Connecticut village of Hadleytown or Bodleytown or Dudleytown—yes, it was, he thinks, Dudleytown—and that he had met a violent end some seventy-odd years later out in some western state, Oklahoma or Missouri or one of those, he can’t remember which. But his tapes are erased. His tape recorder has been sold. He cannot play back for you the recording he had made of Day Whittacker as this “Montross” being questioned by Diana Stoving. He is sorry that he had ever fooled around with the matter. He is even sorrier that he had given Diana Stoving the power to put Day Whittacker into a hypnotic trance simply by telling him to go to sleep. He has been disappointed, and even slightly hurt, that they had been so ungrateful to him as to disappear without any further communication. They could at least have sent him a postcard occasionally, couldn’t they? But no, he does not feel any guilt. “Blame me, if you wish,” he will conclude, “for having rediscovered Montross in the first place in the person of Day Whittacker, but I can hardly be blamed for whatever two impetuous young people take it upon themselves to do with their lives.”

You will glance at your wristwatch. It will be getting close to suppertime. “May I take you to dinner?” you will ask him. He would be delighted. You will take him to dinner, at a good Passaic restaurant, and you will say to him, “Tell me all you know about reincarnation.”

You are by nature a doubting man, G, given to detachment and mistrust; a proper intellectual, you hold with Euripides that man’s most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe. But although you are so thoroughly the ungullible skeptic, you are not close-minded or intolerant. Your first reaction to the staggering possibility of my metempsychosed reexistence within the bones and brain of Day Whittacker will not be incredulity but impartial curiosity and an unwillingness to dismiss, out of hand, the sheer possibility of it all. It will be as if, after hearing about flying saucers for years, you have finally caught a glimpse of one yourself; instead of rushing to have your eyes examined, you begin taking notes and drawing diagrams. The modestly doubting scholar’s approach.

What will disturb you much more than the supposition of my transmigration is the sudden intrusion of this kid, Whittacker, into what you will have begun to conceive as a private matter between Miss Stoving and yourself. For days now, you will have had her photograph; it will have been the last thing you look at before turning out the light in various motels between Arkansas and New Jersey; you have, in a way, you will tell yourself, come to fall in love with her, and come to see yourself as her White Knight riding to the rescue. Now, suddenly, you will have to reckon with this upstart adolescent.

Although you and P.D. Sedgely will have hit it off so well together, getting along splendidly like the brotherly simple-school-teachers that you are, you will not get along very well, at all, with Mr. and Mrs. Charles J. Whittacker. Your tweedy, seedy appearance has persuaded Sedgely that you are indeed a simple schoolteacher like himself. Your tweedy, seedy appearance will give Mr. and Mrs. Whittacker to think you some kind of nut. The last thing they could accept is that you are a detective, but you will seem to hint that you might possibly be able to find out something about the whereabouts of their boy, and Mrs. Whittacker, at least, will be interested; Mr. Whittacker, it will seem, couldn’t care less; he has convinced himself that the boy is a no-good thankless bum, or, worse, a draft-dodger, and has all but written him off.

Mrs. Whittacker will be even more interested when you show her the picture of Diana, for then she will remember that Diana, in the guise of a Life reporter, had appeared at their home just a day or two before poor Day disappeared, although it had never occurred to her to make any connection. Had this girl, who was, after all, a “grown-up” (“I mean she was a college graduate?” Mrs. Whittacker will say/ask), lured her poor boy off into a life of sin or something? Her poor boy certainly wouldn’t have done any harm to the girl? He was a kind and gentle boy….

Mrs. Whittacker will show you the one communication they have had from Day since his disappearance, the postcard, postmarked in July from Torrington, Connecticut. The Whittackers had been in touch with the chief of police of Torrington, but he couldn’t find anything, so they had surmised that Day had simply mailed the card there on his way to some other place. Also, Mrs. Whittacker will inform you, a friend of theirs had sent them a clipping from the Rutland, Vermont, Herald in November, about a woman whose name was given as Mrs. C. Day Whittacker who had been shot in the woods and was in Woodstock Hospital, and “Chuck, my husband, called them up there at the hospital to try and find out if the woman’s husband might possibly be our Day, but this doctor he spoke to said it wasn’t?”

Mr. Whittacker will interrupt in disgust, “Jane, what’re you wasting your time with this guy for? He doesn’t give a damn about Day. He’s only interested in that girl.” And he will stalk out of the room to get himself a beer in the kitchen.

Alone with her, you will say apologetically, “I’m sorry if I’m wasting your time, Mrs. Whittacker, but—”

“Oh, that’s all right?” she will say wearily.

You will ask her to tell you about Day, what sort of person he was. You will get a rather glowing picture of what a nice and kind and talented boy he had been. Had he ever taken drugs? Certainly not. Had he ever been in trouble? No. Never arrested? No. Ever had any emotional problems? No, well, there was only one time, when he was twelve years old, that he had tried to hang himself in the bathroom. Hang himself in the bathroom? Why? Figure it out for yourself. His father had barged in on him, and he pushed his father out and locked the door and tried to hang himself from the shower-curtain rod with his belt, but the curtain rod broke and his father busted down the door and let that boy know in no uncertain terms that he had better think twice before pulling a stunt like that again. And they had never had any more trouble with him along that line. In fact, Day was such a good boy that he paid for a new shower-curtain rod out of his own earnings as an odd-job boy for the neighbors.

“Mrs. Whittacker, would it be all right, would it inconvenience you too much, if I asked to have a look at Day’s things?”

“His things?” she will say.

“Yes, his room, his possessions, his notebooks or whatever….”

“Well—” she will hesitate. It will be clear she is reluctant to let this grown-up beatnik character go prying around in her boy’s stuff, and she will wish her husband hadn’t gone off like that and left her to make her have to be the one to deny your request. “He hasn’t got so awful much?” she will offer as an excuse, but when you assure her, Anything, anything at all, she will relent and take you back to the room which had been Day’s. She will not leave you alone with it, but stand in the doorway, as if guarding so you will not steal any of this humble junk or otherwise desecrate it.

Quickly, like the art historian plunging through the Fogg Library in search of the one essential fact, you will examine his things: his high school yearbooks, his scrapbook, his small library, his clothing and Scouting equipment, his odds and ends, his miscellany of memorabilia. A typical New Jersey teenager, you will think at first, you who have been teaching them for years in your Winfield classes. But then you will begin to piece together an image of a kid who is not all that typical, after all; a young man of unusual interests, of stronger desires, of different chemistry, of, perhaps, deeper loneliness.

You will find nothing related to reincarnation, no trace of “Daniel Lyam Montross,” nothing about hypnosis. Almost all of his stuff is oriented around The Great Outdoors: camping and back-packing and woodcraft. And about trees: his collection of bark samples, his scrapbooks of leaves, his books on forestry and woods management.

There is only one thing which will really catch your eye: in an issue of his high school literary magazine, Reflections, there is an article which he had written, in the tenth or eleventh grade: “A Visit To A New Jersey Ghost Town,” which begins, “Most kids think of ghost towns as false-fronted old saloons and such out in the Wide West mining areas, but do you know that we’ve got at least three authentic ghost towns right here in New Jersey? Last weekend, I had a very interesting overnight camp-out, all by myself, in one of them, the village of Tavistock, which isn’t really completely a ghost town, because according to the last census there are a grand total of ten (10) people somewhere within the incorporated township (although I didn’t see any of them). The history of this town-that-is-no-more-a-town is interesting….” The article goes on to give a brief history of Tavistock, followed by an hour-by-hour record of Day’s short sojourn there, his interests focused mainly on identifying old trees rather than old buildings, and concludes, “Spending the night in a ghost town isn’t as scary as spending the night in a cemetery (and I’ve done both). A ghost town isn’t really dead. It’s just sort of gone some other place for a while.”

Well well, you will think. If a wealthy girl who is interested in old roads meets a Boy Scout who is interested in old towns, then you’ve got a real combination…even if she’s three years older.

But why, you will be wondering, was she so interested in this “Daniel Lyam Montross”? Was he just a “vehicle”?

11

See our hawk-eyed Gumshoe tippy-toeing (yes, G, you will be wearing crepe-soled boots) through the woods, down the old Dark Entry Road, his one good ear straining, his aid turned up so high that were a fly to alight upon it and let a fart, it would sound like unto, verily, a thunderclap. The woods, late in March, will yet have patches of snow in shady places; nothing yet will be in bloom and the birds will not have come back from the south. Dudleytown will be as still and quiet as death.

It will be your intention to take them by surprise, to give them no chance of escape, to seize, at least, the girl, and fight off the boy, if need be. You will have a photograph of him too now; you will know that he is tall, but not as tall as you; in hand to hand combat, if it comes to that, your weak lungs and your damaged heart might be able to hold out long enough to subdue him, and if not…well, you would have tried.

You will poke around in the various cellar holes, you will visit the old dam with thin ice still on the edges of the millpond, you will sneak around the old leaning shanty, Dudleytown’s one remaining building, you will follow the Appalachian Trail as far as the rock which I had styled the Landlocked Whale, you will creep up and down the length of Dudleytown Road, scanning the woods and the walls and the old cellar holes. Dr. Barto would have admired you for all the exercise you will be getting, exploring every path and trail and glade.

You won’t see a soul.

And all you will find, as evidence that anybody had ever been there, except for the cellar holes and stone walls and the shanty, is, in a glade filled with some kind of evergreen shrub (the laurel will not whitely bloom for a good while yet, G, and you know nothing about plant identification, anyway), what appears to be the dark remains of some kind of campfire, or some kind of fire. You will poke about among the ashes and find a small fragment of what appears to be burned cloth of some kind, yellow, some kind of yellow canvas, or duck perhaps, somebody had burned their knapsack, perhaps, or something. From the looks of it, the fire has not been lit for many months.

And you will get out quickly, before dusk, because, as you will say to yourself, the place “gives you the creeps.” The villager in Cornwall Bridge you had interviewed, Miss Mary Elizabeth Evans, an old spinster, who had briefly met Day when he’d been trying to find Dudleytown, will have told you all about the infamous “Curse of Dudleytown,” and you will have no inclination to dawdle longer than necessary, to tempt or disturb any ghosts or presences or whatever, to bring any further bad luck upon yourself. As soon as you are convinced that there is no one in Dudleytown, you will return to your Volvo and drive away.

You won’t have found my father’s grave either.

But you will be more thorough than Day or Diana had been, in attempting to document the existence of my family in Dudleytown. You will visit the Cornwall Town Clerk and the Cornwall Library, where the librarian will be only too happy to give you access to all her material. You will look to her like a genuine scholar, which you are. You will find, alas, no mention of any Montrosses. There will be a “McRoss” or two, but not in Dudleytown proper. You will find records of a family referred to as “Monti Rosso,” but, judging from the various given names, they were all of Mediterranean origin. Ditto the Monterazzis. The Manterussels were apparently Flemish in origin. The Montrusches were German. At last, with a cry of elation which will cause the librarian to put her index finger to her lips, you will discover a “Daniela Latham Mountrose,” but, upon further investigation, will find that she was only an old weaver who had lived in West Cornwall, not Dudleytown, and died in 1834 at the age of eighty. Still, you will think, possibly the descendants of this “Mountrose” changed the spelling of the name, as frequently happens, and moved into Dudleytown. You won’t be able to discount the possibility. But neither will you be able to prove it. There are no records of any Montrosses or Mountroses in Dudleytown.

And now you will be left with a bigger question: Why had Diana and Day left Dudleytown? And where had they gone? You will make casual inquiries around the village of Cornwall Bridge, asking if anyone had seen them. This is how you will meet Felix G. Spofford, the man who had participated in, and will report to you on, the eviction of the “Jesus freaks” from Dudleytown. But no, he won’t have any idea where they might have gone. To hell, he hopes.

This is where we will last catch sight of the eye of your “I,” G. Would you like to have your eye back, your “I” back, G? Would you use it properly? What is more, would you use it honestly? I’m afraid, G, that if I were to give you your “I” back, you might very well do something sneaky, such as having Day killed or disabled during the riot and eviction of the Jesus freaks from Dudleytown, so that you could have Diana all to yourself. That will not do. That will not do at all.

So you will go on. You will continue the search, following your “hunch,” which will be based, albeit weakly, on that information Mrs. Whittacker has given you about the false lead of gun-wounded “Mrs. C. Day Whittacker” in the Woodstock Hospital. You will assume, for the moment, that Diana could have been that victim, and you will surmise that the couple had chosen, or stumbled upon, a ghost town in Vermont somewhere in the vicinity of Woodstock. You are, I must admit, quite familiar with the state of Vermont. You know it has an abundance of ghost villages, if not ghost towns, and you will now be faced with the relatively easy task of making a map of these in order to determine which one of them is closest to Woodstock. Their very names are poetry to you: Green River, Halifax Center, Concord Corner, Goose Green, Greenbank Hollow, Waitsfield Common…and Five Corners. When your research is completed, you will discover that Five Corners is much closer to Woodstock than any of the others.

Early April will find you, at last, driving your Volvo merrily up Hale Hollow Road into the place where five little roads come together to mark the spot of a bygone community. But in early April, if the snows have gone (and they won’t all have), the back roads of Vermont become quagmires, and you will bog your Volvo hopelessly in the center of what had been the Main Street of Five Corners, right out in front of where Glen House Hotel had stood. Undaunted, you will abandon your car and set out on foot to find our couple. Your disappointment in not finding them there will somehow be greater than your disappointment in not having found them in Dudleytown. It will be as if all your knowledge of Vermont ghost villages is for nothing. You will find Day’s lean-to, collapsed beneath the snows of yestermonths, on the slope of the McLowerys’ back yard. You will find other evidence that they, or somebody, had indeed been there and gone: their campfire (you will sift nothing of consequence from its ashes), the trench of their latrine, their clothesline still stretched between two trees. You will take note of their ecological consciousness: they didn’t litter, they didn’t leave any trash behind. You will get down on your knees and peer underneath the collapsed lean-to. It is dark under there. You will strike a match. Back in one corner you will see something. You will fetch a long stick and rake it out. It will be a portable cassette tape recorder, with one tape in it. The floor of the lean-to has sheltered it from the winter snows, and its batteries are still fresh. You will push a button, and listen, fiddling with the controls of your hearing aid; but without the benefit of lips to read, you won’t be able to make out the meaning of the words. It will be a man’s voice, though, you can tell. Not a boy’s voice. An older man’s voice.

And then, searching further around the camp, you will find the mound of earth. Obviously, from the shape of it, a grave. Obviously, from the looks of the dirt, rather freshly dug. You will not have any digging tools with you. Even if you were to have a shovel, you will not be able to dig into that grave. You will not have the nerve. If your Volvo weren’t stuck in the mud, you could rush right back to Woodstock and notify the authorities, and have one of them excavate this grave. But even if your Volvo weren’t stuck, you’ll not be able to do this. You will be afraid to. You will not be able to face up to reality if it should develop that the body buried in that grave is your beloved Diana.

Staggering farther around the camp, in near-panic and despair, you will come across the long rope dangling from a maple tree, one end of it tied to the uppermost branches, the other end tied neatly in a hangman’s noose. Only a good Boy Scout could have tied such a knot. And unless he had tied it for the unlikely purpose of hanging her with it, he must have used it on himself. He’d tried to hang himself once before, remember? Perversely almost, G, you will rejoice at this thought. Day is dead and buried, and Diana is yours. If only you can find her.

You will keep the tape recorder and take it back to your car, wanting to get out of there and find someone who will listen to the tape for you and tell you what it says, in hopes of finding further clues. The penciled-on-paper poem you will have found resting on the grave is interesting, but offers no clue. I’ll be a sylphan sylphid if I can. All right, but where? Where has your sylvan sylphid gone?

You will heave and strain your bulk against the car’s fender, with the wheels in gear and spinning, trying to get it out of the mud. You will fetch large flat rocks and jam them under the tires of the car, and manage to inch the car a foot or so backwards, but, even so, you will begin to see that it is hopeless. In a last expenditure of desperate energy, you will take a deep breath and thrust your back up against the front grill of the car and push for all you are worth. Suddenly something will give…in your back: a sharp pain in your spinal column. You idiot, G; why must you always be attempting tasks that are too great for you? Now you will not only be without the use of your car but also without the use of your spine. It will pain you to move. Night will be coming on; you will not be able to walk three or four miles to the nearest house. You will have to spend the night in Five Corners.

An awful night. A terrible night. You will recline the seat of your Volvo as far as it would recline, not quite horizontal, and you will ease your ruptured back into it. You will lay there and smoke your Pall Malls and take sips from your flask of Old Grand-Dad, until the flask, a pint, is empty, but you will not be drugged enough to sleep or even to ease the pain in your back. You will make sure that all the doors of the car are locked from inside. You will leave your aid turned on, so high it sometimes will whistle in feedback and snap you out of your long reveries. You will grow cold and have to turn on the engine to heat the car, apologizing to the Things of the Night for the noise. And when you turn off the engine, the tinnitus in your ear will keep roaring.

Will you sleep at all that night, G? You must, because the dreams you will have are too strange to be the dreams of non-REM sleep…odd jumbled images: a schoolhouse stove, a two-hole privy, a Hermit at a Mine, Red Hair in the Water of a Pond. At the first peep of dawn your swollen bladder will force you out of the car.

During the night the mud will have frozen, the quagmire hardened, and you will find that it is relatively easy to back your Volvo out of it and make your getaway from that god-forsaken place. Your first pressing business will be to have your back attended to. You will return to Woodstock and, after breakfast, you will wait for the Woodstock Clinic to open for the day. There you will be treated by the good Dr. Henry Fox [copyeditor: again the shade slips, but doctors are hard to libel], who will have you X-rayed, examine the X-ray, and declare that you have a slipped shade—I mean, a slipped disk. He will ask you how you have slipped it. You will tell him. You will tell him that you were trying to find a couple of lost kids in Five Corners. He will smile. The nature of his smile will cause you to ask him if he is familiar with Five Corners. Oh yes, he will say, he knows of the place. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about these kids?” you will ask, and show him the two photographs. The doctor will hesitate, long enough for you to guess that he does know something about the kids, but all he will say is, evasively, “Well, I may have met them.” You will press him further, but he will say, “I’d rather not talk about it.” “All right,” you will say, “just tell me if you have any idea, any idea at all, of where either of them might have gone, north, west, east, south.” “South,” he will say. You will press him. “I don’t remember exactly,” he will say. “There was a time when the boy had been thinking about going south during the cold weather. Virginia, perhaps, or the Carolinas. But that was before—” “Before?” you will say, “before what?” He will change the subject. “Your slipped disk, Mr. G, needs attention. You must take care of it. You must stay off your feet as much as possible until it mends and stops aching.”

Since, as you well know, your own home is merely a drive of less than two hours from Woodstock, you will decide, albeit reluctantly, just to “drop in and check on things.” So you will go home. The house will be as you had left it, in fine disorder, sealed in snug but cold hibernation. Despite your aching back, you will find yourself lighting a fire in the fireplace. You will discover yourself hauling a bucket of water from the cistern in the cellar, because the plumbing is disconnected. You will not reconnect the plumbing. But you will stay.

“I’m just going around in circles,” you will say to yourself. “I’m right back where I started from.”

12

My dictionary is an old one, and well worn; it was one of only three books I owned in my last years in my final town; there were a number of words I had never learned from Henry Fox [not your Woodstock physician, G; it must be a common name; and, as you’ll discover, I had my own Henry Fox] and there is a word which I had never heard, much less learned, from him:

tin · ni · tus/te-nīt-es/n [L. ringing, tinnitus, fr. tinnitus, pp. of tinnire, to ring, of imit. origin]: a sensation of noise (as a ringing or roaring) that is purely subjective.

Purely subjective, yes, G, but nonetheless audible, distinct, constant, and maddening. Yours had begun when meningococcal meningitis, contracted from an unwashed peach, had burned out your auditory nerves at the age of twelve, but then the tinnitus had been a not altogether unpleasant chorus of crickets, cicadas, katydids, tree frogs, and occasionally a distant cowbell; these still remain, but now are cacophonously overlaid by a wild contrapuntal syncopation of throbbing instruments without earthly comparison, which, as the search for Diana Stoving has intensified, have become faster and louder and more urgent, a demented choir and brass band of devils each playing or singing in his own feverish tempo to drive you loose from reality…or to drive you to the end of your long, long search.

It is a wonder to me that you will have managed to keep your cool and to remain, so many weeks, throughout the month of April, alone in that house again. You will not resume chair caning, to give the devils the words of a commercial to accompany their music. One of the first little things you will do is weigh yourself, on the bathroom scale, and smile to see that you have shed six pounds already, down now to 219, where you haven’t been for years. The next thing you will do is make three copies of a letter: “Gentlemen: In preparation for an investigation I have been making into the whereabouts of certain American ghost towns and ghost villages, I would very much appreciate being informed if there are any of these located in your state.” You will mail these three copies to the Departments of Conservation and Development in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the State of North Carolina, and the State of South Carolina.

Your ruptured back will gradually mend. You will take up a kind of primitive living, not in emulation of Diana and Day but out of your reluctance to relight your antique furnace, reconnect the plumbing and electricity, and restore the house to its former functions. You will be tempted, for a while, to see if Cassandra Laigle is living at the Huddlesons’, and to invite her to move in with you if she wishes, or at least to ask her to listen to your tape recording for you and tell what it says. But you will be able to share neither your house nor your tape recording with anyone.

Eventually you will receive replies to two of your three letters. South Carolina will not answer. Perhaps they have no ghost towns. The Commonwealth of Virginia will appear to be off ended that you would think such a progressive state might harbor any ghost towns, but they will inform you of one—“not to mention, of course, Jamestown itself”—the old city of Warwick, on the James River, once the rival of Richmond as Virginia’s largest town, but now passed utterly into oblivion. It will sound like an interesting place, you will think, but it had obviously been a tidewater town, that is, a flatland town, and you will suspect that this “Daniel Lyam Montross,” or at least whichever of the two was following him around, had been a lover of hills, and thus would have eschewed the flatlands. How right you are, G. So you will turn to the other, the last, letter.

Which is from the State of North Carolina. “Dear Dr. G: In response to your letter of April 9, I am enclosing material describing Lost Cove, a mountain settlement near Burnsville, North Carolina, which is now unpopulated. I know of no other such communities in this state which would be suitable for your investigation. Most of the dwellings of Lost Cove are still standing, although I learned, only last week, that one of these dwellings burned recently, perhaps struck by lightning or ignited by vandals. Thank you for your interest in North Carolina.” Enclosed will be Xerox copies of various newspaper clippings about my beloved mountain aerie.

How very curious, G, that you will never go there! I think you would have liked it. I’m sure the four-mile hike along the Clinchfield railroad line to reach the place would have been good exercise for you, although in your physical condition the final mile up the mountain could have severely winded you, could probably have given you a heart attack.

Is that why you will not go there? Do you have some premonition that the great effort of trying to reach the place will kill you?

Or is your “excuse” simply a recognition that Lost Cove, if you would have failed to find either one of our couple there, will be your third strike? Three strikes and you’re out, is that it? Or have you managed to see a “pattern” emerging in what is actually only a coincidence: the seasonal migration of our couple: summer in Dudleytown, autumn in Five Corners, winter in Lost Cove, and now spring in—? It will be spring now; Lost Cove will be empty; after all the effort you would have to make to reach that place, even if it didn’t give you a fatal heart attack, you would have been defeated to find no one there.

Or will you decide that you do not want Lost Cove to be the place where you will find Diana, that it isn’t the right place, that you must look for her in some other place? I do not know why you will not go to Lost Cove; I am not, after all, merely your puppeteer (although I’ll confess to being in a hurry, now that you will be so close to finding me).

The real reason, perhaps, why you will not go to Lost Cove will be based on another one of your “hunches”: you will sense that the burned-down house referred to in that letter might have been the house she had been living in, and you will be thinking: If she was brave enough to go all alone to Lost Cove, and her house burned down on her, where would she go? Wouldn’t she be tired by now of all this trouble and traveling? Wouldn’t she be lonely? Wouldn’t she regain her senses and possibly even go home to Arkansas? For all you will know, G, during these weeks you will have been searching and agonizing, she might have already returned to Arkansas, safe if not sound in the welcoming arms of her parents.

To Arkansas?

Yes, G, there are ghost towns in Arkansas too. And as you will recall, Mr. Sedgely has mentioned something to the effect that I met my violent end eventually in “Oklahoma or Missouri or one of those places.” Could one of those places have been Arkansas? There are plenty of ghost towns in Arkansas, if that is what “Daniel Lyam Montross” (or Diana) was looking for. You will not need to write to the Arkansas Department of Conservation and Development to learn their names. You could take down from the shelves of your library various books which describe them; you could consult your maps, your old state maps and your topographic maps. But you will not even need to do that; you know already most of the names by heart beginning with Arkansas Post itself, the first settlement of the state, now extinct, and running through those places whose sounds are not exactly poetry to your ears, but romantic all the same: Aberdeen, Cabin Creek, Fair Play, George Town, Harrington, Hix Ferry, Jacksonport, Iceledo, Norriston, Napoleon, Paraclifta, Plum Orchard, Rome, Rough and Ready, Rush, and St—but yes, there will be that need of yours, that pressing need of yours, for secrecy.

I have played around with several possible pseudonyms for your town, my town, our final town: I like the alliterative “Linger Longer,” although it has an unwieldy clang, like cowbells. “Bide Awhile” is crisper, but sounds like a summer tourist’s cottage. “Tarry Further” has a nice purr to it but sounds too much like a man’s name. And none of these has the proper Ozarkian rustication. So, to maintain the invitational tone of the real name, that name which beckons one not to leave but to stay more, even though it sounds less beseeching than demanding, I’ll call our town, our final town, “Stick Around”…the last stick out of my sack.

Do you like it, G?

13

Conductor, could we have a little swell of background music, please? It will only be the tinnitus in G’s ear, of course, but the devils will be banished and in their stead will be sweet strings, violins, fiddles if you will (I’ll play one of them myself; I can do the lively John Playford dances perfectly, although I might have a little trouble with the Pastorals of Beethoven and Vaughan Williams). Here we are, friends, in Ozarkadia; it is a fine morning in May; the wildflowers are everywhere; the birds threaten to drown out my fiddle.

Do you like it, G? Aren’t you pleasantly, even blissfully, surprised? Do you understand now why I’ve chosen you for this job? You’ll forgive me for putting you to such bother and agony before springing my happy surprise on you. Would it flatter you, would it boost your crumbling ego, your shattered It, if I told you that the reason I settled ultimately in Stick Around was that this was the right place for eventually meeting you? Believe that if you want to; it’s just as good, just as plausible as the actual reason, which was simply that I wandered into it, just as I had wandered into Five Corners and into Lost Cove, without design or destination, and I liked it, and wanted to stay, wanted to stick around. In 1932, when I first came here, it was a bustling, even a thriving, village, in contrast to the previous places I had lived. There were several stores, a bank, a small hotel, a physician, druggist, dentist, two churches, even an industry, “Orvil Blackshire’s” tomato-canning factory; the place seemed to be practically a metropolis compared with Dudleytown, Five Corners, and Lost Cove: But now look at it. The countryside around it hasn’t changed much; it was then, as now, the remotest, wildest part of the Ozarks, the headwaters of the beautiful Buffalo River country, with a branch of the Little Buffalo flowing right through the center of Stick Around. One thing, perhaps, that drew me to this country was that it seemed to recapitulate the diverse topographies of Dudleytown, Five Corners, and Lost Cove a little like each of them, enough, my “hills of Vaucluse,” to remind me of my past.

You will leave the paved state highway in the town of “Jessup,” county seat of “Isaac” County, and follow a dirt and gravel road some ten miles to reach Stick Around. You’ve been on this road often enough, but never before done the driving yourself, and you’ll have to shift the Volvo from “Drive” into “Low” several times to get up those hills. After passing through the village of “Acropolis” [I hate to shade that one, its real name is so much prettier], south of Jessup, the road winds steeply up Blackshire Mountain for several miles before dropping down into the high valley of Stick Around. Unlike the Greek Acropolis, whose parthenon is the highest spot in town, the village of Acropolis is actually much lower, in elevation, than Stick Around; hence it always sounded a bit odd when Stick Around people had spoken of going “up” to Acropolis; the “up” had meant only north, that on a map, Acropolis would be north of Stick Around. Today, you will notice, Acropolis itself is practically a ghost town, although it still has its post office, which Stick Around lost to it thirty years ago.

You’ll prepare yourself for another surprise, G: Stick Around isn’t a ghost town. Not yet. And maybe not ever; I don’t think it will ever die. Although the village proper is deserted, there are still plenty of families living within the township, on the outskirts of the village. As you come in on the Acropolis road, some of these people will see you and wave at you, although they don’t know (or remember) you from Adam. It’s a friendly habit of ours that won’t ever die: we wave at friends and strangers alike. You will wave back at them. But then, as you drive closer to the village proper, you won’t see any more people.

Although there are still several inhabited houses along the Acropolis road north of Stick Around, and several productive farms still operating to the westward, toward “Roxey,” and the Roxey road is in fairly good repair, the road southward, to “Squire” and “Hankstown,” has years before been given up to the forest and is not even passable by jeep, while the road eastward, to “Drayton,” is passable only by logging trucks. Thus, there is only one way into Stick Around, the broad dirt and gravel road from Acropolis, and one way out of Stick Around, the narrow dirt road to Roxey.

Outside the village, you will stop briefly at the white church-house and drive into the churchyard and park. You will go into the modest wooden frame building, its door unlocked. The interior is unchanged, its rostrum still in place, its twelve long wooden benches still in neat rows…but covered with thick dust. On the thick wooden door of the church, generations of children and teens have written or carved their names, including your own, and recently someone [not me, G, I swear; but there’s more than one of us Over Here] has written

JICK

clue

word

to

me!!!

1519–1972

I live on & on

&

on

&

on

;

You will puzzle over this, and file away the word “Jick” in your memory, in case you should ever be called upon to use it as a clue word [you never will be; and in time you will wonder if some other writer is encroaching on your territory], then you will walk down the steps and out into the church’s graveyard. The names on the headstones are familiar to you: “Buchanan,” “Breedlove,” “McArtor,” “Truett,” “Ramey,” “Madewell,” “Prudden,” “McKinstry,” “Blackshire,” and “Hansell.” You will not find any “Montross.” That sacred burial ground was for good Christians only.

The church is not the only unused-but-still-standing building in Stick Around. In the village proper, where you will next stop your car, there is a building very special to you: you know it will be abandoned, and it is: the windows broken and boarded up, the signs removed except for two or three faded tin advertisements for “Royal Crown Cola,” “Vicks VapoRub” and “Camels.” Once there had also been a “Drink Coca-Cola” sign with the information: “U.S. POST OFFICE, Stick Around, Ark.” This sign is gone. You will find it inside the store, propped against a wall, covered with dust. There is little else inside the store: a broken showcase, empty nail kegs, collage of advertisements for Bull Durham, Day’s Work, Garrett Snuff, Lydia Pinkham Remedies, Putnam Dyes, an official white printed sign KINDLY DO NOT EXPECTORATE UPON THE FLOOR discolored by stains of tobacco juice, and, beneath this sign, the rack of post office boxes, each with a glass door, and a fragment of a wanted poster with front and side photo of some desperado wanted for kidnapping years ago. The little glass doors of the post office boxes are all covered with dust. All except two of them: you will notice that the dust has been wiped off of Nos. 47 and 28, and you will rightly wonder why.

This store-and-post-office, which had also been the home of “Lara Burns,” is very special to you, but it is not your destination. Your destination, and your destiny, is on up the road a piece, more than a mile in fact, along the “Banner Creek” road, the road that used to be one of the cutoffs of the main road to Drayton, but now is a dead end. The house itself is set back from the road, a hundred feet up the west slope of “Lingerfelt” Mountain, the green woods all around it, to set off the yellow I had painted it. What will bring you here? You will be thinking, If I had to pick a house, of all the abandoned houses of Stick Around, I would, more than likely, have picked this one.

But before you tiptoe up the steps on those crepe-soled boots, you will please pause for a moment to admire, or at least to notice, with your knowledge of American domestic architecture, the handiwork of my last piece of carpentry: the house itself. The yellow paint is faded from all the boards except those on the front of the house sheltered by the porch roof from the washing rain; but notice the little touches, the mild “Carpenter Gothic” as some have called it: the cheerful balusters of the railing on the porch; the jigsaw work of the window shutters; the trim of the eaves, the bargeboards: I was proud of that structure, which is, I think, the only physical evidence of myself which has managed to survive. Not a large house by any means, and yet one of only three or four two-story houses in the whole township; I wanted a second story to elevate the two bedrooms, one for myself, the other for young Annie; we caught the night breezes up there. That window on the left was mine; I stood there in the mornings to greet the day; how often I—

But you will be growing tired of me, G, and now, at the climax of your long search, with 5691 miles added to the odometer of your Volvo, you will have no time to linger over the architecture of my house. All right, this moment will be yours, after all; you will have earned it. I will fade off; I’ll retire the “eye” of my I from you for a while, but I’ll be back. Especially will I be back, in a flash, if you try anything tricky.

14

You will not knock. You will try the door, and finding it unlocked, you will burst in upon the house with a jubilant exclamation of “Doctor Livingstone, I presume!” But your poor wit will be thrown back in your face. Dr. Livingstone won’t be there. And neither will be Diana.

The ultimate despair could have overwhelmed you now. You might well be thinking, How could I possibly have hoped to find her here? What vanity, to think that this was the right place. But you will soon discover that someone is indeed making current use of the house for living purposes. There are fresh wild flowers in vases. Cooking smells coming from the kitchen. You will holler up the stairway “HELL-O?” and turn up your aid to listen for a reply, but you will get none. Had she seen you coming, and gone into hiding?

You will go out through the kitchen door and down into the back yard. There is no one around. The forest woods encroach from every side but you will notice that there is a small pig lot with small but live pigs in it, and that a sizable plot of ground is being kept in tilth, for a garden patch, and you, old Gardener, will not be able to resist stepping out among the rows to examine and evaluate this horticulture. A good garden, a lush garden…but the head lettuce is planted a little too close together, you will think; good heads won’t form if they’re that close. And the collard greens ought to be picked before the leaves get so large. The pea vines have finished their harvest and ought to be pulled out, for a second planting of lettuce, or a row of snap beans. The corn is—

You won’t see her. She will come up behind you and could have tapped you on the shoulder before you will know she is with you. You will straighten up from bending over to examine the corn, and there she will be, there in reality, looking you in the eye with those beautiful blue eyes, which, you will realize, are so much like her mother’s, with that same vaguely wistful or baffled look, as if she were not at all certain just where she is, or how she came to be here, or what is now or ever going to come of it. Now the Dr. Livingstone greeting will be a stale joke on your tongue, and your first words to her will be, “You ought to hill your corn.”

“Hill it?” will be her hello.

“Yes, it’s high enough now that unless you hoe some dirt up around the base of the stalks, a good strong wind could blow the corn down. And also—” You will be struck then with the absurdity of your opening words, so mundane in the momentousness of this occasion.

“Is that your car out front?” she will ask. When you nod, she will say, “Vermont plates. That’s a long way off.”

“Yes,” you will agree. “I’ve come a long way.”

Oh, she is beautiful. These months of living close to nature have tanned her skin and put rich color in it. The photograph doesn’t do her justice…although she seems to be, as you will be so disturbed to notice, in a family way, swollen around the abdomen, about four or five months pregnant. No matter. She is still lovelier than you have ever dreamed. And you will know that you would never never be able to return her to her father.

What? She will have just said something, which you will have missed. You will be reluctant to reveal to her that you are anything less than a whole and perfect man by telling her you are hard of hearing. But what had she just said? “I blew the wood”? “I threw you good”? “It’s true you should”? You misunderstood. “I’m sorry,” you will say, and reluctantly brush back your hair to reveal the earpiece. “I don’t hear very well. What did you say?”

“I said,” she will say, “‘I knew you would.”‘

“What? Knew I would what?”

“Come a long way,” she will say.

You will stare at her. How had she known it? Has she been at last in touch with her father, and he has tipped her off that you are looking for her? Or has she merely expected that somebody, anybody, would finally catch up with her? Have your Vermont plates tipped her off? Had she done something in Vermont—broken a law or buried a body—and expected somebody from Vermont to catch up with her? “Do you know who I am?” you will ask her.

She will nod, smiling her wonderful beautiful lovely smile.

“But how—?” you will plead.

“I’ve read your books,” she will declare. “All of them. I recognized you from the jacket photos. I read The Cerise Stone when I was a freshman in college, and, being from Little Rock myself, you see, I thought it was a wonderful evocation of that crazy old town. And, just recently, when I happened to be in North Carolina, in the public library at Burnsville I came across a copy of Firefly, and I just loved it. It made me so interested in this part of the Ozarks that—” She will stop. Noticing the astounded expression on your face, she will ask, “You are him, aren’t you? I mean, aren’t you the author?”

You will manage to nod your head, and begin looking around for a place to sit. You will not want to collapse upon her cornstalks.

“What’s the matter?” she will ask solicitously. You will have reached out unconsciously and gripped her arm to steady yourself. “Let’s sit on the porch,” she will suggest, and guide you around the house to the shade of the front porch. She will put you in the rocking chair and sit beside you in a rush-seat straight-back chair. “Do you like it?” she will ask, gesturing at the porch and its furniture. “I think it suggests the mood of the porch of Lara’s store in Firefly. Don’t you think? The chairs, at least. I found them at an antique shop in Harrison. And look at that porch swing. I’m sorry, are you ill? Can I get you anything? A glass of water? Or something stronger? There’s dandelion wine, and homemade beer, and…yes! guess what, Mr. G, I’ve got a jug of your authentic old Stick Around moonshine! Would you care for a taste? It’s the ‘pure quill,’ as you put it. I bought it from one of Lothar Chisholm’s sons, up on the mountain.” She will jump up and go into the house, and return with two glasses and a genuine old stoneware jug, and will pour a generous dollop of the colorless liquid into both glasses. “I’m sorry there’s no ice. Do you like it ‘neat,’ Mr. G? Or shall I get you some water?” You will shake your head, and she will clank her glass against yours and say, “Well, here’s to your happy ‘homecoming,’ Mr. G!” She will take a sip, and then go on, “I half expected to see you show up, eventually. That is, I said to myself that you hadn’t been back to the Ozarks in a long time, and you were probably getting restless to come back again, and that I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you just came driving up the road some day. And now look, here you are!” But then her delight will cloud over, and she will ask, concernedly, “Is something wrong? What is it?”

“It’s nothing,” you will say. “I’m somewhat flabbergasted, is all. Except for a precious few of my students at college, nobody ever mentions my books to me. I’ve never met anybody in Little Rock who’s even heard of them.” [You will almost slip, here, G, you will almost add: “Not even your own mother, who reads so much.”]

She will laugh. “I’ll bet you’re wondering what I’m doing here. You must have realized when you first saw me that I’m not a native of the Ozarks, despite this house and these clothes.” She will indicate her attire, a simple summer dress of flower-print pattern like those that Ozark girls had worn in the thirties and forties…except that it is a maternity dress. “Even though I’m a native of Arkansas, I’d never been very much interested in the Ozarks until I read Firefly, and until…oh, it’s a long, long story, Mr. G, and I very much doubt that even you would believe it. I’ve thought sometimes of trying to write the story myself, but I doubt anyone would believe me. Are you looking for story material, Mr. G? Isn’t that part of the reason why you’ve come back to Stick Around? Would you like to hear the most marvelous story? Perhaps you could write it, so that it would be believed….”

And she will begin to tell you a most marvelous story, commencing on an afternoon in June of the previous year, in the waiting room of a Porsche dealer in Garfield, New Jersey. You will listen carefully and with great interest, interrupting her gently at times when you do not hear her or when you misunderstand what she is saying. Yes, you will begin to think, it is a story for a book. A fairytale book, maybe, but still….

“Wait!” you will interrupt her, early in her narrative. “Now hold on just a minute, and let me get this straight. I have one big question: Why were you so interested in this ‘Daniel Lyam Montross’?”

“I was getting to that,” she will protest, a little petulantly, “I was simply trying to ‘pace’ my story, in the same way that you do, Mr. G. Well, here it is: you see, Daniel Lyam Montross was my grandfather.”

“What?!” you will exclaim. “No! Oh, come now, Miss Stoving, you can’t expect anyone to believe that!”

It will be she, now, who is looking astonished. Her mouth will gape open, and then in a tiny little voice she will say, “Mr. G…?”

“Yes?” you will say.

“Mr. G,” she will say in almost a hoarse whisper, “you called me ‘Miss Stoving’ just now. Why did you call me that? How did you know what my name is?”

“Well…” you will extemporize. “Some people down the road. I was asking them who lived in this house now, and they told me your name.”

“But I haven’t told anyone around here what my real name is.”

“You haven’t? Are you sure?”

“I’m very sure, Mr. G. Please, please tell me how you knew my name.”

“Well, Diana—may I call you Diana?—I have a little story of my own to tell you.” By this time, G, the very last thing you will care to mention to her is her father. You will not tell her that you are, as it were, in her father’s employ; you will merely tell her that you had happened to see in the Arkansas Gazette a news item to the effect that she had disappeared, and that, because you were at loose ends and needed something to do, you had decided to test your sleuthing powers by trying to find her. She will be very much flattered; she will be completely awed at the masterful way you had managed to trace her from Susan Trombley to P.D. Sedgely and thence to Dudleytown, and thence to Five Corners. You will even confess how deeply involved with her you had come to feel. You will not tell her that you have fallen in love with the thought of her; not yet, at least; that might come later. But you will say to her, after telling her how you traced her to Five Corners, “You can’t imagine how relieved I was to be able to deduce, from various clues, that it was not you but he who was buried in that grave.”

Again her jaw will hang slack as she stares at you with awe. “Buried?” she will say. “Grave?” she will say. And a long moment will pass before her laughter (nervous is it, G?) and her next words: “Oh, that.”

“Yes,” you will say. “That. But don’t misunderstand me. I was sorry, too. I wasn’t entirely relieved. My elation and sadness were all mixed together. I sensed that you and the boy must have spent enough time together to become rather, well, shall we say attached to one another, and therefore his suicide must have been a shock to you, regardless of his—”

“Mr. G,” she will interrupt, and ask you a matter-of-fact question “How long can you stay?”

“Pardon?” you will not have understood exactly her question.

“How long can you stay? How long do you plan to stick around in Stick Around? Now that you’ve found me, after so much trouble, you didn’t intend to rush right off, did you?”

“Oh, no,” you will say. “I can stay as long as you wish. I can stick around forever, if you want me to.”

“Good,” she will say. “Not forever, but long enough to hear all my story, to learn all of Day’s story, and to learn as much as you can of Daniel Lyam Montross’s story. It might take a while. There’s an extra bedroom upstairs. In fact, it was Daniel Lyam Montross’s own bedroom, and I think he would have been very happy to know that you came and stayed in it, and that you might even give him the immortality he deserves by writing a book about him some day. So, will you stay?”

“I’d love to,” you will say, at a loss for better words to express your complete delight and anticipation.

“Fine,” she will say. “Maybe even, if you stay long enough, you might get to meet Day. He’s gone…some other place…for a while. You see—and I’d rather wait and tell this at the appropriate time in the story—but recently we have reached that part of Daniel Lyam Montross’s life where he will leave Stick Around for a period of two weeks in order to go to Little Rock and—no, I won’t tell you, just yet, what he went to Little Rock for; all I can tell you is that it concerns me, when I was a little girl. Well, anyway, Day decided to go off by himself during this two-week period that Daniel is gone to Little Rock, partly because Daniel doesn’t want me to know about it. But there’s another reason, which is Day’s own idea: that maybe we’ve been getting tired of each other, seeing so much of each other all the time for months and months. So, just as a little “experiment,” we have separated for two weeks, to see if ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder.’ I think Day has built himself a little hut off in the woods, up the mountain, somewhere—he won’t tell me where it is; that’s part of the experiment, you see. But he’ll be back. Oh, yes, he’ll be back! And we write letters to each other every day, isn’t that sweet?”

You will be concentrating intently on her words, as if trying to detect any indication that she might really be as demented as you are beginning to think she is. She will sound perfectly rational, and even truthful. But you will not be able to accept it. You cannot join her in her illusions. One of you has to keep fingers wrapped tightly around reality, or all is lost. The only response you can make to her “explanation” is to say: “You write letters?”

“Yes, and we ‘mail’ them, too. We take them down to the store, that empty building which used to be the Stick Around post office, you know, and we just leave them for each other in the old boxes. My box number is 47 and his box number is 28. Every day we write to each other! I wish I could let you read his letters! Then you’d believe me! But his letters are rather personal, you know, and besides, I don’t think he would want me to show them to you.”

“But the grave,” you will protest, “the grave in Five Corners…. Who is buried there?”

She will smile and say, “Both of us.”

You will reel dizzily for a moment, G, and begin to feel that your aggravated case of solipsism has driven you loose from whatever semblance of reality still remains of this “world.”

But then she will laugh at your perplexity, and will say, “You do this yourself, G. In your own fictions, you sometimes play maddening tricks with reality. In order to build up suspense, is it? All right, are you suspended? Do you want to hear our story? Shall I continue? Very well. It was a Sunday morning in June when we left New Jersey and drove northeastward toward Dudleytown. Before we got there, it began to rain very hard….”

15

It will be already late afternoon before you manage to get away with the excuse that you need to pick up a carton of Pall Malls, and to drive into the square of the small county seat, Jessup; you will park in front of Buford’s Hardware Store and go in. Old Clovis Buford is still running the place himself, you will be pleased to see. He does not recognize nor remember you. You will not tell him your name. You will ask him, “Would you send a telegram for me?”

“This aint Western Union, mister,” he will say. “But fer twenty cents cash money, I’ll let ye use my phone to call up Harrison way and send yore tellygram.”

You will explain that you are hard of hearing and unable to use the telephone. You will give him twenty cents and ask him if he would kindly make the call for you. He will phone into the operator at Harrison, and you will dictate your message:

B.A. STOVING

UNION BANK BUILDING

LITTLE ROCK

PLEASE ADVISE NAME DIANA’S GRANDFATHER

SOONEST IMPORTANT STOP

G

C/O BUFORD’S HARDWARE

STORE

JESSUP, ARKANSAS

And then there will be nothing to do but hang around and wait for a reply. “Hot day, aint it?” Clovis Buford will say. “Awful hot fer this time a May. Don’t look to rain, neither.” He will putter around in your vicinity, stacking up his merchandise. “What-all kind of car is that you got out there, mister?” You will tell him that it is a Volvo, of Swedish manufacture. “Don’t ’low as how I ever heerd tell a that kind afore,” he will say. “You git good mileage on her?” You will tell him that the mileage is pretty good. He will amble over to his window for a better look at it, and to see if he can see your license plates. He will come back and say, “Ver-mont! Where in thunderation is Ver-mont at?” You will explain that Ver-mont is a New England state, east of upper New York State. “Git kinda cold, winters, up yonder?” he will ask. Pretty cold, you will tell him. Much snow. He will ponder your strange bearded face closely and say, “I aint seen you hereabouts before, have I? You got any folks, this part a the country?” And you will want very much to say, “Mr. Buford, do you remember a little boy who came in here one day, oh about thirty years ago, and asked you if you carried any spare tongues for toy wagons? Well, that was me.” But you won’t tell him this. You will say: “No, I’m sorry to say, but I don’t have any folks around here. Not any more.”

Finally, the phone will ring, and Mr. Buford will scribble on a scrap of wrapping paper your answer:

G

C/O BUFORD’S HARDWARE STORE

JESSUP, ARKANSAS

NAME DIANA’S GRANDFATHER RICHARD ARTHUR

STOVING THE THIRD

STOP QUERY WHY STOP

B.A. STOVING

“Could you phone another telegram for me?” you will ask Mr. Buford.

“You got the money, I got the time, heh, heh,” he will say.

You will glance at your watch. It will be ten minutes until five o’clock. “Let’s hurry,” you will say.

Mr. Buford will have a little difficulty reaching the operator in Harrison this time, but your telegram will be placed through shortly before five.

B.A. STOVING

UNION BANK BUILDING

LITTLE ROCK

HER OTHER REPEAT OTHER GRANDFATHER STOP

THAT IS COMMA HER

MATERNAL GRANDFATHER HER MOTHER’S

FATHER STOP HIS NAME PLEASE STOP

G

“Operator says you owe me three dollars and twenty-two cents fer them two telly-grams,” Mr. Buford will say. You will pay him, and out of gratitude for his making the calls for you, you will wonder if there is anything in his store which you might buy from him. Any hardware? A gift for Diana, perhaps? What might she need? How about this electric mixer? But she doesn’t have electricity. Do you need anything, G? A knife? A fishing pole? A gun perhaps? Yes, you might care to do some quail hunting. Perhaps a good but inexpensive rifle. Mr. Buford will show you his stock of .22’s. Longrifle twelve-shot automatic. Good for birds. Mr. Buford is happy to sell you the rifle. He hasn’t made very many sales this day.

“Who’s this hyere ‘grandfather’ feller yo’re so interested in?” Mr. Buford will ask, and then apologize, “Don’t mean to be nosey, no.”

Oh, just a fellow you were trying to locate, you will say. And then you will decide to ask him, “Mr. Buford, have you ever heard of anybody named Daniel Lyam Montross?”

He will scratch his head, and hem and haw. “Sounds kinda familiar. But cain’t say as how I have,” he will say. “Whereabouts does he live at?”

“He used to live up beyond Stick Around,” you will say.

“Hhmmm, now. What’s he do?”

“He’s dead,” you will say, but will add, “I think.”

“Daniel Lyam Montross, huh? I wush Fern was still here. She had a better head for names than me. But she passed on last summer. Had breast complaints fer a time, and was laid up at the sanertarium down to Booneville. Brought her home, and she seemed to perk up, but then took a turn fer the worse again. Had to rush her up to Harrison in the middle of the night. Doctors said—”

Mr. Buford will give you a long history of his late wife’s diseases, and then begin discussing a few of his own ailments. He will describe in detail the symptoms of one recent disorder, and ask you what you would prescribe. You will tell him that you haven’t the slightest idea, and will discover that he has been mistaking you for a doctor. Perhaps because of your appearance. You will feel a little flattered, and will point out to him that you are a doctor, but not a medical doctor. You will try to explain to him what a Ph.D. is. He will appear to understand, but then he will have great difficulty understanding what art history is. In fact, he will not be able to understand at all what art history is.

An hour will pass and no reply will come to your second telegram. Probably, you will realize, it had failed to reach Stoving before his office closed. You will wonder if you should send a duplicate of it to his home address. But you will have already put Mr. Buford to such bother, making your phone calls for you, and now he will be acting kind of fidgety, and will say to you, “Gener’ly I have to close up store long about now and go eat my supper.” It is after six o’clock. You will not ask him to keep his store open any longer. The matter can wait. There is no hurry. You will have all the time in the world.

All the time in the world, G, and on your return to Stick Around that evening, you will drive slowly, observing the beauty of the countryside, and reflecting that in this world of Ozarkadia there is no place for an art historian. Why did I ever leave? you will be wondering, forgetting why you left. And now that I’m here, why don’t I just stay?

You will permit yourself a pleasant dream of your future, fabricating your future life in Stick Around, with lovely Diana at the center of that life…if only you carefully and successfully are able to help her weather the grave crisis of relinquishing her delusion that Day Whittacker still exists. And your first big task will be to prove it to yourself.

You will stop again at the old abandoned post office, just for a few minutes, just long enough to set a “trap”: from the glove compartment of your car you will take a small whisk broom and then go into the post office. You will sweep the dust on the floor until it has accumulated in a thick layer in front of the post office boxes. There now. Anybody coming to the post office boxes will leave their footprints in that dust.

Then you will go on “home,” to an excellent dinner of catfish fried in cornmeal. Diana will claim she caught the fish herself, in Banner Creek.

After the meal, she will resume telling the story of her Dudleytown adventure. First she will offer you a postprandial glass of the moonshine. But you will fetch from the Volvo your own half-gallon of Old Grand-Dad.

“What an appropriate name!” she will laugh, and share it with you.

16

You will wake up late the next morning in a bed in the room which had been mine, and at first you will not be able to recall where you are or how you came here. You will lie in bed for half an hour nursing your splitting hangover and trying to piece together the evening before. As the evening progressed and you listened to more and more of her story about Dudleytown, you will have consumed more than enough bourbon, more than even you, old Guzzler, usually drank. Possibly the reason we lost the eye of your “I” in the First Movement was that that eye was befuddled by the booze. At any rate, you can’t remember an awful lot of her story, and after she will have begun telling of their move to Vermont you will lose the track entirely. All you will hear is that strange new tinnitus in your ear: that sound of a fiddle playing one of the eight John Playford dances, so real, so audible, that it will seem to have been coming from right outside the window of my house.

Still fully clothed (except for your shoes, which she will have removed), you do not need to get up and dress; you will merely need to get up. You will rise and put on your shoes and stagger down the stairs and to the kitchen, where you will find her shelling peas into a bowl. “Good morning,” you will say. “Where can I wash up?” She will indicate the sink in the kitchen and the pail of water beside it. She will ask how you like your eggs, and you will reply, Scrambled.

While you are having your breakfast, she will say, politely, “I hope you slept well.”

“Like a log,” you will say. “Deeply and without a single dream. How much did I drink last night?”

“Oh, about half of your bottle.”

“My bottle’s a half-gallon. That means a quart. I hope I behaved myself.”

“Well…” she will hesitate. “Toward the end, you did get a little bit…well, frisky, let’s say.”

“I hope I didn’t…molest you or anything.”

“No. Well, you just kissed me, once. And you asked me to sleep with you. But you passed out as soon as your head touched the pillow. I wasn’t exactly sober myself. But I remember, toward the end, asking you why you were drinking so much, and you said it was because my story is so sad. But I don’t think it’s very sad, G, really; I think it’s a very happy story, with a very happy ending. Why did you think it was sad?”

“Ignore what I say when I’m stoned, Diana. When I’m stoned, I reduce myself in my own eyes to nothing, and therefore nothing I say can matter. But tell me, you said your story has a ‘happy ending.’ Do you mean your story has already ended?”

“Well, yes, in a way. I mean, we’ve found the right place and we’re settled now, and it’s almost time for what you might call the very last chapter in Daniel Lyam Montross’s life. Just as soon as Day comes back—”

“And when, may I ask, will that be?”

“I told you, I don’t know. It’s up to him. Listen, would you like to walk down to the post office with me and see if today’s letter from him has arrived? Maybe it will say when he’s coming.”

“I’ll drive you in my car,” you will offer.

“No,” she will say. “It’s just a mile. And you need the exercise, don’t you? Last night, when you were pretty far gone, you started telling me about what your doctors had said. Are you really dying, G? Don’t you think that if you got a lot of exercise, and took off some weight, and stopped drinking and smoking so much, and—”

“Please, Diana,” you will protest. “I know that. It’s etched in acid on my heart. But all right, I don’t mind walking to your ‘post office’ with you.” So then the two of you will set out on your hike to the post office, this fine May morning with wild flowers all along the way and the singing of birds you cannot hear because of the tinnitus of fiddles, real or imagined, playing one of the eight John Playford dances. You will notice the letter she is carrying, her reply to the “letter” she’s supposedly got from him the day before, and you will say, “I should think that two people who have been seeing as much of each other as you and Day have supposedly been doing would eventually run out of things to say to each other.”

“Oh, no!” she will protest. “That isn’t true at all! I wish I could let you read one of his letters; then you’d see what I mean. One of the things Daniel Lyam Montross learned when he was a young man, from that Henry Fox I was telling you about when you were getting so woozy last night—maybe you don’t remember, but one of the characteristics of love is that two people will share themselves completely and therefore never run out of things to say. Does your mind ever run out of things to think about, G? No, I didn’t think it could. Day tells me everything that’s on his mind, and it’s always interesting.”

“And you?” you will ask. “Do you tell ‘him’ everything that’s on your mind?”

“Well, I don’t think—and I’m not just trying to be modest—but I don’t think my mind is anywhere near as interesting as his. But yes, I try to tell him everything. At least, I never keep anything from him.”

“In other words,” you will attempt a clarification, “you would consider yourself to be genuinely in love with ‘him,’ according to Henry Fox’s definition?”

“Of course!” she will say, as if you didn’t even need to state something so obvious. You cannot help feeling madly jealous, and you will feel that it is even worse to be so jealous of someone who doesn’t exist. And you will realize that it isn’t going to be as easy as you thought to get “him” off her mind.

You will arrive at the post office, and go into the building with her, watching her as she puts her letter into Box 28. The first thing you will notice is that there are no footprints in the dust except her own, the small prints of her canvas sneakers. But now she will open Box 47 and find there a “letter” which, you will notice, is enclosed in an envelope identical with the one she has put into the other box. You will crane your neck to observe the handwriting on the envelope, which will seem very similar to the handwriting on the other envelope. “Busybody!” she will say, laughing, and move away from you to open her “letter” and “read” it. Several passages of the “letter” will cause her to laugh, but she will not pretend to share them with you. For a moment, you will even feel jealous again of “him” for making her laugh. You will be tempted to snatch the letter from her and look at it yourself, but you are afraid that you won’t know quite what to say to her if the paper proved to be blank.

“Well,” she will report at length, “he doesn’t say when he’s coming back, definitely, but he says he doesn’t think he can stand to miss me so, very much longer. And he’s nearly finished seeding the mountain.”

“Doing what, pardon me?”

“Seeding the mountain. He’s carrying on some work that Daniel started but couldn’t finish before his death. You see, or maybe you know, don’t you?—that the loggers back in the thirties and forties brutally cut the timber out of the forests around here and never bothered to plant seedlings to replace it, so that a lot of scrub wood took over the forests. It’s the first thing that Day noticed when we got here, how ugly these woods are in contrast to the magnificent forests of North Carolina. It made him sorry that we had left Lost Cove. But Daniel had felt the same way, and, instead of brooding about it, he got busy and started cutting out the scrub woods and transplanting seedlings of pine and such. Almost all of the thirty-year-old pines that you’ll find on Lingerfelt Mountain are ones that he planted. But there was a piece of about forty acres that he never finished before he was killed, so Day has been finishing that piece for him.”

“Good boy,” you will comment, but again feeling green with jealousy as well as feeling the absurdity of envying someone who doesn’t exist. “I’m most eager to meet him. Do you happen to know when he usually brings his letters to the post office?”

“Are you thinking of trying to waylay him?” she will ask with a smile. “I don’t know, really. Every morning I’ve been coming here at just about this same time, and his letter is always there waiting for me. But I don’t know whether he comes before me, in the morning, or after me, in the afternoon. Or at night, for that matter.”

Diana will retrieve the letter she has posted in “his” box and ask you for a pencil. You will give her your ballpoint. The envelope is sealed, but she will write something on the back of the envelope and then show it to you to read: “P.S. He says he is ‘most eager’ to meet you. So hurry, darling, please. And don’t forget the tablets.” She will return it to Box 28.

“Is he taking medicine?” you will ask. “What are these ‘tablets’?”

“Oh, those are his writing-tablets, the notebooks he kept when we were living in Five Corners, Vermont. In the letter, I told him that we ought to let you read it. It’s much better written than my diary.”

“You kept a diary?” you will ask.

“Yes, and ever since you arrived yesterday I’ve been debating with myself whether or not I ought to let you read it. If you’re really serious about doing a book about me—about us, I mean—then you ought to read it. Of course, some of it is very personal. But it might help you understand my point of view. Are you interested?”

“Am I interested?” you will exclaim. “I’m perishing with interest!”

“Oh, really?” she will say skeptically. “But last night when I was trying to tell you my story, you got drunk and I don’t think you were even listening, or trying to listen, most of the time.”

“I’m sorry. But don’t you think that in your telling of the story you were inclined to, shall we say, censor a bit? I mean, after all, a boy and girl alone together in the woods….”

Diana will laugh. “Oh, I get it!” she will say. “I left out the sex, is that it? Well, I’m afraid my diary doesn’t tell everything. Day’s notebooks are ‘hotter’ than my diary. But if you want the real spice about Daniel, you’ll have to hear the tapes and poems.”

“Tapes and poems!” you will exclaim. “Good lord, we’ve got quite an archive on our hands, haven’t we? Incidentally, if you’ve been missing one of your tapes, I’m returning it to you. I found it underneath your lean-to at Five Corners.”

“Oh bless your heart! That must be Henry Fox’s ‘love’ tape. Did you listen to it?”

“Unfortunately, I can’t hear well enough to listen to a tape recorder. I was hoping you could be my ‘ears’ for me.”

“I will! Oh, I’m so glad you found that tape. It’s our most important tape, Henry Fox’s last tape, and I wondered what had happened to it. It was one of our last tapes in Five Corners, before—”

“Yes, before?” you will prod. “Before what?”

“Before we had to leave.”

“Why did you have to leave?”

“Well, that part of the story was finished anyway. Daniel Lyam Montross himself left Five Corners right after hearing that last monologue from Henry Fox. Get the tape. I’ll read it for you.”

You will fetch from the car the cassette recorder with the tape in it, and she will play it, stopping it after each sentence to repeat back to you my version of Henry Fox’s last great sermon in definition of love. How the sharing of privies leads to love. You have wanted to know for years, G, what love is, so that you could better understand why you’ve never had any. If that is all you will have wanted to know, your search will now be over.

“Beautiful,” you will say when she finishes. “That privy metaphor of Fox’s is positively enchanting. But tell me, if you and ‘Day’ have actually attained a state of love that fits Henry Fox’s definition, why don’t you share your privy?”

“How do you know we don’t?”

“Forgive me, but I couldn’t help but notice that your privy, Diana, has only one hole.”

She will laugh, and say, “Oh, my.” She will sigh and say, “You really are a detective, aren’t you? What am I going to do? At this rate, you’ll know all of my secrets pretty soon.”

“The sooner the better,” you will say.

“It’s still going to take a while,” she will declare.

17

It will take a while, all right, G, more than a while, before you will learn the whole story. The sheer size of her archives will overwhelm you: her thick diaries, Day’s tablets, my collected poems, not to mention the voluminous aural documentation, her collection of over one thousand hours of cassette tape recordings. She will offer to select the more important ones, and, since you cannot hear them, she will offer to listen to them herself and then speak slowly to you so you can understand her, as she repeats my words recorded on the tapes, beginning with my childhood and boyhood in Dudleytown. These tapes will indeed be “spicy” enough for you, and the novelty of hearing my bawdy words on the lovely lips of this girl will be an erotic entertainment such as you have never experienced before. What a delightful evening you will have! My first “priming” with Violate Parmenter will arouse you so much that you will be tempted to ask Diana if she would like to reenact the scene with you, but, since you will have promised her that you won’t drink quite so much this evening, in order to be more attentive to the story, you won’t have the nerve the drink would have given you. Nor will you, when bedtime comes, have either the nerve to invite her to join you in bed or sufficient drowsiness to enable you to sleep. Your evening routines, old Groove, had long since fixed themselves into such a pattern: no drink, no sex; no sex, no sleep; no sleep, much drink; much drink, no sex. When she will yawn and announce that it is past her bedtime, all you could do will be to explain that you can’t sleep without another drink or two. You will hope, of course, that she will suggest an alternative soporific, but she won’t. All she will say is, “Well, as long as you’re staying up, you might as well have something to read.” And she will give you the first volume of her diary. And peck you a quick wet kiss on your forehead before running off to bed.

Old Gullet will keep company with Old Grand-Dad and the young confessions for the next two hours. Her diary does not, as she has said, contain much sex. She seemed often to be more interested in what she had to eat. Obviously, during the latter stages of the Dudleytown episode, she and this Day Whittacker had frequent sexual relations, and, as she confessed to the diary, she had shared herself with the hippies or Jesus freaks or whatever they were, which disturbed you greatly, old Grudge, but, by giving you a picture of a girl who was “mixed up” enough to do such things, prepared you in advance for the far more muddled happenings in Five Corners, the oral things, the voyeuristic things, culminating in this strange and disoriented entry:

December 4

Now why did he have to go and do that?? Oh what a horrible child I’ve been! But oh how immature and impulsive he was! I don’t know which was worse, my shameful self-centered wickedness which drove him to it, or his self-pitying melodramatic overreaction to my badness. Was it such a terrible request for me to make? Just to watch him play with himself? Is that so abominable? I’m so confused I don’t have any values lately; I can’t judge how wrong or innocent something is. I think perhaps he really wanted to kill Daniel; that’s what he was trying to do. But the funny thing is that he couldn’t, and didn’t, kill Daniel. Daniel is still very much alive, and with me, and I had a long long talk with him, in which I told him I’d love to write his poems for him in Lost Cove. I want to get to Lost Cove as soon as I can. This place has driven me crazy. I’ve been here too long. It’s time to go some other place.

You will close the diary then, and close your eyes for a moment, fighting off an involuntary shudder, and with the help of another belt of Old Grand-Dad you will formulate your Great Guess: poor self-pitying Day Whittacker had indeed hanged himself, unable to cope with the rich skeins of Diana’s efflorescent personality, and she, poor thing, had been totally unable to accept the fact of his death, and had, despite burying him in Five Corners, gone on believing that he still exists. She had gone on alone to Lost Cove, the very place itself symbolic of her lost and deluded state, and now has come to Stick Around, still alone, but waiting, waiting for Day’s resurrection. In time she will realize, perhaps, that such a resurrection is never going to occur, and then, G, you could take his place, and have her for your own, and help her find her way out of all the lost places of her mind.

How ironic that you will no longer be bent on proving whether or not I ever existed, but instead determined to help her realize that Day Whittacker no longer exists.

Now it is late, and that fiddle music in your ear will be giving you trouble. It will be too late to listen to another one of the eight Playford dances. Before going to bed, you will stand for a moment in the doorway of Diana’s room, peering through the darkness at the form of her body curled into sleep. You will want very much to go and touch her belly, to find out if there really is a solid bulge of flesh there, if she really is pregnant, or if she hasn’t simply been wearing a pillow or something beneath her dress. But you will know that even a solid bulge of flesh would not necessarily prove anything; you know of the phenomenon called “false or imaginary pregnancy” in which women actually swell up psychosomatically in their conviction of being pregnant. So you will not touch her, now. But you will feel a great wave of compassion for that poor, lonely, confused creature, and it will be all you can do to force yourself to go to your own bed. “I’ll take care of you,” you will mumble aloud before falling asleep.

It will be late, as usual, when you will wake up, and find that the house is empty. She will not be in the garden or yard either. You will be pleased to notice, in the kitchen, that she has left for you, on the warming shelf of the old iron cookstove, a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon with a slice of toast, and there is a pot of coffee on the stove. While you have your breakfast, you will uneasily reflect that it, the breakfast, might be her parting gift for you, that she might have fled, that she might have had misgivings about letting you read her incriminating diary, or that she might be afraid that you are going to get all of her secrets out of her.

After breakfast, you will set out, on foot, for the post office. That will be your intention, your destination, anyway, to see that there are no new footprints in the dust by the boxes and to see, and possibly open, any new “letter” from “him.” You will be a bit surprised, then, to meet her on the road, coming from that direction.

“Where have you been?” you will ask her.

She will show you the bouquet in her hand. “Oh, just out picking wild flowers along the road,” she will say.

“You haven’t been to the post office?”

“Not yet,” she will say, but something in the tone of her voice will make you believe she is lying. Then she will ask you, “Where are you going?”

“Oh, I was just looking for you,” you will say, and reflect, Here we are, brazenly deceiving each other already.

“Well, shall we walk to the post office?” she will ask. “First, I’ll have to go and fetch my letter at the house and put these flowers in a vase. But you walk on, and I’ll catch up with you.”

So you will walk on, at a fast clip, but she, young thing, will soon catch up with you, and, showing you her envelope, which is not yet sealed, will say, “I’ve decided that if I can let you read my diary I might as well let you read my letters…if you’d care to.”

And you will care to.

Dearsomest, darlingsomest Day-O,

Boy, you’d better come on back, P.D.Q. I miss you, I do, I do. Our little “experiment” has gone on long enough, don’t you think? You miss me, I miss you, we miss us, us miss we, so let’s cut out all this missing, hey love? Besides, I’m beginning to suspect that G thinks you don’t even exist.

You do, don’t you? Sometimes I wonder. Your letter yesterday was wonderful, and I’m tickled to pieces to hear about that raccoon you found, but sometimes it seems as if your letters come from another world. Sometimes I find myself disbelieving that you really are just somewhere around here in the woods. Where are you, Day? Please at least tell me that, just so I can think, when I think of you (as I do all the time, you know it, old Love), just so I can think of where you are. Lingerfelt Mountain? Hardscrapple Mountain? South Bench? Butterchurn Holler? I promise I won’t go and try to find you, if you don’t want.

Kiss that adorable raccoon for me. What are you going to name him, or her, or it?

love love love O infinite love,

Diana

P.S. My new friend G is a very lonely person, a very sad person. You know what Daniel tells us, in his Seventh Beatitude, that the true peacemakers are those who never close themselves off from their kindred. And G is our kindred. I think what he’s really looking for is love. And you won’t mind, will you? Remember the Fifth and Sixth Beatitudes.

Reading this letter, old Grasper, will give you a mixture of feelings: at first, you will feel covetous of those sweet endearments she addresses “him” with, but then you will become gradually certain that this letter is not really addressed to “him” but to you (after all, as she says, she has “decided” to let you read it), and it is her indirect way of letting you know that she herself is willing to admit the possibility of Day’s nonexistence, and that furthermore she is getting ready to accept you as her lover but will have to “clear” it first with her conscience in the form of this dearsomest Day-O.

“What are these Beatitudes?” you will ask her.

“You haven’t noticed the walls of your room?” she will ask you. When you shake your head, she will tell you, “Well, next time you’re up there, take a close look at the walls. That was his room, as I told you, Daniel Lyam Montross’s room, and during his last days he wrote on the—” she will pause, and resume, “On second thought, don’t look at the walls. Not yet, anyway. You’ve got to hear the rest of the story first, and read—Oh, look what we’ve got here!”

You will have arrived at the post office, and she will now “find,” stuff ed into her box so that its door won’t close, a roll of notebooks, soft-cover spiral-bound notebooks of the kind used by your college students. “They’re Day’s tablets,” she will exclaim. “He sent them, after all! I didn’t think he would!”

You will notice again there are no footprints in the dust except her own. So that, you will tell yourself, explains her absence from the house this morning. She had to come down here to “plant” Day’s notebooks, and also, probably, another “letter” from “him.”

“Here,” she will say, giving you the notebooks. “These are for you. And this is for me”—she will indicate the “letter” which, you notice again, is in the same kind of envelope as those she sends her letters in. She will begin “reading” it to herself, keeping her distance from you so that you can’t pry, and giggling occasionally (rather falsely, you will detect) at the “contents” of the “letter.”

When she has finished and refolded the letter and reinserted it in its envelope, you will protest, “Why won’t you let me read his letters if you’ll let me read yours?”

“I can’t share everything with you,” she will say, laughing. “There are some things that are simply too personal. But I can tell you most of what he said. He said that he’s glad you’re here; he thinks it’s just what Daniel Lyam Montross is looking for, that is, your coming here is just what we need. And therefore Day is glad to be of any help, and he sends you his tablets with his compliments, his best respects, and his doubts that ‘such a great writer,’ as he calls you, would find his style very attractive, but he adds a caution that in reading his tablets you should refrain from judging him too harshly, or judging me too harshly, until you’ve heard all of the rest of the story, and, although he would love to meet you, he is not going to come back until you’ve heard all of the story, and are prepared to acknowledge two things, first, that he and I have done nothing ‘wrong,’ in your opinion, and second, that you believe with all of your heart in Daniel Lyam Montross.”

A clever and inventive girl! you will reflect, admiring her for the swiftness of her mind that can concoct ad libitum such fanciful but plausible contingencies. But your own swift mind, old Gambiter, will detect the Queen’s sly maneuver to put you in check, and will make your Knight forestall her.

“That sounds almost like a kind of blackmail,” you will point out. “What you’re saying is, in effect, that he will never appear unless I meet those two conditions. And what if I can’t?”

“Don’t be so pessimistic,” she will say. “And there, you have his notebooks. So get busy and read them, and, as he says, don’t be too quick to judge either one of us.”

You are not a fast reader, and it will take you most of the day to read the notebooks. You will be deliberately reading slower than usual, trying to understand all the circumstances leading up to the hanging. For a shady reading spot, you will pick a secluded thicket across the road from the post office, a spot where the Squires Creek Bank and Trust Company had stood before it was taken apart so that its stones could be piled along the road edge to hold back the waters of the occasionally flooding Squires Creek. From this shady thicket, you can spy on the post office, in case Diana comes again to “plant” another letter or to retrieve her own letter. But, absent from the Ozarks for such a long time, you will have forgotten that thickets such as this one you are hiding in are likely to be infested with chiggers and ticks. When you will begin to scratch, in the late afternoon, you will think that it is nervous scratching brought upon you by Day’s story of their unhappy life in Five Corners.

Your feelings toward Day Whittacker, while reading his story, will be ambivalent, to put it mildly. You will feel that Day wasn’t able to understand Diana very well, that often the age difference between them became an age gap. You will wish that it had been you who had lived with her in Five Corners. But then you will realize that the foundation for such a wish lay in the fact that you and Day Whittacker are very much alike. You will remember yourself at the age of nineteen. There will be times when you will find yourself not only scratching but brushing away a tear or two from your eyes. When was the last time you were ever able to weep while reading anything? Go ahead. It will be good for you. It will help you believe.

In time, although you will realize that your tears are real, you will become aware that your scratching is not produced by the same source; you will remember that there are such things as ticks and chiggers, and you will quickly if belatedly get out of that secluded thicket. Before returning to Diana’s house, you will check the post office and find that her letter to “Day” is gone. Had she used the back door of the post office to retrieve it? The footprints in the dust are the same, only hers. But she has not, you will be pleased to notice, “planted” another “letter” from “him.” A good omen? Is she getting ready to give him up?

When you see her again, at suppertime, you will say, “Well, I’ve finished his notebooks. And naturally, I’m left with a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

She won’t mind.

“My most important question,” you will point out, “assuming that I am expected to write this whole story, and make it plausible, is simply this: If Day Whittacker hanged himself in Five Corners, why, for God’s sake, why must you go on with this pretense that he still exists?”

“That’s simple,” she will say. “I hate to spoil whatever illusions you would like to have, G, but the fact is that he didn’t succeed. He must have forgotten about ‘Fox’s Law,’ one of the most important things that Henry Fox ever taught to Daniel. I’ll play the tape for you if you’d care to hear it. Anyway, the essence of Fox’s Law is that there is an inverse ratio between how much one wants or expects something to happen and how likely it is to happen. In other words, if you expect something, you won’t get it. If you get something, you didn’t expect it. I guess I must have forgotten it myself, because I should have known that as long as I actually expected him to…to…well, you know why he tried to hang himself, don’t you? because I…I had this selfish whim to watch him play…well, you read that awful part, didn’t you? I should have known that since I wanted and expected him to do it, he would never, never do it. And when he climbed that tree, I expected that he wouldn’t do it, he wouldn’t jump. And because I expected he wouldn’t, he did. Yes, he jumped. But, don’t you see, Fox’s Law was operating on him too. He fully expected to kill himself. He was quite confident he could do it. Confidence breeds expectation. He knew he was quite skilled at climbing trees. Even more was he skilled at tying knots. He had every expectation of success. And for that reason he failed. Don’t you see?”

No, G, you will not see. A clever job of backing and filling, yes, but obviously another ad libitum concoction. “How do you mean, he ‘failed’?” you will ask. “What happened?”

“Oh, it was pathetic. When he jumped, he sort of tripped, and fell only about eight or ten feet, down to another limb, and got all tangled up in his rope. It took me nearly an hour to climb up there and help him get loose. And even then he was in a state of shock, and couldn’t, or wouldn’t, talk to me. But Daniel would still talk to me. What’s the matter? Don’t you believe me?”

“There remain a couple of other questions. One of these I have asked you before: Who, then, is buried in that grave?”

“And you remember what I answered last time you asked it, that both of us are. That’s the end of your story. I died of a gunshot wound in Woodstock Hospital, and Day buried me in Five Corners and then hanged himself, and Dr. Fox came back and buried Day in the same grave with me. Isn’t that beautiful?”

“You’re aggravating my solipsism something awful.”

“Is that why you’re scratching yourself so much? Is your solipsism itching you, or do you scratch just to prove that your flesh still exists?”

“No, they’re chigger bites.”

“But, ‘I itch, therefore I am,’ right? As long as you itch, you know that you are. But you’ve got to let me, and Day, and Daniel exist too. Because we are. That ‘grave’ you found was nothing but a trench that Day dug to bury our stuff in. Dr. Fox left us only one pair of snowshoes, and in order to get out of that place, Day had to carry me. As Dr. Fox told him, jokingly, if he could carry me four miles when I was shot he could carry me one or two miles when I was well. But anyway we couldn’t carry all of our stuff with us—you can’t imagine how much junk will accumulate in a few months—so Day, who’s such an ecologist, you know, decided to bury it. Call it, if you want to, the symbolic burying of ourselves, the awful selves that we were in Five Corners before we resolvd our ‘It Jitters.’ That’s why I put a copy of Daniel’s poem, ‘Of a Lost Town,’ on top of that ‘grave.’ I thought of it as appropriate to the symbolism.”

“But there’s one more little detail,” you will point out. “That poem was obviously in your handwriting. I recognized that at that time. But answer me this: why are the last pages of Day’s notebook, the part about his hanging, which he obviously couldn’t have written himself if he hanged himself, why are those pages in the same handwriting, that is, your handwriting?”

“Well, don’t you see?” she will offer, somewhat desperately, you will detect, “I had to finish it myself. Can’t you understand? Poor Day was…well, I mean, after all, at that particular time, he wasn’t in any condition for doing any more writing himself….”

That “condition,” you will be certain now, was death.

18

“Are you ready for the poems?” she will ask after supper, and there will ensue this cozy domestic scene: the two of you at the table on either side of the old kerosene lantern, you holding in your lap the three-ring binder of my collected cadences and doggerel, Diana holding in her lap her knitting; she will be knitting, in anticipation of autumn chill (four months off, but underlining her optimism and her forethought), a sweater for “Day,” a sweater which, you will be happy to notice, is large enough for your own frame, provided you succeed in shedding the rest of your surplus avoirdupois.

Although it will happen that you will hear fiddle music, seeming to come from right outside the window, fiddle music in the tinnitus of your ear playing one of eight Playford dances to the tune of the iambic measure to help you scan my verse, you will not read my rhymes and songs for any appreciation of their rhythms and figures; you will read them in search of further clues that Day is dead, and you will find plenty of these clues, beginning with the very fact that no mention whatever is made of his “recuperation” or “recovery.” The poems seem to take it for granted that he “exists” without bothering to explain how he has suddenly surfaced from a state of death or of supposed shock. He hanged himself in the end of the notebooks, and now suddenly we find him making love to Diana on the floor of the deserted Salter house. But of course! Since he is only a figment of her imagination, or, as the early poem entitled “Entity” puts it, “She thinks he’s what a girl as silly as she is / Would fantasize, sweetly, on hysteric whim,” she felt no need to justify his “recovery” by wasting any other poems on the subject of his existence, although that poem called “The Curing,” which details my own recovery with the help of Aunt Billie’s herbs, will seem to you an allusion to Day’s recovery.

And what about this “Flossie”? This ghost? Unquestionable proof, if any were needed, that Day did not exist. One person, one very deluded person, might very well imagine seeing a ghost, and Diana in her pitiful isolation and loneliness would certainly be prone to such illusions. But two persons? No, two persons together would not agree upon seeing a ghost.

You will mention this to Diana. Although you are not really interested in the thread of continuity which the poems have, you cannot help but chuckle, once, at the antics of Flossie, and to challenge Diana, “Oh, come now! Did you really see this ghost?”

Diana, remembering Flossie, will laugh too, and say, “That old dear! I wish I could send her a postcard or something just to let her know that we’re okay, but where would I mail it to, for heaven’s sake?…Goodness, G, those chigger bites are really getting worse, aren’t they? You’re scratching yourself to pieces. Maybe you’d better let me put something on them.”

“But a ghost, Diana, a ghost….”

“What’s a ghost town without a ghost?” she will say, and put down her knitting and fetch some stuff to put on your chigger bites. “First let’s try this—” a cotton swab soaked in kerosene “—and then this—” a tube of some kind of ointment.

You will be somewhat reluctant to expose all of the locations of your chigger bites; whatever you are, old Grandstander, you aren’t an exhibitionist. But she will be persistent and thorough. “They bit Day there too,” she will say.

Her ministrations will arouse you, but you will remain cool enough to say, “Diana, I’m afraid that nobody is going to believe in this Flossie character. In rewriting the poems, you ought to make it clear that she was just your imagination, or—perhaps better—she was an actual, real-live old character, some old recluse who lived in Lost Cove.”

“You sound like a college writing teacher,” she will say, dabbing at your nether regions with the ointment. “Which reminds me, do you know Kynan Harris, or have you read his work?”

“An insufferable buffoon,” you will remark. “His novels are meaningless.”

“Well, anyway, he was my writing teacher at Sarah Lawrence, and he told me that all of my stories were ‘pedestrian.’ I guess they were. But what do you think of these poems? Are they pedestrian?”

“Not at all.”

“Do you think they’re publishable?” she will ask, and the ointment she is stroking onto your chigger bites is persuasive.

“Most of them. As I say, with some revision, to make the characters more credible….”

“But I can’t revise them!” she will protest. “Because I didn’t write them.”

“All of this handwriting is obviously yours,” you will point out.

“Of course!” she will say and give one of your chigger bites a light pinch. “Can’t you get it through your head that I was the only one who could take up pencil and paper and put the words down?”

“Where was Day?” you will shoot at her.

She will stop ointmenting your bites. “He was…well, don’t you understand? he had to be put to sleep.”

“Yes, ‘put to sleep’ is the apt euphemism.”

She will stare at you. “Oh, darn you,” she will say, but she will resume searching for chigger bites and dabbing ointment on them.

Her attentions will be deliberate and intimate. Not to lose touch with the subject, you will say, “After all, Sylvia Plath was about your age when she wrote some of her best work.”

Diana will sigh. “You flatter me enormously, G. But I swear, I don’t have the least bit of talent for verse.” And her fingers will not stop with the small swellings of your chigger bites; they will find a larger swelling.

“Now look what you’ve done,” you will tease her, but she will not blush.

“Well, do they still itch?” she will ask.

“Not they,” you will say. “It.” She will laugh, but you, still clinging to the subject, will go on, “Maybe you think you have no talent for verse, but have you ever heard of ‘automatic writing’? The opening of the gates to the unconscious? If you would like to publish these poems, I’d be happy to recommend them to my agent. But of course, you’ll just have to face up to the necessity for revision, to take this ‘ghost’ out….”

“Oh, darn you!” she will say. “Darn you!” And she will run off to bed, leaving you alone with your bottle of booze and your itch, the Itch of your It. I itch, therefore I am. And apparently, you will decide, she intends for you to pay a price for the relief of that itch. The price of your belief. Belief before relief.

You will leaf through the poems again, not skimming and skipping in search of clues, as you will have done during your first reading, and you will, for the sake of your itch, finally persuade yourself that Diana could not have written the poems, that even if she had written them, through some kind of automatic writing, they are inspired by, imbued with, a presence that is beyond Diana. I appreciate that, G. I’m rewarded that you’ll make such an effort, even out of ulterior motive. To show my gratitude, I’ll permit you to satisfy, in part at least, that ulterior motive. But not tonight. This night is your penultimate one, and Diana is already fast asleep, fabricating a splendid future in her dreams. You will have one more night in Stick Around after this one.

19

And two more days. You will wake late, on your penultimate day, with your last hangover, to discover Diana in distress. She will have already been to the post office, not waiting for you to wake, and will report that there is no letter from “Day.” “I can’t understand it,” she will say. “He’s never missed a single day so far.”

“Perhaps,” you will suggest, “your last letter off ended ‘him.’ You might have hurt his feelings by asking his permission for you and I to—”

“I wasn’t asking his permission,” she will correct you. “As usual, you don’t understand. Day is an even firmer believer than I am in the Beatitudes of Daniel, and if you really believe them, you can’t feel such petty emotions as jealousy or envy, or have any conventional notions of ‘morality.’ So I know that isn’t the reason. There must be something else.” She will suddenly give you a narrow-eyed look, and say, “You wouldn’t possibly have purloined his letter, would you?” You will swear up and down that you wouldn’t do such a thing. You wouldn’t, would you? No. You will be convinced, now, that the real reason there is no “letter” from “him” today is that she is on the verge of giving up the pretense; today is a transitional phase: she is getting ready to face reality, to accept the fact that there will never be any more “letters” from “him.” And the time has come, you will decide, for you to help her rid her mind of the illusion completely.

How can you prove that Day Whittacker exists?

“Well, here are some of his clothes.” She will open a dresser to show you the pile of shirts, sweaters, socks, handkerchiefs, etc., which doesn’t mean anything at all. She could have kept his clothes after burying him.

How can you prove that Day Whittacker exists?

“Well, here are some of his books.” In the bookcase, several books on forestry, woods management, plant pathology, and astronomy. Ditto, she could have kept his books after burying him.

How can you prove that Day Whittacker exists?

“Well, here is his garden and his pigpen and there are his free-ranging chickens. I’m just taking care of them while he’s gone. He planted the garden. It was one of the first things he did. He planted some of it too early, and we had a late frost on April third which killed it, and so he had to plant it again. I don’t know anything about gardening. He just taught me how to identify the weeds so I can keep the weeds out. And I love these Poland China piglets, which he got from a farmer over on the Roxey Road, but I don’t know how to raise pigs.” You will like that allusion to death and resurrection in the killing of “his” garden by the frost, and his “replanting” of it, but the existence of the garden and pigs is no proof at all of “his” existence.

How can you prove that Day Whittacker exists?

“Well, here is his voice on my tapes. Listen. Can’t you hear well enough to tell that it’s his voice? Well, not really his…. I mean, this is Daniel Lyam Montross talking. You can’t hear what he’s saying? But you can hear the tone of the voice, can’t you? It doesn’t sound anything like my voice, does it?” But her voice is, at times, you will have noticed, inclined to be rather husky, and she could easily imitate a male voice, especially in her eagerness to go on believing that this male still exists.

How can you prove that Day Whittacker exists?

“Well, why don’t you go up on the mountain and see if you can find the pine seedlings he planted? I don’t know where they are, but they’re up there somewhere, thousands of them. You might even come across Day himself. But if you do, don’t bother him. I mean, as he says, he doesn’t even want to see you until you’ve come to believe in Daniel Lyam Montross, and that’s important to him. But if you see him, would you ask him why he didn’t write—No, I think the best thing, if you see him, is just to wave at him or something, and go the other way, without speaking….”

You will go hunting that afternoon, old Gunner. Yes, you would look for “his” pine seedlings, you would even look for “him,” but your main excuse for hiking up the mountain will be to hunt for quail. The meals Diana has been serving will have been getting a little monotonous, the main course being nothing but the fish that she catches in Banner Creek, and you, old Gourmet, will think that a few fowl might relieve the monotony. She will not go with you. She has an aversion to firearms. Understandable. Besides, she has a long letter to write. So you will go alone.

You know these woods of Lingerfelt Mountain. You had been lost in them at the age of five. You won’t get lost in them now. The cedars that were small when you were small are now large enough to be cut into clothes closets. The pawpaws and chinquapins are still plentiful, but somebody obviously has been cutting down the scrub trees and hardwood “weeds,” and, sure enough, replanting the forest floor with pine seedlings. But anyone could have done that. This part of Stick Around is right on the edge of the Ozark National Forest, and probably the government had undertaken this reseeding program, which is, you will notice as you go farther and farther up the mountain, quite extensive, certainly not a one-man operation.

You will follow an old logging trail which is familiar to you; it had been the road you’d taken to get out of the woods when you were lost at the age of five. It comes to an end in a ferny glen where there is a waterfall and evidence of ancient Indian inhabitation: tiny burial mounds and rock shelters with shards of old pottery in them. This glen of the waterfall had been the place where you had met that strange old hermit, the man who’d told you how to find your way out of these woods. You aren’t lost now.

You won’t flush any quail. Nor will you flush any Day. You will fire your .22 several times at a tree, just for target practice, and then you will go on back down the mountain.

20

“Well, we might as well get on with the story, if there’s nothing better to do,” you will say to her that evening.

“There isn’t any more,” she will say.

“What?” you will exclaim.

“Not much, any way. There’s very little remaining, and we’ll have that when Day comes back.”

You will stare at her, incredulous that she, having carried the life of Daniel Lyam Montross all the way through “his poems,” all the way from Dudleytown to Five Corners to Lost Cove to Stick Around, would suddenly drop the effort. “But,” you will protest, “I presume that ‘he’ did come to Stick Around, did he not? And lived here for twenty years or more, did he not?”

She will nod. “Oh, yes,” she will say.

“But nothing happened to him here?” you will demand.

Again she will nod. “Nothing except his eventual death. But that’s the beauty of it. That’s why this was the right place for him, don’t you see? It wasn’t nearly as pretty a place as Lost Cove, I can tell you, or even Five Corners, for that matter, but it was a place where he could live and be happy without anything happening to him.” Your open-mouthed incredulity, old Goggle-eyes, will cause her to laugh, and say, “You novelists.” She will laugh again and go on, “You novelists have to have a lot of incidents and happenings and episodes to keep you in business. But don’t you know that all of those occurrences or experiences or adventures usually involve some pain or strife or anguish? They’re aberrations—any conflict is an aberration, and Daniel Lyam Montross had no further conflicts until the very end of his life. But without conflicts, you don’t have a story, do you?”

“Now see here, young lady,” you will object. “I won’t be made a fool of. You aren’t going to sit there and ask me to believe—”

“You don’t believe anyway!” she will assert. “Do you? You don’t believe in Daniel Lyam Montross. You think he’s just something I made up, as an excuse for all this traveling.” When you will not answer her positively or negatively, she will go on, nodding her head, “Yes, you’re just like I was, when I first got involved in this whole business. In the beginning, I wasn’t ‘buying’ any of it. I told Day, right off the bat I said to him, ‘I don’t really believe in reincarnation, not for one minute, and I don’t believe in hypnosis either, and I certainly don’t believe you’re my grandfather.’ I told him that and let it sink in, and then I said, ‘But I would like to believe. I would like to find out. Wouldn’t that be marvelous, to be able to believe’?”

“And now,” you will ask, cynically, “do you believe?”

“With all of my heart,” she will say. “And you’re just like I was, G, you don’t believe in anything. That’s your spiritual deadness. You need something to believe in. And I’m offering it to you. Wouldn’t you like to have something to believe in?”

“Yes, but you aren’t helping matters by trying to persuade me that his life suddenly stopped being eventful after he came to Stick Around.”

She will take your hand. “Come with me,” she will say. She will take you into the room where she keeps her tape recorder and her tapes. She will indicate a stack of about three hundred or so tapes. “Those,” she will say, “were the Dudleytown tapes and the Five Corners tapes, with a few from Lost Cove. And these—” she will indicate the much larger balance of tapes, seven or eight hundred “—these are the Stick Around tapes.”

“But why so many?” you will ask, “if nothing happened to him….”

“Oh, several of these tapes are about him, and we still have to make our last tape. But most of these tapes are not about what happened to him, but what happened to Stick Around. It’s a nearly complete chronicle of the history of this village and everybody in it between 1932 and his death in 1953, by which time the village was nearly dead also. There are some fabulous stories here, all of the incidents and happenings and episodes and adventures that you could ever hope for, but they are not things that happened to him.”

“Good Lord!” you will exclaim, for you will suddenly be not unmindful of what a novelist might be able to do with such a treasure trove. “You wouldn’t be joking by any chance?”

“Listen,” she will say, turning on the recorder. “Or listen to me while I repeat what the tapes say. Just a few samples. First, here’s a typical tape about Daniel Lyam Montross, when I was trying to find out what happened to him here, and when I discovered that practically nothing did. I was just picking dates at random and asking him. Listen—”

The day is June 15, 1934. Has anything interesting happened to you today?

I read a nice poem by John Donne….

Today is April 15, 1938. What did you do today?

I taught Annie how to distinguish the oaks and ashes….

This is March 15, 1933. What did you accomplish today?

I meditated on the difference in sound and meaning between the “brook” of Connecticut and Vermont, and the “creek” of North Carolina and Arkansas.

November 15, 1944. What was today worth to you?

I heard Rupe Blackshire tell an interesting story about a coon hunt.

Now it’s July 15, 1950. What happened today?

I meditated on the subject of envy, and decided that envy is the most despicable of all emotions.

Today is February 15, 1937. Anything today?

I had a nice remembrance-having of Ammey.

Today is August 15, 1939. What did you do today?

I helped find a lost—

Diana will push the Rewind button. “That goes on like that for another hour,” she will say. “And there’s not one single date on which anything happens to him that would be worth mentioning in a novel.” She will remove the tape, and put in a different cassette. “But listen to me recite this one for you. This one’s an example of his ‘Stick Around Chronicles,’ his retellings of what he heard from other people.”

And Diana will begin repeating for you a most interesting story about a hunter of wild hogs. You will not realize it at the moment, G, but eventually you will employ this very story as a central part of a future novel which will be called Razorback.

“Or listen to this,” Diana will say, putting on another tape, and again, although you will not be aware of it just now, you will hear a story that will serve you some day as the wellspring for your sixth novel, The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks.

“Or this.” And there in genesis will be the outrageous outlines of what will become The Scarlet Whickerbill. “Or this one. Or this one. Or this one.” And as the evening passes, there will open up for you a bountiful storehouse of incipient fictions.

“Holy Moses!” you will cry, shaking your head at the sheer plentitude of it all. “What I wouldn’t give to have those tapes!”

“Yes?” Diana will say, moving closer to you and becoming serious. “What wouldn’t you give? Would you give anything?” Do you want to bargain? I’ll ‘sell’ you these tapes, G, but not for cash. One thing I learned from my stupid old father was how to make a deal. And I’ll make you a deal.”

You will be reluctant, G, out of fear that it would be some price or penalty you couldn’t pay. But you will want those tapes. Desperately. “Well,” you will say. “What is it, then?”

“Your soul.”

You will chuckle, but nervously, and say, “Mephistopheles!”

“I knew you would say that,” she will say, “but, as usual, you are too quick to leap to conclusions. Mephistopheles would consider your soul a bad trade. Your soul, G, is moribund and suicidal. My tapes wouldn’t be of any use to you, because you aren’t going to live long enough to use them.”

“How right you are!” you will say with sarcasm. “So it’s a pointless trade anyway, isn’t it?”

“No,” she will say. “Not if you relinquish that sordid soul. What I have in mind isn’t so much a swap as a trade-in. Not my tapes for your old soul. But my tapes for a new soul that will live long enough to use the tapes and make them live too.”

“How do I acquire this ‘new soul’?”

“First you’ve got to be willing. You’ve got to be willing to believe in Daniel Lyam Montross.”

“Oh, I believe!” you will admit. “I do. After all, you couldn’t possibly have ‘imagined’ or ‘invented’ all of these Stick Around stories all by yourself.”

She will offer you her hand. “Is it a deal, then, G?”

“It’s a deal,” you will say.

She will shake your hand, but after you have shaken hands, she will not remove her hand from yours. She will hold your hand tightly in hers, and say, “Now we start trading in that old soul. Tell me: how does this feel?”

“How does what feel?”

“I’m holding your hand.”

“Oh yes, I see,” you will say, looking at your hand being held tightly in the embrace of her hand.

“Well, this is nice,” you will allow, off hand.

“Really?” she will doubt you. “When was the last time you actually felt any real pleasure at the touch of someone’s hand?”

“Off hand, I don’t remember.”

“You wouldn’t,” she will say. She will stand up, still holding your hand, and she will tug that hand. “Come on,” she will say, and with her other hand she will lift the kerosene lantern from the table, and conduct you up the stairs. You will wonder what she has in mind.

You will be thinking, Well, she seems to have eliminated Day Whittacker at last.

She will lead you into your bedroom, never letting go of your hand, and she will hold the lantern high against one wall. “You’ve never bothered to read these walls yet, have you?” she will ask, and when you shake your head, she will say, “Then look up there. Look up there and see what that says.”

She will hold the lantern high against the wall; it is a spot that only a tall man could have reached (or a girl standing on a chair, you will think, briefly, but you will dismiss that thought quickly from your mind, because you will want very much to believe). The handwriting, in old pencil, nearly faded, on the white plaster of the wall, does not seem to be a script that a girl could imitate. And it says:

Only the lordly are imperative. So I can’t and won’t command you. So this isn’t my supreme commandment but my supreme and only prescription: embrace: cling: touch: hug: enfold: cuddle: squeeze: hold! Hold!

“Well,” she will say to you, “do you believe that?” Then she will blow out her lantern and set it aside. Then she will hold you. You will embrace her. She will cling to you. You will touch her. She will hug you. You will enfold her. She will cuddle you. You will squeeze her. To my prescription. Then you will go to bed, but you will not “make love.” Yes, it will be a great wonderful love that you will make, but you will not “make love.” That would have seemed, somehow, superfluous. Which is what I meant. The ultimate cure for solipsism, G, is not the orgasm, which requires no partner, after all, but the caress. All over. A last word from my dictionary [goodbye, Henry; we’re finished, old friend]: polymorphous. The whole body. You never guessed, did you, G, that there are so many different ways just to hold someone?

In the tightness of your embrace, the hard metal corner of your hearing aid will mash against her breast, and she will ask you why you don’t take it off. You will say you want to be able to hear her.

“But I don’t have anything more to say, for now,” she will say.

“But there’s one thing I’ve been wondering about,” you will say. “Your Daniel Lyam Montross is beginning to seem very real to me, and I think I really do believe in him. But, you know, I used to live in Stick Around myself; when I was a young boy, every summer I visited here and lived with my aunt and uncle all summer long. That was back in the late thirties. If Daniel Lyam Montross was living here at that time, why didn’t I ever meet him?”

She will increase the pressure of her embrace, and her lips, so close to yours, will say, “You did.”

And then she will say one thing more: “Go to sleep, G.”

21

Had it been the power of suggestion? Had you identified so closely with Day Whittacker in those episodes where she had used her “magic words” on him, that now, when she used them on you, they had “worked?” Or had you been genuinely sleepy? Or had you yearned for some brief return to those happy days? Whatever the case, it will be full morning when you wake, without a hangover for the first time in ages, and you will remember your dream:

The porch of Lara Burns’ store, the Stick Around post office, one hot morning in July: the daily assemblage of townspeople coming to get their mail, exchange gossip, buy little things at the store, and loaf around, out of the heat of the sun. All of the chairs of the porch are occupied, and upended nail kegs do service for extra sitting places. The children and teens sit on the porch rail or stand in the yard, but your traditional, appropriated sitting-place, little Guy, is the porch swing, although this morning you must share it with two women, one of them your Aunt Josie.

Although it is a hot morning, a mild breeze comes down Squires Creek, bearing the faint sound of the machinery in the canning factory, and the acid smell of boiling tomatoes. Old Herman Blackshire is keeping the boiler running; it makes him mad that he has to miss the morning assembly at Lara’s store.

The others take advantage of his absence to tell tales about him. Quent Buchanan tells how old Herman was up at Jessup the other day bragging that he’d drunk whiskey every day for seventy years and never been harmed by it, when one of those temperance fellers up there interrupted him and said, “Yeah, but how old are you?” and when old Herman says he’s eighty-five, that temperance feller said, “Well, if you hadn’t drunk all that liquor, you might be a hundred by this time.” And poor old Herman got kind of bothered, thinking about that, and couldn’t come up with any answer.

Doc Squires, one of the best tellers of tales, knows a better one about old Herman. Doc says he saw old Herman out driving his one-horse wagon the other day when he’d had a little too much to drink. The old mare slipped on a “road-apple” and fell right down in the shafts. Old Herman stood up in the wagon and started cursing the mare, but the mare wouldn’t get up. Old Herman slapped her with the lines and hollered, “You damned old fool! If you don’t get up, I’m gonna drive right over you!”

They run out of stories to tell on old Herman and begin to look around to see if anybody else is missing that they can tell stories on.

Your Aunt Josie says to you, “Show Doc Squires your finger, boy.” And she says to Doc Squires, “Lookee here at this boy’s finger, Doc. They aint no trace left of that there wart what was on it yestiddy.”

Doc Squires examines your finger and says, “Sure ’nough, it’s clean as a whistle.” And then all of them begin to talk about that bearded old feller who’d come here yesterday at this time, and who, when Lara had mentioned to him your wart, which they said you’d got from handling toadfrogs, had borrowed a thaw of tobacco from one of the men, and, after masticating it, had spat a drop onto your wart, and rubbed it in, and said “What I see increase, What I rub decrease,” and pretty soon had gone on his way. You’d seen him once or twice before; his clothes were the same as everybody else’s: blue denim overalls and cotton shirt; but he wore a broad-brimmed black hat that seemed bigger than most people’s hats, and his black and gray hair came nearly to his shoulders, and he had a beard, although the beard wasn’t long and was neatly trimmed. Your wart was gone completely when you woke this morning.

“He aint a warlock or he-witch, I reckon not,” somebody says, “but I’ll swear if he aint the best wart-taker in this county.”

“Many a time I seen him do it. Aint ne’er failed yet.”

“I don’t put no stock by them spells he uses, but I got to admit he must be doin somethin right.”

“Wonder what he does fer a livin. He aint never worked over to the fact’ry, has he?”

“Him? Aw, he jest keeps a few chickens and pigs and a gyarden patch up thar at that fancy yaller house of his’n.”

“Must be eight, nine year since he built that yaller house. Where’d he come from, anyway?”

“He don’t say. He aint one to talk about hisself. I heerd, though, that he come from east Tennessee or Care-liner some’ers.”

“Wal, I heerd rumors he was a ’scaped con-vict, runnin from the law. Some folks say he must a murdered somebody over there.”

“Wal, I also heerd, some time back, that he was a runaway bank embezzler and had a pile of money hidden some’ers.”

“Yeah, that was three, four years ago. Me and some of them Buchanan boys snuck up to that yaller house wunst when he weren’t around, and we turned that place plum upside down, but couldn’t find a danged cent. He aint got no money.”

“Don’t he never buy nuthin hyere at the store?”

“Naw, and he don’t mail no letters neither, and I’ve never knowed him to git a letter from nobody.”

“But he aint what you’d call a real hermit. He don’t avoid folks. I’ve had many a long chitchat with him myself.”

“Me too. But gener’ly he lets me do all the talkin. He don’t say much.”

“You ever seen that gal of his? Annie he calls ’er. Reckon she’s his daughter, aint but about ten year old, but a real pretty-un.”

“She don’t go to the schoolhouse. Ast him wunst about ’er, how come he don’t send ’er to the school, and he claims he’s edjercatin her hisself.”

“Some folks say he must have some kind of peculiar religion, all his own, and maybe he don’t want that gal to git any wrong notions from the rest a the world.”

“You ever heerd him fiddle? Why, that feller could fiddle the cob outen a jug! They tried wunst to git ’im to fiddle fer the squar dances up at Acropolis, but he wouldn’t. Says there’s too many fights gits started at squar dances and he’d done had enough fights to last him the rest a his life. But I’ve known him to play fer a weddin or two.”

“I bet he caint fiddle near so good as he fingers a shootin-arn. I run into him one day up near Butterchurn Holler, shootin squarl, and I declare, I never seen such a shot in all my life. Why, he could hit a squarl from a half a mile off.”

“Fact he aint got a womern makes some folks say he must’ve been disappointed in love. Or else that gal’s maw got killed or died or somethin.”

“Mighty peculiar feller. But I aint heerd nobody say one bad word about him. Nor tell e’er a funny tale on him, neither.”

“Me neither.”

When all of the people have left the store porch, and you are alone with your Lara again, you show her the place on your finger where the wart was and is no more, and you ask her, “Lara, what’s that feller’s name?”

22

You will have wanted your dream to stick around, you will have hoped that that recapturing of the bright unlonely past would stay more, a little while, long enough for you to talk with your beloved firefly Lara again, but that dream, like all dreams, will pass away, and you will be left lying in bed remembering what will seem to have been, even more, a dream: the pressures and touches of Diana’s arms and hands, the wrapping of the back of your neck in the crook of her elbow, the way her fingertips had clutched the small of your back, the clasp of her armpits on your shoulder and ribs, the clench of her clavicle on your throat….

You will spring out of bed, full of zest for the new day (not knowing, I’m sorry, that this will be your last day), and first you will search the wall to reassure yourself that my supreme prescription had not been a dream. Yes, it is still there in the daylight, that old-fashioned hand scrawling that injunction to embrace and cling and touch and hug and enfold and cuddle and squeeze and hold. Then you will notice (why has it taken you so long to notice my walls, old Gimlet-eye?) that all four of the white plaster walls are covered with pencilings: aphorisms, epigrams, sententious graffiti: observations on nature and on human nature, mottoes, reminders, lists: an old man talking to himself on his walls.

I’m not certain you will be quite ready for it, just then, but since it is your last day, you will find my nine beatitudes:

Montross, His Blessings

1. Happy are they who need no god beyond themselves; for theirs is the kindom of It.

2. Happy are they who are happy; for there is no one to give them what they haven’t got.

3. Happy are the unhumble, the openly honestly unmodest; for only they can endure the custody of Earth.

4. Happy are they who’ve lost their expectation; for they shall not be disappointed.

5. Happy are they who tender love to another; for the offering expects no return.

6. Happy are they who know their hearts aren’t pure; for they shall see their It.

7. Happy are they who never close themselves to another; for they are the true peacemakers.

8. Happy are they who never cause another’s guilt; for their Its have made peace with their own.

9. Happy above all are they who can remove their minds from their body’s business; for their reward is the fullness of feeling.

A pair of hands will come up from behind you and cover your eyes and a voice you can’t hear will say “Guess who?” and you will smile and say “Diana?” and the hands will uncover your eyes and you will turn around and there she will be; her mouth will be moving but you are deaf. You will get your hearing aid and plug yourself in, and hear what she is saying: that you aren’t “ready,” yet, to be reading what comes after these beatitudes. But she will be smiling, and only half-serious, and she will not try to cover your eyes again when you turn back to the wall to read the rest of it. The original Beatitudeanist had stopped with His nine, but I had added nine others:

Montross, His Damnings

1. Wretched are they who chase after beauty; for the end of the chase is the end of the beauty.

2. Wretched are they who work for wages; for the one is never equal to the other.

3. Wretched are the passive; for they who wait shall have only their waiting.

4. Wretched are they who are dead while living; for the one is never equal to the other.

5. Wretched are the envious; for equality is impossible.

6. Wretched are they who think themselves only male or only female; for the one is not equal to the other.

7. Wretched are they who are wronged, or who think they are; for they have no feeling of right.

8. Wretched are they who want more than they have; for the one is never equal to the other.

9. Wretched are they who think themselves wretched; for thought is all they have.

“The old boy got kind of sour in his dotage, didn’t he?” you will remark.

“Sour?” she will say. “I don’t think that’s the right word, at all. There’s nothing cynical or bitter about those writings. Pragmatic, maybe, but not pessimistic. If you think they’re sour, that’s what I meant when I said you aren’t ready for them. Because they’re addressed to you.”

“Oh, I see,” you will say with some sarcasm. “I suppose he knew that I was going to come along some day and see them.”

“Don’t scoff,” she will say. “At least he knew that I was going to come along some day and see them, and they’re addressed to me too.”

“What makes you think that he knew you were going to come along and see them? At the time he wrote them, I mean?”

“At the time he wrote them,” she will tell you, “I was here.”

“What?” You will adjust the volume wheel on your aid.

“I was here,” she will repeat. “I haven’t told you this, G, because I was saving it for later, for our last chapter, after you’ve heard the story of how his daughter Annie left him, and left Stick Around, or, rather, was taken away, or eloped, or—I want you to hear the story soon—but anyway, you see, his daughter Annie, who was my mother, was discovered by Burton Stoving, who was an army captain on maneuvers in the Ozarks during the war, and he, my father, took her away and married her. But Daniel Lyam Montross made her promise—” Diana will shake her head and complain, “Oh, I wish you could hear the whole story, but anyway, what happened was, when I was three years old, Daniel Lyam Montross came to Little Rock and ‘borrowed’ me—kidnapped me is what they called it—he intended to return me when I was grown up, but they didn’t know that—anyway, he brought me here to Stick Around, and I lived with him in this house for a week before they came and—” Diana will make a gesture in imitation of tearing out her hair at the futility of trying to tell it, and then she will sigh and say, “That was why Day is gone, don’t you see? The two weeks he is gone represent the two weeks that Daniel was gone from Stick Around when he went to Little Rock to ‘borrow’ me. He refuses to tell me about that part. Anyway, the point is: these writings on the wall, these blessings and damnings of his, were the last things he wrote. And he told me—I was just three years old, of course, and couldn’t remember, but Day and I have already ‘recaptured’ this particular part—he told me that someday I would come back again and see these writings, and that these writings expressed in a nutshell the kind of life he had wanted me to have, full of that happiness and bare of that wretchedness, and—” You apparently will be staring at her so disbelievingly that she will be unconsciously raising the volume of her voice, as if to get through to you, “Don’t you SEE? HE HAD WANTED, BY KIDNAPPING ME, TO BRING ME UP RIGHT AND KEEP ME FROM GETTING THE HORRIBLE TWISTED PERSONALITY I GOT! HE WANTED ME TO BE HAPPY! HE WANTED TO TEACH ME HOW TO BE UNLIKE OTHER PEOPLE! AND HE COULDN’T! BECAUSE THEY KILLED HIM!”

She will fall against you, then, and you will hold her tightly, and while you hold her, feeling genuine pity and compassion for her, you will begin to see, at last, what you think is “The True Picture,” the “real” justification for all of this long and strange story. There have been times when you, in trying to justify her reasons for inventing me, will have toyed with the theory of Spoiled-Rich-Girlin-Search-of-Kicks, but now, you will realize, it is more serious, and more sad, than that. The money was a factor, but only secondary. Given the kind of parents and environment she had, she might well have grown up wretched, might in fact have grown up more wretched, if they had lived in poverty. Blessed (or damned) with an uncommon intelligence, but lacking any sense of identity (you will remember that beautiful but poignant “Do you think why I am me?”), she had needed to invent her personal saviour: a substitute father, or, in this case, grandfather, a wise and kind old man with much experience, well traveled, whose own sins would make him quick to forgive those she bore with guilt, whose powerful identity would compensate for her lack of one, whose native intellect, mother wit, and acquired intellectuality could come up with such handy, sententious beatitudes to give her something to live by, and for. It is a magnificent creation, a stunning concoction, but you will be sorry to realize that not even you, old Genius, would be able to write the story of it.

And you will know that you must not be too quick to attempt to disabuse her of her strange illusions. You would have to be patient, and play along with her little game, and in time…well, apparently she is already approaching the point of her story where her grandfather gets killed, and then, perhaps, she would allow him to “stay dead,” and would have nobody, then, but you.

I appreciate that, old Goodheart, I really do. I’m glad you will decide not to “de-fabricate” me in her sensitive, delicate mind. You will allow me to stick around, while you concentrate on eliminating that other pathetic delusion of hers, that nineteen-year-old Jersey jerk who’d been unworthy of her, and, being unworthy, had killed himself in despair.

“Shall we go to the post office?” you will gently suggest.

She will shake her head, and hug you tighter.

Gently you will pry her apart from you, and ask, “Don’t you want to see if a ‘letter’ has come for you today?”

Again she will shake her head. “I’m afraid to look,” she will say. “I’m afraid of finding nothing there.”

Understandable. But she must be brave. “You must,” you will say. “You have to face up to realities.”

She will look at you with hesitant, yet beseeching eyes, eyes which seem to ask you to let her hold on to her delusion a little while longer, and yet, at the same time, seem to ask you to speed her away from it. “Come on,” you will say. “It’ll take just a minute. We’ll go in my car.”

She will allow you to lead her, unresisting, out of the house and into your Volvo. But then you can’t find your ignition key. Had you left it in your other trousers? But you are wearing the same pair you had on yesterday. “I can’t find my key,” you’ll tell her. “I’ll go look in my room.”

You will look in your room. You will search the stairs, the whole house. You will come back to the car and search the floor of the car. “Damn,” you will say. “I was going to drive into Jessup today to get some more cigarettes and bourbon.” And also to see if a telegram has ever arrived for you. “You wouldn’t happen to have any cigarettes, would you?” you will ask. She will shake her head. “You wouldn’t happen to have seen my car key, would you?” you will ask. She will shake her head and turn her eyes from you. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to walk. To the post office, I mean. If the key doesn’t show up, I’ll just have to hitchhike or walk into Jessup later on.”

At the post office, she will hold back, still reluctant to face reality. She won’t go into that deserted old building. So you will go in for her. You will notice, first thing, that there still aren’t any footprints in the dust other than yours and her own. But then you will be very unhappy to notice that there is an envelope in her box. How long does she have to continue this self-deceit? You will want to rip open the envelope and confront her with the blankness of the contents. But you have some principles, after all, so you will take it out and give it to her, unopened.

Her face will beam and she will eagerly take the envelope from you with a little squeal of pleasure, and open it, and begin “reading” it to herself, with obvious pleasure. Did I do something wrong? you will be asking yourself. Did I say or do the wrong thing, that she has decided to continue her belief in “him” after being so close to getting over it?

“Oh, he’s coming back!” she will exclaim. “He doesn’t say when, but he’s coming back!”

“Let me see the ‘letter,’ Diana,” you will insist.

“Oh, no!” she will object. “Not this one. I couldn’t even tell you—”

You will snatch the letter from her and run. Down the Squires Creek road you will run.

“You bastard!” she will holler, coming after you. “Give that back!”

You will run on, determined to outrun her and find some secret place where you can stop long enough to look at this “letter,” to prove that it is empty. But unfortunately, old Gasper, you are in no condition to be doing any running, and she is right on your heels, clawing at your back. You should have known better than to attempt to increase the pace of your running.

You will stop abruptly and crumple up with your first heart attack.

How ironic: I have created you for the purpose of keeping Diana alive, she who was doing such a poor job of keeping herself alive. I thought you could keep her alive, if not forever at least long enough to get my story told. I should have picked someone whose heart is in better condition than yours, but you are my only logical choice. Now, will you die on us yourself?

When you fall, she will grab at the letter in your hand, and tear it away from you, leaving you clutching a mere fragment of one corner. You will hold this to your heart and groan, “My heart—”

“Serves you right, you Grabber!” she will say, but her tone will not be entirely hostile; she will become solicitous for your condition, and kneel beside you. Your florid face and heaving chest will alarm her. “I’ll go get your car and drive you to a doctor,” she will suggest.

“No key,” you will gasp.

“I—” she will hesitate. “Maybe I can find it. Keep calm. I’ll be right back.” She will run off toward home.

You would have preferred that she stay with you, holding your hand, while you died. To die alone, in the middle of this dirt road in this dying old town…. Well, on second thought, it does have a certain appropriateness. Except that you will not be actually dying. When she returns, in less than ten minutes, driving your car, you will be sitting up, your respiration and pulse will be nearly normal, and you will have had time to study the fragment of letter you’d torn away, which says only “Remember the pool at Marcella Falls?” The script is not identical to hers, but, you will be relieved to observe, it is very similar to hers: the “e”s and “o”s are formed like hers.

You will return this fragment to her. “I’m sorry,” you will apologize. “I shouldn’t have stolen your letter like that. But my curiosity was killing me. And it nearly did, you might say, kill me.”

“Are you all right?” she will ask. “I was very worried….”

“I should have gone into training for that run,” you will remark lightly. “I’m just in rotten condition. Where did you find my car key?”

“Oh, it was on the—” she will pause, and decide not to lie. “It was hidden on the rotten condition. I hid it. If you’re going to Jessup for more cigarettes and whiskey, you’ll have to walk. Nobody’s going to pick you up.” And she will take the key out of the ignition and run away with it. But she will not run far. She will stop, and wait, as if challenging you to catch her. You will leave your car abandoned there on the Squires Creek road, and start out after her. You will jog a while, then walk a while.

“Starting right now!” she will yell at you, backing off as you near her. “Starting right now, we get you into good condition!”

23

Running, jogging, trotting, walking, you will begin on this day to get into condition. This is both your end and your beginning. The finish line at a race track is in the same place as the starting line, is it not? You do not know it, then, but this is to be your last day in Stick Around. And you do not know it then either, but this running will be the beginning of your long, long race. You will never stop, old Greyhound, but I pleasantly picture you disburdened and disembarrassed of that potbelly, trim of limb and long of gait and full of wind. Sprint on, old Gee!

How many miles will you cover that day? With her beside you, or ahead of you, as your pacer, you will cover every road and trail into and out of and across Stick Around. You wouldn’t have smoked a cigarette if you had one. Hiking and hastening and heaving, you will hurry to cover all the odds and ends that still stick around in your mind.

Why has “Day” decided to start writing to you again, after skipping yesterday?

He was “out of town” yesterday. He had to go all the way down to Russellville to be interviewed by the National Forestry Service. And guess what, he got the job! Starting next month, he’ll be a forest ranger in the Ozark National Forest.

And then “he” will go live by himself in some forest tower?

Maybe, but I hope he can just stay here in Stick Around.

Do you intend to stay here in Stick Around?

Of course!

Forever?

Well, I can’t say that. But I can tell you, I’ve had enough of traveling; I’ve discovered, as Daniel Lyam Montross finally did, that traveling creates instability and insecurity, and that even if Stick Around isn’t as nice as some other places I’ve been, it’s home, and home creates stability and security.

But won’t you ever get lonely?

Not if you’re here.

Pardon? I didn’t catch that.

I said, not for a year. You see, I’ve had a lot of experience with being lonely, but I’ve decided that I simply will not be lonely, for at least a year. That is, I’ll give it a year, and if at the end of that year I want to, then I’ll feel lonely. Stick Around isn’t completely a ghost town, you know. There are still several families living up there in the hills and valleys outside of town, and Day and I have already made some friends.

Tell me, if you don’t mind, why your privy has only one hole.

Well, don’t you see? after Daniel Lyam Montross’s daughter left him, he was alone, and when his original privy got kind of old and worn out, he built a new one, and since there was nobody but him, he didn’t need more than one hole. But your “Day” didn’t feel the need to remedy that situation? After all, in your story so much emphasis was laid on sharing….

You have a scatological mind, G. But if you must know, neither of us has ever used that outhouse. If you live in the woods as long as we have, you prefer the woods.

Will you marry me?

No. Tell me, what is the meaning of the reference to the pool at Marcella Falls in “his” latest “letter.” I couldn’t resist reading that piece that tore off, the end of his letter, and it said, “Remember the pool at Marcella Falls?”

Oh, that’s just an allusion to the subject of voyeurism. If I told you what it really means, you would understand why I can’t let you read his letter, and that is precisely the reason I can’t let you. But, as you’ve remarked, there are different kinds of voyeurism in the various sections of our story. In the first section was the pool at Marcella Falls where Day spied on me the first time I was taking a bath there myself, and later watched me when I took a skinny dip with those Jesus freaks. Then of course, in the second section, there was that awful business about voyeurism in relation to masturbation, which was indirectly responsible for Day’s trying to hang himself. In the third section, there was the situation wherein Flossie sometimes watched us when we were making love. Now, in the fourth section, there is also another kind of voyeurism. That’s what Day was referring to, because it harks back to the pool at Marcella Falls.

The fourth section? What is the fourth section?

This is the fourth section. Right now. We’re in it.

Oh. Are you suggesting that we’re being watched? By a voyeur? Who is watching us?

Daniel, of course, is watching us. He’s responsible for our being here, after all. He’s in charge of the whole show. I don’t know if he’s getting any voyeuristic pleasure out of it, but I do know that he’s watching.

You’re making me self-conscious. Are you insinuating that he created us?

Of course he did! Neither of us would be here, right now, if it hadn’t been for him, would we? He not only created us, but he is also re-creating us: giving us something to live for. But he won’t let me marry you?

No.

Why did he create me, then?

To tell his story, when all the rest of us have tried and failed. And to tell our story.

But he seems to be doing all of the storytelling by himself.

In our “solipsism,” as you call it, all of us invent each other for various reasons, to fill various needs. Day, if you wish, invented Daniel Lyam Montross as a father substitute, a kindly protector, and he invented me for my companionship and love, if not my money, just as I invented him for his practical knowledge of living in the woods. Daniel Lyam Montross invented Day as a reincarnation-in-disguise for himself, and he invented me as a catalyst to take Day to these various towns, concluding with Stick Around, and he invented you to tell the story of it. But the very important thing is, you see, that while we in our solipsism have all invented each other for various reasons, nobody invented Daniel Lyam Montross except himself. He existed long before any of us.

And there is no hope that he could be persuaded to let me marry you?

I’m sorry, no.

Please list the volumes in Daniel Lyam Montross’s library.

He wasn’t an intellectual, not what you would think of as a reading man. There were only three books: the Holy Bible, an anthology of Elizabethan poetry, and an unabridged dictionary. He read the first for humor, the second for music, and the third for drama.

And he was never bored? Or lonely? What about his sex life? Was he suddenly celibate during those twenty-odd years here in Stick Around?

The sex of the sections, as you have remarked, was sequential: the first, coital; the second, oral; the third, anal. This is the fourth section. The sex of the sections was sequential and the fourth is sequestered.

Sequestered? Do you mean solitary? Masturbatory?

No. Not necessarily. Sequestered in the sense of separated, isolated, withdrawn. You recall his ninth beatitude, which implies that the supreme happiness comes from being able to exclude the mind from the body’s business, as for example in sex. That exclusion, or seclusion, is the sequestering. It is, incidentally, how Daniel “cured” our sexual maladjustments: by taking our minds off of it during the act, Day was able to last longer while I—But I can’t dwell on it, because it’s sequestered, don’t you see? Your mind and mine are not permitted to perceive it.

Are you and I going to make love, ever?

Not if it can be perceived by any mind.

What?

Neither of us would be happy doing it if our minds or anyone else’s minds saw us doing it.

Who?

Anyone. We are being observed, as I told you.

Why?

To see which place we wind up in, some other place or the right place.

Where?

The right place.

How?

Through wretchedness to happiness, through damnation to blessedness.

When?

Soon.

I’m running out of questions, and my feet are killing me. But there’s just one question left. All these days and months, why haven’t you ever written to your father and mother?

How do you know I haven’t?

24

Naturally I can’t let you marry her, old Groom, even if you weren’t already wed. Nor can I let the sequence of sex in these sections be upset by any unsequestered love at this point. But, just as I’ve permitted you the joy of that one soul-renewing night of holding and embracing, I’m happy to give you, on this your last afternoon in Stick Around, that innocent but wanton happening you’ve always wanted: the experience of a refreshing sharing of a swim, the two of you rinsing the sweats of your running and hiking by a quick naked plunge into that secluded pool of Banner Creek known as Old Bottomless. The picture is not quite of pastoral beauty, for both of you are paunchy, she with child, and you, old Gut, with gut, but I must observe that without her dress on she looks even less swollen than usual, somehow, while your vigorous race has already removed perhaps an inch from your waistline and you can, by expanding your chest and holding your breath, shrink the other inches. The occasion is, as I say, both innocent and wanton, chaste but frolicsome: you would love, wouldn’t you? for it to develop into something sequestered, but I am watching you, for now, and as long as I choose to watch you, you are not sequestered. So, enjoy yourself, for now. And soak your feet well. Because when this half-hour is up, you’ll have to do some more walking.

25

It will have been a stupid question; you will realize this too late. Most of your questions have been sharp, even clever, but this one will be showing your hand. How could you possibly have known that she had not corresponded with her parents unless you had been in touch with them? Unless you are, as she will quickly guess, hired by her father to find her?

“How much did my father offer to pay you?” she will ask.

You will tell her.

She will say, “I’ll give you twice that much if you promise not to tell him where I am. I’ll give you three times that much.”

You will shake your head. You will tell her that you had never been interested in money, in the first place.

“Are you going to tell him where I am?” she will ask.

“I don’t know,” you will equivocate. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why haven’t you written to your parents? Even to let them know that you’re still alive.”

“I won’t write to my father because I detest him,” she will say. “Do you know, in all the years that I was away at school, at Margaret Hall and then at Sarah Lawrence, I got a total of maybe six or seven letters from him, all of them little short things dictated to his secretary. ‘Be a good girl and work hard.’ ‘Be a good girl and stay out of trouble.’ He never seemed to care about any of the specific problems that I might have been having. He thought money would take care of any problem.”

“But couldn’t you write to your mother instead?”

“No. I want her to see how it feels to have your only daughter abandon you. Because that’s what she did. She abandoned Daniel Lyam Montross, after he’d spent so many years trying to bring her up to be a person and have an It and be able to see it. Why couldn’t she have stayed here in Stick Around and married one of the local boys? Why did she have to go off and marry that absolute louse Burton Stoving and become a society girl? Why couldn’t—”

Now, old Goodfriend, if it will help your faith and understanding any, I’ll take you into my confidence and tell you of certain matters which not even Diana herself has been told, for good reason. She is, as you have seen, an intelligent girl, and she seems lately to have resolved most of her “It jitters,” but there are some things that she is still simply too young and too sensitive to know. One of these is the story, involving intrigue and stealth, of how I “kidnapped” her. I refused her request to “re-create” this story. It is exciting, but immaterial, even irrelevant. She wanted, in effect, to “age-regress” herself to her third year, and pretend to be in Little Rock, and have me come and kidnap her. I had to refuse. That entire two-week episode is sequestered from her. There’s nothing to be gained by repeating the episode. The child was frightened, of course, at first. She didn’t know who I was or what I intended to do with her. And because she was only three years old, I had trouble getting her to understand. Perhaps I should have waited until she was older. But by then it would have been too late. Already, perhaps, it was too late….

Just as, in the case of Annie herself, it had been too late. When I took her away from Walt Ailing and fled from Lost Cove in search of some other place where I could raise her, the nature of her It had already been fixed by her earliest years as Walt Ailing’s child; I couldn’t erase whatever wretchedness she’d suffered during those years; I couldn’t remove the It that had already been formed before I got ahold of her. For example, I couldn’t do very much about her meekness, the most ingrained and terrible of her qualities. She grew up as meek as ever. I think the life she lived in Stick Around was far happier than those lives of most girls her age, but my experiment, if you want to call it that, wasn’t a complete success.

My own life in Stick Around wasn’t solitary, you know; I never thought of myself as a hermit, and in any case my hermitism or withdrawal or isolation wasn’t sudden but gradual; it kept pace with the decline of the old rural life, the decline not just of Stick Around but of all Ozarkadia, the advancement and encroachment of this century’s so-called progress. I was never successful in persuading Annie that there were certain aspects of our country life which must be preserved against the encroachment of “civilization.” Burton Stoving, when he appeared, was a symbol to me of the very worst element of this encroachment: he was the Military, an army captain at the time; he was the Urban Life, a member of the big city’s society; he was Money, he was Progress, he was Civilization. But these very qualities that made him repugnant to me made him desirable to Annie.

That, in itself, says more about my failure in raising and rearing and fostering her than anything else. So I lost Annie to him. I didn’t try to stop her. I thought, If everything I’ve helped you learn doesn’t make you see what a mess you’re getting into if you marry this fellow, then there’s nothing I can say now to stop you. She was nearly twenty at the time, and already pregnant.

But I told her that when this child was born, I wanted to “borrow” that child. I wanted this one last opportunity to “experiment,” if you want to keep on calling it that. I was an old man, nearly seventy, but I knew I could live long enough to finish this work, long enough to take one human creature and show him or her all of the possibilities of the human It, to protect him or her from all the trammelings and warpings and frustrations of society, to reveal to him or her the grand world of nature and the way he or she belonged to it. That was my bargain with Annie.

But she reneged. The baby was born, and I waited three years, which was perhaps too long. If I had acted earlier…but the question is speculative anyway, since my end might have been the same in any case. By the end of those three years I wasn’t ready to wait any longer, and I acted. I knew, of course, that Annie would guess who had taken the child. But if they followed, and found us, I had any number of escape routes carefully plotted, and I knew the fastness of these forests better than any man alive…. Or better, at least, than all but one man. He’s another story.

Will you stay to hear it, G? Or shall I send you off now? By telling you that it was only after I had “borrowed” the child and brought her here to Stick Around, that I finally learned her mother’s reason for not letting me have her: that Diana was her only child, that she couldn’t let me have her only child, that she couldn’t have any more children. Because Burton Stoving was sterile.

Diana is not, would you say? defective. Somewhat strange, yes, in an altogether charming way. But you wouldn’t think there’s anything wrong with her genes.

I’d rather whisper, G, but you wouldn’t hear me. So turn up that aid and listen to me very, very carefully, because I’m not going to repeat myself; and if you repeat me to a soul, let alone Diana, I’ll come back once again and hound you to your grave.

She was my daughter.

26

But the story of that, like the end of your sweet naked hour in the cool water of Old Bottomless, is sequestered.

27

Let us hurry, now, through a desequestering. Could we have a crescendo of background music, please, Conductor? Fiddles sawed for all they’re worth, in a swelling climax of sound. Thank you.

You will hear it in your tinnitus, G, but when you climb out of the pool and retrieve your clothing, and plug your hearing aid back in, you will seem to think that it is not merely tinnitus, this grand finale of fiddling that sounds like all eight of the Playford dances mixed together. No, it isn’t tinnitus. When Diana comes out of the pool, you will ask her if she doesn’t think she can hear this tempestuous fiddling, and she will smile and say, Yes, she believes she can hear it too.

You will look all around you, now, and find the fiddler. He is sitting on a rock within full view of what you thought was your secluded bathing place. A local youth? A spying farmboy? He is a gangling, dark-tanned fellow, in his late teens, dressed in faded blue overalls, chambray work-shirt, a straw hat and—to complete the picture of rusticity—a stalk of Johnson grass gripped between his grinning teeth.

When he sees that you have spotted him, he will stop fiddling, but in your ear the grand crescendo-climax of strings will continue. “Howdy,” he will say, cordially. The brim of his straw hat is casting the upper part of his face in shadow, but there will be something disturbingly familiar about him. Have you seen perhaps a photograph of him somewhere?

Diana will see him too. She will cry out, “Day! You’ve come back!” and she will run toward him. He will rise and come to meet her, and they will embrace. And they will kiss. And you will want to evaporate from the face of the earth. Diana will break loose from his embrace and say to him happily, “Well, you old voyeur, you, are we even now?” He will nod, and then she will bring him to you.

“Day,” she will say, “I want you to meet G. G, this is Day. Day, G. Gee, Day!”

He will offer his hand and you will take it. “Mighty proud to meet you,” he will say. “I’ve been hearin a right smart about you, feller.”

“I’ve been hearin a right smart about you too, feller,” you’ll say to him.

Diana will explain to you, “Day has been trying to learn the Ozark dialect. Do you think he sounds authentic?”

“Purty good, I’d say,” you’ll say in the same saying, “fer a Jersey furriner. I tuk ye fer a local boy at fust.”

“Aw, gosh dawg, I’m not that good, yet,” he will protest. Then he will ask you, “Wal, you fixin to light out, directly?”

“Yeah. Reckon I’d best be gittin on.” Sadly.

“Come go home with us. Light and hitch. Set a spell.”

“Caint stop long.”

“Stay more and eat you some supper with us. No sense rushin off.” The three of you, the four of us, will head for home.

Diana will tell him, “We’ve been running all afternoon, G and I, just as you suggested. But now my feet are dead. Carry me, Day. Carry me!”

And she will climb up on his back, and he will carry her on down the road toward home. You will follow. With a smile, you’ll remember the time he had carried her out of Five Corners when she was shot, and you’ll remember the dream he had when he passed out after carrying her four miles to safety

…in the dream I was carrying her too, piggyback like this, and there was a man following us, who had been following us all along, but he was smiling at us, and she was alive, and laughing, and it was not nighttime but broad day, in some other place where we had finally gone, and not winter but springtime, and she was not hurt but whole, and the dogwood and redbud were blooming and the wind was warm and lifting her hair and her laughter, as I carried her piggyback through that strange and distant but magic woodland, some other place that seemed, in the dream, to be the right place….

So you will understand what I meant: we fabricate our future in our dreams. But our dreams have a nice habit of often coming true. And you won’t be entirely sad, will you, G? I won’t let you.

When you reach my yellow house, you will sit, in the late afternoon, before supper, on the porch, in the chairs that are so much like those of Lara’s store-porch. Diana will be excited. This will be a moment that she has long waited for. She can hardly wait. As soon as you are settled in your chairs, she will look at Day and ask him,

“Now? Okay?” He will smile and nod his head. “Go to sleep, Day,” she will say.

We will meet again at last, G.

“We meet again at last, G,” I say. “Our third meeting, isn’t it?”

You look puzzled. “When was the second time?”

“You don’t remember?” I say. “Surely you remember.”

You remember. “Yes, I’d forgotten about that,” you say. “Probably I was keeping it out of my mind, because I don’t really want to believe in you.”

“I can understand that,” I say.

“That time,” you say, “you told me to go away. You sent me off, out into the world. And now I’ve tried to come back again. And you’re going to make me go away again, aren’t you?”

“Not just yet,” I say. “Stick around, for a little while. I’m not due to die until nearly dusk. You know this is the last day, don’t you? They’re after us, G. They’re coming to get us. But we have a little time left.” I turn to Diana and ask her, “Do you think you ran him enough today to make him sleepy? Do you think you got him tired enough so that we could put him to sleep for a while?”

“Let me get my tape recorder first,” she says.

28

I found you, little Guy, in the dark glen of the waterfall. The hound was with you, but he seemed to be just as lost as you. The both of you were reclining on the ground, moping, beside the pool of the falls. The hound barked at me as I approached, and you looked up, fear in your eyes.

“Howdy there, sonny,” I said, as friendly as I could. Your dog snarled but I gave him my palm to sniff, and he knew my scent.

“Howdy,” you said, and sat up, not quite as frightened as you’d been at first. You recognized me. “Aren’t you that magician who cured my wart?”

I nodded. “That I am,” I said, “but I’m not any magician. How’s the wart?”

“It’s gone,” you said, and showed me. “When I woke up the day after, I couldn’t find no trace of it.”

“Good,” I said. “I’m right glad to hear that.”

“How’d you do it?” you asked. “What made it work? Was it just that tobacco juice you spitted on it?”

“Well, no,” I said. “That was just a gimmick. What made it work was that you believed it would work. And if you believe anything hard enough, it’s bound to.”

You thought about this, turning the thought over in your almost six-year-old head, and you shook your head. “That’s not true. Because I’m lost, right now. And even if I believed I wasn’t lost, it wouldn’t help. I’d still be lost.”

“You’re not lost,” I pointed out to you. “Because I’ve found you, haven’t I?”

You thought about that one, and decided that I must be right. Another little miracle of this old magician. But then you thought of something else, and frowned. “Do you mean you’re going to take me home?”

“If you want me to,” I said.

“I’ll git a lickin,” you protested. “They’ll really clobber me, this time.”

“Probably,” I said, remembering my own boyhood, and then I told you of it. “When I was just about your age, five or so, I climbed up a tree in the back yard to hide from my folks, but my dad found me and started up the tree after me. I had a fool notion that I could just flap my arms like this—” I flapped my arms for you, and you giggled “—and just go flying off through the air, to get away. But naturally I discovered pretty quick that people can’t fly, and I fell down out of that tree, almost to the ground, but that old tree saved me; she put out one of her limbs and kept me from hittin the ground. Then I got up and run away, and just like you, I hid out in the woods all night. But they found me the next day and clobbered me black and blue.”

You nodded, understanding, and said, “So what can I do? I don’t want to go back and git clobbered.”

“I don’t blame you,” I said. “I think a grown-up person who’d hit a little kid that couldn’t hit back is pretty low.”

“Haven’t you ever hit any kids?” you asked.

“Not since I’ve been grown.”

“Didn’t you never even spank your daughter?”

“How’d you know I got a daughter?” I asked.

“I heerd people down to Lara’s store talkin about you.”

“Well, no, I never punished her. What’s the point, anyhow, in punishing other people?”

“Didn’t she never do anything bad?”

“What does ‘bad’ mean?”

“Didn’t she never tell a lie or do something you told her not to?”

“What good is spankin going to do, if she did?”

“It’s supposed to keep her from doing it again,” you explained, a little pedantically, I thought; this little spadger explaining the facts of human nature to this old man who never learned anything.

“I see,” I said. “Well, tell me. What did you get punished for?”

“I told a lie,” you said. “I wanted to spend the night with Lara, but the only way I could do that was tell my Aunt Josie that Lara was throwin a bunkin party for us kids, and when my Aunt Josie found out there was no bunkin party, she really beat me up, but I still wouldn’t tell her what I’d done, and she kept on beatin me. So I run away.”

“Well, you see what I mean,” I said. “Her punishment of you wouldn’t make you tell the truth. No amount of beating is going to find the truth. So what’s the point of the punishment?”

You thought about that for a while, and decided that I must be right. Abruptly you asked me, “Can I go and live with you?”

I’m sorry I laughed. I’m even sorrier that I didn’t give it more thought; but I don’t think it would have worked. My laughing put a hurt frown on your face, so I said, “I’d be right glad to have you, son. But it would be mighty hard to keep you hidden. Folks would find you, soon enough, and drag you on home. And they’d probably be turned against me for trying to keep you.”

You cradled your chin in your hands and sighed. “But I cain’t go back,” you said. “Even if they didn’t clobber me. Because Lara’s got that feller Everett Dahl now, and she loves him now, and probably she don’t even care if I’m lost or not.”

“Tell me about it,” I requested, and you told me then that story which, one day, you would try to tell again, in a book called Firefly, the story of a lonely, longing, lovely woman who was the spinster postmistress of Stick Around and whose only love was this tousle-haired little whippersnapper, five going on six, who kept her company all the time…until, just recently, a man from her past returned to her.

“So you’ve lost her,” I said when you’d finished, and laid a hand on your shoulder in sympathy. “I know how you must feel, son. I’ve lost a few myself.” And in return for your story, I told you some stories of my own, about a brunette in a place called Dudleytown, and a redhead in a place called Five Corners, and a blonde in a place called Lost Cove.

You listened, captured; you thought I was nearly as good a storyteller as your beloved Lara had been. And when I finished, you asked me, “Is my life going to be like that when I get growed up?”

“Not just like that,” I said. “Happier, I hope. But like me, you’re going to have to do a lot of searching.”

“What do I have to search for?”

“Love,” I told you.

“Will I ever find it?”

“I don’t know. I wish I could tell you that you will. But I just don’t know.” I stood up then, and took your hand. “Come on, son. It’s time to go.” I led you out of the glen of the waterfall, and down the mountain to a place where the logging trails begin. “If you ever do find it,” I said, “come back and tell me about it. Or send me a postcard.”

And then I showed you the division of the trail, the diverging paths. “That fork,” I said, pointing, “goes to Stick Around.” I pointed at the other path. “And that fork,” I said, “goes to some other place. It isn’t the right place either, and it’s a long, long road.”

“Thanks, mister,” you said. “Though still I wish I could just stay with you. But I will come back and tell you if I ever find it.” You turned to go. But then you turned back for a moment and said, “I never even learned your name.”

29

Time for only a few more words before we go. That glen of the waterfall will serve us, G, for one more set. And it’s nearly time. I can’t hold out, in this house, against these lawmen. The sheriff has gone back to Jessup, probably to phone the state police for more help. Soon I’ll have to take this girl and strike out up the mountain. That glen of the waterfall, which I might never have known about if I hadn’t been searching for you there years ago, will make a perfect place to hide for the night.

I shake your hand, old Gentleman, and thank you for the pains you’ve taken. It has been worth your while, hasn’t it? You’ve got a story, haven’t you? Even if you’ve never found what you really came here looking for, which is love. You found it, but it wasn’t yours. And finding it without being able to have it will keep you searching for it, in some other place. I’m glad of that, G; you’re a good searcher; you’ll go on searching. I leave you again with my First Damnation: the end of the search is the end of the beauty.

Now I’ve got to go. But you stop me long enough to say, “I hope, Dan, that you’re planning to ‘stay dead’ this time around, that you’ll be leaving these kids alone.”

I can’t help but laugh at your concern, and I rush to set your mind at ease on that score. “Oh yes, that’s part of the plan. Besides, I’m tired. I’ve had all I wanted. I’m going to sleep a long time.”

“Good,” you say. “Then there’s just one question. Nothing important. Just an inconsequential dangling end I’d like to sew up. In my notes, I’ve got the different regional variations on your bywords for sexual terms. For example, a penis in Dudleytown was a “perkin,” in Five Corners a “picket,” in Lost Cove a “pestle.” What was it in Stick Around?”

Old Gross, to the end! I laugh and slap you on the shoulder. “‘Private,’” I say. “Sequestered.”

“And,” you continue, “vale…velvet…vault…?”

“Sequestered too,” I say. “‘Veil.’”

Now, G, when Day “comes back,” you shake his hand too, and tell him you’re sorry you can’t stay longer, and tell him how much you envy him. He reminds you of my Fifth Damnation, that envy is the worst of emotions. In that case, you ask him, does he not envy or resent your hour in the pool with Diana? Of course not, he says, and adds, “That was part of the script.”

And you say to him in conclusion, as you have said to me, “There’s just one question. Nothing very important. Just an inconsequential dangling end I’d like to sew up. But could you please explain to me how you put letters in Diana’s box without leaving any footprints? You see, I set this little ‘trap’ of piling up some dust in front of the boxes—”

“In front of the boxes, yes,” he says. “But didn’t you realize there’s a back side to the boxes, behind the counter? Haven’t you ever been on The Other Side of the counter?”

Don’t go just yet. There is Diana to say goodbye to, and her request to listen to. How would you like, G, to join them in their final “masque,” their last acting-out? They can use you, even if you don’t exactly relish the “rôle” they have in mind for you, that of the state trooper who shot me. But you possess a rifle, which will lend a semblance of “reality” to their “masque.”

Diana shows you an old newspaper clipping, supposedly taken from a 1953 edition of the local weekly, the Jessup Record; you consider, for just one brief moment, the possibility that she could have had this newspaper clipping printed for her at her expense on a sheet of old and yellowed newsprint. But you dismiss such a petty thought from your mind, and you read the clipping:

TROOPER WINS STICK AROUND SHOOT-OUT WITH OLD KIDNAPPER; CHILD IS SAFE

State Police Corp. Sugrue “Sog” Ellen was credited today with finding the hide-out of the “Stick Around Hermit” who kidnapped the three-year-old child, Diane Staving, daughter of prominent Little Rock family, last week.

Corp. Ellen, or “Sog” as he is known to chums in Stick Around, where he was born and reared, is familiar with the woods of Lingerfelt Mountain, and said he had a “hunch” where to look. Finding the hermit-kidnapper by a waterfall in one of the mountain’s hollers, Corp. Ellen demanded he lay down his arms and surrender. When the man refused, Corp. Ellen, making sure the child was not in line of fire, shot and killed the man.

The child was promptly returned to her happy parents, and was found to be unharmed.

The dead man, about 70 years of age, known, to Stick Around friends only as “Dan,” had lived in the area for about twenty years, they said. A search of his dwelling, located near Stick Around village, failed to furnish further identification.

His motive for kidnapping the child was unknown. It was speculated that the man, being penniless, had hoped to collect ransom.

State Police Headquarters in Russellville said Corp. Ellen will probably be decorated.

“It’s a lie,” Diana says to you. “That trooper didn’t ask Daniel to surrender. Daniel didn’t even see him. But that trooper wasn’t taking any chances. Daniel had already wounded three sheriff’s deputies and two state troopers, escaping with me from this house. He wasn’t trying to kill them; he was such a good shot that he could hit them just where he wanted, just enough to disable them so we could make a getaway from this house and go hide up on the mountain. But that Corporal Ellen wasn’t taking any chances. All the officers were under orders to try to take Daniel alive, if possible, or just to wound him, not kill him. But Corporal Ellen sneaked up on us in the glen of the waterfall and without any warning he shot Daniel twice. It was bad shooting too, which didn’t kill him instantly. It took him a while to die.”

On the mountain behind my house, in a grove of cedars, Diana shows you one more thing, one last thing: my grave. She readily admits that the headstone is not “authentic,” that is, not original; she has purchased it recently herself, has had it cut to order out of Arkansas granite by a stonecutter in Harrison. They had buried me here, on my own property, in my own woods, without much of a marker, just a temporary metal stake. Diana has seen fit to leave something more permanent:

DANIEL LYAM MONTROSS

June 17, 1880–May 26, 1953

The last Montross of Dudleytown

The only Montross of Stick Around

“We dream our lives, and live our sleep’s extremes.”

Now it is time for her to be taken to the glen of the waterfall. She has her last fresh tape ready in her tape recorder. You must follow after, with your rifle. You must sneak into the glen of the waterfall and “shoot” me, twice, and then, as Sugrue Ellen had done, turn and go without a word. He had turned and left, not even bothering to take or comfort the child, in order to summon his fellow officers. You will turn and leave, and go, to leave us alone together in these our last moments.

“But you’ll come back?” Diana says to you, and gives you a kiss. “Someday you’ll come back?”

“I’ll come back,” you say.

30

This is all I know of my last hour unto some other place.

I’ll sleep my first true sleep. We’ve found our true kindred; the elements care for us. Aeolus wafts a gust to dance the leaves around our heads. I am shot. Blood and being trickle off my skin. My killer’s gone back down the hill to get some help. I’m blind to all the woods and world except her face. I gaze into her eyes, and feel her grace. The waterfall roars above the roar of death. Before it quits, I’ll slip away to sleep.

Look, child, into my eyes. Speech is all I lack. Solemn and silent. But in my solemn eyes you’ll catch a glimpse of time, and know a proof of me, that will still your trembling. You mustn’t be afraid; you know I’ll live. In the mirror of my eyes you’ll see creation.

It doesn’t help to cry. You’ll learn that tears are only for yourself. Lay your head against my chest, child, and listen:

I live, I draw the breath of life. Hear this tone, this tune, this time. Hear these driftings and quivers, these settlings and stirrings, these dronings and burbles, these ripples and thrummings, these hummings and coursings: these humors in this clod, this chunk of flesh, this body knowing weight and gravity, lying quietly and waiting.

Now take your head away, child. Lift your chin and smile for me. There will be no sound. No sounds are heard in death, no winds in the leaves, no humors coursing through the flesh. The roar of the waterfall will cease. Death is a quiet woman.

Before she takes me to her breast, I’ll show you the Indian shelters and their little burial mounds in this glen of the waterfall. People lived here once. I was an Indian once, and so were you; our people lived here. We might live here again. Time is but the shadow of the world thrown against the screen of eternity; that shadow passes over us, and passes on, but circles and returns. And while it’s gone, we see the light.

Death is a silent woman, but not a dark one: all emblazoned and bespangled with timeless radiance she blinds my eyes before she takes me to her breast. And in my blinded eyes you’ll catch a glimpse of the shadow of time that’s moving over you, to give you a life you’ll see enough of the life you’ll have to help you dream its future. I had wanted to help you dream it, but like everything else I’ve tried to do, I failed again.

Bright Death repells me with her light only because I know I lived a failure. But this will be my one success: letting her take me to her breast.

I’ve known her before, without the blinding light; I’ve known her for a third of my life, in sleep. We pass a third of our lives in her embrace while we dream of the rest that comes before our final rest.

I don’t fear her, as she reaches to take me to her breast. But maybe I fear that pang, that explosion, that orgasmic climax. Which is fear of myself, not of her. I’ll last a while before I come.

Life is a duration, a passing of the shadow of time over us. Death is a timeless eternity. The orgasm is an instant.

And after that instant, she will possess all my habits and desires, and pleasures and afflictions. But not my ideas, which will roam through time in search of some other place.

Before she takes me to her breast, I remember the reading I got at my birth from my sister: Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. And our death is but a waking and a remembering. I will remember it all in the instant of that climax.

Child, if I close my eyes, don’t be frightened. I close my eyes to see my way to reach her dazzling breast.

And if you hear me cry out, don’t be alarmed. I’m singing the short song of my last instant’s ecstasy.

Finale

Putney, Vt.

June 5

Mr. B.A. Stoving

Union Bank Building

Little Rock, Arkansas

Dear Mr. Stoving

After a three-month investigation, involving some 6000 miles of travel, I was able to locate your daughter. You will be happy to know that she is very much alive, and well, and quite contented.

After finding her and hearing her story, I debated with myself for some time before reaching the conclusion that I should respect her wishes by not divulging to you her present whereabouts.

However, I can tell you this much about her: she is deeply in love with a most remarkable young man who would be the envy of any girl searching for a strong, practicable and entertaining male who offers much promise as a life’s companion. The fact that he is making his career in forest work, and has no college education, does not detract from his stature as one of the most interesting young men I’ve ever met.

She expects to bear his child in August. I hope that, after the baby is born, she will want to be in touch with you at last, to send you pictures of your grandchild. If she does not, it will be only because she feels she has her own good reasons for not writing to you.

Perhaps you will feel that a permanently missing daughter is no better than a dead one. But I’m writing to you because I thought it might be some comfort to you to know that she has found the right place in life, after a long search.

Yours sincerely,

G.

P.S. Please do not feel that you are obliged to me in any way, financial or otherwise, for this information.

Stick Around, Ark.

P.O.: Acropolis, Ark.

August 30

Dear G,

Just a few words to serve in place of birth announcement and enclose this Polaroid snapshot of the three of us.

We have named him Daniel G. (after you, old Godfather) Stoving-Whittacker.

If you’re such a great art historian, do you recognize the “pose” of this photograph? Give up? It’s Giorgione’s “Tempest”! The “soldier” on the left is Day, and the “gypsy” on the right nursing her baby is me (and little Dan).

Guess who was on the other side of the camera? Who took the picture? I know it will give you a sleepless night, and the answer isn’t even important, but you’ll appreciate my devious cleverness in making a mystery of it, the same way that you make a mystery of everything.

Everything is wonderful here, and all of us are blissfully happy. Stick Around can get terribly hot in August, but, as you know, Daniel built this house with a kind of natural air-conditioning, and the bedrooms on the second floor are always cool.

Day and I were very pleased to hear about the progress on your book, although we have a few reservations about that title, There Was Another Place Which Was The Right Place. Why burden the book with something so unwieldy and unmemorable? Why not simply call it Some Other Place. The Right Place.?

I was glad to learn that your wife and daughters have returned home, and that your garden is so productive this year. And I was simply amazed to hear that you’ve lost twenty pounds. Is that what I started, on that day?

Incidentally, did you know that you went off and left your rifle? If you’ll forgive this last example of my “psychologizing,” whenever somebody goes off and leaves something behind, it means they want to stay, or they want to come back again. So please do.

Love,

Diana

To the memory of my father (1905–1977)

and my mother (1905–1983)

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Acknowledgments

The true basis for any serious study of the art of Architecture still lies in those indigenous, more humble buildings everywhere that are to architecture what folklore is to literature or folk song to music and with which academic architects were seldom concerned.

…These many folk structures are of the soil, natural. Though often slight, their virtue is intimately related to the environment and to the heartlife of the people. Functions are usually truthfully conceived and rendered invariably with natural feeling. Results are often beautiful and always instructive.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

from The Sovereignty of the Individual

Chapter one

We begin with an ending: the last arciform architecture in the Arkansas Ozarks. Years afterward, waking up one morning in his bedroom at the governor’s mansion in Little Rock, Jacob Ingledew was to remember the home—house, hive, hovel, we should not call it merely “hut”—of Fanshaw. There was, clearly, not a straight line in it, not a corner, not an edge, and Jacob Ingledew was to wake up one morning and stare at the four-cornered ceiling of his bedroom in the governor’s mansion, and think: box! Immediately he would jerk his elbow into his wife Sarah’s ribs, waking her, and declare, “That’s the trouble, Sarey! We’ve done went and boxed ourself in!”

“What?” she was to answer, rousing from good sleep. “You thinkin about them delegates from Washin’ton, hon?” No, he would not have been thinking about the delegates to Washington, but at her mention of them, he was to give over to sleep again in an effort not to think about them, and he was to forget Fanshaw’s home and forget feeling boxed, and go on forever dwelling in boxes of various shapes and sizes.

The home of Fanshaw—our illustration is purely conjectural, based largely on word-of-mouth description; like structures in some of the other illustrations in this study, it no longer exists; Jacob Ingledew moved it, after Fanshaw left, to his backyard, where he used it as a corncrib for several years until it logically fell victim to rot and termites, and disintegrated—looks deceptively small; actually both pens (it was bigeminal, or, to employ the term that we will have frequent recourse to, was an architectural “duple”) were nearly ten feet high and almost thirteen feet in diameter; Fanshaw, who was uncommonly tall for his race, over six feet, was required to stoop only slightly in order to exit his door, while his wife did not have to stoop at all.

Fanshaw was stooping to exit his door when Jacob Ingledew first laid eyes on him. Jacob Ingledew with his brother Noah had come with two saddlebagged mules some six hundred miles from Warren County, Tennessee, their birthplace and rearing-place; on a hazardous journey into an unknown wilderness the two brothers had palliated their nervousness by virtually chain-smoking their pipes, with the result that their supply of tobacco had been exhausted for nearly a week before they stumbled upon the village—or camp—of Fanshaw. It was situated in a clearing on the banks of Swains Creek approximately where Doc Plowright’s spread would later be, in a narrow winding valley that snaked along through five mountains, each a thousand feet higher than the valley. At the first sight of it, Noah Ingledew retreated, refusing to go nearer. From the woods on the hillside, Jacob Ingledew watched the camp for three and one-half hours before Fanshaw emerged, stooping, from his house. Jacob decided that the village, which consisted of twelve other dwellings similar to the one in our illustration, must be deserted except for Fanshaw. A field to one side of the village was devoted to the cultivation of corn, squash, beans, and, Jacob had been pleased to see, tobacco. Although Jacob, like all Ingledew men, was uncommonly shy, so great was his desire for tobacco that, after bobbing his prominent Adam’s apple a couple of times, he began walking toward Fanshaw. Instantly Fanshaw saw him and kept his eyes fastened upon him the whole length of his approach. Jacob Ingledew walked slowly to signify he was friendly.

Fanshaw descried a man of his own height, tall, dressed in buckskin jacket and trousers, wearing a headpiece made from the skin and tail of a raccoon, thin, blue-eyed, brown-haired, long-nosed, and carrying not a rifle but a half-gallon jug with corncob stopper.

Jacob Ingledew saw a man of his own height, tall, dressed in buckskin moccasins and leggings that covered only the legs, the space between breeched with a breech clout, wearing a headpiece (actually just a bandeau) of beaver skin, eagle fathers in the roach of his hair, muscular, dark-eyed, bronze-skinned, long-nosed and naked from the waist up except for a necklace of several dozen bear claws.

Jacob Ingledew spoke, rather noisily from nervousness: “How! You habbum ’baccy? Me swappum firewater for ’baccy. Sabbe?”

“Quite,” said Fanshaw. Jacob Ingledew misinterpreted this as “Quiet,” and began looking around, wondering if the others were sleeping, although it was well into the afternoon. Actually, Fanshaw had spoken in the manner of his namesake, George W. Featherstonehaugh, a British geologist who had explored the Ozarks a few years previously and had been welcomed by Wah Ti An Kah, as he was known before his fellow tribesmen jokingly nicknamed him after their guest because he spent so much time in dialogue with the visitor, even to the point of taking pains to master the visitor’s language.

Fanshaw’s dwelling, like the others, was made of long slender poles cut, appropriately enough, from the bois d’arc tree, or Osageorange (I will discuss in due course the significance of the name bois d’arc, still today called “bodark,” which fits so perfectly with all the other thumping arks of our study). Both ends of these poles were sharpened and then the poles were bent like a bow and the ends stuck into the ground, forming a large arch which was actually a parabola—and most architectural historians agree that the parabolic is the most graceful, not to say strongest, of all arch forms. As may be seen in our illustration, these arched poles were interwoven as they crossed in the smoke-hole at the top; the result was literally a paraboloid, an inverted basketry paraboloid. Marvelous! Over this framework reeds, cattails and other thatch materials were interwoven; as a shelter it was weatherproof; a negligible amount of water poured through the smoke-hole during a heavy rainstorm but was absorbed by woven mats covering the earthen floor which were hung out to dry in the beautiful sunshine that often comes to the Ozarks.

Portable? Yes, “quite portable,” Fanshaw explained later that afternoon when both men were warmed by firewater, Tennessee sour mash nearly comparable, or possibly even superior in some respects, to the Jack Daniels of our time…and Fanshaw’s cured tobacco wasn’t such a bad product itself. Jacob Ingledew was on his third pipeful. (Noah Ingledew still wouldn’t come out of the woods. Noah Ingledew never would work up the nerve to come and talk to Fanshaw, even though Jacob later told him, “Why, that injun kin talk ary bit as good as you or me. Better, mebbe.”)

“A gentleman and his squaw,” Fanshaw explained over the firewater, “can lift and transport their domicile over great distances where the woods are not, or, where the woods are, disassemble and reassemble. If Wahkontah—he whom you address ‘God’—wanted gentlemen to stay in one place he would make the world stand still; but he in his infinite wisdom made it always to change, so birds and animals can move and always have green grass and ripe berries, sunlight to work and play, and night to sleep, always changing, everything for good, the earth and bodies of the skies, forever and ever…” At that point a pretty Indian woman appeared briefly in the door of Fanshaw’s house and spoke gently to Fanshaw in a language that Jacob Ingledew had never heard, then withdrew, presumably into the second of the two units in the duple. Fanshaw chuckled and said to Jacob Ingledew: “The lady thinks I talk too much.” He stood up and gave Jacob his hand, saying, “Do come again, brother.”

But it was a long time before Jacob Ingledew visited again and that was after Fanshaw had come to him. “Jist too blamed tard to ’sociate,” Jacob explained, pointing at the work that he and his brother were doing, the construction of their cabin (see our illustration to the following chapter). There had been some argument between the brothers over settling here. Noah Ingledew did not want to build in the vicinity of Indians. Jacob Ingledew liked the landscape, and besides, these Indians were friendly, and besides that, there were only two of them, Fanshaw having told him that the other members of the tribe had gone off on a hunting trip over a year previously and had not returned. As a result of having imbibed Featherstonehaugh’s firewater too freely, Fanshaw had broken his leg in a fall from his horse at the outset of the hunting trip, and was required to remain behind. He was skeptical that the others would return. He hoped they would, of course, but it had been such a long time since they had gone hunting, and he had had plenty of spare time to imagine the worst: they had met their enemies the Cherokees and been defeated, or met the blue-coat government men who forced them westward into reservations. He did not know. He still walked with a limp.

Jacob and Noah Ingledew worked from sunup to sundown for a fortnight building their cabin. For a discussion of their methods, we must await the next chapter, but suffice it to say here that this work was drudgery, although it lasted only a fortnight. At the end of that time, Fanshaw sought Jacob out (Noah scampered off into the woods as the aborigine approached and wouldn’t come back until he had left, a couple of hours later). Jacob Ingledew passed his jug to Fanshaw, realizing that now his cabin was nearly finished he could get his corn planted but even so it was going to be a dry summer, “dry” before he could get a new run of whiskey made. He told Fanshaw that he was just too tired at the end of each day building his cabin to visit him again.

Fanshaw studied the Ingledew cabin, scratching his chin. He just looked at it for a long time, walking all the way around it like a bird studying some other bird’s strange nest. Not portable, he observed. But worse, to his point of view, it was all square, foursquare, quadriform, there was not a curved edge to it, not one. After passing the jug back and forth between them for a while, they got into a long argument about architecture. I will repeat here only the end of the argument, the point at which it stopped. Although we may be sure that Fanshaw did not have the word “organic” in his vocabulary, let alone understand what is meant by organic architecture, he had a sense of a dwelling’s belonging to the landscape and fitting in with it, and he was trying to boast of how his own dwelling expressed this feeling in a way that the Ingledew cabin did not. He looked out across the rolling hills and pointed toward the gently rounded double-top of what later would be locally called Big Tits Mountain. “My house,” he boasted, “is of the same shape.”

“Yeah?” said Jacob Ingledew, and pointed toward the peak of what later would be called Ingledew Mountain. “Wal, how about that un?” The top of Ingledew Mountain forms a triangular peak of almost the same geometric angles as the gable roof of the Ingledew cabin. Fanshaw just looked at him and grinned.

Fanshaw changed the subject by inquiring whether or not Jacob’s “lady” was “at home.” Jacob Ingledew blushed and hemmed and hawed and said he aint never had ary, for the fact was that an Ingledew man brave enough to approach a savage Indian would never, could never have approached a female, at least not one above the age of, say, eleven. Jacob Ingledew changed the subject by saying that there wasn’t nobody here but him and his brother, and his brother wasn’t here right now because he was scared shitless of Indians, although in most other respects his brother was brave and fearless and had recently killed a panther by ramming his fist down its throat, although he had a few ugly scars on his arm to show for it.

After a couple of hours of drink and talk, Fanshaw got up to go. “Stay more,” Jacob invited him. “Hell, you jist got here.” But Fanshaw politely explained that his lady would be unhappy if he tarried further, and he must return to her. The pattern of this parting would be duplicated on a number of subsequent occasions, always with Jacob inviting him to “stay more”—this was not necessarily because Jacob Ingledew craved his company, although he did in fact very much enjoy Fanshaw’s visits, but a matter of formality, a custom let us say, of his people. One always urges a departing guest to remain. Yet Fanshaw could not help but remark upon this custom to his wife because among his own people the exact reverse is the case: when a guest has stayed as long as he wants to, his host senses it and sends him packing with an Indian expression which, if translated into modern idiom, would most literally be “Haul ass” or perhaps even “Fuck off.” Fanshaw’s wife was amused by the term “stay more” in the Indian equivalent into which he translated it for her. In time, it got to where whenever Fanshaw was leaving his house to go visit Jacob Ingledew, he would tell his wife that he was going to Stay More. Some folks even today think that it was Jacob and/or Noah Ingledew who gave the town its name, when in fact it was an aborigine, and the significance of the name, in its rustic ambivalence, is going to have, we will find, many ramifications, some of them poignant. We must not allow ourselves to feel that this is entirely a happy story.

But it is of Fanshaw’s house that I should speak. Why was it bigeminal, that is, a duple? Not visible in our illustration is the other door, on the other side—the west door to the other unit. There may or may not have been an interior connecting door as well; unfortunately, information on this point has been impossible to obtain. One would logically think that there was an interior connecting door, one would want to believe so, at any rate, but Jacob Ingledew, who was, on at least several occasions, inside the dwelling, simply neglected ever to mention whether or not there was an interior connecting door. The first time he asked Fanshaw why his house was bigeminal (which wasn’t the word he used; he said “divided” although that is not accurate, for, as one can see, the two units of the building are not divided at all, but very strongly conjoined), Fanshaw simply replied that it was “traditional.” Later on, when Jacob Ingledew raised the matter again, Fanshaw could only explain: “That is hers, this is mine.” Naturally Jacob Ingledew would have been too embarrassed to ask Fanshaw whether this meant that they slept separately.

It was learned that Fanshaw himself had not built his house. He had helped to build a number of others, but he had not built this one. He explained. Among his people, the most desirable and eligible young gentlemen are actively sought out by the maidens for the purpose of—he could not remember the English word for it, but it is the state of being man and squaw. The maiden expresses her wish for the young gentleman of her choice by giving him a piece of bread made of maize. Of course the young gentleman has the right to reject her proposal by returning the maize-bread to her. But if he wants her, he keeps the bread. Together they plan a public festival at which they will announce their wish to enter the state of man and squaw. The whole village, then, as a token of joy, build the dwellingplace for the couple in one afternoon. That is the entire ceremony.

“It is simple,” Fanshaw observed. “No words need be spoken, other than many exclamations of joy by the people as they build the domicile. A lodge-raising is a most noisy festival, but it is not in words. Much meat is eaten. The blessed couple afterward are too full of meat to do the—I did not ever learn what you call it in English—the, when in darkness, one-on-top-together-fastened-between. Do you know it? No? Pity. It is with much joy.” There was a legend among his people that this frolic was responsible for the girl’s production of an infant after nine moons. But Fanshaw’s lady had never produced an infant, although, with little else to do but tend their garden patch and hunt an occasional wild turkey, they spent most of their time in one-on-top-together-fastened-between.

It could be a superstition, of which there were many, and while Fanshaw was of the opinion that the efficacy of superstitions was in direct proportion to one’s belief in their efficacy, there was no denying that many superstitions were useful and never failed. In the course of time he imparted several of these to Jacob Ingledew. The root of the buckeye tree, crushed and dropped into a pool of the creek, is a quick way to catch fish, by poisoning them. In time of famine, when other meat is scarce, do not disdain the ordinary mud turtle; his flesh consists of seven tastes of meat: pork, beef, mutton, venison, chicken, duck and fish. Fanshaw taught him many natural herbal remedies for the thousand ills that flesh is heir to, although most of these happened to be identical with ones that Jacob Ingledew already knew, learned from his ancestors. They discovered also that they had in common their beliefs in the importance of doing certain things, such as planting, by the dark of the moon or the light of the moon.

One of their few disagreements, which provided much fuel for their debates, was over the existence of God, or Wahkontah, as Fanshaw called him (it translates as “Mysterious Spirit” rather than the more common “Great Spirit” of other tribes). Jacob Ingledew felt that there was no such thing as God, or, if there were, he was a senile loafer who had created the world during his energetic youth but was now too old to care for it or take care of it. This notion greatly incensed Fanshaw, and in the intensity of their debates they almost came to blows. But they never fought, physically; I have always been curious as to which of them would have won if they had; it would have been a very even match.

But Fanshaw was a man of prayer. The door of his house, that is, the door of his half of the house, faced the east, whence, his people believed, all good things came (a peculiarly harsh irony in view of the fact that the displacing white settlers came from that direction). Each morning, at dawn, he would rise and perform his matinals, facing east. Our illustration attempts to show his house as illuminated by the long light of this early moment; imagination must visualize Fanshaw standing outside his door facing east. The first morning Jacob Ingledew spent in Stay More, sleeping on the ground by his mule tethered half a mile up the creek from Fanshaw’s, he woke to the sound of Fanshaw’s morning prayer, and, having never in his life heard anything like it, went to investigate, hiding in the woods near Fanshaw’s camp and watching him. The closest sound it resembled was that of a screaming panther, which Jacob had heard on many occasions, the most recent being just before Noah had rammed his fist down one’s throat. Jacob was astonished to discover that the sound was being produced by the vocal apparatus of his new friend Fanshaw (and possibly, in the back of his mind, after listening to Fanshaw’s Dawn Chant to its conclusion, he felt that Fanshaw was crazy, and this may have been the real reason, rather than fatigue, why he did not soon return to Fanshaw’s house). Long afterward, Jacob Ingledew could do a reasonable imitation of the Dawn Chant, to awe his descendants, frightening the younger ones, and from one of his descendants in turn I have heard it; it lies beyond my power of words to reproduce; I can only say that it began on the highest pitched note that the voice could reach, and after traveling up and down the scale in a nonmusical but nonverbal manner for several long minutes that evoked abstractly supplications and petitions of all manner, ended abruptly on a note that can only be called a sob of frustration. It was this last that most puzzled Jacob Ingledew, but it was a long time before he could get up his nerve to ask Fanshaw what it meant. Jacob returned to his cabin site to find his brother Noah saddling one of the mules. “Shitfire,” Noah said, “I’m a-gorn back to Tennessee, Jake.” Jacob explained that it was only the aborigine singing some kind of morningsong, but it was only with much conciliation that Jacob persuaded his brother to stay.

It was at the height of one of their arguments about God, much later, that Jacob said to Fanshaw, “If you believe in him so durn much, how come when you git to the ‘amen’ part of yore prayers, you make this here noise that sounds like you feel it aint nary bitty use nohow to be prayin?” Fanshaw stared at him for a long moment before saying, “Oh? You listen to my ‘prayers’?” Jacob said, “Hell’s bells, a body caint help listenin to ’em.” “Be glad then,” Fanshaw retorted, “that there is only me. If my tribesmen were here, we would deafen you.” But he relented, and explained to Jacob that the sob of frustration did not mean that he thought his praying was futile but rather that he was, at that point, given to understand that Wahkontah had chosen, for reasons of His own, to deny Fanshaw’s requests. We all want. We must always continue to want, to desire, even if our wants are not gratified. What did Fanshaw want? He could not tell Jacob; to tell another mortal what one wants greatly decreases one’s chances of getting it—no, it is a guarantee that one will not get it.

But Jacob Ingledew, for all his rough frontiersman demeanor, was a man of good mind, and he could guess the source of Fanshaw’s frustration: surely it had to do with the rest of his tribe not returning. He felt sorry for Fanshaw, but of course if the rest of the tribe did return, which he doubted, he himself would have to move on. He had been told before leaving Tennessee that within a few short years, now that Arkansas had achieved statehood and was no longer a territory, every Indian would have to leave the state.

In the fall, when they were sampling the first run of Jacob’s Arkansas sour mash whiskey (Fanshaw had helped him harvest the corn, and had shown him how to grind it, Indian-fashion, by placing it in a hollowed-out rock—of which there are many in the Ozark streams—and pounding it with a stone pestle), Fanshaw happened to pop a question:

“Why do we drink this stuff?”

“You don’t lak it?” Jacob said. “I ’low as how it aint near as good as that I brung from Tennessee, but…”

“Oh, it is fine. Ripping stuff, old boy. I simply raise the philosophical question: why do we drink it?”

Jacob pondered. “Wal, I kinder relish the taste, myself.”

“Yo. But do we not more relish that which it does to us?”

“I don’t feature drunkenness. I know when to stop.”

“Yo. But in between? Between drunkenness and sobriety there is a wide country, and what is the Name of that Country?”

“Joy?”

“No. Not if, by joy, you mean that kind which, although you have never felt it and thus cannot understand it, comes to the gentleman when with the lady in one-on-top-together-fastened-between. Not a bit of it, old fellow.”

“Wal, what do you call the Country, then?”

“Importance,” Fanshaw uttered, and let the word hover in the air between them like a hummingbird before continuing. “We know that we are nothing, you and I. And it is true, we are as nothing in the sight of Wahkontah. We are but flies he swats in sport. But the pe-tsa-ni—firewater—permits us for a while to forget this. The fire burns away our personal insignificance, and leaves us for a while a great sense of importance.”

“But aint that joy?”

“Not like—” Fanshaw began, but stopped and contemplated Jacob for a moment before declaring, “My friend, some day you must experience the one-on-top-together-fastened-between.”

Jacob kicked a small rock around on the ground for a while and then drew some doodles in the dirt with a stick, and at length said, “Aw, shoot,” and, changing the subject, proposed their topic for debate that day: Which enjoys life more, a short-tailed dog or a long-tailed dog? (Both Fanshaw and Jacob Ingledew had dogs. Fanshaw’s dog was short-tailed, Ingledew’s was a long-tailed hound bitch; these animals had fought one another at first but later seemed to be on amicable terms.) Fanshaw agreed to this topic of debate, and for the next hour the two men matched oratory, but, since there was no referee, the victor could not be decided and each man felt that himself had won.

These debates between Fanshaw and Ingledew were both a sport and a diversion: they gave the two men something to talk about, because often there would be nothing to talk about after exhausting the usual run of topics: weather, crops and the existence of God. A few years later, every little settlement in the Ozarks had its debating society, and it is thought that their repertoire of topics for debate originated with Jacob Ingledew and Fanshaw. Which is worse, a cold or a hangover? Which is the superior tree, the oak or the pine? Which is worse, blindness or deafness? Which makes better whiskey, springwater or rainwater? Is the earth round or flat? And so on. It was the last named topic which, next to their debates about the existence of God, provided the liveliest disputation.

Fanshaw’s people had long believed that the earth was round and revolved slowly around the sun. This notion struck Jacob as fantastic and incredible. “If thet were so, everbody would git throwed offen it!” was his first reaction to this preposterous concept. Jacob began to believe that such a crackpot concept was the result of living in a round house, and he said so to Fanshaw. But Fanshaw proceeded by skillful argument to state his case, and Jacob lost ground, inch by inch, until he was left with only one line of defense: “Wal, if the earth is round, then we must be on the top side of it, and all them pore devils on the bottom has fell off.”

To this, Fanshaw propounded an original explanation of gravity which I would like to dignify with the title Fanshaw’s Law of Gravity, for, if it is correct, he goes far beyond Newton in explaining that mysterious force, namely, that all objects, all matter, actually weigh twice their apparent weight; the other half of their actual weight creates a counteracting “pull” which is the gravity for the objects on the opposite side of the round globe. Thus, all matter is exerting an even outward pull from the center of the earth which is matched by the inward pull that we ordinarily think of as gravity. This concept was almost beyond Jacob’s power of comprehension, but Fanshaw made it clear and simple by saying, “In other words, everything is holding everything else together.”

After Fanshaw had left that day, and Jacob’s brother Noah came back from where he was hiding in the woods during the Indian’s visit, Jacob told him that the Indian thought the earth was round.

“Shitfire, why don’t ye quit wastin yore time with him?” Noah said. Jacob repeated in detail Fanshaw’s arguments for the earth being round, including his theory of gravity. Noah, however, remained unconvinced. Everybody of any sense knew that the earth was flat. (And indeed, the debating societies of every little settlement in the Ozarks would continue year by year to have this topic in their repertoire, until finally, years later, somebody brought in from St. Louis one of those disturbing volumes known as a “textbook.”)

Early winter found the two friends hunting together, Jacob with his flintlock, Fanshaw with his bow. Again, it would be difficult to decide which of the two was the better marksman; they were both deadly accurate. Jacob’s weapon seemed more effective in killing a bear rather than merely wounding it, but on at least one occasion Jacob’s life was saved when, charged by a wounded bear or panther who still had enough life to bite and scratch, he fell and would have been mangled save for the speedy and accurate arrows of Fanshaw.

Fanshaw’s bow was a large one, made of well-seasoned wood from the bois d’arc, coincidentally the same tree that his house was made of. A small but illuminating digression on language is necessary at this point, to help us get all our arks together. Bois d’arc is of course French and may be translated as Bow Wood, which is one of its names, the others being ironwood, yellowwood, hedge, mock orange, and Osage-orange, the last two referring to the fruit, which is a large yellow ball vaguely resembling an orange but which, as any schoolboy who has ever bitten into one has discovered, is quite bitter. “Osage-orange” is so called because the Osages used it to make their bows with, also their houses.

Arc, and also ark, comes from an Indo-European word root, arkw, which means bow or arrow (it is uncertain which; perhaps both together as a unit, since one is no good without the other). The Old Norse arw supplies our word for arrow. In almost all Indo-European languages, arkw is the root of such words as arc, arcade, arch, architecture, archer (shooter of arrow), arciform, arcuate, etc. Arc is also an obsolete form of ark, which meant originally a chest, box, coffer and hence a place of refuge, as in the Biblical Noah’s vessel and as in all over this present book. Both Chaucer and Milton were wont to spell an arc as curve or arch as ark. The name of our state, Arkansas, is thought to mean in Indian the smoky, bow-shaped river, since Kansas means smoky river and ark means bow (although we should all know that Arkansas does not rhyme with Kansas and is accented on the first syllable). The name of our region, the Ozarks, is said by one early authority (Schoolcraft, who should know) to be compounded from “Osage” (our Indian again) and “Arkansas,” which makes just as much sense as the usual idea that it comes from the French, Aux Arc. Therefore, when we speak of “the bois d’arc in the arciform architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks,” every unit in this sentence can be traced to the same root.

What does it feel like to live inside Fanshaw’s house? To settle this question once and for all, I propose that an enterprising group of students reconstruct an example of it, out in the hilly woods, and spend a night in it. And record their dreams the next morning. Many other tribes of Indians lived in the Ozarks down through history, and many of them lived in recesses under bluffs, caverns if you will, and these were rounded and curvilinear too. It is probably difficult to adapt rectilinear furniture to a curvilinear dwelling, but Fanshaw didn’t have any.

One more round thing, and then we must search for the end of this chapter. In Fanshaw’s garden there had grown a plant which Jacob Ingledew had not seen before. Luxuriant green bushes produced a rounded green fruit which, when ripened, turned red, but had a taste that was not sweet like other fruit but tangy, almost acrid, and produced a feeling of voluptuousness. Upon inquiry from Jacob, Fanshaw said this plant was called Tah May Toh, which could be translated as “love apple.” Even now in early winter Fanshaw had a supply of green ones which were still turning ripe. But he failed in his attempts to get Jacob to sample one. Jacob, perhaps out of a growing sense that all round things, all concepts of roundness, and the supposedly round earth itself, were somehow alien to him, was suspicious that the Tah May Toh was poisonous, and he never ate them. (Later generations of Ingledews would learn to love them, and in fact the only “industry” that ever came to Stay More, unless you want to call Vernon Ingledew’s Ham Processing Plant an industry, was a factory for canning these love apples.)

“It don’t matter to me whether the earth is round or flat,” Jacob said to Fanshaw one evening in the late winter. “I aint gonna git to the other side nohow.”

“Where are you going to get to, old chap?”

“Huh? I’ve done got there.”

“The time has come, now, when we must at last cultivate a topic of discussion which, hitherto, we have avoided: why did you come here and build upon this land?”

“Hit was gittin jist too durn crowded back in Tennessee,” Jacob said. “I purt nigh couldn’t lift my elbow ’thout hittin somebody and the preachers was so thick a feller couldn’t say ‘heck’ without gittin a sermon fer it.”

“But you have never even asked for permission to build here. Stay More is the land of my grandfathers.”

“‘Stay More’?”

Fanshaw chuckled. “Yo. That is what I have come to call it.”

Jacob Ingledew repeated the name a couple of times, and himself chuckled. “I reckon that’ll do as well as ary other name.”

“But you cannot,” Fanshaw said.

“Cannot what?”

“Stay more.”

“Says who?” Jacob demanded. “You fixin to try to run me off?”

“My grandfathers are buried here.”

“My grandchildren will be buried here.”

“Ho. Where is their grandmother?”

“I’ll find one, by and by.”

“Ho.”

Then Fanshaw told him the story of the origin of his people. Once upon a time a snail was washed far down the river by floods. He was a good snail but he was alone. Wahkontah, in appreciation of his goodness and in pity for his loneliness, caused the snail to sleep for a long, long time. During the sleep, the snail’s entire body was changed. When he awoke he started back into his shell, but it was far too small. Then he looked at himself, and, seeing that he had long legs, he stood up and walked about. As he walked he kept growing. Hair grew on his head, and from his shoulders long, powerful arms grew. This new creature remembered his former home, and walked far back up the river to the home of the snails, but he could not live with them, and he went in search of some place he could call home. When he grew hungry, Wahkontah gave him a bow and arrow and taught him how to get food. Day by day he went out in search of a home. At last the man, for such he had become, came to the hut of a beaver. The old beaver came out, and said, “Who are you and what do you want?” The man told his story and said he was seeking a home. The young man and the beaver were about to fight, when the beaver’s daughter came out and said she would teach the man to build a house, so that he would not have to trespass on others. To this arrangement the old beaver finally agreed. So the beaver’s daughter and the young man went away together, and she taught him how to build a house of bent bois d’arc poles and to thatch it. Because of her kindness, Wahkontah changed the beaver’s daughter into a maiden, and she became the squaw wife of the man. These two were the first of the people, and that is why they wear the beaver skin ornament.

“What is the origin of your people?” Fanshaw then asked him. Jacob, although an ungodly man, knew the story of Adam and Eve. He told this to Fanshaw, who listened attentively. When he had finished, Fanshaw said, “I now propose the topic for our next debate: Which is greater, the story of the snail and the beaver or the story of Adam and Eve?”

The two men debated this topic at length. Fanshaw pointed out that while there is a distinct reference to the paraboloid house of the man and woman who were snail and beaver, there is no reference to any sort of house for Adam and Eve, neither before nor after their Fall. What did they live in? Jacob went and fetched his brother Noah’s Bible, and read second and third Genesis, but couldn’t find any mention of a house, so he had to concede that point to Fanshaw. His own chief point was that God created Adam in his own image, whereas snails are pretty slow and slimy, and beavers are fat and bucktoothed. They argued that point back and forth until Fanshaw conceded.

So went their debate, and both men realized that what they were actually debating was the beginning of their Great Debate: Who has the right to Stay More, the Indian or the white man? although they did not ever say so in other than metaphorical terms. When it came the usual time for Fanshaw to go back to his lady, and Jacob uttered his ritual “Stay more,” Fanshaw replied, “Thank you, I believe I shall,” and he stayed a long time. Jacob gave him a big hunk of stewed venison and took one for himself, and both men washed their meat down with great gulps of the Arkansas sour mash and began for the first time to get drunk together, but kept on with their Great Debate until neither man was sober enough to reason logically, at which point Fanshaw expressed an idea, a peculiar notion the exact motive of which I have never quite been able to determine:

“It is time, old lad, that you experience the one-on-top-together-fastened-between.”

“Huh? How? Who?” stammered Jacob, who if sober would not have been able to utter a sound in response to such a suggestion.

“My lady,” Fanshaw replied.

Jacob was still sober enough to blush, and say, “Aw, shoot. That’d be adultery.”

“What is ‘adultery’?”

“That’s when a feller does the one-on-top business with another feller’s wife.”

“Your people forbid it?”

“Wal, the Bible’s agin it. God punishes adulterers.”

“But you do not believe in God.”

“Yeah, but I dasn’t ask yore woman.”

“No need to ask. Often she has mentioned the thought. I have but to tell her you will.”

Jacob began trembling. “But if she was even to look at me, I dasn’t.”

“If she looks at you, you will not see her. It will be very dark.”

Jacob was in a quandary. He realized that to refuse might be taken by the Indian as an insult. But to do for the first time something he had never done before, even with the nerve of much drink, might require talent which he did not possess.

Fanshaw prompted, “There is much joy in it.”

“I reckon,” Jacob allowed, but he was afraid that if there was so much joy in it he might develop a hankering for it and want to do it again sometime. He remembered the first time he had taken a drink of whiskey. On the other hand, this might be the only opportunity in his life to have a woman without going through all the long bother of courting her and playing games and being embarrassed and finally working up enough nerve to ask her and then even more nerve to keep pursuing her if she turned you down the first time and then the final uncertainty of whether she would even like it or not. “Okay,” Jacob whispered hoarsely.

Fanshaw clapped him on the shoulder. “Good. I will go tell her. She will be much pleased. You will enter our domicile by the west door, her door, and she will be there. There is but one consideration. A delicate matter. I apologize in advance. It must be revealed to you that, to our people, especially to the women, the body of white man has an odor which is…not altogether agreeable. Here is what I suggest. You should first wash in three waters. Wash in rainwater, then in creekwater, then in springwater. After, do not replace your buckskins, which carry the same odor. Come unadorned. She will be waiting.” Fanshaw stood up then and left.

Jacob had one more drink while he built up the fire in his fireplace and hung the kettle there filled with water from his rain-barrel. He found a piece of lye soap. He took off his buckskin jacket and trousers and moccasins, and when the water was hot he finished his drink and wetted the soap and began scrubbing himself with it. While he was doing this Noah returned to the cabin.

“Shitfire,” Noah said. “I thought you’d never git rid of him. He shore stayed longer than usual, and I was a-gittin powerful cold out yonder in the dark.”

“You ortent to be so afeared of him. He’s a good injun.”

“The only good injun is a dead injun,” Noah replied. Then he asked, “What you takin a bath this time of night fer?”

But Jacob just grinned and finished his bath, splashing all the soap off with hot rainwater. Then he opened the door and went naked across his fields to the creek. He tested the creekwater with his toe. It was icy cold, in this time of late winter, but he took a deep breath and plunged in. He rubbed himself all over with the creekwater, then his teeth began chattering, and he climbed out and ran up the hill toward his spring. Even the exertion of running did not keep him from being covered with gooseflesh big as small-pox. But the springwater, he discovered, was of a much higher temperature than the creekwater, and seemed almost warm by comparison. Again he washed himself all over, top to toes. The effect of all the cold and cool water was sobering him up, so after his last bath he had to return to the cabin for one more drink. Noah was asleep. Jacob drank straight from the jug, several lusty swallows, said “Ah!” and smacked his lips, then started out for the Indian’s house.

It was pitch dark, there was no moon, and he couldn’t find out which of the dwellings in the camp was Fanshaw’s. He tried the west doors of several, groping around on his hands and knees inside without finding any woman. He began to think that Fanshaw was just playing a joke on him. But he tried one more west door, and there she was. His hand touched her fur coverlet and then her bare leg. She was lying on her back. She didn’t say anything and of course he didn’t either. He just climbed on top of her. She embraced him, with her arms and legs alike. Soon, soon they became fastened between. Fanshaw was right: there was much joy. The woman made murmurs and sighs of joy, and Jacob realized he was being pretty noisy himself. He wished this joy could go on all night, but there is an end to everything, and finally the woman’s legs unclasped their embrace of his back and straightened out, and then the woman’s whole body arched itself into a long quivering arc: an ark: a bow: a soft but taut arch that held him suspended up from the earth for a long moment until he fired: burst: was a lightningbolt and its thunderclap and the afterclaps rattling slowly away.

When he woke up it was daylight and he was still there, but the woman was gone.

“Shitfire, whar in tarnation have you been, and mothernaked to boot?” his brother Noah demanded, when, at long last, Jacob returned to his own bed.

Jacob decided not to hide it. “I laid with that injun’s squaw last night.”

“What je do thet fer?” Noah asked innocently.

“Huh? I mean, I done went and entered her.”

“Entered her?”

“You eejit. We fucked.”

“Oh,” Noah said. “What’d it feel like?”

“Lightnin and thunder.”

“Gee,” Noah said.

“You orter try it sometime,” Jacob suggested.

“Me? Shitfire, I wouldn’t go near a injun even to fuck it.”

All that day, Jacob noticed an irregularity in himself, perhaps an afterclap of his afterclaps: he didn’t feel like doing anything. This was the first white man’s “energy shortage” in the Ozarks. Jacob spent the whole day sitting by his fire. This is the origin of the quite erroneous concept of the “shiftless hillbilly.” Usually Jacob was industrious, for the hard life of the frontiersman admits of no indolence. He couldn’t quite understand why he didn’t feel like doing any work today, unless it had something to do with last night, although it really wasn’t all that much effort to do the one-on-top-together-fastened-between, and he’d had a good night’s sleep in the meantime. But suddenly Jacob realized that Fanshaw was terribly lazy, even for an Indian. He never seemed to do much: back in the summer he had puttered in his garden for maybe half an hour each day, and that was it. Even on hunts, he always took his time, and never worked up a sweat, and was ready to quit as soon as one animal had been bagged. It dawned on Jacob that there must be some direct correlation between Fanshaw’s laziness and the amount of time he spent doing the one-on-top-together-fastened-between. Up until this moment, Jacob had never really felt superior to the Indian, but now he did. And it also dawned on Jacob that herein lay the real difference between their dwellings. Fanshaw’s house, for all its complexity, looked like something that a bunch of people had thrown together in one afternoon, whereas Jacob’s house looked like something that two men had worked from sunup to sundown for a fortnight to build.

When Fanshaw came at his usual hour that afternoon, Jacob after pouring the drinks suggested this difference as a topic of debate, probably to divert their attention from the event of the night previous. So they harangued one another for an hour on the subject: Which looks more industrious, the red man’s or the white man’s domicile? “Compare a bird’s nest to an anthill,” Fanshaw suggested. They both avoided mentioning the event of the night previous until they had had several drinks and finished (or at least grew tired of) debating whose house looked more industrious, and the importance or unimportance of industry, but finally Fanshaw broached the event of the night previous by asking, “Well. How was it?”

“It?” said Jacob, although he knew what Fanshaw meant. “Yeah. It was hunky-dory.”

“Hunky-dory?” Fanshaw said.

“Scrumdoodle,” Jacob elaborated. “Galuptious. Splendiferous. Humdinger. Slopergobtious. Bardacious. Yum-yum. Swelleroo. Gumptious. Danderoo. Superbangnamious.”

“But did you like it?” Fanshaw persisted.

“Betcha boots,” Jacob said. “Shore thang. What I mean. I aint kiddin. ’Pon my word. Take it from me. I hope to tell ye. Indeedy. You’re darn tootin.”

Fanshaw frowned. “Say yes or no, please.”

“Yeah,” Jacob said.

“Good,” Fanshaw said. “I said you would. Now we can debate topics which previously excluded you. I propose our first: Which would you choose, if forced to abandon the other: whiskey or woman?”

This was an interesting topic which kept them busy for another hour. Curiously enough, Jacob took the side of woman and Fanshaw took the side of whiskey. The former argued that woman was a more effective panacea, somnifacient, emollient, palliative, embrocative, demulcent and diaphoretic. The latter argued that it is better to feel importance than joy. At the end of their debate, which, again, lacking a referee, neither man won, Fanshaw intimated that Jacob was welcome to repeat this night his experience of the night previous, and Jacob was much obliged and beholden. He took another bath-in-three-waters and went again to feel the lightningbolts and thunderclaps atop the long soft but taut arc.

In the spring, early spring, Noah did all of the plowing because Jacob was just too blamed enervated to help. One day Jacob and Fanshaw were watching Noah plow, when Fanshaw asked, “What manner of animal is that which pulls the plow?”

“That’s a mule,” Jacob explained.

“What is a mule?”

“If a jackass serves a mare, the foal is a mule and is sterile.”

“Tell me,” requested Fanshaw. “What is the purpose of the mule?”

“Wal,” Jacob pointed out, “a mule works harder than a horse and he don’t tire out as easy.”

“Because he is sterile?”

“Maybe. I never thought of it that way, but maybe you’re right.”

Not long afterward, still in the spring, Jacob noticed an oddity: Fanshaw’s language was beginning to deteriorate. Right in the middle of one of their debates (Which is better, a round-topped door or a flat-topped door?) and apropos of nothing that Jacob could figure out, Fanshaw said, “Ho! Toward what shall my people direct their footsteps? it has been said in the house. It is toward a little valley they shall direct their footsteps. Verily, it is not a little valley that is spoken of. It is toward the bend of a river they shall direct their footsteps. Verily, it is not the bend of a river that is spoken of. It is toward a little house that they shall direct their footsteps.” Jacob wondered if it was some kind of riddle or conundrum but decided it was just jibberish and maybe the Indian was losing his marbles. Yet from that day on, Fanshaw never talked good clear English anymore. “White man garden plenty big,” is the way he began to talk. “Indian garden little lazy.” Jacob never asked him what was happening to his speech; perhaps Jacob was afraid to.

One day in early summer Fanshaw came and simply said “Come” and led Jacob back to Fanshaw’s paraboloid house. His woman was standing in front of it. It was the first time that Jacob had ever got a good look at her in the daylight, and he was embarrassed. He found it hard to keep looking at her, but he did, and saw that she was very pretty. Also he saw that her belly was bulging. Fanshaw pointed at the bulge, and then at himself. “Me mule,” he declared. “Sterile. You, jackass. She mare. Jackass serve mare, make more mule.”

Jacob didn’t know what to say. “Wal, I’m sorry. You tole me to.”

“Yo. Good? Not good?”

“It ’pends on how ye look at it,” Jacob suggested.

“Yo. Good? Not good?”

Jacob meditated, and at length replied, “Good. Ever womarn orter have the right to have a baby.”

“Yo. She happy.” Fanshaw spoke a word to his squaw and she smiled. “I tell her smile, she smile. Now we go.” Fanshaw elevated his palm above his head in the Indian “how” fashion. Jacob didn’t know what else to do, so he raised his hand in the same way. When he did so, Fanshaw clasped his elevated hand and held it up there in a long tight grip which made Jacob think maybe he was trying to Indian-wrestle. Jacob was ready to break his arm off if he was, but the Indian merely held their hands together above their heads and said to him, “Farewell.”

“Aw, you don’t have to leave,” Jacob protested. “Stay more, and we’ll have us some real fine deebates.”

But the Indian merely said, in his own custom, “Fuck off,” and then he and his squaw, with their few possessions rolled in a blanket, began walking west. Jacob never saw them again. Sometime later, as we shall see, he removed their domicile to his backyard, where he converted it into a corncrib. Noah burned the other Indian homes in the clearing, and converted the clearing into a corn patch.

If this has been a quiet, lonely chapter, I think I must have intended it so: the moon sometimes hanging in the night sky for hour upon hour, the wind timidly on occasion rustling a few leaves, in summer the lightning bugs (even then) going off and on lazily as they had all night, or in winter morning wisps of woodsmoke rising and drifting with the morning mist. Things will pick up, as we go along.

“Funny,” Jacob remarked one day to his brother Noah. “I never even learned that injun’s name.”

“Which?” Noah said. “Him or her?”

“Neither blessit one of ’em.”

Chapter two

Let us first consider the points of resemblance between Fanshaw’s domicile and the first Ingledew house, dissimilar though they may seem. Both had no windows. Both had but an earthen floor. And although the Ingledew place is foursquare, it is built of rounded logs. Later houses in Stay More would be built of logs hewed flat, but in their haste to clear a bit of land and put a roof over their heads, the Ingledew brothers did not take the time to hew the logs. (One early authority makes a distinction between the rounded-log dwelling and the hewed-log dwelling by referring to the former as “cabin,” the latter as “house,” and we shall do likewise.) Fanshaw and Jacob Ingledew were both over six feet tall, but Jacob did not have to stoop, even slightly, to go through his door, which cleared his head by several inches.

There were (the past tense is deliberate; Jacob’s cabin, like Fanshaw’s domicile, is gone now; it was washed away in a flood) no windows for several reasons. First, the difficulty of cutting openings in the large, heavy hardwood logs; second, the impossibility of obtaining glass for panes; third, the need to provide maximum insulation in winter and summer; and fourth, perhaps most important, what was a kind of psychological insulation against the wilderness, the possibly hostile new world, the Indians if ever they returned, etc. Just as at Deerfield, Massachusetts, and in garrison houses all over colonial New England, the first cabins and houses in the Arkansas Ozarks were a physical manifestation of the settler’s desire to protect himself from unknown dangers. We can think, therefore, of the Ingledew place as a “shy” dwelling. And it is medieval; yet all of the best Ozark architecture remains essentially medieval, in the tradition of the vernacular architecture in England and Presbyterian Ireland, whence the settlers’ forebears came; the classicizing tendencies of the Renaissance, baroque and rococo periods never affected the humbler architecture of those areas, and would never affect, or only slightly affect, the architecture of the Ozark highlands.

Watch this cabin leave the ground! In three upward stages, first the base: the base is of fieldstone, mostly sandstone, but rocks, of the earth, of the ground, clinging to it. The next part up is of logs, their interstices chinked with mud, not so much of the earth as rocks, but still, particularly because the logs are not hewed but left round, and because the mud was wet dirt, still of the earth. And finally the roof, rived thick boards, not shingles actually, farthest from earth, last in the ascending transition from earth to sky, split from oak logs with a frow, worked: most of the brothers’ labor went into the roof, which they laid in the dark of the moon so the boards would not warp or crack—a superstition, but one that works. Notice how the brothers’ labor increases as the house rises, except in the chimney (“chimbly” is how they say it, all of them) whose inward taper is itself a part of the ascending transition from earth to sky, rock to air.

Axe, adz, and auger were all it took. And sweat. The reasons they don’t make ’em that way anymore are two: good virgin hardwood is hard to come by, and good lathering sweat seems unnecessary in an age of power machinery. If, as Jacob suspected, laziness may be correlated with sexual activity, then the Ingledew cabin was the product of years of stored-up energy. The two brothers built it, as we have seen, in a fortnight of sunup to sundown sweating. They killed two birds with one stone, however: the trees they cut to build the house cleared a field to plant in.

There is one other thing the cabin has in common with Fanshaw’s place: there is not a bit of metal in it. Astonishing. No nails: the roof boards are tied to the rafters. The door hinges are made of wood. There is no iron. Where would the Ingledews find iron? Even the works of their clock were all wood.

The first “visitor” to Stay More was a young clock peddler from Connecticut, named Eli Willard. He showed up at the Ingledew cabin one evening not long after Fanshaw had permanently departed, and the Ingledew dog barked at him. This dog, whom we had little reason to notice in the previous chapter, was a hound bitch named, despite her sex, Tige or Tyge. One of the main functions of a dog was to bark at strangers and thus alert the house. But so far Tige had not barked, and Jacob wondered if she still knew how. Sometimes he would bark at her in an effort to stimulate her barking but she had simply stared at him with what might be called doggy disconcertion. So now, when the clock peddler showed up and Tige began barking, the brothers, who were inside the cabin eating their supper, were at first puzzled.

“Is that ole Tige?” Noah wondered aloud.

“Caint be,” Jacob allowed, but he went to investigate, and saw the clock peddler, Eli Willard, sitting on his horse. Strapped to the saddlebag was one (1) shelf clock.

“Good evening, sir,” said Eli Willard to Jacob.

“Howdy, stranger,” Jacob replied. “Light down and hitch.” As there was no hitching post at the Ingledew cabin this invitation must have been merely a formality, like “stay more.” Nevertheless Eli Willard dismounted and found a large rock with which to weight down the ends of his horse’s reins. Then he observed, “The road seems to end here.”

“What road?” Jacob was curious to know.

The man pointed north. “Why, the road that I came here on. All the way from Connecticut.”

Jacob had never heard of Connecticut. It sounded like some kind of Indian name, so he figured maybe it was over in Indian Territory. It was news to him that a road led from Stay More all the way over there. Jacob looked the other way, south, beyond his house, and observed, “Wal, I reckon it don’t go no farther.”

“A coincidence, and a good one,” Eli Willard declared, “because I have only one clock left.” He unstrapped the lone shelf clock from his saddlebag, and held it up for Jacob’s inspection, turning it slowly around for him to admire the woodwork, and then winding it (even the key was wood) and showing Jacob that it ran properly. Since all the parts were wood, there could be no chime or gong, but this clock had a sort of rattling mechanism, so that it could “strike” the hour by making a noise that sounded like a woodpecker close up. Jacob was very impressed with this. “My last clock,” Eli Willard reiterated. “I was going to keep it, out of sentimental reasons. But to honor your status as my last and final contact, I can bear to let you have it. Here.” And he gave the clock into Jacob’s hands.

“Wal, gosh dawg, thet’s awful good of ye,” Jacob said. “Caint I give ye ary thang in return?”

“Twenty dollars,” Eli Willard said.

“Huh? Why, that’s money!” Jacob exclaimed.

“Legal tender, cash, currency, coin of the realm, oil of palm,” Eli Willard said. “Two sawbucks on the barrelhead.”

Jacob turned the pockets on his buckskins inside out. “I aint got a cent to my name,” he declared. “And neither has he”—indicating Noah, who had emerged from the cabin to witness the transaction. Noah also turned the pockets of his buckskins inside out.

Eli Willard looked from one brother to the other, and shook his head in sympathy. “Yes, it’s hard to wrest a living from this rocky soil, isn’t it? Be that as it may, allow me to present this clock to your wife regardless.” He moved toward the door of the cabin.

“Uh, we aint got ary,” Jacob pointed out.

“Allow me to place it upon your mantel then,” Eli Willard said, and continued entering the cabin. Actually, this was a ruse that he, and dozens of other Connecticut clock peddlers swarming through the Ozarks, used to gain admission to the interior of the dwelling, to see if there was anything of value inside that might be traded for the clock. Eli Willard discovered there was no mantel-shelf over the fireplace. No nails in the house, he found a peg on the wall and hung the clock on it. “There!” he said. “A handsome addition to your humble home.” Then he began to look around at the contents of the room.

The Ingledew cabin was, of course, only one room, unlike so many other buildings in our study. Here are the objects that Eli Willard saw: two beds “built-in,” the corners of the cabin forming two of their four sides, mattresses of ticking brought from Tennessee stuffed with cornshucks grown in Arkansas, resting upon rude slats and covered with patchwork quilts (heirlooms brought from Tennessee); two ladder-back chairs which Noah carved from maple and seated with woven hickory splints; a simple table he also carved from maple; two lamps, the fuel of which was bear’s oil; miscellaneous cooking utensils (which, come to think of it, were made of iron and seem to contradict what I said earlier about there being no metal in the house); Noah’s Bible (which he could not read; upon his departure from Tennessee his mother had forced it upon him, having given up all hope for Jacob); on the walls things hanging: their two flintlock rifles and powder horns propped up on racks of deer antlers; two large deerskins sewed up to become vessels, one for bear’s oil, the other for wild honey (these, incidentally, were the only things Eli Willard saw that interested him, but they were too large to pack off on his horse); a water bucket homefashioned of red cedar with a gourd dipper in it; from the joists of the ceiling were strung dried things, tobacco, sliced pumpkin, red pepper; and, finally, several demijohns of Arkansas sour mash (but Eli Willard was a teetotaler).

“Well,” Eli Willard concluded, “I am not above accepting a note of credit.” Then he explained that he would return in six months and, if the gentlemen were satisfied with their clock, they could pay him at that time. If not satisfied, they could return their clock, or, better, Eli Willard would replace it with one more satisfactory. So he got Jacob’s signature on an I.O.U. for twenty dollars, shook hands with both men, and began to disappear.

“Stay more!” Jacob invited. “You caint go rushin off this time of evenin. It’ll be pitch dark soon. Stay the night.”

“Busy, busy,” was all Eli Willard replied, and rode his horse off into the dusk. The brothers wondered where he would spend the night. Maybe he didn’t spend the night. Maybe he just went to sleep on his horse and kept on going. At any rate, the brothers would not see him again for six months, when he would return for his money, and they knew they had better get to work and do something to earn twenty dollars in cash money. So they got to work.

Now that the redskin squaw was no longer there to tempt him, Jacob found that he had a lot of energy again. Both brothers rose at dawn, and after a quick breakfast (there was no coffee, not even green coffee; instead a rather palatable substitute was made from roasted corn meal and molasses) they would plunge into their work: clearing land and more land, felling trees and burning them and digging up the stumps by hitching the mule (there was only one now; a panther got the other) to the stump to pull it out: it took weeks of such labor to clear a mere acre. Each night right after supper the brothers fell into their beds, exhausted but satisfied.

Although the Ingledew cabin was medieval, we may note a few features it has in common with classical colonial buildings: the saddle-notched ends of the logs overlap one another exactly in the same manner as quoins, but whereas the quoins on most American colonial houses were false quoins made of flat boards, the quoins of the log cabin are true quoins holding not just one log to the other, but one wall to the other: they hold the whole house together. In classical Greek architecture, it is thought that the grooves in the triglyph of the frieze are a translation into marble of the grooves scored into the wooden ceiling joists of the original temples, which were made of wood instead of marble. This doesn’t have anything to do, directly, with the Ingledew cabin, except to indicate that even the most elaborate classical detail has its origins in such humble structures as a log cabin’s quoins.

The dimensions of the Ingledew cabin, and of space in general at Stay More, may be measured in “hats”—one hat being the distance that Jacob Ingledew could toss his coonskin headgear: approximately 16.5 feet. The Ingledew cabin is almost exactly one hat long by one hat wide, or, simply, one hat square, and also one hat in elevation, from base to gable-peak. When the brothers measured the size of a tree they had felled, or a piece of the acreage they had cleared, or the distance from their backyard to their spring, Jacob would put his coonskin cap to good use. It was a satisfying life for both of them, building and felling and clearing and pacing off, hat after hat.

Lest we get too pastoral a picture of their life and work, however, brief mention should be made of their afflictions, plagues and pests. In addition to the abovementioned panther who in the dark of night screamed at their mules, petrifying them, then attacked and killed one of them and dragged it off into the woods and devoured it, the Ingledews were constantly assailed by natural enemies, both vegetable and animal: poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, stinging nettles, rattlesnakes, copperheads, cottonmouths, leeches, stinging scorpions, deadly spiders, wasps, bees, yellow-jackets, hornets. One would almost believe that Nature did not want the Ingledews. Maybe She didn’t.

What was worse in terms of pure torment were the ticks, the chiggers, and the frakes. Because these afflictions are not universally known but are particularly severe in the Ozarks, a word of description may be in order. Everybody gets mosquitoes, cockroaches, lice, fleas, houseflies, ants, gnats, moths, etc., and the Ingledews had more than their share of these too, but they were particularly plagued by ticks, chiggers, and frakes. Ticks (order Acarina, suborder Mesostigmata) are medium-sized to minute arachnids, coming in many shapes and colors; under a magnifying glass they are hideous, especially their mouths, with which they attach themselves to the body and suck blood until engorged and sometimes thereafter; some of them are also carriers of dreadful fevers. Chiggers (suborder Prostigmata, family Thrombidiidae) are tiny red mites, almost invisible to the naked eye, which also attach themselves to the body with a hideous mouth, and produce swelling and intense itching. Frakes (it is always plural; while a man might say he has a chigger or a tick, he always has the frakes), like many viruses, are not fully understood by medical science; most medical experts consider it a usually benign fungus, but others are convinced it is a variant form of herpes; all it has in common with ticks and chiggers is a predilection for the genital area; in fact, whereas ticks and chiggers may afflict any part of the body, the frakes is confined to the genital area, where it produces a rash of small blisters that eventually erupt with a discharge. Unlike ticks and chiggers too, which only come in warm weather, the frakes may strike at any time of the year. Experts are agreed that the only known predisposing cause of the frakes is hard work. It used to be thought that overwork was the cause, but now it is known that any long, sustained task, any hard and fruitful labor, is liable to bring on the frakes, as if Nature were punishing man for his puny efforts to accomplish something. This is borne out by the fact that while ticks and chiggers afflict many animals other than man, the only animals that get the frakes are horses, mules, sled dogs, beasts of burden, etc., that is, working animals. The itching is not quite as severe as that produced by chiggers and ticks, but the worst effect is the aftermath: that for weeks, months, possibly years after the condition has cleared up, the sufferer is left feeling that there is nothing worth doing, that all labor is vain, that life is a bad and pointless joke. The Ingledew brothers were destined to get the frakes on several occasions. The pity is, there was never anybody to tell them what caused it.

The clock which came from Connecticut was not, it must be said, a very good one. One night at midnight it struck twenty-six times. “Git up, Jake!” Noah hollered. “Shitfire, it’s later than I’ve ever knowed it to be!” Jacob suspected that something in the inner works was amiss, for at the rate the clock was running, by his calculation, he would be a hundred and forty-three years old when the clock peddler returned. Methuselah and the other longevous old men of the Bible must have got their clocks from Connecticut. Still, Jacob dutifully wound up the clock each night before retiring. “If you got it, use it,” must have been his philosophy. He was, however, required to silence the striking mechanism after the novelty of it wore off and it became annoying. After three weeks of careful investigation, Jacob found a way to open the back of the clock, and he stuffed a wadded-up vacated wasp’s nest into the striking mechanism, silencing it. Jacob continued keeping time by the sun and moon and stars, but it was a diversion to watch the minute hand of his clock running around and around in the still cabin.

Not all of their land was forested; the portion that bordered the creek was flat, rich soil which was “bottom” land. But except for the clearing where the Indian camp had been, it was all covered with a dense growth of cane, bamboo, leatherwood, hazel, grapevines and large saw briars, which had to be grubbed and burned, a job which made clearing the forest seem easy. This good bottom land would be capable of producing fifty bushels of corn to the acre, but getting it cleared was the worst job the brothers had yet done, and after three weeks of clearing bottom land Noah Ingledew was “plumb beat out” and came down with the first attack of the frakes. He didn’t know what it was, and neither did Jacob. Noah took off his buckskins and anointed the frakes with bear’s oil, but that didn’t do any good. He made a salve by boiling mullein leaves in lard, and applied that to his frakes, with negligible results. He resorted then to more drastic remedies, concocting a poultice the essential ingredient of which was panther urine, difficult to obtain. Panthers were easy enough to come by, but persuading one to urinate into a container was entirely a different matter, and since Noah was too weakened by his frakes to do the job, Jacob had to do it for him. Yet even after all the trouble that Jacob went to, the resultant panther-piss poultice had no effect whatever on Noah’s frakes. Jacob offered to hitch the mule to the wagon and drive Noah back east in search of a doctor, but Noah protested that he wasn’t worth it, for already the severe sense of worthlessness that comes after an attack of the frakes was beginning to affect him. He took to his bed and just lay there day after day. In time the frakes erupted and then began to heal over, but more and more did Noah feel that work is senseless, toil vain, life pointless, and he would not get up from his bed. In a way, he was unintentionally evening the score with Jacob, whose work Noah had done back during the time when Jacob didn’t feel like working on account of fooling around with that Indian squaw. Now Jacob had to do all the work, but Noah mocked him.

“Hit aint no use,” Noah would say. “Shitfire, yo’re jist workin yore butt off fer nuthin. Earworms or worse will git all yore corn, wait and see if they or worse don’t.”

And yet, for all his sense of futility, Noah felt one redeeming emotion, which can only be called a sense of snugness. Lying there day after day, thinking few thoughts, having no daydreams or aspirations of any kind, he was aware only of the walls and roof of his cabin, and aware of how he was sheltered, of how his ark was a refuge, snug, cozy, restful. It was home. Our illustration cannot depict the site of the Ingledews’ cabin, but the site contributed to the feeling of snugness, because the cabin was in a holler—by local definition, “a little hollered out place at the foot of a mountain.” While the land that the cabin was on was level enough for a garden and one of their cornpatches, the land on both sides of the cabin rose abruptly up the mountainside, while behind the cabin the holler extended some three hundred feet to the Ingledews’ spring, where it began an abrupt ascent of the mountain. So in his snug cabin in this snug hollow Noah aestivated. Winter came and he hibernated. Jacob never scolded him for his inactivity. He knew it could happen to himself at any time…and it would.

In the autumn Jacob went off to look for a town where he could sell his pelts. He knew nothing of the geography of the region. He knew only a few rough basics: that civilization lay mostly toward the east, that Indian Territory was mostly in the west, that in the north it got colder and in the south it got warmer. He had no idea in which direction he would most likely find a town. His agricultural labors had produced no cash crop this season, but his spare-time trapping, for beaver, ’coon, otter and mink, had produced a few dozen pelts that ought to bring enough to pay off the clock peddler with enough left over to indulge one of Jacob’s dreams: buying a cow. Next to whiskey, milk was Jacob’s favorite beverage, but a year and a half had passed since he’d last had a drop of milk. Also, getting a cow was the first step toward starting a herd of beef.

But Jacob didn’t know where any towns were. The last one they had passed, coming from Tennessee, must have been a hundred miles back on the White River. Still, if he could just find a small settlement where he could unload his pelts and buy a cow, he would be satisfied. He took an egg-sized rock and threw it as hard as he could, straight up into the air. Whichever direction it fell, that way Jacob would go. The rock stayed up in the air a long time, but by and by Jacob heard it coming down. He couldn’t see it for all the woods, but he could hear it crashing through the trees, and the noise was coming from the south. There wasn’t any road or trail at all that went south, so Jacob couldn’t take the mule. He strapped as many pelts as he could carry on his back, and with his long rifle he set out on foot.

He walked for five days and four nights up mountains and down without finding a settlement, and finally was stopped by a large river too wide to swim across. This, he guessed, must be the Arkansas. He followed it downstream for just half a day, and came to a good-sized town. This, he learned, was called Spadra (it no longer exists today, or is practically a ghost town, south of Clarksville). Along the riverfront were shops, and one of these was a fur trader’s. The fur trader was happy to buy Jacob Ingledew’s pelts, and complimented him on the quality of them. The beaver skins fetched two dollars apiece, while the mink and otter skins brought a dollar each, and the coonskins two bits. Jacob received a total of almost a hundred dollars. He’d never had that much money in his life. But Spadra was full of establishments designed to part a man from his money: saloons, whorehouses, gambling parlors. Jacob resisted these as best he could, although his best was not good enough: he lost half his hundred dollars before getting out.

Still, he had more than enough to pay off the clock peddler and buy a cow. The latter became his next immediate objective. Looking around, he saw a large building with a sign out front: Spadra Stock Exchange. He went inside. There were a lot of men standing around tables, holding slips of paper and talking rapidly all at once. Jacob didn’t see any cows, or any other stock. A man came up to him and asked if he could be of any help. Jacob told him he was in the market for cows. “Good,” the man said, “swine are up, beef are down. How many?” Just one, Jacob said. The man looked at him, then said, “Wait here,” and went off to confer with a group of other men standing around one of the tables. The other men cast glances at Jacob, and Jacob began to get the impression that they might be laughing at him. But at length, his man returned, and said, “All right. One cow it is. What do you bid?” Jacob said he didn’t have ary idea how much to bid. How much was usual? “Six and three-eights might do it,” the man said. “Can I go to seven?” Sure, Jacob told him, and the man went away again. He returned shortly, beaming. “Got it at six and five-eights,” he declared. Jacob paid him six dollars and sixty-three cents, plus ten percent brokerage fee and commission, and the man started to walk away, but Jacob said Hey! Where is my cow? “In Kansas City,” the man said. Jacob didn’t want to show his ignorance of geography by asking how to get there, so he left the stock exchange, and stopped the first man he met on the street and asked, Which way is Kansas City? The man pointed, toward the northwest.

Jacob left Spadra, and walked for the rest of the day northwest, but he didn’t come to Kansas City. He met another man and asked again, Which way is Kansas City? and the man pointed northwest. He walked on for two more days without finding any city, and met an old man and asked once more, Which way is Kansas City? and when the old man pointed northwest Jacob asked him how far it was. “What difference do it make?” the old man said. “You’re a-gorn there anyhow, aint ye?” So Jacob walked on.

After several more days, he finally came out of the mountains down into a valley where there was a city, or a large-sized town. There were some loafers sitting in front of the courthouse, and he asked them if this was Kansas City. “Shore thang,” one of them replied, so Jacob said he had bought a cow and wanted to find the stockyards. The loafers offered to accompany him to the stockyards; he was much obliged at their courtesy. They walked him a good distance to the other end of town, and there was the stockyards, full of cows and bulls and calves. “Jist take yore pick,” one of the loafers said, so Jacob selected a good-sized Jersey heifer. One of the loafers fetched a length of rope and tied it around the heifer’s neck, and then they opened the gate, and Jacob led her out. He walked her back through the town.

Looking back at one point, he saw that not just the loafers but a crowd of people were following him. When he got as far as the courthouse, he saw that a man wearing a silver star on his chest was tying a rope to a big maple tree in the courthouse yard, and on the end of the rope was a hangman’s noose. Then the man wearing the star came up to Jacob and said, “Do you know what we do to cattle rustlers in this town?” No, Jacob said, he didn’t know. The man pointed at the rope and said, “We hang ’em.” By this time, the town square was full of people. The man wearing the star took Jacob’s arm and started leading him toward the gallows. I aint rustled no cattle! Jacob protested. “Where’d you get that heifer?” the man demanded. Jacob explained that he had bought it for six dollars and sixty-three cents plus commission at the Spadra Stock Exchange and the feller there told him to come here to Kansas City to get it. “This here aint Kansas City,” the man said. “It’s Fayetteville, state of Arkansas. Come on,” and the man led him on over to the noose.

Jacob felt just terrible. Didn’t they at least give a feller a decent trial before hangin him? Take the heifer back! Jacob pled. But the man went on, and slipped the noose over Jacob’s head. Just then a man in the crowd, a distinguished looking old gentleman with white hair and dressed in a suit, stepped up and said, “All right, Bradshaw. This has gone far enough.” Then he said to Jacob, “I’m Judge Walker, and it just so happens I’m also the owner of the stockyard. These men have played their joke on you. Those men in Spadra also played their joke on you. But enough is enough. Take the heifer. You, Bradshaw, kindly escort this gentleman out of town and see to it that he meets no more fools along the way.” So Jacob and his heifer were allowed to leave.

He didn’t know how to get home, but he had a general notion that it was somewhere to the east, so he led the heifer in that direction. Although Jacob had no knowledge of geography, he had a sixth sense of direction which brought him, after a week of walking and leading the heifer, right back to Stay More. The effort and humiliation that he had been subjected to in order to obtain his cow would leave him sour on city people for the rest of his life, and for many years after this incident he preferred to remain in Stay More rather than venturing out into the world. In fact, thirty years later when he would be offered the governorship of the whole state practically on a platter, he would at first decline, out of his reluctance to have any further dealings with city people. We may thus consider one more quality of his cabin: it is insulation not alone against weather and wilderness but also against any intrusion from the more sophisticated city world, a fortress against cosmopolitans. If Jacob’s cabin would look ridiculous on a city street corner, no less ridiculous would a city man look, standing here in front of his cabin.

Jacob found his brother Noah practically dead from cold and starvation during his long absence. Apparently Noah had lacked the simple will or motivation to get up and keep the fire going and eat the food that Jacob had left for him. Now Jacob had to force him to eat something. Even after eating, Noah was too weak to talk. Jacob yearned to hear him say shitfire, but Noah couldn’t. So Jacob did all of the talking, telling him of his recent adventures in Spadra and Fayetteville and along the way. By the time he was finished telling it, Noah had recovered enough strength to say shitfire. And then he added, “All that bother and trouble fer nuthin. You should of stood in bed, like me.”

“But allow as how we got us a cow now,” Jacob replied.

“Wow,” Noah said. “So let’s have some milk.”

But Jacob realized that the heifer would have to be serviced and have a calf before she would start giving milk. Where would they find a bull? Occasionally a small herd of buffalo wandered through the valley; Jacob wondered if a buffalo bull could service a Jersey heifer. If a jackass could service a mare and produce offspring, why not? Jacob had hoped that maybe his bitch hound Tige would get serviced by a wolf or coyote and produce dogs well-suited for wilderness living. Tige was now all swollen out around the middle but as far as Jacob knew she hadn’t met up with any eligible wolves or coyotes; probably the father had been that short-tailed cur of Fanshaw’s. Yes, a few weeks later, when Tige had her litter, Jacob noted that the pups seemed to resemble Fanshaw’s dog. Well, we’re even, in a way, now, Jacob reflected: I serviced his squaw, his dog serviced my bitch.

But where, or how, to find a bull? Winter came on, yet no more herds of buffalo wandered into the valley. Probably the Indians had wiped out all the buffalo. Jacob’s Jersey heifer, who with want of imagination he named “Jerse,” went into heat and bawled and bawled, but there was no relief.

Then Eli Willard the clock peddler returned after being away six months (or 143 years by his clock’s reckoning). Again he had only a single clock strapped to his saddlebag. He observed, “This is still the end of the road. But you have survived. Many don’t, you know.” Then he asked, “How’s the clock?”

“Blankety-blank,” Jacob replied. “Goshawful. Cuss-fired. No-account. Tinhorn. Punk. Torrible. Infernal. One-gallused. Muckeldydun. Not worth the powder to blow it up.”

“But does it run?” Eli Willard asked.

“It’s runnin fer its life,” Jacob said. “It’s runnin like hell was only a mile away and all the fences down.”

“Well, well,” said Eli Willard and coughed. “I always insist upon my customer’s satisfaction. I will replace your defective clock with this superior model. The works are not made of wood but of brass. Recently in Connecticut all the clockmakers have converted from wood to brass.”

“I aint so sartin that we’uns need ary kind of clock, even if it was made of gold.”

“Everyone needs a clock,” Eli Willard declared. “All the other people hereabouts have clocks.”

“What other people? There’s jist me and Noah.”

“The Ozarks are filling up with people.”

“I aint seed any of ’em. Did ye happen to notice if any of them people had a bull?”

“A bull?”

“Yeah, I got a heifer near ’bout two year old and she needs sarvice somethin turrible.”

“I don’t examine my customers’ livestock,” Eli Willard said. “I’m sorry.”

“Wal, whar is all them folks you’re talkin about?”

“That way,” Eli Willard said, and pointed, the way he had come, toward the north. Jacob realized that he and Noah had come in from the east and that he had gone south and come back from the west, but they had never been north. The bulls would be to the north.

Eli Willard produced the I.O.U. that Jacob had signed six months previously. “If you will settle your account, sir, I shall be happy to leave this new clock of entirely brass works with you.” Jacob realized that his primary purpose in selling the fur pelts had been to pay off the clock peddler, and he did have the twenty dollars, so he gave the money to Eli Willard, who thanked him, but added, “Of course brass being more accurate than wood and in other ways more desirable, it is also more expensive than wood, and, regretfully, we are required to charge a little extra for—”

“How much?” Jacob asked.

“Twenty dollars,” Eli Willard declared.

“I’ll see you in six months,” Jacob said. So he signed another I.O.U., and Willard rode off the way he had come, toward the north.

The new clock compensated for the old one by being as slow as the old one was fast, and Jacob calculated that he was regaining all the years he had lost to the old clock. Also, the new clock had a metal chime to strike the hours in place of the harsh wooden pecker of the old clock. The new chime said PRONG, and since it struck only on the second Tuesday of each month, it was not at all annoying—in fact, an occasion to be looked forward to. In time the brothers turned the occasion into ritual: on the second Tuesday of each month, at the moment the clock was scheduled to chime, they would drop whatever they were doing (or Jacob would; Noah would simply rise up from his bed) and stand beside the clock. Noah would salute as the moment approached; Jacob had his rifle loaded and ready. The clock would say prong and the brothers would let out with whoops and Jacob would fire off his rifle (through the door, the sole opening of the house, so as not to hit anything in the cabin) and the bitch Tige and all eight of her pups would start baying and yipping and chasing their tails and the heifer Jerse would bawl at the top of her lusty lungs, and the sun would stand still for a moment. This was the origin of the custom in our own time of the Lions, Rotarians and Kiwanians meeting for lunch on the second Tuesday of each month.

One noon in the early spring, the Ingledew brothers were having their dinner. Little has been said, up to this point, about their diet; here we might relate it to the architecture of their cabin by observing that, while looking plain and simple on the surface, it actually was quite variegated, and the reason the food looked plain and simple was the result of Jacob’s cooking; it would have been nearly impossible to tell from the appearance of the cooked food whether it was fish or fowl, pork or potato; but the fact was that in terms of variety, beef was the only meat that the brothers did not have.

“Meat” of course to the Ozarker meant only pork: bacon or ham or salt pork or sidemeat, and there was a superabundance of this available in the wild hogs—“razorbacks”—roaming the woods and feeding on acorn mast and providing in turn food for panthers, bobcats and bears as well as ingledews. Both Jacob and Noah seemed to prefer pork to other kinds of meat, although they were not all that particular, and had discovered that even panther meat, eschewed by most hunters, had a taste like delicate veal. Bear meat had a stronger taste.

In the beginning the brothers kept no domestic fowl since the woods were filled with pigeons and wild turkey, one of the easiest game animals to bag—Jacob wouldn’t even waste powder and shot on them because he could kill them just as easily by throwing rocks at them. Likewise he wouldn’t bother wasting bait to catch fish but used instead a gig, one of the few pieces of iron brought with them from Tennessee, and the stream of water that would be called Swains Creek or Little North Fork of the Little Buffalo River was teeming with bass and perch and bream and crappie and catfish, so that his fishing expeditions never lasted more than two and one-half minutes.

Jacob and Noah were also fond of “sallit,” what we would call greens, but wild, the tender leaves of mustard, lamb’s quarters, pepper-grass, pokeweed, dock, thistle and wild lettuce, which Jacob would mix together and boil for a long time in his kettle with a bit of bacon rind and then throw in some onions and pour hot bear’s oil over it and cook it and stir it until it was the same brown color as the main dish and indistinguishable from it on the plate…and palate.

Since there was no milk—yet—the brothers washed their food down with plain spring water, occasionally diluted with a jigger of whiskey, or else their coffee substitute made of roasted corn meal and molasses. For dessert, in season, there might be a watermelon or canteloupe chilled in the spring, or simply wild honey on a corn muffin, or Jacob might try his hand at cooking fried pies which were stuffed with wild berries and were the same brown color as all the other food consumed.

Where were we? Yes: one noon in the early spring, the Ingledew brothers were having their dinner (and it is understood that “dinner” always means the noon meal; the evening meal is always “supper”) when suddenly the population of Stay More took a dramatic leap from two to seventeen. The bitch Tige and her eight pups started barking and it wasn’t even the second Tuesday of the month, and the Ingledews grabbed their rifles and went outside, and there, coming up the trail, was a caravan: a covered wagon in the vanguard, drawn by horses, not mules, followed by pedestrians serving as drovers for a menagerie that might have come from the Biblical Noah’s Ark: a pair, male and female, of each: two sheep, two goats, two beeves (one a bull!), two dogs, two pigs, two house cats—and the rooster with a harem of hens. A middle-aged woman was driving the wagon, and the Ingledews noticed that the others, fourteen in number, were all young people or children. There was no grown man.

“Howdy,” said the woman, halting her team. “‘Pears lak this here road don’t go no further.”

“Hit don’t, I reckon,” Jacob observed.

“Reckon we’uns’ll jist have to turn back a ways. Shore is purty country ’way back around up in here. You’uns the only folks hereabouts?”

“Fur as I know, seems lak,” Jacob confessed.

“I’m Lizzie Swain,” the woman said. “Come from Cullowhee, North Caroliner. This un here’s my leastun, Gilbert”—she indicated the small boy sitting beside her—“and thatun’s Esther. Yonder’un’s Frank, and Nettie standin beside him. Thatun’s Boyd. Next him is Elberta and Octavia. Whar’s Virgil? YOU, VIRGE! Come out so’s these fellers kin see ye. Thar he is! Thatun’s Virgil. Then over yonder is Leo, tendin the sheep. Next him is Zenobia. The one tendin the goats is Orville. Aurora is inside the wagon here, layin down with a stomachache. Thatun with the cow and topcow is Murray, he’s my eldest boy. And yonder’s my eldest gal, Sarah, she’s done past twenty. All of ya’ll kids say howdy to these here fellers.”

“HOWDY!” they all said at once, with friendly, enthusiastic smiles.

“Howdy do,” responded Jacob, and Noah didn’t respond at all. In their shyness before all of these females, it never occurred to them to introduce themselves.

“How fur back up the road does yore land go?” the woman asked.

“I don’t rightly know,” Jacob said. “I aint been very fur up thataways. I hear tell there’s a lot of folks up around yonder some’ers, but I aint seed ary one.”

“Wal, I reckon we’uns will jist git on back a ways,” Lizzie Swain declared, and began turning the team of horses around.

In his discomfiture, Jacob did not even think to offer the ritual invitation, “Stay more.” He just stood and watched the caravan return back up the trail. But they were scarcely out of sight when he began to hear the noise: thock, the unmistakable sound produced by an axe hitting a tree. It was followed rapidly by an identical sound, and then another, and then a succession of thucks made by a different axe, and then began a series of thacks, from yet another axe, followed by some thecks from yet a fourth axe, and finally the chorus was joined by a fifth axe that said thick, until the air was filled with a constant cannonade of thock thuck thack theck thick.

“Shitfire,” Noah remarked. “They must be choppin the woods all to hell.”

Jacob went to investigate and discovered that the family had elected to settle less than half a mile from his own place. Four of the older boys and Lizzie Swain were busy chopping at oak trees, the beginning of the structure that we shall examine in the following chapter. Jacob went up to Lizzie Swain and took the axe out of her hands.

When he did, she looked startled, and asked, “Air we too close on ye?” and the boys raised their axes to defend her, but Jacob simply took the axe and began swinging it at the tree that Lizzie Swain had been chopping. He set a pace for the other boys, but his tree was felled long before theirs were. “That’s right neighborly of ye,” Lizzie Swain said to him. He started in on another tree.

Mrs. Elizabeth Hansell Swain was a true courageous pioneer mother—the first white woman in Stay More. Her husband had died the year before back in Cullowhee, North Carolina, and she decided to bring her fourteen children west in order that, as she would later explain to Jacob, “they could grow up with the country.” All of the children threw their hearts into the idea, and although they had suffered a number of troubles and privations on the long journey (they had left North Carolina over two months previously, in the dead of winter), they were not daunted but overjoyed to have reached their new home at last. While the older boys chopped down the virgin oaks, the older girls and their mother busied themselves constructing a campfire and preparing a first supper that would be a feast in celebration of arrival. Jacob was felling his eighth tree when he heard a dinner horn blow, and, looking up, saw Lizzie Swain blowing it and welcoming him to supper. Jacob had the first fried chicken and the first milk that he would eat and drink in Stay More, and this was the origin of the favorite meal of the people. He liked it so much that, after supper, as dusk settled in the woods, it took little urging from the children to get him to open up and tell about his adventures, and they all sat around and listened to him tell about the Indian Fanshaw and his strange beliefs and customs, such as maidens proposing to braves by giving them cornbread, and he gave them a bloodcurdling imitation of the Dawn Chant, and the children listened, awed and entranced. Years afterward they would tell their own children of these things, so that was the origin of the “oral tradition” which was so strong in the Ozarks for over a hundred years, and perhaps even today has not completely died out.

Noah Ingledew did not help the Swains build their cabin. Jacob apologized for his brother, explaining that he had recently had a terrible affliction from which he was still recovering. Lizzie Swain pressed for details of the affliction, because she was an expert in home remedies and herbal cures, but Jacob blushed and said it wasn’t “decent” to describe. Jacob also was considerably embarrassed in his plan to get his heifer serviced by the Swains’ bull. (In the Ozarks a man would rather cut his tongue out than utter the word “bull” in the presence of a female. There were many circumlocutions: “male,” “topcow,” “cow-critter,” “surly,” “gentleman-cow,” “brute,” “cow-brute,” or simply “he-cow,” but Jacob could not employ these euphemisms if his object was to ask Lizzie for her bull’s service. At first he tried to get around the problem by dealing with Lizzie’s oldest son, Murray, but Murray just said, “Ask Maw.”) But Jacob just couldn’t. He kept putting it off, until finally the heifer Jerse came into heat again and set up such a loud bawling that all the Swains could hear her from half a mile off. “Sounds lak somebody’s heifer wants a calf,” Lizzie Swain remarked. Jacob didn’t say anything. “Wonder whose it is,” she went on. He couldn’t tell her. “You said you and yore brother was the only folks around,” Lizzie observed. Jacob could only nod. “Did ye happen to notice, we’uns got a right full-blooded topcow,” Lizzie informed him. Jacob gulped and nodded again. “Considerin all the help you’re a-givin us a-buildin our house, the least we could do is lend ye our topcow.” Jacob tried to find words to thank her, but could find no words. “Murray,” she said to her oldest boy, “you and Orville and Leo take ole Horns up yonder where that heifer’s a-bawlin, and see if he caint git her to hesh up.”

Jacob went with them, helped them, then returned to his work, the work of building their house, and worked with a new vengeance that came both from gratitude and from his inability to express himself. Soon the Swains’ house was finished. The “community effort” of over a dozen people at work on the house-raising (even the youngest children helped with the job of chinking the cracks between the logs with clay and straw) reminded Jacob of Fanshaw’s description of the Indian’s ritual house-raising, and he told the Swain children about it: how after the maiden had proposed to the young brave by offering him a piece of cornbread, the whole community joined together for the festival of lodge-building for the couple. Jacob brought the Swain children to his own place one day and showed them his corncrib, which was made from the two halves of Fanshaw’s house reversed upon one another to form a large egg-shaped structure resting upon a cradle of stone. He explained how the house had looked in its original form. The older children touched it and peered inside, but the younger children were afraid even to touch it.

Our first chapter ended with a leaving; this one ends with a coming—appropriately in the early spring. The Swains’ house is finished in a fortnight, and they can turn their attention to the land: pulling the stumps of the oaks they have cut and plowing the earth and planting it. I think of the smiling faces of the children, and Lizzie pleased with her new home, and the smell of fresh-plowed earth, and the opening of dogwood and redbud blossom, and then somehow the thought of all the pests and plagues and vermin is endurable.

Weeks and weeks were to pass before, one day, Sarah Swain, the oldest girl, past twenty, hair dark as pitch, would show up at the door of Jacob’s cabin with a piece of freshbaked cornbread, which she would offer into his astonished hands.

Chapter three

At first glance it seems similar to the Ingledew cabin, but in the Ozarks, unlike other areas of the country where prepackaged houses come monotonously identical, there were no two dwellings exactly alike. We are impressed with the two most conspicuous differences: the Swain house has a porch, and its timbers are hewed rather than left round. There are other differences, subtle to notice or not visible in our illustration: a puncheon floor inside, whereas the Ingledew cabin had no floor but earth. (Puncheons are simply split logs with their flat side up, very sturdy, and over the years worn smooth and shiny by the bare feet of many children.) The Swain chimney is slightly taller than the Ingledew chimney, reducing the hazard of igniting the roof. The gable ends are shingled in the Swain house, rather fancifully, and the roof covering is true riven shingles, not boards. The chinking in the interstices between the timbers is not simply mud but more durable clay, finished off with a layer of white lime plaster. There is, as it were, a second story, which was the sleeping quarters for the seven Swain boys: a loft under the gables, reached by a ladder through a scuttle-hole. And there is a window! If we look carefully we can find it, just to the side of the chimney. Glass being unavailable, the window was “glazed” with a bobcat skin, boiled in lye and scraped and oiled, nailed over it. The bobcat skin was translucent but not transparent, letting in light but no prying eyes.

Notice that the corners, the ends of the logs, are not saddle-notched but dovetailed. This makes for a tighter fit and a more sturdy building. The hardest job in building this cabin, which fell exclusively to Jacob Ingledew and the older Swain boy, Murray, was the hewing of these logs. A chalk line was stretched the length of the log and snapped, marking it along the rounded edge; then a chopping axe was sunk into this line at intervals, and then a broadaxe (with curved handle so as to avoid hitting one’s ankles) was used to hack off the rounded sides of the log. It was painstaking, grueling work—and Murray Swain, as we shall see, came down with the frakes at the end of it. But the result of this work was a house that not only looks much more “modern” than the Ingledew cabin, but is also more durable. The Swain house is the first dwelling in our study which still exists today, although, being unoccupied, its porch has collapsed and most of the shingles have blown off the roof and it is used only by young boys looking for a place to sneak a smoke or older boys with their girls looking for a place to sneak a joy. Until about twenty-five years ago, however, it had been lived in continuously by five generations of Swains.

The similarities between the Swain house and the Ingledew cabin are apparent: both have only one door and both are roughly sixteen feet (or one hat) square. The architect of the Swain house is not easy to establish; the similarities between it and the Ingledew cabin would lead some scholars to attribute it to Jacob Ingledew, but since the Swain house was essentially Lizzie Swain’s house, we may assume that she had a large, if not exclusive, hand in the design of it, particularly the porch, which is like a woman’s sunbonnet shading her face, and which provided extra room in temperate weather for the crowded family. Undoubtedly Jacob Ingledew and Lizzie Swain may have discussed, or even argued, several points in the design and construction of the house, just as, later, after she had become his mother-in-law, he would, as men are always doing with their mothers-in-law, argue: they would argue religion, they would argue folk medicine and superstition, they would argue the use of alcoholic beverages, and above all they would argue the naming of things and places in Stay More. It was Lizzie who named Swains Creek and Bantam (Banty) Creek (after one of her little fowl who drowned there) and Leapin Rock (after one of her children who would leap from it) whereas Jacob named Ingledew Mountain and its benches (“West Banch, North Banch,” etc.) and various individual holes of water in the streams that Lizzie had named, Ole Bottomless in Banty Creek, Ole Beaver, Ole Crappie and Ole Stubtoe in Swains Creek. Lizzie also wanted to name the town itself—Cullowhee after her hometown—but Jacob pointed out to her that it had already been named Stay More and so it would stay.

Did Jacob accept that cornbread? The whole idea was Lizzie’s, to begin with. She knew that Sarah was past marryin’ age, and where else was she going to find a man? Jacob might be ten years older than Sarah, but he was ten years younger than Lizzie and besides Lizzie had already had all the children she wanted. Sarah was hard to sell on the idea, though. Like all the Swain children she idolized Jacob Ingledew and for that very reason the thought of marriage to him frightened her, almost as if it had been suggested that she go off and live with God as His wife. It would be an honor to be Mrs. God, but wouldn’t it also be a terrible responsibility? When none of these arguments dissuaded her mother from trying to persuade her to take some cornbread to Jacob, Sarah argued that a man Jacob’s age who had not married probably didn’t care for women in the first place and would just laugh at her if she gave him some cornbread and then she would just die of mortification.

Still, Lizzie Swain kept pestering Sarah about it, in such a persistent way that Sarah thought she would lose her mind unless she yielded. Yet even after she yielded, she was reluctant. Her mother baked the cornbread and then spaced the twelve other children (Murray was in bed with the frakes) along the route to Jacob’s cabin at strategic intervals in descending order of age. Then she put the cornbread into Sarah’s hands and shoved her out the door with such force that Sarah kept trotting as far as where Aurora was standing, and Aurora gave her a shove that sent her trotting on to Orville, who shoved her to Zenobia, and so on, down the line, down the road to Jacob’s cabin, where little Gilbert was waiting, last in line, last to push. He was only four, and pushing was a difficult feat for his small age, but his mother had patiently explained it to him, how it was necessary in order for him to have a “brother-in-law,” making brother-in-law sound like something wonderful, so when Sarah came trotting up, her black hair streaming behind her, he clenched his little tongue between his teeth and got his hands on her buttocks and shoved for all he was worth, propelling her right up against Jacob’s door, which she banged against, causing Jacob to open it, and her momentum was such that even though her body had stopped moving her hands kept going and thrust the cornbread into Jacob’s hands.

Then she just stood there with her hands behind her and stared down at her feet and began to get very red in the face. Jacob duplicated her posture and color exactly, except that he couldn’t put his hands behind his back because he had cornbread in them. He just stood there and looked down at what was in his hands and got even redder in the face than Sarah. For a long time they just stood there stiff and glowing like a pair of branding irons. Finally Jacob’s brother Noah got up from his bed and came to see what it was all about. He stood there and stared back and forth at the two of them. Probably he didn’t grasp the significance of the cornbread, because, being not just afraid of but uninterested in Indians, he had never been told about the customs of Fanshaw’s people. But he was very concerned to see these two human beings standing in front of one another with downcast but red-hot faces. “S—tfire!” he exclaimed, and snatched the cedar water bucket off the wall and, first removing the cornbread from Jacob’s hands so it wouldn’t get hit, doused the heads of both of them. It is very difficult to blush with a wet head, so, since they could no longer blush, they laughed, which is also a nervous reflex. They laughed until the water on their faces was joined by their tears, and Noah looked at them like they were both crazy, and kept mumbling his favorite expletive, which, however, was somewhat cleaned up for Sarah’s benefit, so that it sounded more like “shoot fair” or “sheet far.”

And that was it. That was all there was to it. Jacob never said “I do,” or “I will” or even “Thanks for the cornbread” or even “Aw, gosh dawg and shucks.” Even today, in some of the big weddings in the Ozarks, people do not shower the bride and groom with rice but with water. At that time, of course, there was no church anywhere near Stay More, nor even a circuit rider or “saddlebag preacher,” and even if there had been, he could not legitimately have married an infidel like Jacob Ingledew. So, hand in hand, Jacob and Sarah simply returned to Lizzie’s house, Jacob gathering sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law right and left along the way. At Lizzie’s house, Sarah announced to her mother, “Maw, we’re spliced.”

The month, come to think of it, was June.

“Already?” Lizzie Swain exclaimed. “What didje do, jist jump over a broomstick together?”

“No. Noah, Noah…he dumped a bucket of water on us.”

“Wal, bless yore hearts, I’m so happy fer yuns,” Lizzie said and embraced and kissed them both, and began sniffling. After she got control of her emotions, she said to Jacob, “But if it wouldn’t be too much bother, could ye read us a little from the Bible fer the occasion?”

Elizabeth Swain, like all of her children, like, in fact, everybody in Stay More for years and years, except Jacob, was unable to read. (One must never say “illiterate” since it is so easily confused with “illegitimate,” a fighting word.) In later years, when he began teaching school, Jacob wondered if his unique peculiarity, his ability to read, was perhaps a curse upon him, and for at least the length of his tenure as schoolmaster, reading was not one of the subjects in the curriculum. Lizzie did, however, have a Bible, an old heirloom, which she often touched, and whose wood-engraving illustrations she often “read,” because she was a very Godfearing person. Jacob, although ungodly, did not mind reading from the Bible on this occasion of their marriage; it was the least he could do as a substitute for going hundreds of miles in search of a preacher, and maybe having to pay the man cash money, at that.

But the trouble was, he didn’t know where to look, in the Bible, for an appropriate passage. He let the book fall open at random, and began reading aloud at random in the Book of Second Kings, “But Rabshakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to thee, to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?” Jacob slammed the Bible shut, grumbling, “Blackguardy book. I don’t know how to use it.”

But then he remembered a passage from Genesis that he had read when debating Fanshaw on the origin of man, having to do with the marriage of Adam and Eve. He read this. “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him,” and “And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh—” he would have read more, but Lizzie and Sarah, and all the female Swains, were sniveling and boohooing so loudly they drowned him out. He returned the Bible to Lizzie, and took his bride by the hand and led her back to his own place.

With a stick he gouged a groove across the dirt floor of his cabin, right down the middle, dividing the room into two halves. “That’s yourn,” he said to Noah. “This is ourn.” But Noah got busy and built a small loft up under the gables, and moved his bed up there. It was his first activity since he had been stricken with the frakes the year before, and it was the beginning of his return to normal life.

Jacob and Sarah Ingledew did not consummate their marriage on the bridal night. As soon as it got dark, their cabin was surrounded by a horrendous din: rifles firing, drums beating, cats howling, pans banging, cowbells clanging, hands clapping, lips whistling, horns blaring, hounds bugling, it was all hell broke loose and the roof was raised an inch or two. Investigating with his lantern, Jacob discovered that it was the entire human and animal population of Stay More, serenading the newlyweds.

This was the first Stay More shivaree, or charivari as the French would call it, from a Latin word meaning “headache.” How did this custom ever get started? What psychological motives do people have for harassing the poor couple on their first night together? If we were to interrupt young Virgil Swain while he was pulling the cat’s tail to make it howl and contribute that part of noise to the racket, and interview him on this subject, he would reply, “Wal, I reckon everbody knows what folkses air really gittin married fer, and so we’re a-teasin ’em on account of that. Hoo lordy!” Perhaps he would be right, that even the youngest among them (and maybe some of the animals too) sensed the real reason that a man and a woman would become “one flesh,” and out of envy as well as out of a sense of that reason being lewd, they lewdly heckle and pester the wedded pair. I cannot help but remark upon the contrast between this behavior and that of Fanshaw’s people on the wedding day: the Osage’s “grunts and whoops of joy” become the white man’s grunts and whoops of lewd mirth. The shivaree ends when the groom “treats”: Jacob invited all of them (except the animals) into his cabin, where he gave them refreshments, sarsparilla for the younger ones, stronger stuff for the older, and Sarah’s cake of cornbread smeared with wild honey and divided all around. The party ran deep into the night, and when it was over Jacob was too inebriated to find his bed. He aimed for it but missed, and spent the night sleeping on the floor (or rather the dirt, since there was no floor). The next day all of the guests came back again, for the infare (or “infair” or “enfare,” as most writers misspell it). Lizzie Swain and her girls brought the food, and again it was a big blow-out with fried chicken and everything.

Only Murray Swain wasn’t there, for the shivaree or the infare either. As has been mentioned, being the oldest of the Swain boys, he had worked the hardest in the construction of their house, hewing the logs with his broadaxe and lifting them into place with Jacob lifting the other end of the log, and after three weeks of this hard work he came down with the frakes. His mother tried several of her best home remedies to no avail. Jacob wanted to suggest the poultice made with panther urine, but couldn’t bring himself to broach such a delicate topic to her. Lizzie resorted to a drastic cure of her own, using the warm blood of a black hen. She had Murray lie down on the ground (out back of the house so the other children wouldn’t watch), then she chopped off the hen’s head with an axe and let the blood dribble onto his eruptions and remain on after it had dried. This treatment seemed to be a trifle more effective than Noah’s remedy, but not much, so that now, even though the shivaree and infare were weeks and weeks past and his sores had healed, he still lay abed with great feelings of futility and worthlessness. It was perhaps appropriate that he alone was absent from his sister’s bridal festivities, because it was he, more than anyone else, who was responsible for the fact that Sarah Swain was unencumbered with a maidenhead at her marriage.

But Jacob did not know this, and he never would know it. Ignorant as he was of women and their ways, and having had experience only with an Indian squaw who was no maiden by a long shot, Jacob approached the debut of his bride’s charms with no expectation of difficulty and therefore no disappointment or anger in having encountered none. When the infare was over and all the guests had departed and Jacob was tipsy enough for the nerve, he ran Noah out of the cabin and closed the door, darkening the interior, then he laid Sarah on the bed. That was it, he just laid her, with no more howdy-do or ceremony than the wedding itself. He was surprised, however, that her reactions during the process were not at all comparable to those of the Indian squaw; namely, she did not utter the ghost of a sigh, she did not move, she did not enfold him with arms and legs alike, and, above all, she did not make, at the end, the long taut but smooth arc: ark: bow. She was foursquare, flat; not even her gables peaked. So for him it wasn’t lightning and thunder but maybe just cloudy and windy, chance of showers. Afterward he wanted to ask her if she’d had any joy in it, but he couldn’t ask her things like that. They never would talk about sex…until the very last day of Jacob’s life.

And these were the children of Jacob and Sarah: Benjamin, the firstborn; Isaac, born two years later; Rachel, born two years later; Christopher Columbus, born two years later; and Lucinda, the last, born two years later.

Why was it, Jacob often wondered, that when he really, truly, honest-to-God, sure-enough, straight-up-and-down wanted his woman, she wasn’t much feeling like it, whereas the only times he ever got her was when he wasn’t much feeling like it? That was a hell of a trick for Nature to play on a man…and a woman. Once, when he was upon her, she whispered in his ear, “Jake, if I go to sleep afore you git done, will ye pull down my nightgown?” It must be noted, however, that it was an excess of sexual frustration, no doubt, which caused Jacob single-handedly in a couple of weeks to build the imposing structure which we shall examine in the following chapter, leaving his cabin to Noah. He must have been aware of Noah, up there in the loft, listening, but hearing nothing except a random small grunt of Jacob’s, no sounds whatever from the woman.

If that is cause for pitying Noah, there was a worse one. Sarah’s next-youngest sister, Aurora, encouraged by the success of her older sister’s presentation of the cornbread to Jacob, began to give thought to baking some cornbread for Noah, and her mother approved of this scheme. Noah certainly wasn’t as desirable as Jacob, but Aurora was accustomed to being second to her older sister, getting her hand-me-downs and being next in line for everything. So eventually she baked the cornbread and took it to the Ingledew cabin, but Noah wasn’t there; Jacob said he was out milking the cow. Aurora took the cornbread out to the cowlot and offered it to Noah. By this time Noah understood the significance of the offering and he eagerly reached to take the cornbread, but dropped it, and bending over to pick it up, he tripped and fell to the ground. Aurora couldn’t help giggling. While rising up from the ground, much flustered, he snatched at the cornbread, and it broke in two. Still eager to signify his acceptance of it, he grabbed both pieces and clutched them to his bosom, whereupon they disintegrated into many fragments that showered around his feet. He was so discomposed that he turned and ran off into the woods to hide himself for a long time. Aurora decided she didn’t want a husband who was so clumsy anyway, and would rather wait until the population of Stay More included some other eligible bachelor. Poor Noah was destined to remain unmarried until his death.

Early in their marriage, Jacob’s wife Sarah developed a disconcerting habit which Jacob at first attributed to absent-mindedness: whenever she was outside of the cabin, working in the garden or feeding the chickens or whatever, she would not afterwards return to the cabin but instead wander down the road to her mother’s house and enter it, and stay there, until Jacob came to fetch her home. Undoubtedly a psychiatrist would interpret this as a sign of her dissatisfaction with her marriage, but actually, it seems to me (as in time it dawned on Jacob), that it was a sign of her dissatisfaction with Jacob’s cabin, her perhaps unconscious recognition that her mother’s house was superior to it, more comfortable, less primitive. When Jacob realized this, he began to build his next house, which was as superior to the Swain house as the latter was to his first cabin.

An outsider visiting Jacob’s cabin would have received the impression that Sarah was a slatternly housekeeper, but the fact was that a house with a dirt floor was very difficult to keep clean, and this discouraged Sarah from making the effort. As soon as she became pregnant for the first time, Sarah discontinued further relations with Jacob, until such time as he had completed construction of their new home, which, as we shall see, did not have a dirt floor but a puncheon floor that Jacob took the trouble to shave smooth with a drawing knife, so that Sarah would never get a splinter in her foot.

Lizzie Swain and her brood always joined the Ingledews at noon on the second Tuesday of each month to hear Jacob’s clock say prong, and they began combining the event with the feast of fried chicken; this was the chief social occasion in Stay More for many years. Still, Jacob had never told Lizzie where he got the clock, so one day when Eli Willard showed up at the Swain house, Lizzie did not know who he was. He was just a “furriner” on horseback with bulging saddlebags.

“Ah hah,” observed Mr. Willard. “Another house, and a fair one too. May the lares and penates bless you and your happy home, madam.”

He talked mighty funny, Lizzie thought. “Whar ye from, stranger?” she asked him.

“Connecticut,” he replied. “Willard is the name. Eli Willard. Formerly trafficker in timepieces. Now a purveyor of sundry hard goods.” He patted his saddlebags. “Madam, have I got some nice things for you!”

By this time all of her children (except Murray, abed with the frakes) had gathered ’round, and they watched as Eli Willard dismounted and opened his saddlebags. To each of the boys Eli Willard gave a stick of rosewood studded with small bolts, which, he demonstrated, enclosed a knife that folded out! So that it could be carried in one’s pocket without sticking one, Eli Willard explained. The boys were awed. To each of the girls he gave a pair of knives that were crossed and bolted at the cross and had rings in one end whereby, he demonstrated by inserting his thumb and forefinger through the rings, the knives could be made to move against one another, snipping, so that a straight even cut could be made through cloth, he using the hem of his own coat for a subject. The girls were lost in amazement, and their mother exclaimed, “I declare! If them aint the beatin’est things ever I saw!” Before their mother could stop them, the girls gathered up all the fabric that was in their house, namely, two muslin dishrags and a bit of linsey-woolsey, and quickly reduced this material to shreds. To Lizzie Swain Eli Willard gave an even larger pair of these scissoring knives which would cut through buckskin, the material in which all of the Swains, as well as the Ingledews, were clothed.

“Bless yore heart,” said Lizzie Swain. “We’uns jist don’t know how to thank you.” Eli Willard explained that there was, in fact, a way that they could thank him. His suggestion puzzled Lizzie but after muddling it over for a while, she understood it, and protested that none of them had any of that monetary stuff, to which he assured her that her credit was good, and he would collect when he came again in a year or so. Then he inquired if the Ingledew cabin was still occupied, and, being told that it was, he remounted his horse and prepared to ride off in that direction, but Lizzie laid her hand on the horse’s bridle and said, “Stranger, afore ye go, could ye tell us if they’s any news out yonder.” With her other hand she gestured to the north, the east, the vaguely oriental points where the world was.

“News?” said Eli Willard.

“Yeah, Connecticut must be whar lives all the gentle-peoples what made these things ye give us. Aint there any news out thar in the Nation?”

“It is all bad,” Eli Willard informed her. “What do you want to hear it for?”

“Wal, we’uns is all hidden out here in the woods, y’know. It do git kinder lonesome, times. A body’d like to hear what’s happenin far off and away.”

Eli Willard just looked at her for a long moment, and then he announced, “Lady of the Lake strikes iceberg in mid-Atlantic; 215 drown. New York City fire destroys 700 buildings. Japanese earthquake kills 12,000. Worldwide cholera epidemic kills millions. Wages rise, but prices rise faster. Financial crash occurs on Van Buren’s 36th day in office. Nation begins first great depression. Bank failures and closings spread like plague. 200,000 are unemployed. Business bankrupt; only pawnbrokers prosper. Van Buren declares ten-hour day on all federal jobs. There. Does that make you feel any better?”

Lizzie Swain smiled and all her children smiled, and Lizzie said, “Hit shore do. We thank ye kindly.”

Shaking his head and muttering to himself, Eli Willard rode on his way. He came to the Ingledew cabin, was hailed by the bitch Tige and her now-fully-grown litter of eight, who surrounded his horse and continued barking until Jacob appeared and said, “Oh. It’s you. Back already?” Then he observed, “You shore didn’t stay away long, this time. Accordin to my clock, you’ve only been gone one day, three hours and forty-five minutes.”

Eli Willard drew an envelope from his pocket, unfolded it, and read it to Jacob Ingledew. “The management deeply regrets being apprised of the alleged malfunctioning of the instrument merchandised in good faith to the customer, and under ordinary circumstances would redeem the allegedly defective instrument with one of acceptable performance, but the management must with compunction inform the customer that, since the management is at the present time no longer actively engaged in merchandising instruments of this nature, we are perforce not able to make available to the customer an alternative replacement, therefore—”

“Yeah,” Jacob said. Then, “How’s the weather out yore way?”

“Cold enough to freeze the tail off a brass monkey,” Eli Willard reported. “Blizzards up to here—” he indicated his chin, and he was still sitting on his horse. “How about you?”

“Had one good snap long about Christmas,” Jacob told him.

The two men discussed the weather for a while, one-eighth of a second by Jacob’s clock, then Eli Willard opened his saddlebag and brought out a stick of ivory which enclosed a blade much sharper than those he had given the Swain boys. He unfolded it and handed it to Jacob.

“What’s it fer?” Jacob asked, holding it gingerly.

“For shaving,” Eli Willard explained. “Perhaps if you cut off those whiskers of yours, you might more easily find a wife.”

“I’ve done found a wife,” Jacob informed him, then he called into the cabin, “OH, SAREY! COME OUT SO’S THIS HERE PEDDLAR FELLER KIN SEE YE!”

“Congratulations,” Eli Willard said to Jacob, and when Sarah appeared he amended that to, “Compliments and congratulations. A beauty. My pleasure to meet you, madam, and to present you with this.” He gave her a pair of the scissoring knives like those he had given to Lizzie Swain, and explained to her how to use them. She had no cloth to cut, but took one of Jacob’s beaver skins and snipped it to flinders, expressing her wonder and delight, then she offered to give him a bucket of wild raspberry preserves that she had made, but Jacob explained that this feller was blind to any barter except that issued by the federal government, of which Jacob still had a little hidden behind a loose stone in his fireplace. So he fetched his cash and paid for Sarah’s scissors.

“Don’t you think, madam,” Eli Willard asked, “that your husband would strike a more dashing figure without his beard and mustachios?”

Sarah clipped her scissors and stared at them. “Is these good for that too?”

“Up to a point,” Eli Willard replied. “But to complete the operation he would need this.” He held up the straight-razor again.

“Pay him, Jake,” Sarah told her husband. While Jacob had his bankroll out, Eli Willard gauged the thickness of the wad, and proceeded to sell Jacob a pocketknife, another for Noah, a hand saw, an adjustable plane, a brace and bit, and a hammer. Before he was done, Eli Willard also sold him a scythe blade and a hay fork, observing that, now that Jacob had livestock, he would need good tools for harvesting fodder. Meanwhile Sarah did not return to her cabin but, as had become her peculiar disposition, wandered off to her mother’s house. Jacob took advantage of her absence to draw Eli Willard aside and ask in a low voice, “You reckon you could lay hold of some glass to bring me, yore next trip?”

“Glass?” said Eli Willard in a hushed tone.

“Yeah,” Jacob whispered. “I’m a-fixin to build me a new house, and I aim to put a couple winders in her, so I’ll be needin some winder lights.”

“Glass,” Eli Willard susurrated hoarsely, “is frightfully hard to come by, and of course difficult to transport, and therefore frightfully expensive.”

“I ’spect so,” Jacob sighed, and softly inquired, “How much?”

Eli Willard whispered into his ear a preposterously exorbitant figure. “I’ll be dumbed!” Jacob croaked quietly, but then he drew himself up and declared, “Wal, you git it, and we’uns will find the money some way.”

The window of the Swain house, as we have seen, being covered with boiled and scraped wildcat hide, was translucent but not transparent. It admitted light but permitted no vision, either in or out, unless at night a figure were standing between the window and the light (nocturnal illumination in the Swain house came either from the fireplace or from “lamps” which consisted of sycamore balls floating in saucers of bear’s grease with the stem serving as a wick). The silhouette of a figure was standing between the light and window that night; the figure is Sarah’s. Jacob has not bothered to come for her. He has discovered a wonderful use for the pocketknife he bought from Eli Willard. He can whittle a stick with it.

He is whittling the stick into shavings. Neither the stick nor the shavings have any value, but the act of pushing the knife down along the stick has a certain therapeutic value, is soothing, gives him something to do with his hands, keeps him from seeming entirely idle when in fact he is entirely idle. Henceforward generations of the men and boys of Stay More will whittle to shavings millions of cords of sticks; some of them will actually carve the sticks into totemic figures or useful objects, hatchet handles and such, but the majority of the men and boys will just keep on whittling the stick into shavings and then start on another one, as if, their houses all built and finished, they have to keep on working with wood.

Tonight Jacob sits beside his fire endlessly whittling, and Noah soon catches the contagious habit and joins him. It is Sarah whose silhouette we see passing between the light and the window of her mother’s house. All the others have gone to sleep, the boys in the loft, the girls and their mother below. But Sarah’s silhouette moves across our line of vision and out of it, in the direction of the ladder leading up through the scuttle-hole into the loft. We can no longer see her through the window now, but we can imagine her climbing the ladder to her brothers’ quarters. We cannot easily imagine her motive, until we remember that Murray is still suffering from the after-effects of the frakes. He has no will to live. Sleeps sometimes, more often not. Lies abed, thinking no visions, hatching no plans. Feels only, if feels at all, the same feeling Noah had: of snugness, of being wrapped in the confines of this small house, of having no desire ever again to leave it. What is Sarah climbing to him for? We are not going to know.

But we should know this much, about all of those early houses in Stay More, in contrast to all of the houses that we live in today: the very architecture of “garrison”-type houses, hermetic as it was, insulating and isolating the inhabitants from extremes of hot and cold, the possibly hostile wilderness, etc., fostered because of this an atmosphere of family “togetherness” more intense than any that has ever existed since. By closing the family in on itself, the architecture forced the people of these families into a happy intimacy which we cannot comprehend because we have never known it. There were few or no secrets in these families.

In the case of the Swains, the atmosphere of togetherness was so intense that they thought of themselves not as individuals but as parts of one person. We have already seen an example in the way they cooperated as a team to propel Sarah along the route to Jacob’s cabin and heart. But that was nothing. To observe the degree of their absorption one in another we would have to join them at the table, where there was never any need for anybody to ask to have something passed because everybody knew who wanted what and when and how much. They knew, the Swains, all of them, and nobody ever had to ask to have anything passed. When one of them was supremely happy, they were all supremely happy, and when one of them was sad, they were all sad. The only exception to this, strangely, was Murray’s frakes, which seems to be the one condition whose mood is not contagious, the one condition that must be suffered alone, without empathy from those so close around one. Whatever it was, it was not empathy that caused Sarah to climb up to Murray’s bed.

But Murray did not improve. In addition to his usual feeling of worthlessness, he developed a strange sensation that can only be called a kind of stationary acrophobia. The boys’ sleeping loft was not all that high; just about nine feet above the floor; and indeed it was not the loft that he was afraid of falling out of. Nor his bed, which was a scant two feet high. He was simply afraid of falling out of…of…well, he was simply afraid of falling. In his dreams, when he managed to sleep, he was always falling. Not from anything nor to anything, but falling. He would wake with a cry from these dreams, and, because there were no secrets in those families, in those houses, he would tell his dream to his brothers, and they to his mother and sisters, so that when in the deep of night thereafter anyone was wakened from their sleep by Murray’s cries, they would simply realize, “Murray is fallin,” and turn over and go back to sleep.

Lizzie consulted Noah Ingledew, who enjoyed some esteem as the first person to catch and suffer and endure and survive the frakes, but Noah could not remember having had any sensation of falling, and thus was not able to offer any advice. Lizzie then consulted with Jacob, who, although he had not yet experienced the frakes, was looked upon as the village sage. Jacob agreed to study the problem. He got a stick and sat with it and whittled at it with his new pocketknife. He studied and studied, whittling stick after stick. He wished Fanshaw were still around; Fanshaw might know some answers to what might help acrophobia (although Jacob, of course, did not know or use that word); whatever the condition was, it had to be related to gravity, and Fanshaw was an expert on gravity.

Jacob whittled his sticks and meditated upon how and why objects fall. At length he formulated two important premises: (1) an object must fall from somewhere, and (2) an object must stop falling when it gets to somewhere. He demonstrated and proved these concepts by throwing a rock straight up into the air as hard as he could. The rock rose and rose, but by and by Jacob heard it coming down, crashing through the trees and then making a dull thud as it hit the ground. Now the question was: where did the rock fall from? From the hand of Jacob who had thrown it, or from some unspecified point at which the rock could no longer rise? The latter, he believed, and suddenly realized, Murray Swain is falling from the place at which he knows he caint rise any farther.

He understood that much about the frakes. The next question was: when would he stop falling? When would he hit the ground? Or could somebody catch him? How? Jacob tried another experiment: he went out into his open pasture where there were no trees, and threw another rock straight up into the air and searched for it as it was coming down and ran over beneath it and cupped his hands and tried to catch it. The first few times he tried this, he missed, and the rock either hit the ground or struck him painfully on his head or shoulders. Soon Sarah and Noah and all of the Swains except Murray gathered around to watch Jacob trying to catch rocks. “S—tfire,” Noah remarked to Sarah. “You ortent to have let him out of the house, Sarey.” But finally Jacob succeeded in catching a rock, and then another, and still yet another—and by indirection commenced the legendary Ingledew prowess at that sport which, by fabulous coincidence, was being invented on that same day, at that same moment, by Abner Doubleday in Coopers-town, N.Y.

No element of sport, however, entered Jacob’s mind; he was dead serious, and after he had succeeded in catching several rocks in succession, he stopped throwing them and came and said to the others, “I think I got it.” Then he told Lizzie that they should keep a watch on Murray when he was sleeping, and if he started tossing and turning and acting like he was about to cry out, they should hold him and whisper in his ear, “I’ve caught ye!” That very night Lizzie took one of the lamps made from a sycamore ball floating in a saucer of bear’s grease and she lit it and left it beside Murray’s bed, and then in shifts she and her children kept watch on Murray until, sure enough, he began tossing and turning and acting like he was getting ready to cry out, when Orville, who was on the shift at that moment, leaned down and clutched him and whispered in his ear, “I’ve caught ye!” whereupon Murray smiled in his sleep and stopped tossing, stopped falling apparently, stopped having any but pleasant dreams: of tall wheat waving in the field, of the creek tumbling over shoals, of a cool dipper of spring water on a hot day, of fried chicken, of his sister Sarah’s warmth and depth and damp. The Swains repeated this magic incantation whenever Murray had dreams of falling, until, eventually, he seemed to be cured. Then Lizzie Swain went to Jacob and announced, “We’uns done had a ’lection, and all voted to proclaim ye mayor of Stay More,” a title that Jacob would retain for the rest of his life, even concurrently with, years later, the far grander title of governor of the whole State of Arkansas.

But Murray was not cured. Cured of dreaming dreams of falling, yes, but not of the core of his acrophobia, which festered until it erupted: one day he left his bed and dressed and went out of the house and climbed the mountain behind it until he came to a lofty projection of bluff that jutted out from the side of the mountaintop some three hundred feet (or more accurately, nineteen hats) above the mountainslope below. Young Gilbert, the Swain’s least-un, had followed Murray to see where he was going, and it was he who ran home to report it to his mother, who in turn summoned Jacob, who assured her, “I’ll catch him,” and ran up the mountainslope, fully determined to attempt to break Murray’s fall with his own arms or body, a rash resolution which, had he been able to carry it out, would have killed himself or crippled himself for life. But when he got to that area of the mountainslope directly beneath the bluff jutting out from the mountaintop, Murray was already falling, falling, and though Jacob cried out “I’ll catch ye!” and “I’ve caught ye!” he could not, would not. Limbs of trees deflected the plummet of the body away from his grasp but did not soften the descent enough to keep Murray from slamming into that which awaits the fall of all. Jacob would never forget the sound, all of the parts of the sound: of flesh violently bruised, of lungs expelled, of bones snapping, of blood spurting. Some months later, when he himself would lie abed with the frakes and the fear of, not of falling but of getting the fear of falling, he would load his rifle and instruct Sarah to use it upon him if ever he left the house except to relieve himself out back.

Murray Swain was the founder of the Stay More cemetery. There’s an old story that when the next wave of settlers came into Stay More, six families from various parts of eastern Tennessee and northern Georgia, the men were gathered at the Mayor’s—Jacob’s—house for the formality of requesting his permission to settle. One man declared that he would like to start a blacksmith shop. Another said that he intended to start a sheep ranch. Another declared his intention to start a trading post. Still another was going to start a gristmill. Each of the men had some intention to contribute to the establishment of the village, except for one very old man who had suffered the long trip from Georgia and was ill. “What about him?” Jacob asked the others, and they replied, “Oh. Him. Reckon he aims to start the cemetery.” Jacob thought maybe they were trying to be funny, but he didn’t laugh. He just stared them down and informed them, “We done got one.” And in fact, when the old man died within a few days, and was given a proper burial, there was already another headstone in a clearing down Swains Creek a ways, a headstone quarried from slate and inscribed with the name and the too-brief dates, the last of which was the earliest in Stay More, and the inscription, “Falling no more.” It was Lizzie Swain herself who, without irony or approbation or sorrow so much as plain observation, named the lofty jag of bluff “Leapin Rock,” and defied all her descendants to go near it. Throughout the history of Stay More, it was always difficult for anyone to avoid seeing that landmark, looming up to the west of the village as a silent reminder that there is a place to fall from, a silent temptation to those who want to stop falling.

The six families were the Plowrights, the Coes, the Dinsmores, the Chisms, the Duckworths, and the Whitters. Collectively they increased the population of Stay More by thirty-three, as if to compensate for the decrease by one. They built cabins or houses very similar to, but carefully not identical to, those of the Ingledews and the Swains. Zachariah Dinsmore did indeed construct a primitive gristmill on Swains Creek, and Levi Whitter erected an even more primitive building which became the village’s first general store or trading post, much to the disdain of Eli Willard the next time he came.

Willard’s current merchandise, the knives and scissors and razors, it must be noted, performed just a little more satisfactorily than his clocks: the jackknives could be opened only with a pair of pliers and closed only with a hammer; the screws fell out of Lizzie’s scissors and Sarah’s too (although they discovered that they each had two knives as a result) and Jacob’s razor gave him many mornings of pure agony and bloodshed until he discovered that it worked much better if he first lathered his jowls with soap. But even beardless and fresh-shaven he found that Sarah did not appreciate him any better than she had before, at least not in bed. Once, inspired by drink, he tried again the bath-in-three-waters: rain, creek, spring, hoping it might produce some magic response in Sarah, but this had only the effect of erasing his olfactory identity. “It aint you,” Sarah said, in the dark, refusing to let him into the bed. “Whoever ye air, you aint you.” He slept with his dogs, whose keen noses could recognize at least a trace of whatever remained of him.

Jacob perceived eventually that the only times he had had any luck with Sarah had been after immoderate consumption of his Arkansas sour mash, but naturally this realization did nothing to curb his use of the beverage, rather the reverse. Both Sarah and her mother began to nag Jacob about his use of distilled corn. He invited them to offer one good reason why there was anything wrong with it. They could not; they could only reply that everybody knows it’s “wrong,” but they could not explain why anyone knows it is wrong, they could only nag him for it.

Another example, not unlike the matter of liquor, involved religion. It was no secret to Sarah or to Lizzie Swain that Jacob Ingledew felt that religion was a useless expenditure of time and thought. He was not exactly blasphemous, and took the Lord’s name in vain only under severe duress, as when for example he discovered razorback shoats nursing off his cow’s teats, but he did not believe, as nearly everybody else did, that our words and deeds on this earth will determine our standard of living in the hereafter. In fact, he did not believe in any sort of hereafter. For well over a hundred years, down to the present day, Ozark women would nag their men on these two subjects: whiskey and religion, instilling God knows what a fabric of guilt and evasion; and few of these men would have the solace of the knowledge that Jacob had, that since there is no logical earthly reason for not drinking, and no logical earthly reason for being religious, the nagging was invalid and therefore would be disregarded.

…But not quite. Try as he would, Jacob could not quite disregard the nagging of Sarah and her mother. He knew there was nothing he could say to turn it off. If he went outside, they would follow him. So he did more than just go outside: he left town. The nagging of Sarah and her mother may be credited for Jacob’s discovery that there was indeed a people to the north.

He went north from Stay More less than six miles, down the Little Buffalo River, before coming upon a settlement that was even larger than Stay More. Larger, at least, by one house, for there were nine of them, ranging from porchless, windowless cabins more primitive than the Ingledew place to square-hewed log houses more advanced than the Swain place. Jacob approached the most elaborate of these latter, was hailed by its dogs and then greeted by its owner, John Bellah, who, Jacob learned, had come to the Ozarks even before himself. The name of the settlement was Mount Parthenon, given to it by a neighbor, Thomas K. May, “the Bible man,” and for the time being the small log trading post operated by John Bellah was also the “courthouse” for the county.

“County?” said Jacob Ingledew to John Bellah.

“Yeah, we’ve done been declared a county,” declared John Bellah. “They cut off the whole southeast part of Carroll County and let us have it.”

“What’s the name of this here county?” Jacob wanted to know.

“Newton,” Bellah informed him. Jacob knew that this was a shortened form of “new town,” and he was sorry that the new town apparently wasn’t his own. But Bellah explained that it was named after, or in honor of, Thomas Willoughby Newton, who was the United States Marshal for Arkansas.

“Never heared of ’im,” Jacob said.

“Whar ye from, stranger?” John Bellah wanted to know.

Jacob Ingledew was sore distressed and perplexed and aggerpervoked. To find that he lived in a county, in the first place, and then, in the second place, to be called “stranger” not six miles from his own dooryard, was a demeaning affront. His first impulse was to strike John Bellah down on the spot, but then he reflected that a wiser course of action might be to secede Stay More from the rest of the county, or perhaps, better yet, if more settlers came in and made Stay More larger than Mount Parthenon, to declare Stay More the county seat.

“I’m Mayor of Stay More,” he informed John Bellah.

“Never heared of it,” Bellah declared.

“Second largest town in Newton County and you aint heared of it?” Jacob demanded. A thought suddenly occurred to him: maybe there were more houses, by one, in Mount Parthenon than in Stay More, but that didn’t necessarily mean that there were more human beings inside those houses. “What’s the population of this here town, would ye kindly tell me?” he asked.

John Bellah figured, “Wal, there’s me and Barbary and our four, and the Rolands with their three, and the Seabolts, no childring, but Isaac Archer and Louisa has got five, and Jim Archer and Mary Ann has got two, the Boens has got two, and Jesse Casey the blacksmith has got ten of ’em, Seburn McPherson and Bess has got three, Bill Bowin and Nancy has got four, and the Coopers, all told, Ike and Sarah Ann and his mother Nancy and their childring, six of ’em. That makes fifty-seven.”

“Hah!” Jacob exclaimed and silently thanked Lizzie Swain for having been so multiparous. “Stay More has got fifty-nine!”

John Bellah stared woefully at him. “Whar is this city of yourn?” he asked.

Jacob pointed south.

John Bellah took a hunter’s horn and blew on it three times. Soon, from all directions, fifty-six other men, women and children had assembled in Bellah’s yard, standing in a circle around John Bellah and Jacob Ingledew.

“Folks,” said John Bellah to the assembly, “this here feller claims they’s a town up the creek a little ways has got more people in it than we’uns do.”

“My stars and body!” a woman screeched.

“I’ll be jimjohned!” a man roared.

“Golly Moses fishhooks!” a boy bellowed.

“It beats my grandmother!” a girl squealed.

John Bellah asked, “Air we’uns gonna take this a-layin down?”

“No sirree bob!” a woman shrieked.

“Not by a damned sight!” a man barked.

“I’ll be hanged if!” a boy snarled.

“Not for the world!” a girl bleated.

“Nope, nohow,” a child wailed.

John Bellah raised his arm and suggested, “Then let’s go!”

“Skedaddle!” a woman yipped.

“Pull foot!” a boy snapped.

“High-tail!” a girl howled.

“Hoof it!” a child mewed.

The entire population of Mount Parthenon began moving at a brisk clip up the trail in the direction of Stay More. Jacob Ingledew could only follow along, worried and puzzled. None of these people were armed, so if they meant to fight, they would fight bare-handed.

At the northernmost end of the valley of Stay More, there was a field which had been cleared by Levi Whitter for a cow pasture, and now this field was heavy with sweet clover. It would always be called the Field of Clover after the confrontation which took place there between the people of Stay More and the people of Mount Parthenon.

One of the Swain children had seen the Parthenonians coming and had run to alert the rest of the village. All of the Stay Morons (and kindly believe me that my use of this name is meant to be neither pejorative nor facetious; if you wish to split hairs, it should be borne in mind that strictly speaking a moron is in the mental age group between seven and twelve, a time of life which, as anyone who has lived through it can tell you, is simply wonderful) left their homes and came to halt the Parthenonians’ advance at Levi Whitter’s clover pasture. The two communities faced one another across this field, keeping a distance of some hundred feet (or six hats) between themselves.

“Is that all of ’em, neighbor?” John Bellah asked Jacob Ingledew.

“Yeah, neighbor, I reckon,” Jacob replied.

John Bellah began with his bent finger to count the Stay Morons. When he finished, he said, “Fifty-eight.” Then he counted the Parthenonians and declared, “Fifty-eight.”

“Huh?” Jacob said. “Here, neighbor, let me try.” Also using his finger as a counter, Jacob totaled up the number of people standing over there across the field, and sure enough, it came to fifty-eight. Then he counted the number on this side of the field, and it was also fifty-eight. Something was wrong, that Stay More had lost, and Mount Parthenon gained, a person.

Soon all of the Parthenonians who knew how to count were also counting the Stay Morons, and the latter, with nothing better to do, began counting the former. Everybody who could count agreed that the two groups contained the same number of people.

“Wal, neighbor,” said John Bellah to Jacob Ingledew, “seeing as how we’re even…” Then he asked, “How many dwellings in your village?”

“Eight,” Jacob replied.

“Seeing as how we’re equal in population, neighbor,” John Bellah observed, “I reckon we win, on account of we got nine dwellings.” To the other Parthenonians, he announced, “We win!” and they all gave cheers of hoo raw and huzzah and then went on back home.

Jacob was left to explain to his people that Mount Parthenon had become the county seat of this here county, and that while he had contested it on the grounds of Stay More’s numerical superiority, it turned out that he must have miscalculated.

Forever afterward, the rivalry between Stay More and Mount Parthenon (or simply Parthenon, as it would later be shortened to) would be intense and sensitive, if never violent. The competition between them was perhaps a factor in their growth and development, and if today Stay More is practically a ghost town then Parthenon is not much better off.

We perceive, then, one more motive that Jacob Ingledew had for building the imposing home of our next chapter: he wanted to equal the number of Parthenon’s buildings. That is as good a reason as any for building a house, for sweat, for toil, for going on.

Some time later, it was Noah Ingledew, not exactly anybody’s fool, who first realized and understood the error in census-taking that Jacob had made. “Shitfire!” he exclaimed to his brother. “You was countin yoreself on the wrong side!”

Chapter four

He built it all by himself, almost in secret. He meant to surprise Sarah with it, was possibly the reason, or maybe he just wanted the satisfaction of being solely responsible for it. We know what the real reason was, though he did not, could not have guessed, would have blushed and scoffed if we were to tell him. But it takes an awful lot of pent-up passion to build on this scale, alone and in just slightly over two weeks. Jacob’s second home is his erection. Although that is not why, like spermaries, it is bigeminal. Consciously he may have been remembering Fanshaw’s dwelling; unconsciously no doubt he was remembering one of several dreams he had the first night he slept with Fanshaw’s squaw: a dream in which he saw this very structure almost exactly as he has rendered it here: two-pens-and-a-passage, a double house divided (or conjoined) by an open breezeway.

The house was (and still is) in another holler south up Ingledew Mountain from his first dwelling. He discovered it was a better holler, had a stronger spring, and was only two whoops and a holler (which is not hollow but halloo) away from his first place. Still nobody knew exactly where it was except him and his pack of dogs. Undoubtedly the neighbors, especially the Swains, would have been glad to join him and help in a speedy house-raisin’, but he chose to go it alone, working from first light to last light and sometimes past light day after day for over two weeks. His pack of dogs went with him and sat around and watched; it was not until he was almost finished that they perked up and took a particular interest in the breezeway, discovering that it was a place where they could loll out of the rain and trot in the shade and breeze, a kind of doghouse almost, or at least a “dogtrot,” which is what Jacob called it and which, by extension, is the most common generic name for this type of house as a whole, although there are variants: possum trot, dog run, breezeway, two-wing, open entry, etc.

Jacob Ingledew was by no means the inventor of the type, which scholars have traced all the way back to medieval Sweden, where it was called “pair-cottage,” nor was Jacob’s dogtrot the first in the Ozarks: there is a magnificent two-story dogtrot at Norfork which was built by Indian agent Jacob Wolfe in the first years of the century. But the Ingledew dogtrot was the first bigeminal white man’s dwelling in Newton County, the first bipartition, the first conjugation, the first bifidity, the first duple.

Jacob hoped to install the glass in the windows before showing the house to pretty Sarah, but Eli Willard had not again returned, and everything else was finished, and Jacob was exhausted from his labors (and already, though he did not know it yet, infested with the frakes). So one afternoon he drove the last nail into the last shingle on the roof (the nails were the first product of Absalom Coe’s blacksmith shop in Stay More) and then went back to his first place and said, “Sarey, I got a little susprise fer ye. Come on.” And he led her through the woods to the clearing in the holler where their new home was erected.

She clapped her hands and oohed and ahhed and hugged his neck and carried on like that for a long time, exclaiming Did you ever! and As I live and breathe! and Fancy that! and Well hush my mouth! Jacob just blushed and said Aw shucks, but it was plain that he was very proud of himself. Then Sarah was puzzled somewhat by their new home’s bifidity, that is, she wondered why there were two of them. She asked Jacob, “Is that un there fer Noah?”

“No,” he explained, “it’s fer you.”

“Me?” She stared at him with puzzlement, and then asked anxiously, “Air we a-fixin to split up?”

He laughed. “Aw naw, darlin. That there half is fer the kitchen and fer eatin. So it’s yourn. Th’other half is whar the beds will go, so it’s mine.”

“I caint sleep in there too?” she asked.

“Aw, shore ye kin,” he said. “But don’t you see? It’s like if, wal, like the Bible said about a man and a woman become one flesh but they’re still two people. This here is jist one house, but it’s got two parts, and one part is you and th’other part is me.”

Sarah still did not quite seem to grasp the philosophy of it, but she took note of the open breezeway in between, where Jacob’s nine dogs were lolling about, drooling and thumping the floor with their tails. “And that part,” she asked, “is it fer the dogs?”

“I didn’t mean it so,” he said. “It’s meant fer whar we kin set in our cheers and rest, of an evenin, or maybe eat when it’s hot, or whar ye kin set to shell peas and snap beans and churn the butter and such.” He added: “It’s our porch, sorta like. It aint you, and it aint me. It’s us, both together.”

Sarah thought that her man was a little crazy, but she was awful proud of him for building this house, which was over twice as large as any other dwelling in Stay More. Wouldn’t Perilla Duckworth and Destiny Whitter, not to mention that snooty Malinda Plowright, just perish of envy when they came a-visiting? “And look at them winders!” Sarah exclaimed, taking note for the first time of the large windows in each wing of the building, even if the sash did not yet have its glass installed. She climbed the few steps to the breezeway and opened the door to “her” wing and went into it to see how bright the interior was because of the window. Only when she was inside did she notice that there was no furniture. The room was empty! There was nothing in it except a fireplace. It made her very uncomfortable, and she quickly came back out, saying to Jacob, “If that one is me, I’m all bare and holler.”

“We’ll fill ye up, quick,” he assured her, and returned with her to their first house, where he said to Noah, “Wal, Brother, it’s all yourn now,” and then made a deal with Noah whereby Jacob and Sarah got over half of whatever furniture was portable (Noah hated to see the clock go), and also Noah’s agreement to make, in the near future, a specified number of chairs, tables and bedsteads in return for Jacob’s half-interest in the cabin. Noah also helped Jacob and Sarah carry their possessions and items of furniture up to the new house, where Noah too let loose with many exclamations of surprise and admiration, concluding, “Shetfare, it’s the masterest house ever I seed!”

That night Jacob and Sarah spread their mattress on the puncheon floor, having no bedstead yet, in the wing of the house which was Jacob’s, where he lay on his back and stared at the ceiling of his room, pleased as Punch with the work he had done, but exhausted from it, too tired to sleep. Sarah was not sleeping either. “Hit’s so purty,” she was sighing. “Hit’s shore a fine place. Smells so clean and new. Yo’re a good man, Jake.” She went on admiring the house and him for a while, and then suddenly she turned to him, turned into him, turned on him, saying, “Here, Jake, let me see if I caint make that thing go fer ye.” And then—it was too dark for him to see her, he had covered the window with a bearskin to keep out insects, so not even the moonlight came in to illuminate her—though she had not had any relations with him for eight months and her pregnancy was so near term that she would not now anyway—she employed one or several of her various soft clefts or clasps or crevices, or slews or furcula or nooks, to simulate hers, and stimulate his, until, sure enough, the old clouds gathered and clashed, making lightningbolt and thunderclap and afterclap rattling away.

He went into a deep and most restful sleep then. Sarah slept too, and dreamed, knowing and believing the ages-old tradition that the dream dreamt on the first night in a new house will come true. She was as excited as her great-granddaughter would be on her first visit to a motion picture theater…but she was as puzzled by the dream as her great-granddaughter would have been if she had unwittingly stumbled upon a film by Luis Buñuel.

She (Sarah) was in a large room, much larger than any she had ever been in before, where there were many people, the women dressed in fantastic silken dresses with skirts as big as haymows, the men in black woolen coats with tails like a swallow’s, and Sarah was ashamed of her dusty buckskin frock, until she looked down at herself and saw that she too was dressed in a silken gown with skirt big as a haymow, the air circulating freely around her legs and loins. She saw Jacob, who was dressed in the finest of the black woolen swallowtail coats and was smoking a very large cigar, surrounded by other men who were listening to him talk and talk. He caught sight of her and blew her a kiss. Then he motioned for her to come over. She did, and he told her the names of each of the gentlemen around him, and then told them her name, and one by one they took her hand and bent sharply at the waist and placed their mouths on the back of her hand. She did not say anything. She did not know what to say. The other men then ignored her and resumed talking to Jacob. Each of them called him “Your Excellency.” Some of the women came and tried to talk to Sarah, but she did not know what to say, and was not sure that she understood what the women were saying, whether they were asking questions or just making statements. She was very embarrassed.

But then the women stopped talking, because there was loud music coming from outside. Jacob came and took her hand and led her out onto the porch, and this porch was very high, there must be another house underneath it, and from this porch she could see that the yard and the road were filled with people, some of them in uniforms beating on drums and blowing bugles and fifes and all kinds of strange brass tooters and horns. Jacob waved to all the people, and they cheered “Huzzah!” He nudged her, so she waved too, and again they cheered “Huzzah!” The music-makers played louder, and the crowd cheered louder, and then, loudest of all, somebody fired off a battery of cannon, and the noise made Sarah start shaking.

When she woke up, in the early morning, she discovered that she had both hands clamped tightly over her ears. She remembered the dream and tried to puzzle it out, but all she could get from it, if it were going to come true, was that someday she and Jacob were going to be of the better sort. Quality folks. She rose and took the bearskin off the window, to let in the morning light. Jacob was still sleeping. The quilt was off him. His buckskins were piled on the floor beside the mattress. Sarah’s cheeks waxed hot, seeing his bare prides, but then she noticed that his prides seemed mighty hot too, and, stooping for a closer look, saw that they, and the skin of his groin all around them, were covered with a red rash, thousands of tiny scarlet blisters, almost like chicken pox, but worse. At first she wondered if what she had done the night before might have caused it. She knew that what she had done was unnatural, not right, maybe a sin in the eyes of God. But then she remembered her brother Murray, and knew that her husband had the same terrible affliction.

She shook him awake. “Frake, look, you’ve got the jakes!” she exclaimed, but corrected herself, “Jake, look, you’ve got the frakes!” He yawned and raised himself enough to take one look, then fell back to his original position, where he would remain for months on end.

Jake’s frakes became the concern of the whole community; farfetched remedies were suggested and tried, but with no effect. Lizzie Swain recommended that Sarah try the blood of a black hen, but it worked no better for Jacob than it had for Murray. Noah appeared, clawed and scratched and bloody, with a quantity of panther urine that he made into a poultice, but it worked no better for Jacob than it had for Noah. Perilla Duckworth recommended a purgative from a decoction of white walnut bark peeled downward, and then an emetic from a decoction of white walnut bark peeled upward, but these only aggravated Jacob’s disposition. Destiny Whitter was certain that the frakes was just a form of erypsipelas, or “St. Anthony’s Fire,” which everybody knew could be easily cured with the blood of a black cat. All of the black cats of Stay More were rounded up, a total of nine, and, since it is terrible bad luck to kill a cat, particularly a black one, none were killed, but each had an ear snipped off and an inch removed from its tail, and enough black cat gore was collected to cover Jacob’s frakes in three coats after first washing off all the other stuff that had been applied and caked and dried.

This bold treatment, needless to say, had absolutely no effect, and in time Jacob’s frakes erupted and healed over, but he remained abed with feelings of utter worthlessness, so melancholy that not even the birth of his firstborn, Benjamin, which happened then, could rouse him from his Slough of Despond. Nor did he receive any comfort from the confines of his new house, which lacked the certain snugness of the first Ingledew cabin and the Swain house, and was a constant reminder to him of the futility of human endeavor. He could no longer understand nor remember what had motivated him to build the house. Gradually it filled up with furniture, made by Noah; and Sarah, who in the last months of her pregnancy had taken up flax-spinning and weaving, made linen curtains for the windows and other cloth decorations, so that it was indeed the most elegant home in Stay More or all of Newton County, but this brought no cheer whatever to despairing Jacob.

Almost as if Nature herself agreed with his forlorn mood, Stay More began to suffer its first severe drought. In early July, before any of the crops had been harvested except peas and spinach, the sixtieth day without rainfall occurred, and from then on it did not rain a drop for the rest of the summer. The creeks began to dry up, first Banty Creek and then Swains Creek itself, the deep holes of water remaining until last as diminishing puddles engorged with fish. If Jacob had cared, if he had not lost all sense of any purpose to life, he would have urged the people to harvest these fish and dry them as insurance against the famine ahead, but he did not, and the puddles dried until they were only mounds of dead fish. The springs from the mountainsides kept on trickling enough water for man and livestock, a few weeks after the creeks were bone dry, but then the springs began to fail, until there was no water, no trace of water of any kind, at all. By this time, the cornstalks were twisted freaks, and none of the other crops, not even the heat-loving Tah May Toh, were bearing any fruit. Great swarms of grasshoppers and locusts, apparently needing no water to survive, flew in on the hot wind and devoured all the remaining vegetation. The livestock began to die. The cows managed to find a few small tufts of brown grass and convert it into a liquid that vaguely resembled milk, which was rationed: one-half saucer of this per person per day. But soon that ration was reduced to one-quarter saucer, and then one-eighth, and then measured in drops: ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, none, none.

The cows knelt and died. The people who felt like it (and by this time Jacob was not the only person feeling useless and helpless) loaded their oak-stave barrels and tubs and buckets and pails into their wagons, and drove off down the dry creek in search of water. Days later they returned with some murky river water. They reported that the people of Mount Parthenon were dry and suffering too; the Little Buffalo River was dry all along its length; they had followed it into the Big Buffalo, which was also dry, and followed that into the White River, which still had puddles remaining here and there, but each of these puddles was guarded day and night by fierce men with shotguns; they followed the White for miles before finding a puddle that was not guarded, and there they filled their oak-stave containers with this murky swill. They hauled it back to Stay More, strained it, and discovered that after removing all of the fish, minnows, tadpoles, crawdads, turtles, water moccasins, and a few beaver, they had only half as much water as they had started with, and then this water had to be boiled for so long to purify it that half again evaporated, so they were left with only a quarter of what they had found, and this had to be strictly rationed: a half-saucer per day per person. And then a quarter-saucer, an eighth, and so on, down, down.

These people of Stay More had come originally from eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, and northern Georgia, an area of the country which has more consistent annual rainfall than any other, and not one of these persons, even the oldest, had ever known a drought before. Since the drought had coincided so closely with the onslaught of Jacob’s frakes, the people began to wonder, naturally, if there was any connection. If Jacob Ingledew, who was their much-respected steward, shepherd, chieftain, or at least official mayor, had no hope, and couldn’t care less whether it rained or not, then that might well be the reason it didn’t. Many of the Stay Morons who had been performing superstitious acts to make it rain, with no luck, or praying to God for rain, with less luck, began to wonder if they had not better and more profitably direct their attentions to Jacob Ingledew instead of to God. A delegation of the menfolk was appointed, and they appeared, hats in hands, beside Jacob’s bed.

Elijah Duckworth, their spokesman, spoke: “Squire Ingledew, sir, we’uns is powerful pervoked by the lack of rain, and seein as how yore affliction come smack dab at the same time, we’uns has got to wonderin if they might be tied up some way, one with th’other.”

Jacob stared at Elijah Duckworth for a while and studied the notion. “I hadn’t thought of that, Lige,” he declared. “I don’t do much thinkin, one way or the other, lately.”

“Do ye want it to rain, or not?” Elijah asked.

“Tell ye the truth, I don’t honestly keer,” Jacob replied.

“But you’re shore to starve of thirst along with the rest of us.”

“I reckon so,” Jacob acknowledged.

“Do ye want yore womarn and that fine young’un to die too?” Elijah demanded. (Sarah at this time was one of the few living creatures in Stay More still producing liquid, nursing the baby Benjamin, by dint of the efforts of her mother and her many brothers and sisters, who pooled a portion of their daily ration of water for her.)

“What kin I do?” Jacob lamented morosely and rhetorically. “What kin ary man do? What’s the use, nohow?”

“Mind if we set down?” Elijah Duckworth asked. Jacob gestured feebly toward the new mule-eared chairs that Noah had made, and the men drew them up beside Jacob’s bed and sat in them.

Then, one by one, each man told the funniest joke he could remember. Elijah told of an old man trying to trade mules and offering to another feller a strong, lively horse mule, who, however, while being examined, ran head-on into a big tree. “‘Why, that critter must be blind,’ says the feller the old man was trying to trade with. ‘Naw,’ says the old man, ‘he aint blind. He jist don’t give a damn.’”

All of the men laughed and slapped their thighs and elbowed each other, but Jacob did not stir. They eyed him carefully for any sign of perhaps a twitching at the corner of his mouth or even a slight sparkle in his eye, but there was none. Maybe he had taken it too personal, they decided. So Levi Whitter told one about his oldest boy, Tim, who everybody knew was not over-bright, how Levi was rolling a load of cow manure out to his field when Tim asked him what he was going to do with it, and Levi answered “I’m going to put it on my strawberries,” and Tim give a snort and says, “I put honey and cream on mine, and everybody says I’m a damn fool!”

Jacob didn’t seem to care much for that one either, so Zachariah Dinsmore thought to play upon Jacob’s disdain for religion by telling one about a preacher who stopped by to look over a farmer’s spread and says, “Well, you and the Lord have sure raised some fine corn.” Then when he seen the hogs, he says, “With God’s help, you have got a lot of good pork.” Finally they was looking at the garden next to the barn, and the preacher says, “You and God have sure growed some fine vegetables.” The farmer was losing his patience, and says, “Listen, Preacher, you ought to have seen this here farm when God was a-runnin it all by Hisself!”

But this too failed to provoke any glimmer of mirth in Jacob Ingledew. The men started over, and told a round of the second-funniest jokes they could remember, and then a round of the third-funniest, and so on, and by the time they got to their ninth-funniest jokes they weren’t even laughing themselves, so they gave up and went home.

The drought dragged on, the hot winds parched the flesh, the woods caught fire, and acres of virgin timber burned unchecked, leaving vast black scabs of burnt-out woodland on what had once been the beautiful countryside. Perhaps mercifully, the fires exterminated all of the woods-creatures who were dying of thirst. There would be no game to hunt during the coming famine.

A delegation of womenfolk came next to Jacob, and they stood around his bed, singing happy and pleasant inspirational songs in soprano-contralto harmony. They sang “Keep on the Sunny Side of Life” and “Home, Sweet Home” and “Burdens Are Blessings” and “Smile All the While” and “Bright Cheer Year by Year” and “Oh Happy Day” and “Juberous Times” and “Ah, Happy Heart, Light the Long Hours Ever So Gaily and Anon.” Yet, even though this last was a brilliant coloratura number, Jacob’s mood remained essentially unaltered. In fact, so steadfast did his mood remain that it infected the women, who began singing sad songs until Sarah shooed them off.

Then Sarah’s breasts began to dry, and baby Benjamin spent long hours wailing for milk that he could not get. Was Jacob at least stricken by his small son’s cries? If he was, it was hard to tell.

A delegation of young people came next to Jacob’s bedside, where they performed stunts, antics, headstands, slapsticks and pratfalls, roughhouse and gymnastics, roister and fling and shindig, merrymaking to melt the heart of all but the most hopeless case…which Jacob, unfortunately, was, and remained. The summer passed, and although in September the temperature dropped slightly below 100° for the first time in weeks, there was still no rain. Nobody but the women had anything to do. The women still had to cook, whatever corn and meal remained from the year before, whatever salt pork, whatever reptiles that had not perished. The women tried to find occupation for the men and boys by putting them to work with the carding and spinning of wool shorn from the dead sheep, and scutching and swingling flax to be spun into linen thread, and even with the weaving itself. The making of dry goods, with ironic symbolism, became a busy industry during the drought. Come winter, even if there was no food to eat, everybody would have plenty of clothes and could shed their buckskins. If everybody died, they could at least be buried in fine raiment.

The next delegation to Jacob’s bedside, the last delegation (for they alone remained to try), were the children. The children came, seventeen of them, and stood around his bed. They had no jokes to tell, nor songs to sing, nor stunts to do. They were indescribably dirty, because nobody had had a bath or a swim in three months and children naturally need washing more often anyway. They were thin too, not starving yet, but close to it. Among these children were the younger sons and daughters of Lizzie Swain, the same children who had worn such big smiles when Jacob first saw them, the same who had been so happy and excited to find a new home in a beautiful, bountiful wilderness. None of them were smiling now. They just stood around with their pinched soiled faces staring at Jacob in his bed. He became, finally, aware of them.

“What do you little squirts want?” he asked.

Nine-year-old Octavia Swain, their spokesperson, spoke. “Uncle Jake,” she said, “you aint got nothin to do, and neither has we’uns. So let’s us start us a school, and you be the teacher.”

“Gosh all hemlock,” Jacob groaned. “What would be the use?”

“So’s we’uns could git the smarts, like you,” she explained.

“What’s the use of bein smart?” he demanded. “Class, let me see a hand! Who’s the first to answer? What’s the use of bein smart?”

And without realizing it, Jacob had already founded the first Stay More elementary school. The pupils sat, two by two, on the floor around Jacob’s bed, and he even sat up in his bed for the first time in months. One little boy timidly raised his hand and Jacob called on him.

“If yo’re smart, you kin git rich easy,” offered the boy.

“That aint no answer,” Jacob responded. “What’s the use of bein rich? Come on, let’s see if there’s anybody knows the answer. Let me see another hand.”

None of the children raised their hands, until finally Octavia Swain lifted hers.

“You, Tavy,” Jacob said.

“Well, sir,” she offered, standing up, “if I was smart, I could use my brain to answer hard questions like, ‘What’s the use of bein smart?’” She sat down.

Jacob thought about that for a moment, and then he did something he hadn’t done in a coon’s age: he laughed. Well, it wasn’t exactly an all-out gutbusting hawr-de-hawr horselaugh, but at least it was a respectable straight-up-and-down chortle, and when he did, the students laughed too. “Tavy,” he said, admiringly, “I ’low as how that’s as good a answer as any. Okay. Now it’s your turn. Axe me a question.”

Octavia stood up again. “Sir, how kin we git water?”

Jacob frowned. “That’s a tough one,” he said. “Let me study on it a minute.” His first impulse was to tell them that the only way they could get water would be to leave, abandon Stay More, go back where they all came from, where there was always a plenty of water even if an overplenty of people. But he did not suggest this. Instead he meditated on the meaning of rainfall, the circulation of waters, and the certainty of recurrence. A man could be sure of only one thing: a drought is always ended by a rainfall. But where does all the water go during the drought? He knew that the waters ran to the rivers and the rivers ran to the sea but the sea didn’t run anywhere. If Swains Creek and the Buffalo River were empty, was the sea flooded? He remembered Fanshaw’s theory of gravity, and the notion that the earth is round. If all the creeks and rivers were empty on this side of the earth, and the seas weren’t flooded, then all the water must be over on the other side of the earth. But if that were so, and the earth really rolled around the sun as Fanshaw said it did, then it would wobble, and you’d feel it wobbling. No, the water must be someplace else. It couldn’t all be evaporated up into the sky because if it were then the sky would be full of clouds that would soon rain. So if the seas had their share and couldn’t hold any more, and the rivers were empty and the sky was clear, the only other place the water possibly could be was right down inside the earth.

“Dig,” he answered, at length. “Tell ’em to git their shovels and find the lowest meader in Stay More and git out in the middle of it and start diggin, straight down. Don’t let ’em stop ’till they find water. Class dismissed.”

School met every day after that, the children bringing their lunches in little cloth sacks their mothers made for them, lunches of corn dodger or pone, frugal but filling, and soon the children came to school clean, unspotted if not immaculate, because their fathers had dug fifty feet down in Levi Whitter’s Field of Clover and struck a vast subterranean pool of pure wonderful water. There was so much of it that when Jacob was told, he ordered it shared with their neighbors the Parthenonians, and for a time at least all rivalry between the two villages ceased as the Parthenonians came gratefully to fetch home water. For a time at least, a very brief time, Stay More was declared the county seat of Newton County, and Jacob’s imposing double-pen dogtrot served for a while as the schoolhouse and courthouse both until Sarah complained that she couldn’t fix dinner without brushing a swarm of lawyers off the table and flushing the bailiff out of the potato bin.

Jacob took no interest in the court, even though he was offered a high position there. He stayed in his own wing of the building, still bedfast, still hopeless, but determined to give an education to these children who had asked him for one. They loved school; he never had any trouble with them; he never had to get out of his bed to discipline an unruly pupil. If any one of the children, through restlessness or ennui or just pure cussedness, decided to try to disrupt the orderliness of the classroom, the other children would mob him, tie him, gag him, hoist him from the ceiling and leave him suspended there until he signaled, by frantic eyeball movements, that he was ready to behave…this whole proceeding so quick it did not interrupt the lesson that Jacob was giving.

Jacob never taught his pupils how to read. As we have seen, he was the only literate person in Stay More for a period of many years, and could not help but feel at times that his literacy was a curse upon him, or at least was something he should not infect his charges with. Deliberately then he excluded reading and writing from the curriculum, and the school was none the worse for the omission.

But what, then, did they study? Arithmetic, of course, and since all of the pupils always came barefoot to school, it was possible to do counting exercises up to and including twenty digits…or even forty, because, as in most other rural schools everywhere from time immemorial, there was a kind of buddy system, a pairing, a conjugation, a bifidity, all of them sitting and working two by two together. The curriculum also included practical matters such as how to control one’s facial muscles in order to assume a “deadpan” in times of stress, challenge, insult, reproach, etc. But in the main, the curriculum was devoted to discussion and debate on purely philosophical concepts in the arts and sciences. Why does the wind blow? What makes the rain? Why must chiggers, ticks and frakes bite? Why do we scratch? Why should we live? A whole day’s program could be built around any one of these questions. For example, a question such as “Why can’t a person tickle himself?” would lead not only into a discussion of the psychological factors involved, but also into the anatomy and physiology of tickling, a comparison of the armpit with the underchin, with excursions even into solipsistic examination: I exist because I think, but you exist because I cannot tickle myself without you. Word got back to the families of the intense intellectual stimulation of Jacob’s schoolroom, and many of the grown-ups petitioned Jacob to be allowed to attend, but this petition was not granted.

The only grown-up other than Jacob who ever came into his schoolroom was Eli Willard.

School was in session one day when the Connecticut itinerant reappeared after long absence, bringing Jacob’s window glass and other merchandise. Jacob seized him and presented him to the class. “Boys and girls, this specimen here is a Peddler. You don’t see them very often. They migrate, like the geese flying over. This one comes maybe once a year, like Christmas. But he aint dependable, like Christmas. He’s dependable like rainfall. A Peddler is a feller who has got things you aint got, and he’ll give ’em to ye, and then after you’re glad you got ’em he’ll tell ye how much cash money you owe him fer ’em. If you aint got cash money, he’ll give credit, and collect the next time he comes ’round, and meantime you work hard to git the money someway so’s ye kin pay him off. Look at his eyes. Notice how they are kinder shiftly-like. Now, class, the first question is: why is this feller’s eyes shiftly-like?”

Several pupils raised their hands. Jacob called on one, who offered the possibility that it was a congenital defect; another suggested that he might have a foreign object in his eye; another wondered if the case might be that he had enemies who were following him, and he was looking out for them. Jacob was required to call upon his star pupil, Octavia Swain, in hopes of the correct answer.

“He’s jist casing the joint,” Octavia observed, “to see if you got anything he might want to swap ye out of.”

“Kee-reck,” Jacob complimented her. “Now, these here Peddler fellers is also slick talkers. They say things like—”

“I beg your pardon…” Eli Willard interrupted.

“They say things like ‘I beg your pardon,’” Jacob went on, “and ‘Good evening, sir’ and ‘Good morning, madam,’ and ‘Permit me to serve you in any manner I can,’ and ‘This is a most unexpected pleasure,’ and ‘I beg your acceptance of my very hearty thanks for doing me the honor to inquire if I shall have the opportunity to appreciate most cordially your extremely welcome response to my gratitude for your kindness in obliging my hope that you anticipate my wishes for—’”

“Do you want your confounded window glass, or not?” Eli Willard demanded.

“Bring it in,” Jacob said to him, and while Eli Willard was outside unloading the glass from his saddlebags, Jacob told his students, “Now directly we’ll git a chance to watch how a real Peddler operates. I want you’uns to watch and listen real careful. He’ll bring in them thar winder panes, which is costin me ever cent I’ve got to my name, and then he’ll say somethin like, ‘It grieves me to have to report that the current quotation on pane glass is even more frightfully dear than I had previously imagined…’ and then he’ll soak me for all I kin raise between now and the next time he shows up, and then he’ll give me the glass, but it will turn out that the glass don’t fit my winders, it’s too big and has to be cut with God knows what, and he’ll git this big smile on his face and whip out this little gizmo from his pocket and hold it up and say, ‘Presto! A magic Acme Damascus Coal Carbon Disc Wheel Glass Cutter! In limited supply and for a short time only, ten dollars each.’ And dodgast me if I don’t pay. Here he comes. Watch careful, class.”

Eli Willard reentered, bearing a sheaf of random-sized glass sheets packed in excelsior. He cleared his throat and began, “It grieves me to have to report—”

All seventeen of Jacob’s pupils chimed in, “—THAT THE CURRENT QUOTATION ON PANE GLASS IS EVEN MORE FRIGHTFULLY DEAR THAN I HAD PREVIOUSLY IMAGINED.”

Eli Willard stared at the boys and girls, then he beseeched Jacob, “Call off your dogs,” and whispered into Jacob’s ear the new revised exorbitant figure, and told him, “Take it or leave it.”

“I aint got much choice,” Jacob observed. “But look. Them there glass pieces is too big to fit my panes.”

Eli Willard smiled and reached into his pocket and brought out a little gizmo which he held up. “Presto—” he began.

“OH LOOK!” chorused the class. “A MAGIC ACME DAMASCUS COAL CARBON DISC WHEEL GLASS CUTTER!”

“In limited—”

“—SUPPLY FOR A SHORT TIME ONLY, TEN CENTS EACH!”

“Ten dollars,” Eli Willard corrected them.

“TEN CENTS,” they reaffirmed.

“Dollars.”

“CENTS.”

“My compliments to your well-drilled academy,” Eli Willard said to Jacob. “They drive a hard bargain. Very well, it is yours for the trifling sum of ten cents. Now could I interest you or any of your scholars in my latest line of merchandise?”

It turned out that on this particular visit, Eli Willard was hawking silk umbrellas for ladies and gentlemen, parasols for children, and oil slicker raincoats for all, as well as eaves trough hangers and metal spigots for rainbarrels. When neither Jacob nor his pupils expressed any interest whatever in merchandise of this nature, Eli Willard broke down and confessed that he had not been able to sell a single item of this line anywhere in the Ozarks and was now on the edge of penury. Reputable meteorologists back East had assured him that the following spring and summer promised to be very wet, but so far he was totally without luck in pushing his raingear and appurtenances.

“Buck up, feller,” Jacob tried to comfort him, and then explained to his class, “By and large Peddlers don’t generally cry. This is jist an exception.” Then Jacob got out of bed and conducted Eli Willard across the breezeway into the other wing of his house, and told Sarah to try to scare up something to feed the poor feller. They fed him, and Jacob paid him for the glass and reminded him of how much money he still owed him, which brought some small cheer to Eli Willard as he rode on his luckless way.

It is idle to speculate whether the Stay Morons erred grievously in failing to patronize Eli Willard in his latest line of merchandise, for the rains that came the following spring and summer would have rendered umbrellas and rainwear practically useless. It was almost as if Nature, in clumsy headlong atonement for her stinginess with moisture the year before, overcompensated, went too far. Deluged. Inundated. It was terrible. If not for the proverbial forty days and nights, it rained steadily nearly every day for over a month, nobody measured or kept track but it must have been more inches than ever fell in any other month in the history of the Ozarks.

The rains began, ironically enough, on the second Tuesday of a month, right in the middle of a gala bergu that the Parthenonians threw to fete the Stay Morons for the hospitality of their waterwell.

A bergu is a kind of stew, consisting of five hundred squirrels properly cleaned and boiled to the consistency of soup in a twenty-gallon iron kettle. The Parthenonian’s bergu was almost ready, while the Stay Morons stood around with their napkins tucked into their collars and their knives and spoons gripped in their hands, when the first raindrops fell, and then the cloudburst began, and in their haste to get the bergu indoors the Parthenonians dropped the kettle and spilled the five hundred stewed squirrels into the dry bed of Shop Creek, which soon began to fill with water. The Stay Morons went home hungry, and sat and watched as, day by day, Swains Creek rose higher and higher, left its banks and overflowed into fields, and Banty Creek roared through its gorges, engorging them. If the Stay Morons were angry at the Parthenonians for spilling and spoiling the bergu, the Parthenonians became angry at the Stay Morons because, being downstream from Stay More, they already had more water in the Little Buffalo than they could handle but Stay More kept sending its creeks on down to Parthenon anyway. “You’re stranglin us!” John Bellah of Parthenon protested to Jacob Ingledew. “Send yore creeks somewheres else!” But there was nowhere else to send the creeks.

The Parthenonians talked about bringing a cease-and-desist action against the Stay Morons in the county court, but all the lawyers had fled to higher ground. Then the Little Buffalo River submerged the hollers along the base of Reynolds Mountain and shut Parthenon off from Stay More for the duration of the deluge, and no more was heard from them.

Until the flood became really impossible, the Stay Morons managed to keep their good sense of humor and even to make jokes about it. Their favorite jokes involved Noah Ingledew, because of his name. “Keep a watch on him,” they would say, “and when he gits out his saw and hammer, start packin yore duds.” Jokers would catch a pair of snakes, male and female of each, and crate them, and present them to Noah as “voyagers.” Noah couldn’t even indulge his favorite pastime, whittling, without somebody saying to him something like, “Is that there the foremast or the mizzenmast?” and they would ask him things like, “Would you know an olive branch if you saw one?” and nobody ever even passed by his cabin without giving it a good kick and saying “Think she’ll float?” Noah bore all of this badinage in silence, until he decided it had gone far enough, and then one day, when the rain was coming down hard and the fields were nearly all flooded, he stepped outside and yelled, “ANCHORS AWEIGH!” as loud as he could, which seems perhaps a cruel thing to do, like yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater, and as we shall see he will soon be punished for it, but it had its effect: all of the Stay Morons came running, carrying whatever small belongings they could gather, and crowded around his cabin. Inside it, he barred the door, but yelled, from time to time, “HEAVE HO!” or “HIT THE DECK!” or “HAUL THE YARDARM!” or “SAG TO LEEWARD!” until his brother Jacob banged on the door and threatened to keelhaul him if he didn’t avast this foolishness and cut off his jib.

But nobody bothered Noah after that. In fact, they wouldn’t have had a chance to, even if they wanted to, because that same night, in the middle of the night, all the beaver dams in all the hills around Stay More broke and washed out, and all the ponds spilled into the already flooded streams, and Noah woke to discover that his cabin, which was the lowest dwelling in Stay More, was not floating, but that its bilge was awash. He swam to the door, raised the bar, and a wave of cold water swept the door open and sucked Noah out of it and down the now broad river that had once been gentle Swains Creek. Swept along on the roiling crest, he clutched right and clutched left, for any limb to grab, but he was carried nearly halfway to Parthenon before his fingers finally seized a branch and stopped his course. He got both hands on the limb and hauled himself up. Judging from the feel of the bark, it was a sycamore tree. He sat on the limb and rested awhile, spitting out water and getting his wind back, but the water was still rising; he climbed to a higher limb, and then again to an even higher one, where he lodged himself in the fork between limb and trunk and spent the rest of the night. He began to worry about falling asleep and tumbling into the rising waters.

Groping around in the dark, he discovered that creeping blackjack vines snaked through the branches of the sycamore. He tore off several of these and used them in lieu of rope to lash himself firmly to the tree so that he would not fall out of it if he went to sleep. In fact, he tied himself so fast that he couldn’t have got loose if he wanted to. And yet he did not fall asleep; the roaring and bubbling of the cataract beneath him kept him awake until dawn. The sun’s early light revealed the whole valley under yellow-brown water. Considering the size of the big sycamore tree he was in, he judged that he must be some thirty feet (or two hats) above the ground, and yet the water was less than ten feet below him, which meant that the ground was covered with twenty feet of water. “AHOY!” he yelled several times, but there was no answer.

Meanwhile, Jacob’s dogtrot house, which was situated on higher ground than any of the other dwellings, became the ark of refuge for all of the other Stay Morons. They counted heads and discovered Noah missing, and began to grieve for him, and to be sorry that they had teased him, and even to be glad for the little trick he had played on them, because they had assembled their belongings when he had called “Anchors Aweigh!” so their belongings were all ready to go when the real flood came in the middle of the night. The religious ones among them prayed for Noah’s safety. Jacob had the opinion that maybe Noah was sitting on the ridgepole of his cabin, and in the morning they could construct a raft and float it down there and rescue him. As for the rest of the night, everybody was too excited to sleep, even if there were space in the two crowded pens to lie down, so they stayed awake talking and telling jokes in an effort to divert their minds from the rising water and the devastation of their fields and livestock and homes.

But then the members of the Stay More Debating Society proposed a new topic: Which is worse, a drought or a flood? Sides were drawn, and the oratory and rebuttals kept them busy until dawn. But Jacob, the referee, decreed that the match was a draw, even-Stephen, and the jug of whiskey that was to go to the winners was shared, all around. At dawn, the men began constructing a raft, which Jacob piloted, leaving his house and grounds for the first time since the frakes had got him, and beginning his return to normal life.

With Elijah Duckworth and Levi Whitter as first mate and boatswain, Jacob poled the raft down the broad yellow-brown river to the holler where his first cabin was; but it was no more. Probing with his pole for some sign of the roof or chimney, Jacob reluctantly concluded that the whole cabin must have washed away. “NOEY!” he called, but only the roar of the river answered him. He let the raft drift aimlessly downstream, continuing to call out for his brother, until Duckworth and Whitter suggested that they would like to inspect their homesteads too. These, it turned out, were still standing, although the livestock were drowned, except for a flock of chickens on the ridgepole of Duckworth’s place, and a pair of goats on Whitter’s ridgepole. The other buildings, too, of Stay More had survived, except for the rude trading post, whose roof could be seen floating in an eddy off Banty Creek. What was better, the men noted, the water level seemed to be dropping rapidly, and the rain had stopped and the sun was shining marvelously in a near-cloudless sky. Before the day was over, the people could return to their homes and drag out their wet bedding to hang in the sunshine, and begin scraping mud off their floors and furniture, and start the long hard reconstruction of their lives.

But even after the floodwaters receded, Noah was still up in that tree. Not by choice; he was helplessly entangled in the blackjack vines that he had used to bind himself to the trunk. He would husband his strength for a while and then tug and tear at the vines, but to no avail. Whenever he did not feel completely exhausted, he would draw breath into his lungs and yell “AHOY!” but if anyone heard him from afar they probably took it as an echo of their own voices calling “NOAH!” or “NOEY!”

This was true in Jacob’s case; since his own house did not require drying out and cleaning like the others, he could spend all of his time searching for his brother…or his brother’s body…but whenever he went far enough downstream to hear the distant, faint “ahoy” he took it as only an echo of his own voice calling “NOEY!”

In time, Noah became too weak to yell very loudly. It is a marvel how he survived, but he did. Some of the details of his survival technique are not pleasant to dwell upon, but a few of the less unsavory may be mentioned: the sunshine dried his cold wet buckskins (although also drying, and tightening, the black-jack vines that bound him to the tree); there was a small saucer-shaped depression in a tree limb near his head which contained rainwater, or spunkwater as they call it, and which he, by craning his neck, could dip his tongue into and slake his thirst from time to time; his hands were still free, and he could use these to: (1) tear off leaves from the tree to chew upon; (2) unfasten his trousers in order to relieve himself; (3) seize, and pluck the feathers off of, pigeons, whose uncooked flesh was better than nothing. In this manner he managed to subsist for nearly a week, until he was found. He slept well without fear of falling into the water—or, now that the flood was gone, the ground, thirty feet below him. He was bothered by backaches occasionally, and, for two days, by constipation, but these were minor annoyances. He was troubled by thoughts of what unknown desolation the flood may have wreaked upon Stay More. One day a dove brought him an olive branch, but he did not know what it was, and ate the dove.

It was Jacob who found him. Jacob, who had nothing better to do than to search, and kept at it. The people of Stay More had begun to feel very sorry for Jacob. Every day they would hear his voice, somewhere up or down the creek, calling “NOEY!” and they would shake their heads and cast sorrowful glances at one another, and remember all over again how cruel they had been to Noah before the flood. One of the more superstitiously religious women, perhaps out of guilt, tried to justify or at least explain the loss of Noah: “Hit’s God’s new sign. In the last flood all perished but Noah. In this flood all survived but Noah.”

In fact, Jacob himself had given up the search, and what brought him to the vicinity of Noah’s sycamore tree was not the search for Noah, now abandoned, but a desire to go down to Parthenon to see if his neighbors there had survived the flood. This is how he happened to pass beneath Noah’s tree, and would not have noticed Noah if the latter had not noticed him first. At first Noah thought that Jacob was just an apparition, but perhaps as a simple reflex action, he said again, one last time, “Ahoy!” and Jacob looked up and saw him high overhead.

“Heigh-ho!” Jacob exclaimed. “Whoopee! Yippity-yay! Boy oh boy! Goody gander! Hooraw! Hi-de-ho! Man alive! Hot diggety darn! Tolderollol!” Jacob jumped up and kicked his heels together twice before coming down. Then he became solicitous. “Air ye all right, Brother? You aint drownded? How’s yore heartbeat? Breathin normal? Kin ye see out of both eyes? Hear out of both ears? Bowel movements reg’lar? I’ll bet ye could stand a drop of good corn. Come on down.”

“I’m all hung up,” Noah pointed out. “This here black-jack vine has got a mighty holt on me.”

“I’ll git ye loose,” Jacob declared, and prepared to climb the tree, but saw that the first limb was too high for him to reach. “I’ll have to fetch a rope or ladder,” he told Noah. “Keep cool. I’ll be right back. Don’t git narvous. Steady down. Easy does it. Be a man. Stay with it. Chin up.” Jacob turned and ran for home. It was not a short distance, and he wasn’t used to running. Pretty soon he had to stop for breath, and he told himself there wasn’t any real hurry, because if Noah had been up in that tree for seven days and six nights already he could last for another hour or so.

Jacob returned home to find Sarah yelling that Baby Ben had opened the cow-pasture gate and let all the cows out, and was being chased by the bull. Jacob shooed the bull off of Ben, spanked the latter and sent him to the house, then rounded up his cows and got them back into the pasture. No sooner had he finished this when word came that the Duckworths, in trying to dry their damp belongings, had built up too large a fire in their fireplace, and the roof had caught from sparks and the house was burning. Jacob grabbed up all his empty buckets and pails and took off for the Duckworth house, and spent the next hour helping them put out the fire. Part of the roof was gone but the rest of the place was saved. Then one of the sons of Levi Whitter, who was helping fight the fire, came running to tell Levi that his wife Destiny had fallen into the well, and they didn’t have rope long enough to reach her. Jacob ran home to get more rope and then down to the Field of Clover to help get Destiny out of the well. By the time they got her out and dried her off and revived her with whiskey, everybody was plumb wore out and hungry, so Jacob told Sarah to serve up a big supper for the rescue crews, and since Jacob’s place had escaped the flood and their larder was still undamaged if not exactly brimming, Sarah prepared what might in such lean times be considered a sumptuous feast, and afterwards the menfolk sat around in Jacob’s breezeway picking their teeth and belching in deep satisfaction. Dark came on. One of the men remarked philosophically, “Wal, boys, I reckon we’ve seen the worst of it.” The other men nodded sagely, and got out their pocketknives and commenced whittling. The jug of corn was circulated freely among them, until, one by one, they got up and expressed their thanks for the fine supper and said they’d best be getting on down home. The last leaver clapped Jacob on the back and said, “Yeah, Jake, I reckon we’ve seen the worst of it. You’ve lost Noah, but—”

“Great Caesar’s ghost!” Jacob exclaimed. “I plumb fergot all about him! Where’s a ladder? Quick!” Jacob rounded up rope, a ladder, and an axe to cut the black-jack vines, and with a torch of rags soaked in bear’s oil to light his way, went as fast as he could back toward the sycamore where Noah, meanwhile, having convinced himself that it really was just an apparition that he had mistaken for his brother, had supped on raw pigeon, relieved himself, and gone to sleep. Once Jacob got up into the sycamore, he had trouble waking Noah, and the still-sleepy Noah muttered to the effect that he might as well stay here. But Jacob got him down and took him home, or rather, since Noah’s cabin was washed away, into his own house, where he was bedded in the loft of the kitchen.

We have essayed, in this chapter, to approach an exploration of duality, particularly as manifested in the bipartition or conjugation of Jacob Ingledew’s dogtrot house, which he in his simplistic perspective considered a manifestation of the bipartition or conjugation of the sexes, but which, although he was nearly correct in that limited interpretation, has hints of extension into far larger dualities: of drought and flood, of hot and cold, of day and night, of living and not living, of sowing and reaping, of breaking down and building up. We shape our buildings, and thereafter they shape us.

“You know somethin?” Noah remarked one day to his brother. “Hit weren’t nearly so bad as you’d think, up there in that tree. Naw. Why, it was kinder fun. Could ye lend me the borry of yore saw and hammer…?”

Chapter five

It was an anomaly, a freak of the Ozarks, as it were, but so was Noah Ingledew, as it were. And yet, who are we to take the measure of that man and pronounce him abnormal? There is in each of us the child who yearns to build treehouses, to return to primordial man’s arboreal aerie. We don’t know Noah, and never will; a man whose vocabulary of oaths was limited to a single illogical combination of feces and flame might seem to lack the imagination to design and build the original penthouse shown in our illustration; and yet not only did he build it, but also he made a couple of innovations in architecture, to wit: it is the first split level dwelling in the Ozarks (and bigeminal, by Jiminy!) and, perhaps owing in part to the difficulty of building up a chimney of stone to that height (two hats, or over thirty feet above the ground), it was the first dwelling in the Ozarks heated by a metal stove with tin flue—although where Noah obtained the metal and how he fashioned it into a stove, and what the stove actually looked like, I cannot say.

Noah’s house and its massive sycamore tree (not the same tree he was stuck in a few pages back) were located not far from the center of Stay More, on the banks of Swains Creek, around a sharp bend of the creek as it meanders its tortuous course through the valley. The house remained stubbornly clinging to the sycamore tree for years and years after Noah’s death—unoccupied even during times of housing shortage, not necessarily through reverence for Noah’s memory but rather out of superstition—until well into the twentieth century, when a mixed crowd of “modern” youths, to whom the name “Noah Ingledew” meant merely the faceless cofounder of Stay More, climbed up into it for the purpose of sexual sport (a purpose to which Noah himself had put the treehouse on only one fleeting occasion), and through a combination of the ardor of their sport and the weight of their numbers (there were four boys and four girls) caused the tree house, both pens of it, to detach itself from the tree and crash to the ground. All eight of the youths were injured, none seriously, but their biggest problem was explaining to their elders the nature of the accident—the truth got out, and some of the older elders claimed they could see the ghost of Noah Ingledew nightly surveying the ruins of the treehouse.

Initial public reaction to Noah’s construction of the treehouse was mixed; half of the Stay Morons declared that it confirmed their suspicion that Noah was “not over-bright,” while the other half countered by saying Well as I live and breathe! and What do you know about that! and If thet aint the beatinest thang ever I seed! These people coaxed out of Noah an invitation to climb up and view the interior(s); he could admit them only one at a time; the others queued up at the base of the tree, and even some of those who had deemed Noah “not over-bright” joined the line and waited their turns to climb up and look inside his treehouse. Word quickly spread, and soon people from Parthenon and even Jasper were joining the queue, which grew longer and longer. An itinerant evangelist, or wandering “saddlebag preacher,” happened by the end of the queue, which at that point was stretched out of sight of the treehouse around a bend in Swains Creek.

There was some profane cursing going on at the end of the queue, with imprecations of “Quit shovin!” and “Git in line!” and “Keep off my toes!” and the profanity, more than the queue itself, drew the preacher’s attention. “Brethern and sistern,” he addressed them, “how come you’uns take the Lord’s Name in vain?” The people just stared at him, until one of them said, “Light down often yore goddamn horse, and take yore place in line like everybody else.” This incensed the preacher, but he got down and tethered his horse to a tree, and took his place in line. The line moved slowly, and by and by the preacher tapped the shoulder of the man ahead of him and asked, “What air we a-waitin fer, anyhow?” The man, who happened to be Jacob Ingledew, looked at him. Jacob judged from the preacher’s clothing, and from his remark about taking the Lord’s name in vain, that he might be an ignorant preacher who had just stumbled by, and he asked him, “Air ye a preacher, Reverend?”

“Some has been known to say so,” the preacher replied.

“Wal, Reverend,” Jacob said, “you’re jist in time. It’s the Jedgment Day, and up yonder God has set Hisself a booth up in a tree, and we’re all a-waitin to be jedged.”

The preacher began to sweat, and while he continued to wait patiently in the queue, he gave himself over to silent prayer. After a while his place in line had moved around the bend of Swains Creek, and he came in view of the big sycamore tree with Noah’s treehouse thirty feet off the ground, and people climbing up the ladder to it. His knees trembled and he stumbled against Jacob, who said, “Quit shovin, Reverend. God has got all day.” Jacob meanwhile had quietly passed along to the others the news of the joke that was being played on the poor preacher, and the others gave him amused looks and tried hard not to laugh. One woman said to the preacher, “You aint skairt, air ye, Reverend? Don’t the Lord place the preachers on His right hand?” “Yeah,” the preacher replied, “but there was a few sins in my past that air still a-troublin me.”

By the time the preacher reached the head of the queue at the base of the big sycamore tree, he was lathered with sweat and trembling as if with the palsy. Jacob took his turn climbing up to view the interior(s) of his brother’s treehouse, but decided against telling Noah that his next visitor would be a dumb preacher expecting to meet God. When Jacob climbed down, he had to assist the preacher in climbing the rude rungs up the tree, and to give him a final shove to propel him through the door of the treehouse, where the preacher fell down on his knees before the astonished Noah, crying, “LORD, I REPENT EVER BIT OF IT!” Noah, who had been sitting in his chair welcoming each visitor with the same mild words: “Howdy. Make yerself pleasant” (that is, “Make yourself at home”), and had repeated this so many times by now that it was automatic, now said to the prostrate preacher, “Howdy. Make yerself pleasant.” The preacher looked around him and saw that there was an empty chair in the room, and managed to hoist himself into it, where he sat with clenched hands between his knees and gazed in awe at Noah. Noah at that time was about thirty-four years old, and he sure didn’t look like anybody’s conventional conception of God, but the preacher had never seen God before, and you couldn’t never tell. Maybe he was just Saint Peter, the preacher thought, but either way the preacher was in for a hot time of it, on account of his past sins. “Fergive us our trespasses,” he beseeched, “as we fergive them that trespass against us.”

Noah, for his part, was more than a little discomfited. Although he had said to each visitor, “Howdy. Make yerself pleasant,” this had been a mere formality, and not one of the people had taken him at his word and sat down in the other chair, until this feller came along. The feller seemed tetched in the head someway. He was dressed kind of funny, too, in a black suit and hat and necktie. And now he was asking to be forgiven for trespassing. “Aint no trespass,” Noah reassured him. “If all them other folks could come up here, reckon ye got as much right as any.”

God—or Saint Peter—talked kind of funny, the preacher thought. He talked just like he looked: just plain folks. Well, sure, the preacher realized, God would want to make Himself appear like one of His people. “You fergive me, then?” he timidly asked.

“Why, shore,” Noah declared. “Come again sometime.”

“You mean that’s all?” the preacher asked. “That’s all there is to it? I kin git to go to heaven, now?”

Noah was a little annoyed by this feller’s silliness, but he wanted to make light of it. “Shitfire,” he remarked, “you kin git to go to hell, fer all I care.”

The preacher fainted. When he came to, he was no longer in God’s treehouse, but flat out on a sandbar by a riverbank surrounded by a vast mob of howling fiends who were pointing their fingers at him and cackling fit to bust. He fainted again at the sight of these denizens of hell, and when he revived the second time there were not so many of them and they were not cackling but just chuckling, and a woman among them who felt sorry for him took the trouble to explain the trick that had been played upon him.

He grew exceedingly angry, as well as mortified. Strangely enough, the brunt of his anger became focused upon Noah, as if Noah had been responsible for the trick, and the preacher became determined to “git even, someway.” He began to preach against men living in trees. His gatherings were small, because most people were still laughing at him too much to be able to sit and listen to him seriously. But to whatever gathering he could assemble, in the name of God, in brush arbors constructed in Stay More, Parthenon and Jasper, he ranted against the unnaturalness of men living in trees.

By purest coincidence only, this was just two years after Darwin had published the findings of his voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle, and we may be sure that the preacher had never heard of Darwin, and in any case the conflict between religion and the theory of evolution was still years in the future, but the preacher accused Noah Ingledew of being a monkey. “What other reason would a creature have fer livin up in a tree?” he would demand of his audiences, and quote Scripture to prove that man was meant to walk on the ground and dwell on the ground, and a man living up in a tree was bound to bring the wrath of God upon all the people.

Little by little, the preacher converted a few of the people to his position against Noah, but he could persuade none of them to join him in his plan, which was to take an axe and chop down the sycamore, so in the end he had to go it all alone. But as soon as he began swinging the axe against the tree, in the light of the moon one night, Noah stepped to the edge of his dogtrot (or rather birdtrot, because no dogs ever got up there) and urinated down upon the preacher’s head. The preacher retreated, yelling, “I’ll git ye, yet!” and he went away and preached to the people for several more days and nights, without succeeding in persuading any of them to help him chop down the tree. He went again with his axe late at night, when he was sure Noah would be asleep, but at the first THOCK of the axe Noah woke up, and squatted backwards at the edge of his birdtrot. Enraged, the preacher hurled his axe at Noah. The axe missed Noah, but imbedded itself in the side of the treehouse, where Noah allowed it to remain as an ornament, and where it may be minutely detected in our illustration. His brother Jacob, visiting the next day, noticed it and asked Noah about it and then declared, “Wal, that preacher has done went too far.” So Jacob assembled the menfolk of Stay More and they took a split rail off a fence and carried it to the preacher and Jacob said, “Climb up. Or do you need a saddle?” and, to use the expression that would be employed whenever this ceremony was duplicated in the future, they “rode him out of town on a rail.” He protested, “If it weren’t fer the honor, I’d jist as soon walk.” He was never seen again. Nor, for that matter, were any other preachers, saddlebag or otherwise, seen in Stay More for years thereafter.

Except for one instance, to be scrutinized in moderate detail later, Noah lived the life of a celibate bachelor. But he was not a recluse. Over the years people visited him in his treehouse, not just out of curiosity, and he was especially popular with his nephews and nieces; it was said that each of Jacob Ingledew’s five children had “come of age” when he or she was old enough to climb unassisted up the ladder into Noah’s treehouse. Little Benjamin made the first ascent at the age of four, Isaac bested him by going up at three-and-a-half, Rachel was nearly five before she got up, and neither Lum nor Lucinda could do much better than Benjamin. Noah cultivated a knack for making candy apples (he had his own orchard, established with the help of a passing “furriner” named John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed), and these candy apples were the reward for the ascent to his treehouse of his nephews and nieces. But that was not the reason they climbed up to visit him; they climbed because they liked him.

We do not know exactly why. We know so pitifully little about the true workings of Noah’s mind and heart. The one clue we have, if such it be, was that Noah had a wide-eyed sense of wonder which was perhaps childlike or with which the children empathized. Everything either fascinated him or (like Indians) terrified him. He felt constantly confronted with the unknown. Sometimes he would sit idly in his treehouse, just listening to the beating of his heart or to the slow wafting of air in and out of his nostrils, and these things, circulation, respiration, would captivate him with wonder. He never took anything for granted. The sun might so easily choose not to come up some morning, and Noah would not be surprised, he would be just as fascinated as he was with the fact that the sun came up and went down every day.

Noah understood nothing; he only witnessed it. The intricate growth and tasseling and pollination of a stalk of corn was endlessly absorbing to him, but he did not comprehend the sexuality of plants any better than he did the sexuality of animals. Like any rural person, he was exposed daily to the varied spectacle of one animal affixing itself to another animal for the purpose of perpetuating its species and experiencing pleasure into the bargain. Noah watched these spectacles entranced. We cannot know to what extent he felt excluded from Nature’s grand saturnalia, nor are we going to learn how much or how little appetite he personally possessed, much less how, if ever, he gratified it, but we can discern this much: that Noah, knowing nothing and understanding less, knew at least the fundamental difference between man and the other animals in regard to the ritual of mating: that for all animals it required merely a casual exchange of glances or of scents, or perhaps a little posturing, preening and circling, whereas for man it is a protracted business of gallantry, courting and coaxing and caressing, proposing and promoting and preparing, that costs literally millions of words, of which animals are not capable. Nor was Noah.

Why, then, was his treehouse bigeminal? Merely in emulation of his brother’s dogtrot? If, as we have conclusively demonstrated, bigeminality is symbolic of the division of the sexes, was the second half of Noah’s house merely wishful thinking or subconscious yearning? A symbol of his absent “better half”? Perhaps. It could well be that he never gave up hope that some girl would again bring him a piece of cornbread which he could accept without clumsiness. But if any visitor to his treehouse remarked upon its bigeminality, Noah would simply point out that one half was where he slept and the other half was where he cooked and ate and sat, not necessarily in that order. It is only purest coincidence, of no significance whatever, that Noah’s first two years in his tree-house were the same two years that Thoreau lived at Walden, but like Thoreau, Noah had one chair for solitude, two for friendship, and three for society—although that society usually consisted only of his nephews and nieces.

In our pitiful ignorance of the man, we do not even know how he managed to entertain them, apart from presenting them with candy apples. Did he tell them stories, or did they just sit and munch their apples in silence? Little Benjamin, at least, must have been silent, for it is told about him that he was eight years old before uttering his first words, which were, “Watch it, Paw!” at the moment the latter was about to be charged from behind by a bull while in the pasture, whereupon Jacob, after jumping out of the bull’s path, exclaimed to Benjamin, “How come you never said nary a word afore now?” to which Benjamin replied, “I never had nothin ’portant to say.”

If this legend is true (and I have no reason to doubt it), then Benjamin must have sat silently munching his candy apple while Noah talked, but what did Noah say? He does not seem the storytelling type, even less the joke-cracking type. Did he verbalize his wonder at the mystery of the pollination of corn, or of the sun’s diurnal appearance? Quite possibly he did not talk at all, but it is disquieting to visualize the two of them sitting there silently, eerie in that aerie, for over four years, until Noah remarked, “Yore pap tells me ye kin talk right easy,” and Benjamin allowed, “Yep,” and Noah shook his head in commiseration and said, “A durn shame.” Thereafter, Benjamin felt obliged to say something, so he began, from the age of nine onwards, to ask Noah questions. It never mattered that Noah was unable to answer a single one of Benjamin’s questions, or at least to answer one accurately; Benjamin went on asking them, and Noah went on trying and failing to answer them. There were things Benjamin could not discuss with his parents. We know that he slept, until his twelfth year, in a “truckle,” or trundle bed, at the foot of his parents’ own bed, and that in that proximity he was suffered to eavesdrop upon their occasional (infrequent; once a month, on the average, usually the night of the Second Tuesday of the Month) exchanges of words that meant nothing to him. (Could it be that he had never talked because he associated words with nothingness, or, worse, dark unfathomable deeds connected with the words his father and mother spoke to each other in their bed at night?)

“How’s that?” Benjamin would hear one of them say to the other in the dark in their bed.

“Wal, I reckon,” he would hear the other reply. He could not tell their voices apart; his mother’s voice at such times was low and husky. Benjamin could not tell if these were his father or his mother:

“Yore nose is cold.”

“There.”

“Move down.”

“Yore knee is in my monkey.”

“Seems lak we caint git it through.”

“Here I go.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I said.”

“Now.”

“Where?”

“Holy hop-toads!”

“Done?”

“Um.”

His parents never talked like this during the daytime, and it puzzled Benjamin to the extent that, when he was nine years old and began to ask Noah questions, he would repeat what his parents had said in bed to Noah and ask Noah what it meant. Even assuming Noah actually knew the meaning of the various utterances, doubtless he would not have been able to discuss it with a mere lad of nine. So his “answers” were inaccurate. He would, for example, interpret “Seems lak we caint git it through” as meaning that Sarah was trying to help Jacob put his pants on and couldn’t get one leg into them. “Monkey,” he would define, is the base of the spine, where a monkey’s tail would go, so “Yore knee is in my monkey”…Benjamin seemed satisfied with these explanations, but by the time he was twelve years old and pubescent himself, and had witnessed sufficient numbers of animals wild and domestic pairing themselves together with a strange mixture both of apparent pain and intense pleasure, it dawned on him that the voices he heard in the night once a month on the average had some connection with this business of one animal having a hole which another animal would wish to probe with his dood, and although Benjamin would not have wished to suspect that his very own dear mother ever did that sort of thing with his father, at length he persuaded himself that it was inevitable, so that the time came when in the night he heard one of his parents saying to the other:

“Seems as ’ough we caint fasten our thangs together no more.”

Benjamin was moved to suggest, audibly, “Try a rope.”

Whereupon his father trundled the trundle bed out of the door, across the breezeway into the other wing, where Benjamin slept thereafter until he was fifteen, when he left home.

Noah has been accused, unjustly I think, of being partly responsible for Benjamin’s leaving home. Benjamin, like any resident of Stay More, male or female, had been obliged, from the age of seven onward, to work as hard as he possibly could, starting at sunrise and keeping on until sunset, the year around, Sundays not excepted. Since Benjamin was Jacob’s oldest son, and since at the age of fifteen he was full-grown, he was obliged to do a man’s work somewhat prematurely, with the predictable result that he came down with the frakes, which kept him in bed for most of his fifteenth year, and left him with, not so much a sense of futility or the vainness of labor, but rather with a conviction that if a man (or boy) had to work, there ought to be some kind of work somewhere that wasn’t so goshdarned hard. But when he asked his father about this, when he asked his father if there weren’t places in the world somewhere where people didn’t have to toil from sunup to sundown, his father merely gave him a lecture on how Stay More was the center of the universe, as it were, and of the necessity for a man (or boy) to do the most labor of which he was capable, to “do his damnedest,” as Jacob put it. So Benjamin went to Noah. “Uncle Noah,” he inquired, “I been wonderin: aint there anyplace out yonder in the world where a body’d not have to slave the livelong day jist to do what was ’spected of him?”

Noah could not tell him of cities, having never seen one himself, unless you count Memphis, which at the time Noah had briefly passed through it on his way to the Ozarks was scarcely more than a large town. Noah could tell him of certain shiftless persons who managed to eke out a subsistence with a modicum of effort, but Noah chose wisely not to tell him of these types. All Noah could tell him was what little he himself had heard rumored about a distant Promised Land way off in the west, which was called in the Spanish “Hot Oven,” or Californy, where gold had recently been discovered, and where, it was said, a man could spend a few hours searching for gold and then take the rest of the week off. Benjamin asked Noah to explain what “gold” was, and why it was so valuable, and Noah did the best he could.

“How come you never wanted to go there?” Benjamin asked him. Noah explained that it was a long ways off and besides you had to pass through a lot of Indian country to get there and Noah would be just as happy if he never saw another Indian in his life. But Benjamin, having never seen an Indian and having none of his uncle’s irrational fear of them, began to consider, increasingly and seriously, the idea of going to California to, if not make his fortune, avoid a life of hard labor. He kept his intention a secret from no one, but no one took him seriously. A person never left Stay More except to go to the county seat or to go to rest in the Stay More cemetery.

One summer Saturday afternoon, when all the Ingledews were enjoying one of their annual shopping or swapping trips into Jasper, Benjamin saw a little crowd assembled on a corner of the courthouse square, and, joining them, saw them clustered around a man whom we might refer to as Newton County’s first and only itinerant “travel agent.” This man, Charlie Fancher, was offering, for the rather lavish sum of $50, to “book passage” on a wagon train that was departing soon for Californy. He painted a more glowing picture of Californy than Uncle Noah had, extolling its excellent climate and its picturesque mountains and its view of the ocean. No one in Newton County had ever seen an ocean or could even imagine seeing that much water in one place. They listened in awe to the travel agent, but when he got around to mentioning the price, $50, they began, one by one, to drift away, until only Benjamin was left standing with the travel agent.

“Shitepoke town,” the agent grumbled, not necessarily to Benjamin. “I shoulda knowed better than git lost way back up here in these hills.” Then he noticed Benjamin and said, “Kid, you aint happenin to have fifty dollars layin around loose, have ye?”

“Nossir,” Benjamin declared. “Fifteen, twenty, is the most I could ever hope to lay hands on. But I’d be right glad to work it off. I could drive a wagon and help tend the teams.”

“Hmmm,” the agent said, and sized him up. “You any good with a rifle?”

“I kin knock a squirrel off a tree limb from ten hats off.”

“Hats?” the agent said.

Benjamin explained that unit of measure to the agent, who calculated it and then said, “Well, okay, kid. You’re on. Let’s go. Let’s git out of this shitepoke town.”

“Let me say goodbye to my folks,” Benjamin requested.

“Cut it short,” the agent said.

Benjamin’s folks were scattered around the village. He had to hunt them up individually, and explain to each of them what he was going to do, and deafen himself to their protests and tears. His younger brother Isaac begged to go with him, but Benjamin told him he would send for him in a couple of years when Isaac was older. His little sisters Rachel and Lucinda grabbed his arms and said they wouldn’t let him go, and he had to tear his shirt getting loose from them. His mother reminded him that his sixteenth birthday was coming up soon, and she had wanted to make it special for him. He said he was powerful sorry. His father Jacob said, “What if I was to say you caint go?” “You’d have to tie me up,” Benjamin averred. Jacob drew back his fist as if to smite Benjamin, but Benjamin did not cower nor flinch. Jacob dropped his arm. “Paw,” Benjamin protested, “I’ll come home soon as I git rich.” Jacob snorted and said, “There aint no place for a rich man in this country.” But when Jacob saw that he could not dissuade Benjamin, he gave Benjamin his horse and then shook hands with him and wished him luck.

Noah was the last of his folks that Benjamin could find, and when Benjamin told him what he was doing, Noah moaned and faulted himself for having mentioned Californy to him in the first place. Benjamin pointed out that even if Noah hadn’t mentioned it, he would still have heard about it from this man Charlie Fancher that he was going with. “Shitfire, let Fancher show hisself,” Noah declared. “I’ll shred him up with my bare hands.” But Benjamin clapped his uncle on the shoulder and said, “Goodbye, Uncle Noey. And thanks fer all them candy apples,” and then he mounted the horse his father had given him and went to rejoin Charlie Fancher. They rode north to the town of Harrison, and from there west to the town of Berryville, where the wagon train was assembled, and the people that Fancher had “recruited” from all over the Ozarks, over 140 of them, got into the wagons. Charlie Fancher started the wagon train moving west, Benjamin driving one of the lead wagons with eight people in it, westward out of Arkansas and across the national boundary line into Indian territory, where occasionally they saw parties or even camps of Indians, but had no conflicts with any of them, until, weeks later, in a valley called Mountain Meadows, in a place called Utah, they were suddenly surrounded by a large band of mounted Indians in war paint who began shooting at them, not with bows and arrows but with rifles.

Charlie Fancher ordered the wagons to form into a circle and everybody got behind the wagons and Benjamin and all the other men who could handle a rifle returned the fire of the Indians, killing many of them, and keeping them at bay for hours into the night, then all of the following day, and the one after that, three days in all, until a white flag appeared among the enemy, a flag of truce under which approached a group of men. These were not Indians but white men, whose leader introduced himself as John D. Lee and told Charlie Fancher that his wagon train must turn back and that he and his fellow white men would protect their retreat from the Indians as far back as Cedar City. But the man insisted that Fancher and all his party must go on foot and unarmed in order to allay the suspicions of the Indians, a condition which Fancher was reluctant to accept, yet a condition which had no alternative except to stay and fight, which few of the Fancher party wanted to do, among those few Benjamin, who smelled something suspicious in the whole business, but had no liberty to disobey his leader, Fancher. At length Fancher ordered his party to yield to the retreat order, to leave their wagons and weapons and begin the march toward Cedar City. They never reached it, because as soon as they were out of sight of their wagons the Indians came again, along with those treacherous white men, and slaughtered every last single one of them, sparing only the youngest children.

Benjamin, as he felt the searing bullet tearing life out of his breast, was sorry that he had ever left home.

There was no survivor to return the news to Arkansas, but sometime later Eli Willard from Connecticut, hawking musical instruments this time, happened to bring with him a copy of a New York newspaper, to leave with Lizzie Swain and her family, who had such a hankering for occasional news from the outside world, although they could not read, and nobody could read except Jacob, who didn’t mind reading to Lizzie and her brood the newspaper Eli Willard had dropped off (and his business was pretty good this time around; to the populace of Stay More he sold three banjos, a piano, a parlor organ, and other instruments, including a fiddle that Jacob bought for his son Isaac, and a Jew’s harp that Noah bought for himself). Lizzie and her children assembled in Jacob’s dogtrot and he began reading them the newspaper. He hadn’t read very far, however, before he came to a big headline, “MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE” with a sub-headline “140 Arkansans Slain in Utah Valley” and a sub-headline “Suspect Mormon Plot.” Jacob’s voice quavered as he read the text of the item, and his voice broke when he came to the name of Charles Fancher, because that was the name of the man Benjamin had told him he was going with. Jacob stopped altogether when he came to the words, “…not one single survivor, except a few children under the age of seven who have been discovered to be in the custody of the Mormons in Salt Lake City.” He read the rest of the item silently to himself, as Lizzie and her children stared at him. It had been charged that Mormons had incited and directed the attack, to keep the Fancher party out of Utah, although the wagon train was merely passing through Utah on its way to California. The investigation was continuing (but it would not be, we know, until exactly ten years later that John D. Lee, a fanatical Mormon settler, would be tried, found guilty, excommunicated by his Church, and put to death on the site of the massacre).

“What’s a Mormon?” Jacob said to Lizzie.

But Lizzie could only shake her head, and ask, “Is the news pretty bad?”

Jacob declared, “My boy Benjamin is dead.”

Everyone in Stay More assembled in the yard of Jacob’s dogtrot to offer their condolences to Jacob and Sarah, and to discuss the news of the atrocity. Jacob asked them if any of them knew what a Mormon was, but none of them had ever heard of such a creature. Jacob addressed the gathering briefly, in conclusion, expressing his sorrow at the loss of his eldest son, and more particularly his sorrow that his son had been misguided and deluded into leaving home. Jacob’s voice rose. “But jist let me say this. Fer all of you folks, and fer all of yore generations after ye, from this day forward, ferevermore, I, Jacob Ingledew, do hereby solemnly place a curse upon any person who leaves Stay More to go west. Amen.”

So it was that Isaac took his brother’s place as the oldest son, just as earlier he had taken his brother’s place sleeping at the foot of the parents’ bed, where he remained until manhood, wisely keeping his mouth shut when he heard his father or mother saying unfathomable words in the dark once a month. Isaac Ingledew was never much given to talk anyway, and it is said of him that he earned his nickname, “Coon,” because, like a raccoon, he never opened his mouth except to eat or to cuss.

To appreciate his nickname, we would have to have heard a raccoon cussing, and many of us have not. Isaac, as we shall see (or hear), was the greatest cusser of all the Ingledews. Unlike Benjamin, who allegedly never spoke until he was eight, Isaac said his first word at eleven months, the word being “shitfire,” which he must have learned from one of his relatives, but by the age of six he had broadened his stock of oaths to include all that were known (and some unknown) in Stay More. When his father bought for him a fiddle from Eli Willard, he quickly learned how to play it, and became eventually a champion fiddler who was capable, on occasion, of making the fiddle cuss. We are going to see and hear a lot of Isaac “Coon” Ingledew, for it was he who fought beside his father in the War.

The War. The first anybody (other than Jacob Ingledew, who kept it to himself) heard of war, heard that the whole nation had split itself right in two and was fighting itself, was when coffee, tea, pepper and such, which were always imported, became at first short in supply, and then impossible to obtain, at which point Eli Willard, who had been supplying these items, confessed that he could no longer obtain them. Then he held aloft the particular item that he was selling this year: a Sharps rifle.

“Stop!” Jacob Ingledew exclaimed. “Turn yore wagon and git the hell back whar ye came from!”

The people stared at Jacob, wondering why he was being suddenly hostile to his old friend from Connecticut.

“But you’re going to need these,” Eli Willard protested, still holding the Sharps rifle aloft. “No man should be without one. As a weapon it is vastly superior to your old breechloaders and flint-locks.”

“Fer shootin folks, you mean,” Jacob said. “Git back down the road, I say.”

But the other men of Stay More were curious to examine the new hardware (Eli Willard was also carrying a line of side-arms), and they protested to Jacob, as respectfully as they could, stopping short of telling him outright to shut up, but making it clear that they couldn’t understand why they shouldn’t buy a new shootin iron if they felt like it.

“Yeah,” Noah chimed in, “shitfire, let me see thet thang,” and he took the Sharps rifle from Eli Willard and began examining it appreciatively.

Jacob sighed. It was a small sigh, as sighs go, but we should try to understand it: two years previously, the people of Newton County had been asked to send a delegate to a special state convention at the state capital, Little Rock. The delegate, they were told, need not be a politician, lawyer or county official; there were only two qualifications: one, that he be wise, and two, that he be typical. The people thought of all the wise men of Newton County, but none of them were typical. Then they thought of all the typical men of Newton County, but the only wise one among those was Jacob Ingledew, so the people prevailed upon him to become their delegate. Jacob didn’t want anything to do with any city, or even a big town. But the people pointed out that the convention was only supposed to last a few days. Jacob protested that he didn’t have any idea of what he was supposed to do when he got there, and none of the people did either, but they told him that he was the only one of them who was both typical and wise.

Pride was not one of Jacob’s sins, but he couldn’t help feeling flattered when they told him that, so he accepted, and at the appointed time, mid-March, he saddled his horse, donned a fine nut-brown suit of clothes that Sarah had woven and sewn special for the occasion, and rode off down to Little Rock, a distance of some 150 miles. He reported for duty at the capitol, a large building made entirely out of white marble; it was the biggest building he’d ever seen. He was assigned a seat at a desk in a big room, the biggest room he’d ever been in, with dozens of other desks. The men sitting at the other desks looked well-fixed and most of them were smoking cigars. Jacob decided he would keep his mouth shut and his ears open and not let anybody put anything over on him. So when the well-fixedest-looking man of them all came into the room, and all the men stood up, Jacob stayed in his seat. Somebody announced, “His Excellency, Governor Rector!” and everybody but Jacob clapped their hands, and the well-fixedest-looking man stepped up on a platform in the front of the room and made a long speech. Jacob listened carefully.

The governor began by saying, “Gentlemen, it is assumed by most that this convention was called in response to the election, last month, of Jefferson Davis as provisional president of the Confederacy. President Lincoln, who received not one single Arkansas vote in the recent election, apparently likes to think of us as a safe Border State, along with Missouri. But, gentlemen, Arkansas is south of Missouri!” Jacob realized that, if nothing else, he was going to learn a few things about geography. The governor went on to say, “Many of you gentlemen are pioneers. I am a pioneer. Many of you gentlemen are also slaveowners. I am a slaveowner. The Confederacy is made up of pioneers and slaveowners. Shall we join them, or not? That is the issue of this convention!”

The governor’s speech lasted for over an hour, and Jacob had to admit that the man was the fanciest speaker he’d ever listened to. Then several other less-fancy speakers took turns giving one-hour speeches. They didn’t all sound the same. The ones that talked just like folks back up home were the ones who didn’t want to join the Confederacy. The ones that wanted to join the Confederacy, like the governor, talked real slow and lazy-like. At first Jacob didn’t have any idea what the Confederacy was, but gradually he got a picture of it, yet he still couldn’t understand that the only reason they were confederated was because they didn’t want to give up their slaves.

Jacob had seen slaves, back in Tennessee, where just about anybody with a lot of land that wasn’t too hilly would have some niggers around the place. And there was even one family he knew of, up in Newton County not too far from Stay More, who kept a couple of niggers. Jacob had met them. He had never given a thought to having a slave himself, because, the way he saw it, a man shouldn’t have more land than him and his sons could take care of. And he had never been able to understand why slaves all had to be dark-complected. He’d never heard of a light-complected slave. But apparently what he was supposed to do in this convention was listen to all these men talk about joining the Confederacy, and then vote on it. Hell, if some of those states wanted to confederate theirself, he didn’t personally have any objection, but if Arkansas joined up with them, that would mean all of the people of Arkansas supported slavery. Jacob didn’t actually support slavery, but on the other hand he didn’t see anything wrong with it except that all the slaves were dark-complected, and it stands to reason that there ought to be equality and have just as many light-complected slaves.

Then too, there were a lot of things being said in those speeches that Jacob didn’t understand at all. He didn’t know who “John Brown” was. He didn’t know what was meant by “emancipation” and “secession” and “state sovereignty” and “Fugitive Slave Law.” Finally somebody said, “Today’s session is adjourned. You gentlemen will please collect your remuneration at the door.” Jacob didn’t know what “remuneration” was either, but he got in line with the rest of the fellows, and when his turn came a man at the door gave him three dollars cash money, which was a pleasant surprise, and meant that he wouldn’t have to sleep with his horse at the livery stable but could get a bed in a house somewhere. But outside the capitol, there was a fancy-dressed black man hollering, “This way, gemmens and sirs!” and pointing down the street at a big building with a sign on it that said Anthony House. All the other delegates were heading that way, so Jacob tagged along, and when he got there he found that they weren’t even going to charge him anything for his room, and he got a big room all to himself, and they put out a fine big supper downstairs and afterward most of the delegates sat around smoking cigars, and somebody gave Jacob a handful of cigars, and they poured honest-to-God pure whiskey, and drank and swapped yarns and cussed Lincoln and stayed up nearly all night.

Jacob discovered that the Presiding Delegate, David Walker, was the son of the Judge Walker who had “pardoned” Jacob years before when he “stole” his heifer at Fayetteville. Jacob told this yarn to Walker, told it on himself, and they both had a good laugh over it. Then Jacob got chummy with a distinguished-looking old white-haired gent who was the delegate from Ashley County down in the southeast part of the state, and owned a twenty-room house and 340 slaves. Jacob confessed that he wasn’t nothing but a ignorant hillbilly, and he got the old gent to tell him the meaning of “secession,” “emancipation,” “state sovereignty,” “Fugitive Slave Law,” and who “John Brown” was. The old gent was right proud to harangue Jacob’s ear until nearly dawn, and Jacob went to bed thinking that the secessionists sure had a good case for their cause.

Back at the capitol the next day he listened to speeches all day long, and that night at the hotel he asked the old gent from Ashley County to explain anything that he hadn’t understood. This went on for three days, and on the third day the head delegate David Walker stood up and said, “Would the delegate from Newton County care to express his views?” Jacob wondered who the delegate from Newton County was, and after a minute of silence he noticed that several men were staring at him, and then he remembered who the delegate from Newton County was, and he coughed and bobbed his Adam’s apple, and mumbled, “I reckon not.” “Are we ready to vote, then?” asked the head delegate. “AYE!” they all hollered, and David Walker said, “Those in favor of secession, please stand.” Thirty-five men stood up. “Those opposed?” Jacob found himself rising up from his chair, and his chum the old gent from Ashley County was glowering ferociously at him. But thirty-eight other men were also standing. And outside, on the banks of the river, thirty-nine Federal guns were fired in salute of those who had kept Arkansas in the Union. Jacob collected his last remuneration and went back home to Stay More. When any of the Stay Morons asked him, “What was that all about?” he would shake his head and say, “Durn if I know.”

March passed, and then April, and when May came a messenger brought word to Jacob that the convention was reconvening at Little Rock. This time he told Sarah what the other men’s suits had looked like, and she stayed up all night making him one that was fairly like theirs, and the next day he put it on and rode off to Little Rock again. There, Governor Rector gave another fancy one-hour speech, talking about the bombing of a fort called Sumter, and Lincoln’s call for seventy-five thousand volunteers. “I have told him,” Rector said, “that no troops from Arkansas will be furnished. His demand is only adding insult to injury. The people of this commonwealth are freemen, not slaves, and will defend to the last extremity our honor, lives, and property against Northern mendacity and usurpation!” The hall and the gallery up above were packed with spectators, almost all of them hollering “SECEDE!” every time the governor paused for breath. Jacob’s former chum the old gent from Ashley County passed a note to him which said, “You have a nerve to show your head here. I doubt you will leave alive.”

After the governor’s speech, almost all the other speeches were strongly in favor of secession. The only one speaking against it was the head delegate, David Walker of Fayetteville, and his speech was apologetic and half-hearted. When he finished he said, “Well, are we ready to vote, or would the delegate from Newton County care to express his views this time?” Jacob coughed and bobbed his Adam’s apple, and then discovered that he was standing up. He tried to sit back down, but couldn’t. He stuffed his hands into his pockets, then took them out and stuffed them back in. Everybody was staring at him. Then he heard himself asking a question: “How many of you fellers has ever been to Newton County?” Only four or five of them raised their hands. “Wal, you know Newton County is so fur off in the mountains we have to wipe the owl shit off the clock to tell what time it is.” All of the delegates laughed, and Jacob heard some tittering up in the gallery; looking up, he noticed there were women there, and he got very red in the face and mumbled, “Sorry, ladies.” Then he went on. “But the folks up yonder have picked me out to represent ’em at this here convention. I reckon they picked me on account of I feel the same way about most things that they do. And here is what I feel. If you fellers that owns slaves wants to secede, that’s yore right and yore privilege, but I could count all the slaves of Newton County on one hand and still have maybe a couple of fingers still standin, and Newton County is stayin in the Union!” There was applause from a small few of the delegates and from somebody up in the gallery. Jacob tried to go on, but the words wouldn’t come, so he sat down.

The governor stood up and said, “May I comment upon that? If Newton County stays in the Union after Arkansas secedes, there will be worse than owl droppings on your clocks!” The delegates laughed, and the governor said, “Let us vote!”

The vote was taken, and there were only four men besides Jacob who stood up to vote “No,” and those four were also from the Ozarks. One of them, David Walker of Fayetteville, said, “If it is inevitable that Arkansas secede, let the wires carry the news to all the world that Arkansas stands as a unit! May we request that you gentlemen withdraw your votes, to make the result unanimous? I will withdraw mine. All right, we shall take the vote again. All in favor of secession, please stand.” Everybody stood up…except Jacob. “All opposed?” Jacob stood, and stood there alone, in awkward silence, while delegates around him cursed him, and a woman up in the gallery flung a bouquet of flowers which fell at Jacob’s feet, and he looked up and smiled at her, and she blew a kiss to him. The head delegate said to him, “For the last time, sir, will you not withdraw your vote, to make the result unanimous?” “I will not,” Jacob said, still standing, and the head delegate said, “Very well. The final tabulation is sixty-nine in favor, one opposed. The convention is adjourned until tomorrow, at which time we will begin the drafting of a new Constitution. May I suggest that the delegate from Newton County might honorably resign his seat before then.”

But Jacob did not resign his seat. When he left the capitol that afternoon, the woman who had thrown the bouquet of flowers at his feet was waiting for him. This woman, whose name we cannot know because she was a member of one of Little Rock’s finest families, a family still prominent socially and politically today, took Jacob home with her to her very fine house, which had no slaves, and fed him supper, and gave him to drink, and took him to bed. In the morning she fed him breakfast and sent him off to the capitol, where he claimed his seat and his right to vote for Newton County, and participated in the day’s session. He supported the convention in its work, and voted “No” only on those issues related to slavery and secession.

The convention remained in session until the close of the month, and each night Jacob went to the woman’s house for supper and bed and pleasure. Once she told him that she thought the real reason for the War was not slavery itself but the ungratified sexual appetites of the men involved. It was always men who made war. Jacob felt no desire to fight anybody, but he went on voting “No” at the convention; he voted “No” against the raising of an “Arkansas Army,” he voted “No” against a two-million-dollar “Arkansas War Loan,” he voted “No” against the confiscation of all public lands and money in the state, and finally he voted “No” against a motion to hang Jacob Ingledew for treason and sedition. The motion narrowly passed, however, and might have been carried out if they could have found him, not knowing that he was staying at the house of the woman. That night he lay with her a final time, then took his trousers off the bedpost and announced that he had better get on out of town. She hated to let him go, but knew it was for the best. “My darling backwoodsman,” she said in parting, kissing him and letting him ride off home to his backwoods, where he told nobody that Arkansas was out of the Union, nor that the Union was torn, nor that men were killing one another.

That was, as I say, two years before Eli Willard showed up again carrying a line of Sharps rifles and sidearms, and still nobody but Jacob knew that the country had been at war for two years, except for the scarcity of coffee, tea, black pepper and such, a shortage which, like all shortages, was difficult if not impossible to understand, and so no attempt was made to understand it, rather only to get around it, by using substitutes: parched okra seeds and chicory for coffee, ordinary sassafras for tea, and ground garden pepper for pepper.

Now Eli Willard was selling firearms right and left, in defiance of Jacob, who was fuming and on the verge of demolishing Eli Willard and his wagon. His own brother Noah had been the first to buy a Sharps rifle, and was already demonstrating how he could shoot the eye out of a squirrel from eight hats off.

Jacob couldn’t stand it. Finally he demanded of Eli Willard, “Don’t you know there’s a War on?”

“All the more reason,” Eli Willard retorted.

“War?” Noah said. “What war?”

“Yeah, what war?” the other men joined in.

Jacob wondered how to explain it, or even whether or not to try. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them; that had been his policy for two years. But how much longer could he protect his people from the strife of the nation?

“Why don’t you tell them?” he said to Eli Willard. “You’re a Yankee.”

“Are you a Rebel?” Eli Willard asked him.

“Hell no,” Jacob declared, “but I aint exactly a Yankee either.”

“Well, then,” Eli Willard began, “you see, gentlemen, it’s like this…”

That night Noah sat in his treehouse, fondling his new Sharps rifle and puzzling over what Eli Willard had said. From what we know of Noah, by now, we can assume that he was struck with wonder, no, that he was positively dumbfounded, at the idea of the whole country splitting in two, and of men killing each other. We would not be going too far to imagine that his gaze fell upon the opposite wing of his treehouse and his mind dwelt fleetingly on a different kind of bigeminality: of disjunction, separation, disunion.

Jacob too, in his dogtrot, was taking note of the bigeminality of his dwelling and thinking about how even countries can be divided. His trouble was that he was caught in the wrong wing of the House. And like Noah too, he was fondling a new Sharps rifle.

Chapter six

The prairie schooner, or conestoga wagon, which our example clearly is not, was the prototypical mobile home, although it was less a home than a vehicle to those who used it, and those were all heading west. Conestoga wagons may have been built in the Ozarks, but were not used there, save in passing. The Ozark’s first true mobile home, in the modern sense of that term, i.e., a vehicle more often immobile than mobile although capable of the latter, is illustrated to the left. We do not know who built it, nor whether it was actually built in the Ozarks proper, although that was where it traveled.

The driver was an immature youth called Moon Satterfield. He was silent and humorless; we know very little about him, except that he did not like Stay More, and was eager to move on. The wagon was parked at Stay More for less than two weeks.

The occupant of the other of the two interior chambers of this mobile home (yes, it too was apparently bigeminal) was a barely post-adolescent damsel named Viridiana Boatright, called “Virdie.”

We know much more about her than about Moon Satterfield, but still we do not know exactly who her employers were. When she first arrived in Stay More, it was “norated” around town that a cat wagon had fetched up just outside the village, but two peculiarities were soon noted about this cat wagon: (1) there was only one cat in it, and (2) she wasn’t charging anything. She dispensed her voluptuous favors to any and all willing and able Stay More men, and most of the hot-blooded boys of the town wanted in too, but she wasn’t taking anyone under eighteen, although some of the bolder lads lied about their age to get in. The reason Virdie wasn’t taking anyone under eighteen wasn’t known, but presently it was rumored that she was recruiting, or trying to recruit, soldiers to the cause of the Confederate States of America. When Jacob Ingledew heard this rumor, he went to her at once, waited a minute until her current prospect came out of the wagon, then barged in on her. “Now lookee here, young lady…” he began, wagging his finger in her face, but she threw her soft arms around his neck and buried her full lips beneath his earlobe. He tried to separate himself from her, but she gyrated her hips against his, pressing and stroking and fluttering, and darting her tongue into his ear, which caused his legs to fail him, so that she quite easily pulled him down to her bed.

When she was finished with him, she asked, “Now weren’t thet a heap o’ fun?” Jacob had to allow that it was, that by his three standards of measure, Fanshaw’s squaw, Sarah his wife, and the lady in Little Rock, Virdie Boatright was the best of them all. “Yeah, but I don’t aim to jine up with the Rebels, and I don’t want the menfolks of this here town to jine up neither, so you’d better jist get on back to wharever ye come from.” Virdie laughed. She had a right pleasant and womanly laugh, Jacob had to allow.

“Who,” she asked, “are you to be talkin so big?” “I’m the mayor of this here town,” Jacob informed her, “and what I say gener’ly goes.” “Air ye now?” Virdie exclaimed, her face lighting up right winsomely, Jacob had to allow. “The mayor! Wal, I declare! I never had me a mayor afore. In thet case, let’s do it again!” and before Jacob could protest she spread him out on her bed and employed her full stock of novel therapies to revive and temper his root, whereupon she clambered atop him. He’d never had a woman on top of him before and at first he resented her usurpation of his rightful position, as if, by taking over from him, she symbolized her intention of taking over the town from him. But as she churned and squirmed, rising and falling gently and then less gently and then much less gently, Jacob reflected that this wasn’t such a bad idea after all, that there was no earthly reason why a man and a woman shouldn’t take turns, trade places ever now and again, and equalize the work, if, as in the case, the woman enjoyed it as much as the man. Virdie cried out, a long low groan, but she didn’t stop, and Jacob realized that if she kept on going like that he might very well cry out himself. But just then a voice outside the wagon called “JAKE! AIR YE IN THAR?” and he knew it was Sarah. “ANSWER ME!” she requested, so he did. “Yeah, I’m in here, but I’ll be right out.” He was bucking beneath the weight of Virdie in an effort to finish. “WHAT’RE YE DOIN IN THAR, JAKE?” Sarah wanted to know. “I’m havin words—” he panted “—with this here Rebel foe.” He was nearly there, although he realized that the wagon must be visibly shaking. Virdie suddenly stuffed her dress into her mouth, but it was not enough to keep another one of her long groans from coming out. “JAKE!” Sarah hollered. “YOU AINT A-HURTING HER, AIR YE?” “Jist a little,” he answered, “to teach her a lesson.” And then he got there, rapturously, reflecting, Godalmighty, if I could git this reg’lar, maybe I’d jine the Rebels after all. Virdie climbed off him, smiling, and while he was buttoning his pants she kept her arms around him and her lips on his face and neck. He moved away from her to the door, opened it, and turned back to say to her, so Sarah could hear: “And jist remember what I said: no menfolks of Stay More air fightin on the Rebel side!” He meant it too.

But soon he heard a rumor that most of the men in Limestone Valley, to the south of Stay More, which had been Virdie Boatright’s previous “stand” (or “recline”) before coming to Stay More, had joined the Confederate army, or at least were preparing to fight as guerrillas on the Southern side. When he heard this, he issued an order of assembly for all men of Stay More, who dutifully gathered at the appointed time in the yard of Jacob’s dogtrot. Some of the men brought their wives and children, but he sent these away, declaring that the meeting was for men only. Then he addressed them, saying, “Nearly all you fellers bought new shootin arns from Eli Willard, and so did I. You heared what he said about all the rest o’ the country splittin off to fight. Now there’s that ’ere loose womarn come to town, Virdie Boatright, tryin to git you fellers to jine the Rebels. Most of you fellers have sampled what she’s givin away free—” Here he was interrupted by a general clamor of hand-clapping, hip-slapping, lip-smacking, finger-snapping, whistling, and grunts of pleasure.

“Maybe you’ve heared,” he went on, “that her perticular campaign, or whatever you’d call it, has converted Limestone Valley to the Rebels. That means we’ve got the enemy numberin up right over yon mountain—” He gestured to the south. “Unless—” and his eyes moved slowly from man to man “—unless some of you fellers don’t consider the Rebels enemies no more.” He paused, then demanded, “Wal? How many of you has she recruited?” To his astonishment, every man jack of them raised their hands, including, to his dismay and disbelief, his own brother Noah. “Noey?!” he exclaimed, turning to him. “Godalmighty, you wouldn’t be funnin me, would ye? Don’t give me that! Says who? Tell me another. Hooey! Can you tie that? Don’t make me laugh! I wasn’t born yestiddy. Git along with ye. My foot. What do you mean, anyhow? I won’t buy that. Like hell you did. Where do you get that stuff? You’re full of beans. Noey, fer cryin out loud, air ye shore ye heared my question right?”

“What does ‘recruit’ mean?” Noah asked.

“That means she has got ye to pledge or promise to jine the Rebel army.”

“Aw, naw!” Noah protested. “She never done that to me.”

“Me neither,” chorused several of the others.

“Wal, then,” Jacob asked, “how many of you has she made pledge or promise to jine the Rebel army?” Not a single man raised his hand. “Wal, what in thunderation did y’all think I meant by ‘recruit’?” He addressed this question to the men at large, but his eyes were on Noah, and Noah only blushed and hemmed and hawed. Jacob turned to Gilbert Swain. “What did you think I meant?”

“Aw, heck,” Gilbert said, “like you jist said, most of us fellers has sampled what she’s givin away free. Boy howdy, she’s done recruited me four times already!”

“But don’t she say nothin ’bout the Rebel army?” Jacob wanted to know.

“Not a word to me,” Gilbert claimed.

“Nor me neither,” chorused the others.

“Hmm,” uttered Jacob, shaking his head. “Wal, supposin she does. Any of you fellers want to fight fer the Rebels?”

They all shook their heads, declaring, “Not me!” and “Nor me neither!”

“Wal, then, the question is: do we want to remain neutral or do we want to fight for the Union if those boys down in Limestone Valley try to start somethin?” A lively and formal debate was organized, which lasted for the rest of the afternoon. At the end a vote was taken, and the majority favored neutrality. Jacob dismissed the gathering, but took Noah aside and said to him, “Noey, honest injun, no buts about it, shore-nuff, really-truly, straight-up-and-down, tell me the pint-blank truth: did thet thar Virdie Boatright actually git ye inter her wagon?”

“Naw,” said Noah.

“I didn’t think so. But you said she ‘recruited’ you…”

“I never got inter her wagon,” Noah declared, “but she clumb up inter my house.”

“Did she now?” Jacob said. “And then what?”

“Wal…” Noah hesitated. “She tole me her name, and I tole her mine.”

“Is that so?” Jacob said. “And then what?”

“She ast me did I live all alone by myself up in thet tree.”

“Do tell?” Jacob said. “And then what?”

“She ast me did I keer to git a little lovin.”

“Golly moses,” Jacob said. “And then what?”

“I tole her I never had none afore.”

“Indeedy,” Jacob said. “And then what?”

“Aw…” Noah protested. “You know.”

“Naw, I caint imagine,” Jacob declared. “Tell me.”

So Noah told him, in some hesitant detail, which we may omit here, how Virdie Boatright succeeded in an undertaking which any woman other than she could never have accomplished. It was not easy, and it was not quick. But Noah’s half-century of virginity was sacrificed, or, if that is not the word, expropriated, or, if that is not the word, it was dispossessed; in any case, for that one time in his life at least, he didn’t have it anymore.

“What’d it feel like?” Jacob wanted to know.

“Shitfire,” Noah said.

“Wal?” Jacob persisted. “What did it feel like?”

“That’s it,” Noah said. “Shitfire. It felt like shitfire.”

“Oh,” Jacob said.

In the days following, bits of war news trickled into Stay More: the Confederate Army of Arkansas had boldly invaded Missouri and defeated the Federal Army at Wilson’s Creek, but had retreated back into Arkansas, where, in the hills and valleys of Pea Ridge in northwestern Arkansas, it met again a regrouped and larger Federal Army, and, after several days of fierce fighting, was beaten, although it was rumored that the Rebels still considered themselves in full control of Arkansas. A few men from Limestone Valley claimed to have been involved on the Rebel side at Pea Ridge. So far as Jacob could tell, none of the men of Stay More were showing any signs of joining the Rebels. Not then, anyway. But they were clearly restless, particularly the younger men. Jacob felt pretty restless himself, and wondered if he was too old to enlist in the army.

The men of Stay More, including Jacob, began to exhibit open signs of their restlessness: they could be seen kicking fence posts, dogs, and even occasionally a small child. They each developed a nervous tic of smashing one fist into the palm of the other hand. They swore more often than usual. Whittling was no longer therapeutic enough, although they denuded the forests with their whittling. Soon the younger men began fighting one another with their hands and teeth. Jacob’s sense of community responsibility never deserted him, and he attempted to organize energetic games of Base Ball to channel the aggressive energy of the men, but, as referee of the games, he often found himself losing his temper and kicking somebody. If only, Jacob thought, if only he could talk to Sarah and get her to realize that if she would let him have her more often then he would be all right. Better yet, if he could persuade Sarah to talk to the womenfolk of Stay More and convince them to be more yielding to their husbands, then all of the men of Stay More would be all right. But Jacob had never been able to talk to Sarah about sex, and never would, until the last day of his life. He considered, briefly, talking instead to Lizzie Swain, who, now in her sixties, was virtually the matriarch of the village. Lizzie could easily call a meeting of all the womenfolk and perhaps persuade them to open their thighs more often for their husbands.

But Jacob realized that he could no more broach such a topic with Lizzie than he could have asked her, years earlier, to have her bull service his cow. So instead he organized a Public Works Project: all of the men were to take their sledgehammers and smash boulders into gravel, and pave the road from Stay More to Jasper with crushed gravel. This project kept them busy for a while, but when they had graveled the road as far as Jasper they discovered that Virdie Boatright’s wagon was parked off the courthouse square. When they tried to get in, she wouldn’t let them, not even Jacob. There were just too many men in Jasper, she told him. She couldn’t “accommodate” any more.

The Stay Morons cursed and smacked their fists into their palms and went on back to Stay More, where they resumed kicking posts and dogs with a vengeance, and Jacob exercised his brains to think of something else for them to do, but then he got angry with himself for wasting so much of his good thought on those worthless clods, and, being angry with himself, he kicked a post so hard he broke his foot. The foot was slow to heal, and he couldn’t walk at all, but it didn’t matter anyway, because he, along with every last man who had worked so hard crushing rocks for the road to Jasper, suddenly came down with the frakes. The entire able-bodied male population of Stay More (numbering in that year approximately forty-six) came down with the frakes!

Most of them were of the opinion that it was a venereal disease contracted from Virdie Boatright, and in some parts of the Ozarks even today there are people who stubbornly persist in believing that the frakes is a venereal disease, but Noah Ingledew, who had had the frakes before while still a virgin, knew that it was not, and tried to assure his fellows that it was not, but most of them went on believing (or rather lay bedridden convinced) that Virdie Boatright was responsible. It was commonly, even if atrociously, believed in the Ozarks that the only cure for a venereal disease is to transmit it to a person of the opposite sex, and the men of Stay More yearned desperately for this cure, which could not be had for two reasons: (1) no female was willing to lie with a man infested with the frakes, and (2) no male infested with the frakes was potent while he had the frakes.

One would think—one would like to think—that the extreme lassitude and sense of utter futility which come as the aftermath of the frakes would have disencumbered these men of their aggressions, their restless incipient martiality. But it did not happen that way. True, all of the men did feel weak and futile, but they still felt restless and belligerent. A dangerous combination. Since they were all bedridden and could no longer kick posts and dogs (although they could still smash one fist into the palm of the other hand, and frequently did) they were reduced to such acts as tearing their bedcovers and gnashing the bedposts. Naturally the womenfolk were dismayed and, although the frakes had cleared up and the men were potent again, the women all refused to sleep with the men, which made the men rend their bedcovers all the harder and chomp the bedposts all the fiercer, and this vicious cycle continued until there was not one whole quilt or blanket in Stay More, nor one bedpost still standing.

The day came at last when the men could leave their beds and move about, whereupon, although they still felt weak and futile, they resumed kicking posts and dogs and an occasional child, and fighting one another with hands and teeth. The women sulked and held many quilting bees at which they complained everlastingly to one another of what monsters their husbands were, and took a collective vow to have no further relations with their husbands until the men stopped being so mean, which made the men all the meaner, and so on.

Word came from Jasper, where Virdie Boatright had gone after leaving Stay More, that the sheriff himself, John Cecil, one of the most popular and revered men in the county, had joined the Confederates and had been appointed captain in charge of Newton County. When Jacob Ingledew heard that, he felt more weak and futile than ever; he also felt more restless and belligerent than ever, and he caught his wife Sarah and raped her. It was the only time in his life that he ever raped her, and for a little while afterwards he felt contrite, and begged her forgiveness, which she withheld, taking her younger children and moving back to her mother’s house, and telling her older son, Isaac, what his father had done to her. Isaac, who was a young man of twenty at this time and already well over six feet tall (and who, of course, along with all the other men of Stay More, had been infected with the frakes and was sharing their suffering and weakness and futility and restlessness and belligerence), put down the fiddle that he was sawing to pieces and sought out his father and said tersely, “Gon whup ye, Paw.” Jacob snorted with derisive laughter, and rolled up his sleeves and prepared to demolish his son. Undoubtedly Isaac, who was several inches taller and many pounds heavier than his father, not to mention being thirty-odd years younger and quicker, would easily have won the contest, might possibly even have killed his father, if they had not been interrupted by Gilbert Swain, bringing news from Jasper that one of the Stay Morons had joined Capt. John Cecil’s Rebels.

“NO!” Jacob thundered. “It caint be. Who was the dawg?”

“I hate to tell ye,” Gilbert demurred.

Jacob grabbed Gilbert Swain by his collar and hauled his face close to his own, and angrily hissed, “You’re jist a-funnin me, boy, and it aint so funny.”

“H-h-honest to God,” Gilbert protested. “I seen him myself.”

Jacob tightened his grip and twisted it, then hollered into Gilbert’s face, “THEN TELL ME WHO IT WAS!”

“Don’t hole it agin me, Uncle Jake, please,” Gilbert begged. “It weren’t my fault.”

“Son,” Jacob said as calmly as he could, “if you don’t tell me who it was, right now, I am fixin to bash yore haid down yore throat.”

“Let go of me, and I will,” Gilbert said.

Jacob released him. Gilbert stepped back, half-turning as if to flee, and nearly whispered. “It was Noey.”

“Huh?” Jacob said. “Noey who?”

“Uncle Noey,” Gilbert said. “Yore brother. Noah Ingledew.”

We will leave Jacob standing there overwhelmed in silent immobility for a very long moment while we meditate upon this situation. It should be remembered that Noah Ingledew was a bachelor, a frustrated virgin until Virdie Boatright came briefly into his life and his treehouse. It should be considered that her strategy or therapy or primum mobile or whatever we may call it, if it worked at all, would most likely work upon a man like Noah. We do not know how many hours he spent in his lonely treehouse reminiscing about the fleeting fulfillment that Virdie Boatright had given him, nor what intensified longings he was left with. We do know that he kicked as many posts and dogs as any other man in Stay More, and that he crushed more rock than most, and that his bout with the frakes was severe and compounded by having no woman to attend his bedfastness. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that while his weakness and futility were greater than any other man’s, so were his restlessness and belligerence. Admittedly it is difficult to think of mild, shy, bland Noah Ingledew as belligerent; even more difficult is it to picture him in uniform; even more difficult, well-nigh impossible, to imagine him in uniform shooting at his fellowmen. But war itself, I think, is more difficult to understand.

Jacob went at once to Noah’s treehouse and called up to it, “Oh, Brother dear. Come out.” But there was no answer, so he climbed up into the treehouse, and found both wings empty. He returned to his own house and saddled his horse and rode at a fast gallop into Jasper, where he inquired at the courthouse for John Cecil, but was told that Cecil was no longer sheriff since becoming captain of the county Confederates. He asked where Cecil could be found, and was told that the Rebels had no fixed headquarters but were roaming freely over the county, and, indeed, all over the Ozarks. Jacob asked where the Union headquarters were, and was told that the nearest fixed Federal headquarters were up in Springfield, Missouri.

Instead of returning to Stay More, Jacob rode his horse northward toward Springfield. The journey took him only two days, he was that impatient. In Springfield he found the Union headquarters and told the recruiting sergeant that he wanted to enlist forty-five men in the Union Army. The recruiting sergeant was experienced only with individuals, not with masses of men, so the sergeant passed him on up to a lieutenant, who sent him to a captain, who directed him to a major, who introduced him to a colonel, who delivered him to Gen. James A. Melton, commander of the Union Army at Springfield.

Gen. Melton was a meticulous diarist, whose writings survive. Here is an excerpt from the entry in his journal for that day:

I had the honor to receive to-day one Jacob Engledieu, who hails from the excessively bucolic wilds of Newton County down in Arkansas. Although Arkansas is one of the Confederated States, Newton County, I have it on the good report of my brother, Major John Melton, has thus far resisted being swallowed into the Confederacy, although there are scattered bands of Rebels operating there, and a somewhat crude and brazen recruitment effort conducted by a hired wanton named Verdy Boughtrite. Thus I welcomed the appearance of Mr. (now Capt.) Engledieu, all the more so because I had already known of his notoriety as the only delegate to the Arkansas Secession Convention who steadfastly refused to vote with the majority (although in the beginning of our interview, I refrained from telling Capt. Engledieu that I already knew he was a Union hero).

Capt. Engledieu is tall, lean but sinewy, and has eyes so blue that they seem always watering. He is a man of the soil and of the woods, and makes no pretensions to gentility or sophistication, in speech, manner or appearance. But I am persuaded he is keen of wit, a natural leader of men, and like all of his fellow Ozarkers most probably a deadly marksman. Every one of those boys can hit a squirrel in the eye at eighty yards. His first question to me was whether or not a man of his years (58) was too old to volunteer for the army. I asked if he had previous military experience, to which he replied in the negative. I said I did not think a man of his years would be happy as a mere foot soldier. To which he replied that he had a mighty fine horse, and, drawing me to the window, gestured at the animal tethered outside; indeed, a fine horse, but I said I did doubt as well whether he would be happy as a mere cavalry private. It was at this point he informed me that, if I would accept him, he would donate 45 additional men from his settlement of Staymore in the abovementioned County, each of whom also had a horse or riding animal (albeit not as mighty fine as his own, he intimated). In that case, I said, I could appoint him lieutenant in charge of a cavalry platoon. He let me know by his grin that this pleased him, and then he said he also intended to recruit as many men as possible from the communities of Parthenon, Jasper and elswhere in the County. In that case, I replied, I could appoint him captain in charge of a cavalry troop, which I did, on the spot, and then, because he was totally without any knowledge of military structure, I explained to him that a platoon is divided into four squads, and four platoons plus Headquarters section make up a troop or company, and so many companies make a battalion and so many battalions a regiment, and so forth. I also instructed him briefly on the conduct of war, and I believe he was a good listener.

Concluding the interview, I told him to muster his men, drill them at length, then, if they passed an inspection, which my brother, Major Melton, would perform, I would commence regular orders for their detachment. Capt. Engledieu saluted me, but, his salute being somewhat irregular, I demonstrated the proper form until he had mastered it, and took his leave, supplied with a requisition to the quartermaster for three dozen black cavalry hats and cavalry sabers. I was left optimistic that he will be useful in dealing with Rebel forays in that quarter.

Upon his return to Stay More, Jacob found that the men were still kicking dogs and posts, and slamming their fists into their palms, and for the first time this pleased him. He went into his house and hollered, “Sarey! Make me a uniform!” But Sarah was not there, and he remembered why she was not there. He went to Lizzie Swain’s cabin and asked to speak to Sarah, but Lizzie would not let him. A fine kettle of fish: him a captain in the United States Army cavalry, and no way to get a uniform. Well, there were forty or more other women in town who might make him a uniform. He ordered an assembly of all the men, distributed the cavalry hats and sabers among them, and offered a lieutenancy to the first man whose wife would make a uniform for Jacob. The womenfolk of Stay More got busy, weaving wool and dyeing it blue with indigo, and cutting and sewing it into Federal uniforms. Sarah was quick to hear of this activity, and, not to be outdone, she sneaked back to her spinning wheel and loom and worked through the night by oil light for two nights and two days, and won the contest to be the first to provide Captain Ingledew with a uniform.

Try as he might, Jacob couldn’t very well appoint himself lieutenant, since he was already captain, so in the end he gave the lieutenancy to his son Isaac, and appointed four sergeants and eight corporals, and then the forty-six of them donned their new uniforms and climbed on their horses or mules or whatever riding animals they had (one donkey, two oxen, a large ram, and a tame buck), and Jacob began to drill them.

They raised a lot of dust. Women and children covered their faces with wet handkerchiefs, and all the green leaves turned tan, and the porches and roofs had inch-deep coats of dust. A favorable wind came and lifted the dust into an enormous dust cloud that hovered high in the sky over Stay More, visible for miles and miles, and people came from all over Newton County to see what was causing the cloud of dust, and to marvel at Jacob Ingledew’s cavalry parading, mounting, dismounting, shooting at targets while in full gallop, and generally raising dust. When a sizable audience had gathered, Jacob halted his men in formation, and, sitting atop his own horse at their front, made a speech, inviting all of the menfolk in the audience to join his cavalry and all the womenfolk to make uniforms for the men. The women seemed just as eager as the men, if not more so, and within a few days Jacob’s cavalry had swollen to slightly over a hundred. The cloud of dust covered the whole county, and people from neighboring counties, Madison and Searcy and Boone, came to watch Jacob’s cavalry, and some of these men joined too.

When Major Melton, the general’s brother, arrived eventually to inspect Jacob’s troops and assess their fitness for war, he discovered that the first thing he would have to do would be to promote Jacob Ingledew from captain to major because of the size of his cavalry. Then Major Ingledew paraded his men for Major Melton. The latter’s only serious criticism was of some of the irregular animals that were being ridden; he did not feel that there was any place in the United States Cavalry for oxen, donkeys, rams or bucks, and he offered a shipment of horses from Springfield to replace them. Otherwise he was greatly impressed with both the horsemanship and marksmanship of Jacob’s men, and conveyed to him from General Melton his first orders: pursue and destroy Captain John Cecil and his Rebels.

This was what Jacob was waiting for, but as soon as Major Melton had gone, he addressed his men, saying, “Boys, now listen to me good. I don’t want there to be no killin. You know what I mean? Okay, let’s go!” and he led his men out in search of John Cecil’s Rebels. For three months Jacob’s cavalry scoured the wilderness of Newton County, hunting and finding Rebels. Such was their marksmanship that they could fire at a Rebel and knock his weapon from his hands, or chip a boulder near his head to nick him with, or break a tree branch to fall upon him, or splatter mud in his face, or shoot his horse out from under him, or in various other ways annoy, harrass and slightly injure him. Of course the Rebels were equally good marksmen themselves, and they too had no desire to kill but only to make noise and annoy, harrass and slightly injure the Federals.

For three months the opposing forces fought one another all over Newton County, and only one man was killed—when he foolishly tried to yank his opponent’s weapon out of his hands, causing it accidentally to discharge. Most all of these men, Rebel and Federal, were cousins or in-laws or even, like Jacob and Noah, brothers. One of Jacob’s sergeants, Sam Cecil, was the younger brother of the Rebel leader himself. Sam Cecil had no more interest in killing John Cecil than Jacob in killing Noah. But when General Melton in Springfield learned that three months of fighting had produced only one fatal casualty, he was sorely displeased, and he dispatched his brother Major Melton with a shipment of heavy artillery. Major Melton remained long enough with Jacob’s men to instruct them in the deployment of cannon, and left Jacob with the general’s stern command: shoot to kill.

It is difficult to fire a cannon without killing or grievously injuring the enemy, but Jacob’s artillerymen practiced diligently and in time learned how to fire a cannon so that it would cause a tree limb to fall upon the enemy or splatter mud all over him, or at least make him wet his pants in fear. The best thing about cannon was the noise they made, and it was the noise of war, rather than killing, which the men enjoyed, and which relieved them of their need to kick posts or dogs or slam their fists into their palms. There were many men and boys who wanted to join Jacob’s army but had no horse or suitable riding animal, so Jacob created a regiment of Infantry Volunteers and promoted his son Isaac to captain and placed him in charge of the infantry. With both cavalry and infantry, Jacob could engage the enemy in a pitched battle instead of mere raids and skirmishes, and the only Newton County battle that made the history books was the Battle of Whiteley’s Mill, near Boxley in the western part of the county.

Capt. Cecil’s spies learned of the planned attack in advance, and his Rebels were reinforced by other guerrilla bands from neighboring counties, so that the Confederate strength was nearly 250 men, the same number that Jacob commanded. Jacob’s artillerymen rolled their cannon up onto a ridge overlooking the valley in which the Confederates formed their battle line, and, at a signal from Jacob, began firing their cannon in such a way as to splatter the enemy with mud and make him wet his pants in fear. Then Jacob charged the line with his cavalry from one side while Isaac brought up his infantry regiment from the other. For more than two hours the battle raged, tooth and nail. Jacob’s artillerymen blasted every tree in the valley, and the battle would have gone on longer except that the valley became overcast with a dark veil of gunpowder and smoke that blotted out the sun, and the men were choking from the heavy odor of it. Jacob assessed the situation and the casualties: one of his men had his horse shot out from under him and broke his leg and was captured; one of Capt. Cecil’s guerrillas had been accidentally wounded while attempting to remove his wet pants. Jacob ordered a retreat; his ammunition was used up. Throughout the battle he had searched everywhere for his brother Noah but had been unable to spot him, until, as he and his men were retreating, he saw Noah standing amidst a crowd of Rebels who were shouting their notorious “Rebel Yell,” the bloodcurdling victory whoop that reminded Jacob somewhat of Fanshaw’s dawn chant. Noah was hollering it as loudly as the others, and Jacob felt taunted and humiliated in his retreat.

As was expected of him, he filed a report of the battle and sent it to headquarters, and received from General Melton this reply:

Major: you have the honor to report that the numbers of men now under your command qualifies you for promotion to colonel. But you ask me to believe that your regiments assaulted Rebel forces in a pitched battle of over two hours duration, all the while steadily employing the heavy field pieces recently shipped to you, without one single battle death on either side. Sir, that is not warfare. That is fraternization with the enemy! Fraternization with the enemy is a serious dereliction of duty, punishable by death. But I am loath to have you and your entire command hanged. Therefore I am demoting you to captain and placing my brother, Major Melton, in command of your regiments, with instructions to improve their abilities to spill blood, maim, and, I hope, deprive the enemy of life. You will answer to him, and, I hope, render him every assistance in dispersing and exterminating the Confederate forces in Newton County.

The bearer of this letter was Major Melton himself, who said to Jacob, “Just out of curiosity, could you tell me how five hundred men could mobilize and fight for over two hours without a single one getting killed?”

“It weren’t easy,” Jacob admitted.

“Don’t your men aim their weapons in the general direction of the enemy?” Major Melton wanted to know.

“Shore,” Jacob replied, “we shoot at ’em.”

“And the enemy, I assume, shoot at you. Might I ask how much ammunition was used at Whiteley’s Mill?”

Jacob calculated. “Wal, we started out with a thousand rounds of cannon shot and ten thousand of rifle shot, and when it was all over we were near ’bout shotless. That’s the main reason I had to retreat.”

“And not a single one of those rounds hit anybody?”

“Wal, there was this one Reb who was tryin to take off his bepissed pants, and he tripped, and…”

“I heard about that,” Major Melton interrupted, impatiently. “Sir, you make a joke of war.”

“War is a purty sorry joke,” Jacob opined.

“My fear is that you and your men, as well as the enemy, will eventually persuade yourselves that this conflict is all a lot of foolishness and simply call it off without consulting higher echelons.”

“That is your fear,” said Jacob, “and my hope.”

“Would you prefer,” Major Melton asked, “that your regiments be transferred to a theater of operations where the enemy are not cousins and brothers?”

“I’d a heap sight prefer that to this,” Jacob declared.

“All right. I’ll recommend it to Headquarters. But first,” Major Melton held up his index finger, “we have a job to do.”

Major Melton took over command of Jacob’s cavalry and infantry regiments, and Jacob was demoted to the captaincy of Company A of the cavalry regiment; this company was composed mainly of the original Stay More men. Major Melton assembled all of the troops and made a long speech to them, explaining the necessity of killing, and pointing out that a refusal to kill amounted to fraternization with the enemy, a dereliction of duty punishable by death. The men listened sullenly and suspiciously, and when Major Melton was finished with them they reverted to their old habits of smashing their fists into their palms, and, because the movements of the armies had knocked down every post and there were no posts to kick, and all the dogs in the county had learned to hide at the sight of man, they kicked each other. Jacob wondered if Virdie Boatright would ever come back. Even if she did, she might not have anything to do with a soldier dressed in blue. Or mightn’t she? Even if she might, she couldn’t take on a whole regiment of them. Or couldn’t she? Even if she could, the benefits would only be temporary. Or wouldn’t they? Even if they weren’t…but Jacob began to realize that what was done could not be undone. For a while he gave serious thought to secretly sending a messenger to Capt. Cecil warning him that Major Melton now intended to shoot to kill. But that would be treason. Or at least fraternization with the enemy. The best that Jacob could hope for would be that if Major Melton started killing he might be killed in return, and then for a while the Federals and Confederates of Newton County could go back to their old safe way of fighting. These thoughts were interrupted by the sight and sound of Major Melton riding up and down the lines brandishing his saber and yelling, “Forward, ho!”

For weeks they searched for Capt. Cecil without finding a single Rebel. Their rations were low, and Jacob didn’t like Major Melton’s idea of “expropriating” rations from the civilian population of the county. Even in peacetime these people had a hard enough task living from hand to mouth. Now they were being victimized not just by the Federal troops but also by roving bands of bushwhackers and jayhawkers.

The people always suffer the brunt of war, Jacob realized, and he yearned to slip away to Stay More to see if his own people were enduring their hardships. He suggested to Major Melton that Capt. Cecil’s troops might have left the county to join Confederate engagements elsewhere. But Major Melton was determined to continue the search, until every holler of Newton County had been explored. Finally Major Melton asked Jacob, “Which of your men would know Cecil best?” and Jacob replied that would be Sergeant Sam Cecil, his own brother. Sam Cecil was called up, and Major Melton asked him if he had any idea where his brother might be hiding. Sam did, but was reluctant to say. Major Melton lost his temper and busted Sam to private, then assembled all the troops and gave them a long lecture on the superiority of patriotism over brotherhood, concluding rhetorically, “If your brother pointed his weapon at you and prepared to fire, would you not return his fire?” Afterward Sam Cecil came to Jacob and said he had decided to go ahead and tell the major where he thought his brother was hiding, but, he asked Jacob, would it be all right to send a secret messenger to John Cecil, warning him that Major Melton now intended to shoot to kill? Jacob had to explain to Sam that that would be treason or at least fraternization with the enemy, and Jacob in clear conscience could not give Sam permission to do so. Even if he did warn his brother, Jacob pointed out, what good would it do? It would just mean that the Rebels would be waiting and ready to shoot to kill, themselves. Yeah, Sam admitted, if somebody’s gonna git kilt, it mout as well be them ’stead of us. So he went to Major Melton and told him that his brother was probably hiding in Limestone Valley, that hotbed of Confederate sympathizers. Major Melton restored Sam to sergeant, and promoted him to chief scout for the expedition to invade Limestone Valley.

The attack was carefully planned, and kept secret from all but the higher officers, but still, when the Federals swept down into Limestone Valley at the crack of dawn, they discovered that John Cecil had been tipped off and was already in full flight with his band of some 180 men. Major Melton ordered a cavalry charge in pursuit and rode at the head of it himself, and was the first to overtake and kill one of the fleeing Rebels. At the far end of Limestone Valley, Capt. John Cecil halted his flight and tried to rally his men to form a line of defense, but when the Rebels saw that the Federals were shooting to kill, saw dozens of their comrades falling, they ran for their lives, scattering all over the mountain. Still Major Melton pursued them, killing many and capturing several. Jacob dutifully followed, but still could not bring himself to kill anyone, although, when he was forced to, he would shoot to wound rather than kill, and he wounded several.

The pursuing cavalry were as scattered as their quarry, and Jacob found himself separated from the others, alone in a holler of Big Piney Creek, where he was chasing a Rebel soldier. The soldier was on foot, and Jacob soon caught up with him. The soldier turned to face him and to fire at him, and Jacob discovered that it was Noah.

Before Noah could fire, Jacob yelled, “Hey, Noey! It’s me, Jake!”

Noah did not lower his rifle. “Shit,” he said, “fire.”

Instinctively Jacob brought his rifle up and sighted, to protect himself, but he went on talking, “This is foolish, Noah. This is crazy.”

“Shit,” said Noah again, “fire,” and squeezed the trigger.

In the same instant Jacob returned his fire. These brothers, like all the Ozark mountain men, were sharpshooters. Each had aimed precisely at the other’s left eye, the sighting eye. Thus, their bullets met midway between them, collided and fused into a lump of lead, and dropped to the earth. They fired again, and again their bullets collided between them.

“SHIT!” Noah hollered. “FIRE!”

His voice startled Jacob’s horse, and the horse’s sudden movement spoiled his aim. Their third bullets, instead of colliding in midair, missed each other. Noah’s bullet hit Jacob in the shoulder. Jacob’s bullet hit Noah in the heart.

Major Melton granted a one-week furlough to Jacob so that he could return to Stay More for his brother’s funeral. Noah was buried near Murray Swain in the cemetery on Swains Creek. His tombstone, which even today somebody always covers with flowers on the anniversary of his death, says simply “Corp. Noah L. Ingledew, C.S.A.,” followed by his dates of birth and death, and the simple inscription, “Who was right.” Undoubtedly, unquestionably, a question mark was intended to follow these words, but perhaps the stonecutter did not know how to cut one, with the resultant ambiguity suggesting that Noah might have been right. Or perhaps he was; I am just guessing.

The people of Stay More felt such great sorrow for Jacob Ingledew that they could not possibly conceive of a single adequate word of condolence that might be spoken to him; consequently no one spoke to Jacob, and he mistakenly interpreted this as a sign of their scorn or derision, which he felt he justly deserved. Not even his own wife Sarah could think of any words adequate to express her sorrow and her pity for him. All she could do, by way of solace, was to make herself freely available in bed, but Jacob did not think that copulation was appropriate in a time of bereavement, so he rejected her offering. He spent much of his time standing by Swains Creek beneath the sycamore tree in which Noah’s treehouse was perched, staring up at it. Over and over again in his mind he relived the last moments of Noah’s life, trying to figure out what was going through Noah’s mind. He realized that Noah must have seen many of his fellow soldiers killed by Major Melton’s troops (altogether, in the skirmish of Limestone Valley, thirty Rebels were killed, forty-three were wounded, and eight taken prisoner) and that Noah suddenly knew that the game of war was no longer a game, that it was now: kill or be killed. But his own brother? Had Noah really believed that Jacob would kill him? But Jacob knew that he himself was thinking along similar lines during those tense moments.

In time he reached the point where he realized that thinking was useless, and took a vow to quit thinking. Then he seriously considered shooting himself, but realized that in order to do that he would have to think about it, and if he had taken a vow to quit thinking he couldn’t do it. So he didn’t. For the rest of his furlough he did not think a single thought, and thus when his furlough was over he did not know it. Major Melton had to come and get him. Major Melton was impressed that his speech on the superiority of patriotism over brotherhood had had such a dramatic effect in Jacob’s case, and he had reported favorably to his own brother, General Melton, at Headquarters, who had sent an order restoring Jacob to major and transferring him and his cavalry regiments to the command of General Frederick Steele, who was in eastern Arkansas preparing to march upon Little Rock. Jacob still wasn’t thinking, but one of his aides helped him put on his boots and saddle his horse and mount it, then the aide pointed the horse eastward and said “Giddyup” to it and kicked it, then summoned the rest of Jacob’s cavalry to follow, and they began their long ride to Helena on the Mississippi River, where they were welcomed by the Federal garrison there.

General Steele himself welcomed Jacob, and was especially delighted to have in his command the person who was reputed to be not only the lone Arkansas delegate opposing secession at the state convention but also the lone soldier who had killed his own brother. All the newspapers were in the habit of referring to the War as a great clash of “brother against brother” but so far General Steele had never heard of any man who had actually killed his brother, so he was ineffably glad to meet Jacob and have him and his cavalry join the assault on Little Rock, and on the spot he promoted Jacob to colonel. Jacob thought nothing of it, because he still wasn’t thinking. But soon, when he had shot and killed his first Rebel in eastern Arkansas, he was forced to think: he thought that this man he had killed was a southern slaveowner of the type who had fomented the rebellion and deserved to die. Thinking, Jacob realized that there was nothing wrong in killing this type of person. In fact, this type of person was indirectly responsible for starting a war which had resulted in the death of his brother Noah. It would be revenge to kill them, and Jacob took his revenge, killing them wherever he found them.

By the time General Steele’s army reached Little Rock, Jacob’s marksmanship and anger had become a legend among the troops of both sides, and it is said that the real reason the Confederates gave up the city without any resistance was their fear of being mowed down like dogs by Jacob Ingledew. In any case, General Steele occupied the capital without the loss of a single man, and breveted Jacob brigadier general, and sent him out to harass the retreating Rebels south and west of the city. Those he did not annihilate were driven so far away they never came back. Jacob returned to Little Rock and went to the house of the lady whom we have seen before, the lady who must remain nameless because her family name is a revered one in Little Rock society today. He took off his boots and hung his trousers on the bedpost, and afterwards he and lady lay together talking for a long time, about war, and death, and duty, and, yes, love or whatever it might be called.

That was in September. The following January, delegates from twenty-three loyalist counties converged on Little Rock and voted to choose General Jacob Ingledew as provisional governor. The following March, the people of the state elected him governor, and he was inaugurated in April. Arkansas was the first of the seceded states to secede from the Secession.

Chapter seven

No, our illustration this time around is not the governor’s mansion in Little Rock. That city, after all, is not in the Ozarks, missing by at least eight miles, so the dwelling that Jacob occupied there does not rightfully belong in a study of Ozark architecture. Our illustration is of the house that Jacob built in Stay More after he returned from his four-year term as governor; thus we will have to wait until the end of this chapter to learn why it is trigeminal rather than bigeminal, in fact one of the few trigeminal structures in the Ozarks, as well as the single most impressive building in Stay More. This was the third and last house that Jacob Ingledew built in Stay More, although being third is not the reason why it was trigeminal. We may guess or anticipate the real reason, but we would do better to wait until the end of the chapter.

Although this house was (and still is) the most impressive dwelling of Stay More, it is relatively modest by comparison with the house Jacob occupied in Little Rock, which we cannot illustrate here. Confederate Governor Flanagin abandoned it quickly in the face of the advance of General Steele’s army, taking only a few personal possessions and mementos and some of his wife’s best silver. So it was fully and rather opulently furnished when Jacob moved into it. As long as he was only provisional governor, he did not send for his wife Sarah and his children. He thought of writing them and telling them that he had been chosen provisional governor, but, remembering that no one in Stay More could read, he dispatched instead a messenger to carry the news orally. Not far outside of Little Rock this messenger was ambushed by bushwhackers and killed. The people of Stay More would have to wait for some time to learn of the high position attained by one of their own. Meanwhile the Little Rock lady (whom we cannot name) came clandestinely each night to the governor’s mansion to keep Jacob’s company in bed, and to share his burden as helmsman for the ship of state.

This burden, as long as he was only provisional governor, was not a heavy one. Most important matters, both military and civil, remained in the care of the military governor, General Steele, and Jacob did not seem to mind that all of the messages from President Lincoln during this period were addressed not to him but to Steele. The lady explained to Jacob what a “figurehead” is, as distinct from a “puppet,” which he was not. He took more interest in supervising the drafting of a new state constitution. He made few speeches, and these were carefully corrected and rehearsed in advance with the help of his ladyfriend. He avoided coarse language, especially in the presence of women. A reporter from the New York Tribune interviewed him at that time and wrote a long piece which was both condescending toward his back-country appearance and deportment and warmly approving of his platform, expressed, as he was quoted, “to git this here state back into the Union and keep’er thar till hell freezes over.”

For a long time, his ladyfriend made a timid, half-hearted attempt to refine his diction, and at least succeeded to the point where his speech no longer betrayed his true intelligence, but still there were many loyal Unionists in the state who were embarrassed by his image, and indeed, the reason that Jacob’s name appears so sporadically in histories of Arkansas is that historians are still somewhat discomfited, if not embarrassed, by his image. There was not, however, any man willing to run against him in the election. The election offered only a pair of alternatives: ratification of a new constitution, or not; and Jacob Ingledew for governor, or not. In the actual election, Jacob polled more votes than the constitution did, a circumstance that was not pleasing to President Lincoln, although Lincoln finally wrote directly to him to congratulate him, a brief letter that was always afterwards one of Jacob’s few prized possessions: “Governor Engledew: I am much gratified that you got out so large a vote, so nearly all the right way, at the late election; and not less so that your state government, including the legislature, is organized and in good working order. Whatever I can I will do to protect you; meanwhile you must do your utmost to protect yourselves. A. Lincoln.”

Lincoln’s cautionary conclusion was warranted; many parts of Arkansas, especially the southwest, were still under Confederate control, and bands of bushwhackers roamed the whole state, right up to the gates of Little Rock; no citizen or soldier of that city dared to go more than a mile outside of it without heavy protection. When he was elected, Jacob sent another messenger to Stay More to ask his family to come to Little Rock in time for the inauguration, but this messenger too was ambushed and killed by bushwhackers before reaching his destination. The nervousness that Jacob exhibited during his inaugural address was not so much from speaking to a large crowd of people as from his anxiety about his family. Except for that nervousness, his address was forthright if not eloquent, solemn if not ponderous, and dignified if not majestic. The Arkansas Gazette commented: “For a man so little versed in the arts of the public forum, Gov. Ingledew acquitted himself handily. His personal views against the institution of slavery were made unassailable. He inspired confidence in a rich future for Arkansas.” Jacob’s ladyfriend, of course, had written the address, although the sentiments expressed in it were his own.

We may with good reason wonder: why, if Jacob achieved office by popular election, did nobody in Newton County know about it? Didn’t they have the election in Newton County? Probably not, because the departure of Jacob’s cavalry had brought Cecil’s Rebels out of hiding, and Newton County was temporarily under Confederate control at the time of the election. But surely, we might ask, didn’t a single one of Jacob’s cavalrymen get furloughed or discharged after Little Rock fell to them, and return home to Newton County to spread the news of Jacob’s success? Apparently not, for General Steele intended to keep as large a force as possible on duty in Little Rock. Still, we might reasonably argue, Newton County wasn’t so isolated that no news of Jacob’s governorship would somehow trickle into it. But obviously it must have been. Because it was nearly a month after Jacob’s inauguration before Eli Willard brought the news. He had read about it in a Connecticut newspaper. Now, selling a line of elixirs, balms and unguents, which few people had the money to pay for, he came again to Stay More and was somewhat surprised to find Sarah Ingledew and her younger children still living, or trying to, at the old dogtrot.

“My congratulations, madam,” he said to her. “Or should I offer my sympathies? Have you and your husband come to a parting of the ways?”

“Naw, he’s jist off some’ers a-fightin that infernal War,” she informed Eli Willard.

Eli Willard wondered if there might be some other Jacob Ingledew, but it was not a common name, and the newspaper item had clearly implied that the new governor was from an isolated settlement in the Ozarks.

“You aren’t divor—” he started to ask her, but changed this to: “You are still married?”

“Why, shore,” she replied.

Suddenly Eli Willard understood, and was moved. If Jacob Ingledew despite his humble origins had attained the governorship of the state, he would not want to display his ragtag family in the marble halls of the capitol, so he had deliberately refrained from sending for them.

“I feel for you,” Eli Willard said to Sarah.

She drew back. “You’d jist better not, Eli Willard.”

“I mean—” he said, “that I understand how you must feel, and I am touched.”

He sure was talking as if he was touched, Sarah decided. How must she feel? she wondered.

“But looking at the more positive side of it,” Eli Willard remarked, “I suppose it is more comfortable to abide in the tranquillity of these sylvan mountains than cope with the myriad concerns and distractions of the urban hurly-burly.”

Sarah decided that he must be building up some new sales pitch, and she said, “Whatever yo’re sellin this time, Mister Willard, I’m sorry to tell ye, but we’uns couldn’t find a red cent around this place if it was ransom fer our life.”

“You know your credit is always good with me,” he reminded her. “But doesn’t he even send you any of his salary?”

“Who?”

“The governor.”

Sarah was convinced now that Eli Willard didn’t have all his buttons. Probably it was the result of being out in the hot broiling sun all day long. The poor feller was sunstruck. She invited him into the shade of the breezeway while she fetched him a dipper of cold water. If that didn’t help, she would have to make him a tea of jimsonweed leaves.

Eli Willard, while he drank the water, began to wonder if Jacob Ingledew had chosen not only to keep his family at home but also to withhold from them the news of his gubernatoriality. If that were true, then Jacob Ingledew was a heartless man, and Eli Willard had never thought of him as being heartless.

He asked her directly, “You don’t know where your husband is?”

“Last I heared tell,” she replied, “he was headin fer the Missippi River for to fight fer Gen’l Steele.”

“Ah hah,” Eli Willard was moved to murmur, marveling at the difficulty of communications in Arkansas. “Madam, I have the honor to be the first informant to report to you the wonderful news that your estimable husband has been elected to the governorship of the State of Arkansas.”

Sarah went into her kitchen and began decocting an infusion of jimsonweed leaves. If that didn’t help, she might have to try a purgative of slippery-elm bark.

The narcotic in jimsonweed is similar to that of belladonna, or deadly nightshade, but the dose in Eli Willard’s drink was only enough to make him slightly intoxicated. After selling Sarah a few of his balms and unguents on credit, and failing further in his attempts to convince her that her husband was governor, he went on his way, visiting the other dwellings of Stay More, each in its turn, and the news was widely norated around the village that Eli Willard, whom everyone had always assumed to be a teetotaler, had turned up drunk, and in his drunkenness was telling everybody that Jacob Ingledew was governor of Arkansas. Sarah was boiling her slippery-elm bark as fast as she could, but still it would take several hours before it would be ready to use, and by that time Eli Willard’s case of sunstroke might have reached final coma.

Captain Isaac Ingledew of the Federal Infantry, pausing in Stay More to rest from his constant pursuit of John Cecil, learned of Eli Willard’s latest visit. He was a great admirer of Eli Willard, having spent his “growing-up” years looking forward to each reappearance of the peddler, who had usually given him a piece of candy. He knew that Eli Willard never drank. Now he did not want to believe that a nice man like Eli Willard was drunk and saying crazy things about his father, so he sought out Eli Willard himself. Being, as we have observed, the most taciturn of all the Ingledews (whence came his nickname “Coon”) as well as the most profane, Isaac said to him simply, “Shit. Governor?”

“Yes indeed,” Eli Willard replied. “And congratulations to you too, for being captain. No doubt your father will promote you to major, or even colonel.”

“Where’d ye git that?” Isaac wanted to know.

“Which?”

“That Paw is governor.”

“I read it in a newspaper,” Eli Willard declared.

“Lak hell.”

“I did, believe me. I considered that it might have been a mistake, but how many men in small Ozark villages would be named Jacob Ingledew?”

“Nary a goddamn one.”

“Then your father is governor, no doubt about it, and again my congratulations to you. Now, may I interest you in this bottle of new, sure-fire, all-purpose…”

After much thought, Isaac decided that Eli Willard might conceivably be right, even if he were obviously drunk for the first time. Isaac wanted to believe him. Still, he did not protest when his mother and a group of Stay Morons grabbed Eli Willard and held him down and made him take a large dose of slippery-elm bark. This powerful purgative gave the poor peddler such a bad case of the canters (more severe than the trots but less severe than the gallops) that he was unable to leave Stay More for three days. Sarah gave him a bed, from which, however, he frequently had to canter. On the third day, after the canter had slowed to a trot, and the trot had slowed to a walk, Sarah said to him, “Now then, what did ye say the name of the governor is?”

“John Johnson,” Eli Willard replied, and Sarah let him go on his way.

Isaac Ingledew realized that the only way to find out if his father were actually governor would be to go and find his father and make him deny it or admit it. Isaac—or any man—should have been reluctant to go off alone through bushwhacker country, but he wasn’t afraid. He decided, however, to change from his uniform into civvies, and not to carry a rifle but only a pistol concealed under his belt. This showed his wisdom, for during the two weeks that it took him to walk to Little Rock (all of the riding animals had been taken by Jacob’s cavalry), he was ambushed by bushwhackers on seventeen separate occasions.

Isaac, we may have noticed, was a big man, one might almost say a giant of a man, six feet seven inches in height, 230 pounds in weight, shoes size fourteen. Dressed as a farmer, he should have been able to talk his way out of several of the ambushes, but, being taciturn, he was unable to talk his way out of any of them. He fought his way bare-handed out of nine and was required to use his pistol in the remaining eight ambushes, in which he killed thirteen bushwhackers and wounded the same number. At the onset of each ambush, he uttered a single obscene expletive, employing a different one each time, making a total of seventeen distinct obscene expletives. He was somewhat fatigued by the time he reached Little Rock late one afternoon, but he began at once to search for the governor’s mansion.

Being taciturn he didn’t want to ask anyone for directions, but Little Rock was not a very large town in those days, and he knew that if he just kept looking he would find the governor’s house. He did, too, somehow, but when he found it he realized that he would feel like a goddamn fool if it turned out that the occupant of the mansion was not his father. He couldn’t very well just go up and holler the goddamn house and disappear if the man wasn’t his father. Back home you didn’t need to holler a house because everybody had dogs and the dogs hollered the house for you. But here in the city, the governor, whoever he was, didn’t seem to have any goddamn dogs around the place, and Isaac would have to holler the house, and if the man wasn’t his father he would be embarrassed as hell or maybe even put in the goddamn jail. No, he couldn’t do it. He went away and wandered around through the town, thinking. He couldn’t just stop somebody on the street and ask them who the governor was. If he could read, he could have bought any one of Little Rock’s three daily newspapers and have found some mention of the governor in it, but he couldn’t read.

After much thought, he decided that the best thing would be to wait until dark, and sneak around the governor’s house peeking into windows, and if he saw that the man really was his father then he wouldn’t be reluctant to holler the house. So he did that: he waited until it was full dark and went back to the governor’s house, which had a lot of lights burning inside. But there was a soldier on the porch standing guard by the door. Isaac sneaked around to the back, but there was another soldier back there guarding the rear door. At least the two sides of the house weren’t guarded, and the bushes were fairly thick at the sides. Crawling on his belly, Isaac wormed through the side yard and the bushes and up to the side of the house, where he raised his head up to the windowsill and peered into a room. There wasn’t anybody in it. But Jesus jumping Christ, Isaac said to himself, what fancy furniture and stuff! He couldn’t conceive of his father living in a place like that, and once again, for the thousandth time, he wondered if Eli Willard actually was a goddamn drunken liar. He crept along the side of the house and peered into another window, another room. Nobody in there either, just more fancy furniture.

Wait a minute. Yonder through the door comes a woman. She is dressed in silk to the floor. She is laughing and tossing her head. The governor’s wife, you’d reckon. So Eli Willard is a drunken goddamn liar, after all. Wait a minute. Yonder through the door comes a man. He is dressed in a fancy suit with vest and tie, but that doesn’t fool Isaac. Isaac would know that face anywhere. The governor is laughing too, and holding in each hand a fancy tulip-shaped glass with amber liquid in it. What does he need two of them for? No, he is handing one to the woman. Then he and the woman bang their glasses together, and each takes a drink, and the woman gives the governor a big kiss on his cheek, and they sit down real close together in one of those fancy settees, and the governor puts his arm…

Isaac felt a sting in his shoulder, and swatted at it. His swat touched cold steel and he turned to see that it was the bayonet of one of the soldier-guards.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” the guard demanded.

Even if Isaac hadn’t been the most taciturn of all the Ingledews, he wouldn’t have known what to say.

They took him off and locked him up. The other prisoners were Rebel soldiers from south Arkansas, and Isaac didn’t like the way they talked or the things they said, but there wasn’t much he could do about it because they outnumbered him by dozens. He could have avoided prison if he had tried to persuade the soldiers that he was the governor’s son, but he didn’t want to embarrass the governor, and already he was himself deeply embarrassed if not mortified to have discovered that his father had a sweetheart. So that was the reason nobody in Stay More had been told that he was the governor! Isaac decided just to keep his mouth shut, an easy decision for him since he rarely opened it except to eat and cuss, and when he got out of prison he would just go on back home to Stay More and keep his mouth shut there too and be nice to his mother and never tell her.

But he didn’t get out of prison. Early the following morning he was taken before a military court and tried as a Confederate spy. He gave his name as “John Johnson.” The guard who had captured him went on the stand to testify. Then Isaac went on the stand, and the prosecutor asked him what he was doing looking in the window of the governor’s mansion. Isaac replied, “Nothing.” The prosecutor with much sarcasm speculated about several facetious motives that John Johnson might have had, then declared what the true motive was: that John Johnson was spying upon the governor. “Do you deny it?” the prosecutor demanded. No, Isaac admitted. “Then what was the motive of your spying? Did you intend to assassinate the governor?” Here the prosecutor held up Exhibit A: Isaac’s pistol. “Naw,” Isaac said. The prosecutor tried for several hours, with one brief recess, to find out John Johnson’s motive, and finally made a speech to the officers of the tribunal in which the motive was claimed to be assassination. The officers agreed, and sentenced Isaac to hang at dawn of the following day. Back in his cell, awaiting his end, Isaac tried to feel sorry for himself, but that was an emotion to which he was a stranger.

At dawn he was taken out to a public gallows, riding to it atop his own coffin, staring coolly at the spectators who were jeering him. The gallows was surrounded by troops; he couldn’t run away if he wanted to. He was hustled up the steps to the gallows, and the noose was thrown like a lariat over his head, then tightened. The provost-marshal prepared a blindfold, but waited. He waited a long time, holding the blindfold.

Bored, Isaac demanded, “What’re ye waitin fer?”

“The governor,” the man replied. “He aint et his breakfast yet.”

“Tie on the #@%*&#@* blindfold!” Isaac insisted.

“Not till the governor gets a look at your traitorous mug.”

Another half-hour passed before a carriage finally arrived with the governor. The governor was ill-humored and complaining about having to leave his coffee and watch spies git hung. Then he looked up at the spy. The spy had his eyes closed. Scared shitless, no doubt, the governor reflected. But then the governor decided he didn’t actually look scared, apart from the closed eyes. He was standing tall and proud, awaiting his dread fate manfully. A big and handsome man. Why did he have his eyes closed? “Tell him to pop open them peepers,” the governor ordered an aide. This command was conveyed to the spy, who obeyed. His eyes were blue. Just like mine, the governor thought, and then he recognized the spy.

“Isaac??” he croaked.

“Howdy, Paw,” Isaac returned mildly.

“What in tarnation air ye a-standin up there for, boy?”

“They’re a-fixin for to hang me, Paw,” Isaac said.

Jacob grabbed the nearest general by the collar and demanded, “What’s the charge, buster?”

“Attempted assassination, sir,” the general replied.

“Who was he ’temptin to ’assinate?” Jacob asked.

“You, sir,” the general replied.

Jacob looked up at Isaac. “That true, son?”

“Aw, naw, Paw,” Isaac said.

“He was caught peering into a window of your house, sir,” the general said, “with a pistol in his possession. He was duly tried by a military tribunal, and convicted.”

“That’s terrible,” Jacob declared. “My own boy. General, that there is my own flesh and blood. I’ve knowed him since the day he was born. He’s a chip off the old block. Isaac Ingledew is my son, sir.”

“That’s terrible,” the general agreed.

“I don’t aim to jist stand here and watch him git hung,” Jacob declared.

“I don’t think you’re required by law to watch, sir,” the general offered, somewhat lamely.

“But don’t the law give me the right to grant him a pardon?” Jacob asked.

“I believe it does, sir.”

“Okay. Isaac boy, you are done hereby pardoned, per executive order. Come go home with me and eat you some victuals.” Jacob led his son down from the scaffold and took him to the governor’s mansion and fed him a large breakfast, during which he questioned Isaac about his motives for peering in the window with a pistol in his possession. Isaac was just as taciturn with his father as he was with anybody else, but he was able to nod or shake his head in response to simple yes-or-no questions, and in this manner Jacob was able to determine that his son had not meant to assassinate him, and also that his son had seen Jacob in the company of his ladyfriend, who, Jacob tried unconvincingly to persuade Isaac, was the secretary of state. Jacob learned that the messengers he had sent to Stay More had never arrived. Bushwhackers were thicker than flies, Isaac told him, not mentioning that he himself had been ambushed seventeen times. After breakfast, Jacob took Isaac over to a Main Street tailor and had him fitted out with a good suit, which was sewn on the spot and altered to fit Isaac’s six-seven frame, then Jacob gave Isaac a tour of the state capitol building and showed him his own large and lavish office, where he gave Isaac a cigar, his first, and a drink of honest-to-God pure whiskey, likewise his first, and asked him if he wouldn’t like to live here in Little Rock. Isaac shook his head, and Jacob understood. In that case, Jacob said, he would make Isaac a present of the Ingledew dogtrot in Stay More, and eighty acres of land. Isaac was choked with gratitude, and didn’t know what to say even if he hadn’t been unable to say anything anyway. Jacob told him that he was going to dispatch a cavalry platoon to escort Isaac back up to Stay More and escort Sarah and the other children back down to Little Rock. Then he questioned Isaac at some length about the progress of the fighting in Newton County, promoted him to colonel, shook hands, and sent him on his way.

Jacob worried about what “arrangement” to make with his ladyfriend once Sarah arrived in Little Rock. He and his ladyfriend had already discussed the inevitable. It had never been a secret to the ladyfriend that Jacob was married. The ladyfriend herself had been married at one time to one of the most prominent citizens of Little Rock. Jacob tried to understand his own feelings. Without using the word “love,” which is a deeply embarrassing term to all Ozarks men, or simply denotes sex for its own sake, Jacob realized that Sarah still occupied the prime position in his affections, and indeed, since absence makes the heart grow fonder and he hadn’t seen her for almost a year, he was very eager to have her with him again, and knew that when she came to Little Rock she would be “First Lady” in more than one respect.

Arriving back in Stay More, Isaac began the arduous task of persuading his mother that she was First Lady of Arkansas and that the First Gentleman of Arkansas desired to have her join him in Little Rock. Being taciturn, Isaac was not able to talk her into believing it. She wanted to dose him with slippery-elm bark, but he told her that if she did, she would also have to dose the entire cavalry platoon that had escorted him from Little Rock and was waiting to escort her to Little Rock, and while she was at it she might as well dose their horses too, and then maybe the sight of all those horses with the trots and canters and gallops would convince her that she was the First Lady of Arkansas, but that would delay the trip to Little Rock. It was the longest speech he had ever made in his life, and it exhausted him, but it convinced his mother, whose first response, however, was, “But I don’t have a blessit thing to wear.” Isaac, who was wearing the new suit his father had had tailored for him, indicated it, and told her that his father would most likely “fix her up” too when she got there. So she put on her best black dress, and dressed the girls Rachel and Lucinda in the only dresses they had, and told Lum to put on his best britches and wash good behind the ears, but Lum wasn’t going, he declared. He said he didn’t care if his father was elected king of England, he didn’t want nothing to do with no cities. Isaac told him that his father had given Isaac the house and eighty acres, and Lum could stay and keep the farm while Isaac rejoined his Federal infantry in pursuit of Cecil’s Rebels. Sarah stuffed a few belongings into a gunnysack and she and her daughters waved goodbye to Isaac and Lum, and rode off with the cavalry platoon to Little Rock.

Sarah’s dream, which she had dreamt years earlier on the occasion of their first night in the dogtrot, came exactly true. The dream had been about the perhaps excessively highfalutin reception that Jacob now hosted in her honor, after he had taken her and their daughters out to the town’s best dressmaker and had them fitted out with hoops. Most of the younger girls of that day did not wear hoops, but Jacob was determined to have all three of his “gals,” including Sarah, in hoops. Rachel was almost twenty, and looked quite ladylike in hers, but Lucinda was only fifteen, and looked uncomfortable, and felt uncomfortable, and was not able to move about in her hoops, nor sit, so during the reception she remained parked inside her hoops in one corner, where no one spoke to her, although I doubt that this experience was sufficiently traumatic to account for the fact that many years later she went insane.

The part of the reception that Sarah did not like at all was when the other ladies tried to talk to her and she couldn’t understand them, couldn’t tell whether they were asking questions or just making statements. “It is so festive?” a woman would say to her, and she didn’t know if this was a question or not. “The price of crinoline is outrageous?” another woman would say. “I am Senator Fishback’s wife?” another would say. “The militia makes one feel more secure?” “The price of coffee is ridiculous?” “The band will be playing soon?” “Your daughters are exquisite?” Some of these words, like “exquisite,” Sarah did not even understand, and to the lady who asked this particular question, if it was a question, she mumbled in reply, “Not as fur as I know, yet.”

She was very glad when Jacob came and took her hand and led her away from the ladies and out onto the balcony to watch the band playing, and to see the crowd waving and cheering, and to hear the cannon firing their salutes. The Arkansas Gazette’s society editor commented the following day: “For a woman so little familiarized with the amenities of the drawing room, the governor’s lady acquitted herself handily.” Jacob read this item to her, but was required to explain, as best he could, “amenities,” “drawing room,” and “acquitted.” Still Sarah wondered if they weren’t poking fun at her, and her next words to Jacob were: “Jake, how long do you have to be governor?” When he told her four years, she sighed.

She was to do a lot of sighing during those four years. She would sigh when the Gazette wrote, in reference to a habit of Jacob’s: “For a man who prefers to receive visiting dignitaries with his coonskin cap atop his head, the governor acquitted himself handily.” When the Little Rock National Democrat, commenting on a dinner (“luncheon” they called it) that Sarah held for the legislators’ wives, wrote: “For a woman whose culinary accomplishment is limited to porcine dishes, the governor’s lady acquitted herself handily,” Sarah sighed. Sarah sighed when the Arkansas Advocate, commenting on Jacob’s conciliation of a feud between the legislature and the Little Rock Ministerial Alliance, wrote, “For a professedly unregenerate disbeliever, the governor acquitted himself handily.” Finally the New York Tribune, in a long “profile” on the Arkansas governor and his family, commented about Sarah: “For a lady of such high standing and comforts, Mrs. Ingledew sighs handily.”

Jacob Ingledew was not a great governor, but he was a good one. His administration began without a dollar in the treasury, yet by the end of his term every cent of expenses had been paid, with a surplus of $270,000 in the vaults. His strong suit was a near-genius for raising revenue. He taxed everything that could be taxed, and many things that could not. He was the inventor of highway taxes: for the upkeeping of streets and roadways the provost-marshal was ordered to collect a highway tax of two weeks’ labor or fifty dollars from every citizen between the ages of eighteen and fifty years, actual government employees excepted. Most people preferred working for the government at low wages to gain this exemption, and there was no dearth of cheap government labor. At one time, Jacob had working at the governor’s mansion alone three majordomos, six butlers, seven coachmen, nine maids, eleven cooks, thirteen valets, and thirty-two yardmen. The grounds were immaculate, but the yardmen began fighting among themselves with their shears and spades, and Sarah sighed.

Jacob also managed, adequately if not adroitly, the orchestration of the three separate branches of government. It has been pointed out (or if it hasn’t, it has been now) that the three branches of government may be compared to the three levels of personality as seen by Freud: the legislative body is the id, the executive body is the ego, and the judicial body is the superego. Jacob got along splendidly with his legislature, who were for the most part simple country men like himself, some of them uncouth, many of them illiterate, all of them loud and hard-drinking and tobacco-chewing. Superciliously the Little Rock Daily Republican observed that Jacob’s legislature was composed of “at least a few worthies who, we may assure our readers, are able to sign their names without running out their tongues or distorting their countenances in the effort, and thus acquit themselves handily.” The judiciary branch, on the other hand, was composed mainly of city men, or citified men, sedate, grave, and disapproving. They disapproved of most of Jacob’s taxes, declaring the taxes unconstitutional.

Jacob did not get along very well at all with his supreme court. He did not like city men to begin with, as we have seen. City men who were also justices were as intolerable to him as our superegos are to our egos. But the superego, I think, is gullible, and Jacob gulled his justices. He would invite them into his office, and take a gallon stone jug from a barrel filled with straw, and offer them “whiskey so good you kin smell the feet of the boys who plowed the corn.” The justices would sniff their noses and at first decline, but he would urge his real mountain dew upon them and, while they became progressively intoxicated, he would tell them tall tales, wild stories, fish stories, which they believed. He would tell them of having caught a four-hundred-pound catfish which he hadn’t been able to drag out of the water. “Yes,” one of the justices would remark, “I suppose it’s difficult to land those big ones.” Jacob would explain how he tickled the catfish’s whiskers, and stroked its head, causing it to leap out of the water and follow him around like a dog. The justices would nod, declaring that they had heard that catfish are easily tamed. Jacob would say, “I jist throwed a bridle on her, and rid her plumb home.” When none of the justices expressed any incredulity at that, he would raise his voice and declare, “I tied her to my strawstack, and bedded her down with the cattle all winter.” The justices would solemnly nod. Finally, Jacob would desperately declare that he bred the catfish to a mule, and foaled two horse colts! At this point, one of the justices would remark, “I do not believe that part of it. Everybody knows that mules are not fertile.”

Then, Jacob would know, he had them right where he wanted them, and he could proceed to explain to them why, for example, the air of Arkansas, being, as anybody knows, the sweetest and purest air to breathe anywhere, is therefore taxable, and it is perfectly justifiable to put a tax on breathing. In the end, the justices yielded, but were so drunk they had to be carried from Jacob’s office. Government labor being cheap, Jacob retained twelve men for the purpose of carrying drunk justices out of his office.

Jacob’s successive successes in the office of governor meant nothing to Sarah; he did not discuss affairs of state with her; to her he was just the same old Jake, and she did not defer to him any more than she would have “back home.” Obviously she missed “back home,” and it was Sarah Ingledew who is credited with the coinage of the adjective “old-timey” in reference to the lost past. Increasingly, for the rest of that century and down through our own century, mass nostalgia would employ this expression that Sarah invented…although nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. Today we are even speaking of “old-timey” television, and tomorrow we shall be speaking of “old-timey” gasoline and electricity, but it was Sarah Ingledew who first said, “Jake, I shore do miss them old-timey days back home.” And the governor got a bit misty-eyed himself (although it was hard to tell, because the blueness of his eyes made them seem always watering) and replied, “Yeah, Sarey, them were the days.” (This expression, grammatically corrected, also entered our language.)

Nor was this merely a fleeting mood on both their parts. It lingered, and it infected those around them, who in turn infected those around them, until all of the people were in the grips of epidemic nostalgia. Although the French had identified the disease early in that century, nostalgie had not been identified or named in America at this time, and it would be a few more years before a Missourian, Sydney Smith, having discovered its spread from Arkansas to Missouri, would write his seminal article, “What a Dreadful Disease Is Nostalgia on the Banks of the Missouri!” and still more years before the first English dictionary would define it. But it began with Sarah’s casual remark to Jacob, and soon everyone had it, and because it had no name yet and no one could name it, they simply referred to it as it, and noted that there was a lot of it going around in those days. People would stop one another and ask, “Do you have it yet?” and admit “Yes, I caught it last night, I think,” and all of the Little Rock newspapers ran editorials with titles like “It Does Not Acquit Itself Handily.”

The war was not over, bushwhackers and jayhawkers still roamed and pillaged, but people were tired of it all. Everybody yearned for the old-timey prewar days, but everybody knew that the old-timey prewar days would never—no, never—come again, and because they would not come again people could only wish for them, and because wishing for something that can never be had is wishful thinking, and because wishful thinking is erroneous identification of one’s wishes with reality, then reality is warped into a melancholy dream. In this dream that was life, all the people developed sheep’s eyes, which enhanced their looks at the expense of their vision.

There was only one person in Little Rock who did not catch “it,” and that was Jacob’s ladyfriend (whom we cannot name). Probably the reason that she did not catch nostalgia was that there had been little or nothing in the old-timey prewar days that she had enjoyed; she lived for the future, not in languishing longing for the past. All around her people, including her lover, especially her lover, were afflicted with the aches of pining for the past, but she remained oriented to the future. Undoubtedly she would have looked all the more beautiful with sheep’s eyes (I have seen a daguerreotype of her), but she did not get them. We do not know her; not even her name; of all the many persons in our story she will remain the most mysterious; but we know this much about her, that she alone was afflicted with longing for the future, and that she had come to the point where she could not conceive of a future without Jacob, and yet she knew that when his term expired he would leave Little Rock. He could, if he wished, run for another term, but he was stricken deeply with nostalgia, and the people, also stricken, were longing for the governors of the past, men like Izard and Conway and Yell, all aristocrats compared to Jacob Ingledew (and the man they would elect to replace him, Powell Clayton, would be the most aristocratic of them all). So if Jacob’s lady-friend wanted to hang onto him, she would have to scheme.

So she schemed. She told Jacob that she wanted to become Sarah’s social secretary. Jacob pointed out that, government labor being cheap, Sarah already had eight social secretaries. Whom We Cannot Name responded to that by pointing out that that would make it all the easier to “slip her in” among the others. Jacob wondered why she needed the salary, which wasn’t much, one dollar a day. She said she did not need the money, of course; she only wanted to be “closer” to Jacob. Jacob pointed out that as far as being “close” was concerned, it wouldn’t do them any good to be “close” in the governor’s mansion, because every room was so full of people, servants and secretaries and such, that they would never have a moment’s privacy. But Jacob’s ladyfriend persisted, and he hired her as Sarah’s ninth social secretary. The other secretaries, she soon discovered, were not, like herself, products of Little Rock’s finer society, and she quickly learned to dominate them.

Sarah had very little to do with her social secretaries; she went where they told her to when they told her to, but Sarah did not give them orders, nor spend any time in idle conversation with them, nor seek their advice. Nor did they curry her favor. But her new ninth social secretary, Sarah discovered, was somehow different from the others. A very friendly person. A refined lady, too, and yet the woman did not look down upon Sarah nor make her feel uncomfortable. And on top of that, the woman was a very attractive person, who made a handsome decoration for the governor’s mansion. Soon Sarah found that she and her ninth social secretary had become good friends. When Sarah was invited to give a speech to the Little Rock Beaux Arts Club, the woman offered to write it for her. Sarah was so close to the woman by this time that she was able to confide in her the well-kept secret that she could not read. The woman did not look down upon her for it. Instead the woman offered to help her rehearse the speech over a period of several days, and the woman also spoke many words of encouragement, so that when Sarah finally delivered the speech to the Beaux Arts Club, the Arkansas Advocate commented, “For a lady of somewhat limited elocution and enunciation, the governor’s wife acquitted herself handily.”

One day Sarah remarked to her ninth social secretary, “Honey, I just don’t know what I’d do without you.” Sarah bragged to Jacob about what a great fine beautiful person her ninth social secretary was, but Jacob pretended lack of interest. Sarah tried to persuade Jacob to meet her, but Jacob said he was too busy. But Sarah kept after him about it, dogging his heels, until finally she caught him in the hallway of the mansion and presented her ninth social secretary to him. “This is her, Jake,” Sarah said. “That I’ve been tellin ye about. This is the lady that keeps the world together fer me.” Jacob said, “Howdy do, ma’am,” and offered his hand. The woman took it, and, smiling, said, “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Your Excellency.” Jacob excused himself, and went on. Sarah apologized to the woman, saying, “If you got to know him, you’d see he’s a real fine man.” “I’m sure he is,” said the ninth social secretary.

When Jacob came to her house and her bed that night, she and Jacob had a gentle little laugh over that. But Jacob felt guilty, and often he had a temptation to confess to Sarah. Sometimes he would think about saying something to Sarah, forming the words in his mind, but would stop just short of speaking, whereupon Sarah, disconcertingly, would say “What?” This would continue for the rest of their lives, at times unnerving him. He would know that he had not actually spoken, that he had only been thinking about speaking, but still Sarah would say “What?” Was she reading his mind? Whatever the case, he never actually spoke to her, but for the rest of their lives he went on thinking about speaking to her, and each time he thought about it, she would say “What?” We have seen, much earlier on, how at one time the young Sarah revered Jacob as if he were God, and did not want to marry him for that reason, and it seems to me that we stand for the rest of our lives in the same relation to God, always asking that “What?” which has no answer. Perhaps we should feel no greater pity for Sarah than we should feel for ourselves.

One thing-of-the-past that the people of Arkansas in their excruciating nostalgia yearned for most was a return to statehood. For although Arkansas had been the first state to leave the Confederacy, she had not yet been reaccepted into the Union. The Congress of the United States would not let her come home. Nostalgia in its deepest sense is a yearning for home. But the Congress, dominated by Thaddeus Stevens and his radical Republicans, had not only refused to allow any of the seceded states back into the Union but also passed the dread Reconstruction Act, which would throw the South into seven long and lean years of carpetbaggery. Jacob disliked the carpetbaggers even more than he disliked the Confederates, but he was caught between them and could do nothing. Both sides began to blame him for the failure of Arkansas to reenter the Union. They began to call him “Old Imbecility,” and to openly mock his country ways. He lost control of his legislature to them. He could no longer handle the supreme court justices, who ceased coming to his office to drink his mountain dew and listen to his tall tales. The supreme court declared unconstitutional his law that Arkansawyers who had borne arms against the United States were not eligible to vote, and this allowed the ex-Confederates to sweep back into government. But the carpetbaggers, or Republicans as they called themselves, gained control, and nominated one of their own, Powell Clayton, an ex-Pennsylvanian, to run for governor. Jacob could not have beaten him even if he were not infected with hopeless nostalgia and longing for Stay More. Shortly after the election in which Clayton took the governorship, Congress restored Arkansas to the Union.

One of the few utterances of Jacob Ingledew that found its way into recorded history was by virtue of Powell Clayton’s memoirs, written in his eighties after a distinguished career as governor and later U.S. Senator from Arkansas. Clayton reminisced about the day of his inauguration in midsummer, waiting in his carriage, seated beside the outgoing governor. He described the outgoing governor: mild blue eyes, tangled beard, long wavy locks of the mountaineer, wearing a suit of plain homespun. Clayton was wearing, by contrast, a suit of full broadcloth, with frock coat and wide wing collar; and he was wearing fine kid gloves. As the outgoing governor got into the carriage, he took a long look at the gloves, and then, Clayton recalled, Jacob Ingledew remarked, “Well, I reckon I never saw anyone but you wearing gloves in July! Only dudes do that!” To which Clayton, by his account, retorted, “Governor, it’s not the garb that makes the man; but in deference to you and especially in view of the character of the work I am about to enter upon today, which will require handling without gloves, I will now remove mine.” Clayton also wrote of being invited to Jacob’s office after the inauguration, where the ex-governor fished a gallon stone jug out of a barrel of straw and offered Clayton a drink of mountain dew. Clayton had good cause to recall the incident, because it was the only expression of goodwill the mountaineers ever gave him.

Jacob hired a carriage to take him home to Stay More. When he entered it, he found Sarah and his daughters already there. He also found his ladyfriend there, dressed for travel and holding her hat-box in her lap.

“Where do ye think you’re a-headin?” he asked her.

“She’s goin with us, Jake!” Sarah exclaimed. “I ast her to, and she said she would! I jist couldn’t never git along without her!”

Jacob took his seat. It was crowded, five of them in a carriage meant for four, and it was a long way to Stay More. “Hhmmph,” he was moved to comment. But as the carriage pulled away from the governor’s mansion and moved north out of the city of Little Rock, he began to chuckle, and then to laugh.

“What’s so funny, Jake?” Sarah asked.

He gained control of himself and replied, “Nothin. I’m jist right glad to git out of that town.”

“Me too,” said Sarah.

“Me too,” chorused their daughters.

And, “Me too,” said the ladyfriend. It is one of the few things we have heard her say; it is all we will.

Our illustration for this chapter is of a house which is, therefore, trigeminal rather than bigeminal, a treble rather than a duple, although I doubt if anybody ever consciously thought of the symbolism of it: that the left door, as we face the house, is Sarah’s, the center door, Jacob’s, the right door, Whom We Cannot Name’s. There were interior connecting doors between the center and both sides. A later occupant, in our century, removed the partition between the left and center chambers, making one large living room, and that is the way it may be seen today. Jacob, in concession to the amenities of his ladyfriend’s former environment, constructed the first “outhouse” or privy in Stay More. Heretofore, everybody in Stay More had simply “gone out” and used the woods or bushes, or the open, and children were taught not to foul a path lest they get a “sty” on their bottoms or cause the death of their sisters. The expression “go out” was so clearly understood that one might even remark of an incontinent child or drunken man, “He went out in his britches.” But now, on a little knoll behind his house, Jacob built Stay More’s first privy, which was also trigeminal, in a way: it had three holes, the possible significance of which I must leave to the speculation of my students. The people of Stay More thought that Jacob was “puttin on airs” by constructing a privy, but they did not think anything unseemly about his ladyfriend. To all of them, forever, she was only “Sarey’s friend,” or “Aunt Sarey’s friend,” or “Grammaw Sarey’s friend,” or “Great-Grammaw Sarey’s friend.” Indeed, the only words on her tombstone are “Sarah’s Friend.” But she was not to die until well into our own century. Jacob himself lived until the first year of our century, and Sarah survived him by one day. The words on Jacob’s tombstone are: “He done his damndest.” Harry Truman, the only Ozarker ever to make it all the way to the Presidency, liked to quote those words, and requested that they be put on his own tombstone, although for some reason they were not.

The buildings in our study thus far have been medieval, with gable roofs; Jacob’s trigeminal house is a hip-roofed Victorian example of “steamboat gothic.” Facing the main road in the exact center of downtown Stay More, it is…

But we have had enough, for now, of the generation of Jacob; if generations generate, we must move on.

Chapter eight

Being taciturn, Isaac Ingledew (called—never to his face—“Colonel Coon” for the rest of his life), became a miller, and here we see his mill. A miller didn’t have to talk if he didn’t feel like it, although most millers did. Isaac’s customers chatted and gossiped freely with one another, while he ground their grain and meal in silence. Whenever something went wrong with the machinery in his mill, he would cuss profusely and obscenely, but otherwise he kept his mouth shut. People came from miles in every direction to Isaac’s mill, but everyone knew that Colonel Coon did not enjoy speech, and no one tried to draw him out. Still they could not help wondering whether he ever spoke at least to his wife. It is something of a miracle that Isaac Ingledew had a wife. But he did. Her name was Salina Denton, naturally pronounced “Sleeny,” and she was a real “looker,” as they said of her. Isaac Ingledew came across her, or chanced upon her, or stumbled into her life, toward the end of the War, when he and his men (or rather man, a lone major who remained the last infantryman in Colonel Coon’s command at that late juncture) were pursuing the remnants of the Confederate army in Newton County, a band of three bushwhackers.

Although small in numbers, this band was still wreaking havoc from one end of the county to the other, terrorizing helpless women and children and old men, and Isaac and his one-man army were determined, although outnumbered, to wipe them out. They caught and killed one of the three after the band had raided the Denton cabin, thereby equalizing the two armies, and while his major went off in pursuit of the other two, Isaac inspected the damage to the Denton cabin, and found Salina Denton cowering there, alone, in ranting hysterics. He wanted to calm her down, but, being taciturn, he didn’t know what to say. He tried to pat her on the back, but when he did so, she began to climb him. He set her down gently but she climbed him again. Again he set her down, but again she climbed him, and by this time he became aroused, to put it mildly. So the third time she climbed him, he did not set her down, although she went on raving. He was, we should remember, a giant of a man, and while there was nothing exactly small about Salina Denton, he supported her easily. Apparently the act or deed brought her to her senses, for afterward she said calmly, “Whar am I?” and then she looked at him and said, “Who are you? And what’s thet out fer?” Hastily he buttoned himself and fled.

He and his major spent the next year tracking down and killing the two remnants of the Confederate Army, and then they declared the War won and went home. Isaac planted most of the eighty acres his father had given him in wheat and corn, and began the construction of his mill, assisted by his brother Lum and his Swain uncles. He had finished one door of the mill when a girl appeared, on foot, barefoot, holding an infant in her arms. It took him a moment to recognize and remember her, but still he did not even say “Howdy.” She did, however, and then she held out the infant to him and asked, “Do ye wanter take a gander at yore son?” Isaac took a gander at the baby, and even chucked it under the chin; he tried to mumble “Cootchycoo,” but the words would not come. And then he said to Salina the only thing that anybody ever heard him say to her publicly. Gesturing across the valley at the distant knoll where the dogtrot house his father had given him was located, he declared, “That’s my place up yonder.” Salina and her baby moved in. The infant boy was named Denton Ingledew, after his mother’s last name. Turning back to his work, Isaac built another door on the mill, and thus we might think of the mill as being also bigeminal in symbolism of the new union, but in this particular case we know that the bigeminality was strictly functional: one door was for people going into the mill, the other door was for people coming out.

Isaac worked that day until well past dark, deliberately postponing going home to his woman, to whom he did not know what else to say. But inevitably he had to go home, where Salina was waiting with a pretty fine supper she had fixed. While he ate it, Isaac couldn’t think of a blessed thing to say, but that was all right, because Salina, by contrast with her husband, was just about the most talkative person who ever lived in Stay More. That night she began: “My name’s Sleeny Denton, and I’m seventeen year old, and I’ve got two older brothers and three older sisters that have all done flew the roost, and we lived up Right Prong Holler all our life, my daddy and mom were gone visitin kinfolks in Demijohn that day ye came, that’s how come ye didn’t meet ’em, and I’d jist had the everlastin wits skeered out o’ me by them bushwhackers that lit far to the house, ’till you come and run ’em off, and then done what ye done, which I have to say I didn’t mind a bit, it was the most fun, I’m tellin ye, and I wouldn’t care if ye did it again soon as ye git done eatin, although not in the same room with the baby, because I’m strict about that, you’ll find, but aint he the cutest little spadger ever ye saw, looks jist lak ye, same eyes and all, ’though I think his nose kinder favors my daddy’s, and he’s got Mom’s ears, but you kin jist tell by lookin at him that he’ll grow up to be big and strong lak you, why, my, I never seed ary man in my life as big and strong as you, it’s a sin to Moses how big and strong, and I tole my daddy what yore uniform looked lak, and ast my daddy what did them bars on yore collar mean, and my daddy said them bars meant ye were a colonel! and my sakes alive! if I haven’t always wanted to marry me a colonel! why, when I was jist a little chicky I used to tell my playmates I was a-fixin to marry me a colonel when I got growed up, and now jist look at me! I’ve done went and done it!”

After Isaac had finished eating, he stood up, belched to signify his satisfaction with the meal, and began stretching. While he was stretching, Salina, first putting the baby into the other house of the dogtrot, climbed him. She was not hysterical now, but she went on talking, a blue streak, the whole time he did her, although her words were interlaced with coos and burbles and were terminated by a squeal. Thus their second-born, Monroe Ingledew, was conceived. In fact, one of the few things of distinction about John Ingledew, their third son, apart from his being the father of the next great wave of Ingledews in our ongoing saga, was that he was the first of Isaac’s and Salina’s children to be conceived when his parents were in a horizontal rather than a vertical position, for it took them that long to discover, albeit accidentally, that it was possible to do it while lying down. It may be noted in passing that Isaac Ingledew was the only Ingledew male who never again got the frakes. He worked hard, but not hard enough to get the frakes, or, if he did work hard enough to get the frakes, Salina’s hearty, refreshing sensuality gave him immunity.

He was, as I say, a miller. He was not the first; we may have glimpsed, chapters back, the rude gristmill of Zachariah Dinsmore, which was a primitive “tub wheel” mill, on Swains Creek. Isaac’s mill was on Banty Creek, near its mouth where it empties into Swains Creek, where it was swiftest, swift enough to power the large undershot wheel that powered the grindstone. But soon after he had built the mill, Banty Creek went dry. Rather than turn the whole mill structure around so that its wheel would be in Swains Creek (which wouldn’t have worked anyway—or, rather, it would have turned the wheel in the opposite direction, and, Isaac realized, unground the meal), he decided to convert to steam power. A boiler and an engine and the necessary machinery would cost him a thousand dollars, which he did not have. Reticently he asked his father, recently retired from the governorship, for a loan, but Jacob claimed that he had spent all his money building his trigeminal house, a lame excuse, but Isaac, being taciturn, did not argue.

Learning that the cities suffered a scarcity of bacon, Isaac took his gun into the woods and slaughtered five hundred razorback hogs, dressed them with the help of his wife and brother, and carted them off to Springfield, Missouri, where he easily sold them for more than enough to purchase the boiler and engine and machinery, which he purchased there and carted back to Stay More and installed in the smaller building which may be seen in the rear of our illustration. It was the first engine in Newton County, one of the first engines in all of the Arkansas Ozarks. He brought with him from Springfield a fireman, named Toliver Cole, or Cole Toliver (it is not certain which), to operate the engine. There was still enough water in Banty Creek to fuel the boiler.

Everyone in Stay More, and half the populaces of Parthenon and Jasper, gathered at The Ingledew Grist Co. to watch the first firing of the engine. Toliver Cole (or Cole Toliver) was impressed with the size of his audience, and for the occasion he wore a top hat, cutaway, and spats, although in place of a tie he wore his usual red bandana. Fifteen girls fell in love with him, so he could take his pick, and afterwards picked Rachel Ingledew, Isaac’s young sister, who became Mrs. Cole, or Mrs. Toliver. But the ceremony of the firing was awesome, horrifying, well worth the trip to those who had come from a distance. Lum Ingledew, Isaac’s brother, was given the concession, and did a brisk business in sassafrasade, jujubes, and folding fans. As the engine started up, women fanned themselves, and prayed, or fainted. Grown men trembled and wiped their sweating palms on their shirtfronts. Children screamed, dogs howled, birds flew away. It was the Second Tuesday of the Month, and up the hill at the Ingledew dogtrot, the old Eli Willard clock said PRONG, unnoticed, unheard.

Strange to relate, Isaac’s business fell off. People reverted to laboriously pounding their grain in stone mortars, Indian-fashion. Being taciturn, Isaac could not go around asking people why they would not patronize his mill. Were they actually afraid of his engine? At any rate, he had to lay off his new brother-in-law, who went back to Springfield, taking Rachel with him. For days, weeks, Isaac sat in his captain’s chair on the porch of his mill, waiting for customers. He would go home late in the evening, and Salina would climb him and make him feel better, momentarily, but she never asked him, “How’s business?” and even if she had, he could not have told her. He kept a fire lighted under his boiler, and checked the pressure gauge now and then, but never threw the switch to start the engine.

Gradually, the people, although they did not want to patronize his mill, began to miss the chatting and gossip that they had indulged in while waiting for Colonel Coon to grind their grain, and one by one, sackless or with their gunnysacks empty, they began coming back to his mill and sitting on his porch and chatting and gossiping with one another. Isaac sat among them, listening, yearning to open his mouth and ask them why they did not patronize his mill any longer. Were they afraid of his engine? Would they bring their grain to him if he threw out the engine and moved the mill around so that its wheel was in Swains Creek? What about earplugs? Or what if he offered to pick up and deliver their grain so that they did not have to see, let alone hear, the engine? But he could not ask these things. And because he never spoke, the people began to take his presence for granted, they began to feel that he was only an inanimate fixture, and they began to talk about him as if he were not there.

It is amazing how much a man can learn about himself in this fashion. Isaac learned that he was well-belovèd to them all. He learned how much the men envied him because of his beautiful wife Salina, and how much the women envied Salina because she had “caught” a big, strong, handsome man like Isaac. He learned that there was not a man in Newton County who was willing to fight him, on a dare, or for any amount of money. He learned that all of the men had dreams, nearly every night, involving amatory sport with Salina, and that the women had dreams involving the same with Isaac. But he did not learn why neither the men nor the women, nor the children, would bring their grain to be ground in his mill.

In time, his own fields of wheat and corn were ripe for harvest, and he harvested them, and hauled the grain to his mill, and built up the fire under his boiler, and hooked up his engine, and ground his grain and meal. The people left the porch of the mill and drifted off, and did not come back until he had shut down the engine. Birds, rats and mice infested his mill and ate through the gunny-sacks and devoured his grain and meal and flour, but fled when he started the engine again. It was a choice: no pests but no people, or people and pests. He opted for the latter, and let the birds, rats and mice have his grain. By and by, he became almost content, sitting among the people, listening to them talk about him. The seasons passed, seedtime, grain and harvest. But after another harvest, the people began to complain among themselves about the back breaking job of grinding their grain in stone mortars, Indian-fashion. Isaac listened to their grumblings for as long as he could stand it, and then he reviewed in his mind his stock of choice profanities until he had picked the one that seemed to him choicest and most profane. He stood up and uttered it, loudly. Then he asked,

“How come y’all don’t bring yore #@%&*# grain to my #@%&*# mill?”

The people grew silent, staring at one another and at Isaac. All of them suddenly realized that he was there, where they had forgotten that he had been. This embarrassed them greatly, and they remembered all the things they had said about him, and they all began to get very red in the face, and to slink down in their chairs, and one by one they put their tails between their legs and crept away. Soon each of them returned, carrying upon their backs or their mules’ backs gunnysacks filled with grain. Isaac fired his engine and ground their grain, and grew prosperous over the years, running the mill day and night; he had to hire two helpers and train a new fireman. It was not until his old age, in our own century, after Stay More had seen the coming of a newer and commoner kind of self-propelled engine, that Isaac Ingledew finally learned the reason why people had ever been reluctant to come to his mill: not that they were afraid of the sight or sound of his engine, but rather, as his middle-aged daughter Drussie expressed it to him one day, “I reckon folks back in them old-timey days just couldn’t stand fer no kind of PROG RESS.”

Indeed, she was right, not alone about that instance of resistance to progress, but to the entire history of Stay More, nay, the entire history of the Ozarks. Everything new, everything progressive or forward-looking, was anathema to those people, and who are we to fault them for it? “Stay More” is synonymous with “Status Quo”; in fact, there are people who believe, or who like to believe, that the name of the town was intended as an entreaty, beseeching the past to remain present. Today, Colonel Coon’s newfangled engine is an antique; after his death, it was transferred to Oren Duckworth’s tomato canning factory, where it powered the conveyor belt for a generation, but has been out of use and rusting for half of my lifetime.

It was in the generation of Isaac, also, that Stay More and the Ozarks experienced the first serious fuel shortage, called the First Spell of Darkness. All of the lamps, as we have seen, were fueled with bear’s oil, but as the human population increased the population of bears decreased. Isaac himself shot the last bear of Stay More, and when that bruin’s lard was all used up, the people experienced their first blackout. It was very dark, and the moon wasn’t scheduled to reappear for two weeks, and it was the hottest part of summer, so that fireplace light was uncomfortable. Most people simply went to bed, but this indirectly caused a population explosion which in turn would lead to a future depletion of fuel. Isaac’s oldest sons, Denton and Monroe, ran around in the dark yard of the dogtrot catching lightning bugs and putting them into a glass jar, but this kind of lamp was feeble and temporary, since the boys didn’t know what the bugs ate and didn’t feed them, and they died. In an emergency, someone could always make a torch from sap-rich pine, but otherwise most people just went to bed…except Isaac Ingledew and his two helpers and his fireman, who had to stay up ’way past dark to finish the grinding of the day’s flour and meal. By leaving the boiler room door open, some light came into the mill, scarcely enough to work by but enough to keep the men from being entirely blind, and they lit a pine torch from time to time for delicate operations.

It was during this first Spell of Darkness that lawlessness first came to Stay More (unless we consider, as we should, the War lawless); and note that I say it came to Stay More; it did not originate there. Isaac’s mill had been running night and day for several weeks, and it was rumored that he kept a large sum of money at the mill. This was not true; he kept only enough to make change; the rest of his small fortune was kept in a location which even I do not know. But after dark the men working inside the mill bolted the doors, as any businesses do when they have closed to the public but are still working.

One night after the doors had been bolted, Isaac was standing near one of the big oak doors at the main entrance, trying to adjust a faulty elevator by pine-torch light, when there came a knocking at the door. Isaac hesitated for only a moment, deciding that it must be some customer coming in late, perhaps after a breakdown, and then he opened the door. A man slipped inside, breathing hard. Isaac gave him the once over and guessed that the man had been riding long and hard. Because of his own experience riding horses, Isaac could even guess how long the man had been in the saddle, at what speed he was traveling, and therefore how far he had come, and from which direction…Missouri. In the dim light only the man’s eyeballs could be seen clearly: his eyes were taking in everything. The man sized up Isaac, who stood a good foot taller, and asked, “You own this here mill?” Isaac nodded. The man began walking around, inspecting the machinery. Not knowing that Isaac was taciturn, he began asking Isaac a lot of questions about his business. How wide an area of the county did the mill serve? From how far away did customers come? How many employees did Isaac have? Isaac answered, if he answered at all, in monosyllables. Meanwhile, the fireman had come up from the engine room with the iron rod that he used to stir his fire, and got in back of the man without being noticed and held the iron bar above the back of his head. The two helpers had rebolted the doors and the side door leading to the engine room. Isaac felt no fear: even if he had been alone with the man, he would have felt no fear, although the dark shadow of a bulge of a gun was obvious inside the man’s shirt. After a few minutes the man asked the price of cracked corn. Isaac told him. The man said, “I’ll take two bushel. There’s eight more fellers out there with me, and their horses aint been fed.” Isaac gave him two bushels of cracked corn, and the man took out a large roll of bills and peeled one of them off and gave it to Isaac. Then they unbolted a door for him and he vanished into the darkness. They could not see any other men or horses out there, but it was very dark.

As soon as the door was bolted again, the fireman burst out excitedly, “Don’t ye know who that was?” Isaac shook his head. “Hit was Jesse James hisself!” exclaimed the fireman. “He’ll be back, no doubt about it, and he’ll rob ye! Or try to.” Isaac grinned. He did have some money that night, but it would have been small pickin for the likes of Jesse James. The fireman and the two helpers were looking at Isaac as if waiting for his instructions or for permission to return to the safety of their homes. Being taciturn, Isaac did not know quite what to say, even to his own employees. There was still work to be done in the mill that night, but Isaac figured it could wait until morning. “Fire out,” he said, which was his traditional nightly terseness signaling that the engine could be shut off and the men could go home (and which to our modern ears would sound like “Far out,” possibly a comment on the situation). They lost no time in closing up shop. But Isaac remained behind, alone, after each of them had said to him, “G’night, Colonel. Take keer.”

After extinguishing the lone pine torch that had provided illumination inside the mill, Isaac bolted the doors again and then, from beneath the high desk where he kept his accounts, he took out his fiddle-case and opened it, and tucked the fiddle under his chin, and began to play.

As we have remarked, and will continue to remark, Isaac might have been taciturn with words, but not with notes of music, and there were some people, particularly old-timers, who claimed that they could understand perfectly well what Isaac’s fiddle was saying. No, they couldn’t quite put it into words, but they could still understand it. Children, especially girls, were never allowed to listen while Isaac was fiddling. None of the houses of Stay More were close enough to the mill for the sound of this fiddling to carry to them tonight. If Jacob Ingledew had gone out onto his porch and strained his ears…but no, the ex-governor’s hearing was failing in his later years. So there was nobody to hear Isaac’s fiddle, except himself…and a band of nine men sitting on their horses in the woods behind the mill. We can only imagine what thoughts they might have been having, or what words they were speaking to one another, as they listened to the fiddling.

Most biographers of Jesse James refrain from mentioning the Stay More episode, and in others it is reduced to a mere footnote or the trailing edge of a paragraph. But the James gang itself was made up largely of Ozarkers, albeit Ozark desperadoes who were clearly determined, tonight, to part Isaac from his small fortune. So these Ozarkers in the James gang must have understood part of what Isaac’s fiddle was saying to them, and they knew for the most part that it was cussing them to high heaven and daring them to enter his mill at their own peril. We may even suppose that if Frank James was there that night, which he was, he tried his best to dissuade Jesse from proceeding. Unquestionably, one or more of the James gang must have remarked to their leader that a back woods gristmill was hardly in the same class with a bank or a train, and undoubtedly Jesse himself could not shake loose his impression of what a giant of a man Isaac was. But the James gang never backed away from an enterprise, so they didn’t. Jesse himself mounted the mill porch and banged on the door, hollering, “Open up! Cut out that goddumb fiddlin and open the godburn door!” But Isaac went on fiddling, if anything, faster, louder, more obscene. Some of the gang began heaving their shoulders against the door, trying to break it down.

As we have seen, the bigeminality of Isaac’s mill was because one door was for entering, the other for leaving, to create traffic flow and avoid confusion. Now these gangsters in their ignorance were trying to enter the exit door, and this incensed Isaac all the more, and his fiddle music became really animated and profane. But the gangsters succeeded in busting the door loose from its hinges and entered, whereupon the fiddle music abruptly stopped. “You, Luke,” the ringleader ordered one of his men, “guard this here door. Bob and Cole guard the other doors.” Then he hollered into the dark interior, “Okay, mister millerman, give up, or die!”

Now Isaac’s mill, being three-and-a-half stories in height, was a labyrinth of nooks and crannies, passages, stairs, catwalks, traps, hoppers, cribs, coves, lofts, galleries and stoops. Isaac could have been in, or on, any of these; he knew them all by heart, in the pitch dark. One advantage of dark times, even though they bring desperadoes bent on crime, is that they make seeing difficult for the desperadoes. “Strike a light,” the gangleader ordered, and one of the men lighted a torch. Huddling close together, with their revolvers cocked and pointed in every direction, the men prowled the mill, searching for Isaac. They probed all over the first level, then ascended to the second, and then to the third. On the third-and-a-half level, they were inching along a catwalk when suddenly two of them tripped—or were pushed—and plummeted all the way back to the first level, where they broke several bones and began howling in pain. The remaining four men decided that Isaac was not to be found in the ceiling of the mill, and began to descend; by the time they got to the first level they discovered that they were not four but two: Jesse and Frank alone. They called for their comrades but received no answer. “Luke? Bob? Cole?” Jesse called to the men he had left posted at the doors, but he received no answer.

One may imagine that at this point the intrepid Jesse James felt an involuntary shudder; none of the biographies mention it, although an unfavorable biography of Frank James declares that at this point Frank “spontaneously defecated into one leg of his trousers.” “Let’s get out of here,” Frank suggested to his brother, and his brother wisely agreed. The two men quickly left the mill, remounted their horses and rode off. They had not ridden far, however, when Jesse said, “Frank, I wonder if we should jist ride off and leave ’em behind like that. Frank? FRANK??” He discovered the horse beside him was riderless, and he spurred his own horse as hard as he could, and did not even slow down until he was outside of Newton County. It would be weeks later before all of his gang would rejoin him; none of them killed, but each with various bones broken, and it would be years before the James gang went back into criminal action…never again in the state of Arkansas. Working in the mill the next day, one of Isaac’s helpers asked him, “Have any trouble last night, Colonel?” “Some,” Isaac replied, but, being taciturn, did not elaborate.

There really wasn’t much need for light after dark during the First Spell of Darkness, since no one could read, except Jacob (and, now, his ladyfriend—and they used candles). The only need for light after dark was to find one’s way to “go out.” That was a problem on a dark night. But the problem was solved when Eli Willard, making his usual timely reappearance, brought a wagon-load of chamberpots, which he facetiously called “thundermugs” and which the people of Stay More eventually referred to as “slop jars.” Ownership of a chamberpot, they felt, was not “puttin on airs” like the construction of a privy, nor was it necessarily PROG RESS; it was merely a convenient way to remain in while going out, or to go out without going out. Children were given the task of emptying and cleaning the chamberpots each morning, and were warned not to empty them into a path, lest the pots become permanently stuck to the child’s fingers. Nobody ever knew of any child whose pot stuck to his fingers, but no child was ever known to empty a pot into a path, so the superstition was just as efficacious as all their other superstitions.

Eli Willard, while selling the chamberpots to every house, happened to hear of the shortage of bear’s oil which had caused a shortage of light which had caused the boom in chamberpots, and, having sold his last chamberpot, he promised to bring relief for the fuel shortage on his next trip. True to his word, when he came again, a year later, he was driving a large wagon filled with barrels. The barrels, he said, contained “whale” oil. Since no one in Stay More had ever seen the ocean or could even imagine it, Eli Willard had to explain to them that a “whale” is a kind of big fish that lived in the ocean. Had they never read about Jonah in the Bible? Apparently not, because they did not read. They were suspicious of fish oil; they thought it would smell fishy. It did, but not like any of the fish of Stay More. Eli Willard used his pitchmanship to promote his product, and made a killing. He was also offering a line of special new lamps to burn the whale oil in, and made a further killing with these. Verily, Eli Willard made so much money selling whale oil and lamps that he retired from the game, and was not seen in Stay More again for ten years.

Those ten years were called the Decade of Light. There would be another Spell of Darkness after them, but for ten years there was a plenty of light. The last of Isaac’s children, Perlina and Drussie, had been conceived when Salina climbed him in the dark of the First Spell of Darkness. During the Decade of Light, she no longer climbed him, for, as we may have noticed, she was over-fastidious about not being seen by her children, and it was at the beginning of the Decade of Light when John, her third son, happened to spot his mother climbing his father by the light of whale oil. He was about five years old at the time. Far from suffering any “primal scene” trauma from the experience, he thought it looked like some wonderful game, and as soon as his mother was finished, he climbed his father and said, “Do me.” Salina was shocked, and never again climbed Isaac during the Decade of Light. But little John frequently climbed Isaac and said, “Do me,” to which Isaac, being taciturn, could only reply “Not now, son,” which did not deter John from later climbing his father and saying “Do me” again. This was how John got his nickname, “Doomy,” which he had so much trouble outliving in later life. Most people always thought that the nickname derived from the air of doom that seemed to surround John throughout his adult life, but that is not the fact of the case.

Because Salina would not climb Isaac during the Decade of Light, he became restless. One day he spoke to himself. Being taciturn, Isaac did not like to talk, even to himself. But now he announced to himself, “I’m gonna git me a new jug, and drink till the goddamn world looks little.” Isaac, like many silent men, was a connoisseur of fine liquor. His father Jacob had once spoken of “whiskey so good you kin smell the feet of the boys who plowed the corn.” Isaac not only could smell their feet but also could identify them and tell what they had had for breakfast. He could distinguish corn whiskey by regions as ably as any French wine taster could distinguish the vineyards of France. Abler. And in the case of metheglin—variously pronounced “mathiglum” or “mothiglum”—which is a spiced variety of mead, he could not only distinguish between that made from honey and that made from sorghum, but also identify each of the spices. So, having determined to drink until the world looked little, he was determined to do it in style, and after reflection he selected Seth Chism’s sour mash, which was, perhaps, one might say, the Château Lafitte Rothschild of Newton County.

Seth Chism had ground his grain at Isaac’s mill, and Isaac had ground it with especial care because he knew the care with which Seth Chism would distill it. Being taciturn, Isaac could not very well ask Seth Chism for a jug of it, but Seth understood the only possible meaning of a palm full of coins, and wordlessly made the sale. Isaac took his jug into his mill, barred the door, and began to diminish the size of the world. Because he was such a big man, it required half of the jug to reduce the world to half its size. He wanted to continue, but realized that if he drank all the jug the world would be reduced to nothing, so he stopped, and began to test the half-world. There was a barrel of flour in the mill which he knew weighed two hundred pounds; he hoisted it and then held it overhead, convinced it weighed only one hundred pounds. Then he went outside on the porch of his mill and looked around. The trees were half as high, the creek half as full and wide, the blue dome of heaven half as far away. He started down from the high porch, but the top step seemed half as far as it was, and, stepping only halfway, he went over into a somersault and landed flat on his back on the hard ground below. The fall would have killed a man half his size, or broken half his bones, but all it did to Isaac was knock half his breath out of him. He lay there for a while, getting that half back, and while he was lying there a rider rode up, a stranger, a man not three foot tall on a stallion not eight hands high. The little man on the tiny stallion did not know that Isaac was taciturn, and asked him a question:

“Howdy. Whar at is yore post office?”

The only office Isaac had ever heard tell on was his father Jacob’s office, where the ex-governor claimed he was writing his memoirs, but was not. Isaac remained silent, but at length got up from the ground, dusted himself off, and looked down at the little rider. “What’s a post office?” he said.

“Whar at do you’uns git yore mail?”

Near ’bout ever farmer in Stay More valley had one or more males around the place, if this feller was referrin to topcows, but since he was ridin a stallion there weren’t no sense in his lookin fer a cow-critter male. Isaac remained silent.

The stranger turned to his saddlebags, opened them, and drew out a small card, which he offered to Isaac. “This here postcard is addressed to ‘The Good People of Stay More, Arkansas.’ I reckon this here is Stay More, aint it?”

Isaac nodded.

“Then take it,” the stranger requested, and Isaac took it. Thus, in the beginning of the Decade of Light, in, coincidentally, the same year postcards were invented, Stay More became a post office.

The stranger turned his horse and prepared to ride off, but paused. He stared at Isaac for a moment and then asked, “Jist out of curiosity, what war you a-laying thar on the ground fer, when I rid up?”

Isaac studied the postcard, which he could not read, then gave the stranger a look that was not exactly hostile, but not cordial either. “Layin low fer moles,” he answered, and the rider stared at him for only an instant longer before spurring his horse and riding off. Isaac decided to deliver the postcard to his father, who could read it. His father’s house was only half as far as it used to be, and Isaac reached it in half the time. His father too, he discovered, was shrunk to half his size, sitting in his tiny office pretending to write his half-baked memoirs. Isaac gave him the little card. Jacob took the card and read both sides of it, was at first puzzled, then chuckled.

“It’s from ole Eli Willard,” Jacob told his son. “He must’ve got so all-fired rich sellin his whale oil that he’s done took off for a tour of the world. Sent this’un here from some’ers called ‘Stone-hinge,’ in Old England, clear across the sea. Says, ‘Having marvelous time. Wish you were here. Onward to London t’morrow. My fondest regards to all of you. Eli Willard.’” Jacob chuckled again, and observed, “Right thoughty of him, weren’t it?” He poked the postcard into a pigeonhole of his desk, and resumed pretending to write his memoirs, not noticing, or not commenting upon, the fact that his son Isaac positively reeked of Seth Chism’s aqua vitae. Isaac left, vaguely troubled with the thought that Eli Willard was expanding the world that Isaac was trying to contract. For several years following, throughout the Decade of Light, postcards kept coming from Eli Willard in Paris, Geneva, Venice, Rome, Naples, Athens, Istanbul, Sevastopol, Tehran, Bombay, Rangoon, Singapore, Shanghai, Osaka, Honolulu, and, the last one, San Francisco.

Every day, Isaac drank half a jug of corn whiskey to keep the world to half its size, but nobody seemed to notice that he was constantly half seas o’er, not even his better half, Salina, who, however, continued not to climb him. Seth Chism raised his price to half a dollar a jug, but this did not strain Isaac’s finances, because he continued to run his mill, half for corn, half for wheat, troubled only by having to double each measure to get it right, and vaguely troubled by postcards that came from halfway around the world. Stay More was officially declared a United States Post Office, and the postmastership was appointed to Isaac’s younger brother, Christopher Columbus “Lum” Ingledew, who, however, like everybody else except Jacob and his ladyfriend, could neither read nor write, a considerable handicap for a postmaster. It was decided to start a school, the first since Jacob’s little academy of many years previous, and everybody pitched in to build the schoolhouse, which we shall examine in the next chapter. Jacob declined the schoolmastership on the grounds of being past the retirement age. A subscription was got up, and a young man from Harrison up in neighboring Boone County, by the name of Boone Harrison, was hired, at $75 per term plus room and board, to teach the school. Boone Harrison was just barely literate himself, but he could, and did, teach people how to read and write, and thus it was that during the Decade of Light the people of Stay More acquired not only a post office but a means of patronizing both ends of it, sending and receiving, and once they became literate they spent all their spare time writing letters, a worthless enterprise.

The post office in its early years was not a separate structure, but occupied one small corner of Isaac’s mill, where, twice weekly, Lum Ingledew would sort and distribute mail, what little there was of it, until the people discovered how to write off for catalogs and to circulate chain letters. One of the first catalogs to arrive in Stay More was a seed catalog, and the recipients discovered to their amazement that the Tah May Toh, which grew wild on fifteen-foot vines all over Stay More, and which they had always thought poisonous, was considered edible, so immediately everybody began harvesting and eating ’maters, as they called them, and suffering no effects other than the heady (and body) sense of voluptuousness that gave the ’mater its nickname, “love apple.” It is not exactly an aphrodisiac, because no frigid woman nor impotent man has ever been cured by eating one, but in the case of persons already healthily disposed toward sex, it enriches the disposition. Hence, the numbers of people who comprised Stay More’s maximum population during the last part of that century were conceived and born during the Decade of Light. But Isaac’s wife Salina, even though she acquired just as fond a taste for ’maters as anybody else, still would not climb Isaac during the Decade of Light. After eating a ’mater, she might remark to him, “I’d like to climb a tree,” but she wouldn’t climb him. In time, she spoke of “climbing the walls,” but she never again climbed Isaac until the Decade of Light was over. And he went on drinking, so that she looked to him too small, less than three feet high, to climb him anyway.

Oddly enough, all of the energy or voluptuousness or libido or lubricity generated by the love apple cannot be discharged through sex alone. There is a generous residue that seeks other outlets, so during the peak of ’mater-pickin time the women commenced frenzies of quilting bees, and the men devoted all their spare time to the game they called Base Ball, originated by Jacob Ingledew years before. The equipment remained unrefined: a hickory stake for a bat, a round chunk of sandstone for a ball, gunnysacks for bases; but the men spent so much time playing it during ’mater-pickin time that they perfected it in many ways: some players were so strong they could knock the rock clear out of the field, which constituted a “free run home,” while the pitchers, in order to thwart this type of batter, learned how to make the rock actually “curve” instead of going in a straight line, and some pitchers, by applying their tobacco juice to the rock, could really confuse and harass the batter. Isaac Ingledew, once the greatest batter and pitcher of all, was still in his thirties, and tried to play, but could not: he would swing at the rock before it was halfway to him.

Every five years during the Decade of Light, that is, twice, Stay More hosted a gala reunion of the G.A.R., the veterans who had fought with Jacob and Isaac during the War. These men would come, with their families, from all over Newton and adjoining counties, and hundreds of primitive tents would be pitched in the Field of Clover, and a great time would be had by all. The women of Stay More would spend days in their kitchens preparing banquets. The menfolk kept the stills running night and day, and shot all the game out of all the woods. The reunion began on a Second Tuesday of the Month and lasted only three days, but that was long enough to eat up all the food and drink all the liquor and listen to a speech by Jacob Ingledew. The first reunion was such a big success that when time came five years later for the second one, even some of John Cecil’s Rebels tried to sneak in with their families, but they were spotted and driven away. The second reunion happened by accident to occur during the peak of ’mater-pickin time. The womenfolk not only served loads of fresh whole ’maters cooled in springwater, but also they prepared and served baked stuffed ’mater, fried ’mater, broiled ’mater, sautéed crumbed ’mater, as well as ’mater juice, ’mater gazpacho, ’mater compote, ’mater aspic, ketchup, puree, relish, ’mater salad, ’mater jam and ’mater pie, this last, however, being made with green ’maters, which do not have the potency of red ones. Most of the out-of-town reunionists were skeptical of ’maters, until the Stay Morons assured them that they had been eating them for several years now without being p’izened, whereupon they, and everybody, tucked their napkins in their collars and did their duty.

The banquet was again scheduled to run three days, but nobody slept the first night, either making sounds or listening to them. The tent camp in the Field of Clover was a ruckus of amatory sounds, and the various residences of town were not exactly silent, either, except for Isaac Ingledew’s. Isaac got out of bed, allowing as how he had better go and see what could be done to quieten things down. On the dark road to the Field of Clover, he was climbed eight times, so when he arrived at the tent camp he was grateful to accept the drink that somebody offered him and to rest awhile. Returning home, he was only climbed twice, so he figured that things were beginning to quieten down. Once asleep, in deep, deep sleep, he did not notice the noises going on through the night. In the morning it was absolutely silent, until the creak of the first wagonwheel as, one by one, the out-of-town reunionists began returning homeward. By noon the tent camp was abandoned, and the people of Stay More did not come out of their houses for all that day. There would be another G.A.R. reunion in five more years, but it would be scheduled at a time of year other than ’mater-pickin. And that year would be beyond the Decade of Light.

The Decade of Light, like most decades, lasted only ten years. And then it was over. The barrels of whale oil went dry, were empty. The Second Spell of Darkness was ushered in. By daylight, people sat on their porches watching the road for the reappearance of Eli Willard. By night, untired, they went to bed and lay awake with insomnia. The chamberpots were hauled out from under the beds and dusted off, and a new generation of children was warned that the pots would stick to their fingers if they emptied them into a path. Realizing their insomnia was hopeless, the people sat up in the dark, telling to one another terrifying ghost stories, which did nothing for their insomnia but gave them something to do in the dark. Women and children were more suggestible, and both more susceptible to, and addicted to, the shivers brought on by these tales of “boogers” and “haints.” One enterprising group of women, in an effort to kick the habit, attempted to have a quilting bee in the dark, but the product, which somebody referred to as a “crazy quilt,” was a source of mirth to everybody else. The men tried to whittle in the dark, and a number of fingers were lost before this practice was abandoned. When all the ghost stories that everybody knew had been told and retold several times, the more imaginative (and more insomniac) Stay Morons began to create new stories, fantastic tales that stretched credulity beyond bounds. But having nothing else to do, the people began to believe these stories, and the Second Period of Darkness that followed the Decade of Light was not real, that is, it was mostly fictitious or illusory, all in the mind. Isaac Ingledew sobered up, because now that it was dark again Salina was climbing him all the time, every time she caught him standing, and sometimes even when he was sitting, but, being sober, he believed that he was only imagining it, that it was not real. The world was full-sized again for him, nothing was halved, but the full-sized world was dark and fanciful.

In time, among all the other dark chimeras and phantasms that were conceived in this world, there appeared the unmistakable specter of Eli Willard, driving another large wagon laden with barrels. He was older, and his trip around the world had broadened him about the middle, but, no doubt about it, he was Eli Willard. The barrels he had this time, he said, contained a fuel which did not smell fishy. It smelled powerful strong, all right, but it did not smell fishy. It was made from coal, a kind of rock, a pitch black rock deep in the earth. It was called kerosine, he said. There were grown people in Stay More who had been too young during Eli Willard’s previous visit to remember him, although they had heard his name many times, but this feller trying to hoax them into believing that oil could be squeezed out of a rock could not possibly be Eli Willard, but an imposter. Everybody knows that rocks are the driest things that are. No, whale oil was good enough for them, any time. But this person pretending to be Eli Willard claimed that all the whales had been killed; there was no more whale oil. Nothing but kerosine. The Stay Morons, especially the younger ones, were suspicious of him. The sun went down, darkness fell, Eli Willard lighted one of his kerosine lamps as a demonstration. His patience was ebbing. “Take it or leave it,” he said. So they left it. Whether or not they believed that oil could be squeezed out of a black rock, they equated such an artificial product with PROG RESS, and wanted none of it.

PROG RESS is always at the expense of pain and sacrifice and expense, and even if the Stay Morons did not know of the men who had toiled and died to mine the coal and make the oil, they guessed rightly that kerosine is the product of pain and sacrifice and expense. Darkness might tend to obscure and even confuse the world, but in darkness there was little pain or sacrifice or expense. Eli Willard sold not a drop of kerosine in the Ozarks, not that year anyway, and lost his shirt. Now, at Stay More, he was more dispirited than he had been years earlier when he had failed to sell raincoats and umbrellas during the drought. He turned off his demonstration lamp and sat with his head in his hands in the darkness. He hoped somebody would offer him a bed for the night, but nobody did, because with their insomnia they no longer went to bed but stayed up telling wild and fanciful stories.

Eli Willard listened to these stories, and was amazed. He had thought he understood the Ozark mind and heart as well as any outsider could, but these stories dumbfounded him. They were either incredibly fabulous or impossibly inconceivable. At any rate, he was captivated, so that when daylight came and the people stopped telling stories and went to work, he decided to stay for another night to hear more stories. But throughout the long day, with nothing to do because nobody was buying kerosine, he felt a growing ennui that left him utterly weary and miserable by late afternoon. Salina Ingledew found him in this condition and asked what was ailing him. He replied simply, “I’m bored.”

Now, to any Stay Moron, any Ozarker, the word “bored” had nothing to do with boredom, but meant humiliated or chagrined. Salina spread the word to her neighbors, and everyone assumed that Eli Willard was humiliated because of his failure to sell kerosine, but this did not change their attitude toward purchasing coal oil. Had they known what he really meant by being “bored,” they would have been puzzled, for at that time nobody in the Ozarks had ever been bored in the sense that Eli Willard meant. “Boredom” was a word, and an emotion, like “nostalgia,” that had to be learned and acquired, and fortunately Eli Willard’s boredom was not yet contagious, although he was severely afflicted with it. Anyone who has contracted acute boredom knows that it doesn’t easily go away; hence, when the people began telling their stories again after darkness, Eli Willard listened to them but was no longer amazed. He was bored. What had seemed fabulous and fanciful in the stories now struck him merely as long-windedness. What had seemed clever and imaginative now seemed only silly. In the middle of an exceptionally long and silly story, he left town, using his kerosine lamps to light his way.

Both the post office and the school remained closed during the Second Spell of Darkness, but nobody seemed to miss either one of them. Most of what came through the post office had been what we would today refer to as “junk mail” and it was a relief not to get any. As for the school, the people began to realize that Jacob Ingledew had had a good reason for excluding reading and writing from his old academy. The more one read or wrote, the less one talked. At any rate, Boone Harrison the schoolmaster returned home to the county and town he was named after, and the schoolhouse was converted, as we shall soon see, to other purposes. When everybody told, or had heard, every possible tale and fiction that could be told or heard, and the most inventive of the yarn spinners had exhausted their imaginations, the Stay Morons turned for diversion to the singing of songs. Modern folklorists have tabulated and recorded 2,349 distinct “folk songs” heard in the Ozarks, all but 847 of which have been traced to ancient England, Scotland, Wales, or Ireland; 176 of the latter were invented and composed in Stay More at one time or another, but all 2,349 of the songs were known by heart to one or more Stay Morons, so the dark and starless nights were filled with song, and Isaac Ingledew would furnish accompaniment with his fiddle, at least after the children had gone to bed.

Song is poetry, of a kind, and the night is the most poetic of times, so the people of Stay More were no longer oppressed by the darkness, and most all of them were able to sleep again after a night of singing. Most all of them, that is, except Isaac Ingledew, who had discovered during his months of insomnia that sleep is an extravagant and useless pastime, and who never slept again, to the end of his days. We do not know, and can scarcely imagine, how he passed the many hours of life that others give over to slumber, but he was never idle, except when Salina was climbing him, which she continued to do, every chance she got, until…. But that is another story, another chapter, another edifice.

Chapter nine

It was built as a schoolhouse, and so it remained during the Decade of Light, Boone Harrison holding sway as literacy-giver to the young and old of Stay More, many of whom would walk three or four miles in all kinds of weather just to “git a little schoolin.” The schoolhouse was both a house of learning and the community center. Its bigeminality (we have hinted unsubtly and often that architectural bigeminality is sexual) was definitely and overtly sexist: the left door was for females, the right door for males, without exception (although an occasional “tomboy” among the girls would boldly use the right door…but no boy ever used the left door, because there was never the equivalent of a “queen,” “nancy,” “molly,” or “betty” anywhere in the Ozarks). Since both doors led to the same one-room interior, we may assume that the reason for two of them was to facilitate egress at recess, lunch and dismissal, which, when indicated by Boone Harrison, cleared the room in 3.6 seconds. Any door, of course, is for both entering and leaving. Some doors are more pleasurable to enter, while others are more pleasurable to exit, but in any case one must usually always enter before exiting. The study of architecture is a fine thing.

Boone Harrison never discussed the doors with his pupils; tacitly they understood what the doors were for, and which to use, according to sex. The signal to enter was the ringing of the bell, housed in the small cupola atop the ridgepole; the signal to exit was Boone Harrison sitting down. When he sat down, he would take out his pocketknife and whittle goose-feathers into quill pens for his pupils to write with. He manufactured his own ink from the “ink balls” that grow on oak trees, boiling them in a little water and setting the liquid with copperas. The pupils always licked their pens as an aid to concentration before commencing to write, and this caused their lips to turn the blue-green color of the ink. It was easy to distinguish the literate from the illiterate Stay Morons: the latter did not have blue-green lips. During the Decade of Light, there arose almost a caste system based upon lip color, with those of deep blue-green lips at the upper caste, and those with natural lips at the bottom. It was possible to cross caste lines by kissing, and kissing became very popular, until in time the color of one’s lips was meaningless, and the caste system fell apart, and the Decade of Light came to an end, and Boone Harrison sat down for the last time, then stood up and went home to the county and town he was named after, and those who could read and write forgot how.

The schoolhouse was empty during the first years of the Second Spell of Darkness. Vandals broke its windows one by one, and someone stole the picture of George Washington that was its sole interior decoration. The pages of the McGuffey’s Readers, Ray’s Arithmetics and the Blue Back Spellers were employed as “asswipes” until they were used up. Bats and owls roosted in the ceiling of the schoolhouse, and were noctural. Everything was nocturnal. It was dark and often starless and even the moon was missing as often as not. Because all women are beautiful in the dark, all the girls and women of Stay More were ravishing, and were ravished. And because the darkness makes one invisible to one’s enemies, nobody had any enemies. It was a dark and peaceful and licentious time.

Then, one day (or night), for the first time since the coming of the “saddlebag preacher” who had pestered Noah Ingledew because of his treehouse and had been ridden out of town on a rail, an itinerant evangelist showed up in town. He discovered the schoolhouse empty and unused, and decided to convert it to a church. The hour of his first service was norated around the village, but when the hour came nobody showed up, except old Elijah Duckworth, who took a seat on the front bench, and waited. The preacher waited too, and when nobody else showed up, he asked Lige if he thought he should go ahead with the service. “Wal, Reverend,” Lige observed, “if I put some hay in the wagon and take it down to the pasture to feed the cows and only one cow shows up, I feed her.” So the preacher went ahead and gave his service, with a rousing full-length sermon. Afterwards he asked Lige what he had thought of it. “Wal, Reverend, I’ll tell ye,” said Lige. “If I put some hay in the wagon and go down to the pasture to feed the cows and only one cow shows up, I don’t give her the whole damn load.”

Later Lige spread word to the other Stay Morons that the preacher was a “Presbyterian.” The old-timers had a vague memory of the saddlebag preacher of Noah’s time, and they had vague associations of unpleasantness with him. The new-timers had never heard of a preacher, and this “Presbyterian” seemed very suspicious. So they stayed away from his services. Failing to get any further audiences, he began pastoring them individually, door to door. Presbyterians, he explained to them, were strong believers in predestination, but the Stay Morons couldn’t understand predestination any better than Presbyterianism. Trying to simplify it, the minister would shout, “What is to be, will be!” “Why, shore,” his listeners were apt to respond, “any durn fool knows that.”

The Presbyterian began to claim that, as evidence of his message, the world was predestined to be plunged into darkness during the daylight on a certain day soon approaching. Nobody believed him; nobody wanted to believe him, because the world was dark enough already. But on the day appointed (which the Presbyterian had previously learned about from astronomers in the East) there occurred a total eclipse of the sun which darkened the earth for a while, long enough for the preacher to convert everybody except the Ingledews to Presbyterianism. Thereafter he managed to fill the schoolhouse (now churchhouse) every Sunday morning, until one day, when another preacher, who called himself a “Methodist,” came into the churchhouse and challenged the Presbyterian to a debate on the subject of predestination, which the Methodist was against. The debate lasted for three days, then the Methodist challenged the Presbyterian to prove predestination, which the Presbyterian could not do, there being no other eclipses scheduled for the immediate future. The congregation was allowed to put the matter to a vote, and since the majority of them liked the idea of free salvation better than predestination, they gave the pastorate to the Methodist, who conducted services for some time thereafter, until the day another preacher, calling himself a “Baptist,” came and challenged the Methodist to a debate over the issue of baptism by sprinkling or immersion.

Most Stay Morons readily agreed that immersion is certainly a lot more fun and probably cleaner than sprinkling, and they became Baptists in denomination until a “Campbellite” minister appeared and argued against denominationalism, pointing out that there is nothing in the Bible authorizing anybody to call themselves Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians or anything else. If, he said, there had to be a name over the door of the church, then let it be simply “Church of Christ.” This made eminent sense to everybody, and they dismissed the Baptist preacher and installed the Campbellite, but he was not a very interesting, let alone exciting, personality. The Dinsmores, who gave him a place to sleep his first Saturday in town, said he wouldn’t eat his supper. They said he had remarked, “You folks sure do set a good table, but I don’t never eat much when I’m a-fixin to give a sarmon.” Then on Sunday morning the Dinsmores set out a fine breakfast of ham and eggs, but the preacher wouldn’t touch it. “Earthly food seems to hinder a true feast of the spirit,” he said. “My finest sarmons has all been preached on a empty stomach.” So he had just one cup of coffee and went off to the churchhouse. After listening to his sermon, one of the Dinsmores remarked, “Why, that there preacher might just as well have et.”

The Campbellite was supplanted by a colorful preacher of the “Holiness” faith, who amazed the Stay Morons by handling poisonous snakes without being bitten and running his hand through fire without being burned. For several months the Stay More church was a Holiness church, until the novelty of the snakes and fire wore off. Subsequently, other ministers converted the church to Assembly of God, Gospel Tabernacle, Seventh-Day Adventist and Pentecostal. One Sunday, even a Roman Catholic priest wandered into Stay More and was permitted to celebrate a mass at the church, but afterwards the stares that he received from the Stay Morons unnerved him, and he wandered on out of town. Stay More had run the gamut of gentile religions without deciding upon any one of them.

Then Eli Willard returned. His hair was nearly all white now, and he was wearing a different kind of suit. He had no whale oil or kerosine; he had nothing. Each person who saw him noticed this, and asked him, “What’re ye sellin this time?” but Eli Willard just smiled. He tethered his horse to a post at Isaac’s mill, then sat in a chair on the porch. Isaac, being taciturn, didn’t ask him any questions. After most of the population of Stay More had assembled around the porch, Eli Willard stood up and cleared his throat and said, “Friends and Good People. I hawk no goods, vend no wares. A higher calling brings me to you, and I offer you free of charge this wonderful message. Others will tell you that God is divided into three: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. I do not hold with that. I believe that there is, at most, one God. Hence I am now pleased to call myself a Unitarian. Unitarians do not believe in heaven or hell, except in the spirit, in the now rather than the hereafter. Unitarians believe—”

He was interrupted and drowned out by a chorus of protests. No heaven? No hell? Fiddle-faddle! If there is no hereafter, why live? If there had been one thing that all the other preachers had agreed upon, it was that we must conduct our lives in such a way as to be rewarded after death and avoid punishment in the hereafter. The men began shaking their fists at Eli Willard, the women spat at him, and the younger people began throwing rocks at him. He had to duck inside the mill for protection. He stayed there until everyone had left, except Isaac. He said to Isaac, in parting, “Well, I tried.” Isaac, who did not believe in the hereafter but had no use for Unitarianism either, did not comment.

None of the Ingledew males were ever converted to any religion, perhaps a heritage from Jacob, who had originally left Tennessee because, as he had told Fanshaw, “the preachers was so thick a feller couldn’t say ‘heck’ without gittin a sermon fer it.” Isaac, if anything, was even less of a believer than his father had been, and his sons would be less than he, and their sons less than they, and so on, until the last Ingledew, who…but he is the last chapter, and we are only halfway there. What little light there was during the Second Spell of Darkness came in the form of lightning; Isaac would shake his fist at the lightning and silently dare God to strike him down. God never did. God killed many an animal with lightning, and blasted many a tree, and from time to time destroyed a human being or two, but God never hit Isaac.

Isaac’s wife Salina “caught religion” when the Presbyterian produced an eclipse of the sun, and although she was most partial to the Baptist, she attended all the church services in Stay More, and Isaac sometimes accompanied her out of curiosity, which is the bottom rung on the ladder of motives for going to church, the other rungs being, in ascending hierarchy: 2, being too timid to refuse, 3, a sense of duty, 4, a desire to mingle with others, 5, a desire to learn the means of salvation, 6, a desire to be saved, 7, lust for paradise in the hereafter, 8, schizophrenic need to need, 9, insanity, and 10, sainthood. There were very few Stay Morons who ascended to the top of this ladder. Isaac remained on the bottom rung, and Salina got about as far as the sixth. As far as anybody could tell, she never asked him what he thought of the sermons, or never asked him anything about religion, although she talked to him freely, for hours on end, expressing her own views and opinions. One of the preachers had gone so far as to hint that sexual intercourse, even between lawfully wed husband and wife, was not in the best interests of attaining heaven, and once again Salina ceased climbing Isaac, even though it was dark and no one could see them, and once again Isaac turned to strong beverages for solace.

Nearly all the preachers, in particular the Methodist, abhorred alcohol, and preached frequently against it, and consequently Seth Chism had “caught religion” and given up the making of his superior sour mash, so Isaac was required to patronize Caleb Duckworth’s inferior brand of rotgut. This stuff was just as capable of reducing the world to half its size, but it also reduced time to half its length, which was terribly confusing to Isaac, who in compensation for it began to double everything: each day was forty-eight hours in length, or rather Monday came twice a week, and the Second Tuesday of the Month was also the Third; spring and summer came twice a year, and so did autumn, which wasn’t so bad, but two winters in one year was awful.

Actually, the Year that Winter Came Twice was perceived not alone by Isaac but also by everyone in Stay More. It was the coldest and longest winter that anyone had ever known. Isaac could have warned them of its coming, because he knew that the first frost always occurred six weeks after the first chirp of a katydid, and he had heard the first katydid’s chirp twelve weeks before, which, even by his double reckoning, meant that a heavy frost was coming any minute now, but, being taciturn, he didn’t warn anybody, and sure enough the terrible winter came and caught them by surprise. All the birds flew south, but a large flock of mallards flying over was caught in freak currents of frozen air, and, frozen solid as stones, plummeted to the earth, breaking through roofs all over Stay More, or landing upon a random farm animal, dog, or cat, who were killed. The people gathered up all the frozen ducks and stacked them in a pile, where they remained frozen throughout the winter. Whenever anybody had a hankering for duckmeat, they would just grab one off the pile and throw it into the fire.

But it was so cold that winter that keeping the fires going night and day was a major effort. The youngsters were required to keep the fires going at night, and, as one of the survivors of that winter expressed it to me in his old age, “We had to put wood on the fire all night with one hand, and sleep with the other!” This might be an exaggeration, but we may imagine what he meant. In order to obtain enough wood for the fires, the Stay Morons practically denuded the forests during the course of the Winter that Came Twice, cutting all the second-growth timber that had started growing after the great fire which had occurred during the great drought. Before Christmas, it began to snow heavily in Stay More; snow rarely fell in the Ozarks, and never before Christmas, but now there were blizzards. By Christmas, as my informant quoted above expressed it, “the snow was so all-fired deep we had to shit standing up!” Again he might be exaggerating, but we may picture the practice.

The barns of that era were rather ramshackle, and offered little protection to the livestock, who froze; chickens saved themselves by roosting on the chimney shoulders and absorbing some warmth from the stones. The leather belts and pulleys in Isaac’s mill would not run because they were frozen, and even if he thawed them out he couldn’t make a fire hot enough to boil the frozen water in his boiler. It was too blamed cold to work in the mill anyway, and his helpers and fireman had already quit on him, so halfway through the winter, or rather between the two winters that came that year, he quit and went home to sit by the fire, which was what everybody else was already doing. With not even the chore of milking to do, since the cows were frozen, there was no work for anybody except women, except chopping wood for the fires. Everybody had runny noses, and some people had runny eyes, and some coughed badly, and several developed chest complaints, and a few, despite herbal remedies, died, but could not be buried until the ground thawed in the spring, so were left frozen in Isaac’s unused mill. Isaac’s family was more fortunate than most; the son John had a bad cough, but only Salina was sick enough to go to bed, and the girls Perlina and Drussie were old enough to assume their mother’s duties.

Although, architecturally speaking, the houses of that time were built well, the fireplaces were not of optimum efficiency: most of the heat went up the chimney. And simply sitting beside the fire was not sufficient to keep warm on the coldest days of that winter. But there was nothing else to do, and consequently the Stay Morons discovered by accident that condition which we call boredom, which had been unknown to them before. Since the word “bored” meant “humiliated” to them, they would have a problem finding a name for their condition. It was Denton Ingledew, Isaac’s oldest boy, who first identified and attempted to name the condition. He was past marryin’ age, and so was the second oldest boy, Monroe, but they, like so many Ingledews, were too shy to approach women with romance or even matrimony in mind, so they still lived at home in Isaac’s dogtrot house. One day in the coldest part of the winter, all the Ingledews of Isaac’s household were crowded together around the fire, trying to keep warm. They had been sitting there for five hours, not moving much except to throw another log on the fire. Denton yawned, and said, “I feel so kinda like…” but no word would come to him. He could not name his condition. Half an hour later Monroe yawned too, and said, “Yeah, I know what ye mean.” But he couldn’t name it either. Some time later, John, the third boy, yawned, and remarked, “Me, too,” but was unable to expand upon that. After a while, Willis, the last son, remarked, “Same here,” but he too was at a loss for names.

The condition, whatever it was, had affected the girls too by this time; although they weren’t yawning, tears were trickling slowly down their cheeks. “I’ve got the wearies,” remarked Perlina, and Drussie, some time later, put in, “It’s jist so teejus,” but neither of these words would quite do. After further reflection, Denton observed of his condition, “I aint interested in a damn thing. It’s sorter like after I had the frakes.” Monroe, who had also had the frakes, said, “Yeah, that’s sorter it,” and John, veteran of the frakes too, added, “I reckon.” The girls, who like all females had not had the frakes, did not quite understand. Isaac, their father, did not know what his children were talking about, because he wasn’t bored and never would be. A man who can stay awake all night long without ever going to sleep for the rest of his life is the least likely person to get bored. Willis, who had also had the frakes, remarked, “Naw, when a feller’s a-gittin over the frakes, he jist don’t give a damn about nothin, but this here that we’uns have caught, it’s somethin else. I feel like I’d like to give a damn about somethin, but there jist aint nothin around right at the moment to latch onto.” “Yeah,” his sisters chimed in. “That’s more like it.” Some time later, Denton observed, “But we still aint got a word fer it.” As the hours drifted by, one or the other of them would make a suggestion. Again Perlina offered “wearies.” They debated it, concluding it wasn’t quite right. “Teejusments,” suggested Drussie. “Mopes,” offered Willis. “Ho-hums,” suggested John. Monroe came up with “timesick.” They liked that one, but thought it was kind of highfallutin.

Finally Denton snapped his fingers and said, “sour hours.” The way he pronounced it was almost identical to the way they pronounce “sorrows,” which means not grief but regrets, and the resemblance, with the suggestion that sour hours produce sorrows, won the votes of his brothers and sisters. They were so excited over finding a word for their condition that their condition no longer obtained, and they couldn’t wait to spread the word through the village, which they promptly did, finding dozens of people sitting beside their fireplaces afflicted with the sourhours. As soon as they were told this new word for their condition, they rapidly grew interested in it, and before long nobody had the sourhours anymore, at least not for another hour or two. Pronunciation of the noun, sourhour, and of the passive verb, sourhoured, if vociferous enough, also resembles the barking of a certain breed of dog, and for the next hour or two everybody in Stay More went around barking at one another, and their dogs tilted their heads to one side and gave their masters puzzled looks. But after an hour or two, the people grew sourhoured of barking at one another, and gave it up, and resumed passing the sour hours by the fire, day after day, shivering with cold, yawning, rubbing their arms, thinking no thoughts, none at all.

They were discovered there thus, late in the winter, by the first preacher to come to Stay More since the winter began. Most preachers seemed to have such a fondness for hellfire that cold weather was abominable to them, and not one had been seen since summer, until this one came. This one was a big man, almost as tall as Isaac Ingledew, and he was dressed up in furs, bearskins and coonskins and beaver skins, which made him look even bigger, positively mammoth, and the horse he was riding on was the biggest horse anyone had ever seen, big enough to support not only the mammoth preacher but also the girl, or young woman, riding behind him, also dressed all over in animal skins. The very sight of this couple and their horse was enough to banish the sourhours for the rest of the day. Beneath the preacher’s otterskin hat protruded bushy tufts of red hair surrounding a pink freckled face reddened by the cold, a large red mustache dripping with icicles: it was a surpassingly gentle face, not jolly, but capable of compassion and animation. He seemed to be close to forty, but not beyond it, while his companion was only a teenager. Her hair was the same color as his, which made people surmise that she was his daughter. He went from door to door in the village, speaking in a soft, almost inaudible voice, inviting everyone to join him at the meeting house on the following morning, which was Sunday. He and the girl, or young woman, were given beds for the night at the Dinsmores, who had boarded the unhungry Campbellite, and they noted that he, in contrast to the former, had a prodigious appetite. They offered him a second helping, and then a third, a fourth, and a fifth; they believed he would have accepted a sixth, if they had offered it, which they could not. His name, they learned, was Long Jack Stapleton. Brother Long Jack Stapleton, he said, although nobody ever learned which denomination, if any, he belonged to. No, the young woman was not his daughter; she was his “baby sister,” name of Sirena.

After supper the Dinsmores were treated to a preview of his powers of narration, when he told them the story of Samson and Delilah, creating such powerful word pictures that his audience could actually “see” the whole dramatic love story unfolding before their eyes. If the modern mobile home may be traced back to Viridiana Boatright’s “cat wagon,” if the monthly luncheon of Lions and Rotarians may be traced to Jacob and Noah Ingledew’s ceremony of the clock on the Second Tuesday of the Month, if the oral tradition may be traced to Jacob’s entertaining Lizzie Swain and her large brood with stories about Indians, then surely it would be no exaggeration to trace the motion picture, and by extension television, to Brother Long Jack Stapleton. Before his service on Sunday morning, the Dinsmores had spread word of his powers throughout the village, and all the men and boys crowded through the right door and all the women and girls through the left door, and the meeting house was packed to the rafters, so that body heat alone was sufficient to warm the room, which had been below freezing moments earlier. Brother Stapleton mounted the pulpit; without all his furs he did not look quite so imposing, but still he was the most striking figure ever to stand on that platform. He surveyed the “amen corner,” where the most prominent men of the church were sitting, spotted his host Clyde Dinsmore among them, and asked, “Brother Dinsmore, ‘sposin ye could lead us sing a hymn or two?”

Brother Dinsmore rose from his bench, shifted his cud of tobacco from one cheek to the other, and faced the congregation. “Brethern and sistern, let’s us sing one of them old’uns that we’uns all know—‘Warshed in the Blood.’” Then he cleared his throat loudly and gave out the key: “DO MI SOL DO! DO SOL MI DO!” and began swinging his arms vigorously as every voice sang at its top…every voice, that is, except Brother Long Jack Stapleton’s. Maybe he didn’t know the words. Then Brother Dinsmore requested that they sing “Lead, Kindly Light,” followed by “Abide with Me.” After that, Brother Stapleton asked for a volunteer to lead them in prayer, and Seth Chism stood up and thanked God for sending them a parson in the coldest winter ever known to man and beast, and asked God to grant the parson power to banish their sourhours and save their souls, in the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Then he sat down and Brother Stapleton began his sermon.

“Brethering and sistering,” he addressed them in his gentle voice that could barely be heard in the back of the room, “I take as my text this mornin the eleventh and twelfth verses of the second chapter of Solomon’s song, ‘For lo, the winter is past, the snow is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singin of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heared in our land.’”

“Hold on, Parson!” said Brother Chism, rising to his feet. “Turtles aint got no voices!”

“It means turtledove,” Brother Stapleton explained, and described one, and held out his hand, and a real, or seemingly real turtledove flew down and alighted upon his hand, and everyone’s mouth gaped open…everyone’s but his sister Sirena, who had seen him do this trick many times before. Then the preacher’s gentle voice lifted and quickened, and he pounded his Bible and said, “That’s what it says here, friends, ‘For lo,’ it says, ‘the winter is past,’ it says, ‘the snow is over and gone,’ it says!” And the rhythms of his voice lulled his audience, hypnotized them, their eyes glazed over as he painted pictures of springtime and bloom and the renewal of the verdant earth.

The chief difference between Brother Stapleton’s magic and that of the motion picture and television is that while the latter are only visual, the former was not only visual but also tactile, olfactory, and gustatory. His audience could feel the spring breeze blowing through their hair, smell the blossom of dogwood, taste the first-harvested sprout of sparrowgrass. For the length of his sermon, which lasted two and one-half hours, the winter actually was over and gone. The main body of his sermon he devoted to the story of Solomon, dwelling upon the legendary love between the wise King and the Dark Girl of the Song. He did not use the word “love,” which was an embarrassment, but everybody knew exactly what he was talking about, and everybody could see vividly depicted on the “screen” of the mind the exact lineaments of the dazzling Solomon in all his glory and the exquisite exotic beauty of the girl, and they could see as clearly as if they were there the nut orchards and fruit orchards and shepherds’ tents where the lovers met. We may appreciate the suitability of Stapleton’s selection of the subject matter, for Solomon himself (or whoever wrote his Song) was a master of description who gave us a vivid image of his beloved, step by step from her eyes to her toes. Brother Stapleton’s “projection” or “showing” or “screening” concluded after two-and-a-half hours with the words, “And so, my friends, we may think that God keers fer each of us jist like King Solomon keered fer that purty gal, and we air comforted by it.” Then he ceased.

His audience, like an audience at a movie theater when the house lights come on after a gripping film, sat motionless and unseeing for several minutes. Then most of them smiled and looked very entertained and satisfied, but a few of them looked perplexed, and one of these, Seth Chism, rose and asked, “Aint there to be no call to the mourner’s bench?”

Brother Stapleton stared for a moment at that front bench, empty, reserved for sinners seeking salvation. He shook his head.

Clyde Dinsmore rose and asked, “Aint there to be no communion? We done brung the grape juice and sody crackers.”

Brother Stapleton replied, “No, Brother Dinsmore, but mightn’t ye lead us in the closin prayer?”

Brother Dinsmore made a short prayer, thanking God for the “show” and apologizing to Him for the absence of the call for sinners and communion, in Jesus’ Name, Amen. Everybody had their heads bowed, except the male Ingledews, who noticed that Brother Stapleton crossed his fingers at the moment Jesus’ name was invoked.

Then the service was over.

Salina Ingledew invited Brother Stapleton and his sister Sirena to Sunday dinner, and everybody went home, marveling to one another about how real that “show” had been, everybody, that is, except the deacons of the “amen corner,” Brothers Chism, Dinsmore, Plowright, Coe and Whitter, who remained behind in the meeting house to discuss their new minister and his unorthodox ways of conducting a service. They granted that he sure spoke a right powerful sermon, they even admitted that they had seen those images plain as day, but some of those images seemed a mite too bold; for instance, in that part toward the end, what was the King and that girlfriend of his doing out there in that orchard as night was coming on? The deacons might be mistaken, but it sure looked to them like that King and his girlfriend were actually fornicating! Right there in full view of everybody, even the women and children. The rest of the show was all right, real pretty in fact, but that part was scandalous! The deacons agreed that they should speak with Brother Stapleton, and find out if the King and his girlfriend were really doing what it looked like they were doing, and, if so, how come Brother Stapleton allowed it to be shown right there in front of the women and children?

Meanwhile, the new minister was enjoying himself at the Ingledew’s table, where he had six helpings of spit-roasted mallard with all the trimmings. Salina and her daughters held Brother Stapleton in absolute awe, not alone for his fabulous sermon but also for his appetite. It was the custom, then and for many years afterward, for the women and girls to wait until the men and boys had finished eating before serving themselves, but Salina and her daughters couldn’t help hanging around the table and watching Brother Stapleton eat. Sirena Stapleton, who usually tried not watching her brother eat, hung around too, because she was falling in love with all four of the Ingledew brothers. At the table, Brother Stapleton tried to engage Isaac in conversation, but quickly discovered that Isaac was taciturn, so he talked instead with the “boys” (even though the boys were as grown as they would ever be, Ingledew brothers would always be known as “the boys,” even in their old age). The boys did not hold Brother Stapleton in such awe as their mother and sisters did, but still they sure had enjoyed watching that show, they said, and hoped he would put on some more shows for them to watch. He replied that he wasn’t in any great hurry to move on. Denton Ingledew, the oldest brother, was brave enough to ask, “How come, durin the prayer, you crossed yore fingers at the end?”

Brother Stapleton choked on a bite of mallard wing, but composed himself and eyed Denton coolly. “How’d ye know I had my fingers crossed?”

“I was watchin,” Denton declared. He looked to his brothers, who nodded in affirmation. “We’uns all saw ye.”

“Why weren’t yore haids bowed durin the prayer?” Brother Stapleton asked.

“We don’t bow our haids,” Denton said. “Aint ary one of us believes in God, ’ceptin Maw and them gals.”

“Too bad,” said Brother Stapleton. “How kin ye believe in Jesus iffen ye don’t believe in God?”

“I reckon we’uns don’t believe in Him neither,” Denton said.

“Me neither,” said Brother Stapleton. “Which is why I crossed my fingers when His name was taken.”

Salina Ingledew was unable to restrain herself from rushing this news to the other ladies of Stay More, and her daughters passed it on to their friends, and soon the talk of the town was about the heterodox beliefs of Brother Stapleton. The deacons of the meeting house decided that he must be a Jew and ought to be hanged or better yet burned. Meanwhile, Sirena Stapleton was trying unsuccessfully to draw the attention of the four Ingledew brothers; not one of them would even look at her. Their sister Perlina took her aside and explained, “It aint no use. Ingledews is always shy toward gals.”

Salina Ingledew felt a little uncomfortable having in her house a minister who did not believe in Jesus, but since it was always customary to urge the parting guest to remain, when Salina said to Brother Stapleton, “Stay more. Stay and eat you some supper with us,” he replied, “Why, thank you,” and stayed to eat six helpings of scrambled eggs. Again, after supper, Salina was obliged to say, “Stay more. Better jist spend the night with us,” and Brother Stapleton replied, “Why, thank you.” There weren’t any spare beds, but Salina prepared a pallet on the floor of the boys’ sleeping loft for him, and one on the floor of the girls’ sleeping loft for his sister Sirena. In the middle of the night, Sirena, sleepless on the thin pallet, and very cold despite the heap of quilts covering her, and doubtless feeling frustrated over her failure to get any of the Ingledew boys to notice her, climbed down from the girls’ loft and climbed up to the boys’ loft, where the four boys were all sleeping in one bed. She managed to crowd in beside them without waking them, and was warmed, and slept, rising before dawn to return to her own pallet.

Brother Stapleton and his sister remained with the Ingledews thereafter, because it was unheard of for anybody not to say “Stay more,” and Salina went on saying it. Each night Sirena crept into bed with the Ingledew boys without waking them; each day they went on ignoring her existence. Although the deacons were talking about burning Brother Stapleton, everybody else was impatient to view another of his movies, and their impatience made their sourhours ever sourer, so that in the end they prevailed, and prevailed upon Brother Stapleton the following Sabbath to give them another picture show. This time he told them the passionate and touching story of the prophet Hosea and his marriage to the prostitute Gomer, whom he continued to love despite her infidelities, and whom he sold into bondage and then redeemed from bondage and carried away to the desert to remove her from temptation and have her for his own. The deacons were convinced that there was one scene toward the end, where Hosea and Gomer were lying together behind a sand dune in the desert, when the intercourse was so explicit you could even see their genitals, but the deacons were so enthralled that they did not protest, until the sermon was over and the rest of the congregation had departed, when they accosted Brother Stapleton, and one of the deacons, Seth Chism, said to him, “Pastor, was I jist imaginin things, or didn’t that there Hosea actually commence to shaggin his wife in that part toward the end in the desert?”

“A man sees what he wants to see,” Brother Stapleton replied.

“A man, yeah,” Brother Chism said, “but what about all the womenfolk and childreng? It aint fitten to show things like that to their innocent eyes.”

“No eyes is innocent,” the minister replied.

Through the rest of that bitterly cold winter, the people of Stay More lived from one Sunday to the next, suffering intolerable sourhours in between, just to go to Brother Stapleton’s cinema. He showed the romantic stories of Abraham and Sarah, of David and Bathsheba, of Jacob and Rachel, of Ruth and Boaz, even the incestuous story of Amnon and his half-sister Tamar. Each of the Ingledew brothers was aroused by these shows, and each of them had private daydreams of being able to do that with that pretty redhead Sirena, but each of them knew that it was impossible because they couldn’t even get up the nerve to look at her. Sirena continued, unbeknownst, sleeping with them. One morning she awakened before daylight to discover that the brother next to her had a risen root, although he was still asleep and mildly snoring. She thought that was amazing: getting a serviceable dinger while sleeping. She also thought it was exciting. She lifted his nightshirt and her nightdress, and climbed aboard. He never woke. She wondered which one of the four brothers he was; she couldn’t see a thing. She wondered what he would think if he woke. She wondered how vigorous she could be without waking him. She was very vigorous, and at the end she stuffed her fist into her mouth to stifle her sound. Before leaving the room she gave his shoulder a gentle shake and whispered into his ear, “Which one are you? What’s your name?” “Nmpth,” he responded. “What’s your name?” she said again. “John,” he said without ever fully waking.

Before the start of each of Brother Stapleton’s shows, one of the deacons would request, “Show us a pitcher of heaven, Preacher!” or one of the other deacons would request, “Show us pitchers of hell!” but Brother Stapleton could not show them heaven or hell because he did not believe in them. He could, however, show them paradise, and he told them the exquisitely connubial story of Adam and Eve, depicting Eden as the setting for their dramatic romance and temptation and fall. The congregation viewed the enchanting scenery of Eden with delight, until one of them observed and exclaimed: “Why, it aint no different than Stay More in the middle of summer in a good year!”

All the others nodded their heads and chimed in with: “It’s a fact!” “That’s the Gospel truth!” “Sure thing!”

Brother Stapleton smiled and went on with the show. Adam came on the screen, naked as a jaybird, and all the women blushed and covered their eyes. Then Eve appeared, and she wasn’t wearing a stitch either; some of the men whistled, panted or clapped. The deacons rose as one from the amen corner and stalked out of the meeting house, but most of them could later be seen peeking in the windows. When Adam and Eve looked at each other, they didn’t seem to mind that they didn’t have any clothes; in fact, they didn’t seem to notice, and pretty soon the congregation took it for granted too, because although Adam and Eve were naked they weren’t fooling around with each other or anything, they were just talking about the fruit that Eve wanted to eat, and then they were eating it, when all of a sudden they got embarrassed about not having clothes, so they made some skirts out of fig leaves, with which they made do, until God gave them some buckskins to wear. Adam and Eve never did sleep with one another as long as they were in the Garden, but as soon as they were driven out of Eden they began doing it all the time, usually behind bushes and large rocks, but eventually they were so desperate to couple that they didn’t care whether they were seen or not, and they were doing it so often that all the women and children had to leave the meeting house, and even the men were finally forced to follow the women because of their excitation. One of the deacons took a lump of charcoal and scrawled a large “X” on the front of the meeting house, and the deacons decreed that the people could watch no more of those shows.

The Ingledews were somewhat relieved, not because they hadn’t enjoyed watching the shows, but because Brother Stapleton and his sister had continued to lodge and dine at Isaac’s and Salina’s house, and the preacher had almost eaten them out of house and home. He had also, unbeknownst to them, been banishing the sourhours of Perlina and Drussie by giving the girls private screenings of some of his short subjects and previews of coming attractions, although these were all “decent,” that is, presentable. Perlina and Drussie both loved him madly, and they had walked out of the Adam and Eve show not because they were offended but because all the other women and girls were walking out and they figured it was expected of them. In truth they had been fascinated, but couldn’t admit it, even to each other. Each of them wanted to ask Brother Stapleton privately to show them the part they had missed after walking out, but neither of them could quite muster the nerve. Ingledew girls were never afflicted with man-shyness in the way that all Ingledews boys were afflicted with woman-shyness, but all the same there were limits to what a girl could ask a preacher to do.

And yet when they heard that the deacons had decreed there would be no more shows at the meeting house, they feared that Brother Stapleton would leave them for good and go somewhere else, and then the sourhours would come back again and bog them down forevermore. Perlina, at least, the older of the two sisters, would do anything to avoid that. So she washed her hair with sassafras-bark shampoo and drank a quart of tea made from butterfly weed, both of which are good for nerve, then she sought and found Brother Stapleton when he was alone and requested, “Show me the rest of that show.”

“Where did you leave?” he wanted to know.

“The part where she’d done birthed Cain and they were fixin to make Abel.”

“It gits awful free and fast, there,” he warned her.

“I don’t keer. I want to see it,” she insisted.

Long Jack Stapleton threaded his projector and allowed Perlina to view a re-run of the end of the Adam and Eve story, when the amatory couple were giving themselves up to their urges with such frequency and force and noise that even their animals watched them with great curiosity. It was almost more than Perlina could bear, but she watched it all, to the end, and realized that unless this man would have her right then and there she would start howling like a heifer in heat. Yet when she embraced him he gently separated himself from her. “Fer the love of God!” she entreated, trying unsuccessfully to attach herself to him, “I’m burnin up!”

“I caint,” he said ruefully. “I aint able.”

“You’re a man, aint ye?” she protested.

He shook his head. “Not exactly.”

“Huh?” she said. “What does that mean?”

“I caint tell ye,” he said, and took his leave of her.

But Perlina could not give up. The next time she saw Long Jack’s sister, Sirena, she asked her why, or how, or where, her brother was not a man. Sirena blushed, and whispered into Perlina’s ear the details of an “accident” that had befallen Long Jack in his young manhood, an accident related to his nickname, in a reverse sort of way. Perlina was saddened by this news, but also felt such a great wave of compassion for Long Jack, as well as a desire to keep him and his shows in Stay More, that she went to him and told him she wanted to marry him despite his “shortcoming.” Her proposal moved him to tears. In the woods, the first bud of springtime opened, as the temperature climbed above freezing for the first time in months.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen of the Ingledew house, Sirena Stapleton walked boldly up to the table where the four brothers were sitting and boldly asked, “Which one of you is named John?” All four of them avoided her eyes, but the one named John managed to put his index finger on his Adam’s apple.

“I gotta talk to you,” she said to him.

“I caint,” he said ruefully. “I aint able.”

“You’re a man, aint ye?” she protested.

“That’s why I caint,” he observed.

She grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet and dragged him out of the kitchen and across the breezeway into the privacy of the other wing of the dogtrot, where she informed him, “I’m in the family way.”

“Yeah, but you’re leavin, aint ye?”

“I mean, I’m knocked up.”

“Huh?”

“I’m with child,” she said, patting her abdomen.

“Do tell? Wal, I’ll lend my shotgun to yore brother, and he’ll make the feller marry ye, if ye want.”

“The feller was you.”

“Huh? Why, I never!”

She explained. John was blushing furiously, and as she described what had transpired, he nearly burst with embarrassment. How could she say such things to him? Worse, how could a girl have done such a thing to him? It sure was a good thing he had been asleep, or else he would have been powerfully mortified. He daydreamed all the time about laying with this pretty redhead Sirena, but the thought that he had actually done it, or that she had done it to him without his knowing it, made him want to go and dig a deep hole and jump in it and cover himself up. He wished she would hush up. He wished she would let him alone and not even look at him again, but he knew that a feller has to live up to his responsibilities, and if he was the baby’s father then he would just have to be the baby’s father.

It was a double wedding. Brother Stapleton granted his sister’s hand in marriage to John Ingledew, then he asked Isaac Ingledew for Perlina’s hand. Isaac, being taciturn, managed to nod. There being no ministers in Stay More other than himself, he officiated at his own nuptials and those of his sister and brother-in-law. The day of the wedding was full springtime; it would not be cold for another year. The weddings were duly attended by all the other Ingledews but no one else, because the deacons forbade it. The deacons were going to be in for a surprise.

Perlina never did tell a soul about her husband’s shortcoming, which wasn’t so short that she didn’t conceive and bear a large family over the years. Since Long Jack Stapleton was now living his own love story, he didn’t feel any need whatever to preach the love stories of the Bible, although he still had the power to speak word pictures more graphic than movies, and when he promised the deacons never to show any “undecent” pictures anymore they reluctantly let him use the meeting house again, and he began showing stories of the great battles in the Bible, scenes of bloodshed and gore, flashing swords and decapitation, torture and pillage and scourging and mutilation. He packed the people in, and even the deacons themselves returned to his services, where they sat at their select bench with their eyes glued to the images, and one or the other of them would urge on the action with “Praise the Lord!” and “Amen!” and “Gawd git ’em!” As summertime wiped out the last trace of the long bitter winter, people came from all over Newton County to see Brother Stapleton’s shows; the meeting house wouldn’t hold them all, so he had to give matinées in the afternoon and candlelit productions at night. He even began the practice of passing a plate for free will offering, and gleaned enough coins to support Perlina and himself in fairly good style.

They lived happily ever after.

Chapter ten

The first general merchandise store in Stay More was the work and the business of Isaac’s younger brother, Christopher Columbus “Lum” Ingledew. We have caught only glimpses of him—his refusing to go with his mother to Little Rock, his helping Isaac build the mill and then handling the concession during the ceremony of the engine-firing, his serving as postmaster during the Decade of Light—he has not been conspicuous, perhaps because he was not marked with any specific characteristic comparable to Isaac’s taciturnity; Lum was not very talkative, but neither was he reticent: he said what had to be said, and did what had to be done, and one thing that had to be done was to build and operate a general merchandise store, because the population of Stay More was exploding. During the Second Spell of Darkness, fondness for ’maters and the concealing dark were a potent combination of factors fostering conception. Old Jacob Ingledew decreed that no more settlers would be allowed to immigrate into Stay More because it was so crowded already, and his decree remained the law, but even without further immigration the population went on exploding. A high incidence of inbreeding naturally resulted in the birth of a more than common number of defectives, usually idiots. The people of Stay More did not know that the origin of the word idiot, pronounced “idjit” or “eejit,” is the Greek idios, meaning private. The idiots of Stay More were not private; they were very public; they were allowed to come and go as they pleased.

Lum Ingledew’s general merchandise store was erected on the main road, near the mill, in front of the mill (shown in the rear of our illustration), but even after he finished it the people continued to use the mill as their communal gathering place, out of habit and out of respect for Isaac, although the porch and yard of the mill were now so crowded that a person couldn’t sit down. So, because idiots usually prefer to sit, or squat, or kneel, or recline in various postures, and because there was no room for them at the mill, they began to use the porch of Lum’s store. Our illustration does not show them there, but that is where they were. Lum didn’t mind, so long as they did not wander into the store and tamper with the merchandise. They were speechless and made no talk to distract him while he was waiting on customers. Although they were speechless and lacked full control of their faces and limbs, they nevertheless possessed curiosity, and liked to loll on the store porch watching the world go by. Lum had a barrel of black walnuts, and when he wasn’t busy waiting on customers, he would crack the walnuts, pick their meats, and distribute them among the idiots, because it was popularly believed that the black walnut, whose shell resembles the human skull and whose meat resembles the human brain, is a good cure for mental deficiency. For years Lum fed black walnuts to the idiots who frequented his store porch, but it never seemed to do any good.

Sportsmen from the cities, St. Louis and Kansas City and even Chicago, began coming to Stay More to hunt and fish (nobody knows who betrayed to the cities the secret that the waters of Stay More were teeming with easy-to-catch fish, and that the air was full of fine game birds, but at any rate the sportsmen came) and they patronized Lum Ingledew’s store, buying their tackle and ammunition from him, and buying tins of sardines and Vienna sausages to eat on crackers for their lunch; he also sold them whiskey. The sportsmen could not help noticing the idiots on the porch, and, unaware that the normal population was congregating at the mill behind the store, they mistakenly assumed that the idiots were typical, and they carried back to their cities a gross misrepresentation of the Ozark people, which is undoubtedly the origin of all of the spurious humor, not to mention the ridicule, that has been perpetuated ever since. In fact the idiots represented only a very small percentage of the populace. The sportsmen also depleted the reserves of fish and game, but nobody protested, either because they didn’t know what was happening or because, like Lum, they needed the money that the sportsmen brought with them and spent. An occasional sportsman would invite one or two of the idiots to accompany him fishing or hunting, although he would soon discover that idiots are useless for practically anything.

The idiots of Stay More never got the sourhours; they sometimes attended, but could not understand, Brother Stapleton’s Magic Bible Shows; but they were never afflicted with the sourhours, nor, indeed, any emotion or feeling: they neither grieved over deaths nor exulted over pleasures. If they especially enjoyed eating, it was not possible to tell. They slept because it came natural to them. The only thing that they apparently wanted to do, and which they did all the time, was to loll and squat on the porch of Lum’s store. They were loitering there thus one afternoon when Eli Willard next returned to Stay More.

Eli Willard was distressed, on two accounts: 1, he was sorry to see that Stay More now had a full-fledged general store, to compete with his peddling; and 2, he was sorry to see that the younger generation of Stay Morons were such sorry specimens; some of them looked like the Mongolians he had seen on his trip around the world. Maybe, he thought, these were the same uncouth youngsters who had thrown rocks at him when he had brought his rejected message of Unitarianism. He was not now carrying that message; he had returned to traffic in material goods, particularly, this time around, grooming aids, which these youths on the store porch could obviously put to good use. In addition to a line of toothbrushes, ear cleaners, hair tonics, body braces and trusses and other grooming aids, he had rebottled (and perfumed) his unsold kerosine and was now marketing it as “Willard’s Miracle All-Purpose Hand Cleaner and Lubricant.”

He began with a demonstration of this latter. He dipped his hands into the dust of the road and covered his hands thoroughly with dirt, rubbing and smearing the dirt all over his hands. The idiots watched him closely. Then from a container in his wagon, he took out handfuls of soot and blacked his hands. “Now, watch,” he said, needlessly, since all eyes hung on his every move. He uncapped a bottle of his miracle all-purpose hand cleaner, poured some into one palm, and rubbed his hands together. Presto! All the dirt and soot were loosened and he wiped it off on a towel. “Two bits a bottle,” he said, and held three bottles in each hand, offering them, but there were no takers. Perhaps, he reflected, there was no future whatever in kerosine, as far as Stay More was concerned.

Then he demonstrated the toothbrush. The idiots stared at him. He next demonstrated the ear cleaner, which had a tiny scoop at one end and a sponge at the other end of an ornate ivory handle. The idiots not only stared at him but also at one another. He next demonstrated the hair tonic. Since his own hair was mostly gone, he selected a bushy-headed boy from his audience. As he sprinkled the tonic on the boy’s hair the boy began whimpering and kicking.

“But doesn’t it instantly make your scalp feel better?” Eli Willard asked. The boy continued whimpering; the others began edging away from him; they all scuttled hurriedly into the store. Lum Ingledew looked up from his account book and was puzzled to see all of the idiots rushing into his store. He went out to investigate.

“What’s a-gorn on?” he demanded of Eli Willard, but then recognized him and exclaimed, “Why, if it aint ole Eli Willard!” He noticed the items of merchandise and said, “Preachin didn’t make ye no money, did it?”

“I’m afraid it didn’t,” Eli Willard admitted.

“Reckon me and you is sorta rivals, then,” Lum observed. “I’m the propriorater of this here store. What-all you got thar?” Eli Willard showed him the various grooming aids. “I don’t carry none a them,” Lum observed, “so maybe we aint rivals atter all.”

“My luck hasn’t turned,” Eli Willard observed. “Even though all of these are cheaply priced, I failed to sell a single one of them to those young people.”

Lum Ingledew laughed. “Them young people is idjits. Put all their brains in one pile, you’d have maybe a cupful.”

Eli Willard meditated upon that curious circumstance. “In all of the rest of the world,” he declared, “idiots are placed in institutions.”

“Is that a fack? Wal, I reckon folks hereabouts couldn’t afford it.”

“The government pays for it. I’m sure the good state of Arkansas has an asylum somewhere that would take them in, free of charge.”

“Wal, heck, they aint done no harm,” Lum said in their defense. “We jist let ’em alone and they keep to theirself and don’t bother a soul. If you want to hug one, it’ll hug ye right back.”

Eli Willard shuddered at the thought. The idiots were crowded into the doorway of the store, peering out at him.

We may note that although the Ingledew General Store was not bigeminal in the strictest sense of having two separate parts or doors, it had three double doors, which almost amounts to the same thing, except that there was no distinction as to which side of the double door was used by which sex: male and female alike used either side. Huddled close together, all of the idiots of Stay More could crowd into the center doorway and peer out at Eli Willard. Since he was no longer rubbing dirt on his hands or sticking things in his ear or threatening to pour liquid on their heads, they lost their fear of him and gradually returned to the porch, where they resumed sitting or squatting or kneeling or reclining, and continued staring at him. He was disconcerted, and drove his wagon on over to the mill, where people with minds were, and sold them toothbrushes, liquid and powder dentifrices, ear cleaners, trusses, and other grooming aids, including many, many bottles of his Miracle All-purpose Hand Cleaner. A year later, Sirena Ingledew, happening to light her cob pipe right after using the hand cleaner, discovered that the liquid was inflammable, and, after chanting a secret saying to draw the fire out of her burns, she poured some of the hand cleaner into an old lamp and made the further discovery that it could serve as a fuel. The Second Spell of Darkness was over.

But while the Spell of Darkness came to an end, and the school and post office were restored, the population explosion went on. The forests on the steepest hillsides were girdled and turned into pasture, and large quantities of Willard’s Miracle All-purpose Hand Cleaner were deliberately poured onto the forest floor to ignite it and burn the forest and create more pastures and fields. Any piece of ground that could be cultivated was plowed up. The farmed plots became progressively steeper, up the sheer mountainsides, until the farmers began falling out of their fields, but that did not stop them; their sons carried on. Isaac’s mill ran twenty-four hours a day; since he never slept, he worked always, stopping only to eat. Lum Ingledew hired both John and Willis to clerk full time in his store, but still business was so brisk that another general merchandise store was opened at the other end of what had now become Main Street, and in between there were established offices of physicians and dentists.

Until that point, all illnesses had been treated with herbal cures or incantations, and all toothaches were simply cured by extraction, but now ambitious young men among the families of Plowright, Swain, Chism and Whitter, who had been taught by Boone Harrison in their childhood to read and still remembered how, sent off to St. Louis for correspondence courses in medicine and dentistry, studied their lessons diligently, practiced on the idiots until they had ironed out the kinks in their practice, then hung out their shingles on small new white-painted buildings up and down Main Street. The idiots’ other problem was that because of the population explosion they were crowded off of Lum’s store porch and lost their favorite gathering place. Restless, they wandered, and discovered an orchard, and ate green apples, and had to be taken back to the doctors.

There were so many people in Stay More that nobody could keep track of them all. A few got lost, and nobody noticed. John Ingledew, if pressed, could not tell how many brothers and sisters he had, nor, in fact, how many children he had. (He had ten, all told, each conceived in his sleep, except for one, who was, as we will learn, conceived in the sleep of his brother Willis.) There were times when he could not even find his wife, Sirena. He would hear her, in some other room, humming to herself, or sneezing, or just breathing, but he could not find her. This contributed to his constant expression of foreboding, which people associated with the childhood nickname he had never outgrown, “Doomy.” As his sister Perlina expressed it to her husband, Brother Stapleton, “Doomy allus looks like the world’s comin to a end any minute now.” This air made him the less effective of the two brothers who clerked at their Uncle Lum’s store; in fact, anybody coming to the store would always rather have Willis wait upon them, and would turn to John only if Willis and Lum were both very busy. John was sensitive about this, and it further affected his facial expression. No doubt John had a good heart and was a good husband (when he could find her) and a reasonably good father, but in appearance, although he was just as handsome as any other Ingledew, he was the most disagreeable of them all, and for this reason I am, and always have been, prejudiced against him.

When Lum Ingledew died, he willed his store to Willis, not even mentioning John, and this further affected John’s mien. Lum Ingledew died during an epidemic of typhoid fever, the first corrective measure that Nature took against the overpopulation. This is not to suggest that Nature singled out Lum Ingledew, but that he was haplessly one of many random persons who were put beneath the earth in order to make more room on top of it. Before Stay More got its doctors, the worst afflictions that anyone got were pneumonia and the frakes, neither of which is contagious, and nobody ever died of the latter. But after the doctors hung their shingles, there were epidemics of, successively: typhoid fever, shingles, tuberculosis, influenza, meningitis, poliomyelitis, and yellow fever. The doctors were able to identify each one of these, but they were not able to cure any of them. They prescribed and sold an esoteric pharmacopoeia that was of no earthly use. The lucky persons were those whose grandmothers insisted on administering the old remedies: slippery-elm bark tonic, chicken blood and cat blood, ground roots and herbs. The unlucky ones, or those who did not have grandmothers, like Lum Ingledew, perished. Even some who had grandmothers perished. John and Sirena Ingledew lost two of their children. Perlina and Long Jack Stapleton lost three of theirs. Denton and Monroe Ingledew gave up farming and turned to gravedigging and were employed so steadily they both got the frakes. The doctors too were working so hard they both got the frakes, and treated one another, without success. One by one the idiots died and could not grieve for each other, until there was only one left, and he, in his last hours, seemed suddenly to realize that all of his companions had preceded him out of this life, but, instead of weeping, he laughed and cheered.

And then the Century died. The whole Century itself, which had lasted for an even hundred years, was dead. It would be no more. Those who had been born during it, as all of them had, grieved for its passing. Old Jacob Ingledew especially, who had lived through more of it than anybody else, mourned its irrevocable demise, and took to his bed, never to rise again. It was some small consolation to him that during the first year of the new Century the people of Arkansas elected another Ozarks mountaineer, Jeff Davis, as their governor, but even that good news was not enough to give him something to live for, and he expired. He said to his wife, seated at his bedside, “Sarey, feel my pulse.” She felt for it, could find none, and told him so: “You aint got ary pulse, Jake.” He then said, “That’s what I figgered. Wal, afore I go, Sarey, promise to tell me somethin.” She promised. “Tell me, Sarey, how come, all our life long since you and me was hitched, we never…did…get our things together more often than once a month at the mostest.” Sarah blushed, swallowed, and, because she had promised, but because her “friend” who was also Jacob’s ladyfriend was present in the room, she bent down and whispered the somewhat lengthy answer into Jacob’s ear, and he smiled and closed his eyes and died. While he was lying in state, the next day, Sarah lay down beside him and followed him out of existence.

Everybody else who had not died came to their joint funeral, which was the grandest funeral ever given in Stay More, despite a constant rainstorm. Brother Long Jack Stapleton gave the eulogy: a five-hour show of Jacob’s entire life condensed, and considerably censored. Everyone present realized that there could never be another life like that, and because they already realized that there could never be another Century like the one late lamented, they were inconsolable and lachrymose. For weeks after the funeral no one was able to do anything. It was as if everybody was temporarily recovering from the frakes. John Ingledew in particular, who already had such a doomy air, was plunged into gloom over the loss of his grandparents and the loss of the Century. We too should pause here for a minute of silent meditation.

Death cheapens the value of life. As dying becomes commonplace, grieving is rarer, shallower. So many people had died in Stay More that nobody cared anymore who was living or not. Death was a fact of life. Some people did not get sick at all, and felt guilty, and committed suicide, leapt from Leapin Rock. There were incidents of poisoning, arson, shooting, lynching, all unheard-of before. More unheard-of were the incidents of rampant ruffianism. Nearly all Stay Morons had been noted for their simple gentleness, but now several of them turned mean and rowdy. If there had been one distinguishing difference between the mountaineer of the Ozarks and his kinsmen the mountaineers of Kentucky and Tennessee, it was that the latter were noted for bloody feuding while the former, even if just as impulsive, was not quarrelsome. But now men began beating and shooting one another in earnest. Take, for example, Ike Whitter, who was possibly the worst rowdy in Stay More. He was a rugged six-footer, barrel-chested, brawny, hard as nails. When sober he was merely ill-humored; when drunk, as he was every Saturday, he became ferocious. Any man bold enough to fight him had to agree to his rule that the taking of eyeballs was permitted. Three men each had an eye gouged out before everyone conceded that Ike Whitter was the toughest customer in the village…next, of course, to Isaac Ingledew, whose strength was so legendary that Ike Whitter never even gave a thought to challenging him, even though Isaac was getting pretty close to sixty. The people always knew that there was one man who could always lick Ike Whitter, so they let Ike have his fun, and even enjoyed the spectacle of his gouging out an eyeball here and there. But nobody wanted to invite Ike Whitter to anything; he was never invited to the house-raisin’s, barn-raisin’s, shootin matches, cornhuskin’s, games of Base Ball, square dances or Brother Staple-ton’s Magic Bible Shows. He was indignant at these slights, but he did not object, until he was not even invited to his own sister’s weddin, and when that happened he showed up anyway, picked a fight with the groom, and killed him. They sent to Jasper for the sheriff. Sheriff Barker came with a sworn warrant, and two revolvers, which he cocked and pointed simultaneously at Ike Whitter.

“Ike Whitter,” said the sheriff. “You are a prisoner, under suspicion of murder. Come along peaceable.”

“Haw,” snorted Ike Whitter. “The devil ye say. You’d better jist slope away from here, sheriff, cause I’m liable to git dangerous toward ary man that would point pistols at me.”

“I’m only doin my duty,” the sheriff said, somewhat apologetically. “The people of this here county have appointed me to keep order. You have did a crime. Grubbin out a eyeball here and there is one thing, but murder is a hoss of a different feather. It is my bounden duty to remit ye to the county jail.”

Ike Whitter leered. “Wal, reckon ye got the drap on me.” He held out his wrists. “Put on the handcuffs.”

The sheriff, in order to fish out his handcuffs, had to return one of his two revolvers to its holster, and as he did so, Ike Whitter slapped the other one out of his hand, then hit the sheriff a swipe on his ear that laid him out, then extracted one of his eyeballs. The sheriff, screaming “Oh, Ike, Lordy, don’t kill me!” made a hasty retreat. When the sheriff returned to Jasper and reported what had happened to him, it aroused so much interest and was considered so newsworthy that a printing press was brought from Harrison and Newton County’s first newspaper, the Jasper Disaster, was established, with a banner headline on its first issue: SHERIFF HALF-BLINDED BY STAY MORE MALEFACTOR.

Other items reported were scattered incidents of poisoning, arson, shooting, lynching, prostitution and insanity, as well as a few wedding and birthday announcements, and the meeting of the Grange. Copies of the first issue reached Stay More, and one of Ike Whitter’s few cronies read the front page to Ike, who could not read, and Ike was considerably impressed that there was such a thing as a newspaper and even more impressed, and immensely flattered, that he dominated the first issue of it. He took the front page and nailed it to the front of the Ingledew General Merchandise Store, for all eyes to see, but the eyes were not seeing it because they were staying home out of fear of him. He had the town to himself. Willis Ingledew turned the store over to John and went off to see the St. Louis World’s Fair. John Ingledew managed the store for only a few days until Ike Whitter came in and began helping himself to Vienna sausages and crackers and anything else he desired. John went to his father, Isaac, and complained, “Paw, somethin’s got to be done about Ike Whitter.”

Isaac, as taciturn in his late fifties as he ever was, suggested laconically, “Lynch him.”

John went around the village, talking to all the men. Most of them did not wish to meddle with Ike Whitter, but John succeeded in recruiting, in addition to his older brothers Denton and Monroe, one Dinsmore, one Chism, one Coe, one Plowright, and one Swain. These eight men took their rifles and coils of rope and marched upon the Ingledew General Store, where they found Ike Whitter and two of his cronies sitting on the porch, eating can after can of confiscated sardines. Ike Whitter had his rifle in his lap, and at the approach of the lynch mob he raised it and began firing at them, wounding one Coe and one Dinsmore. The only place the lynch mob could take cover was Jacob Ingledew’s house, where Jacob’s ladyfriend now lived alone, severely frightened by the sound of gunfire. They told her to take cover in a back room; then they manned the windows of the three front rooms, breaking out the panes and firing across the road at the three doors of the General Store, where Ike and his two cronies lurked and returned the fire. For an hour they fusilladed one another, without any apparent effect on either side, except the shattering of every window in the Ingledew house and in the Ingledew store. Glass was a lot cheaper in those days than it had been when Jacob Ingledew installed the first panes of Stay More, but still it wasn’t so cheap that this wasn’t a terrible waste, and there was one man at least who was mindful of it.

As John and his lynch mob watched, one of Ike Whitter’s cronies, the one in the left door, came tumbling out through the door of the store, down the steps, and crashed into the dirt of the road, where he lay jumbled and inert. John and his lynch mob stopped firing. After another instant, the other crony in the right door repeated the movements of the first. Then, after a longer pause, Ike Whitter himself came tumbling out through the center door and collapsed into the road. John and his lynch mob rushed to investigate, found Ike Whitter breathing, but just barely, and entered the store just in time to see Isaac Ingledew closing the rear door behind him.

“Gawdamighty,” each of the eight said quietly. Then they revived and bound Ike Whitter and his cronies, and lynched them. The new Jasper Disaster headlined the event: STAY MORE VIGILANTES PUT NOOSE ON VILLAINS. There would not be any more ruffians in Stay More for years and years.

But the sheriff, One-eyed Barker, appeared with a warrant for the arrest of John Ingledew and the other vigilantes.

“What in tarnation for?” John demanded.

“Violation of the lynch law,” said One-eyed Barker. “It’s a-gin the law to take the law into yore own hands.”

John and his lynch mob surrendered, were jailed in Jasper, and brought before a judge and jury in the County courthouse. They were represented by Jim Tom Duckworth, a Stay Moron, who, some months previously, had mailed off to St. Louis to purchase the twelve-volume Whitestone’s Easy Jurisprudence and Forensic Medicine Self-Taught. Jim Tom argued before the court that Ike Whitter and his cronies were already half-dead when Isaac Ingledew got through with them, and therefore his clients had not killed them but only half-killed them. Isaac Ingledew was subpoenaed to depone. Since the judge, like the jury and everybody else, knew that Isaac Ingledew was too taciturn to depone, the judge conducted Isaac to his chambers along with the prosecuting attorney and Jim Tom Duckworth, and there he explained that the examination and cross-examination were to be arranged in such a way that Isaac could depone simply by nodding or shaking his head in response to yes-or-no questions. The trial then proceeded. Did Isaac Ingledew enter upon the premises of the Ingledew General Merchandise Store in Stay More, county of Newton, state of Arkansas at the time of the incident hitherto described, gaining entry by means of the rear door of said premises? Isaac nodded. Was Isaac Ingledew’s sole motive or intent the cessation, interruption, or termination of the hostilities, armed conflict, altercation, or contentiousness then in progress? He nodded. Did Isaac Ingledew approach each of the adversaries, combatants or victims, each in turn, each and severally from the rear, catching each by surprise? Isaac shook his head. Then if each was not caught by surprise, was the first one caught by surprise? A nod. The first one, as well as the subsequent two, were seen by the defendants to emerge, come forth, or burst out of their respective doorways in extremely rapid manner, not under their own volition; might it be assumed that Isaac Ingledew had thrown, flang, heaved or chunked each man bodily out through their respective doorways? He nodded. And yet, we may assume, that even being thrown, flang, heaved or chunked out through their respective doorways, and thence downward off the high porch and into the road, would not account for the alleged unconsciousness or alleged half-death of each of the three adversaries, combatants or victims; so is it to be surmised that Isaac Ingledew, before throwing, flinging, heaving or chunking each and several of the aforementioned adversaries, combatants or victims, did first bash in their heads?

“Objection!” cried Jim Tom Duckworth, leaping to his feet. “The prosecutor is asking the witness a leadin question.”

“Overruled,” decreed the judge. “Prosecution’s jist tryin to fine out what ole Coon—Mr. Ingledew—actually done to them varmints afore he throwed ’em out. Witness must respond.”

Isaac nodded.

Did Isaac Ingledew do other to the adversaries, combatants or victims, than merely bash in their heads? Isaac nodded. Did Isaac perhaps break their arms? Isaac nodded. Furthermore, did Isaac possibly stomp on their toes? Isaac nodded. Furthermore, did Isaac, by any chance, punch, sock, slug or whop the abdomens or regions of the midriffs in such a way as to deflate the lungs and conceivably cause internal injury? Isaac nodded. Was the motive of this sequence of bashing, stomping, breaking, and whopping to deprive the adversaries, combatants or victims of life, or merely to disable them?

“Objection!” said Jim Tom Duckworth. “The prosecutor is askin two separate questions.”

“Sustained,” said the judge. “Prosecution will ask one question at a time.”

Was it to deprive them of life? Isaac shook his head. Was it to merely disable them? Isaac nodded.

Your witness, the prosecutor said to Jim Tom, and Jim Tom stood before Isaac and asked, “Did ye expect them fellers to git up and lead normal lifes after all what you’d done to ’em?” Isaac shook his head. “Wal, did ye expect ’em to git up by and by or at least be carried off to bed to get well, or part well, and then maybe lead jist sorta normal lifes, maybe walkin on crutches, or carryin a cane, for the rest of their lifes?” Isaac nodded. “How long did ye expect ’em to live, thataway? Aw heck, I fergot I aint suppose to ask questions that caint be answered yes or no. Wal, did ye expect ’em to live to be a hundred?” Isaac shook his head. “Eighty?” Isaac shook his head. “Fifty, at least?” Isaac nodded. Jim Tom turned to the judge. “Yore Honor, as everbody knows, fifty is jist one half of a hundred, so I have done proved my point, namely and likewise, that my clients removed only half of the life of them fellers and this ole gent took the other half.” Jim Tom turned to the jury. “Fine gents of the jury,” he addressed them. “Half is half, as you can plainly see. You kin either both half-punish my clients and Isaac Ingledew, or else only punish half of my clients, and as there is eight of them, you’ll have to decide which four. The defense rests.”

The jury deliberated for three weeks and a day. They returned a verdict that the lynch law was unconstitutional and was therefore invalid. The judge instructed them that such a decision was not for them to make, or in any case was not their charge. Their charge was to determine whether the defendants were innocent, guilty, or half-guilty, and, if the latter, whether all eight of them were guilty or half-guilty, or whether four of them were guilty and four innocent, and if so, which four. The jury retired once more. They were never seen again. Some folks claimed that three of them had been seen fishing on the Buffalo River, and another one was thought to be living alone in an isolated cabin on Mount Sherman, but this was only hearsay and not admissible. The judge declared a mistrial and everybody went home.

It was peaceful everywhere after that. Willis Ingledew came home from the St. Louis World’s Fair and resumed managing his general store. To anyone who would listen, Willis could loquaciously boast for hours on end of the wonders he had seen at the fair: the buildings themselves, great palaces of white marble, any one of which was larger than all the buildings of Stay More put together. No one believed this. Willis insisted that there were a thousand white marble statues of people and animals ten times life-size. The Stay Morons shook their heads and looked at Willis out of the corners of their eyes. Willis claimed that on one day of the fair, there were over a million people on the grounds. Everybody knew that there weren’t that many people in the whole world, and they wondered if Willis had taken to strong drink, or perhaps even had become a dope fiend. Willis tried to convince them that there had been an enormous bird cage, covering over an acre, which contained exotic birds of all sizes and colors, but the people told one another that that one was for the birds, and they wondered why Willis was sawing off such whoppers. Willis’s business began to fall off; most people preferred patronizing one of the other general stores rather than listen to Willis tell tall tales about the St. Louis World’s Fair. Even after he shut up about the subject, weeks later, his business was still bad, and he had to lay off his clerk and brother, John.

Laid off, John had nothing better to do than take his children and go off to see for himself what the St. Louis World’s Fair looked like. He loaded his wife and eight kids into the wagon and drove off up to Springfield, and they took the train from there. They had never seen a train before. Newton County is the only one of Arkansas’ seventy-five counties in which not one mile of railroad track has ever been laid, which perhaps more than any other statistic gives a good idea of how isolated it has always been. At the sight of the train, the children’s jaws dropped open and remained that way for the rest of the trip, which became increasingly awe-inspiring.

The World’s Fair, sure enough, was everything and more that Willis had said it was. “Uncle Willis didn’t tell the half of it,” remarked one of the boys. But John Ingledew, whatever his shortcomings, was smart. “Now listen to me, younguns,” he told his children on the return trip home. “Don’t breathe a word about that place to nobody, or I’ll whop the whey outen ye.” They had to wait at Jasper for a few days, until the children could close their jaws, before they went on home to Stay More. Whenever anyone asked John about St. Louis, he would reply that it was just like Stay More, except there was more of it. Folks lived in the same kind of houses, he said, but they had a couple of extry general stores, and a bridge across their creek. John won the respect of the town for his truthfulness, whereas Willis was practically disgraced.

This did not exactly change the expression of doom that was a permanent fixture of John’s face, but it made him feel superior to his younger brother for the first time, and, feeling superior, he established Stay More’s first fraternal organization, Ingledewville Lodge, No. 642, of the Free and Accepted Masonic Order. He could not persuade his father to join, but he signed up all his brothers, plus several Plowrights, Swains, Goes, Dinsmores, Chisms, Duckworths and Whitters, twenty-eight of them in all. None of them protested that the lodge was called Ingledewville Lodge, because that was customary. Everything about Masonry was customary, and some of the customs went all the way back to the knights of the Dark Ages.

The main custom of Masonry is secrecy, and that was what they liked best about it. The trappings of Masonry might not have been worth much to them, but they were secret, and the secret knowledge of them placed a man above his neighbors. Only the best men of Stay More belonged to the Masons; that was why there were only twenty-eight of them. At first John didn’t even want to invite Willis to join, because Willis was so inferior to him, but they needed a large private room for their Lodge, and the only one available was the back room of Willis’s store, and also they needed a “tiler,” who is the officer standing outside the door during meetings to guard the secrecy of the meetings, so John appointed Willis as tiler. He appointed himself Worshipful Master. The other offices were by election: Denton Ingledew was Senior Warden, Monroe Ingledew was Junior Warden, Long Jack Stapleton was Chaplain, Jim Tom Duckworth was Senior Steward, and so on. There was an office for every man—for example, Deputy Junior Deacon and Adjunct Associate Deputy Junior Steward—and each man had a badge of office which he proudly wore suspended from a ribbon around his neck. They were not so proud of their little lambskin aprons, but that was an essential and sacred garment of Masonry, and besides, they only wore their little aprons during meetings, and the meetings were strictly secret, so none of the womenfolk or the children could see them in their little aprons and laugh at them or point at them. Willis stood outside the door of the back room of his store when the meetings were held, and brandished his ceremonial mace. Nobody ever tried to break in to any of the meetings, but if they had, Willis was supposed to brain them with his ceremonial mace.

Once the Lodge was established, John wrote off to the national headquarters in Washington asking to be supplied with enough secrets to keep them busy for a year or so. In reply he received a request for a tithe of the dues. He did not know what a tithe was, and none of the other members did either. They figured it was one of the secret words. He answered to headquarters by protesting that he couldn’t very well send a tithe if they wouldn’t send him the secrets first so he could find out what a tithe was and send it to them. This brought a rather sarcastic reply intimating that if John and his Lodge brethren did not know the meaning of tithe, they were perhaps not intelligent enough to be Masons. Stung by this, John rode off to Jasper and asked the county judge what a tithe is. The judge referred him to the county clerk, who suggested that he ask the sheriff. One-eyed Barker referred him to the county surveyor, who recommended the coroner. The county coroner didn’t know but was pretty sure that the treasurer would know, and sure enough Curgus Young the county treasurer told him what a tithe is. He returned home and conveyed this information to his Lodge brethren. “Men,” he declared, “we’ve solved half the problem. Now if we can just find out what ‘dues’ are.” He was only kidding, of course, because he already knew what dues are, but he did not know how much he should assess. It seemed reasonable that if the national headquarters got ten percent of their dues, then the dues ought to be ten percent of the members’ income. But no member except Willis Ingledew had ever sat down and figured out what his income was, and even Willis’s figures were based on gross rather than net. So John just took off his hat and passed it around among the members, counted up the proceeds, divided that by ten, and sent ten percent, which was $2.15, to Washington. In return he received a protest against his parsimony, but he also received an official kit full of secret words to play with.

None of the words, however, was parsimony, so he still didn’t know what that meant. The words were, in alphabetical order: ashlar, brazen pilar, circumambulation, discalceation, esoteric, floor cloth, gauntlet, hele, indented tassel, joined hands, low twelve, northeast corner, omnific, pectoral, quorum, rite, symbol, trowel, unaffiliate, vouching, winding stairs, xenophobe, and zeugma.

The brethren of the Lodge were summoned, Willis was posted outside the door with his mace and a blank look, they donned their little lambskin aprons, discalceated themselves, spread a floor cloth with indented tassel, vouched for one another, holding a trowel in one hand and placing their other hand on their pectorals, joined hands and began to circumambulate from the northeast corner. It was all very esoteric, and lasted until low twelve.

They did that on the Second Tuesday of every Month for over a year, until the novelty began to pall, and John Ingledew passed the hat once more. It had been a drought year, so the tithe of the collection came to only $1.68, which he sent off to headquarters, requesting a new supply of secrets. In return he received another kit with a covering letter execrating his niggardliness, but the kit contained neither “execrating” nor “niggardliness”; in fact, this kit did not contain secret words but secret abbreviations, and headquarters had neglected to include any definitions or explanations of them. The brethren of the Lodge gathered and entertained themselves until low twelve by trying to figure out the meanings.

“F. & A. M.” was easy: “Free and Accepted Masons.” So was “A.D.” for year of the Lord, and “W.M.” for Worshipful Master. They solved “S.T.M.,” Second Tuesday of the Month, and they even solved “M.O.V.P.E.R.,” Mystic Order Veiled Prophets of the Enchanted Realm, but they were stumped by “T.G.A.O.T.U.” For hours they considered several possibilities: The Goddamn Alliance of Tear-Uppers, The Gentleman’s Association Opposed to Usury, The Greasy As Oil Tonic Unguent, Timid Geese Always Open Their Umbrellas, Tom’s Goat Ate Oliver’s Turnips Up, The Grinning and Ogling Tipplers’ Union—on into the night the steadfast brethren labored, so obsessed with their object that even when they conversed among themselves their sentences could be abbreviated in the same letters. “They got all our thoughts unstrung,” complained one. “To guess abbreviations often takes understandin,” observed another. “Try givin another one to unravel,” another requested.

The following day John Ingledew wrote to headquarters complaining that the abbreviations had come without any explanation, and he, for one, would sure like to know what the hell T.G.A.O.T.U. stood for. The reply was curt and consisted only of the words themselves: The Grand Architect of the Universe. This struck the brethren of the Lodge as an anticlimactic comedown from some of the more fanciful meanings they had imagined; they liked The Grinning and Ogling Tipplers’ Union a lot better. Some of them wished that John had not bothered to find out the meaning, and now that he had, what was the use of it?

What was the Grand Architect of the Universe? What was an “architect”? For the first time in the history of our study of Ozarks architecture, the Stay Morons began to discuss architects. One of the Masons was certain that an architect is an assemblage of musicians. Another was just as convinced that an architect is a place where weapons and ammunition are stored. A third man scoffed at them and said that to architect means to speak clearly and expressively. A fourth thought that architect is a poison. Another was certain that architect was just a fancy word for mathematics. Another who had done well in geography in school explained that the Architect is the name for the region around the north pole; the region around the south pole is the Antarchitect. Willis Ingledew recalled having seen an architect in the giant bird cage at the World’s Fair in St. Louis; he described its colors and plumage and wingspread, but nobody listened because nobody believed Willis anymore.

Once again, John Ingledew went off to Jasper to seek an answer, but the county treasurer thought an architect was just a member of the architocracy, or upper class; the county coroner discreetly explained than an architect is a portion of the rectum that has slipped out of place; the county surveyor was certain that Architect was a town over in Madison County, but he couldn’t find it on the map; the sheriff had the honesty to admit that he didn’t know, although it sounded like it probably came off of a hay baling machine; the county clerk declared that the architect is the place where archives are kept, and he showed John the architect in the courthouse basement; the county judge knew that “arch” was an indication of highest rank, as in arch-duke or archbishop, so an architect was the highest ranking itect, and an itect is a kind of itch mite that causes scabies.

There was only one thing John could do. Reluctant as he was, he returned to Stay More and knocked on the door of his grandfather’s house, where the woman Whom We Cannot Name now lived alone, on Jacob’s legacy, which had easily borne the expense of replacing all the windows shattered by the ruffians and the lynch mob. John knew the woman only as “Grammaw’s friend,” but he had never before spoken to her. It was known that she had been a city woman and was educated, but that alone made her strange and remote to John. Now she came to the door, and opened it. She was in her eighties, yet still pretty. John asked her what an architect is. She told him. He thanked her, and left.

“Fellers,” John told the next meeting of the Lodge, “it’s just a man who draws up plans for buildings.” They stared at him and at one another. John looked up at the ceiling over their heads. “Who drew up the plans for this building?” He opened the door and spoke to Willis, who was guarding the meeting with his mace. “Willis, did Uncle Lum draw up the plans for this here store?” Willis thought about it, but could not recall having seen any plans. “He was good at figgers,” Willis said, “but he couldn’t draw worth a damn. I reckon he jist built it.” “It aint got no plan to it,” John observed. That is not precisely true, we may protest. But there is a point: who, indeed, planned any of the buildings in this book? Who decided that a door goes here, a window there? How was the pitch of the roof determined? Was the construction totally spontaneous? If not, then perhaps there is a Grand Architect of the Universe. John decided that this was what was meant by the name, or person, or whatever it was. He explained it to his fellow Masons, but they snorted their disapproval and said they liked The Grinning and Ogling Tipplers’ Union a lot better.

One day a postcard came from Masonic headquarters. It asked simply: “Do you believe in The Grand Architect of the Universe?”

John replied with a postcard: “Who is it?”

Back came the answer: “God, or whatever you choose to call Him.”

John assembled the Lodge. “Fellers, reckon we’ll have to take a vote. I don’t believe in God, and I know Denton and Monroe don’t neither, nor Willis, so that makes four of us. How many of the rest of you’uns do?” The vote was taken and came out 11 For, 17 Against. John conveyed this tabulation to headquarters.

Headquarters responded: “Then you may no longer call yourselves Masons.”

The members of Lodge No. 642, F. & A. M., were at first indignant, then saddened, and finally defiant: they would not give up their little lambskin aprons and other ceremonial regalia; they would continue to meet; they would continue their secrecy and their playing with secrets; they would not call themselves Masons.

In my possession is a group photograph of all twenty-eight of them, in two rows, the front row kneeling, the back row standing. It is almost impossible to tell them apart: each man, except John, has a handlebar mustache; all of them, including John, are wearing identical broad-brimmed, flat-topped hats; each man is also wearing his little lambskin apron. Written on the back of the photograph is the date and the legend, “The Grinning and Ogling Tipplers’ Union,” although not one of the men in the photograph is either grinning or ogling; all of them are absolutely deadpan. Also written on the back of the photograph is the name of the photographer: “Willard Studios.”

When Eli Willard arrived in Stay More for the umpteenth time, bringing a big camera and a portable lab, everybody noticed something mighty peculiar about his wagon, but it took them a while to figure it out: there weren’t any horses pulling the wagon.

Chapter eleven

It suddenly occurs to me, at the sight of Eli Willard driving up in the first horseless carriage to appear in Stay More, that our investigation has been essentially pastoral and yet we have not dwelt upon very many pastures, let alone the architecture for storing pasturage, namely, the barn. Hence, to remedy that oversight, the illustration to the left. There were many barns in Stay More in the last Century, but they were rather flimsy affairs. The barn of Denton and Monroe Ingledew belongs to our Century, although the design of it is possibly ancient. Denton and Monroe were not the architects; they were only the builders. Who gave them the design?

This barn stood (and still stands) on the sophisticated structural principle known as the cantilever; it is cantilevered all around, front, back, sides. This is as “modern” as Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Falling Water” house, but while the cantilevering of the latter is mostly for appearance’s sake, the cantilevering of this humble barn is purely functional: it provides additional protection from the rain and sun for the livestock. Who taught the principle of the cantilever to Denton and Monroe? There were not, at this time, any other cantilevered structures in Stay More, or in Newton County.

From a distance, this barn has some resemblance to the Ingledew dogtrot, which might possibly have inspired it, but that building was not cantilevered. The “dogtrot” here is a horsetrot, or rather a horsewalk, high enough for a wagonload of hay to be pulled into it and transferred to the lofts of the two cribs, yes, two, bigeminal not necessarily as male and female, although it was not merely coincidence that all of the cows kept in the left crib happened to be females while all of the horses stabled in the right crib were males. According to family tradition, quite possibly apocryphal, there was one of the horses, once upon a time, who carried on a sustained affair with one of the cows. Who told Denton and Monroe about bigeminality? Their grandfather, Jacob? I doubt it. Man naturally knows how to build good and true buildings, honest and unselfconscious. Or perhaps there is a Grand Architect of the Universe, after all.

But what does this barn have to do with Eli Willard’s horseless carriage? Well, on a more practical level, it was the place where he parked the carriage during a sudden heavy rainstorm, because the carriage, an early Oldsmobile, had no top—and thus converting the barn temporarily into Stay More’s first garage. On a heavy-handed symbolic level, the barn is the most pastoral of structures, and the coming of the automobile signaled the decline of the pastoral age. Indeed, when Eli Willard drove into the barn between the two cribs for horses and cows, the horses reared up whinnying and snorting and broke the gates of their stalls, and the cows gave sour milk for a week afterwards. But this reaction was as nothing compared with the first appearance of his automobile in the center of town, where tethered horses broke their reins and ran away, horses and mules hitched to wagons stampeded, all of the dogs of Stay More howled until they were hoarse, children screamed, women fainted, and the brass clock, which Eli Willard had sold sixty-odd years before, said PRONG.

Eli Willard must have been in his eighties now; a man of that age would be denied a driver’s license today, but he still had two good eyes and two good ears and a strong pair of hands to hold the wheel with which he steered the machine. He came to a stop in front of the Ingledew General Merchandise Store, and everybody who had not fainted or was not tending to those who had, crowded into the road, keeping a safe distance from the vehicle, except for the bravest of the Ingledews, Swains, Plowrights, Coes, Dinsmores, Chisms, Duckworths and Whitters, one man of each, who approached the machine warily after Eli Willard had cut off its engine, and who got down on their knees and stuck their heads under it to see how it was put together. Eli Willard gave a squeeze to a large rubber bulb attached to a brass horn pointing downward, and the resultant sound produced eight bruised heads, one each to an Ingledew, Swain, Plowright, Coe, Dinsmore, Chism, Duckworth and Whitter. Each of them rose and shouted his favorite epithet at Eli Willard.

“Sorry, gentlemen,” said the octogenarian from Connecticut. “I couldn’t resist. Where I come from, it is considered the height of rudeness to examine the mechanisms of another’s motorcar.”

“Gawdeverallmighty!” exclaimed a Swain, “hit aint a man nor a beast, hit’s a thang!”

“Whatever on earth is the world a-comin to?” asked a Dinsmore.

“Hit aint even got a bridle on it!” observed a Coe.

“Is that all of it?” wondered a Plowright. “Aint there any more to it?”

“Lookit them thar tars,” said a Chism, and kicked one. “Rubber tars! What’s inside ’em? Straw?”

“Air,” said Eli Willard.

“Air!” exclaimed all eight of them incredulously, and one demanded, “How d’ye git the air in ’em?”

Eli Willard demonstrated his tire pump.

“If that aint the beatinest thang ever I seed!” one exclaimed, and each man had to try it for himself, squirting air into his eyes, mouth and ears.

An Ingledew put his ear to the hood. “She was rattlin and runnin. But she’s quiet as daybreak now. Is she dead?”

Eli Willard took off his coat, retarded the spark, inserted the crank and spun it. The engine leaped to life. The men backed away, and the ring of the crowd keeping its distance expanded to more distance. The exertion of spinning the crank wearied the old man, and he sat down on the running board to rest for a few moments. Then he stood up slowly and addressed the crowd, delivering his spiel for the taking of their photographs. “Fifty cents for one person or a couple, a dollar for a group. Step right this way.”

No one stepped. He took from the rear of his vehicle the large camera and tripod, and began setting them up. Once more he appealed to the crowd, “Doesn’t anybody have fifty cents to get photographed?” No one responded. “Sharp and clear pictures, card mounted,” he said. “None of your fuzzy tintypes. Developed on the spot.” He gestured at his portable developing laboratory. But no one came forward. “All right,” he said, “twenty-five cents. Two bits. I don’t make any profit at that price, but I’m not going to just give them away.” Still no one moved, until, edging her way through the crowd, came the figure of an old but pretty woman. She went up to Eli Willard and placed a half dollar in his hand.

“Ah,” Eli Willard said, smiling and recognizing her. “Sarah’s friend. Step right over here.” He positioned her, then put his head under the hood of his camera, made adjustments, and took her picture. While he was developing it, he asked her, “And how is Sarah?” She did not answer, but from the look in her eyes he understood that Sarah was not. “And Jacob too?” The woman gave the ghost of a nod. Eli Willard brushed away a tear while he finished developing the picture. He mounted it on a stiff card and showed it to her. She was satisfied with it. As she was returning to her home, the crowd closed in on her and insisted on seeing the photograph. She gave it to them, and they passed it from hand to hand, smudging it with their fingers, so that by the time it had circulated among all of them and had come back to her, it was defaced. She returned it to Eli Willard. “Let me make you another one, without charge,” he offered, and while he was making it, he noticed that the others no longer formed a crowd but were getting into a queue; many of them dashed to their homes to don their best clothes and rushed right back.

The Masons—or, now, The Grinning and Ogling Tipplers’ Union—were already dressed for their monthly meeting, so after photographing Sarah’s friend again, he made the group photograph which I have mentioned of T.G.A.O.T.U., at their request moving his tripod around to the rear of the Ingledew store, where they could put on their little lambskin aprons in relative privacy. “Mason!” Eli Willard exclaimed, but John Ingledew explained to him that they were miscreant or reprobate Masons who now called themselves by another name. That name was not revealed to Eli Willard, but even so he tried all his tricks to get them to grin or ogle at the instant he took their picture. He made comical faces at them, told a couple of hilarious jokes, and even related what the farmer’s daughter said to the traveling salesman, all without avail: the twenty-eight men are expressionless in that photograph.

All day he made photographs. He offered a choice of fake backdrops, painted on canvas: one was of Niagara Falls, with a real barrel in front of it that the subject could sit in and appear to have gone over the falls in; another featured a stampede of buffalo bearing down on the subject from behind; another featured an automobile that the subject appeared to be driving; another showed a lavish mansion and acres of gardened estate that the subject could appear to be the owner of; the last—not very popular at Stay More—was the interior of the White House office of the President of the United States. Eli Willard photographed all of the Ingledews, except Isaac, who was unwilling, so we do not know what that patriarch looked like; we can only guess, by subtracting the looks of Salina, who was photographed, from those of all their children, all of whom were photographed, Perlina in a double shot with Long Jack Stapleton, and John in a group photograph with Sirena and all of their children. Since Eli Willard’s camera was portable, he was able, at their request, to photograph the Ladies’ Quilting Bee Society at work on one of their spectacular star pattern quilts, the two dentists at work with patients in their chairs, the two doctors at work with patients on their tables, Willis at work as postmaster, and other “candid” images which form a valuable documentary record of life in Stay More early in our Century.

The photographing session was terminated, late that afternoon, by a sudden heavy shower. The line of customers broke up and ran for shelter on the porches of the store or mill. Old Eli Willard, working as fast as he could, tried to drape his equipment and his automobile with the canvases that he used as backdrops for his photographs, when suddenly his eye caught sight of Denton’s and Monroe’s unusual barn in a nearby field. “Whose barn is that?” he asked the people taking refuge from the rain on the store porch. “Mine and Denton’s,” said Monroe, who was there. “Might I ask permission to park there out of the rain?” asked Eli Willard. “Park?” said Monroe, who had never heard the word before. “I’d like to remove my motorcar there,” Eli Willard said rapidly, because the rain was coming down in torrents now. Monroe had, of course, heard of the word “remove,” as in remove one’s hat, but, whereas a hat is pretty light-weight and easy to remove, it would take a mighty stout feller to remove a whole motorcar, unless…it suddenly occured to Monroe that perhaps what Ole Eli Willard wanted to do was drive the motorcar up to the barn and into the passageway, or maybe, if he wanted to remove it there, it meant he wanted to drive it there and remove it, take it apart, or whatever. “Wal—” Monroe said, but faltered. He didn’t particularly care one way or the other himself, but maybe he ought to go find Denton and talk it over with his brother to see if Denton didn’t mind.

“I’ve got to get my motorcar out of the rain!” Eli Willard beseeched. “Aw, yeah, shore,” Monroe said. “Go right ahead.” Eli Willard cranked his engine, hopped in, and drove quickly to the Ingledew barn. He had to get out and unlatch the barnyard gate and drive through it and get out again and relatch the gate, and by the time he was sheltered in the passageway, frightening the cows and horses, he might just as well have stayed out in the rain because he and his car were soaked. He took a tin can from his tool box and began to bail the water out of the car.

Denton Ingledew had meanwhile been inside the cow crib milking one of the cows. When the Oldsmobile pulled into the passageway, Demon’s cow put her hind foot in the milk pail and kicked it over, lashed the side of his face with her tail, commenced bellowing along with her sisters, and turned completely around, mashing Denton against the wall. He got out alive, and began cussing Eli Willard, who protested, “Your brother said I could park here.” “Park?” said Denton, who had never heard the word before.

“It’s raining cats and dogs,” Eli Willard pointed out. “I had to get my motorcar out of the rain.”

Denton noticed how wet Eli Willard and his motorcar were, and observed, “Didn’t do ye much good, did it? My cows is havin conniption fits. And lookee at them hosses in thar, a-bustin up their stalls. You have done went too far, Mr. Willard. I am a-gorn to have to law ye.”

“Law me?” said Eli Willard.

“Sue ye in court,” Denton explained, and he went off to confer with his attorney, Jim Tom Duckworth, who counseled him that it stood to reason, even if it didn’t stand in the books, that damages and nuisances caused by animals’ reactions to the sight and sound of self-propelled conveyances ought to be actionable, and Jim Tom straightway took the matter to court at Jasper.

Eli Willard was summonsed, to appear as soon as the rain stopped. But the rain lasted for several days before stopping, and by then the dirt road was a morass of mud. The motorcar was mired hopelessly before it had gone fifty feet from the barn. Laughing, Monroe Ingledew offered, for a small consideration, to hitch a team of his horses to the motorcar and get it out. The horses performed this task contemptuously but successfully. Eli Willard paid Monroe the small consideration, and drove on. He had not gone far, however, when he got stuck again, up to the hubs. One of the Swain men hitched a team to him and pulled him out, for a slight fee. In front of the Plowrights’ house, another team extricated him from the ooze, in return for a freewill donation. The Dinsmores accepted a trifling premium. The Chisms required only a scant compensation. The Duckworths’ bill was insignificant. But Eli Willard realized that at his present rate of travel he would take weeks to reach Jasper, so he persuaded the Whitters, after they had hauled his motorcar out of the mud for a pittance, to accept a substantial reward in return for pulling him all the way to the Jasper courthouse, which they did, people pointing and laughing all along the route. Eli Willard hired one of the lawyers hanging around the courthouse to represent him.

There was no jury; the judge alone heard the case. “Yore Honor,” Jim Tom began, “my client the plaintiff here, with the help of his brother a-sittin over thar, built a mighty fine barn up to Stay More, with a sorta open passway right through the middle of it for the purpose of drivin a team and wagon into the barn under cover to unload the hay and put it up in the two lofts either side of the passway. The defendant, thar, on the date mentioned, did unlawfully operate a self-propelled vee hickle, or hossless kerridge, that’s it yonder a-settin right out thar through the winder, in such a manner as to enter the aforementioned passway, with the intent to, or fer the purpose of, gittin in out a the rain, and by so doing, did aggerpervoke the plaintiff’s cows and hosses, which caused the former to give sour milk ever since, and caused the latter to rare up and strike the gates of their stalls in such a way as to shatter same, not to mention it has lately been discovered one of ’em has got a lame fetlock. We ask real damages of one hundred smackers plus punitive damages of one hundred.”

Eli Willard’s attorney said, “If hit please the Court, I’d like to ask Yore Honor to find whar it says, anywhar in the statues, that hit’s a-gin the law to drive a hossless kerridge into a barn.”

The judge recessed the court while he consulted the books, which said nothing whatever about hossless kerridges. He reconvened the court, informed the plaintiff and defendant of this fact, and declared, “Since I caint rule ipso jure, reckon I’ll jist have to rule ipso facto. Proceed, gents.”

Eli Willard’s attorney argued that the defendant had received permission from the plaintiff’s brother, co-builder of the barn, to deposit his vee hickle there. The defendant did not know that the barn was inhabited by cows and horses at that moment, and the defendant had no intention of causing any damage, and furthermore the defendant, as you can plainly see, is very old and probably senile and probably didn’t even know what he was doing.

Be that as it may, argued Jim Tom Duckworth, a senile old man had no business operating a dangerous machine. “Yore Honor,” he asked the judge, “do you know what makes that hossless kerridge go?”

“Court perfesses ignorance,” replied the judge.

“Infernal combustion!” declared Jim Tom. “That thar senile ole defendant has been combustin all over creation, and it’s all that combustin what skeers the cows and hosses and gener’ly raises up hell.”

Eli Willard was not feeling well. He did not enjoy hearing references to his advanced age, and he did not like the thought that he was senile. He told his attorney, “Rest our case, and let’s get it over with.”

“Yore Honor,” the attorney began his summation, “jist let me say this. My client is innocent. As you well know, all my clients is innocent, but this here client, I’m a-tellin ye, is straight-up-and-down innocent, which means that he caint possibly be guilty noway. Why, he’s the tore-downdest innocentest feller they ever was. To look at it another way, he is blameless. The fault, if thar ever was one, aint his’n. May hit please the Court, I do hereby pronounce this pore ole senile Yankee peddler feller, whose hands is clean as a hound-dog’s tooth, pure of crime and in the clear! Defense rests.”

“Yore Honor,” countered Jim Tom Duckworth, “I shore wouldn’t swaller that line, iffen I was you. The defendant’s hands aint clean; they’re red! Look at ’em! Why, that feller is guilty. He is the guiltiest defendant ever I saw; in fact, he is the most guiltiest defendant ever I saw. It’s all his fault, ever bit of it, right down the line. He has transgressed! He has trespassed! He has offended! He has damaged! Judge, listen to me, if he aint guilty, I’m a monkey’s uncle. If he aint guilty, black is white and up is down and hot is cold and dry is wet and God knows what all! I swear up and down and all over the place that he is guilty. He don’t know what innocent is. He has done wrong and must pay for it. I stand here with proud haid bared afore the bar of justice and I p’int my finger at that rascal and I declare that he is, without the slightest doubt in the least, to blame. He is GEE EYE DOUBLE-ELL TEE WHY!”

The judge listened thoughtfully to both of these summations, and decided that Jim Tom’s was the more eloquent of the two, and thus he found against the defendant. Eli Willard paid up, and left town.

The Jasper Disaster gave the case brief mention under the headline MOTORIST CONVICTED OF SPOOKING LIVESTOCK. The years went by, one by one, and Eli Willard did not come back to Stay More again. The people wondered if he was just sulking, or if he had died. Either way, they were very sorry to see him go, or, rather, very sorry to see him not come back. Denton Ingledew himself wanted to write a letter to Eli Willard and apologize and invite him to come back, but he did not know where to address it. At any rate, no more hossless kerridges were seen in Stay More for several years, and the Ingledew barn remained pastoral.

These were the Ingledew children, John’s sons, conceived at night while he slept, and his assumed daughter: Elhannon Harvey, who never could speak his own name, and was called “E.H.”; he had an excess of yellow bile, and was generally irascible. Odell Hueston, called variously “Ode,” “Dell” and “Odd,” had an excess of black bile, and was thus the son who most resembled his father: gloomy and doomy. Bevis Handy, called “Beef” or sometimes “Bevis,” destined to become the father of the next (and penultimate) wave of Ingledews, had an excess of blood, and was, depending on how you interpreted it, excitable, passionate or maniacal. Tearle Harley, called always “Tearle,” which is pronounced “Tull,” had an excess of sweat and was industrious, too much so, which made him frakes-prone, so that in his thirties he acquired an excess of alcohol, which rendered him good natured and witty, because alcohol is the most humorous of the humors. Lola Hannah, called “Lola,” pronounced “Lowly,” the only daughter, who was not really John’s daughter but Willis’s, although none of them knew that, not even her mother, who was sleepwalking when she entered Willis’s room, and not Willis, who slept through it all; Lola had an excess of menses, and was untouchable. Stanfield Henry, called, for some reason, “Stay,” as in Stay More, or sometimes “Flem” because he had an excess of phlegm and was sluggish, or self-possessed. And the last-born, Raymond Hugh, called “Ray,” who had an excess of semen, and was lustful. Raymond was just reaching puberty when his older brothers and his half-sister turned the hayloft of the barn into a clubhouse, but he could tell a joke just as ribald as anyone’s.

The boys tried to exclude Lola from these hayloft gatherings, but she insisted on attending, and threatened to tell on them if they didn’t let her, although she never participated in their activities but remained an interested kibitzer. They said and did things in her presence that they would never have dreamed of saying or doing in the presence of any other female, but after all she was their sister; if they had known she was only their half-sister, they would have said and done only half the things. Lola remained a spinster all her life, and one cannot help but wonder if the fact that she was the only girl among six brothers had anything to do with it, or whether her watching and listening to the goings-on of the hayloft clubhouse gave her a negative attitude toward the opposite sex.

During the pastoral age symbolized by our barn, there was an influx of new homesteaders, not farmers but people from the cities, mostly single women. A smart land lawyer in Jasper got rich by challenging in court Jacob Ingledew’s decree against further immigration, on the grounds that it violated the Homestead Act, and winning the case, and selling his services to people suffering from “city fever” who wanted to get back to the land. These people had spent all their lives in the cities, laboring in business and industry, saving their pennies, and dreaming of a better life. There appeared on the newsstands of the cities a rash of new magazines: Country Life in America, America Outdoors, Rural Digest, Arcadian Times, Hill and Dale, Silvan Weekly, Ladies’ Bucolic Companion, Back-country Journal, Pastoral Pictures, extolling the healthful benefits of a return to the soil.

The only possible real return to the soil is to the grave, but the magazines did not believe it. They sent their reporters out across the land. One of them, a young woman from Arcadian Times, published in Chicago, got lost in the backcountry and stumbled upon Stay More. She walked down the Main Street, slowly, with her notebook in hand, pausing now and then to write “impressions.” The Stay Morons watched her. She was wearing a skirt that came down to a pair of high button shoes, and a ruffled blouse that revealed most of her shoulders; beneath these garments she wore a corset which constricted her waistline to, as one observer put it, “not no more thick than my thigh.” She entered Willis Ingledew’s General Store and browsed around, mumbling from time to time, “How quaint,” and pausing to write impressions in her notebook.

“Could I be of some hep to ye, ma’am?” Willis asked her.

She stared at him, then smiled with delight, and requested, “Say that again, please.”

“Could I be of some hep to ye, ma’am?” he repeated patiently.

She wrote these words down in her notebook, then asked, “What is the name of this place?” Willis pointed at the post office in one corner of the store, where a sign clearly said, “U.S. Post Office, Stay More, Ark.” She wrote this down, then said, “Oh! Is that your post office?”

“Nome,” said Willis, “it’s the undertaker’s.”

The young woman was moved to remark, “Ha, ha.” Then she wrote this down in her notebook.

“Was you wantin to buy anything, lady?” Willis asked.

After writing this down, the woman said, “No, thank you. I’m simply gathering gleanings. What is your name?”

“Willis Ingledew, ma’am,” he replied.

“How quaint,” she said, and wrote this down, then wandered on out of the store. She strolled along to the gristmill, and walked all the way around it to the creek. It was in busy operation, but over the noise of the machinery she approached Isaac Ingledew and asked him, “Does it really run?” Isaac slowly shook his head. “How tall are you, by the way?” she asked. Isaac held out his hand at the level of his headtop, to indicate how tall he was. This tactic provoked her to comment, “Hee, hee.” Then she scribbled in her notebook. She asked him, “And what is your name, sir?”

One of the other men at the mill said to her, “Hit’s Isaac Ingledew, lady, and he don’t like to talk none, so you’d best not be askin him no questions.”

“How quaint. Are you related to Willis Ingledew?” she asked Isaac. He shook his head. “You look as if you might be his father,” she observed. “Why is it that you don’t like to talk?” He did not answer. “Perhaps you have a congenital speech impediment that medical science could cure? Or possibly it’s psychological. Do you understand psychology?” He made no response. “It could be that when you were a child something frightened you speechless and you’ve never been able to talk since.”

“Lady,” said one of the other men, “he aint never been frightened by man nor beast in his whole life long, so you’re jist a-wastin yore time. He don’t like to talk because—”

“Not so fast,” said the young woman, taking notes as rapidly as she could. “I can’t keep up with you.”

“He don’t like to talk because he don’t like to talk. Now why don’t you ask me somethin, and leave him alone?”

“Very well. What is your name, sir?”

“Puddin Tame,” he replied.

“How do you spell that last name?”

“I caint spell, ma’am.”

“How quaint. Have you lived here all your life?”

He felt his pulse. “No. Not yet.”

“Hi, hi,” she commented. “What work do you do?”

“I keep the ’skeeters out of the mill.”

“Mosquitoes? How do you keep them out?”

“With my shotgun.”

“My. Are they that big?”

“You aint seen any Stay More ’skeeters yet? Wal, iffen ye do, don’t swat at one. Jist makes it mad. Fling rocks at it as fast as ye kin.”

“I believe you are having me on, sir,” she said, closing her notebook and leaving the mill. But as she strolled further about the village she kept her eyes open, and at one point she bent down and picked up a rock which she carried in her hand. She caught sight of the unusual Ingledew barn and walked all around it, noting that it had no windows and was dramatically cantilevered. She walked into the passageway that ran through it, where she heard voices coming from the loft above. She listened, hearing an off-color joke. Then she climbed to the top of the ladder, with difficulty on account of her ankle-length dress. The young Ingledews were surprised to see this elegant young lady holding a notebook in one hand and a rock in the other. Hastily they buttoned themselves. “How quaint,” the elegant young lady was moved to comment. “What is this?” None of them answered. “Is this your house?” They looked at one another and then nodded in unison. “What is all the dried grass for?” she asked. “Oh, is it to sleep on?” They nodded. She looked at Lola. “Are you the lady of the house?” Lola nodded. “Which of them is your husband?” “All of ’em,” declared Lola solemnly. “How quaint. Even him?” she said, indicating thirteen-year-old Raymond. Lola nodded. “What are your names?” “Ingledew.” “All of you?” They nodded. The elegant young lady climbed down the ladder.

She noticed the two cribs, which were empty; the horses and cows were out to pasture. One of the horses, she noticed, was mounted upon one of the cows. To herself she remarked, “How quaint.” Then somehow she found the road to Jasper. As she walked along it, a turkey buzzard flew out of a tree in her direction. She screamed and threw the rock she was carrying at it. The rock missed, but the turkey buzzard did not come and sting her. At Jasper she caught a coach which took her to Harrison, where she caught a train back to Chicago. Not long afterwards, an issue of Arcadian Times carried her article, “A Most Quaint Village Deep in the Ozarks,” with wood engravings by the staff artist illustrating a typical home filled with dried grass, a giant mosquito, and a seven-foot inhabitant who never spoke. All of the inhabitants, said the article, were named Hinkledew, with the exception of a Mr. Tame, who had told her how to deal with the giant mosquitoes. The region was an utterly enchanting and enchanted one. The people ground their own flour and meal in an enormous mill powered by a steam engine. The post office was in the general store. The only painted buildings in town were the small offices of two doctors and two dentists. The people were polyandrous, one woman having as many as six husbands; there was probably a shortage of women. Their pastimes were sensual. The pastimes of the horses and cows were sensual. Everything, except for the giant mosquitoes, was utterly enchanting.

As a direct or indirect result of this article, people from the cities, particularly women, who had slaved as clerks and secretaries and millworkers, saving their money and dreaming of a better life, withdrew their deposits, packed their bags, and took the train to Harrison, where a coach took them to Jasper, where they hired the land lawyer to drive them to Stay More, and homesteaded every tract of land that had not been claimed. The men of Stay More were hired to build their houses for them; at first, the women insisted on a house that resembled the Ingledew barn, but, being assured that the barn was a barn, they accepted log cabins. For fifty dollars cash, a Stay Moron would build them a simple and quite habitable log cabin. These cabins are not illustrated here because they were anachronisms. They looked like Jacob Ingledew’s first cabin, but the door was in the gable end and the windows on the sides. Today the ruins and skeletons of these cabins are mistaken for early settlers’ houses.

The women homesteaders were flirtatious with their builders, and the building went slow, interrupted by many a roll in the bushes. Even though these women enjoyed and were undoubtedly grateful for these rendezvous, they were condescending toward the Stay Morons, openly referring to them as “blue-eyed monkeys.” Once the cabins were built, these women enlisted the Stay More menfolk to the cause of their rural education: how to plant a garden, how to tell the difference between a large mosquito and a turkey buzzard. During “nature study” hikes in the woods, they would pause frequently for further gratification of the flesh. A Stay More woman, suspicious because her husband was no longer making any demands on her, followed him into the woods one day and caught him at it, and spread the word to the other women of Stay More, who also suddenly realized that their husbands were no longer making demands on them, and were outraged at the boldness of these city women; the women of Stay More determined that they would not allow their husbands into their beds again until their husbands gave up philandering the city women; this stratagem had the reverse of the intended effect. For a long time the women of Stay More were unhappy and jealous. But everyone else was happy. The newcomers were good for the economy. The money they spent to have their cabins built went into the pockets of the natives. They bought their groceries from Willis Ingledew or the other general store, and bought their flour from the mill. They were not good at gardening, not the first year anyway, and were required to buy their produce from the local people. The first year too they had not acquired immunity to the twenty-three Stay More viruses, and they often patronized the two local doctors. Everybody, except the wives of Stay More, agreed that the city women were the best thing that ever happened to Stay More.

One day one of the city women suggested to her paramour, “Why don’t you leave your wife to her other husbands and come and be mine?” Her paramour laughed and said, “Where’d ye git the idee my old womarn had another man?” And then the awful truth was out. One by one, the city women learned that Stay Morons were not polyandrous after all, that, in fact, there was a slight surplus of females in the population, which the city women had increased. But it was too late. They had invested their life savings to have the cabins built and to establish roots in the enchanted backcountry. They loved the fresh air and the sunshine, and the smell of wildflowers and weeds and the creekwater. They loved their blue-eyed monkey lovers, even if they could never marry them. They could not go back to the cities. So they tried as best as they could to adapt themselves to Stay More life. The many snakes and reptiles of Stay More frightened them, and their general nervousness caused all of them to smoke a lot of cigarettes, in the privacy of their cabins. Their Stay More lovers discovered that cigarettes aren’t as much bother as a pipe, and can also be inhaled, and the Stay More men took up the smoking of cigarettes, in public as well as in private, and were nagged by the womenfolk, who warned them that the cigarettes, no less than the city women, would be their undoing.

One night the whole sky seemed to explode with gigantic sparks, in what was one of the rare reappearances of the comet known as Halley’s but unknown to the Stay Morons, who interpreted it as a cosmic caution to give up their sinful ways. Although they did not give up the smoking of cigarettes, they gave up philandering with the city women. The city women were required to turn their attention to unmarried men. But all of the unmarried men were Ingledews, who, the city women were dismayed to discover, were too shy even to notice them, except Willis Ingledew, who waited on them in his general merchandise store but who, if he talked at all, talked endlessly about his experiences at the St. Louis World’s Fair some years before, which bored the city women, since they had all been to the fair.

Searching for men, the city women began to attend the games of Base Ball and the shooting matches where the men and boys of Stay More, having taken down their grandfathers’ muzzle-loaders from over the doors of their houses, competed for a beef calf by firing, from four hats away, at a slip of paper tacked to a tree. The women were amazed at the marksmanship, particularly of the Ingledews, who always won, but the women failed utterly to attract the notice of any of the Ingledews…except the youngest, Raymond, who was only fourteen years old. Raymond, having an excess of the humor of semen in his system, couldn’t wait until he was old enough to philander one of the city women, not realizing that when he was old enough to court one of them, they would be too old for him. Whenever they were watching the games of Base Ball or the shooting matches, Raymond always did things to call attention to himself, making diving catches of the ball, shooting from the hip with Jacob’s muzzle-loader. “What a cute boy,” the city women would exclaim, but they wouldn’t flirt with him. At the meetings of the hayloft clubhouse, Raymond would boast to his older brothers of what he intended to do to the city women, but his older brothers, although they themselves constantly talked of precisely what they would like to do to the city women if only they weren’t too shy to approach them, laughed at Raymond and told him he was too young, and double-dog-dared him to find a hole for his pole.

This became a constant obsession for Raymond. He would stop at a city woman’s cabin and say to her, “I was on my way to the store and jist a-wonderin iffen I could bring ye anythang.” “Why, bless your heart,” she would reply. “I need a spool of white thread.” He would bring it to her, and hang around, waiting to see if she would flirt with him, but she would not. He would try another woman, offering to mow the weeds around her cabin, and when he was finished the woman would ask, “What can I give you?” “Aw,” Raymond would say, “…you know…” “Twenty-five cents enough?” she would ask, and fetch him a quarter. There was one very pretty woman who had obtained a cow but did not know how to milk it. Raymond offered to show her. After she had mastered the practice, and was stroking the cow’s teats firmly, Raymond boldly asked her, “What does that make you think of?” After a moment’s reflection, the woman replied, “Butter. I’m going to get me a churn and make my own butter.” There was another woman who was noted for her devotion to nature study, and had been known to tour the woods with several different men before the exploding night sky had frightened them out of the practice. “By golly,” Raymond said to her, “I know jist as much about the woods as e’er a man alive.” “You sweet boy,” the woman replied. “Let’s see if you do.” They went into the woods, and Raymond demonstrated that he could name every tree and every flower. But the woman showed no intention of flirting with him. “Aint we gonna lay down?” he asked her. “I’m not tired,” she replied and thanked him for the tour and went back to her cabin, leaving him less satisfied than ever.

Raymond decided he would have to commit rape. There was one woman whose cabin was way off up on Ledbetter Mountain, too far for the nearest neighbor to hear her if she hollered. Raymond made a disguise out of a pillowcase with two slits for his eyes, and went to the cabin. The woman hollered. “Won’t do ye no good,” he told her. “Nobody kin hear ye. You know what I’m after, and I aim to git it.” She asked, “Aren’t you that cute Raymond Ingledew boy who shows off at Base Ball and shooting matches?” “Nome, I’m one a his older brothers,” he replied. She reproved him, “I never thought an Ingledew would be a robber.” “I aint a robber, ma’am, I’m a rapist.” The woman broke up with laughter; she couldn’t stop. Raymond tried to hold her still so that he could rape her, but he couldn’t hold her; she went on rocking with laughter. Raymond went home and buried his disguise, and decided he would wait until he was fifteen and see what happened.

Chapter twelve

Willis Ingledew made so much money from the operation of his General Merchandise Store, particularly after the city women became his customers, that he didn’t know what to do with it. He had no family to support, and he was nervous about having so much money, which he kept in a locked drawer of the post office, but he knew that this was a misuse of U.S. government property. He decided he would have to buy something. What was the most expensive article that he could use?

After considerable thought, he decided that a hossless kerridge probably cost a right smart of cash, so he ran off to Springfield, Missouri, where the nearest Ford agency was located, and bought himself a Model T Ford and brought it home, but the people of Stay More, having learned long since not to believe Willis Ingledew, did not believe he had a hossless kerridge, and ignored it. He drove up and down every dry road in the village, tooting his horn and waving, but nobody believed it, and nobody returned his waves. He offered rides to his nephews and his niece Lola who was his secret daughter, but all of them said, “Aw, you’re jist a-funnin us” and “Quit yore kiddin, Uncle Will.”

There was one person in the town, however, who did believe that Willis had acquired a Model T Ford, who could not ignore him, and that was his brother John. As we have seen, it was very important to John to be able to feel superior to Willis. Even though Willis owned the General Store, John was the respected leader of the lynch mob and the Worshipful Master of the Masons, or Top Tippler of T.G.A.O.T.U., but he did not own, and could ill afford to own, a hossless kerridge.

Consumed with envy, he began a systematic campaign to persuade the other Stay Morons that Willis was a villain because hossless kerridges were the worst form of PROG RESS and dangerous and they spooked the livestock and polluted the air and ought to be permanently banished from Stay More, but nobody listened to John because nobody believed that Willis really had one. It was very frustrating to John, trying to convince the people that Willis actually did possess an automobile, in order to persuade them that his possession of the automobile was deleterious. “Don’t carry on so, Doomy,” his older brothers Denton and Monroe said to him. “There’s nothin to worry about. Hit’s all only in yore haid. Fergit it. We aint interested.”

He appealed to Brother Long Jack Stapleton to make a picture show of Willis’s automobile, so that the people could see it, but Long Jack just stared at him and said, “What automobile?”

In time, John’s envy of Willis’s Model T Ford revealed itself to him for what it really was: envy. He came to realize that he would never be content until he had a Model T Ford for his very own, or, better yet, a Model U, V, W, X, Y or Z. Yet he had no money. He asked his father for a loan, but Isaac did not reply. The only other person who had money was Willis, and John couldn’t very well ask Willis for a loan to go out and buy a car to best him with. Like all of us who have at one time or another been short of cash, he dreamed of robbing the bank. He hatched elaborate plans for holding up the bank, in disguise. He considered many different types of disguise, and even tried out several. Then he suddenly realized that there wasn’t any bank. Stay More didn’t have one. In that case, he decided, somebody had better start one, and it might as well be him.

He made elaborate mental plans for his bank and its building, which adorns this chapter. In the first place, he determined, a bank building had to be a stronghold, so it couldn’t be robbed. He knew he must build his bank of heavy stones and cement. There were plenty of heavy stones lying around loose, but he would have to buy the cement, and he didn’t have the money. “Willis,” he said to his brother, “aint you a little bit skeered that somethin might happen to all the money you got stashed away some’ers?”

“If you’re tryin to git me to tell whar it’s hid, it won’t do you no good,” Willis said.

“Naw, naw, I aint interested in whar it’s hid. I just got to wonderin if you’d ever give a thought to whether somebody might find it and take it from ye?”

“That’ll be the day.”

“A furriner or a stranger or a tourist might come a-passin through, and when he sees that thar Model T he’ll know you got lots of money hid some’ers, and he might start sneakin around lookin fer it.”

“What Model T?”

John snorted. “Aw, I aint fooled. That’s it a-settin yonder, plain as day, even if nobody else believes it. Now look, here’s what I got in mind: I’m aimin to start me a bank. All I need is the cash to pay fer the see-ment, if you’d be so kind as to loan it to me and take it out of my wages.”

“Hmmm,” Willis said, and pondered his brother’s venture. “Whar you aim to find a steel door with combination lock fer yore vault?”

“Hadn’t thought of that,” John confessed. “Do ye reckon Sears, Roebuck would carry them things?”

“I misdoubt it,” Willis said. “But I got some equipment catalogs that might have ’em.” He dragged out his catalogs, and the brothers pored through them, until they had found a steel door with combination lock manufactured in St. Louis. The price of it, John was dismayed to learn, was almost enough to pay for an automobile. But whereas he couldn’t ask Willis for a loan to buy a car, he could, and did, ask Willis to help him get set up in his bank, pointing out the advantage to Willis, and to their father, and to their brothers and sisters and everybody, of having a safe place to keep their money. Willis thought a bank would just be an extra temptation to rob it, but John said he was going to make his bank out of heavy stone and put bars on the windows and with that steel door with combination lock for the vault, the only way any robber could get the money would be to hold up John, and as everybody knew John was the fastest trigger east of Indian Territory, which wasn’t Indian Territory anymore because Oklahoma had been granted statehood and Arkansas was no longer the western frontier.

After much persuasion, Willis considered the fact that if John left his employ and went into business for himself Willis would be getting rid of a clerk whom many customers didn’t like on account of his gloomy, doomy expression, and he also realized that while a gloomy-doomy expression is not an asset for a store clerk, it would be just perfect for a banker. So he loaned John the money for his cement, and sent off to St. Louis for a steel door with combination lock. It was summer, the creeks were dry, and the bed of Swains Creek was cluttered with an abundance of large stones; John selected among these and hauled them up Main Street to the north end, and began building his bank on the east side of the street. He named it the Swains Creek Bank and Trust Company, appropriately, for the creek had furnished the building materials. While he was building it, he attracted much curiosity, particularly among the younger generation, who wanted to know what kind of shop he was building. When he told them it was a bank, they asked what he was going to sell, and when he told them that he was not going to sell anything but just take in money, they went home and told their parents that John Ingledew was playing with rocks and some of the rocks had gotten into his head. But all six of John’s sons helped him with the masonry, and from time to time a lodgebrother from T.G.A.O.T.U. would stop by to help out, and the building was finished just in time to install the steel door with combination lock shipped from St. Louis. The vault was constructed of the same masonry as the building itself, and was bonded to it; it took six men to lift the steel door and hold it in place while it was bolted to the vault. Then John went to Jasper, where a job printing outfit was operated as a sideline to the Jasper Disaster, and ordered the printing of his deposit slips, checks, savings books and other forms.

The printer was also the editor of the Disaster, and he interviewed John and ran a front page story under the headline, NEW FINANCIAL EMPORIUM TO DEBUT AT STAY MORE. The article mentioned that a gala ribbon cutting and grand opening would feature refreshments on the house to all comers. John went all the way to Harrison just to get the lemons to make lemonade with, to serve to the womenfolk and children; to the men, of course, he would serve the best corn that could be found. Sirena and her daughter Lola were kept busy for a week baking pies and cakes.

The festivities lasted all day on the Second Tuesday of the Month, and were enjoyed by all present in downtown Stay More. John wished that Eli Willard was there to photograph the whole shebang. He waited until late afternoon, when most of the men were pleasantly plastered, to make his speech. Then he stood on the porch of his bank and addressed his townsmen, with an air of civic pride, telling them how glad he was to be able to contribute this handsome stone edifice to the Main Street skyline, a rugged building that would last forever, that all of us gathered here together can boast of to our great-great-grandchildren that we were present on the day it was first opened, a building solemnly dedicated to the preservation and protection of our hard-earned pennies and nickels, so that we may sleep better at night secure in the knowledge our riches are sealed away in a vault behind a door that took six men to lift, dedicated to the proposition that this great land of ours is a society of free enterprise wherein a man may work to earn capital and possess his capital in the form of cash and coins, and deposit his capital into the firm and powerful safekeeping of the Swains Creek Bank and Trust Company and hold up his head before all other men, the line forms right over here.

The line did not form. The men and women looked at one another, waiting to see who would go first, but nobody went. The city women had all brought their savings with them to deposit, but they would not move until the natives did. John Ingledew overheard a Swain woman saying to her husband, “Homer, d’ye reckon that loose stone in the chimley-hearth is the best place to keep it?” “Sshh, hush, old woman,” he replied, but it was too late; the people around them had heard her. In another part of the crowd, a Plowright woman remarked to her husband, “It does kinder make a lump under the mattress,” while a Chism woman said to hers, “The rats might chew it if you keep on leavin it under the barn,” while a Duckworth woman said to hers, “I don’t mind ye stashin it in the peeanner, but it keeps some a the notes from soundin.” Before long, just about everybody had an idea of where everybody else was keeping their money, so they all went home and lifted rocks and mattresses and reached under barns and into pianos, and brought their money to deposit in John Ingledew’s bank, and the city women deposited their savings.

John collected almost five thousand dollars. His hands shook just from touching that much money, but he gathered it all up and carried it to his vault. The steel door on the vault, however, would not open. It had a little dial set into it with numbers from o to 9 running around it. That was the combination lock, he knew, but he did not know the combination. He fiddled with it for a while, turning it this way and that, but realized that it was hopeless. He was very nervous, and decided he had better return the money to the depositors until he could find out what the combination number was. He went from house to house, seeking to return the money, but he was rebuffed at every door; the people had revealed their money hiding places, and entrusted their money to John’s bank; it was up to John to keep his side of the bargain. He took the money home and ate supper with it in his lap; he put it under his pillow before going to bed; he kept his revolver loaded and in his hand while he tried to sleep, but he couldn’t sleep. He remembered that his father never slept, so he took the money down to the mill and asked Isaac if he would mind keeping an eye on the money for him. Isaac nodded. John reflected, and decided that since he had asked his father if he would mind, and his father nodded, that meant that he would mind. “You mean you won’t?” John said. Isaac nodded. John took the money home again and lay sleepless all night with it under his pillow. Early on the following morn, he sought out his brother Willis and asked him to drive his Model T up to St. Louis and find the vault-door manufacturer and find out what the combination was. Willis declined, suggesting that John send a first class special delivery letter; as postmaster, he sold the stamps to John.

John mailed his letter and went sleepless for four nights waiting for the reply, which said: “Before we can give you this information, you must furnish proof that you are indeed the owner of the bank.” How could he furnish proof? He drew up a petition, which said, “We, the undersigned, citizens of Stay More, county of Newton, state of Arkansas, do solemnly swear that John Ingledew is well known to us as John Ingledew, and is the owner of the Swains Creek Bank and Trust Company.” He took this petition around to everybody he could find; most of them signed it, although many of them could not write and had to sign an “X.” The petition was covered with a great variety of X’s. But he mailed it off, and went sleepless four more nights waiting for the reply, which said: “You will find the combination engraved in small figures in the lower left corner on the reverse of the door.” John thought about that for a while, then fired off another letter. “Goddamn it all to hell, how can I see the reverse of the goddamn door if the door is locked?” He waited another four days for the reply: “Please do not use profanity. If you will furnish us the serial number of your door, we can supply the combination from our files.” John couldn’t find any serial number, and wrote to tell them so. They replied: “The serial number is located in the upper right corner on the reverse of the door.” If John had not gone for so many nights without sleep, he would have lost his temper in the worst way, but he had no temper left to lose. He tried to curse, but it came out, “Ghdfm.”

He wrote another letter. “Dearest Sirs. I sure do hate to keep on bothering you good people like this, and I just know all of you fellers have much more important things to do than waste your time on a dumb old hillbilly like me, but I have to call your attention to the fact that there is no possible way I could send you the serial number of my door if the serial number is on the back side of it and the door is locked. On bended knee I beg of you, good gentlemen, to scratch your heads and think of something else.” He posted this, went home and fell asleep and slept for four days and nights with the money under his pillow and his revolver in his hand. The reply came, enclosing the combination number, which had been located by tracing the shipping invoice number to the list of serial numbers. John ran all the way up Main Street to the bank with his money and tried the combination on the vault door; tumblers clicked, but nothing happened. John noticed that there was a handle on the door, and he discovered that the handle would turn, and when it was turned the door opened; he foreverafter wondered if it would have opened in the first place if he had simply turned the handle. He put the money into the vault and locked it. Then he sat down at his desk and hid the combination number in the bottom drawer.

He was in business. The business of a bank is to take folks’ money and keep it safe and pay interest on it by loaning it out at a higher rate of interest to other folks. Whom did John know who would like to borrow some money? Well, there was a feller who wanted very much to take out an automobile loan so he could get him a Model T, or better. Feller named John Ingledew. “John, how much do you need for this loan?” John asked him. John told him. “That’s quite a lot. Are you a upstandin citizen of the community, and a good family man?” John asked him. “Some has been known to say so,” John modestly replied. “What is your occupation?” John wanted to know. “Why, I’m the pressydunt and cheerman of the board of the Swains Creek Bank and Trust Company,” John replied. “Do tell? Sir, it’s an honor to do business with such a tycoon. Your credit with us is always good. But I ought to point out, sir, that a Model T is the common man’s vee hickle, and a gentleman of your position ought to git hisself a better car.” “Is that so? Well, I will certainly have to give thought to that. Thank you for your advice. And thank you for the loan.” “You’re welcome. Come again, sir.” John opened the vault and took out the money for John’s automobile loan, and John put it in his pocket, closed the bank, and went off to Springfield and bought himself an Overland six-cylinder sedan, took an hour of driving lessons, and drove it home.

The people of Stay More believed it when they saw it, and were very much impressed. Willis was not impressed. John hoped that Willis would turn green with envy, since the Overland was such a better automobile than the Ford Model T. But since nobody believed that Willis had a Model T, he felt there wasn’t any point in his being envious of an automobile that was better than one that did not exist. Denton Ingledew said to his brother Monroe, “Wonder whar ole Doomy got the money?” Monroe replied, “Aw, bankers is all rich, don’t ye know that?” John parked his Overland in front of the bank, where it remained a symbol of affluence and an object of admiration. The doctors and dentists of Stay More felt that they too ought to have Overlands, and they applied to the bank for automobile loans, but John would not loan them enough for Overlands, and they had to settle for lesser cars, the financing of which emptied John’s vault, so that when Willis came to the bank and said to John, “How ’bout payin me back the money I lent ye fer the steel door and see-ment?” John had to put him off until another day.

John decided that he had better get out into the hills and go to work on some of the misers. Stay More had a number of these. They did not hide their money in the piano or under the mattress; they buried it. John drove his Overland right up to their dooryards, if they could be reached; if not, he tried to leave the car within distant view, so the misers could be impressed by the sight of it. He intimated that if the misers would deposit their money in his bank and let it accumulate interest, the misers too could afford an automobile some day. But the misers did not like the thought of having their coins and bills all mixed together with everybody else’s; they didn’t like the thought of exchanging their savings for a slip of scribbled paper. Only they knew where their money was buried, not even their wives and children, so it was safe.

“Maybe it’s safe, yeah,” John agreed. “But don’t you know that the cost of everthing is goin up, and when prices rise, the value of the money goes down. So you might think you got a hunerd dollars buried out yonder behind the corncrib, but when you go to dig it up and spend it, you might discover it’s only fifty dollars.” Some of the misers could not resist this logic, and they yielded, grabbing their spades and going off and coming back with earth-caked casks and rusty iron coffers containing silver and gold pieces and a few greenbacks. They gave their money to John in return for a slip of paper; they never questioned his honesty; after all, he was an Ingledew, wasn’t he? and all Ingledews have always been honest.

The other misers, the ones who continued to resist, did so on the claim that it didn’t matter whether prices rose or not because they never intended to spend their money anyway. “Air ye jist goin to let it stay buried after you air?” John would ask, incredulously. “Since you’re the only one knows whar at it’s hid, you’ll carry the secret to your grave.” Well, no, they said; on their deathbeds they would tell their wives or children where the money was buried. “But what if you’re hit by lightnin, or a tree falls on ye, or yore heart gives out all of a suddent?” John persisted, and one by one the misers yielded, until he had them all.

But, curiously enough, John’s exposure to all of those misers turned him into something of a miser himself. His children, fortunately, had all come of age before he turned into a miser, so they could support themselves without any help from him, although his firstborn, E.H., after apprenticing himself to the town dentist, wanted to set up his own practice, but was denied help from his father and had to seek elsewhere. His assumed daughter Lola, who was secretly Willis’s, got a job clerking in Willis’s store. Odell, Bevis and Tearle were successful farmers, but their father constantly badgered them to save every penny and deposit it in his bank. John dreaded the thought that there was a single coin anywhere in Stay More lying around loose; even more he dreaded the thought of a single coin being spent unless it was absolutely necessary. Other men continued to chat about weather and crops and Base Ball, but John never talked about anything but thrift and savings accounts, and he was a terrible bore. He had to lend money to cover the interest on the savings accounts, but he hated to, and he subjected each borrower to a merciless and embarrassing cross-examination, and then, in the rare event the loan was granted, he charged the highest interest that the law allowed. Not a few rugged farmers were known to break down and cry like babies on the other side of his desk.

But John reserved his true meanness for the city women, who, one by one, because of inflation, were using up all their savings. One by one they sat or stood, sunbonnets in hand, in front of his desk, twisting their sunbonnets and pleading for a small loan. One by one John turned them down, on the grounds that they had no employment and no prospects for income. One by one they told their pathetic plans: one intended to raise laying hens and sell eggs, one intended to weave baskets, one intended to be trained as a nurse in Doc Plowright’s office, one intended to be trained as a dental assistant in E.H. Ingledew’s office, one was expecting an inheritance from a wealthy aunt in Kansas City who was dying. One even asked for a job as a teller in John’s bank, claiming previous experience in a Chicago bank. But John set his gloomy eyes and his doomy jaw and turned them all down. One by one they starved for a while, then packed up and went back to their cities, abandoning their humble rustic cabins to the weeds and snakes. They were not missed by the women of Stay More.

The only man that John feared was a black-suited agent from the newly created Federal Bureau of Internal Revenue. Recently those politicians up in Washington, probably the same bunch of bastards who ran the Masonic headquarters, had got together and decided that the easiest way to raise money for the government was to put a tax on every man’s earnings. It was unconstitutional, a violation of free enterprise, but the black-suited agent told John that he would go to jail unless he obeyed. John called in his attorney, Jim Tom Duckworth, and asked him if it was true he would go to jail if he didn’t cough up. Jim Tom, who was having his own problems trying to fill out his annual income tax return, admitted that it was true. John asked his help in filling out the forms, and Jim Tom agreed to help as soon as he finished his own forms, in another couple of months or so. When John finally got his forms filled out and sent them in, the black-suited agent came back again and told John to prepare to be audited. John didn’t know what “audited” meant, although it sounded like “indicted” or “outlawed.” He asked if he should pack a suitcase.

“We aren’t going anywhere. I’ll do it right here,” the agent replied.

John went for his revolver, but the agent didn’t seem to be armed. “What do ye aim to do it with?” John asked.

“Why, with my ears, of course,” the agent said, and sat down at John’s desk and began asking him a whole bunch of questions. Beads of sweat began to break out all over John’s doomy face; soon his collar was drenched, but the agent went on asking questions, and John went on sweating, and then he began squirming in his seat. “Auditing,” he reflected, was not quite as bad as the frakes, but it was worse than ticks and chiggers. Finally the agent stopped asking questions and began writing some figures on his pad. At length the agent informed John that he had underpaid his taxes by $756.00 plus 8? interest and penalty. John opened the vault and got the money and gave it to the agent, who didn’t even thank him for it. Every year after that, John grew to dread the appearance of the agent, who always came, always without warning except the general warning that he always came. Year by year, the people up in Washington collected so much money that they didn’t know what to do with it. Like Willis Ingledew, who had collected so much money he didn’t know what to do with it, and thus had bought an automobile that nobody noticed, the government, on a larger scale, began to buy battleships and tanks and submarines, which nobody noticed.

John Ingledew was not the only Stay More victim of the Federal Bureau of Internal Revenue. The black-suited agent also “got” Willis, and “got” Jim Tom Duckworth and Doc Plowright and even William Dill the wagonmaker, who wasn’t making much profit now that anyone who could afford it was buying an automobile.

The black-suited agent had a younger brother, who wore a brown shirt and brown pants, and worked for a different branch of the Revenue Service, a branch that claimed a right to put a tax on the distillation of corn. That was going too far. If they would allow the government to put a tax on their right to convert corn into beverage, the government might as well put a tax on their right to have their cows convert grass into milk. The next thing you know, the government would be putting a tax on a cow’s right to convert bullseed into calves. John Ingledew called an emergency meeting of T.G.A.O.T.U. to assess the situation. Stay More’s best distiller, Waymon Chism, was a member, and he stood to lose most if the man in the brown shirt located his still, which wasn’t hidden, but in plain view on the Right Prong Road, with a sign over the doorway, “Chism’s Dew, 35¢ a gourd, W. Chism Prop.”

The members suggested that the first thing he had better do is scratch out “dew” and write in something else. To fit the space, it had to be a three-letter word, and there weren’t many of those. “Sip,” “sup,” “lap” and “nip” were suggested, but considered risky. Better to disguise it entirely with “pot,” “lap,” “oil,” or “rot.” Better still to call it “tea.” Waymon Chism scratched out “dew” and painted in “tea,” but the man in the brown shirt came anyway and stared at his sign and sniffed the air and asked Waymon what kind of tea was worth 35¢ a gourd. Waymon offered to sell him a gourdful, but the man claimed he was a United States government agent and was not required to pay for it. They argued awhile, and finally Waymon gave him a gourd, which contained a genuine tea that Waymon’s old woman had brewed out of sassafras roots, goldenseal, wild cherry, May apple, spicebush bark, dogbane, red-clover blossoms, bloodroot, purple coneflower, peach leaves, wild cherry bitters, saffron, sheep manure, and a generous dollop of Chism dew, the excellent taste of which was camouflaged by the other ingredients. The man in the brown shirt had to allow that it was the beatin’est tea ever he tasted, and he quaffed off the gourd in a few lusty swallows. All of the ingredients, including the last, were known to thin and purify the blood, and the brown-shirted man’s blood became so thin and pure that he was absolutely lighthearted and euphoric. “Hotcha!” he exclaimed, and paid 35¢ to Waymon, and then went on his way, exclaiming from time to time, “Zippy-umph!” and “Diggety-gee!” and “Mmmm Mamma!”

He had no heart for searching further for moonshiners, not for several days at least, so he checked into a hotel at Jasper, where, several days later, the Jasper Disaster noted the fact under a headline reading MANIAC AT LARGE IN TOWN. People barred their doors and the sheriff got up a posse. The man in the brown shirt was run to earth on the courthouse lawn. He flashed his I.R.S. badge. The sheriff asked him what he had been drinking, and he replied, “Chism’s Tea.” “Wal, did ye cut down his still?” the sheriff wanted to know. “What for?” the revenuer said. “That tea is the best stuff I ever drunk.” The sheriff and his posse looked at one another and grinned, and winked. “I’ll let ye go,” said the sheriff, “but next time don’t drink a whole gourdful,” The revenuer went on his way, busting up stills all over the Ozarks, but after a few weeks of such hard work, he developed an overpowering thirst for some more tea, so he returned to Stay More again and hiked up the Ring Prong road to Waymon Chism’s. He asked if he could buy just half a gourdful, explaining that the county sheriff had ordered him not to drink a whole gourd. Waymon said he was sorry but a gourd was the least amount he could see his way to sell. The revenuer asked if Waymon would loan him a Mason jar to pour half of it in; Waymon didn’t have any Mason jars but he poured half of the gourd into a stone jug stoppered with a corncob and gave it to the revenuer, who drank the other half and went off swinging the jug in his hand. He found that taking a small nip from the jug just before raiding a still gave him energy, and he went on busting up stills all over the Ozarks and returning periodically to Stay More to refill his jug with Chism’s tea, and he would have lived happily ever after, but he was a bachelor with no dependents and because of that fact he was drafted into the army and shipped overseas, where he died at Verdun.

Bachelors with no dependents made up the entire United States Army, and almost all the Ingledews were bachelors without dependents, but none of them were drafted, and if they had been they would not have served, because they couldn’t see any sense in going across the sea to fight some other countries’ battles for them. When the Jasper Disaster ran a banner headline, AMERICA ENTERS WAR, the people of Stay More assembled at Isaac’s mill and discussed the situation for three-and-a-half minutes, then put it out of their minds. They had nothing personal against the Germans. Stay Morons were not isolationists because of their isolation but because of their patriotism, which they thought of as loving and protecting their country, and they couldn’t see any way that fighting in France had to do with their country. There were only two Stay Morons who fought in France during that war, and they were not drafted but volunteered. One was Raymond Ingledew, whom we met in the previous chapter, he of the libidinous urges, which were not gratified at the age of fifteen, nor at any time by the city women. At the age of sixteen, however, following a square dance at which much of Chism’s Dew was consumed, he successfully enticed a somewhat homely Dinsmore girl off into the bushes, and removed both their virginities. At seventeen, he attended a pie supper, and was the highest bidder on a pie that had been baked by one of the Whitter girls, not as homely as the Dinsmore girl but still not a “looker”; she yielded easily to his debauchment. At eighteen, he graduated to a Duckworth girl who was almost pretty. At twenty, he succeeded in seducing a Coe girl who actually had certain attractions. At twenty-one, he achieved his majority and sowed his wild oats between a couple of Swain and Chism girls who were quite pretty. He felt ready to take on a beautiful girl.

There was only one girl in Stay More who, without any reservation, met that standard, and I cannot utter her name here, because the utterance of her name fills me with longing and sadness, but I have uttered it elsewhere. The town fathers of Jasper erected a high school, and this Beautiful Girl, although from a very humble family, was the first graduate of Stay More grade school to qualify for admission to the high school, and just to be near her Raymond Ingledew volunteered to serve as school bus driver, or rather school wagon driver, hitching a one-horse chaise five mornings a week and driving her into Jasper, where, since he had nothing better to do while waiting to drive her home, he enrolled at the high school himself, a twenty-one-year-old freshman among fifteen-year-old freshmen. Raymond, commendably, made no attempt to seduce the Beautiful Girl when she was a fifteen-year-old freshman. He waited until she was a sixteen-year-old sophomore.

But she repulsed him, claiming she already had a boyfriend. She did; his name was…but I have a habit of uttering his name only as a magic incantation to ward off mindlessness; I can use here only his initials, which were E.D. E.D. had been the Beautiful Girl’s boyfriend since she was eleven years old, but this stood as an extra challenge to Raymond, who knew that he was much more handsome than E.D. and was certainly from a much better family. He continued, during their junior and senior years, trying to seduce her, and, because her own mother continually reminded her that Raymond was a banker’s son while E.D. was only a wagonmaker’s son who couldn’t go to high school, Raymond at last, with a promise of marriage, seduced her, discovering that her ardor in the act was a match for her beauty. But the conquest did not satisfy him. Although they were officially engaged, he continued to dissipate his oats among all his previous conquests, and he could not for long keep this a secret from the Beautiful Girl, who, when she found out that he had been keeping company with Wanda Dinsmore, gave herself again to E.D. and later boasted of it to Raymond, whose strict double standard tore at his heart and compelled him to the rash act of picking a fight with E.D., whose fists drubbed him senseless.

When Raymond recovered, he committed the rasher act of running off to Jasper and enlisting in the army. Raymond’s older brothers, all five of them, ganged up on E.D. and threatened to kill him unless he went and joined the army too. So those were the only two men of Stay More to fight in France, where they wound up in the same platoon, and even became friends, or at least friendly rivals, or at least comrades-in-arms. E.D. was promoted to sergeant, and won the Croix de Guerre; Raymond was promoted to corporal, and was captured by the Germans in the Argonne forest, tied to a tree and left there as a decoy to lure other Yanks into the line of machine gun fire, but the squadron’s lieutenant sensed the trap and forbade his men to rescue Raymond. E.D. disobeyed the command; the lieutenant tried to stop him; he knocked the lieutenant cold, and crawled on his belly fifty feet to the tree where Raymond was tied and began untying him; Raymond urged him to get away because it was a trap, but E.D. continued untying him, until the machine guns opened fire: both of E.D.’s legs were hit and he crumpled to the ground and would have perished had not his men opened massive fire on the machine gun nest and managed to drag E.D. out of there. Raymond wasn’t hit, but he must have died in a German prison camp, or else, when liberated, he must have met some voluptuous French girl and married her and stayed over there, because he never came back to Stay More. E.D. was court-martialed for disobeying orders and striking the lieutenant, and was sent to Fort Leavenworth prison.

John Ingledew gave the Beautiful Girl a job as a teller in the Swains Creek Bank and Trust Co. and kept reassuring her that Raymond would be coming home any day now, but he never did. Raymond’s older brother Bevis, he of the sanguine humor, managed to stumble into marriage and perpetuate the Ingledew name, as we shall see; he was the only one of the six brothers to marry.

The same year the war began and ended, the same year that Bevis married, the same year that Raymond did not come home, old Isaac Ingledew gave up working in his mill. He did not tell anyone why he was quitting, but it was assumed that he was retiring on the grounds of old age, being seventy-five years old. He turned the management of the mill over to Denton and Monroe, but he continued to sit in his captain’s chair on the porch of the mill, listening to the people chatting and gossiping while their meal and flour were ground. He continued as he had for many years going without sleep. A bright young reporter on the Jasper Disaster, freshly graduated from what was called a “journalism school,” heard that there was an old man living in Stay More who never slept, and he came down to Stay More and tried to interview Isaac, without success, because among all the other things that Isaac was continuing was his taciturnity. Isaac never revealed the secret, if there was one, of why and how he never slept, but the reporter secluded himself in the bushes for at least three nights in a row to spy on Isaac and make sure he never slept; unfortunately it was too dark for the reporter to be able to see whether Isaac’s eyes were open or shut, but everyone else whom the reporter interviewed said that nobody had found Isaac asleep since the beginning of the Second Spell of Darkness, which was a fairly long time ago.

The reporter finally interviewed Isaac’s wife Salina, who was more than willing to talk; the reporter’s major problem was to get away from her; she kept him for fourteen hours and told him the story of her own life, the story of Isaac’s whole life, the stories of her children’s lives, and she admitted that she had never known her husband to go to bed since the beginning of the Second Spell of Darkness, but she didn’t know why, or how, or what. The reporter wanted to ask her what effect that circumstance had had on their sex lives, but he didn’t know how to phrase the question, and let it go. Even if he had asked, he could not very well have printed the information that Salina still climbed Isaac with regularity in their seventies. Even if he had printed it, people wouldn’t have wanted to know that such old people even had a sex life anymore. Even if people had wanted to know that, they wouldn’t have wanted to picture Isaac and Salina in that particular position or posture. The reporter’s article in the Disaster was a long one, but it didn’t tell anybody anything that wasn’t already commonly known.

Because Isaac sat on the mill porch, never speaking, listening to the people gossip and chatter, the people gradually began to forget that he was among them. Just as their parents and grandparents had done once upon a time, they began to talk about Isaac as if he were not there, nay, they began to talk about him as if he were no longer living, as if he had passed already into legend, and they began to reminisce about his deeds and exploits, blowing them up out of all proportion: it was almost as if they were trying to outdo one another in making a mythical hero out of him.

He sat there unnoticed, listening with what amazement we can only imagine, as The Incredible Epic of Colonel Coon Ingledew was embellished and heightened and embroidered. Perhaps he realized that there could never again be a life like that, and perhaps this saddened him, and perhaps out of sadness he quietly died. Or perhaps, as some suggested later, he had waited only long enough to be sure that at least one of his many grandsons would marry and continue the Ingledew name, and now that Bevis had married he could pass on. Whatever the case, he yielded his breath. Because no one noticed him, no one noticed this, and they went on talking, telling of his fabulous feats and heroic adventures. Although they did not notice him, they could not help but notice, in time, the smell. Denton was the first to sniff the necrosis, and he glanced at his father and declared, “I think Paw has done guv out.” “How can you tell?” asked Monroe. “Shake him and see,” said Denton. “Heck, you shake him,” said Monroe. “You’re closer to him,” Denton pointed out. “You’re older’n me,” Monroe countered. After further argument, the brothers agreed to shake him simultaneously, which they did, warily. Their father did not respond. Rigor mortis was so advanced that they had to bury him still sitting in his captain’s chair with his hands gripping the arms of it, and even though they used silver dollars to try to close his eyelids, they could not get them closed, and had to leave them open. The entire population of Newton County, over ten thousand people, attended the funeral and stood in the rain at the Stay More cemetery to watch entranced as Brother Stapleton delivered the eulogy, a four-hour show, “The Incredible Epic of Colonel Coon Ingledew,” and then the ten thousand voices were lifted in funereal song:

Tempted and tried we’re oft made to wonder

Why it should be thus all the day long

While there are others living about us

Never molested though in the wrong.

and the resplendent, mournful chorus:

Farther along we’ll know all about it,

Farther along we’ll understand why;

Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,

We’ll understand it, all by and by.

The members of the family, instead of sprinkling handfuls of dirt into the grave, substituted flour and corn meal. The headstone bore the inscription, “Now he sleeps,” but some folks weren’t at all too sure of that. Salina Ingledew, well aware of the fact that Jacob’s wife Sarah had followed him out of existence on the day after his death, felt beholden to continue the tradition, and took to her bed, trying hard to give up the ghost, but the ghost would not give. She felt disgraced by this failure, and remained in seclusion for the rest of her life, which lasted and lasted.

The Beautiful Girl was working as a teller in the bank one day when E.D. returned to Stay More, having broken out of the military jail. He tried to persuade her to run away with him, but she did not want to leave Stay More. He tried to stay more and persuade her to marry him, but Raymond’s five brothers ganged up on him and ran him out of town a second time.

The Jasper Disaster announced that an amendment had been added to the United States Constitution prohibiting the manufacture, sale or possession of alcoholic beverages. The Stay More Lodge of T.G.A.O.T.U. vowed to resist unto death. But Waymon Chism, just to be safe, moved his operation off up the mountain, to a remote cave concealed by a waterfall.

Time passed. The Beautiful Girl was feeding her hogs one evening after supper, when E.D. appeared once again, having once again broken out of Fort Leavenworth. Once again he tried to persuade her to run away with him: once again she protested that Stay More was her home. The argument was futile; out of futility he raped her. Then out of further futility, the following day, while she was working alone at the bank during John Ingledew’s lunch hour, he appeared in disguise and pointed a revolver at her, and robbed the bank of eight thousand dollars, and was not seen again for eighteen years.

The decline of Stay More had begun.

Chapter thirteen

Bevis Ingledew was lucky. Although his father had refused to permit him to withdraw his savings in order to build a house for his new bride, Bevis had gone to the bank one day when it was being attended only by the Beautiful Girl, had made out a withdrawal slip, and had said to her, “Goldang it, I’m thirty years old and I got a right to git my own money if I wanter.” The Beautiful Girl had not argued, but had given him the money, although she had later been tongue-lashed for it by John Ingledew. The Beautiful Girl could not possibly have known it then, but she was helping Bevis get the money to build a house wherein Bevis’s firstborn, John Henry, would be delivered, and that that same John Henry would grow up and marry the Beautiful Girl’s own daughter, conceived when E.D. raped her. We all have a way of doing things that turn out to matter, somehow. So when the father of that daughter robbed the bank, all the Ingledews lost their money, except Bevis, who had converted his money into building materials and erected the somewhat modest bungalow illustrated above. If it is not nearly as interesting as most of our earlier structures, perhaps Bevis was not as interesting as most of our earlier Ingledews. Some would argue that his house is a symbol of the beginning of Stay More’s decline.

Bevis’s bride’s name was Emelda Duckworth; she was a great granddaughter of Elijah Duckworth, one of Stay More’s early settlers, and niece of attorney Jim Tom Duckworth. She had lost her virginity to Bevis’s brother Raymond, and when Raymond became engaged to the Beautiful Girl, Emelda Duckworth turned her attentions to Raymond’s five brothers, but soon discovered that all of them were too woman-shy even to look at her, much less to speak to her or listen to her. Bevis, even though because of his excess of blood he was high-spirited, lighthearted, even frolicsome, was just as woman-shy as his brothers. He was also perhaps the most talkative of all the Ingledews, but he could not talk to girls. He had known Emelda Duckworth all of her life, but he had never spoken to her until the Unforgettable Picnic, and in fact he did not even speak to her there.

The Unforgettable Picnic got its name from the fact that people still talked about it for years afterward (although nobody remembers it today), and younger generations were always pestering their elders to hold another Unforgettable Picnic, which their elders had to patiently explain to them would be impossible, and so the Unforgettable Picnic acquired even more legendary memorability as one of those things of the past that would never come again. The Unforgettable Picnic was held during the last year of the War, not necessarily as a diversion, because so very few of the participants were even concerned with the War, but because that was the only year in which the Fourth of July happened to occur on the Second Tuesday of the Month, a special coincidence made even more memorable by coinciding with the peak of ’mater-pickin time and the Golden (50th) Reunion of the G.A.R. When the news of the picnic was norated around the county by the Jasper Disaster, everybody made plans to come, but the Stay More T.G.A.O.T.U., sponsors of the picnic, declared in a subsequent issue of the Disaster that the picnic was limited only to residents of Stay More and veterans of the G.A.R. Even so, this was quite a crowd. The Field of Clover was again chosen as the site; dozens of tables, hundreds of chairs were carried into the field. The older women remembered the deplorably lascivious picnic that had occurred in ’mater-pickin time during the Decade of Light, and they cautioned their daughters to go easy on the ’maters preparing dishes for the feast.

The daughters had not been born during the Decade of Light, and they ignored this caution, but the ’mater somehow wasn’t as potent as it used to be; it made a body feel pretty good but not necessarily lustful. A good clean time was had by all. There was a lot of square dancing, shootin matches, games of Base Ball, as well as several booths and rides. At the most popular of the booths, a canvas wagon cover was hung up with a hole slit in it; people took turns sticking their heads through the hole from one side while from the other side, at a distance of four hats, other people threw rotten (or at least unfresh) eggs, at three eggs for ten cents or to the highest bidder; people would gladly pay more for the privilege of throwing eggs at people they didn’t like, and it was understood that every person had to take his or her turn sticking his or her head through the canvas hole. When John Ingledew’s turn came, a man bid five dollars for three eggs, and hit John’s head with all three of them. When the old woman Whom We Cannot Name was required to take her turn, nobody would pay even ten cents for three eggs, or even accept them free, so none were thrown. When the Beautiful Girl’s turn came, Tearle Ingledew bought the eggs but deliberately missed. When Bevis Ingledew’s turn came, he took it cheerfully, because he was always carefree, although he hoped he had no enemies with good aim. He put his head through the hole and looked up in surprise to see Emelda Duckworth buying the eggs. Why was she mad at him? Because he had been too shy to return her attentions? But he hadn’t been any more shy than E.H., Odell, Tearle and Stanfield, and they hadn’t returned her attentions either. Why didn’t she throw at them? Why pick on me? he silently demanded.

Suddenly he heard her reply, I’m a-throwin at you ’cause I like ye best. But she hadn’t spoken, and besides she was standing four hats away, and he couldn’t have heard her if she did speak. How had he heard her? It was spooky, and the flesh of Bevis crawled, but because he was lighthearted he managed to smile at her as she wound up for the throw, and he replied to her inside his head, If that be the case, why don’t ye miss my haid clean? Okay, he distinctly heard her voice inside his head, and one by one she threw her eggs, and each one widely missed. Thanks, gal, he voicelessly told her, and she replied, You’re shore welcome. Later, when the big feed was spread and everybody had filled their plates with fried chicken and ’mater dishes and pie, and sat crosslegged on the grass to eat, Bevis noticed Emelda sitting not too far away, two, three hats away from him, and he decided as an experiment to ask her inside his head, Did you honestly say what you said? Or was I jist imaginin it? Her mute reply was immediate: You heared me, didn’t ye? And besides, I baked that thar pie that you’re eatin a piece of. Bevis looked down at the slice of pie in his fingers as if it were haunted, and his hand began to tremble, so he stuffed the whole piece into his mouth and, being unable to speak, remarked to her soundlessly, I’m a-gittin a bit uneasy, us a-talkin like this, though I got to admit, if we really was talkin, out loud I mean, I couldn’t say a word. She replied with sealed lips, I know. That’s how come I figgered that I’ve never git ye to open your mouth so iffen I was ever gonna talk together with you, we’d have to do it thisaway. Still, Bevis found it difficult to believe that he could hear her so plainly, especially since she was sitting a good little distance away. As a further test, he tried to see if this weird telepathy would work on anybody else. Spotting his brother Tearle, he silently asked, Hey, Tull, have you got the time? but Tearle did not respond. He saw his father and wordlessly yelled at him, Paw, you’re full of shit! but John Ingledew betrayed not a twitch of having heard, although Emelda’s voice entered Bevis’s head: Shame on ye. That aint no way to talk to yore own poppa! He decided that only Emelda could hear him, and he her.

Kin you read my mind? he telegraphed her, at a loss for any other way of expressing this occult phenomenon. Shore, she replied, which again made him feel uneasy, until he realized that there was nothing he could do about it, so he might as well get used to it, since he was cheerful, lighthearted, an optimist. What color underwear have I got on? he tested her. Red, came her quick reply. Although Bevis was sweating more than usual, he strove to remain cheerful. He tested her with several other questions. How much money did he have in the bank? What was his middle name? How many flapjacks had he eaten for breakfast? She answered all of these correctly, and then she asked him a question, Do you think I’m pretty? Bevis started to assure her that she was, but discovered that he could not; to his great amazement, he found himself replying, ’Naw, not exactly. There’s lots of girls roundabouts who’re a heap sight prettier than you, but on th’other hand you aint so bad. I seen lots worse. Bevis realized with astonishment that in the reading of minds there can be no flattery, no dissembling, no lies. He noticed that Emelda Duckworth was smiling, although her eyes were not on him, so maybe she had not been displeased with his honest answer. Emboldened, he told her, I’d come over there and sit beside ye, but I’m way too shy for that. She replied, I know, and offered, Would it make any difference iffen I was to come over yonder and sit by you? He answered, Wal, I’d git powerful red in the face if ye did, but I reckon I could stand it, so long as you never said nothin out loud. She said, Okay, here I come, but even until that last moment he did not believe that she would actually do it, and when he saw her rise up from the ground and start walking in his direction, he had a strong impulse to run away, and he started to rise but heard her voice inside him say, Don’t git up. I’ll be right thar.

Participants in the afternoon’s activities at the Unforgettable Picnic could not help but notice, from time to time, all afternoon long, Bevis Ingledew and Emelda Duckworth sitting side by side, alone together in the Field of Clover, never speaking nor touching nor even looking at one another. But the Stay Morons considered it a great achievement on Emelda’s part even to get that close to a shy Ingledew, although they doubted that she would ever get any closer. They pitied both Bevis and Emelda because they were missing so many of the activities and attractions of the Unforgettable Picnic, but if two people could amuse themselves by sitting side by side without speaking for the whole long afternoon, then that was their business, so nobody spoke to Bevis or Emelda or tried to get them up from the ground, not even for one of the main attractions, when a furriner from out of state set up a talking machine and for five cents a head gave his customers the privilege of listening for five minutes to an accurate recording of a Negro being burned to death by a lynch mob, one of the most unforgettable sounds of the Unforgettable Picnic. Years afterwards, someone would always comment on the fact that Bevis Ingledew had never been known to speak to his wife, whereas even old speechless Coon Ingledew had at least been heard to give his wife directions to his house when she first came to Stay More.

Emelda politely waited until Bevis Ingledew’s face had stopped burning before she “spoke” to him again. And then she “said,” I know it would mortify you iffen we was to hold hands, so let’s us jist play like we’re a-holdin hands. Like this, and she demonstrated: how, by keeping her hands in her lap, and his at his sides, they could pretend that they were actually linking hands and even intertwining their fingers. How does that feel? she asked him. Mighty nice, he replied. Then she suggested, Let’s play like we’re takin a stroll down by the creek, to git away from all these folks. So they pretended that they got up from the ground, linked hands again, and strolled casually across the Field of Clover and into the trees bordering Swains Creek. They pretended that they walked along the bank of the creek until they were out of earshot of the Picnic; Emelda hummed old songs while Bevis skipped pebbles across the surface of the creek, and they went on strolling, and came to a secluded place where they sat on a rock and dangled their feet in the water. It was cool and quiet.

Emelda told him that if she could read his thoughts then he could read her thoughts too. He protested that he didn’t want to snoop. Go ahead, she invited him. It’s fun. So he invaded her thoughts, and discovered that she was thinking about kissing. He thought of the fact that he had never kissed a girl and was too shy to start, but she invaded his thought and thought that there was really nothing to it, all they had to do was move their heads close enough together so that their lips could touch, and they both thought about that and then pretended to do it, for a long minute. How did that feel? she asked him, and he replied, Mighty fine. The kissing had aroused his procreative instincts. My, my, she exclaimed. Yore jemmison is like iron. Could I pretend like I was a-touchin it? Bevis tried to pretend that he was blushing, but could not. Emelda bargained, You kin make believe you’re squeezin my titties. So they fondled one another in their minds. This petting was interrupted by imagined footsteps and voices approaching. Let’s turn it into dark of night, Bevis suggested, and they were concealed by the disappearance of the sun. The imagined footsteps and voices faded away, cursing the darkness. In the light of stars, Bevis and Emelda could just barely pretend to see one another, so they imagined that they were pretending to feel for one another with their hands. I never heared what doing it was named, Emelda’s voice said inside his head, but whatever it’s called, let’s do it anyhow. Or, I mean, let’s play like we’re a-doin it. Bevis did know what it was called; in fact, he knew close to a hundred different names for it, none of them pretty or even delicate, so he couldn’t tell her, but since she could read his mind she discovered them anyway and was impressed by their number and their aggressive energy, and she exclaimed Oooh! almost as if they were already doing it. Groaning and murmuring, she pretended to lie down on the ground and made believe that she was spreading her arms for him, also her legs. He needed no pretense of encouragement; his mind was raring to go, and he let it go, and it went.

If any visitor to the Unforgettable Picnic might have happened to glance at the couple sitting silently side by side in the grass of the Field of Clover, the visitor would have noticed, and wondered at, the fact that both of them simultaneously closed their eyes for a long moment, and smiled, as if experiencing rapture. But no visitor happened to be looking at them during their moment.

When the couple pretended to have rested from their labor of love and returned themselves to the Field of Clover and the Unforgettable Picnic, Bevis was somewhat taken aback to hear Emelda declare: Now you’ve got to marry me. He protested: Aw, heck, we was jist playin like. We never really done it. I aint ruined ye. She suggested, Then let’s play like we’re gittin married. He pointed out, It wouldn’t be legal. She thought and thought about that, and he read her thoughts, and their thoughts got mixed up and were interchangeable. Wait here a minute, she told him, and then she actually got up off the ground and went off in search of Brother Long Jack Stapleton; he wasn’t hard to find, as his Magic Bible Shows tent was a central attraction; she had to wait until the show was over before she could speak to him, and then she told him about Bevis Ingledew and herself and what had happened to them, or what they had allowed themselves to believe had happened.

Brother Stapleton was of course a great respecter of imagination, illusion, make-believe, and he was in sympathy with her situation. He told her just to leave everything up to him and he would take care of it. The conclusion of the Unforgettable Picnic, late in the afternoon, was a triple-feature show by Brother Stapleton: “The Marriage of the Virgin,” with Mary and Joseph dressed in Stay More costumes of the last Century, “The Marriage at Cana,” with more elaborate costumes and orchestral accompaniment, and “The Marriage at Stay More,” which depicted the wedding of Bevis Ingledew and Emelda Duckworth. The bride and groom attended more as spectators than participants, and it made Emelda weep to see herself getting married, and it made Bevis get awful red in the face to see how much he was blushing during the ceremony. He was tortured with suspense, wondering if, when the time came, the man who was Bevis could muster the nerve to say “I do” out loud. The other spectators, which included everybody at the Picnic, were caught up with the show, and cheered the couple on; bets were made among the men; the women who were not weeping made loud exclamations about the beauty of the bride’s gown, which indeed Brother Stapleton had made elegant. Finally the big moment came when the groom was called upon to open his mouth, but he could not. Bevis hated to watch that part. He wanted to cover his face in his hands; at the breaking point he choked back his mortification and yelled at the groom, “Speak up, you damn fool!” and at this urging the groom croaked, “I do,” and the crowd went wild.

Brother Stapleton brought the show to a dramatic conclusion, perhaps even overdoing it somewhat by having twelve pipe organs playing together as the bride and groom departed. The shivaree they gave that night for Bevis and Emelda was not imaginary; it was, as one participant remarked, the “shivareest shivaree ever shivered,” with an incredible amount of noise and harassment of the newlyweds, who were given not a moment to themselves to think any thoughts or read each other’s or even pretend to transmit a word into the other’s head. It was just as well that they were given no opportunity for sleep that night, because Bevis would have been much too shy to share a bed with his bride. The second night of their marriage, they slept in separate beds, although before falling asleep they enjoyed a lusty copulation in their minds, and when they fell asleep their dreams were all mixed together and exchanged; in the morning he was awakened by the “sound” of Emelda doing a perfect imitation of a rooster’s matinal crow. It required several more weeks of sleep to sort out the dreams and properly apportion them so that each had their fair share of nightmares. After a year of marriage, Emelda silently declared that although she had enormously enjoyed 365 incidents of imaginary albeit almost exhaustingly true-to-life intercourse, it was obvious that she would never conceive anything other than an imaginary baby in that fashion. Biology is biology, after all, and has nothing to do with make-believe.

The year of imaginary intimacy had made Bevis not quite so shy with his bride, so it was not too difficult for him to permit her to slip into his bed one night. Yet both afterwards agreed that actuality is a weak stepsister of imagination, although it was successful in begetting their firstborn, John Henry. As soon as Emelda was got with him, she and Bevis reverted gladly to their old way of intercourses, sexual and verbal, and when Bevis withdrew his savings from the bank and built his house, its bigeminality was intended literally to make separate rooms for the two of them, where they went on sleeping apart and coming together in their minds, and mixing their dreams and nightmares in fair proportion. There must have been at least three occasions thereafter when one of them physically crossed through the interior door that joined the rooms, because they had three additional sons: Jackson, William Robert (“Billy Bob”) and Tracy. Along with John Henry, these four boys each noticed, in growing up, that their mother and father slept in separate rooms and never spoke to one another; since the only times the boys would not speak to one another was when they were angry, they assumed that their mother and father were always angry at one another, and therefore never on speaking terms. The boys had playmates whose parents were often heard to speak to one another, and some of the playmates claimed that their mothers and fathers actually slept in the same bed, and a few of the playmates went so far as to tell what their mothers and fathers did with one another when they were in bed.

The Ingledew boys disbelieved this, but they still felt isolated; they felt that their own parents were eccentric; they knew their father was full of blood and always cheerful and animated; they couldn’t understand why their mother didn’t like him enough even to say “howdy” to him. On the other hand, their mother was sweet-natured herself, and a good cook besides; they couldn’t understand why their father didn’t like her enough even to say, “Them shore was good biscuit, Maw.” Their father talked freely and cheerfully to everybody else, but never to their mother.

One by one each of the sons grew old enough to understand the meaning and mystery of sex; one by one each was forced to accept the uncomfortable truth that in order for them to have been born, their happy father had to have slept with their mother, and that since their mother and father never slept together and weren’t even on speaking terms, they couldn’t possibly have been born and were therefore only imagining that they existed.

Imagination begets imagination. What lasting psychological effect all of this had upon the four boys may be imagined. The population of Stay More was declining, and one by one the Ingledew boys mentally subtracted themselves from it.

The population of Stay More declined for several reasons. People who lost their money when the bank was robbed worked twice as hard in order to replace the money, and by working twice as hard were afflicted with the frakes, and after recovering from the long lethargy and sense of futility that follows a bout with the frakes they wandered out of Stay More and were never seen again. The ones that stayed never really worked very hard again.

Tearle Ingledew, for example, who had been the most industrious of all the Ingledews because he had an excess of sweat, had worked so hard to replace his lost savings that he came down with perhaps the severest case of the frakes that anyone had ever seen: the rash was not confined to the genital area but spread all over his body; he was anointed with all the traditional remedies with all the traditional lack of effect; what little money he had reearned by working so hard he spent entirely for large quantities of Chism’s Dew, and by staying in a constant state of intoxication managed to slight if not ignore his affliction, and in their own time his blisters festered and healed, and he was left with the characteristic feeling that life is a joke. The strange thing was, the joke struck him not as bad and pointless but hilarious. For the rest of his long life, he worked only hard enough to pay for his heavy consumption of Chism’s Dew, and was full of good humor and could tell excellent jokes. He never gave up believing that life is futile, but the futility of it was always good for a laugh, and he was always laughing and causing others to laugh, and I believe I like Tearle Ingledew better than any of the others, even apart from his many kindnesses to me when I was young.

If he does not loom large in this particular saga, it is only because nothing much ever really happened to Tearle Ingledew, which is as it should be for persons who can laugh at the futility of life. He sat on the store porch or the mill porch, depending on where the shrinking crowds were, and told jokes and swapped yarns until he began to feel sober, then he would walk up to Waymon Chism’s place and buy a gourdful to drink on the premises, then meander back to the village. “Meander” is the only word to describe Tearle’s style of walking, and it is revealed as a symbol of the whole Ozarks, where everything meanders. All the rivers, streams, creeks and branches meander. The limbs of trees, especially sycamores, meander. Snakes meander. Tearle Ingledew meandered not so much because of alcohol in his brain as because he had nowhere to get to, and loads of time to get there in. When creeks and snakes and tree limbs and men are young, they go in pretty much of a straight line. When they get older, they meander. A rushing brook becomes a river and meanders. A boy becomes a man and meanders. A story becomes a book and meanders. There is always an end, but no hurry to get there; indeed, there is almost a strong wish not to get there. Let Tearle’s meander, therefore, stand as a symbol both of the Ozarks themselves and of this, our study of its architecture.

Nothing ever happened to Tearle, not even death, although he might be dying as you read this; one would hope not, unless he has laughed at the futility of life for so long that he has at last realized that that very humorousness of life’s futility is precisely the reason that life is precious, and, valuing it, loses it. Tearle, like all of his brothers save Bevis, never married, and has no descendants, and when he dies he will not be the last of the Ingledews to pass away, but he will be the last of the Ingledews born in that Century, and his death will seal the last vestige of that Century, so we have much reason for hoping that he is not on his last legs and that his liver is holding out.

Others continued to die, though. One day the loafers on the store porch got to reminiscing again about various people they hadn’t seen for a long time, and the name of Eli Willard was mentioned, and they wondered if he were dead or if he would ever come back. The subject was good for a few minutes of speculation and then they tried to think of anybody else they hadn’t seen for a long time, and somebody suddenly realized that the woman Whom We Cannot Name had not been seen since the day of the Unforgettable Picnic. The loafers got up off their nail kegs and crossed the road to her house and politely knocked on the door for several minutes before opening it. They went into her room but she wasn’t there. They crossed the interior door into Jacob’s room and found her upon Jacob’s bed, dressed in her best dress with her hands folded upon her waist. They wondered why she had chosen Jacob’s bed to die on, and they decided that in her old age she must have become somewhat confused. Anyway, she was dead, and they took her up to the cemetery and buried her beside Sarah. Brother Stapleton apologized that he couldn’t show a eulogy because he claimed he didn’t know a blessed thing about the woman but he offered a five-minute short subject showing the scene where Jacob’s carriage is leaving Little Rock for his return to Stay More and he discovers that his wife Sarah is taking her social secretary home with her. Then the few people attending the funeral sang one chorus of:

Farther along we’ll know all about it,

Farther along we’ll understand why;

Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,

We’ll understand it, all by and by.

The woman had not left a will. Attorney Jim Tom Duckworth was consulted, and he advised that the house and contents should go to Isaac’s heir, who was his wife Salina. Salina did not want the house; she refused to leave the dogtrot, where she remained in seclusion. Next in line was the oldest son, Denton, but he didn’t want the house either. John wanted the house badly, but he had to wait his turn, because Monroe was next in line; Monroe thought about it and thought about it, deliberately taking his time because he knew how much John craved to have the house; it was, after all, the biggest house in town, one of the oldest and most impressive buildings in Stay More. The house that John was living in, and had reared his large family in, isn’t even illustrated in this study, not necessarily because of my personal bias against John but because the house is unnoteworthy in all respects, at least in my opinion. John would have made a large leap up in the world if he could have inherited his grandfather’s house. And for that very reason, Monroe kept it…or, rather, he accepted his inheritance of it, although he didn’t care to live there any more than Denton did; he and Denton had shared the same bed all their lives, and saw no reason to discontinue the habit in their fifties, although this is not in any way to suggest that anything funny was going on; it was common practice for bachelor or spinster siblings to share a bed all their lives: so while Monroe did not abandon his accustomed bed, he deeded the house to his and John’s younger brother Willis, making it convenient to Willis’s store, and Willis moved into it with his younger sister Drussie, who, noting the trigeminality of the house and counting upon her fingers, realized that she and Willis made two, whereas the house was three, so she converted the house into a HOTEL, and hung a small sign over the porch that said simply “hotel.” She gave the place a good cleaning, and ordered new linen and china and flatware from Sears, Roebuck and dressed up the three-hole privy out back with lace and chromolithographs of children rolling hoops, and ordered a case of expensive Nippon crepe toilet paper; then she sat in a rocker on the front porch day after day eagerly waiting her first guest, but the only people who came to her hotel were various neighbors, friends and relatives who did not intend to spend the night but only wanted to try out the novelty of using Nippon crepe toilet paper and discovering how superior it was to corncobs, sticks, leaves, mail order catalogs and old songbooks. Drussie had to order another case of rolls.

But still no paying guests arrived to spend the night at her hotel.

The economy was in bad shape, at least locally. The Jasper Disaster ran side-by-side stories about how Newton County was going to the dogs while nationally the city folks were all getting rich and lavishing their money on bootlegged booze and fancy autos and a strange music called jazz. Letters-to-the-editor poured in to the Disaster asking him to please stop rubbing it in. Drussie wrote pointing out that such stories of local poverty might frighten off potential guests for her hotel. The people of Stay More might not even have known they were poor if that dadblasted newspaper hadn’t told them so.

John Ingledew asked Jim Tom Duckworth to bring suit against the newspaper, but it was too late: one by one the customers of John’s bank withdrew their savings in order to make the down payment on crank-up phonographs and records, player pianos, cream separators, fancy cast-iron cooking stoves, inner-spring mattresses, wristwatches, and new radiators for their Fords. After all their savings were spent, they tried to float loans from John, but he had nothing to loan them, and the bank failed. There was no need for a bank; every penny that was earned was spent to meet the installments on credit purchases. And not many pennies were earned, because the land itself had been used up over the years, worn out from one-crop farming: year by year the average size of an ear of corn became smaller and smaller, until the nubbins were too tiny to husk and shell, and there was no grain for Denton and Monroe to grind in the mill, and the mill closed down. Denton and Monroe had no choice but return to farming full time, but the earth was too poor to farm, and they talked of going off to a city and finding work, although they hated the idea, and did not want to leave Stay More, or at least Newton County, or at least the Ozarks, but since there were not yet any cities in the Ozarks, at least not in Arkansas, and since the only city in Arkansas was Little Rock, Denton and Monroe went there and found work and lived in a boarding house and were not seen again in Stay More for several years.

Bevis Ingledew, who had a wife and four sons to support, was no more lucky at farming than Denton and Monroe, but he wouldn’t move to Little Rock, and he kept on farming, refusing to accept the fact that there was no profit in it. As soon as his four sons were old enough, he got them out of bed before daylight and put them to work until past sunset, and Emelda cried because she couldn’t scare up enough grub to feed them sufficiently for all that work. Nightly her dreams were shared with Bevis, but more often than not their dreams were nightmares, until the only dream that Emelda had remaining consisted of a doll fashioned from cornhusks. When they were awake, Emelda silently “discussed” with Bevis the possible significance of this cornhusk doll, but he, who had had his share of that image in their remaining common dream, did not know its meaning any better than she. Emelda treasured the humble cornhusk doll because it was the only pleasant dream that still came to her at night, and it appeared faithfully every night. In time, during a spare moment, Emelda fashioned a real cornhusk doll and clothed it with mother-hubbard and sunbonnet made of calico from a flour sack. Her sons admired it and wished their father would speak up and admire it too, not knowing he already had. Having created the female cornhusk doll, Emelda next created a male one dressed in dungarees. Having created thus a pair female and male, she couldn’t stop, and went on making cornhusk dolls until the house was filled with them, the females in her room, the males in Bevis’s.

Bevis was embarrassed by this useless activity and was afraid that somebody might come and see it and spread the word around the village that Emelda Ingledew had slipped a cog. He realized, however, because he could read her mind, that she couldn’t stop. He knew also that she had given an individual name to each and every one of the dolls, from Abella to Zona for the females and from Aaron to Zuriel for the males. Furthermore, each of the dolls had a distinct personality, and in the dreams they shared at night these dolls began interpersonal relationships, usually of a happy manner that managed to crowd out many of their unpleasant nightmares. There were so many dolls that Bevis and Emelda might not have had any nightmares at all but for the fact that it was a drought year and the crops were failing and John Ingledew had no money to lend them even if he were willing to, which he was not, and Uncle Willis could not extend their credit at the store, and Aunt Drussie was unable to furnish them a free dinner at her hotel, and the only way they could eat at all was for their sons to go down to the bank of Swains Creek each night with a lantern and fish for a mess of catfish, which were always easy to catch after dark, until the Ingledews had caught and eaten them all. They went hungry for four days and then the boys asked permission from their mother to eat a couple of her cornhusk dolls, but Emelda was shocked at the thought of what would amount to cannibalism to her, and could not permit it. Since all of them had given up work, they sat most of the day on the store porch, slightly consoled by listening to Uncle Tearle make jokes about the futility of life. Out of compassion Uncle Willis gave them a can of Vienna sausages; they each had one and saved the rest for breakfast. Surely, otherwise, they would have starved.

One day a fancy automobile, in fact a Cadillac Four-Passenger Sport Phaeton with its top down, came into Stay More and drove around. The passengers were tourists, two ladies and two gentlemen, all wearing baggy knickers, golf hose and bow ties. They did not stop nor get out. They looked at the buildings and pointed at the people, and drove on. When they passed Bevis Ingledew’s house, one of the women shouted “Stop!” to the man driving, and he applied his brakes. “Look at that,” said the woman to her companions, pointing at Emelda Ingledew, who was sitting on the porch in her rocker, making a corn-husk doll named Romola. She was applying the finishing touch: a gingham sunbonnet. “I want one of those, Harry,” the woman said to her companion, and Harry dutifully opened the door of the Sport Phaeton and stepped out, extracting his wallet.

“How much?” he said to Emelda, gesturing at the cornhusk doll.

“Huh?” she replied, never having suspected that anyone would attach a cash value to a cornhusk doll, any more than to a human life.

“That,” he said, clearly aiming his index finger at the doll. “It. Whatever. You sell? Me pay.”

“I never sold one afore,” she informed him.

“Fifty cents? A dollar?” he bargained.

“My lands,” Emelda said, “it aint but some cornshucks and scraps of flour sacks.”

“Harry!” called the woman from the car. “Louise says that she wants one too!”

“You got any more of them?” Harry asked Emelda.

“Aw, shore,” Emelda admitted. “House is full of ’em. You want a he-doll or a she-doll?”

“Louise,” Harry called to the car, “do you want a boy dolly or a girlie?”

“Oh, get one of each, Harry!” Louise said, and the other woman said, “For me too!”

Harry held up four fingers to Emelda; she went into Bevis’s room and got two male dolls, then into her room for another female.

“How much?” he asked her again.

“Whate’er ye think they’re worth,” she said modestly.

“Four bits apiece?” he offered, and laid two one-dollar bills in her hand.

“Thank ye kindly,” she said, and Harry took the dolls to the Sports Phaeton and gave a pair to each of the ladies.

The ladies examined their dolls and one said, “Aren’t they the cat’s meow?” and the other said, “Aren’t they the bee’s knees?” Then both told Harry that nothing would do but that they must also get a pair each as gifts for their friends Maxie, Lila, Isadora, Nikki, Maisie, Lydia and Stacia, and maybe they shouldn’t forget Winnie and Daisie.

Harry returned to the porch and said to Emelda, “Make me a wholesale offer. Whaddayasay three for a buck? Gimme eighteen.” She fetched the dolls for him, loaded his arms with them. He packed them into the trunk of the Sports Phaeton, then gave Emelda six more dollars, and the tourists drove away. As they passed back through the town, the women were seen to point together at the hotel sign on Drussie’s hotel. Drussie watched the car slow down. The women seemed to be pleading with the men to stop at the hotel, and Drussie hoped the men would agree to stop, but apparently they did not, for the Sports Phaeton went on out of town and was not seen again.

Emelda Ingledew, however, had eight dollars, which was more money of her own than she had ever held in her hand before. She ran all the way to Willis’s store, where Bevis and the boys were loafing, and, forgetting herself, spoke aloud publicly to Bevis for the first time, showing him the money and saying, “Lookee what them tourists paid me for a passel of cornshuck dolls!” Bevis was extremely embarrassed on several counts: he was embarrassed because a female was speaking to him, because she was publicly displaying money, because she was admitting that she made corn-husk dolls, and above all because he did not believe that tourists would pay eight dollars for any amount of cornhusk dolls, although, since he could read her mind, he knew that she was not lying to him. Together, and with the help of their four sons, they went into Willis’s store and bought eight dollars’ worth of Corn Flakes, Quaker Oats, Vienna sausages, sardines, sody crackers, coffee, flour, and fistfuls of Hershey bars, O Henrys and Baby Ruths. The latter items were not good for their teeth, and they all developed cavities which the dentist, Bevis’s oldest brother E.H., refused to treat for less than cash money. They resigned themselves to letting their teeth rot until they fell out, but they were saved from this fate by the arrival of a letter at the post office addressed simply to: The Dollmaker, Stay More, Ark. By then, everybody knew that Emelda made cornhusk dolls, and they didn’t dare laugh at her since she had sold eight dollars’ worth of them.

Postmaster Uncle Willis delivered the letter to her. It was signed by a St. Louis woman named Isadora Lubitschi, and it said: “Dear Madame: My good friend Louise Goldstein recently returned from a delightful tour of the woodsy mountains and presented me with a pair of dolls which she had purchased from you, if you are the person in question who manufactures these items, which consist of some sort of dried plant material covered with bits of cloth in the fashion of women’s long dresses and men’s working overhalls. If you are the person in question who manufactures these charming curios, I would be pleased to inform you that I am in the business of middleman, or middlewoman, to the trade in objets d’art, and I am able to quote you an offer of $36.00 (thirty-six dollars) per gross for whatever quantities of such items you can supply. Please ship them parcel post to the above address.” Emelda was dumbfounded. She did not know what “gross” meant, unless the St. Louis woman considered her cornhusk dolls coarse, vulgar or obscene. Emelda asked Bevis telepathically what “gross” meant, but he had only heard the word when Jim Tom Duckworth spoke of “gross injustice” in court. So they asked Uncle Jim Tom what it meant and he said it meant something so mighty awful or misdone that it can’t be pardoned. Emelda showed him one of her dolls and asked him for his opinion, but he opined that as far as his taste was concerned, the doll might look pretty awful but it wasn’t so gross that it couldn’t be pardoned. He, for one, was willing to pardon it. Emelda showed him the letter from the St. Louis woman. He read it, and called her attention to the structure of the phrasing, “per gross.” “That’s a gross,” he said. “It means how many of something, but I disremember the figure. Why’n’t ye ask Uncle Willis. He orter know.”

They were reluctant to ask Uncle Willis, because nobody ever believed anything that Uncle Willis said, but they had nowhere else to turn, so they asked Uncle Willis and he told them that a gross was a dozen dozen. They thought that was unbelievable, but they sat down on the store porch and counted up on their fingers, trying to figure out what a dozen dozen were. Since they each had only ten fingers, it was difficult to count up to a dozen, and get another dozen on top of that. Uncle Willis watched them for as long as he could stand it, which was pretty long, and then he took from his storeroom a cardboard carton marked “One Gross, White Thread” and gave it to them and told them to count the spools, which they did, finding that there were 144 spools. Emelda and Bevis went home and counted the dolls, and discovered that there were 432 male dolls and 432 female dolls. They divided these into piles of 144 each, and discovered that they had exactly six gross of dolls. Emelda hated to see them go, but she could always make more. They shipped the six gross off to St. Louis and received in return the woman’s check for $216. Although John’s bank had failed and he could not cash the check for them, he decided to reopen the bank and let them deposit their check and draw upon it as they needed. John had never given up hope of reopening his bank; he still subscribed to and faithfully read The Bankers’ and Investors’ Weekly; I doubt if his conscience was troubled at all by the fact that he was enabled to reopen his bank by a deposit from the same son whom he had denied permission to withdraw his savings years before.

Bevis Ingledew took his wagon and drove around to all of the farms in Stay More, buying cornhusks for 5¢ a bushel. No one thought him crazy, because word had quickly spread of Emelda’s talent for converting cornhusks into money, and most of the other women were dying to learn her secret, but Emelda pulled down all the shades in all her windows and arranged her four sons into an assembly line, and together, with Bevis guarding the exterior of the house to ward off peepers, they turned out cornhusk dolls by the thousand, and shipped them off to St. Louis, and made a fantastic lot of money, more than they knew what to do with, so much more that they were easily persuaded by John, whose bank they practically owned now, to invest it. John faithfully read The Bankers’ and Investors’ Weekly, and he had dreamed for years of dabbling in securities analysis or becoming a “Customer’s Man,” but he had no potential customers until his own son Bevis had more money than he knew what to do with. He took Bevis’s surplus money and sent it off to a brokerage office in Little Rock and invested it in those issues which The Bankers’ and Investors’ Weekly recommended as growth stocks, and sure enough they grew and grew. It mattered naught that their growingest stock was General Electric although they had never seen electricity and did not believe in it. They made so much money in the stock market that John’s commissions from this one customer were enough for a full salary, and John was thinking of renovating his bank, while Emelda telepathically pestered Bevis to build a larger and finer house for them. John began to pay attention to those issues which The Bankers’ and Investors’ Weekly classified as “high risk speculative ventures,” investment in which was practically gambling, but John began to gamble, and to win. One stock in particular, Poupée Industries Inc. of St. Louis, was particularly attractive, and John bought more and more shares of it, and it continued to rise, until it was one of the highest priced stocks on the under-the-counter market, and Bevis and Emelda owned practically all of it. A lavishly printed annual stockholders’ report was mailed to them, and they discovered that Poupée Industries Inc. was merely the distributor of quaint dolls “which consist of some sort of dried plant material covered with bits of cloth in the fashion of women’s long dresses and men’s working overhalls and are manufactured at a secret location in the enchanted Ozarks.”

Then the stock market crashed. It wasn’t John D. Ingledew’s fault any more than it was John D. Rockefeller’s, but the latter survived while the former didn’t. A small headline in the Jasper Disaster noted the fact: “Stay More Stockholders Wiped Out in Panic of Wall Street” and a small editorial said simply “We hope some lesson has been learned from all of this.”

Bevis Ingledew was always cheerful and full of blood, and he took the bad news in good part, but John D. Ingledew took to bed, and stayed there, looking gloomier and doomier than he ever had, if that were possible. Doc Colvin Swain was called in. Doc Swain was not only the best of Stay More’s physicians, but he was also the seventh son of a seventh son (who was Gilbert Swain, Lizzie’s seventh), and a seventh son of a seventh son has the power to cure any sickness known to man except the frakes. But even with this power, Doc Swain could not cure John D. Ingledew, and John D. died. Doc Swain was so puzzled as to the cause of death that he asked for permission to perform an autopsy, expecting to find perhaps a broken heart, but John D.’s heart, when Doc Swain finally succeeded in finding it, was not broken but only atrophied, severely.

At the funeral, Brother Long Jack Stapleton discovered that he was unable to show the eulogy. Something had gone wrong with his power; it wouldn’t work. The show would not go on. He tried and tried to turn it on, but not a single image appeared. So he said a short prayer and they sang several choruses of “Farther along we’ll know all about it” and Brother Stapleton went home, wondering if farther along he ever would understand why he had lost his power to show. He never did, and he never regained it, and some folks said that the loss of his power was the reason he himself died, not long after, leaving Stay More without a resident pastor for the rest of its life.

Chapter fourteen

When John Henry “Hank” Ingledew was ten years old, he ran away from home, to join the circus. The year before, he had grown mighty tired of making cornhusk dolls. Making cornhusk dolls all day long leaves the mind idle to think idle thoughts, and although Hank was pretty good at thinking no thoughts at all, he could not help but continue to speculate upon the fact that he probably did not exist because he could not have been born if his mother and father did not sleep together and were not even on speaking terms with one another although they did seem to cooperate at least in the making of cornhusk dolls. Other boys his age did not have to make cornhusk dolls, and that was one more reason for feeling that he did not really exist but was only imagining things. His reasoning was that if he did not exist he might as well not exist someplace else instead of here in Stay More. The trouble was, he couldn’t conceive of someplace else, until one day in the late summer of his tenth year, when a billposter in a bow tie and a straw boater, driving a Ford truck, came into town and received permission to glue an enormous circus bill to the side of the barn that had been built by Denton and Monroe and was prominently located in the center of town. Hank Ingledew, along with all the other children of Stay More, gazed in awe at the poster, which showed in garish colors pictures of ferocious tropical animals, women in tight clothes standing up on the backs of prancing horses, acrobats leaping through the air, and announced that Foogle Bros. Three-Ring Shows would play at Jasper, Ark, three days only, Aug. 24–27, with a Grand Midway.

It occurred to Hank that a circus was a someplace else that would beat hell out of not existing in Stay More, even though he wasn’t required to make cornhusk dolls anymore since the stock market collapsed and people out in the world were spending their money on apples and pencils instead of cornhusk dolls. Hank began to hatch a plan: he would sneak off to Jasper in time to be there when the circus arrived, and he would get a job with the circus, so when his folks showed up to attend the circus they would see that he already had a job, and might even be proud of him, and they wouldn’t make a big fuss when the circus moved on and took him with it. So on the eve of August 24th, when nobody was looking, he “borrowed” one of his father’s mules without telling anyone and rode it bareback into Jasper, where he found to his dismay that the circus had already arrived in town and was being erected, by the light of strings of intensely burning glass bulbs. Jasper had not yet received electricity, but the circus had its own portable generator.

Hank could do nothing at first but stare with fascination at all of the light bulbs, until one of the workmen said to him, “Show aint open yet, kid. Come back tomorrow.” Hank told the man he was hoping to get him a job of work. “See the punk pusher,” the man replied, and directed him to a tough-looking man in a teeshirt, who was supervising a bunch of local boys, many of whom Hank recognized. “No cash. Free ticket only,” the man said to him. “Go help those punks hold that rope.” Hank said that he wanted to join the circus for keeps and do something important like impossible stunts. The man laughed at him and asked what kind of impossible stunt he could do. Well, Hank said, he could touch his elbows together behind his back. He demonstrated. “Hey, that’s pretty good, kid,” the man remarked sincerely. “Come with me.” The man took him to a trailer where another man in a teeshirt was just sitting in a canvas chair, doing nothing but smoking a cigarette. “Hey, Cholly, get a load of this,” the first man said and told Hank to repeat his impossible stunt of touching his elbows together behind his back. Hank did. Cholly pursed his lips and stared at Hank through squinted lids. “He’ll do,” Cholly said and took Hank and fitted him out with a clown suit and showed him how to tie a rubber ball over his nose and put white and purple paint on his face. Then Cholly took him to another man in a teeshirt and said, “Phil, watch the kid,” and as Phil watched Hank touched his elbows together behind his back several times in quick succession. “What else can he do?” Phil wanted to know. Hank said that he could also pat his stomach while rotating his other hand on top of his head, and vice versa. “Great,” said Phil. “Can you juggle?” Hank couldn’t, so Phil took three oranges and began to show him how. Hank was getting sleepy, but he kept practicing until he could not only juggle the three balls but throw them all up in the air, touch his elbows behind his back three times, and catch them as they came down.

The putting up of the circus was finished, and all the other local boys were run off the grounds, but Hank was allowed to stay. It must have been close to midnight, but none of the circus people seemed to be sleepy. They sat around and played cards and smoked cigarettes and told dirty jokes. Phil said to him, “Well, let’s meet some of the finkers and geeks,” and he took him around and introduced him as “the new joey” to several of the circus people: the other clowns, acrobats, horsemen, and even to the sideshow people, who made him uneasy: a bearded lady, a very fat lady, a midget, a man covered with tatoos, another man who seemed normal but Phil whispered into Hank’s ear that the man did an act of biting the heads off of chickens, and a man who was very, very old, who Phil said was billed as “the World’s Oldest Man.” None of these people showed any particular interest in meeting Hank, but the man who was the World’s Oldest Man seemed to be studying him keenly behind his wrinkled eyelids. The old man’s eyes seemed to be still working, although none of the rest of him looked like it would work; Hank doubted that the old man could speak, so he was surprised and momentarily disbelieving when the old man asked him a question, “Where are you from, Joey?” After Hank had persuaded himself that the old man’s mouth actually had moved and that he had spoken, Hank answered, telling him that he was from Stay More, which was a small town about ten miles south of here. He was required to repeat himself, loudly, for the old man was nearly deaf. Then the old man nodded his head almost imperceptibly and spoke again: “You’re an Ingledew, aren’t you? I would recognize an Ingledew anywhere, even behind that rubber nose and that greasepaint.”

Hank went away wondering how the old man had known he was an Ingledew, but he decided that anybody as old as that man was probably knew everything that was to be known. And then the magic electric bulbs were going out, and Phil told Hank that he would have to do a star pitch. When Hank looked puzzled and asked what a star pitch was, Phil laughed and slapped him on the shoulder and said, “You’ll have to learn the circus lingo, kid. A star pitch is sleeping out in the open, on the grass.”

Hank slept on the grass, sleeping fitfully, having dreams of performing his stunts in his clown suit in front of a whole bunch of people, many of whom might recognize him behind his rubber nose and his greasepaint, as the old man had done. When he woke and rose up from the grass, he discovered that nobody else in the camp was awake even though the sun was well up in the sky. He figured that people who stayed up so late at night probably slept late in the morning. He smelled coffee a-making somewhere, and tracing it, found a trailer with the back end open and a man inside cooking up a bunch of flapjacks.

It was the first time Hank had ever seen or heard of a man doing the cooking; maybe the man was also one of the freaks. But Hank was hungry, and he eyed the flapjacks hungrily, licking his lips, until the cooking man noticed him, and said, “New kid, huh? Welcome to the crumb castle.” The cooking man loaded a plate with flapjacks and gave them to him along with a mug of coffee. Hank sat down at a nearby table to eat but the cooking man explained to him that that was the “long end,” reserved for the circus workmen; the performers had to eat at the “short end.” Hank moved, and ate his breakfast, joined gradually by other clowns and acrobats. He learned that the Midway would not open until noon, and the first performance under the Big Top was not scheduled until two o’clock.

After watering his mule, Hank wandered around the grounds, treating himself to a free preview of the animals. There was a lion in an iron cage on wheels and it roared at him, giving him a slight start. There was an elephant tethered by one enormous ankle to a stake; he had never seen an elephant before, but he knew what it was because he had studied African geography in the fourth grade. It did not roar at him; it seemed to be very slow and calm and gentle, lifting an enormous foot slightly from time to time. He patted it on its tremendously long snout; suddenly the elephant coiled its snout and uncoiled it with such force that Hank was flung through the air a distance of nearly two hats and landed on his back in pain. He got up gingerly, resolved to go no closer to the elephant; he fingered himself all over for broken bones; none were, but his upper lip was beginning to swell, and by the time the Big Top opened his lip would be so swollen that he would have the most comical face of all the clowns. He stared malevolently at the elephant and said to it, “If Godalmighty made you, He orter make one more and quit.” He wandered on, and found a monkey in a cage; the monkey was so small and timid-looking that he couldn’t possibly do Hank any harm, but when Hank tried to shake hands the monkey scratched him, leaving bleeding lines halfway up his arm. Hank decided to leave the animals alone, and wandered over to the area where the sideshow people were loafing around in the morning sunshine. A reporter from the Jasper Disaster had arrived, and was interviewing the fat lady, asking her questions about her diet and how much she weighed, and did she have any trouble rolling over in her sleep at night? Then the reporter interviewed the midget, the bearded lady, the world’s strongest man, and he tried to interview the man who bit heads off of chickens, but the man would answer no questions, so the reporter went on to the World’s Oldest Man and asked him, “How old are you?” There was no response.

Hank told the reporter, “He’s near deef. Talk loud.” The reporter repeated the question loudly.

“I can’t be certain,” replied the World’s Oldest Man, “but several years past a hundred, I can assure you.”

“How did you manage to live that long?” asked the reporter. “Are you an abstainer?”

“I’ve never tasted alcohol, no,” replied the old man, “but I don’t think that had anything to do with it.”

“Well—?” the reporter waited, then persisted, “To what do you attribute your longevity?”

The old man was silent, as if thinking, then he said quietly, “I kept moving. I never slowed down long enough for death to catch me.”

The reporter admired that answer and commented, “You seem to have all of your wits about you.”

“Thank you,” replied the old man. “I do.”

The reporter pursued the question. “But why did you keep moving?”

Again the old man was silent, as if meditating and discovering the answer for the first time, and when he spoke the answer it was with a self-wonderment. “I felt there was something I had to do. Ought to do. Was foreordained to do.”

“No fooling?” said the reporter. “And what was that something?”

“Whatever I have done,” said the old man, and would not elaborate.

“How long have you been with this circus?” asked the reporter.

“Oh, it’s hard to remember. Maybe twenty years.”

“And what did you do before that?”

“I traveled. I was engaged in various sales campaigns.”

“Where are you from, originally?”

“Connecticut.”

The reporter thanked the old man for the interview and went on to interview the tattooed man. Hank wandered back to the crumb castle or chuck wagon or whatever it was to see if dinner was ready yet. After eating, he saw that the Midway was open, and he strolled it, keeping an eye out for any of his folks, whom he did not want to see until he had his clown suit and make-up on. But there weren’t many people on the Midway. He had two dollars and seventy-five cents in his pocket, which was all of his life’s savings after the stock market crashed, so he spent some of this to ride the Ferris Wheel and get a cone of cotton candy. Then he realized he’d better go practice his juggling before the Big Top opened. As he was leaving the Midway, he passed a peanut vendor and was surprised to discover that the peanut vendor was the World’s Oldest Man, hawking peanuts out of a tray that was suspended from his neck on a string. Not very loudly, the old peanut vendor was calling, “Fresh roasted peanuts! A nickel a bag!” Hank went up to him and gave him a nickel. The old man looked at him and gave him a bag of peanuts but refused his nickel.

“You’re an Ingledew,” said the old man. “I can’t charge an Ingledew anything.”

Hank commented, speaking loudly, “That thar sideshow must not pay ye very well, that you’re obliged to sell goobers on the side.”

The old man shook his head. “No, boy, I don’t need to sell peanuts. I’ve been selling things all my life, and I just can’t give up the confounded habit.” And he hobbled off down the Midway, croaking, “Fresh roasted peanuts! A nickel a bag!” Hank wondered again about how the old man was so old that he knew everything and therefore knew that Hank was an Ingledew, although that didn’t explain why he would give away a bag of peanuts free of charge to any Ingledew.

Hank went to Phil’s trailer and with Phil’s help put on his clown suit and his rubber nose and greasepaint. He confessed to Phil that he was a bit nervous about appearing in front of all those people. Phil snorted. “What’s the name of this place? Jasper? Well, in circus lingo a ‘jasper’ is a local person who buys a ticket. There’re not many jaspers in Jasper.”

Phil was right: when Hank went into the Big Top for the first time, he discovered that there weren’t more than fifty people in the audience, and none of them were Stay Morons. Although there were three rings in the circus, only one of them was being used. With the other clowns, Hank went around the ring, doing his elbow-touching and juggling act. Nobody laughed, although the younger members of the audience giggled and pointed. Hank was disappointed; it hadn’t been much of a thrill. He suffered the sourhours while waiting for the evening performance. The attendance at the night show wasn’t much better, and again there was no one from Stay More. Hank knew it had been a bad drought summer and people didn’t have much money, and his own folks didn’t have any money at all. But he wished that at least one of his uncles or brothers would show up in the audience and recognize him. Maybe tomorrow. But when the evening performance was over, Phil assembled all the circus people and said to them, “Okay, let’s blow this morgue. Everybody up at dawn and tear down the rags.” Hank was surprised to discover that his friend Phil was apparently the boss of the whole circus, and he asked him if he meant that they were leaving in the morning, and Phil said, “Yeah, kid, this town is a total blank,” so Hank asked him if he could go with them to whatever next town they were going to, and Phil said, “Sure, kid, but the pay is lousy.” Hank realized that he hadn’t been paid anything for his two performances so far, but he’d had plenty of free food. He went to bed early on the grass and had dreams of doing his act in front of big crowds in the cities.

He was awakened just before dawn by a hand on his shoulder. It was the World’s Oldest Man. “Get up, Ingledew,” he said. Hank rose quickly to his feet. “Let’s go home,” the old man said. “The circus is over.”

“But I’m a-gorn with ’em. Phil said I could,” Hank protested, then remembered he would have to speak loudly for the old man to hear him. He began to repeat himself loudly, but the old man hissed “Sshh!” and put a finger to his lips and clamped the other hand over Hank’s mouth. “Wait ’till we’re out of here,” the old man said and took his arm and began to lead him out of the circus lot. Hank couldn’t understand why the old man intended to go with him. Or maybe the old man just intended to escort him out of the circus. If the old man was so old that he knew everything, even Hank’s last name, then maybe the old man knew some reason why Hank should not join the circus for keeps and go with them to the next town. Suddenly Hank remembered his mule, and by mute sign language or pantomime he tried to convey this to the old man, and was finally required to whisper loudly in the old man’s ear, “My mule,” and the old man let him go and get it. Then the old man slipped into a tent and got a fifty-pound sack of peanuts and hoisted it up onto the back of the mule. Hank led the mule and they left the grounds of the circus. When they were out of earshot of anyone in the circus, Hank raised his voice and said to the old man, “I was fixin to jine the circus fer keeps. Phil said I could. Aint he the boss?”

“Philip Foogle and his brother Charles own the circus, yes,” the old man said. “But he isn’t the boss, and neither is Charles.”

“Who is?”

“I am. Or, rather, I’m an agent of the boss.”

“Why won’t you let me jine the circus? I don’t want to go back to Stay More.”

“You don’t? That’s dreadful. You shouldn’t have left it in the first place. Didn’t anyone ever tell you the story of your great-great-uncle Benjamin Ingledew?”

Hank had heard of the story of his great-grandpap’s older brother Benjamin, who had headed for California to hunt for gold and died in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, but he didn’t understand what that had to do with his joining the circus, and he wondered how the old man knew about Benjamin Ingledew, but realized that the old man was so old that he knew everything. They were well outside of Jasper by now, halfway to Parthenon, and the old man was still hobbling along beside him. Was he actually going all the way to Stay More with him? It would sure wear him out.

“You wanter ride the mule?” Hank offered.

“Thank you,” the old man said. “I would be very grateful.” Hank helped him to climb up on the mule’s back, and they went on. The sun was rising.

Hank indicated the fifty-pound sack of peanuts on the mule’s shoulders, and asked, “You aim to sell them goobers in Stay More?”

“If I can,” the old man said.

They walked on, and passed through Parthenon. They did not talk much, because the old man would only speak if Hank asked him a question and although there were many questions which Hank could have asked him Hank didn’t know which one to start with, so he remained silent. Hank wondered if the old man was quitting the circus for good, or maybe he just intended to sell his peanuts in Stay More and then catch up with the circus later on. Maybe in the meantime Hank could persuade him to let him join the circus, if he really was the boss.

It was almost noon when they reached Stay More. Hank began to worry if his folks would give him a licking for sneaking off from home and taking the mule with him. He had a feeling that maybe the old man could protect him, so when the old man asked to get down from the mule at Willis’s store, Hank asked him if he didn’t mind staying with him until he took the mule home, and the old man smiled a small smile and nodded his head. Thus, the old man did not get off the mule until they reached Hank’s house, where Hank’s father and brothers were sitting on the porch waiting for dinner, and Hank’s mother came running out of the kitchen as soon as Bevis Ingledew telepathically informed her that their errant son had returned with the mule and that an unbelievably old man was sitting on the mule.

“Boy, whar on earth have ye—” Bevis Ingledew started to demand of Hank but then he stared fixedly at the old man for a long moment and exclaimed, “Strike me blind! If it aint ole Eli Willard! But it caint be! I’ve not laid eyes on ye since I was ’bout twenty, and I’m past forty now, and back then you was already senile.”

“He’s the World’s Oldest Man,” Hank declared proudly, as if he had invented, or at least discovered, him. But he had heard stories about Eli Willard and knew that he had already been in Stay More again and again and again long before Hank was born.

“Jist in time for dinner,” Emelda remarked, and invited Eli Willard into her kitchen, where she served him and Bevis and the boys a frugal but filling lunch. During the meal, Eli Willard was brought up to date on the current condition of Stay More: who had died, who had been born, the opening and closing of the bank, the closing of the mill, the coming and going of the city-women homesteaders, the Unforgettable Picnic, the making and selling of corn-husk dolls, the failure of crops, and so forth.

Eli Willard showed no particular interest or emotion at any of this news, although he remarked that he was happy to have noticed that there was now a gasoline pump standing in the road beside Willis’s store, which implied that there was now an abundance of horseless carriages in the neighborhood. He asked if there had been any more lawsuits against hapless motorists whose vehicles had frightened livestock. The Ingledews were embarrassed at his bringing up the subject, and they apologized on behalf of the departed Uncle Denton, and said that there was a legend in the Ingledew family that Uncle Denton had a peculiar sense of humor and had intended the lawsuit only as a joke. Eli Willard smiled a wan smile. Then he thanked them for the dinner and asked Hank to take him back to the general store. Eli Willard’s reappearance had caused so much excitement to Bevis and Emelda that they forgot to reprimand Hank for running away from home, or even to ask where he had been. Hank helped Eli Willard up on the mule’s back once again and took him and his fifty-pound sack of peanuts to Willis’s store, where Eli Willard attempted to buy a hundred small paper sacks from Willis, who was so astonished and delighted to find the Connecticut peddler still among the living that he refused to accept payment for the tiny sacks, but, when Eli Willard had transferred the contents of the fifty-pound sack of peanuts into one hundred half-pound sacks, with Hank’s help, Willis accepted the gift of one sack free gratis. Then Eli Willard sat on the store porch and attempted to sell peanuts at five cents a bag.

Business was not very brisk. Willis tactfully pointed out to Eli Willard that the word “bag” means scrotum throughout the Ozarks, and that instead of saying “Fresh roasted peanuts! A nickel a bag!” Eli Willard should say “Fresh roasted peanuts! A nickel a poke!” Therefore the peanut peddler altered his pitch, but business did not improve. Willis offered the further opinion that the word “peanuts” itself was suspect, because it suggested not only the testicles but also micturition. “Goobers” also suggested the male genitals, but was not as suggestive as peanuts. So Eli Willard began to say, “Fresh roasted goobers! A nickel a poke!” whenever anyone came along, which wasn’t often. He sold a few pokes. Hank decided that maybe Eli Willard intended to rejoin the circus as soon as he had sold all of the peanuts. To test this notion, he casually asked the old man if he knew where the circus was going after it left Jasper. Eli Willard nodded. Hank left the store and went around from house to house in Stay More, telling everybody that old Eli Willard was back in town, and offering a whole half-pound of goobers for just five cents. Soon the store porch was crowded with people cracking and eating peanuts, and before long they were up to their ankles in peanut shells. As the afternoon waned, Eli Willard sold his last poke of peanuts. Willis Ingledew swept the peanut shells off the store porch, and closed his store and went home to eat supper. Eli Willard and Hank were alone. The profits from the sale of peanuts had come to exactly five dollars, which Eli Willard gave to Hank, saying it was payment for the ride from Jasper to Stay More.

“How you gorn to git back?” Hank wanted to know.

“I’m not.”

“Huh? You aint givin up on the circus fer good, air ye?”

Eli Willard nodded.

“Wal, will ye tell me whar they went, so’s I can fine ’em?”

Eli Willard shook his head. Then he asked, “What’s your name, Ingledew?”

“John Henry. Everbody calls me Hank.”

Eli Willard seemed to be only thinking about that, without comment. Then he unbuttoned his left sleeve and removed from his wrist a dazzling gold wristwatch; even the band was gold. He handed it to Hank. “It’s a chronometer,” he explained. “Keeps perfect time. Never loses a second. Not a fraction of a second. But it isn’t for you, except in trust. Keep it for your son.”

“My son?” Hank said. “Heck, I ain’t but ten year old.”

“Yes, but you’ll have a son some day.”

Hank thought about that. He realized that in order to have a son you first had to find a girl and sweet-talk her into marrying you, and then you had to persuade her to get into bed with you and let you do it to her, and more than once if it wasn’t the right time of month. Hank could never do anything like that, and he told Eli Willard so, but the old man just laughed and assured him that he would indeed eventually do all of those things, and more.

“But what if it aint a son but a daughter?”

“Try again. And again. And when your son is old enough to appreciate, give him that chronometer and tell him my story.”

“What’s your story?”

“Four score and ten years ago, I sold a clock to your great-greatgrandfather, who, as you probably know, was the first white settler of Stay More. It wasn’t a very good clock, I must confess…” Eli Willard went on, and told Hank the whole long story of his many many returns to Stay More, what merchandise he had offered if not sold, the experiences he had had, not excluding the humiliations and the boredom. He talked through and past suppertime, and Hank was getting mighty hungry, but he figured the least he could do in return for such a fine gold watch, even if he couldn’t wear it himself but only keep it for his son, was to listen carefully to the old man’s story and try to remember it so that he could tell it to his son on the day that he would give him the fine gold watch, and maybe his son could make some sense out of the story even if Hank couldn’t.

It was a very interesting story, Hank thought, although he didn’t see any particular significance in it, unless it was just about time in general, time passing, time coming and staying awhile and going away forever not never to come back anymore. It was kind of sad, he thought. It was almost like not knowing whether or not you really existed because in order for you to have been born your mother and father had to speak to one another and go to bed together, and as far as he knew his mother and father never had. Eli Willard seemed to be a very wise old man, and Hank decided that when the old man got finished telling his story Hank would ask him for his opinion on whether or not a person could exist if his parents had never spoken to one another or gone to bed together.

It seemed to be getting late. The lightning bugs had all come out and filled the air. The old man’s voice was becoming weak and hoarse, but he seemed to be near the finish. He was at the part where he drove the first horseless carriage into Stay More and Uncle Denton sued him for it and he went away and joined a circus and didn’t come back again for twenty years.

He’s almost done, Hank realized, and then Hank could ask him some questions. He had to strain his ears to hear what the old man was saying in his weak, hoarse voice. And then he could not hear him at all. The old man’s lips were still moving, but Hank couldn’t catch a word. Hank put his ear up close to the old man’s mouth and managed to catch one feeble word that sounded like “peanuts” but then he couldn’t hear anything else. Eli Willard’s lips went on moving. “I caint hear you!” Hank hollered into his ear, but Eli Willard just closed his eyes, and his lips went on moving for a while and then stopped moving, and his chin fell to his chest. Hank gave his shoulder a shake and Eli Willard fell over.

Hank ran up the road to Doc Swain’s place and fetched Doc Swain, who came and inspected Eli Willard and declared that it looked as if he had been dead for many years. Doc Swain took his shoulders and Hank took his legs and they carried him over to E.H. Ingledew’s dentist shop, where E.H., who was a mortician as well as a dentist, carefully embalmed him. The next day the people of Stay More assembled and discussed the situation. They didn’t know where to ship the body, and even if they did they couldn’t afford it. A search of the dead man’s pockets had produced just a tiny amount of cash, not even enough for a box coffin. Hank Ingledew didn’t tell anyone about the gold wristwatch, which rightfully belonged to his future son; he wrapped the watch in flannel and put it into a tin lard pail and buried it in a place that not even I know. Eli Willard was not buried. The Stay More cemetery, after all, was for Stay Morons, and Eli Willard was not a Stay Moron. Willis Ingledew offered in place of a coffin an unused glass showcase in the rear of his general store, and Eli Willard’s well-preserved body was laid to rest in this showcase, and all of the Ingledews, at least, gathered around it and sang:

Farther along we’ll know all about it,

Farther along we’ll understand why;

Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,

We’ll understand it, all by and by.

One day Hank Ingledew laboriously hand-lettered a sign, “WURL’S OLDISS MAN,” and took it into the store and, with Willis’s permission, placed it on top of the showcase. Hank brooded sometimes because Eli Willard had not lived long enough for Hank to ask him the question about whether or not Hank could exist if his parents had never spoken to one another or slept together. Sometimes when Willis was sitting out on the store porch, Hank would slip into the rear of the store and sit down beside the showcase and make believe that he was talking to Eli Willard and asking him questions. In this way, over a period of time, he came to understand the power of make-believe, and this was a consolation to him.

Eli Willard rested in peace in the showcase for several years, and people came from all over Newton County to see him, and while they were in the store they would usually buy a candy bar or a plug of chewing tobacco or something, and this business helped Willis Ingledew survive the lean years of the Great Depression and even to make modest loans to all the other Ingledews to help them survive.

Willis was totally forgiven for whatever errors of credulity he had made long ago; people began to believe him; they believed anything he said; they even believed, all of a sudden one day, that he actually possessed an automobile. On the day they believed he possessed an automobile he was driving it into Jasper for repairs when he lost control on a sharp curve and plunged down a steep embankment, totally wrecking the car. He died instantly and they buried him, singing “Farther Along” over his grave. He was the last male of his line.

His niece Lola, whom nobody realized was secretly his daughter, inherited the general store, and her first act as proprietress was to insist that the other Ingledews kindly remove the glass showcase with the body of Eli Willard in it. She said she would not set foot in the store until they did. So she did not set foot in the store, which was all right with just about anybody, because nobody had any money to spend there, although unfortunately the post office was also inside the store. But Lola did not inherit the postmastership, because U.S. government positions are not inheritable. When Willis Ingledew died, the Beautiful Girl, who had returned to Stay More after a long and mysterious absence and had purchased Bob Cluley’s little general store up at the other end of Main Street, purchased it with money that nobody knew how or where or why she had obtained, now applied to the U.S. government for the post of postmistress, and was granted it, much to the chagrin of Lola, who could only watch helplessly as Tearle Ingledew loaded the cabinet of post office boxes into a wagon and hauled it up Main Street to the Beautiful Girl’s general store. Lola and the Beautiful Girl had in common that they were spinsters and that they were general store proprietresses, but they had absolutely nothing else in common.

The Jasper Disaster ran a feature story on the corpse of Eli Willard under the title, “Connecticut Itinerant Has No Final Resting Place, Even in Death.” One of the national wire services picked up the story, and soon it was running in papers all over the country. A family of Willards in Rhode Island wrote to the Newton County coroner, claiming that Eli Willard was their longlost great-grandfather, but the coroner replied that Eli Willard was a lifelong bachelor who had no kin or descendants. The students of Yale University took up a collection for the purpose of having the showcase shipped to Yale’s Dwight Chapel, but the university administration vetoed the idea. The Governor of Connecticut wrote the Governor of Arkansas suggesting that something ought to be done, and the latter replied that his staff was investigating, with the main problem being to locate Newton County in general and Stay More in particular. Meanwhile a man drove up to Lola’s store and introduced himself as Philip Foogle and asked to be allowed to view the remains. Lola said she wouldn’t set foot inside the store, but she would unlock it for him, and did, and the man went in and later came back out and said that the deceased had been, when last seen, wearing an extremely expensive gold chronometer wristwatch which was not now on the deceased’s person. Foogle claimed that he had loaned a considerable sum of money to the deceased, who had spent it on the wristwatch. In short, he, Foogle, wanted the wristwatch. Lola said she didn’t know nothing about no wristwatch. Foogle asked who had been with the deceased at the time of his deceasement, and Lola told him Hank Ingledew, and gave him directions to Hank’s house, and Foogle went there and was mildly surprised to discover that Hank Ingledew was a grown-up version of the same ten-year-old kid whom he had almost converted into a permanent clown several years before.

“Aha!” said Foogle, and then, “Okay, kid, come clean. What did you do with the wristwatch?”

“What wristwatch?” said Hank, having learned in the school of life how to maintain a perfect deadpan and a tone of innocence.

Foogle, forgetting momentarily that he was no longer dealing with a ten-year-old circus punk, began to twist Hank’s arm, whereupon the grown-up Hank flung Foogle all the way back to his car. Foogle drove back to Lola’s store, thinking he might at least salvage something if he could lay claim to the showcase and contents, and exhibit it in his sideshow. Lola was more than happy to let him have it, if he would haul it off. It wouldn’t fit in his car. He drove off to Jasper to hire a truck, and Lola gloatingly boasted to the Ingledews that she had worked her will, and that soon she would set foot inside her store.

But before Foogle could get back with the truck, Hank rounded up his three younger brothers and the four of them gained entrance to the store through the rear door, and transferred the showcase and contents to the abandoned mill, where they concealed it inside the wheat roller machine, and where it remained for many years. The Ingledew brothers pledged one another to secrecy. Lola set foot in her store. She had no idea on earth, she told Foogle, where the showcase might have gone. She was just glad it was gone.

What has all of this to do with the illustration at the head of this chapter? That curious “carpenter gothic” house, located a mile up Banty Creek from downtown Stay More, was built by a man who, like Eli Willard, was not a Stay Moron, but that in itself is no reason for making his house the headpiece for this whole chapter. The man was also a native of Connecticut and was also, like Eli Willard, a wanderer, but neither are those any reasons. I will offer a reasonably good reason in just a few minutes, but for the moment I need only point out that, chronologically, the house was built during one of those years that Eli Willard lay in state in Willis’s store, the same year that Bob Cluley sold his little general store to the Beautiful Girl (although there is no connection) so that this carpenter gothic house represents those years and that year, not only chronologically but also symbolically, because the retardataire gothicism of the house relates to Eli Willard and his death. Nobody knew well the man who built it, but they knew he must have been a carpenter, not just because of all the carpenter gothic details but because it was well-built and is still standing, although it was vacant for some twenty years after the violent death of the builder.

The man was known only as “Dan.” He was already in his fifties when he first came to Stay More and although he did not have a wife he had a young child, a girl as reclusive as her father. Neither of them was seen in the village more often than the Second Tuesday of the Month. People sat on the porch of Lola’s store and speculated that the man was an escaped convict. Then one by one the people moved to the porch of the Beautiful Girl’s store not only because it had become the post office but also because they liked her better than Lola, and on that porch they speculated that Dan was a runaway bank embezzler and had a pile of money stashed away somewhere in his fancy carpenter gothic house. Now and then someone would come upon the man out in the woods hunting, and marvel at his marksmanship, extraordinary even by Stay More standards. A lucky few people happened to be within earshot on several occasions when the man was playing his fiddle, and they agreed that there had never been a better fiddler, not even the legendary Colonel Coon Ingledew.

During the years of the Great Depression, the Stay Morons all of a sudden revived their interest in the old-timey music and the old-timey ways, and both the Stay Morons and the Parthenonians tried to persuade Dan to play his fiddle for public events, but he would not, not out of shyness but because he knew that square dances fostered drunken fighting, and, as he said, he had been in enough fights to last him for the rest of his life. So, in effect, unlike Eli Willard, who over the years kept bringing things to Stay More, the strange near-hermit named Dan contributed nothing to Stay More, but rather took from it, in the form of a meticulous observation of its history and culture that resulted, indirectly, through means I have discussed in some other place, in the present volume. If Dan himself has no place in the present volume, he was responsible for it, and his house has a place in it, for it was in his house, after Dan was killed and the house was abandoned, that the Ingledews deposited the glass showcase with the remains of Eli Willard, after a flood had undermined the foundations of the abandoned mill. Even in death Eli Willard kept traveling, but once he was deposited in the abandoned house of the near-hermit Dan he was left in relative peace for another twenty years.

Just in passing, we might note that the house was, and still slightly is, yellow. It was one of the few painted houses of Stay More. We need not get involved with the architectural significance of painted vs. unpainted houses, but we should consider the symbolism of the color, as Dan saw it. It had nothing to do with cowardice, for Dan was one of the bravest men who ever lived. If he had been an Ingledew, which he was not, his legend would have equaled anything in this book. Nor did yellow have anything to do with jaundice, lemons, Fusarium wilt, Orientals, or egg yolks. The Indo-European root of yellow is ghel, a formation which also produces gold, gleam, felon, glimpse, glitter, glisten, gloss, glow, glib and gloaming. All of these apply to Dan, but he painted his house yellow as a symbol of fair-haired women, and of the rising sun.

Chapter fifteen

Recognize it? The practiced student of architecture should be able to examine an altered building and determine the form of the original—“read” it in translation, as it were. Here we see the somewhat imaginative, if architecturally uncomely, result of Oren Duckworth’s attempt to convert the unused barn that Denton and Monroe Ingledew built four chapters back into an industry, specifically a canning factory, or “Cannon Fact’ry” as they pronounced it. Unless we count the present-day ham processing operation of Vernon Ingledew as an industry, the Cannon Fact’ry was the only modern industry that Stay More ever had. Rare was the Stay Moron who enjoyed working for someone else, for wages. No farm in Stay More ever had a hired hand. Just as Jacob Ingledew had never even considered owning slaves because he felt that a man shouldn’t own more land than he and his sons were capable of cultivating, successive generations of Stay Morons felt that they should not hire help; if they needed extra hands during haying time or threshing time, they swapped help with one another. But during the Great Depression, the farms of Stay More were reduced to bare subsistence enterprises, yielding the families a meager larder and nothing else. To earn even enough to pay for staples like salt and pepper and chewing tobacco, it was necessary to find a job, and the only jobs to be found in Stay More was the seasonal labor in Oren Duckworth’s Cannon Fact’ry. Later the W.P.A. and the C.C.C. and the A.A.A. and the rest of the New Deal’s alphabet soup brought relief to some, but most Stay Morons considered those government agencies a form of welfare or even charity, which was worse than working for somebody else.

Oren Duckworth started his canning factory not to provide jobs for his neighbors but because with the death of John Ingledew Stay More was without a leading citizen and Oren Duckworth desired to become a leading citizen. He was Jim Tom Duckworth’s oldest boy, and attorneys’ sons were always expected to amount to something, although Oren was past forty before he thought of the idea of taking the old engine from behind the abandoned mill and putting it alongside the abandoned barn to convert it into a factory. I’ve always wondered why he didn’t simply convert the abandoned mill into a factory; possibly E.H. Ingledew, the oldest of his line and therefore the legatee of the mill, wouldn’t sell it to him. At any rate, when old Jim Tom Duckworth went to his reward, he left behind a modest amount of accumulated lawyer’s fees, which Oren used to purchase the simple machinery for his factory: conveyors, cleaning trough, canner and cooker.

Unconsciously no doubt, in planning his factory, Oren Duckworth preserved the bigeminality of the original barn: the left crib was where the women cleaned and prepared the snaps and ’maters and put them into cans; the right crib was where the men sealed the cans and cooked them, and the male-female division of labor was always clear in the minds of those who worked there. Snaps and ’maters were the only products of the factory; the former were canned during June and the latter during July and August; both vegetables grew abundantly all over the place. Additional jobs were provided for the pickers. Farmers hired women, teenagers and even children to pick, paying them usually a few pennies per bushel, and hauled the bushels by wagon to Oren Duckworth’s factory, where a stout girl unloaded them into a trough around which sat a dozen women who cleaned, snapped the snaps or peeled the ’maters, pressed them into tin cans being loaded on the chute up in the loft by another person, also female, and placed them on a conveyor belt which carried them over into the other crib, where a group of men manned the machine that put a lid on each can and then arranged them in large iron bails that were lowered into a vat of boiling water; after the cans had cooked and cooled, they were conveyed up into the loft of that crib where another person, also male, packed them into cardboard cartons.

In the early days of the operation, the cans bore Oren Duckworth’s own gaudily chromolithographed labels, imprinted with the legends “Duckworth’s Finust Snaps” and “Duckworth’s Finust Maters,” but, even though the former clearly pictured a luscious mound of plump green beans while the latter showed a huge red tomato, nobody in the cities, where the cans were shipped, appeared to know that “snap” means green beans and “mater” means tomato, and the cans did not sell. Eventually Oren Duckworth made contact with a large and well-known food processor in Kansas City, a company whose lawyers will not permit me to mention its name, and thereafter Duckworth’s finust snaps and maters were sent in unlabeled cans to Kansas City, where the Big Name Food Processor attached his own label, and you and I were unknowingly eating them when we were children, although the Cannon Fact’ry closed down before we were grown up.

The Stay More ’mater had of course not retained its full aphrodisiac properties, although the ’mater of that time was surely far more erogenous than the hybridized objects that are marketed as “tomatoes” today.

Whatever might be said against Oren Duckworth’s materialistic motives for operating the canning factory, it must be acknowledged that the operation granted Stay More a reprieve, to live as a town a little longer. Without the canning factory, people would have been forced to leave Stay More and search for work in the larger towns and cities. The canning factory not only created jobs but also, because the big motortruck which came to get the cans and take them to Kansas City had to ford Banty Creek where it crosses the main road and because Banty Creek overflowed its banks six different times during the first summer the canning factory was in operation, making it impossible of passage not only for the big motortruck but also for any wagons hauling snaps and ’maters from the north side of the creek, and because Oren Duckworth’s crews had to construct a raft and laboriously float not only the raw product but also the finished product back and forth across the creek when it was flooded, which caused Oren Duckworth not only to curse but also to moan, and because he was noticed cursing and moaning not only by his employees and family but also by a federal government agent, a “spotter” from the Works Progress Administration, who wore not only a pair of binoculars but also a telescope suspended from leather thongs around his neck, and who spotted not only Banty Creek in flood but also Oren Duckworth cursing and moaning, and who told the Stay Morons that not only could he do something about it but also would he do something about it, and did: he brought in an engineer who not only surveyed Banty Creek and drew up plans for a cement bridge over it but also hired some of the local boys to assist in the labor of constructing the bridge, which took all summer. Oren Duckworth was all in favor of the bridge, and so were the local boys given jobs by the W.P.A., but, nobody else was, because a bridge was the worst form of PROG RESS and was against all tradition.

The W.P.A. bridge is not illustrated here, partly for that reason. No architectural history of the United States is complete without an illustration of the Brooklyn Bridge, and it should follow that our history should not omit the W.P.A. bridge, but it is scarcely comparable, being only three hats long, about three feet above the natural water level of the creek, and consisting of poured cement with the sides formed of a row of crenelated piers, fifteen to the side. Year by year the floods of Banty Creek would wash logs and other debris against those crenelated piers, where it would jam up, and to break the jam the Stay Morons would sledgehammer those crenellations away, until eventually only the roadway of the bridge itself remained, with one pier of the crenellation embossed like a tombstone with the legend “Built by W.P.A.” Bevis Ingledew often remarked that he would just as soon get aholt of some dynamite and obliterate the whole bridge, but for one reason or another he never got around to it, and what is left of it is still there.

Most of John Henry “Hank” Ingledew’s children do not even know what “W.P.A.” stands for, and they have had some fun conjecturing the possibilities: Well Plastered Alcoholics, Washout Prevention Association, Way Past Absurdity, What Possible Accident, Wet Persons Anonymous, etc. The fact that the “P” in W.P.A. actually did stand for PROG RESS was not lost upon the Stay Morons of the time, who helplessly watched the bridge being poured, and wondered what the world was coming to.

After work, the W.P.A. gang got into fights with local boys, but they were fighting not out of ideological controversy so much as for recreation and for the purpose of showing off in front of a very pretty teenage redhead girl named Sonora Twichell who was presumed to be the niece of the Beautiful Girl and was spending the summer with her, as she had been doing for several summers, going back home each August to her presumed mother in Little Rock. John Henry “Hank” Ingledew was one of the local boys who fought with the W.P.A. gang for the purpose of showing off in front of Sonora, although he didn’t need to, because she had eyes only for him, although he didn’t know it; because he was just as shy of females as any Ingledew had ever been, although he never forgot about Eli Willard’s chronometer wristwatch which he had buried; because he knew that some day he would have a son to give the watch to, although he couldn’t conceive of how he would ever approach a girl and get up his nerve to ask her to marry him so that they could have a son; because that was something well beyond the powers of an Ingledew, although he knew that in order for him to exist his own father somehow had to have approached his mother. The very pretty redhead Sonora thought that Hank Ingledew was the best-looking boy she had ever seen, and from the age of thirteen onward, when she first started spending summers with the woman she thought was her aunt but guessed was her mother, she decided that she would marry Hank someday. But every time she even looked at him, let alone spoke to him, he would get red in the face and turn away. Her mother, whom she presumed to be her aunt, told her about the legendary woman-shyness of all the Ingledews extending back into history. The Beautiful Girl knew the whole history of Stay More and told Sonora about the cornbread that Sarah had baked for Jacob Ingledew, so Sonora baked some corn-bread for Hank the summer she turned sixteen, and she took it to him and gave it to him, but nobody (except Eli Willard) had ever bothered to tell Hank anything about his great-great-grandfather (and Eli Willard hadn’t mentioned the cornbread) so Hank didn’t know the significance of the cornbread, except as something to eat, and he did eat it, but didn’t think it was as good as the cornbread his mother made, although he didn’t say this to Sonora, because he wasn’t capable of saying anything to her.

When Sonora went back home to Little Rock that year after the summer was over, she was emboldened to write a letter to Hank, saying things that she dared not say to his face, things that he dared not listen to, to his face. She told him that although she was only sixteen years old she already felt grown up and that she didn’t like any of the boys in Little Rock as much as she liked him and she was very sorry that he wasn’t able to talk to her and she hoped that even though he couldn’t talk to her he might be able to write to her, and she signed it “Your friend, Sonora.”

Just holding this letter in his hands made Hank get very red in the face, especially because Sonora was the prettiest girl he had ever seen, which made it all the harder for him to conceive of ever being able to say anything to her. But he suddenly realized that saying something to her in a letter wouldn’t be the same as saying something to her face. She wouldn’t be looking at him when he said it; she couldn’t even see him. So he sat down and got out a sheet of writing paper and took his pencil and licked on it and chewed it for a while, and managed to write, “Dear Sonora:” That was as far as he got. He waited for a better day, but the day never came, so he took the sheet of paper saying only “Dear Sonora:” and put it in an envelope and mailed it to her.

She was thrilled, and responded with a letter pouring out her heart to him, telling him how she liked Stay More so much better than Little Rock and how she wished she could live there all year around instead of just in the summertime. She even told him who her favorite film actors and actresses were.

These names meant nothing to Hank because he had never seen a film, and yet, as if by magic, the same week Hank received this letter, a man drove a truck into Stay More and hung dark curtains over the windows of the school house and set up a screen and a projector and allowed everybody to come and pay ten cents to see real shows that were almost as good as the shows that Brother Long Jack Stapleton used to show before he lost the power, and there on the screen were the actual persons that Sonora had mentioned to Hank in her letter, so that after he had seen ten of the shows, he was able to write Sonora and say, “Dear Sonora: I saw some of them shows too, and my favorites is also Barbara Stanwyck and James Stewart. Your friend, Hank.”

This was the most that he had ever said to any female except his mother, and Sonora realized it, and was greatly flattered. She replied at great length, saying she hoped that when she came back to Stay More the following summer to stay with her aunt, she hoped that she and Hank could go together to watch a picture show. If the show were romantic, she speculated, they might find themselves holding hands. Hank read this letter several times, and thought about it carefully. Movies, he had discovered, were shown in the dark, and in the dark it wouldn’t be so difficult for him to hold hands with a girl, especially Sonora, since they had already broken the ice by mail. In his next letter he told her so, and she was so excited that she replied by suggesting that if the movie were romantic enough, and they held hands, it might develop that when he took her home afterwards they would want to sit in the porch swing together for a little while, and if they did that they might kiss. Hank memorized this letter but was uncertain as to whether or not he could ever get up the nerve to kiss Sonora, certainly not in broad daylight, and he conveyed these doubts to her in his next letter. She replied, “Silly. It would be night.” All of the movies that Hank had seen had been shown in broad daylight with dark curtains over the schoolhouse windows, but after thinking about it, he decided that maybe he could persuade the movie man, if he ever came back to Stay More the next summer, to show some of the shows at night. When he mentioned this in his next letter to Sonora, she was so aroused that she wrote back to him saying that if they saw a lot of movies and did a lot of hand-holding, and sat in the porch swing afterwards kissing for a long enough time, they might want to sneak out to the corncrib where they could lie down together. John Henry “Hank” Ingledew lost his virginity by mail.

When Sonora returned to Stay More the following June to spend the summer with her aunt/mother, she and Hank were such old friends that they didn’t even bother with the preliminaries of movie-going and hand-holding and kissing. As soon as it got dark on the first night Sonora was back in Stay More, they met in a thicket alongside Swains Creek, embraced, and made a love that eclipsed anything in the U.S. mails. Hank was amazed at how superior reality is to words. To experience such a thing, he realized, was proof that he existed, even if his parents had never done it. And he knew that now that he had done it, he had created a son to wear Eli Willard’s chronometer.

But he was mistaken. He did not realize that every act of love does not result in offspring; he did not know that there are many days in each month when a girl is infertile. He offered to marry Sonora, and was confused when she laughed and said she was too young, although she would be happy to marry him after she finished high school in another year. The high school that Hank had finished at Jasper had not permitted pregnant girls to attend, but possibly, he realized, the big-city high school at Little Rock was more broadminded. He was further confused when, the very following night, she wanted to do it again. He wondered if that would produce twins, but he did it. By the end of the week, he was worrying about supporting quintuplets, but he thoroughly enjoyed doing it and went on doing it, until Sonora said they had to stop for a while because it was the “wrong” time. He didn’t know what was wrong with it, but he obligingly stopped. “We can pet, though,” she told him. He didn’t know that word, but she showed him what it meant.

It was a great summer. I was there. Even though I was only a child I knew what Hank and Sonora were up to. Several times I spied on them and envied their pleasure. But the only other person who knew, rather than simply guessed, what they were up to, was the Beautiful Girl, to whom Sonora confessed. As postmistress of Stay More, the Beautiful Girl knew that her daughter, whom everybody else thought was her niece, had been carrying on a lengthy correspondence with Hank Ingledew, and she was glad for Sonora, because Hank was one of the best in a long line of fine Ingledews. He was tall, and strong, and good-looking. So the Beautiful Girl, who once upon a time had been courted and bedded by Hank’s Uncle Raymond, was not at all surprised when Sonora confessed that she had lost her virginity to Hank and that they indulged themselves in their bodies almost daily. Sonora assured her that they were “careful.” The Beautiful Girl thought that was a beautiful thing, and she lived vicariously through Sonora, enjoying Sonora’s descriptions of the myriad ways that she and Hank took advantage of the fact that they had miraculously been created female and male.

It was also miraculous that Sonora did not get pregnant that summer. Hank was puzzled. He knew that certain women are sterile. He asked Sonora if she had ever had a bad case of the mumps, but she hadn’t. Then he began to wonder if he himself might be sterile. Perhaps, after all, he was only imagining that he existed. Or maybe, he speculated, he only existed in Sonora’s imagination; she had created him for the purpose of giving her pleasure. He did not much like the thought, but there it was.

Thought can be a shattering experience. Sonora, for her part, did not think thoughts, except to remember when it was the wrong time of month; she simply enjoyed herself. Hank couldn’t tell her what was gnawing away at his brain, and yet, compulsively, he went ahead. He was quite fond of ’maters, but that had nothing to do with it. There was simply something about Sonora: the way she looked, the shape of her, her red hair that had a wonderful smell in all its locations, her eyes even, her voice too, the movements of her hands and feet, the shape and capacity of her arms, and above all the shape and capacity of her principal openings, that never failed to animate him and his responsive part. Thinking about this, as he often did, he came to the conclusion that her openings were, after all, sockets, hollows, voids, and therefore if it were possible that somebody did not exist, it was more likely she rather than he, and he arrived at the momentous truth that woman is but the creation of man, his fancy and his delight. He could live with this, and he did: having settled the problem, he endured it.

After the true maternity and paternity of Sonora became known, she did not have to return to Little Rock to her adoptive mother, who was in fact her aunt, but remained in Stay More, finishing her education at Jasper High School. Her father, E.D., had acquired religion, and when he learned from her mother of Sonora’s affair with Hank Ingledew, he attempted to put a stop to it. He was only partly successful. Sonora would not accommodate Hank on school nights, limiting him to weekends. Because weekends often occurred at the wrong time, she also acquired, from a high school girlfriend who clerked in the Jasper drugstore, a package of prophylactics, which she insisted that Hank use. “What’s that fool thang for?” he wanted to know. “Heck, that won’t be no fun,” he protested. “Let’s try it and see,” she suggested, and they did.

But after graduation, in June, she threw away the prophylactics, and she and Hank ran off into the woods, in broad daylight, mornings, afternoons, evenings, and corresponded themselves silly, even in the wrong time, until Sonora was unquestionably pregnant, whereupon they were dutifully married, and on the wedding night, after the shivaree party had been served refreshments and departed, Hank told Sonora of the gold chronometer wristwatch which Eli Willard had given him and which he had buried to await the appropriate time when Hank could give it to his son. Sonora thought that was the marvelousest thing she had ever heard, and she said they ought to name their son Eli Willard Ingledew, and Hank agreed that would be very appropriate. For nine months, they talked every day about Eli Willard Ingledew; they could even picture him grown up, wearing the magic watch that kept perfect time and never lost even a second. They knew he would be somebody very important in the world, maybe even President of the United States, or at the very least Vice President. When Sonora could feel the baby stirring in her womb, she began to picture him, and she and Hank knew that Eli Willard would be the most handsome of all the Ingledews.

Sonora took up sewing, and made all of Eli Willard Ingledew’s clothing up to the age at which he would receive the wristwatch, which would be sixteen. They not only talked about Eli Willard Ingledew to one another, but also to all their family and friends, so that the whole village began to look forward to his birth, almost as if the baby would be an actual reincarnation of the Connecticut peddler. When Sonora went into labor, instead of fetching Doc Swain and having her baby at home like everybody else had always done, she was taken all the way to Harrison, where the nearest hospital was, and the car in which she traveled was followed by every available conveyance in Stay More, with the entire population, in that year just about a hundred, being transported. The waiting room at the hospital wouldn’t hold a fraction of them, but they milled about in the corridors and outside on the lawn. Sonora’s labor was a long one, yet nobody seemed to mind. News of the advent or nativity or simply parturition spread through the town of Harrison, and the members of the Harrison High School precision marching band donned their new uniforms and assembled in formation on the hospital lawn, where they played “A Babe in Mother’s Arms,” “A Child at Mother’s Knee,” “A Boy Grows Up,” “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and the Harrison High School alma mater.

At last the obstetrician lifted the baby by its ankles, slapped its bottom to induce crying, and Sonora discovered that Eli Willard Ingledew had no penis. “A mighty fine gal,” said the obstetrician, and Sonora told him to break the news gently to her husband. Hank Ingledew hung around for a while, but everybody else went home, and the following week’s issue of the Jasper Disaster carried the event in seventeen words at the bottom of the last page: “Last Friday a daughter, unnamed, was born to Mr. and Mrs. J.H. Ingledew of Stay More.” Hank and Sonora got their heads together and considered naming the baby Ela Willa or Elise Wilma or Eleanor Willardine, but finally Sonora named her simply Latha, after her mother. Then, as soon as Sonora was able, they got busy again, in the morning, afternoon and evening, and tried to create Eli Willard on the second chance.

Sonora’s conception was quick; the new infant would be born less than ten months after the first one. That summer Sonora went to work in the canning factory, to earn money for a second layette. Sonora parked her baby in the “baby-trough” at the canning factory, which was one of the former cow cribs reserved for the babies of the women who sat around the cleaning-trough snapping snaps and peeling ’maters. The several babies did not socialize much; mainly they lay or sat watching their mothers snapping snaps or peeling ’maters and wondering what in the name of heaven was going on, all day long. At night Sonora protested to Hank that she was simply too tired to make love, much as she wanted to, and her refraining from it overloaded Hank with new reserves of life, so that he was compelled to work harder, and even began clearing some new land, the first time that that had been done in Stay More for ages and ages. As a result of this labor, he was waylaid with a severe case of the frakes. His mother, Emelda, attempted to administer the old but unproven remedies, but he would not let her, because, although he had no interest in superstitions, folklore nor old-timey ways in general, he had at least heard that there was really no earthly cure for the frakes. Sonora’s old high school chum who clerked in the Jasper drugstore furnished an ointment containing acth, and this, although it didn’t cure Hank’s frakes, was at least as effective as the panther urine ointment had been a century before, which is to say, it was worthless. Hank took to his bed and waited in agony for the itching to stop, and then gave himself up to the deep feeling of utter futility that came afterward. When news of the birth of his second child reached his bed, he remarked, “I don’t give a shit what it is.”

It was another girl. Sonora solicited his help in naming it, but he said she could name it Eulalee Wilhelmina for all he cared. Sonora named it simply Eva. She pointed out to Hank that while all of his siblings were male and all of his many uncles were male, this was no guarantee that his children would be male, because, after all, her mother’s siblings had been female, and there had been a lot of females in her father’s lineage. Hank said he didn’t care. He really didn’t. He would just as soon have girls as boys, or neither. He would just as soon have nothing. He didn’t give a damn. It was all the same to him, one way or the other. He could straddle the fence and leave well enough alone. In fact, he could leave everything alone and didn’t feel like making the effort to straddle the fence, even. Nothing mattered. It made him no difference whatever.

Hank’s case of the frakes was one of the worst. In the winter, beneath their heavy quilts, Sonora would cuddle up to him and try to warm him, but he would not be warmed. She was scared, because she had grown up in the city and had never seen anyone get the frakes before. She told him that she loved him, and that therefore she loved his frakes too, but he did not even bother to reply. He couldn’t care less. Sonora’s mother counseled her that she would just have to wait and be patient. “How long? Oh, Mother, how long?” Sonora wailed. But her mother could only say that nobody ever knew.

Then the world went to war again. This time, the Stay More town meeting lasted for a little longer than the three-and-a-half-minute discussion of the previous war, but not much: the general consensus was that if this feller Hitler wanted Europe, why shouldn’t he have it? But he was also trying to get England, and that was where our foreparents came from, and we oughtn’t to let him have that, so we ought to at least help the British hang on to their lands. Several Stay More boys went off and joined the service. Sonora hoped that maybe the war would rouse Hank from his lethargy and despondency. It did not.

But then some yellow people who lived halfway around the world sent their ships and planes to a place called Pearl that was part of America even though it was out in the middle of the ocean, and bombed hell out of it. That was going too far. Hank got out of bed, dressed, kissed his wife and babies goodbye, and said so long to his parents and brothers and uncles, and went off to join the service. He didn’t know which branch of the service to join. The Army offered to teach him a trade, and the Marines offered to make a real man out of him, but he kept thinking of Pearl, which was way out in the ocean, and he decided the best way to get to it would be the Navy. So he joined it, and after basic training they let him come home for a little while to show off his uniform and get his picture in the Disaster and impregnate Sonora again. Then they sent him to a school where they taught him how to take apart and repair and put together radio equipment. There was hardly any trace of his frakes remaining, so he studied hard, and by the time he was shipped to sea he could write to Sonora and tell her that he was “Semen First Class,” to which she replied, “You sure are, honey.”

He was the first Stay Moron ever to see the sea. His ship went all over the ocean, but it didn’t go to Pearl. Because the enemy commenced shooting at and trying to bomb his ship, they raised his pay, and he didn’t have anything to spend it on, so he sent most all of it home, and Sonora and her babies were able to live a good life. Hank was so good at patching up and operating radios that he was transferred to a bigger ship, and promoted to petty officer. He survived the sinkings of two destroyers, a battleship, and an aircraft carrier, and by then he was a master chief petty officer (and also the father of a third daughter, Janice). Eventually they shipped him back stateside for shore leave, and once again he came home to show off his uniform and to attempt once again to create Eli Willard Ingledew.

The Jasper Disaster took his portrait and printed it on their front page, and noted that he was eligible for commission as ensign. Hank was saddened to learn that some of his childhood friends had been killed in France and on the beaches of the Pacific. His brothers Jackson and Tracy had been drafted and were fighting in Europe, and his youngest brother William Robert (“Billy Bob”) would have been drafted, except that he was the last son in the family, and there was a law against it.

There were very few young men in Stay More; in the previous war there had been very few young men out of Stay More. The canning factory was no longer operating, on account of a shortage of tin, but the women and boys and old men went on harvesting the snap crop and ’mater crop and canning it in re-used Mason jars. The war was good for Stay More in the sense that all its young men fighting overseas sent most of their paychecks home, and there was so much mail from them and to them that the post office was permitted to reopen for the duration of the war, and of course both general stores did a fair business. Odell Ingledew even thought of reopening his father’s bank, but Tearle talked him out of it, saying that the war was only a temporary thing and would probably be over before Odell could install a new floor and replace the busted-out winder lights, not to mention the vault door that had been ripped off and gone God knows where.

Hank returned to the Pacific with the rank of ensign, and his ships began invading islands and atolls all over the place. He himself never fired a gun, nor killed an enemy, but his expertise with radio helped conquer the foe, and by the time of the invasion of Iwo Jima his rank was captain, in charge of all the radio operations of his entire fleet. The officers and enlisted men under his command still referred to him as “Rube” behind his back, and did bad imitations of his country accent, but they respected him and never gave him any trouble. In the invasion of Iwo Jima, another Stay More boy, Gerald Coe, who had been a boyhood friend of Hank’s, made a heroic charge of a machine gun nest that was instrumental in taking the island, but was killed in the process, and posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. There is a bronze plaque in his memory in a hallway of Jasper High School. When the war ended after the surrender of the enemy, Hank was promoted to commodore and offered a stateside desk job, but he wasn’t interested, and came home to Stay More just in time for the birth of his fourth daughter, Patricia.

He didn’t hold it against Sonora, but he somehow felt that it cast aspersions on his manhood that he had been unable to produce a son. It was hard for him to hold his head up in Stay More. Also, there wasn’t much use in Stay More for a highly trained electronics technician. Stay More didn’t even have electricity yet. Also, Swains Creek and Banty Creek put together weren’t much water compared with the ocean. Hank dreamed, nearly every night, of that ocean. Finally he could stand it no longer, and said to Sonora:

“Let’s go to California.”

“Anytime,” she replied, thinking he only meant to show her the place. She did not know the story of Benjamin Ingledew, who had tried to go to California and got as far as Mountain Meadows. Nor did she know of the curse that Jacob Ingledew had placed on any Stay Moron who dared try it again.

When they left for California, Hank had forgotten about the gold chronometer wristwatch. Perhaps he had even forgotten where he had buried it.

Chapter sixteen

During the war there came to maturity, in Stay More, two twin sisters, Jelena and Doris Dinsmore, who were destined to intrude, indirectly, into the Ingledew saga. It was Bevis Ingledew who first referred to them as “the Siamese twins.” Those listening to him didn’t know what that meant, but he could remember being taken as a child to the St. Louis World’s Fair, where he had seen a pair of Siamese twins in a sideshow. So when Bevis started joking in his high-spirited fashion about Jelena and Doris Dinsmore as the Siamese twins, the rest of the Stay Morons picked up the habit.

Jelena and Doris (their full names were Jelena Cloris and Helena Doris, but this confused their mother when she was yelling at them) were inseparable, not physically, but in all other ways. One was never seen without the other. Never. The men loafing and joking on the store porch had a ready mine of mirth in the inseparability of the Dinsmore sisters, speculating, for instance, that the two girls probably “went out back” together too, since it was known that the Dinsmore outhouse, though primitive and airy, was a two-holer. Although they were twins, there was a very slight difference between them, which gave rise to rumors that their fathers had not both been Jake Dinsmore, who, when the sisters were five years old, had gone out to California looking for a job, and had never returned, abandoning a family of fourteen children to a mother who did her poor best to feed them.

The mother’s name was Selena—her father had named her that because he had been an admirer of Salina Ingledew but didn’t know how to spell. Selena Dinsmore had first noticed the closeness of Jelena and Doris when they were infants: she had only one crib, and the two girls began very early the practice they would continue for the rest of their lives: sleeping in the same bed. Their mother nursed them together one to a breast, a not very difficult balancing act to those who saw her doing it. As soon as they were old enough to sit up and eat at the table with the other children, they always made certain that their chairs were side-by-side and their identical chipped bowls contained the same amount of gruel. From the first through the eighth and last grades, the two sisters shared the same desk, and the teacher of those years, Estalee Jerram, could scarcely ever tell them apart and was always calling upon one of them by the other’s name. The difficulty was compounded because Jelena and Doris insisted that their mother sew their clothes from identical patterns of flour-sack gingham and calico. If one of them was punished in school for some infraction of the rules, the other would insist that Miss Jerram mete the same punishment to her. If one of them was hurt and cried, the other’s tears were no less profound. They had few friends and seemed to need none.

The men who loafed on the store porch and made joking allusions to “the Siamese twins” began to speculate jokingly about what was going to happen now that the sisters were growing up and filling out. There were not, to anyone’s knowledge, two brothers anywhere hereabouts who were sufficiently twinned themselves to make a proper match for Jelena and Doris. But that was not what Jelena and Doris had in mind anyway, it seemed. What they had in mind became apparent at the first play-party they attended, Etta Whitter’s birthday celebration, where the games played were “Marching ’round the Levee,” “Build the Bridge,” “Post Office,” and “Snap.” All of these were kissing games, and whichever boy kissed Jelena had to kiss Doris too. Some of these games involved being “it,” and whenever Jelena was “it,” Doris would also be “it” at the same time, which some of the others felt was unfair in the running and catching games, because it made the sisters doubly quicker to catch when they were “it.” Usually, when they were caught by the boy who was “it,” they would both kiss him at the same time, Jelena on the right cheek, Doris on the left. The men on the store porch, hearing about the party afterward, made jokes about what was going to happen when Jelena and Doris were old enough to start going to square dances. As a matter of fact, the sisters did nearly wreck the first square dance they attended. Tobe Chism, the caller, had to stop the music and take the girls aside and try to explain to them that it is simply impossible for two girls to square dance with the same partner at the same time. When he was unable to persuade them to take turns, one doing one dance and one the next, he at least worked it out so that they wouldn’t both be moving with the partner at the same time, although this didn’t work too well either because Jelena or Doris or both would be inclined to forget to stand still and let the other do the moving. Folks were laughing at them so, they finally walked home together and didn’t go to any more of those romps.

They decided to get religion, because religion held that any kind of dancing was sinful, and even frowned upon the play-parties, because kissing was involved. On the next rare Sunday when a passing evangelist came to Stay More to give a meeting and baptism, the sisters offered themselves up for salvation, but when the congregation gathered at the creek for the baptizing, the revivalist discovered that the sisters wished to be baptized simultaneously. He argued that they ought to be baptized in the order of their birth, Jelena going first, but they refused. He protested that he didn’t think he was stout enough to submerse them both at the same time.

“You got two hands, ain’t ye?” Jelena observed.

“Yeah,” said the minister, “but generally I clamp one of ’em on yore face to keep the water out of yore nose and mouth.”

“We kin clamp our own faces,” declared Doris.

So the baptist, after studying and pantomiming the possibilities for a while, standing with his legs spread wide in the waist-deep water, had the girls face one another, and put one of his hands on the back of each, and lowered Jelena to his right and Doris to his left into the water. But to get them both completely under in this position required him to go under too, and there was no sign of any of them for a long moment; then the man’s head emerged, his hair plastered and his spectacles all wet, struggling mightily to get both girls back out of the water.

The men on the store porch got a lot of mileage out of that story, and began to make jokes about what would happen when Jelena and Doris were old enough to receive their first caller.

Although most of the old-timey ways were forgotten or unused, courtship was still formal and old-fashioned. Couples, especially those who had got religion, did not go off on “dates”; a respectable girl would never find herself alone with a young fellow before marriage, which was why Sonora Twichell’s premarital conduct with Hank Ingledew had scandalized a small segment of the population. For proper folks, the suitor or swain, if he had matrimony in prospect, would call at the girl’s house, be invited to spend the night, and have the privilege of staying up late and talking with his intended after the others had gone to bed—in the same room, usually within earshot of anyone who could not, or did not want to, sleep.

The Dinsmore hovel (there is no other name for it), shown in our illustration, is perhaps typical of lower class dwellings built throughout the “Hoover” years when “things was so bad we’uns jist stood around lookin at one another and wonderin who to eat next.” In fact, it was built during the Roosevelt administration, but it still represents the decline of architecture in the Ozarks. It had but two rooms, and when Mont Duckworth, son of the canning factory owner, came to court Jelena, he would sleep in one room, in a bed with three of her brothers, Willard (named after some peddler), Tilbert and Baby Jim. In the other room he would do his courting while Mrs. Dinsmore slept with Ella Jean, Norma and—Mont hoped—Doris. But Doris, and Jelena too, could not conceive that anyone would court one of them without the other. Thus, when the others had gone to bed, Mont found himself sitting in front of the woodstove, Jelena on one side, Doris on the other.

“Well, uh…” Mont began. He had heard some of the jokes that the men on the store porch had made. If he had listened well enough, he could have remembered what they had suggested that he say or do in a situation like this, but he could not. To help his nervousness, he bit off a chaw of tobacco and began chewing. From time to time he would make some idle talk such as: “Right airish tonight, aint it?” and from time to time he would spit accurately into the open door of the stove. Doris and Jelena would both smile and make dove’s eyes at him. After midnight, when the fire in the stove was almost out and no move had been made to rekindle it, Mont announced, “Well, uh, reckon I’d best turn in,” and he went and slept with their brothers and departed early on the dawn.

The men on the store porch made jokes at the expense of Mont as well as Doris and Jelena. But one of the younger of them, Boden Whitter, declared, “By God, ole Mont aint got the melt to spark them gals proper, but I kin shore give it a try.” Boden Whitter did not report back to the men on the store porch about the outcome of his attempt, but word got around anyway, and Boden became no less a victim of the men’s jokes than Mont had been. It seems that at one point during the evening he had suggested to Jelena, “Well, honey, you keer to traipse out fer a look at the moon, or somethin?” and Jelena said she didn’t mind, and rose, and went out, but Doris was right on her heels. Boden followed, trying politely to get them to take turns, but Jelena said, “It’s jist as much her moon as it is mine.” Boden sat down on a big rock, and the sisters sat on either side of him; by and by he put an arm around each of them, and a little later he started in to kissing Jelena, but then he had to kiss Doris too. The kisses got longer and harder and Boden began to think he could talk Jelena into lying down, but then he realized that Doris would be watching or, worse, lying down beside Jelena, and he began to doubt if he could do anything if he was being watched, and in any case he might be expected to do Doris too, and he wasn’t at all certain that he could. The more he thought about it all, the less sure and more nervous he became, and finally he gave it up.

The men on the store porch speculated endlessly about alternative outcomes to Boden’s experience, and had a lot of fun.

A year or so went by, both Mont and Boden got married to other girls, and Jelena and Doris were getting to the far end of marriageable age, and then the war came and took away nearly all the young bachelors of Stay More. When news came of the first of several deaths of Stay Morons in the war, the people threw a pie supper at the canning factory for the purpose of raising funds for some kind of War Memorial. Ostensibly a pie supper is for the purpose of raising funds, but it is also a means of promoting conviviality and courtship between males and females. All the women and girls bake a pie, and these are wrapped and sealed and auctioned off one by one to the highest bidders among the men and boys. The males aren’t supposed to know who baked which pie, and are thus obliged to sit with, and eat with, and talk with, the female who baked the pie that they bid on. The organizers of the pie supper paid a visit to Mrs. Dinsmore and said she ought to make sure that both Doris and Jelena each baked a separate pie, no foolishness of both doing the same pie, and Mrs. Dinsmore said she would see to it that each girl did her separate pie, and sure enough, Jelena and Doris showed up at the pie supper with two different pies.

To the men on the store porch who had missed the pie supper, it was afterward Uncle Tearle Ingledew who told the tale, told it on his own nephew, William Robert Ingledew. “Billy Bob,” as we have seen, was Hank’s youngest brother, and was not drafted into the service because all three of his brothers were already serving. Although just as tall and strong and handsome as his oldest brother, he was, if anything, even shyer toward females, the shyest of his generation of shy Ingledews, but he somehow persuaded himself that there was no connection between bidding on a pie, of which he was uncommonly fond, and courting a girl. “So he made him a good bid,” related Uncle Tearle to the men on the store porch, “and he got this here pie that Jelena had fixed, and he took the wrappers off, and saw it was sweet pertater, which he don’t keer fer too mighty well, so he figgered he’d take him another chance, and bid on the next pie that come up, and damn if he didn’t git the one Doris fixed! It was coconut cream. The folks thar got pervoked and says you wasn’t supposed to bid on but one pie, but ole Billy Bob, he says by God he likes coconut cream and for that matter he aint too unpartial to sweet pertater neither, and he reckons he’ll jist eat ’em both. And he did. Jelena and Doris set on each side of him while he et their pies, but he never minded. They never bothered him much, and he give ’em a slice or two of their pies. After they done eatin, he was right well full and satisfied, and didn’t even mind when both them gals set in to talkin his ear off.” Strangely, the men on the store porch did not make any jokes over this news. They nodded their heads gravely, spat their tobacco juice, whittled their sticks, stretched in their chairs. At length one of them remarked, “Wal, if they is a-gorn to be jist one, then maybe ole Billy Bob is the one, atter all.”

He was. The next summer, Billy Bob, who was a carpenter by trade, more or less, built himself a modest frame house on the south bench of Ingledew Mountain. It too resembled the plain, modest dwelling which is the headpiece of this chapter and which represents the further architectural decline of the Ozarks. The only difference between Billy Bob’s house and the one illustrated here is that while the latter is bigeminal the former is trigeminal. When Hank Ingledew came home on another shore leave, he paid a visit to his kid brother’s house, and reported back to the village the news that Billy Bob had two housekeepers who were sisters, Dinsmore girls, and everybody knew who he meant, but one of them said to Hank, “Yeah, but they aint exactly housekeepers.”

The next time the revivalist who had revived the Dinsmore sisters happened to be passing through Stay More again, he learned of the situation and paid a call on the sisters and pointed out to them that their “man” wasn’t even a member of the church; in fact, like all Ingledews, he was an atheist; but even if he was a member of the church they would still be living in sin and they had better agree to one of them getting legally married to Billy Bob. When this had no effect, the minister went to their mother and reasoned with her, but Selena told him, “Why, Reverend, them gals is happier than I ever seed ’em in their whole life, and I aint aimin to git in the way of their happiness.” The preacher gave up. But the men on the store porch did not. Whenever Billy Bob came to the store, which was seldom, they would pester him with questions which made him blush all the redder and at last manage to stammer out, “Aw, you fellers is all wet.”

But were they? To their sharp eyes it began to appear increasingly plain that Billy Bob, who had never been noted for great energy, was becoming almost indolent. He moved with slow, unstudied aimlessness, not exactly abstracted but with the corners of his mouth ever so slightly uptilted in what was not a grin nor a smirk so much as an expression of felicity. If the store-porchers’ conjectures were true, they could not help but feel, to a man, a profound envy which they never dared express to one another. Yet the only question which Billy Bob ever deigned answer was a question that one of the men on the store porch posed in the most general terms and as a kind of observation, twelve months after the sisters had gone to live with him: “Hit’s been all of a year now, Billy Bob. How you like it?”

And Billy Bob scratched under his hat reflectingly and, with that expression on the corners of his mouth, allowed, “Wal, they tend to kind of talk a little more than I keer to listen.”

Not long after, Tilbert Dinsmore circulated the report that not one but both of his sisters, he had observed on a recent visit to Billy Bob’s place, seemed to be swelling out around the middle. Now he didn’t know what others thought, he said, but as for himself he didn’t take kindly to the idea of having a damn pair of woodscolts for nephews or nieces or one of each. The next time the preacher happened to be passing through Stay More, Billy Bob’s many uncles, led by Tearle, ganged up on him and “persuaded” him to join William Robert Ingledew in holy matrimony with Jelena Cloris Dinsmore and Helena Doris Dinsmore. They were no longer referred to as “the Siamese twins” but rather as “the Mizzes Ingledew.”

Several months later, strangest of all to relate, only one child was born. According to whoever heard it from Billy Bob, who himself did not understand it, Jelena and Doris with their bellies approaching term had gone down to the creek to bathe, and when they returned, Jelena was carrying the baby swathed in a towel.

What happened to the other baby? Or had there been another one? Had it been stillborn and they had buried it? Or had it drowned in the creek? But how could two sisters, even if they had conceived within minutes of one another, have managed to give birth at the same instant?

No, the people thought, only one of the girls had been pregnant, and the other girl had a sympathetic false pregnancy or else just stuffed a pillow of ever-increasing size inside her dress. But Billy Bob himself didn’t know which sister it was, and within a short time, in the last year of the war, his brother Jackson was wounded in France and sent home, and since Billy Bob was no longer the only brother at home he was drafted into the service and flown almost immediately to Germany.

The baby was a girl, and its name was Jelena. This news threw the men on the store porch, and the whole village, into endless speculation. Before long, all of the Stay Morons were divided almost equally into two factions: (1) The Jelenists, who held that Jelena must have been the mother because she named the infant after herself, as a kind of “Jelena Junior,” and (2) The Dorisites, who held that Doris must have been the mother because she named it for her sister, out of love. These two factions debated endlessly, occasionally quarreled, and caused some disruption of family ties. Men, by and large, were more inclined to join the Jelenists, while more women than men leaned toward the Dorisite persuasion.

Mrs. Dinsmore, the sisters’ mother, was invited to become a leader of the Dorisites but did not want to show favoritism, so, before joining either faction she determined upon a simple way of deciding which sect to join: she would ask her daughters which one was the mother. She did. Afterwards, fanning herself and mopping her brow in the parlor of the arch-Dorisite, she announced to the other ladies present, “I swear, if them gals didn’t jist both look at me and both say the same words at the same time, word by word: ‘We both of us are.’”

So the debates raged on, until every Stay Moron had declared as a staunch Jelenist or a devout Dorisite. Everyone, that is, except Jelena and Doris themselves, and nobody ever thought of the idea of asking them to join. One day Jelena told her mother that she would like to join the Dorisites, which the Dorisites took as unquestionable proof of their position. But Jelena said she could not join the Dorisites because Doris wanted to join the Jelenists, which the Jelenists declared was unquestionable proof of their position. Neither sister could join their respective sects because it would involve their separation, and they had never been separated from the moment of Doris’s birth. So neither did, but their respective sects went on claiming that because the sisters had wanted to join, it was unquestionable proof of their position.

Jelenists, by and large, are individualists, holding that a person is responsible for himself, that if one conducts one’s life with due responsibility, everything will go all right. Jelenism teaches us to be alert, to watch what is occurring in the everyday life, to observe closely sensory input to ourselves. Jelenism gives us a sense of our own uniqueness. No two people are ever alike; if we meet someone like ourself, it is only proof of our uniqueness. A true Jelenist who also happens to believe in God can comfortably believe that God did indeed create man in His own image. But it isn’t necessary for a Jelenist to believe in God. The atheistic Jelenist can believe that man created God in his own image, while the solipsistic Jelenist can believe that he himself has created everything and everyone to his own liking. All Jelenists have a strong sense of personal identity, and, usually, a sense of personal purpose, of having something to do that needs to be done and can best be done by oneself. Jelenists may be chauvinistic, and it is true that they are more proselytizing than Dorisites, but this is because of their belief that a strong sense of identity and purpose also requires a strong sense of conviction. It is very difficult to prove a Jelenist wrong on any question.

Dorisites, on the other hand, are altruistic, cooperative, lenient, and so respectful of the opinions of others that they tolerate the Jelenists much more than the reverse. A Jelenist cannot understand why anyone would want to be a Dorisite, while a Dorisite not only understands why Jelenists are as they are, but also appreciates it or at least sympathizes with it. Dorisites are very good at empathy and sympathy. To a Dorisite, the most wonderful fact of existence is that there is somebody else besides oneself. A true Dorisite who also happens to believe in God usually believes that God really does love him or her and everybody else. The atheistic Dorisite believes that although there is no God, if there were a God He would be an easy person to talk to, while the solipsistic Dorisite, which is almost a contradiction in terms, believes that he has created everybody else because he needs somebody to play with. Dorisites make excellent mothers, and also but less often, excellent fathers. Above all, Dorisites make excellent lovers. Even in the physical act itself, a Dorisite is always aware of mutuality. Outside such intimate dealings, Dorisites are sociable to the point of gregariousness. Every Dorisite has many friends and is always on the lookout for more. It would be easily possible to imagine a hermit Jelenist; an anchorite Dorisite is inconceivable.

Human nature is not perfect, and both Jelenists and Dorisites have their shortcomings. Jelenists are inclined to be secretive, while Dorisites are so incapable of keeping a secret that they are not trustworthy. Dorisites can be overprotective, while Jelenists may be inclined to be unconcerned. Some Jelenists are acknowledged swell-heads, while just as many Dorisites are shrinking violets. In the area of perversion, Jelenists are sadists and Dorisites are masochists. There are Jelenists known for their compulsive lying or compulsive stealing, while Dorisitism has produced its share of prostitutes and bad politicians. There have been six U.S. Presidents since the time of Jelena and Doris; of those six, three have been Dorisites, while the other three were Jelenists.

But it is of the Stay More factions that we must speak. The Jelenists were no longer on speaking terms with the Dorisites, and the latter, although perfectly willing to speak to the former, understood the former’s feelings, respected them, and made no move. In families containing members of both factions, difficulties arose. Bevis Ingledew, for example, was one of the leaders of the Jelenists, while his wife Emelda was an upstanding Dorisite. Being no longer on speaking terms with her was no problem, since he never spoke to her anyway, but there was the problem of shutting her out of his thoughts. Every now and then he would “hear” her say something like, Dorisitism teaches us to be charitable. Why don’t ye take that leftover ham to them pore Coes? and he would be inclined to retort that Jelenism teaches us to be self-sufficient, but he would remember that Jelenists were not on speaking terms with Dorisites, and then realize that just by thinking these thoughts he had communicated them to her. The “argument” would begin, their thoughts furiously debating charity vs. self-sufficiency. She couldn’t prove him wrong, because a Jelenist can never be proved wrong, but in the end he would wind up taking the leftover ham to the poor Coes, where he would find that while Ed Herb Coe was a Dorisite and grateful for the ham, Viola Coe was a Jelenist and wouldn’t let him accept it. “Shame on ye, Bevis! A good Jelenist like you! I got a mine to tell the other members on ye!”

The schoolhouse, which had been the church once upon a time, was expropriated by the Jelenists for their sanctuary, which is what Jelenists call their meeting place. Being accommodating, the Dorisites did not object: instead, they held their meetin place, which is what Dorisites call their meeting place, in the unused canning factory. The Jelenists also expropriated the Second Tuesday of the Month for their meetings; the Dorisites instituted the Third Tuesday of the Month. Dorisite meetings were little more than sociables, where everybody greeted one another and exchanged secrets and sang convivial songs and hatched charitable plots and declared their love for Doris Ingledew and her daughter Jelena and everybody else, including the Jelenists. The Jelenist meetings were more somber, or more staid; without singing, they solemnly repeated their list of 101 reasons why Jelena Ingledew could not possibly be the daughter of Doris, and then their more complicated list of 1001 shortcomings of Dorisites, then each member of the congregation rose in turn to proclaim that he or she was an individual, unlike anybody else present, and could be depended upon to do his or her share of keeping the world going, and didn’t need no help from nobody.

This factionalism continued strong until the War Department sent news that Pfc. William Robert Ingledew had been killed in combat in the siege of Berlin.

The Jelenists and the Dorisites united for a memorial service in Billy Bob’s honor, and all together sang:

Farther along we’ll know all about it,

Farther along we’ll understand why;

Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,

We’ll understand it, all by and by.

The Dorisites praised the Jelenists, and the latter grudgingly admitted that while they couldn’t understand why anybody would want to be a Dorisite it was pretty obvious that Dorisites weren’t all bad, in fact Dorisites had a lot to recommend them, and they suggested that the Jelenists and Dorisites bury the hatchet and become united. The Dorisites squealed their approval of this suggestion, and everyone embraced.

Toward the end of the service, all were surprised by the appearance of Jelena and Doris themselves, carrying between them, or taking turns carrying, the infant Jelena. There was absolute silence as they came down the aisle and took seats, Jelena sitting on the Dorisite side, Doris sitting on the Jelenist side, with the baby being permitted to crawl around in the aisle between them. It was the first time that Doris and Jelena had been separated, in a sense, but no one thought of them as being separated. Spontaneously the girls began singing “Farther Along,” and the rest of the congregation quickly picked it up, and were alert enough to notice and follow the slight alteration that the girls made in the line, “Cheer up, my sister, live in the sunshine…”

Then it was time for the eulogy, but nobody could think of anything to say about Billy Bob. Oren Duckworth remarked that he had died in the service of his country, but that was about all. Doc Swain, who was acting as master of ceremonies even though he was a Jelenist, invited Jelena and Doris to make concluding remarks if they wished to do so. They rose together, faced the gathering, and, as one, declared: “He was both of ours.”

Doc Swain adjourned the meeting. He would have one more duty to perform, sadly, a few days later, standing with his pen in one hand and the certificates in the other, looking down upon the reddened earth where the sisters lay, hundreds of feet beneath Leapin Rock, tightly holding hands though lifeless. On each certificate, where the blank said “Cause of death,” Doc Swain wrote: “Broken heart.”

And at the funeral, when they tried to sing “Farther Along,” Doc Swain interrupted them, saying, “Farther along, hell! We done already understood it.”

Even afterward there were people who still thought of themselves as being Jelenists or Dorisites, or who at least remembered that they once were. But the factions never met as separate groups again.

The baby Jelena was taken to live with Sonora Ingledew and her four daughters, but when Hank came home from the war, and decided to go to California, he and Sonora discussed it and agreed that they had too many girls already, so they asked Hank’s brother Jackson, who was a bachelor, if he wouldn’t mind rearing the child, and Jackson said it was the least he could do. When the little girl was old enough to go to kindergarten, Jackson moved with her to Harrison, where she grew up, and became a beautiful woman, and is going to reappear significantly in the end of this saga. Like so many of the Ingledews, Jackson didn’t talk much, and unless he ever told it to her, which I doubt, she’s never heard this story.

Chapter seventeen

Southeast of Los Angeles, in neighboring Orange County, California, is the city of Anaheim; founded by Germans in the middle of the last Century, it was discovered early in this Century by a wandering Stay Moron, who was struck by the novelty of having an orange tree in one’s own front yard, from which one could help oneself when the oranges are ripe. He settled there, and from time to time wrote his various cousins back home in Stay More to tell them about the excellent winterless climate, high pay, and the fact of being able to pick an orange in one’s own front yard, in some cases the backyard too, and by the end of the war, the Second one, there were a dozen Stay Morons living in Anaheim, as well as several hundred persons from other places in the Ozarks, so that the atmosphere of Anaheim was distinctly Ozarkian although there was no topographic, climatic or architectural resemblance. (The illustration to the left is of a house not in Anaheim but in Stay More, and was not built until the end of this dreadful chapter.)

People from the Ozarks transplanted to Anaheim still greeted one another with “Howdy” and dropped their “g’s” and periodically they observed “Old-timey Days,” particularly the Second Tuesday of the Month, and some of the men whittled, and some of the women held quilting bees, although all of the old-timey superstitions and remedies were forgotten, and there was no condemnation of PROG RESS, because PROG RESS was going on all around them: Anaheim was growing at a phenomenal rate, everybody was prospering. When John Henry Ingledew arrived with Sonora and his four daughters, the other Stay Morons gave them a big welcome party, because they were delighted to have at last a genuine Ingledew among them, since they already had a Dinsmore, a Whitter, a Duckworth, a Coe, a Chism, a Plowright, a Swain and a Stapleton.

John Henry “Hank” Ingledew quickly found employment, at high pay, as an electronics technician for a huge canning factory, an operation that made Oren Duckworth’s snap and ’mater canning factory look like nothing to write home about. (The Duckworth factory did reopen for a few summers after the war, but the competition, most of it coming from California, killed it, and Duckworth too moved to Anaheim.) The factory Hank Ingledew worked for was automated, and his job was to service the electronic apparatus which automated it. Also he “moonlighted,” after hours, as a repairman of television sets, and made so much money that he and his family could afford to live in an opulent twelve-room “Spanish colonial” house (which will never be illustrated in any history of architecture). Sonora joined a women’s club, and the daughters went to good kindergartens and schools. Every weekend, if somebody’s TV set wasn’t in urgent need of repair, they all went to the beach, where Hank could stare at his ocean, or rather John Henry could, because as soon as he arrived in California he let it be known that he would prefer not to be addressed by the nickname of his Stay More boyhood, although it took Sonora a full two years to get out of the habit of calling him Hank, and even after two years she would sometimes forget herself, especially when she was being endearing, as she often was, unhampered by worry since a California gynecologist fitted her out with a diaphragm.

But when her youngest daughter, Patricia, was old enough to leave home and go to kindergarten, Sonora found that her days were empty. She thought of getting a job, but John Henry pointed out to her that they already had more money than they knew what to do with. Sonora became addicted to daytime soap operas and quiz shows on television, and her days were long and lonely and repetitious. When she simply could not stand to watch the tube, she began to write long letters, to her mother and a few other chums back home in Stay More. She told them of all the things she did, and all the things she possessed, and how happy her daughters were, and how busy John Henry was. They replied with what little news Stay More yielded: deaths mostly, the changing of the seasons (which Sonora missed), drought, flood, a rare wedding, and Decoration Day at the cemetery.

Without discussing it with John Henry, out of fear that he would say no, Sonora took to leaving her diaphragm in its case. She was, after all, only twenty-seven, and they could, after all, quite easily afford a large family, and there was always a chance, after all, that they might have a son. For three months Sonora went without her diaphragm, and took her husband into her at least every bedtime and often on waking, so that John Henry no longer had any enthusiasm for moonlighting, and gave up his sideline repair of television sets, with some loss of income, offset by an automatic generous raise at the automated canning factory.

In the middle of the fourth month, it worked: Sonora knew the night she had conceived, and her days thereafter were still dull with television and an occasional women’s club meeting, but she no longer felt purposeless. She was five months pregnant before John Henry even noticed, and that was because she said “Ow” when his paunch was bearing down too hard upon her middle, whereupon he looked down between them and observed, “Hey, you’re gettin a potbelly too.” She just smiled, and he went on, “Unless…” He finished what they were doing, and then lay beside her and asked, “Have you not been wearin that thing?” She shook her head. He asked, “Wal, what was the sense in gettin it, then?” She shrugged her shoulders. John Henry did not get angry. He concluded, “Well, it durn well better be a boy, this time.” Not only was he well aware of the heavy responsibility he carried to perpetuate the Ingledew name, but also his daughters were spoiled and they were all over the place. He was constantly tripping on their toys, and constantly bringing home more toys for them to leave for him to trip on. And when all four of the girls were gathered around their mother, gossiping away like some gabby hen party, John Henry felt excluded from his family.

He missed males. He missed his uncles and his father and his brother. Twice a year, on the average, the Stay Morons of Anaheim would get together with the other Ozarkers of Anaheim for an Old-timey Day, where the women would load tables with platters of fried chicken and ’mater dishes and every manner of pie and cake, and the men would congregate to themselves to swap remembered hunting and fishing yarns, or to attempt to remember and relate the old jokes, although nobody was very good at it. These bull sessions always wound up with each of the men declaring fervently that, while, yes, he shore missed them ole Ozarks and shore aimed to git back fer a visit one of these days, it was frankly obvious that after all has been said and done, in this day and age California is the place to be endowed with this world’s goods and to feel well repaid for our efforts and to entertain high hopes of enjoying the finer side of life or even be cradled in luxury or at least live the even tenor of one’s ways to the heart’s content.

John Henry thought these men seemed a little bit runny around the edges. He had grown up with some of the men, and they seemed to have changed. Maybe, he realized, he was runny around the edges himself, and didn’t know it. He touched his potbelly and noticed that the other men had potbellies too. He ought to walk more, he decided, but there weren’t many sidewalks in Anaheim outside of downtown, and pedestrians on the roads were stared at by drivers as if they were in trouble. John Henry had taken a long walk, once, and seventeen cars had stopped and offered him a ride. Dogs had barked and howled at him. Children had stared and pointed. A housewife had come out of her house and offered him the use of her telephone, and when he had said he was just walking for exercise, she had invited him into her house for a beer, and after he had finished it she had opened her housecoat revealing nothing underneath and had thrown herself upon him, and he had marveled at the novelty of fucking an absolute stranger, but he hadn’t gone for any more walks since then.

He told himself that he would make up for it whenever they went back to Stay More for a visit. He promised himself that if they went back to Stay More for a visit he would walk up and down every road in Newton County. But every year, when his two-week vacation came, they went to Yosemite or Grand Canyon or San Francisco or down into Mexico. There were a few Stay Morons in Anaheim who went back for a visit, and returned to report that Stay More was dying and just about gone, and this saddened John Henry and Sonora, who told themselves and each other that this was the reason they didn’t want to go back, but they both knew, without telling each other, that the real reason was that if they ever did go back to Stay More they would not be able to leave it. Few if any of the Stay Morons in Anaheim remembered the curse that Jacob Ingledew had placed on any Stay Moron who would leave it to go west, but one by one the Stay Morons in Anaheim began to experience calamities and misfortunes: one was killed in a freeway crash, one died of lung cancer, one was wiped out at a Las Vegas crap table, one was mangled in the machinery of a factory, one drowned in the surf of the Pacific, one was murdered by a jealous husband, one choked to death on an orange, and so on. Nothing ever happened to John Henry, but he kept wondering if something would.

During her fifth pregnancy, Sonora put on an exceptional amount of extra weight, so that toward the end of the pregnancy she felt that she was fat and gross and ugly and could not understand why John Henry would want to keep making love to her, so she stopped him from it. It was a bad time to do such a thing, because there was a girl, one of the secretaries at the factory where John Henry worked, who had been flirting with John Henry for a long time although she too was married. They sometimes had a cocktail together after work at a lounge near the factory, and during one of these meetings he revealed to the secretary that his wife was no longer permitting him to have relations with her. “Call her and tell her you have to work late,” the secretary suggested. He did, and the secretary likewise called her husband and told him the boss was keeping her overtime, and then they got into the secretary’s convertible and drove up into the hills, and walked into a dense grove of orange trees and lay down on the ground and spent an hour doing it and redoing it with variations, and that was the beginning of their affair.

The secretary told John Henry that he had shown her what sex could really be like. She was always flattering him. Sometimes they would lie around tired after doing it and she would take his part in her hands and admire it, making original complimentary remarks about it. On weekends, the secretary’s husband, who was an ardent sports fan, often went off to a ball game, leaving his wife alone, or, now, alone with John Henry, so that they did not have to lie upon the hard ground but on a soft bed, soft rug, soft sofa, or standing up together in the shower.

It was on one of these Saturdays that Sonora went into labor. She didn’t know how to find John Henry; he had told her he was going to some ball game. She phoned for a taxicab to take her to the hospital, and decided that her oldest girl, Latha, who was nearly ten, could baby-sit. John Henry came home from his tryst to find Latha trying to break up a fight among her younger sisters, who were wrecking the house. He found a teenaged baby-sitter for the four of them, and went off to the hospital, where Sonora was in her room napping after the delivery. He did not wake her, but went to the glass wall to view the baby. There were many of them. He asked a passing nurse, “Which’un’s mine? Ingledew’s the name.” The nurse pointed, to the second row. John Henry couldn’t see the baby very clearly, but he noticed that each bassinet had a card affixed to it, some of the cards were trimmed in blue and some in pink, and the bassinet the nurse was pointing at had a pink-edged card on it. “Shit,” said John Henry. “Oh, shit.” The nurse gave him a distasteful look and walked away. He found another nurse and told her that when his wife woke up to tell her that he had come and seen the baby and would come back tomorrow. Then he telephoned the secretary’s house, but her husband answered, so he hung up, and went out to a cocktail lounge and got drunk, and came home in the wee hours of the morning to find the baby-sitter’s irate parents taking her place and asking him if he didn’t have any idea of what time it was, and if he didn’t have the common sense to let the sitter know where he could be reached. When he got rid of them he fell into bed, and had no dreams until well after daylight, when he had dreams of Stay More alternating with dreams of running off to Mexico with the secretary.

It was almost noon when he woke, and found that his daughters had tried to prepare a breakfast for him, but had burned the coffee and overcooked the eggs. “Girls! Girls! Girls! Girls! Girls! Girls!” he said, and the smaller ones began to cry. “Aw, cut it out, and let’s all go out to Howard Johnson’s for breakfast,” he suggested. They told him that they had had their breakfast at breakfasttime and it was almost lunchtime. So he took them out to eat their lunch while he had his breakfast, and then, because children aren’t allowed in maternity wards, he had them stay in the car reading comic books while he went into the hospital. He kissed Sonora on her forehead, and she took his hand and held it and said “Poor Hank,” then looked at him apologetically.

“Wal,” he observed philosophically, “it don’t look like there’s going to be any more Ingledews.”

“This one’s the prettiest of them all,” Sonora declared. “Wait till you see her.”

They named the fifth daughter Sharon and she did indeed grow up to be the prettiest of them all, although they were all pretty. John Henry decided that he had better go back to repairing television sets on the side, and save his money in order to be able to pay for five fancy weddings eventually. When he met the secretary at the cocktail lounge after work on Monday, he remarked, not facetiously, “Maybe if I was married to you, I’d have a boy.” The secretary shook her head, telling him that she didn’t want to have any children. That struck John Henry as peculiar; he had never heard of a woman who didn’t want to have children. “How come?” he asked. She explained that she liked sex so much that she didn’t want to spoil it by having children. That struck John Henry as ironic: to refrain from procreation for the sake of enjoying the procreative process. The secretary asked, “Do you want to marry me?” He said he had given it a thought or two. She laughed and held his hand and told him to hurry and finish his drink so they could drive up into the hills, but he said not this evening, because he had decided to return to the nocturnal repairing of television sets as an extra source of income, to finance his many daughters’ eventual weddings. “I didn’t know you could fix TV’s,” she said. “Come and fix ours. You can meet my husband.” So that night, on his rounds, he stopped by the secretary’s house in the guise of repairman, and met her husband. He was a tall fellow, but not as tall as John Henry. Sure enough, the television set needed a new tube.

The husband didn’t pay much attention while John Henry replaced the tube, and when it was finished the husband just took out his wallet and said “How much?” The secretary said, “I think that other one up in the bedroom has something wrong with the channel selector. Come on, I’ll show you.” She took him up to the bedroom and closed the door and giggled and unzipped his pants and knelt before him. Soon they were doing a sixty-nine on the bed, with John Henry on the bottom, when the door opened and the husband came in and said, “Well, well, this is interesting. But don’t let me interrupt you.” John Henry tried to get up, but he was on the bottom, and the secretary whispered to him “I think he means it,” and she went on doing him until she had finished him off. John Henry wasn’t worrying about getting beaten up afterwards, not by that guy, but maybe the fellow had a pistol somewhere. When the secretary had finished him, the husband remarked, “Lovely. Doesn’t she give wonderful head?” and then went out and back downstairs.

John Henry asked the secretary if her husband had a gun, and she said not that she knew of. He checked the bedroom’s television set; there was nothing wrong with it. He went downstairs, where he found the husband mixing drinks, and offering him a glass. John Henry’s drink was Scotch, whereas he preferred bourbon, but he didn’t quibble. They sipped their drinks, and the secretary introduced them, saying, “This is John Henry Ingledew. He’s in charge of electronics at the plant, but he repairs televisions on his own.” “Glad to meet you, Jack,” said the husband. “How’s your wife?” “She’s fine,” John Henry replied. “Just had a baby.” “I mean,” said the husband, “how is she at giving head?” “Oh, pretty good, I guess,” John Henry said uncomfortably, feeling that his privacy was being twice invaded. “Would she give it to me?” the husband asked. “Now, look here…” John Henry said, getting angry. He didn’t have to listen to this. He would just as soon bash in the guy’s face for him. “Turn about is fair play,” the husband insisted, “don’t you think?” “You don’t even know my wife,” John Henry pointed out. “No, but wouldn’t it be easy to get to know her? Let’s have a party.” “No, thanks. I’m too busy,” John Henry said, and he set down his unfinished drink and went out the door and got into his van and went on to the next house that needed its television set repaired. The lone occupant of this house was a woman who said her husband was out playing cards and told him the bedroom television set also needed repairs. “No thanks, lady,” he said, and got away from there.

He avoided the secretary thereafter, but after he had been avoiding her for several weeks she came into the electronics shop at the factory at the end of the day and said, “Couldn’t we have a drink and a little talk, like old times?” He gave in, and took her to the cocktail lounge again. When their drinks were before them, the secretary began, “After all, these are modern times we are living in,” and she proceeded to elaborate an argument in favor of free love. She loved having sex with him, she said, and she had been missing it terribly these past few weeks, and she was awfully glad to know that her husband actually didn’t mind, one teensy bit. “But he wants me to return him the favor,” John Henry said. “And you honestly can’t?” the secretary wanted to know. “I don’t think so,” he said. “At least, I sure as hell wouldn’t care to watch.”

He had tried to imagine what it would be like, watching Sonora going down on the secretary’s husband, and he couldn’t even get the picture in focus. “He wouldn’t insist on that,” the secretary assured him. “I just don’t like the whole idea!” John Henry said so loudly that several other customers in the bar turned to stare at him. “Well,” the secretary concluded, “we’re giving a party Saturday night. Would you consider coming to that? It wouldn’t be just the four of us. There will be a lot of other couples there.” “I’ll think about it,” John Henry told her, and for the rest of the week he thought about it. He didn’t want to go, and he wondered what kind of party it would be, whether they would play games or even start fooling around. But Sonora was depressed lately, as she always was several weeks after the birth of a baby, and he thought it might do her good to get out of the house and meet people and have some good clean fun or even some good unclean fun if that was what it was all about. These are modern times we are living in, he kept remembering, over and over. So he said to Sonora, How would you like to go to a party? and when she said whose? he said some people at the factory were giving it. She didn’t have anything to wear, because she was still overweight and didn’t have her figure back, but he offered to buy her a new dress and she was dying to get out of the house for an evening, so she gave in, and they went to the party at the secretary’s and her husband’s house.

It was not a wild party. There was plenty of drinking, but no fooling around. The secretary’s husband complimented John Henry on his wife’s beauty, but he made no passes at her. Sonora seemed to be enjoying herself. Several men made decorous small talk with her, and one man flirted with her, but nobody laid a hand on her. Occasionally a couple would disappear upstairs for a while, but all in all it was a warm and sociable occasion, and John Henry thanked the secretary’s husband for inviting them. On the way home, Sonora, who was tipsy, babbled on about what a good time she had had, and in bed that night she was exceptionally passionate and adventurous. Just two days later, one of the men they had met at the party phoned and invited them to another party the very next weekend. The secretary and her husband were also at the second party, but there were a lot of people who had not been at the first, and the Ingledews broadened their circle of acquaintances. Toward the end of the party, Sonora was deep in conversation with two men on the sofa, and did not notice when the secretary came and took John Henry’s hand and led him off to a bedroom.

When the Ingledews got home that night and went to bed, John Henry wasn’t in the mood, and Sonora accused him of drinking too much. As they were dressing for the third party the following Saturday, she made him promise not to drink so much. At the party, he told the secretary, “Look, let’s do it early so I’ll have time to recuperate before bedtime.” Sonora lost interest in the man she was talking to, and noticed John Henry was missing. When he reappeared, she asked, “Where did you go?” He replied, “I was out in the kitchen, talking to some guys.”

Later in the evening, Sonora found herself in conversation with the secretary’s husband, who kept refilling her drink until she was too tipsy too early. She had made John Henry promise not to drink so much and now here she herself was drinking too much. She liked the secretary’s husband, and thought he was witty. Every time he finished a joke he would lean down and kiss her underneath her ear. One time when he did that, he whispered in her ear, “Let’s get some fresh air.” The room was stuffy with cigarette smoke, and also hot, and she thought they could continue their conversation out on the porch, so she stepped outside with him. There weren’t any chairs on the porch. “Let’s sit in my car,” the man suggested. They sat in the car. The man put his arm around her, but she brushed it off. He put it around her again, and she was too tipsy to bother brushing it off again. She didn’t care. After a while he took one of her hands and placed it on his groin and she felt him swell; she tried to take her hand away but he held it there. “Let me go,” she protested. He whispered in her ear, “I’ll let you go if you’ll kiss it a while.” She slapped him, hard, and got out of the car and returned to the party, where she found Hank and apologized to him for having drunk so much and asked to go home.

At the next party, she avoided the secretary’s husband. But late in the evening everybody started taking their clothes off, declaring they were going to have an orgy. John Henry and Sonora argued; she wanted to go, he wanted to stay. She left, saying he could get somebody else to drive him home. After the orgy, which John Henry didn’t particularly enjoy, the secretary and her husband drove him home. “You ought to have a talk with that girl,” the secretary’s husband told him. Sonora was in bed, but she turned on the light when he came in, and they had a talk. It was quite a talk. Sonora began by demanding to know if he had had sex at the orgy, and when he told her that was the point of the whole thing, she was furious. “Do you think I would ever do a thing like that?” she demanded. “You’d have to get used to it, gradually,” he said. “You think I would?” she said. “Would you want me to?” “I don’t know,” he admitted, but allowed, “I guess if I was doing it I couldn’t object if you were.” “Oh ho!” she said. “Did you know that that man, that…what’s his name…the husband of one of the secretaries at your plant…when we were at the last party he somehow talked me into sitting in his car with him, and then he tried to get me to give him a blow job! Would you have let me give him a blow job?” John Henry did not answer, because he had still not settled the question in his own mind. In order for him to settle the question, he would have to permit himself to visualize the act, and he was unable to get the picture in focus. The tube was blown. “Would you?” she persisted. At length he admitted, “I honestly don’t know. His wife has done it to me. With him watching.”

Sonora began beating at him with her fists, yelling “Get out! Get out of here! Get out of here and don’t ever come back!” He resisted, but her fists drove him out of the bedroom and down the hall and down the stairs and out the front door and down the steps. He spent the night in a motel, and returned to his house the following day. She wouldn’t let him in. He protested that all his clothes and things were in the house. She began dumping his clothes and things out the window. “Sonora, for crying out loud!” he complained, but she continued throwing his effects out of the house, until there was nothing of his remaining in the house and the front yard was littered and the neighbors were standing on their porches watching and whispering as John Henry loaded all his effects into his van and drove to the motel.

After a week he returned to his house and rang the doorbell and then pounded on the door and hollered, “Sonora, at least let me say goodbye to the girls!” But she would not open the door. He lived in the motel for another two weeks, and called her every day on the telephone, but as soon as she recognized his voice she would hang up. He tried to write her a letter, but got as far as “Dear Sonora,” which caused him to remember the first letter he had ever sent her, and made him sad, but he mailed these two words to her anyway, with the return address of his motel; there was no reply.

Of course, he went to no more parties, and when the secretary came into his electronics shop to find out why he was avoiding her, before she could get a word out of her mouth he said, “Just skip it. Just git the hell out of here and don’t bother me anymore,” and the tone with which he said these words was such that she left him alone and he never saw her again. After work Friday he drew his paycheck and got it cashed and checked out of the motel, and wrote Sonora one more note: “Dear Sonora: I’m going home. Going home. Love, Hank.” He mailed this, and pointed his van eastward and drove all night across the desert and up into the mountains and beyond. He parked and napped beside the road a couple of brief times, and kept moving; on the morning of the third day he reached Fort Smith, Arkansas, and turned northeastward toward home.

On the road from Jasper to Stay More he noticed an abandoned house. And then another one. Parthenon was all run down. At the church/schoolhouse outside Stay More he stopped and got out and walked for a while among the headstones in the cemetery: a dozen Ingledews, many Swains and Plowrights and Coes and Dinsmores and Chisms and Duckworths and Stapletons. He drove on into the village. There was no village. His mother-in-law’s small general store seemed to be still in operation; at least its front door was open, but he did not stop to speak to her. The bank was a shell of stone. The dentists’ and doctors’ offices were empty or gone. The mill was rotting and seemed as if it would collapse any moment. Aunt Lola’s big general store was boarded up, its gasoline pump immobile with rust. The canning factory was stuffed with bales of hay. Someone seemed to be still living in the old hotel, but he did not stop. He drove on to his folks’ house and was almost surprised to find it lived in. His mother and father stared at his van as if it had come from the moon, and read the lettering on the door: “Ingledew Television Service, Anaheim, Calif. 433-8991.” To his father and mother, he said simply that Sonora had kicked him out of the house and it was purely his own fault because he had been fooling around, but he was awful glad to come back to Stay More because he never cared much for California anyway.

After his mother fed him dinner, he left his van at their house and went for a long walk, to start getting rid of his potbelly. The walk took him past many more abandoned houses; he tried to remember the names of the people who had lived in them. The ones he could remember all lived, if they still lived, in Anaheim or Fullerton or other California towns. But while the human habitations were abandoned, nature was not, and nature welcomed Hank back to Stay More: the air was nice and had a fragrance that he had never found anywhere out west. The smell of weeds that he had taken for granted all his life was a new perfume for him. A car stopped beside him and its driver said “If it aint ole Hank! Git in, Hank. No sense walkin,” and Hank was obliged to explain that he was walking for exercise and then to offer some reasonable explanation for why he had come back from California.

During his long walk, which lasted most of the afternoon, seventeen cars stopped and offered him a ride, and each time he had to explain why he had come back from California. One of the drivers said, “I heared that Snory and the gals didn’t come with ye,” and Hank, remembering that news travels fast in the backbrush, said “Naw, but they’ll be along, directly.” “You and Snory busted up?” another driver asked, and Hank replied, “Jist fer a little spell.” His walk took him in a roundabout way almost to Jasper, and walking back from Jasper on the main road he remembered that the last time he had traveled this road on foot he was only ten years old and was accompanied by the World’s Oldest Man, who had died after giving Hank a gold chronometer wristwatch for his son and telling him the whole story of his many visits to Stay More. Hank could still remember most of the story, but damned if he could remember where he had buried that wristwatch. It didn’t matter. He had no son to give it to.

Hank hoped to avoid explanations to his mother-in-law, but when he walked into Stay More she was sitting in her rocker on the porch of her store, and he couldn’t very well just walk on past her. So he stopped and sat on a porch chair and told her that her daughter had evicted him because he had foolishly “been with” another woman, but he hoped that time would heal all wounds, and that Sonora would bring the girls and come back to Stay More to live, because as far as he was concerned he wasn’t ever going to leave Stay More again. His mother-in-law said she was very glad to hear that, and she hoped that Sonora would forgive him and come home too. They chatted a while longer about other things, and then the subject came up of Hank’s regret over having fathered no son. His mother-in-law laughed, and she, who probably knew more about the old-timey ways than anybody else in Stay More, told him of an old tried-and-true superstition that had never been known to fail: if a husband sits on the roof of his house near the chimney for seven hours his next child will be a boy. Hank scoffed, but his mother-in-law named all of the men of Stay More who had been born males as a result of their fathers sitting on the roofs of their houses for seven hours. Hank was impressed, but he observed, “Heck, I aint even got a roof to set on.”

That set him to thinking, and the following day he began construction of the ranch-style house which is the illustration for this chapter. It is located at a higher elevation of Ingledew Mountain than any of the other Ingledew buildings, and has a fine view of what is left of Stay More, as well as the mountains around. The architecture of it might seem Californian, but while there are many houses similar to it in California, there are also many houses similar to it elsewhere in the Ozarks. Hank didn’t know anything about carpentry, having never done any before, but he was good with his hands, and could learn. Stay More still did not have electricity, so he couldn’t use power tools, but he went to Harrison and persuaded the electric company to run a line from Jasper, and thus it might be said that the building of this house was indirectly responsible for the coming of electricity to Stay More. Hank’s uncles dropped by from time to time to give him advice and to saw a board.

When the foundation was laid, he wrote a letter to Sonora, telling her what he was doing. She did reply, but he wished she hadn’t: it was a very cool letter mentioning the fact that she had run into the secretary’s husband at a supermarket and gone with him to his car in broad daylight and knelt on the floorboards and blown him. Pure spite. Hank was tempted to modify his plan for the house, eliminating all of the extra bedrooms for his daughters, but he was convinced that even if Sonora never came back to Stay More, his daughters would come, at least to visit. So he went ahead and built five bedrooms in the house, one for himself (and Sonora if she ever came back), three for his daughters to share, and one, finally, for the son that he never gave up hoping to have.

Chapter eighteen

John Henry “Hank” Ingledew worked so hard on his house that, expectedly (although he had forgotten to expect it), he came down with the frakes when he was finished with it. It is of course quite possible to get the frakes more than once; having them does not produce immunity as in the case of so many other dread diseases. His second attack of the frakes was, however, not quite as uncomfortable as the first, because the experience of the first had taught him that the itching would be terrible and that afterwards he would sink into irrevocable despair, and there was nothing he could do about it, so he resigned himself to it, and his resignation kept him from suffering quite so much. Still, he was bedfast, and would have starved to death, had not his mother, taking him a pie she had baked, discovered he needed far more than pie. After she had cooked a meal and forced him to eat it, she told Sonora’s mother of his condition, and his mother-in-law had his father-in-law drive her into Jasper, where there was a telephone. She put in a long distance call to California, and told Sonora that Hank had the frakes, and Sonora immediately booked airplane passage for herself and her five daughters, and was picked up by her father at the Fort Smith airport and driven to Stay More, where she burst into Hank’s bedroom hollering “Why didn’t you tell me?” He replied, “Who cares?”

She threw herself upon him, weeping, and the five daughters crowded timidly into the doorway, staring at their father. “Is he dead?” one of the younger asked the oldest. “No,” the oldest assured her, “he just wishes he was.” Then the girls wandered off for a tour of their new home, and fought over whose bedroom was whose, and who would get a room all to herself. It was decided that the oldest would have that privilege. There was no furniture in any of the rooms, except the bed in Hank’s bedroom, so the girls spent the night at their grandparents’. Sonora slept with Hank and even tried to interest him in intercourse, but he wasn’t interested. She apologized for the nasty letter she had sent and the awful thing she had done with the secretary’s husband, but Hank honestly felt no animosity, nor, for that matter, anything. Wasn’t he the least bit glad that she had come home? Sonora persisted. Well, he observed, it would be convenient because he wasn’t able to cook for himself, provided he was interested in eating, but since he didn’t give a shit about eating, it wasn’t convenient, so she might as well go back to California. No, she said, it was too late: before she left she had placed their house on the market and instructed a mover to pack up all their furniture and stuff and transport it to Stay More. So see? she said. Hank shrugged. She sighed and went to sleep. Hank knew that the purpose of sleep is to restore the mind and body for the challenge of the coming day, and since the coming day held no challenges for him he didn’t care whether he slept or not, but Nature, who runs this show, put him to sleep anyway.

Because there was no longer a school at Stay More, the daughters of school age were driven into Jasper each day by Sonora’s father, who worked as a mechanic in the Jasper Ford agency. The daughters came home each day complaining of the school’s shortcomings compared with the schools they had attended in Anaheim. Sonora was sad about this, even though it meant nothing to Hank. She tried to assure the girls that they would get used to it. She tried to instill in them a respect, if not a love, for their native state, reminding them that all of them except the baby had been born in the Ozarks. And in fact, one by one, eventually, they no longer complained of their school but even reported on the more positive aspects of it. They began complaining that their father was indifferent to them. Even though he was no longer bedridden, and could move around just as easy as anyone, he wasn’t interested in anything, and his daughters couldn’t talk to him, although they tried.

Gradually he regained his interest in eating, if in nothing else, and one evening at supper when Sonora served some heated-up beans out of a can he actually grumbled. “It’s all we can afford,” Sonora retorted. “We’ve used up all our savings building this house and moving our things here and living for weeks and weeks without any income. Do you want me to look for a job? Will you stay home and take care of the baby while I’m working? I intend to start a garden patch next spring, and get some chickens, but what will we do until then?”

“Aw, heck,” Hank replied, and the next day he painted out the letters “Anaheim, Calif.” on the side of his van, and painted in the letters “Jasper, Ark.” and drove into Jasper and rented one of the vacant buildings on the square, the little brick-painted-white store whose illustration heads this chapter. It is the only building illustrated in this book which is not in Stay More, but there would be no more buildings in Stay More, except one, and that is our last chapter.

Although Jasper had been wired for electricity it had no television sets, and it dawned on Hank that before he could service television sets there would first have to be television sets, and not only that but they would also have to be around long enough, a week at least, for something to go wrong with them. So he got out his paintbrush again and added “and Sales” after “Service” on the sides of his van and the front of his shop. General Electric generously shipped him a dozen sets on credit, and he put these in his show windows, and waited for customers. Everybody who came into Jasper, especially on Saturdays, would wander around the square to Hank’s shop and look in the windows at his television sets, but no body came into the store.

It occurred to Hank that if he turned the sets on, the people could see how an actual picture appears. So he plugged the sets in and turned them on, but the reception was terrible. He realized he would need not only a high antenna atop his shop, but also a “booster.” He sent off to Little Rock for these items. When they arrived, Hank was finally in business. Crowds gathered at his windows, and stayed for hours to watch whole games of Base Ball coming from St. Louis and Chicago and Kansas City and everywhere else. The sheriff complained that the crowds were blocking traffic on the street, and requested that Hank bring some of the sets out into the square, but Hank explained that television requires dim light for the picture to be seen clearly. He suggested to the sheriff that the sheriff could help matters by ordering the crowd to go inside and buy one of the damn things so they could watch it in the comfort of their own living room.

The sheriff went up in front of the crowd and hollered, “OKAY, FOLKS! YOU’RE BLOCKING TRAFFIC! WHY DON’T YOU GO INSIDE AND BUY ONE OF THE DAMN THINGS SO YOU CAN WATCH ’EM IN THE COMFORT OF YOUR OWN LIVING ROOM?” The crowd surged through the door, and Hank was sold out within five minutes, and booked up for a month to install the antennas and boosters at their homes. When he arrived at some of their homes to install the antennas and boosters, he discovered that these homes were so far out in the wilds that they didn’t have electricity; he was instrumental in getting power lines erected in the remotest recesses of Newton County. The desire for television brought with it the means for operating washing machines, dryers, deep freezes, ranges, phonographs, blenders, electric clocks, vacuum cleaners, radial arm saws, toothbrushes, shoe polishers, shavers, typewriters, not to mention lamps and chandeliers and porch lights and every manner of ceiling fixture. Labor was so saved that there never again was a single case of the frakes in Newton County—no, there was one case, but he is our last chapter.

We may rightly question whether or not Hank Ingledew’s contribution to the way of life was a gross violation of the time-worn strictures against PROG RESS, and there is no denying that the company which manufactured the television sets he sold, as well as all the other aforementioned electrical appliances, had (and still has) as its motto, “PROG RESS is our most important product,” but I seriously doubt that Hank Ingledew ever gave the matter any thought. Selling television was a good way of earning a living, and he grew prosperous. Then too, innumerable sourhours were banished by the tube. There is one school of opinion which would argue that if literacy spoiled the Ozarks by diminishing the oral tradition, television restored something by requiring no literacy—but just what that something is would be hard to pin down.

When the money began rolling in, Hank decided that the time had come to try, once more, one last time, to have a son. He never forgot the superstition that his mother-in-law had told him about, and although he was totally without belief in superstition he could not deny the evidence of the efficacy of this particular superstition, that so many males born in Stay More had been males because their fathers had sat on the roofs of their houses for seven hours, and when Hank built the house that he now lived in, he had given it a low-pitched roof not only because low-pitched roofs are fashionable for ranch-style houses but also in order to facilitate his eventual ascent to the roof’s ridge. One evening when Hank and Sonora were talking in bed before going to sleep, he asked her,

“Snory, do you want to have another kid?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she replied. “I went to a gynecologist up at Harrison and had myself fitted out for a new diaphragm.”

“I don’t mean that,” he said. “I mean, would you? Could you stand to have one more?”

She was silent, thinking. Then she said, “It probably wouldn’t be a boy, either. You still want a boy. You won’t ever give up.”

“Your mother told me something, once,” he said. “I know it sounds silly, but there’s an old, old superstition that if a man sits on his roof for seven hours near the chimney his next child will be a boy.”

Sonora laughed uproariously. “My mother never told me that.”

“But it works, she said. Lots of men were born male because their fathers sat on their roofs. Her own father. Your dad’s father. Your dad. And she said me too, although not on purpose: my father was nailing on the shingles of his roof one day, and he was up there seven hours. At least that’s what your mother said.”

“When did you get so chummy with my mother?”

“It was the day I came home from California.”

“Oh? As soon as you got back, you went running to my mother to complain because I won’t give you a son?”

“Not like that. I was just talking to her and the subject came up.”

“Are you going to sit on the roof for seven hours?”

“I’ve been thinking about it.”

“Really, Hank! What if somebody comes along and sees you?”

“Well, I could just tell ’em I’m adjusting the TV antenna or something.”

“Oh sure. Just when are you supposed to sit on the roof? Right before knocking me up, or right before the baby is born?”

“I hadn’t thought of that. Your mother didn’t say.”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“Heck, I couldn’t ask her that.”

Sonora didn’t say anything more. But just before going to sleep, she drowsily mumbled, “Maybe I will ask her.” And she did. The next time she saw her mother, she casually mentioned the subject, never having had any difficulty discussing sex with her mother, and told her, “Hank wants to sit on the roof for seven hours. When’s he supposed to do it? Before conception or before birth?” Her mother told her that it was supposed to happen just prior to conception. Sonora relayed this information to Hank, who declared,

“Well, I’m ready anytime you are.”

Sonora calculated the best time of her month and answered, “Any time this weekend,” so the following Sunday, after the noon dinner, when there weren’t any television sets that needed urgent repairs, Hank filled a quart Mason jar with ice and water (it was a hot day), propped a ladder against the eaves of his house, kissed Sonora for good luck, and climbed to the roof, stepped onto it, then climbed the roof to its ridge. He put his ice water on the top of the chimney, the only flat surface up there. He sat down on the ridge, lighted a cigarette, smoked it, and dropped the butt down the chimney. His daughters came out of the house and stared up at him, pointing at him and giggling among themselves fit to burst. After an hour of it, they grew tired of giggling and went back into the house.

It was one hell of a hot day, and the sun reflecting off the roof made it even hotter. Hank was soaked with sweat; he uncapped the Mason jar and took a lusty drink of ice water. The ice was rapidly melting. The pressure of the ridge against his buttocks was uncomfortable. He hollered down the chimney, “Hey, Snory!” His wife came out of the house, and he called to her, “Could you throw me up a sofa cushion or a pillow or something?” She laughed and went back into the house and brought out a sofa cushion; she threw it; it didn’t reach him; he had to fetch it halfway down the roof. He put it on the roof ridge and sat on it. That was much more comfortable. A pickup truck pulled into his driveway, and in it was his father and all four of his uncles. “Hey, Hank!” Uncle Tearle called up to him. “Ball game down at Deer. Let’s go.” “I got to fix this damn antenna,” Hank replied, taking hold of the antenna and pretending to turn it. “We can wait,” Bevis said, and got out of the truck and began climbing the ladder. At the top of the ladder he asked, “Need a hand?” “That’s okay, Dad,” Hank said. “I can do it, but it takes a while to get it right. You boys go on to the ball game.” Bevis protested that they could wait, and it took several minutes of argument for Hank to persuade them to leave. They were scarcely out of sight when another pickup truck pulled into his driveway, and Bill Chism jumped out and called to him, “Hey, Hank. My Tee Vee just won’t go on. I don’t know what’s the matter with it.” “Well, Bill, I’m sorry,” Hank replied. “I’m messin with this here antenna, and I’ll probably be up here all afternoon.” “Aw, durn,” Bill said, “I was gonna watch the Cardinals.”

“Did you check to see if it was plugged in?” Hank asked. “Hadn’t thought of that,” Bill said and got back into his pickup and drove off. Half an hour later he was back. “Yeah, it’s plugged in, all right, and I can get some sound, but there jist aint ary picture.” Hank replied, “Try the brightness and contrast knobs. Could be you’ve dimmed the tube out.” Bill left again, and returned in another half hour. “I reckon I’ve missed that there Cardinal game by now. But my old woman is givin me hell on account of she has to watch ‘I Love Lucy.’ You sure are takin a long time with that antenna. What’s wrong with it anyhow?” “Caint git it adjusted just right,” Hank said, but he was at a loss for any way to get rid of Bill Chism. He could keep sending him back to fool around with various knobs and screws on his television set, but ole Bill would just keep on coming back until Hank had fixed it. Now Bill showed no inclination to leave, but was just hanging around watching Hank pretending to twist the TV antenna. Hank kept up the pretense until he realized that he wasn’t fooling Bill, and then he asked, “Bill, can you keep a secret? I’ll tell you the truth. I know it’s plumb ridiculous, but what I’m doing up here on the roof, see, is an old superstition. Learned it from Snory’s mother. I’ve got to sit here on the roof for seven hours, and I’ve just been here about three.”

“No foolin?” Bill said, with an ill-suppressed grin. “What’s it supposed to cure?” “It don’t cure anything, exactly,” Hank replied, “it just sorta brings a certain kind of good luck.” “Is that a fact?” Bill said. “Well, I declare. I hope it works fer ye. But will you come and fix my Tee Vee as soon as you git down?” Bill consulted his wristwatch and added, “That’d be about eight o’clock. If you hurry, maybe my old woman can watch her program.” “I’m sure sorry, Bill,” Hank said. “But as soon as I git down, I’ve got to do something else.”

“What’s that?”

“I caint tell ye, Bill, but it’s part of the superstition too.”

Bill hung around a while longer, dejected, and then complained, “What if you was a doctor, and my old woman was a-dying? You’d come down then, I bet.”

“Yeah, Bill, I sure would, but I aint a doctor and your old woman aint a-dying, and I’ve done put my mind to this here superstition, and you’d have to burn my house down to get me off of here.” Bill went away.

Hank’s jar of water was empty; he hollered down the chimney for more, and Sonora climbed the ladder and got his jar and refilled it, and brought it back up with a ham sandwich. He ate his sandwich and drank his ice water, then he realized that he needed to urinate. He went down the back slope of the roof and stood at the edge of the roof and urinated. Inside the house one of his daughters observed, “Mommy, it’s raining, although the sun is out. I bet there’ll be a rainbow.” All of the girls ran out of the house looking for a rainbow. Then they went back in. Late in the afternoon, a carload of Stay Morons drove into the driveway and stared at him and then drove away. “Damn that Bill Chism,” Hank said aloud. Another carload of Stay Morons arrived. Then another. The population of Stay More at that time had shrunk to only about sixty, but before the afternoon was over every last one of them had had a chance to see Hank Ingledew sitting on his roof. Most of them shouted, “Good luck, Hank” as they were driving away, but many of them made joking remarks. The last visitor was a reporter from the Jasper Disaster, carrying a Graphlex camera. “You point that thing at me,” Hank warned, “and I’ll smash it to flinders.”

“Could I ask a few questions?” the reporter asked.

“I jist as soon ye didn’t,” Hank said.

“It isn’t every day that I get a chance like this,” the reporter persisted. “Imagine the headline: ‘STAY MORE MAN SITS ON ROOF SEVEN HOURS.’”

Hank grimaced, and said, “There better not be a word in your paper. A man has got the right to do whatever he wants so long as he aint harmin anyone. I’m on my own property, and you’re trespassing. I’ll take ye to court if you print this.” The reporter retreated, and nobody else came. He had just a couple of hours to go. He was tired. His bones ached. He felt silly. But he believed it would work. Faith fortifies.

When his seven hours were up, Sonora climbed to the top of the ladder and smiled at him and asked, “Shall I climb on up there, and we’ll do it on the roof?” Hank didn’t know if she was serious or not, but he observed, “It’s still light. I’ll come down.” He went down off the roof. She pointed out that the girls wouldn’t be going to bed for another hour. “Are we supposed to do it right away?” Hank wondered. “I guess,” she said. “Well, let’s go for a little walk,” he suggested. Sonora went inside to tell the oldest girl that they were going for a walk and would be back soon. Then Sonora and Hank went into the woods behind their house; within a few hats they were lost from sight. On a thick blanket of old leaves Sonora sat and removed her slacks and panties; Hank removed his pants and shorts. They embraced and kissed for a while, but Hank discovered that his part was not only not standing but also it wasn’t even rising. Hank could not explain it. He tried: “I guess maybe I’m just all wore out from sitting on the roof so long.”

“But what about all of those other men that it worked for, who sat on their roofs and then had sons?” Sonora said. “Were they worn out too? How did they get it in?”

“I don’t know,” Hank said, and he climbed on top of her and put it between her legs and went through all the motions of intercourse, but his part refused to stiffen. Sonora thrust her hips vigorously against his, but it wouldn’t help. He did, however, after prolonged movement, spill his seed, which Sonora collected on her fingertips and inserted into herself. It was this which impregnated her.

Nine months later she gave birth to, sure enough, a son. She was ecstatic, and there is no word to apply to Hank, who made a fool of himself out of pride and happiness. But after the celebrating was over, he frowned and asked Sonora, “What was the name of that guy we were going to name him after? You know, the World’s Oldest Man, that peddler from Connecticut?” “Yeah, I know who you mean,” Sonora said, frowning; “His name is right on the tip of my tongue…Eh…Eh…Elmer? No. What was it?” She couldn’t remember. Hank asked his father. Bevis said, “It was one of them funny Yankee names, Esau or something.” Hank’s Uncle Tearle thought the first name was “Ezra” but none of his uncles could help him.

Wasn’t the name written down anywhere? Maybe it was written on the glass showcase which served as the man’s coffin. Hank went into the old mill; its timbers were thoroughly rotten; he worried that the mill would collapse upon his head, but he found the glass showcase and dusted it off. The old man hadn’t changed a bit, but the sight of him didn’t refresh Hank’s memory as to what his name had been. “What was your name, old-timer?” Hank said aloud, and wouldn’t have been surprised if he got a reply, but he didn’t. He inspected the glass showcase closely, but there was nothing written on it except the name of the manufacturer, “Acme Display Fixtures, Inc.” He told Sonora that they might as well name their son Acme Display Fixture Ingledew, but Sonora rejected that because of the resemblance between “Acme” and “Acne.” Sonora suggested finding the oldest person in Stay More and asking him or her if he or she could remember the name of the Connecticut peddler. That turned out to be Drussie Ingledew, Grandpa Doomy’s kid sister, in her early eighties, still living in the Stay More Hotel, still operating it in fact, although the last customer to spend the night there was back during the Second War.

“Aunt Drussie,” Hank said, “what was the name of that old peddler who used to come back to Stay More again and again and finally died here when I was a kid?” “Aw, shore,” Drussie replied, “everybody knows his name. I’m ashamed of ye, thet you’ve forgot it. Why, when I was just a little girl, I remember the year he brought the whale oil when the bar oil guv out, and then again when the whale oil guv out he brought coal oil. Then there was the time—” “Aunt Drussie,” Hank interrupted, “what was his name?” “He used to give me candy,” Drussie recalled, “and ask me if I had been a good girl, and if I was being as good a girl as I knew how. I’ll never forget him, to the day I die.” “But you don’t remember his name?” Hank asked. “Ellis Wilkins?” Drussie said. “Ellery Wilkes? Ephriam Wilson? Elton Wallace? Ennis Willoughby? Any of them sound right to you?” Hank shook his head. “Wal, I’ll tell ye,” Drussie offered, “there was a time he druv up to Stay More in the first hossless kerridge, and my oldest brother Denton took ’im to court fer spookin his livestock’ in the building whar the cannin fact’ry used to be, that one time was Denton and Monroe’s barn, and the Jasper newspaper printed a give-out on the court trial. Maybe if you was to find that old newspaper, it would have his name in it.” “What year was it?” Hank asked. “Year?” said Drussie. “Why, I reckon that was the same year, or the year after, that Doomy organized the Masons.” “What year was that? Do you know the number of the year?” “Number of the year? Law, boy, years don’t have numbers!” “Don’t you know the number of this year?” “No. Do you?” Hank said goodbye to his great-aunt and drove into Jasper to search the files of old Disasters, but the fellow on duty in the Disaster office was the same person that Hank had refused permission to photograph him on his rooftop or even to interview him, and the fellow was peevish and wouldn’t give Hank permission to look at old issues. It didn’t matter; Hank didn’t even know what year it was. Even if he knew the exact year, he probably wouldn’t have been able to find the item. He went home to Sonora and said, “Let’s just name him Hank Junior and you can call me Big Hank and call him Little Hank.”

No, Sonora wasn’t buying that. For one thing, she knew that the boy would eventually grow to be bigger than his father, and therefore the Little Hank designation would be as absurd as “Li’l Abner.” For another thing, she had been thinking that names ought to mean something. Her own name, Sonora, had been given to her by her mother because it meant “little song” and her newborn cries had been like little songs. “John Henry” didn’t mean anything. Taken literally, it meant “God is gracious and is the ruler of an enclosure, or private property,” which, even apart from the fact that the Ingledews didn’t even believe in God, was contradictory: a gracious John cannot be a tightfisted Henry. Sonora wanted a meaningful name. It was springtime; things were growing; she wanted her baby to grow and flourish. So she named him Vernon. Hank didn’t much like that, but there wasn’t much he could do. He hoped that before the ink was dry on the birth certificate the name of the Connecticut peddler might suddenly return to him, but it never did. Vernon Ingledew it was, and remained.

We come now to a difficult matter. What psychological effect would it have upon a growing boy to have five older sisters? Wouldn’t he be dreadfully spoiled? Would he become effeminate? Or wouldn’t his congenital Ingledew woman-shyness be magnified a hundredfold? It was true his sisters doted on him—and during the summers there were not five but six of them, in a sense: his first cousin Jelena, raised by his Uncle Jackson in Harrison during the school year, spent all her summers, every summer, in Stay More and was such a close friend of his sisters, especially of Patricia, who was the same age, that as far as Vernon was concerned she was one more sister. She and Patricia were eight years old when Vernon was born, and that is an age for being particularly interested in watching Sonora change Vernon’s diapers. Soon Patricia and Jelena were volunteering to change Vernon’s diapers.

Jelena was to claim, years afterward, that she fell in love with him the first time she laid eyes on him. Was he aware of her in infancy? Dubitable; to him, her face was just one of seven female faces that came constantly in and out of his field of vision. But he was four years old before he understood that he was in any way different from these seven persons. By the age of four he had begun to misbehave, and his father, in order to induce good behavior, threatened to cut off his tallywhacker unless he behaved himself. He could not help but notice that the other seven persons did not possess tallywhackers, and assumed that they had all flagrantly misbehaved, and were doomed to go through life tallywhackerless and wearing dresses and sitting down to pee.

He did not want to wear a dress, nor did he want to have to sit down to pee, so he tried his best to behave. In the years of his growing up, Vernon was preoccupied with behaving himself. He felt sorry for the seven persons who had lost their tallywhackers, but he tried to avoid all of them except the one who was his mother, for whom he felt an emotion that was not pity or compassion or wonder but a deep feeling that he could not understand, and which frightened him in its intensity, causing him to do his best to suppress the feeling, lest it lead him into misbehavior and the loss of his tallywhacker.

There are two things that can happen to a boy who has five (or six) older sisters and a mother with whom he is unknowingly deeply in love: on the one hand he can lose all of his courage and self-confidence and be a pampered emotional cripple for the rest of his life, or, conversely on the other hand, growing up masculine in a feminine household, fiercely determined to keep his tally-whacker, he may be forced by himself into great achievements. Vernon Ingledew forced himself into great achievements.

His first great achievement, however, was almost accidental, and occurred at the age of sixteen. On one of his many solitary walks in the fastnesses of Ingledew Mountain, he discovered a razorback boar. It had been thought that the razorback, if it ever existed at all outside of legend, was long extinct in the Ozarks, but to Vernon, who had seen pictures of them, there was no mistaking that this was indeed a razorback boar. In the end of the following, penultimate chapter, we will have to witness Vernon’s struggle to capture the boar. And in the final chapter we will learn what he did with it.

Chapter nineteen

Jackson Ingledew was a janitor in the Harrison public school system. He got the job in the same year that Jelena, who had become his ward, was old enough to start to school. During the summer months, when school was not in session, he was unemployed, and the two of them returned to Stay More for the entire summer. That is part of the reason why he bought the “mobile home,” shown here; the other part of the reason was that he thought the mobile home looked “modern.” The Ozarks were filling up with mobile homes, and Jackson got the latest model. Stay More was full of abandoned houses that were his for the asking, but he opted for the modernity and the convenience of a mobile home. For nine months of the year, while school was in session, Jackson’s mobile home was parked in a “trailer camp” in the small city of Harrison; for the other three months it was parked beside Swains Creek in Stay More, halfway between the old canning factory and the sycamore tree which had held Noah Ingledew’s treehouse.

In many ways Jackson Ingledew resembled Noah Ingledew, or at least Noah is the only other Ingledew to whom Jackson is comparable in any respect. Jackson’s favorite (but not exclusive) oath was also “shitfire” but he always pronounced it as a drawn-out “sheeeut far,” and he never uttered it in the presence of his niece and ward Jelena. He was extremely conscientious about his responsibilities as substitute father; the position did not rest lightly on his shoulders, but he tried his best: for instance, when Jelena grew up and became a beautiful and highly desirable girl, Jackson highly desired her, and it required the highest exercise of self-control to keep him from seducing her, but he never seduced her, which more than any other fact tells us what kind of man he was. When she was only one year old she climbed into his lap and uttered her first word, “Da da.” He put her down, perhaps literally as well as figuratively, and said, “Not Dada. Uncle.” She looked at him strangely and tried to pronounce “uncle,” but it came out “ugla” and he is still Ugla Jackson to her to this day.

Although he was unable to give her the affection of fatherhood, he was at least attentive to her; whenever she requested, he would read her storybooks to her, so often that she already knew how to read by herself even before she started school. When school was over, each day, Jackson had to sweep the halls and rooms for a couple of hours, so during those two hours he would leave her in the school’s library, where she read and reread every book over the years. She loved reading, but it was a dull way to grow up, and she always eagerly looked forward to the summers, when Jackson would hitch the mobile home to his pickup truck and haul it back to Stay More. It was even more fun for Jelena when Hank and Sonora Ingledew came back from California with their five daughters and Jelena discovered that she had a first cousin, Patricia, who was the same age as she. Jelena never read a book in the summertime.

One summer when Jelena was eight, she arrived in Stay More to discover that she had another cousin, recently born, and that this cousin had a tail, or rather a tail that was on backwards, or rather frontwards, a tail on the front of him, just an inch or less long. When she looked at his face, she fell in love with him. Although she had not ever seen one of those tails before, she knew that all the world was divided into boys and girls, and that when boys and girls grew up they got married and became mothers and fathers, although she herself for some reason had no mother and father, and she decided on the spot that when Vernon Ingledew grew up she was going to marry him. She couldn’t wait for him to grow up, but he took such a long time doing it, and by the time she herself was already grown up he was just a little kid starting the first grade of school. What was worse, he wouldn’t have anything to do with her. He ignored her. She and his sisters played “house,” frequently, but Vernon refused to join them. They also played “mobile home,” but he would not even volunteer to drive the “truck.” They played “school” and “store” and “bank,” and tried their best to recruit him as a “pupil” or “customer,” but he would have none of it. They played “church” and told him he would go to hell unless he joined them, but he opted for hell.

One summer old Doc Swain died, and his little clinic on Main Street was abandoned, along with the other abandoned doctors’ and dentists’ offices, and the abandoned bank and mill and general store—in fact, everything on Main Street was abandoned except the old hotel, which was no longer a hotel but just a residence for Drussie and her niece Lola, both old ladies who sat on the porch all summer long staring at the boarded-up general store. When Doc Swain’s office was abandoned, all of the contents of it were left in it, and Vernon’s sisters and Jelena decided to play “doctor” and again they tried to persuade Vernon to join them, telling him that he could be the doctor and they would be the nurses and patients. This time Vernon, who was six, at least thought the matter over without flatly rejecting it, and at length decided that he didn’t mind being a doctor, so for the very first time he joined them in their play. The clinic was as fully equipped as country doctors’ clinics ever were; they dressed Vernon in the doctor’s smock, rolling up the sleeves until they fit him; and put a stethoscope around his neck and a round reflex mirror on his forehead. Sharon was the nurse, Eva the receptionist, and the rest of them patients. Vernon at the age of six had been taken to the doctor often enough, with whooping cough and measles and mumps and chicken pox, to know how a doctor deports himself, and he gave a reasonably good performance. He felt each patient’s pulse and put his stethoscope to their chests and listened—with some awe—to their heartbeats. Jelena’s breasts were well developed at the age of fourteen, and it thrilled her when Vernon’s hand put the stethoscope on her breast. “What’s your complaint?” the six-year-old boy said to her in as deep a voice as he could manage. It was the first time he had ever spoken to her. “I’m going to have a baby,” she told him. “Hhmm,” he said, and gave her a bottle of yellow pills. “Well, take two of these a day, and come back if it doesn’t go away.” The girls laughed, embarrassing him, and “Nurse” Sharon told him, “You’re ’sposed to examine her. She’s ’sposed to git on that table and have you take a look at her.” Jelena was reluctant but also excited at the idea, and she climbed onto the examination table and raised her skirt and removed her panties. Vernon came and took a look, but wouldn’t come close. “Nothing wrong with you,” he said, “’ceptin they cut off yore tallywhacker fer bein bad.” The girls laughed uproariously, and Vernon threw off his smock and stethoscope and marched out, declaring “I don’t want to play dumb games.” He never again joined any of their games, and then they were too old to play games.

When Vernon was six, he noticed for the first time that his father also had a tallywhacker, which he had already guessed, since his father wore pants and had short hair, so the next time he saw his grandfather he asked Bevis, “Grampaw, was Daddy always a good boy?” Bevis replied by telling him of the time that Hank had “stolen” one of the mules and run away to join the circus. “But you didn’t cut off his tallywhacker for it?” Vernon wanted to know. “Didn’t he never do nothing that was bad enough for you to cut off his tallywhacker?” “Huh?” said Bevis, and Vernon revealed to his grandfather that his father had on several occasions threatened to cut off his tallywhacker and make him into a girl unless he behaved himself. “Aw, he was jist a-funnin you,” Bevis told him. “He’d never do nothin like that, and even if he did, that wouldn’t make ye into a girl. Girls are born that way.” “Why?” Vernon wanted to know. “Wal,” Bevis hedged, “you’re a mite too young to understand things like that. Why don’t ye jist put it out of your mind ’till you’re older?”

But Vernon could never put it out of his mind, nor could he completely shake off the fear that his father might cut off his tally-whacker unless he behaved himself, so he continued to behave himself, and he continued to be obsessed with the subject of sex, although he continued to withstand the efforts of his sisters to involve him in their activities and the efforts of his cousin Jelena to get him to notice her. There were no boys in Stay More his own age, although he had a few friends at the Jasper school, with whom he played boys’ games during recess. He excelled in sports. But he would just as soon stay home by himself, or help his mother; he was always striving to do things for his mother, whom he loved. She loved him too, perhaps too much, because her husband never did completely regain his potency after sitting on the roof for seven hours; he suffered recurring bouts of impotency, and went to see a specialist at Little Rock, who examined him and talked about “distinctly low testosterone assay” and prescribed medicine that didn’t help much; he later went all the way to St. Louis to see another specialist, who examined him and talked about “estimation of urinary 17-ketosteroid excretion” and prescribed another medicine which was just a little better, but didn’t cure the problem; so, during a national convention of televison salesmen in Chicago, he slipped off to see a psychiatrist, who traced the problem back to the episode of sitting on the roof for seven hours but was unable to help Hank understand how sitting on the roof for seven hours would make him impotent, so he traced the problem further back to Hank’s childhood when Hank had often wondered whether or not he actually existed because in order to exist his mother and father would have had to have gone to bed together, which they had never done.

“How do you know they didn’t?” asked the psychiatrist. Because they had separate beds, and never slept together, Hank told him. “But,” said the psychiatrist, “that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have had intercourse somewhere, at some time.” Well, anyway, Hank said, the problem never bothered him anymore so he didn’t think it had anything to do with his impotency. “Aha!” said the psychiatrist. “The roots of our problems lie where we least expect them,” and he suggested that Hank commence psychoanalysis, but Hank told him that he was just temporarily in Chicago for a convention, and he went on back to Stay More. Because he didn’t make love to Sonora very often, she was somewhat frustrated, but she had determined never to “cheat” on him again, so she remained a faithful wife but compensated for her frustration by being overaffectionate to Vernon, who returned her affection. They frequently slept together, until he was nine years old, when his growing manhood tempted her and made her ashamed of her temptations, so that she never slept with him thereafter, which he could not understand. There were so many things that he could not understand, although in his fantasy he concocted elaborate and even outrageous explanations for them. When he was ten years old, his mother discovered that she had irreversible breast cancer. At her funeral Vernon listened to them singing:

Farther along we’ll know all about it,

Farther along we’ll understand why;

Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,

We’ll understand it, all by and by.

He did not understand this. He did not understand that what was meant by “by and by” was the “sweet by and by” of the hereafter. Even if he believed in a hereafter, which he did not, he understood the song to mean that there would come a time, on this earth, when we will finally know the meaning of life, and time, and death, and he was determined, from that moment forward, to learn the meaning, if it took him all his life.

The rain that fell during Sonora’s funeral was the hardest that had fallen on the Ozarks since the flood of Noah Ingledew’s time, and it caused all the creeks to overflow their banks. Hank, grieving though he was, had the presence of mind to realize that the old mill and probably the store too would be swept away in the flood, so after the funeral, he and his brother Jackson backed a pickup truck, up to its hubcaps in swirling muddy water, to the porch of the old mill, and they went into the mill, feeling its floor trembling, and lifted the glass showcase containing the body of the old Connecticut peddler, whatever his name was, and loaded it into the pickup truck and got it away just in the nick of time: with a thunderous roar the old mill collapsed and was swept away down the creek. They transported the showcase to higher ground, to the abandoned yellow house of the old near-hermit Dan, where they left it in an upstairs bedroom, and then returned to the village, and with the help of the other men of Stay More used sledgehammers to demolish the old abandoned bank building and stack its stones against the side of the road in an effort to keep the swollen creek from washing away the road. The effort did not succeed; the road was washed away; but after the creek had returned to its normal level, they partially rebuilt the road.

Jelena graduated from Harrison High School at the age of eighteen; she was the valedictorian of her class, and undoubtedly could have won a college scholarship if she had applied for one, but after the death of Vernon’s mother, Jelena was old enough and smart enough to realize that it had been foolish of her to plan, all her life, to marry Vernon when he grew up. When he grew up, she would be twenty-six, at least, past marriageable age. Even if that wasn’t past marriageable age, he was her first cousin, and nowadays first cousins did not marry. Even if first cousins could marry, she could never get him to notice her, except for that one time when they had played “doctor.” At his mother’s funeral, when Jelena had tried to embrace him and say something comforting to him, he did not seem to be aware of her existence. So, if she could not be his wife, perhaps at least she could become his mother, or his stepmother. Waiting for a suitable time some months after the funeral, she said to Hank, “Would you like to marry me?” “That’s real kind of ye, Jelena,” Hank replied, “but I’m your uncle and I caint marry you.” “Vernon needs a mother,” Jelena insisted. “I don’t know about that,” Hank observed. “I reckon he’s jist about old enough to take care of hisself. And he’s got lots of sisters to look after ’im.” “You won’t marry me?” Jelena tried one last time. “I have to tell you somethin, honey,” Hank replied. “I don’t know how to say it, but even apart from me bein twenty-four years older than you, I aint able to…well, you know what a man is supposed to do to his woman, well, I aint able.” “I don’t care,” Jelena replied, “we don’t have to do that.” “Don’t ye want children?” Hank asked. “No,” she said, “Vernon can be my child.” “Tell you the honest truth, Jelena,” Hank said, “nothin against you personal, but I don’t honestly believe that Vernon would want to be your child.”

Crestfallen, Jelena gave up on the idea. Mark Duckworth, son of Mont, son of Oren the erstwhile canning factory operator, and Jelena’s third cousin twice removed, asked Jelena for a date, took her to the drive-in movies at Harrison, kissed her during intermission, took her there again the following Saturday, petted her some, was petted in return on the third date, and after the fifth date persuaded her to get into the back seat with him. The movies bored Jelena, but there was nothing else to do, and she soon discovered that she really liked the things that she and Mark could do with their bodies. When he proposed marriage to her, she turned him down, telling him that she was waiting for Vernon Ingledew to grow up. He laughed at that, and went on proposing, pointing out that his chicken ranch was just about the best chicken ranch in Newton County and that he intended to make it even bigger. (While we have Jelena and Mark in his car at the drive-in movies, we might notice that the car too is bigeminal, usually having two doors, his side, her side, and that cars have traditionally been used for “making out,” which in essence is what bigeminality is all about.)

Mark was a good-looking chicken farmer, twenty-two years old; Jelena was a beautiful brunette close to nineteen. We have not yet reached the point where we could tap her on the shoulder, as it were, and point out to her that she could never have a happy marriage with Mark Duckworth because of the discrepancy between their respective intelligences. He was no dumbbell, by any means, but Jelena Ingledew was just about the most intelligent female in the history of Stay More. If she had been willing to leave Stay More, she could have found boundless opportunities elsewhere, and boundlessly more attractive prospects for husbands, but she was not willing to leave Stay More. So she married Mark Duckworth. The old abandoned school/churchhouse was given a good dusting, a minister was imported from Jasper, and everybody (there were only twenty-nine Stay Morons that year) came to the wedding. Jelena was even surprised to find Vernon there, dressed in his first suit and his first necktie. As Uncle Jackson was leading her down the aisle, she paused and bent down and whispered in Vernon’s ear, “I was going to wait and marry you when you grew up. Will you marry me when you grow up? If you say ‘yes,’ I’ll call off this wedding.” Vernon looked into her eyes to understand if she were teasing him, and, understanding that she was serious, shook his head and declared, “I will never marry.” And he was right. He never will. He is the last of all the Ingledews. There will be no more.

We are so close to the end of this epic that if it were a snake it would bite us, as folks used to say in Stay More, but don’t anymore, because there are so few folks remaining. Yet endings make me nervous, not because I don’t know what to expect but simply because they are endings, and there is nothing beyond them, as there is nothing beyond death and nothing beyond the universe. There will be something beyond this ending, but not for now. We do not have time to accompany Vernon on one of his numerous solitary walks in the woods, when he studied nature as intently as possible, trying to understand it. We do not have time to listen to one of the heated quarrels between Jelena and her husband Mark, who discovered very quickly that marriage takes something out of romance. Jelena bore Mark two children, both sons, and with his permission had herself sterilized after the birth of the second son. She was a good mother, but eventually decided that she could not stand her husband; it was a loveless marriage, and the chores of a chicken farmer’s wife were endlessly boring. She had fantasies, sometimes, of taking her life, and once she even walked up the mountain to Leapin Rock and stood on the edge of it, looking down. Vernon, on one of his woods walks, spotted her. He was fourteen then, and as big as she, and he sneaked up behind her and threw his arms around her and pulled her away from the precipice. “I was just enjoying the view,” she told him. “Oh,” he said, hangdog, “I thought ye were fixin to jump.” “Why should I jump?” she said. He studied her eyes, trying to understand whether or not she had intended to jump, and understood that she had, and told her, “You’re unhappy.” “Why should I be unhappy?” she demanded, but then she broke down, not weeping but just losing control of herself, and told him all her problems. He was embarrassed, not only because she was a woman talking to him and he was shy of women, but also, and more so, because he had not reached a level of understanding to be able to tell her what she should do or even to offer her words of comfort or solace. “Well,” she observed at length, “it did me good to talk to you,” and she went back home.

On one of his weekend woods walks, at the age of sixteen, Vernon discovered the abandoned yellow house of the old near-hermit Dan, who was buried on the hill behind it. Exploring the interior of the house, he found upstairs a feather mattress, and lay down on it; he had never lain on a feather mattress before and was surprised at how comfortable it was, so comfortable that he fell asleep and slept for several hours. When he got up he went into the other of the two bedrooms of the house and was startled to discover an old glass showcase containing the body of an old, old man. He stared at it for a moment, trying to understand, then he ran all the way home and said, “Dad, there’s a dead body in a showcase in an old yellow house about a mile up Banty Creek.”

Hank said, “Sit down, son. Can you spare an hour or two?” It took more than an hour or two, more like three, but Hank told Vernon the story of the old peddler from Connecticut. Vernon was delighted. Even more delighted than by the story of the old peddler, he was delighted by the past of Stay More; he had known that Stay More had a past, and he had explored all of its abandoned buildings, but he had never inquired into that past. “We was even going to name ye after him,” Hank informed his son, “but we plumb fergot what his name was, and nobody could recall it. The reason we was even going to name ye after him was that he left somethin fer ye, let me see if I caint remember whar I buried the thing.” Hank took his shovel and went to Bevis’s house and asked his father if he could dig up something in the backyard. Bevis was seventy-eight years old, and his mind had begun to fail him, but he could still use Emelda’s mind, which he did, and she said okay. Hank dug his hole, but that wasn’t the spot. He dug another hole, and then another. Darkness came and he had to give up digging for the day, but rose early the next morning and resumed digging, until the backyard of his parents’ house looked as if it had been bombed. The reporter of the Jasper Disaster, who had been a mere reporter when Hank had sat on his roof for seven hours, was now the editor, and showed up and began taking pictures before Hank could stop him. “What are you looking for?” the editor wanted to know. “Oil? Gold?” “None of your business,” Hank replied. The editor beseeched, “Nothing ever happens in this county anymore. Give me a story.” Hank would not.

The Disaster folded with the next week’s issue, which consisted only of grocery ads and a picture of Hank destroying his parents’ backyard with a caption, “Stay More citizen, J.H. Ingledew, 48, shown with shovel in left background, is mysteriously excavating the rear yard of the home of his parents, Mr. and Mrs. B.H. Ingledew, also of Stay More, this county. We were unable to determine his motive, and, after reflection, we ceased to care. This is the last issue.” There have been no more newspapers in Newton County.

But Hank found the watch. The lard pail was so rusted it disintegrated in his hands, but the heavy wad of flannel within the lard pail was still intact, and in the heart of the wad of flannel was the gold chronometer wristwatch, in perfect condition.

As Hank winds up the watch, time changes to the present tense. Now. The watch runs. Hank apologizes to his parents for having torn up their yard, and promises to smooth it out and reseed it as soon as he gets the chance. “You jist better,” says Bevis, whose mind has failed but who is using Emelda’s. Hank takes the watch home and gives it to Vernon. He says, “This is it. This is what that old peddler left for you. He made me promise to keep it for you.”

“Gosh dawg,” exclaims Vernon, dazzled by the sight of the expensive gold chronometer, whose band is gold too. He takes it and looks at it closely, turning it over and over in his hand. He discovers on the reverse of the gold case, which is not gold but some kind of polished silvery alloy, an inscription, engraved into the metal: “For Vernon Ingledew, from Eli Willard. Tempus fugit. Carpe diem. Etc.” He calls this to the attention of his father, who reads it and exclaims, “That’s him! That’s his name! Eli Willard. That’s your name, boy! That’s what we were fixin to name ye.” “No,” Vernon points out, his name is “Vernon,” as can plainly be seen in the inscription. There is something puzzling about that circumstance to Hank. He rereads the inscription. “Hhmmm,” he says. “What’s this here ‘ect.’ for?” “Not ect,” says Vernon, “etc. Et cetera. It means everything else.” He says again, “Everything,” he is so proud to have that watch. He holds the watch to his ear and listens to its precise, firm, assertive ticking. Then he slips the watch over his hand and onto his wrist.

As Vernon puts the watch on his wrist, he becomes aware of us.

He stares at us. We stare back at him. We notice how, at the age of sixteen, he is already a full-grown Ingledew, past six feet tall, eyes as blue as his great-great-great-grandfather’s.

“Who are those people?” Vernon asks his father.

“What people?” says his father.

Vernon realizes that he is aware of us because he wears the watch. We make him uncomfortable, self-conscious, and the women among us make him extremely woman-shy. He takes off the wristwatch and puts it in his pocket, losing his awareness of us.

“You aint gon wear it?” his father asks.

“Not yet,” says Vernon. “I aint ready for it. But I’ll carry it around.”

He carries it around, in his pocket, and at night leaves it on his bureau with his pocket change, rabbit’s foot, etc. Sometimes in the middle of the night, he wakes up, in pitch dark, takes the watch and puts it on, to see if we are still here. We still are.

Toward the end of his sixteenth year he leaves the house and goes off into the forest of Ingledew Mountain and into a deep dark cave, where he hides and puts on his watch again. We are still here. “What do you folks want with me?” he asks.

As our spokesman, I reply, “Listen, Vernon, we’ve got great plans for you.”

“Who are you?” he wants to know.

“We are students of the architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks who have become interested in Stay More and particularly in the Ingledews. You, Vernon, could become the greatest Ingledew of them all. You know already that you’re the last Ingledew, because you aren’t going to marry or have any children.”

“That’s right,” he acknowledges, “but I aint so certain that I’d care to be the greatest Ingledew of them all, and even if I did, I don’t want you folks following me around. Darn it, that lady there is a-laughin at me, and if you folks is such students of the Ingledews you know how shy Ingledews is toward women. Make her stop.”

Madam, please.

“Look, Vernon,” I continue, “we already know practically everything about you, and about all of your ancestors. Our study is just about finished, and we want to conclude it with something important. The building that heads this chapter, if you can call it a ‘building,’ is just a trite mobile home, like trite mobile homes all over the Ozarks and elsewhere. Architecturally, it’s a cipher, even if it is bigeminal, a duple, which means that it is divisible by two: two rooms, two doors, two bays, whatever, symbolizing the division of creatures into male and female, and of sexuality, although in the case of this particular mobile home, which belonged to your Uncle Jackson and in which Jelena represented the female side, there was no sex between them. But speaking of Jelena, haven’t you ever had sexual fantasies about her?”

“That aint none of your business!” he says, and grasps the watch as if to remove it from his wrist.

“Oh, indeed it is our business,” I declare, “but let it go, for the moment. Our immediate problem is to construct the building of the next chapter, the last chapter. You are going to do it by yourself.”

“What am I supposed to do? Get out a saw and hammer?”

“No. First you must do something that will make a lot of money, for your house is going to be expensive. You will be twenty-two when you build it, and you’re only sixteen now, which means that you have six years to raise the money.”

“How? Jobs are pretty scarce hereabouts.”

“Create your own job.”

“Doing what?”

“Growing and selling something.”

“Jelena’s husband Mark Duckworth grows and sells chickens, but he aint gittin rich.”

“Not chickens. Pigs. Vernon, aren’t you awfully fond of ham?”

“That’s right.”

“But haven’t you been constantly suspicious that nobody makes really good ham anymore?”

“Sure. It troubles me.”

“Then do something about it.”

“Okay. Where do I start?”

“Find a razorback.”

“There aren’t any razorbacks anymore.”

“You seem to know an awful lot for a boy your age.”

“Aw, heck. Everbody knows there aren’t any razorbacks.”

“Get up and walk outside of this cave.”

Vernon obeys. Outside the cave, foraging on acorn mast, is a razorback boar. He softly whistles in recognition of it. “Say, thanks,” he says to us, and removes his wristwatch and puts it into his pocket. It is too bad he cannot put us into his pocket too, to spare us the sight of the terrible contest that is about to occur.

Vernon improvises a halter out of black-jack vines, and sneaks up on the boar. Having had no experience in capturing razorbacks, because there have been no razorbacks to capture, he does not realize that razorbacks will fiercely defend themselves. When the boar sees Vernon, it does not run, but stands its ground until Vernon is close to it, then it charges him, toppling his legs out from under him, goring his calves with inch-deep wounds. Razorbacks are not nearly as big as domestic swine, but they are much swifter and meaner for that reason. Vernon can hardly stand up, and as soon as he is on his feet, the boar charges him again, but he sidesteps like a matador and throws the halter over the boar’s head as it charges past, keeping a firm grip on the other end of the line. He is pulled off his feet and dragged along the ground, and the wristwatch in his pocket is broken.

Chapter twenty

Our last illustration, regrettably, is smudged and obscure. Vernon Ingledew refuses our request to view the final dwelling of Stay More. We can just barely determine that it has certain things in common with the first dwelling in our study, which perhaps suggests that time, and architecture, are cyclical: we began with an ending, we end with a beginning. But I have not seen this building myself; Vernon refuses to divulge its exact location in the forest fastnesses of Stay More; our illustration, or what is left of it, is based upon a Polaroid snapshot taken by a young couple who are friends of mine, and the last “outsiders” to immigrate into Stay More. But Vernon will not build this structure until his twenty-second year, and he is still only sixteen.

Yes, he finally succeeds in capturing that razorback boar, tethering him to a tree while he hobbles home to dress his wounds, then borrows his father’s four-wheel-drive truck, which he drives up old logging trails to the place where he has captured the boar. He drops a ramp from the truck-bed, and forces the boar up the ramp and into the truck, and takes it home and pens it up. Word quickly spreads that Vernon Ingledew has captured a real live razorback. This is so fantastic that the editor of the defunct Disaster is tempted to start it up again, but he has already sold his printing press. A Harrison newspaper publishes the story, and the students at the University of Arkansas, whose mascot the razorback is, take up a collection of two thousand dollars for the purpose of buying Vernon’s razorback, but two thousand dollars isn’t enough to pay for the building of the house of this chapter, so he rejects the offer.

Vernon sets about breeding the boar to three Poland China gilts. The boar is disdainful, but a gilt in heat is too much for him. Vernon turns seventeen, and after three-and-a-half months the Poland China sows farrow a total of twenty-six pigs. Instead of black-and-white like Poland China pigs, they are red-and-brown, and have bristly spines like razorbacks. Vernon fattens them; instead of feeding them corn, as domestic swine are fed, he feeds them the diet of razorbacks: acorn mast and wild fruits, all they can eat. One of the Chism boys up on the mountain is still distilling Chism’s Dew, and Vernon asks permission to haul off the corn mash that is used in the distillation process, and he feeds this also to his pigs; there is enough alcohol in it to keep his pigs constantly happy. In hot weather, when most pigs suffer, and wallow in mud to alleviate their suffering, Vernon regularly showers down his pigs with cold water from a hose, which makes them actually smile and grunt with pleasure. All of this contributes to a superior type of pig. When the gilts are old enough to go into heat, Vernon breeds them to their father, producing pigs that are even more razorback than themselves. Normally, wild razorback sows farrow only four to six pigs, but Vernon’s hogs have become so contented and domesticated that they farrow eight to twelve pigs each.

Vernon’s great-great-aunt Drussie Ingledew, ninety-eight years old, is on her deathbed, but before she dies she tells Vernon how people used to cure ham back in the old days when there were still razorbacks at large, but Vernon refuses to share his secrets with us. He will not reveal the special time of year when he slaughters his hogs, nor will he reveal the arcane but humane method he uses to slaughter them. He smokes the meat for an amount of time that he will not reveal, using smoke from burning objects the composition of which is a closely guarded secret. Many spies try to learn his secrets, but they do not succeed.

“Ingledew Ham” is the best stuff in the history of ham-making. There is nothing else comparable; it practically melts in your mouth, and is much sweeter than ordinary ham. At first Vernon sells his total output to the supermarkets of Jasper and Harrison, but the demand for it keeps forcing the price up, until the local supermarkets cannot carry it, and it becomes a mail order item affordable only by the wealthy. Vernon’s five sisters, who are married to, respectively, a Whitter, a Chism, a Coe, a Plowright, and a Stapleton, help him raise and process his hams, as do their husbands; it becomes an increasingly large operation. Vernon branches off into smoked sausage, cased in cornhusks the old-fashioned way, and far superior to commercial sausage. Then he branches off into sugar-cured and smoked bacon; also spareribs and head cheese, letting nothing go to waste.

One day he takes his watch to Harrison to be repaired. The watch repairman examines it, declaring he’s never seen one like it. The repairman gently opens the case, and shakes his head; he says it will take him months, maybe years, to find replacements for the damaged parts and to put the watch back together. “Take your time,” Vernon assures him. He is only eighteen years old. (It’s really too bad about that watch. I had planned to tell Vernon what the next step was: he was to go away to college, to the University of Arkansas, where he would play football, becoming a “Razorback” himself, making the first string in his sophomore year, as a defensive end, and becoming the best defensive end in the history of the Razorbacks, making All-American in his senior year. That would have made a great sports story, which we could call simply Razorback, but the watch is broken and we cannot get to him to tell him about it. So he does not go to college. But he studies.)

On the same trip to Harrison to take his watch to be repaired, he discovers a store that sells a kind of book with soft covers called “paperback.” The paperback more than the razorback is a momentous discovery for Vernon. He buys a handful of paperbacks on astronomy, geology, genetics, anthropology, linguistics, and architecture, which he takes home and reads in his spare time when he is not supervising his swine industry. Periodically he returns to Harrison to see if his watch has been repaired, and finding that it hasn’t, he buys more paperbacks, on chemistry, geometry, zoology, history, philosophy, musicology and literature.

His sisters, and his father too, to a lesser extent, tease him about becoming a “bookworm.” The only other person in Stay More who reads books is his cousin Jelena. When Vernon finishes his paperbacks, he takes them to Jelena and trades them to her for her paperbacks on physics, biology, art history, theater, sociology and eschatology, which is a subject that interests him most because he is still trying to understand why his mother died. One day Jelena swaps him a book on sexology. He has not been exactly ignorant of the subject, for, after all, he has been personally responsible for breeding his razorback boar to many Poland China gilts and their offspring, the sight of which has given him many a throb. And yes, although he refuses to admit it, he has had sexual fantasies involving his cousin Jelena. When he swaps books with her, he is careful not to get too close to her, because she has a certain venereal scent or fragrance that drives him wild.

The next time he goes to swap books with her, he finds her alone, her children in school and her husband off somewhere for the day selling his chickens. She gives him a Coke, and asks him what he thought of the book on sexology. He admits it was “interesting.” She asks him if there is anything he doesn’t understand. He understands just about everything, he allows, but he doesn’t quite understand why it is that animals “mate” only at certain times whereas humans apparently do it all the time. “Sit down, Vernon,” she suggests, “and we’ll talk about it.” He sits down, careful not to sit too close to her. She says, “You’re nineteen. Are you still a virgin?” That isn’t any of her business, he tells her. “I’m just trying to find out if you know what sex feels like,” she says. I can imagine, he says. “Then you have a rich imagination,” she comments, and begins her mini-lecture: “If sex is pleasurable for all creatures, why is it that for animals it is confined only to the time of rutting or ‘heat’? Did you know, by the way, that compared with animals, it is more exceptional for women than for men to be able to indulge in sex at any time of the year?” Vernon admits that he had not thought of that. “It’s true,” she goes on, “and since it’s plain that the purpose of human sex is not for procreation but for pleasure, more often than not, then this pleasure, and the absence of it, and the strong emotions inspired by both the desire and the unfulfillment of the desire, are on one hand the source of art, literature, music, religion and science, and on the other hand greed, selfishness, malice, envy and war. We are different from animals because we have a mind, imagination and an ability to reason, and these attributes originate out of our longings and desires for sex. Does that make any sense to you?”

Vernon thinks it over and grants that it does. “But our sexuality also leads us into ‘civilization,’” Jelena points out, “and civilization imposes restrictions on our sexuality. Civilization creates the institution of marriage, and standards of ‘morality.’ Marriage is a trap. But I needn’t warn you of that, because you are never going to marry, are you?”

Vernon reaffirms the intention that he first declared to her on her wedding day. “Are you,” she asks, “like so many of your uncles and great-uncles and great-great-uncles, going to remain celibate all your life?” Vernon does not answer. “We’re alone, you know,” she points out. “Mark won’t be home until suppertime.” Vernon makes no response. “Don’t you want me, Vernon?” she asks, a trifle desperately. “Am I too old for you?” Vernon can bring himself neither to nod nor shake his head. Jelena stands up. “I’m going into the bedroom,” she announces, “and I’m going to take off all my clothes and lie down on the bed.” She leaves the room. Vernon just sits there. I wish he had on that wristwatch so that we could shout at him. But perhaps he does not need it; we see him finally rise, and walk slowly to Jelena’s bedroom, where he finds her reclining on the bed, smiling at him. It is the most beautiful sight he has ever seen, and he understands it. He understands that he must quickly get out of his clothes, and does. He understands that he must climb upon the bed and suspend himself above her, and does. She takes hold of him and guides him into her; the entrance entrances him; Vernon will remember that first entrance for the rest of his life: he cannot understand how anything could be so far beyond understanding as the feeling of her warm moist interior. He sighs aloud at the wonder of it, and so does she. And as soon as he has absorbed the wonder of it, they both begin moving their hips, urgently, as if, having discovered the wonder, they are eager to find how much of it can be found. Vernon does not last long; his quaking burst paralyzes him, but she holds him to her and will not let him go, whispering a question in his ear, “How did that feel?”

Vernon studies the heuristic inquiry, and replies, “It felt…it felt like I was being turned inside out.” She laughs, and says, “That’s beautiful,” and her laughter causes her body to shake, and the shaking of her body rearouses Vernon and he begins to move again, they both again, for a longer time this time, alternately fast and slow as if searching for the right tempo, and finding it, which causes Jelena to begin to tremble, slowly at first, then uncontrollably, violently, amazing Vernon, who is more amazed by the sound that comes deep from her throat, but he seeks to understand it, and understands it, and in the understanding of it reaches his own second crisis and explosion and release.

Then they lie side by side holding one another and breathing deeply, and Jelena teases, “See what you’ve been missing all these years.” He does, but has a worry: “What if you get pregnant?” “I can’t,” she replies. “When Monty was born, I requested that the doctor tie my tubes.” “Oh,” says Vernon, “then you can do it all the time?” “All the time,” she says, hugging him tighter.

The “affair” between Vernon and Jelena, for that is what it is, continues; it is a rare day that her husband Mark is gone from home all day long, but Jelena finds excuses to get out of the house, and she and Vernon begin meeting in the woods, where they remove their clothes and cavort like animals. One day she tells him that she wants to get a divorce from Mark and marry Vernon. Divorces are unheard of in Stay More; at least we have not heard of one yet. Vernon tells her again that he loves her but he reminds her of his declaration that he will never marry. She does not understand it, but she wishes that she could live with him all the time, and not have to go on meeting him clandestinely. If they keep that up long enough they will be discovered.

And sure enough, they are discovered: Luke Duckworth, Mark’s brother, hunting squirrel in the woods, happens to spot the couple, and reports it to Mark, who does not believe it, but confronts Jelena and says, “Somebody tole me they seen you and Vernon out in the woods together without your clothes on. Tell me it aint true.” She knows she can’t go on covering it up. “It’s true,” she says. He slaps her, knocking her to the floor, kicks her, then takes his rifle and goes to Vernon’s swine processing plant and points the rifle at Vernon and says, “If you even look at Jelena again, I’ll kill you.”

Soon everybody in Stay More (there are only twenty-one people this year) knows about the affair between Vernon and Jelena, and several of Vernon’s sisters remark to him that he ought to be ashamed of himself, and his father says to him, “You’re too old for me to cut off your tallywhacker, but I got a good mind to do it anyhow.” Vernon goes to Harrison to see if his watch has been repaired; it hasn’t, so he buys paperbacks on law, psychology, archaeology and an assortment of pornography, and secludes himself with his books, until he discovers one day that there is a boy his own age in Stay More, for the first time since he was born. The boy’s name is Day Whittacker and he is accompanied by a girl who does not give her name, but who may or may not be the wife of the boy, because she is several months pregnant. The boy, who like Vernon is nineteen years old, says that they have been wandering around exploring various ghost towns, and they like Stay More, even if it isn’t completely a ghost town, and they would like to use the old yellow house if nobody else wants it, but one of the upstairs bedrooms contains a glass showcase with the dead body of a very old man in it, and they can’t very well live in the same house with a dead body. Vernon explains to them the historical significance of the dead body, and tells them that if they really want to live in the yellow house he will ask his father if they can move the body to some other place. Then Vernon remembers that his father is angry with him because of his affair with Jelena, so he says to Day Whittacker, “On second thought, let’s you and me jist move it ourself. I’ll git my truck.” He gets his truck and with Day’s help they transport the showcase back to its original location, appropriately, in the abandoned Ingledew general store.

Day Whittacker and Vernon Ingledew become good friends; they have in common not only their age but also a boundless curiosity about nature. Day Whittacker is an expert in forestry, and knows everything about wood. I have partially examined the story of his visit to Stay More in another volume; his significance in the present volume is merely that he provides Vernon Ingledew with many hours of companionship, and for that matter will continue to be Vernon’s best buddy for the rest of their lives.

Now in particular he and his wife or girlfriend or whoever she is help to divert Vernon’s attention from Jelena. Vernon tells them all that he knows of the history of Stay More, and they tell him of their adventures and exploits exploring ghost towns in Connecticut, Vermont and North Carolina. They are “tracking” the old near-hermit Dan, who had lived in all those places, and who has died, or been killed, here in Stay More. Vernon takes an interest in the story of Dan, particularly Dan’s place in the history of Stay More.

Vernon is shown something that he had not noticed before, thinking it only wallpaper: the plaster walls of Dan’s bedroom are covered with writings, in pencil: aphorisms, epigrams, mottoes, observations on nature and on human nature, including references to various Ingledews. Vernon learns, for instance, something that neither he nor his father ever knew: that the reason his grandfather Bevis Ingledew never spoke to his grandmother Emelda was not that they were not on speaking terms but that they could communicate telepathically. Bevis and Emelda are both now dead. Vernon learns also that his great-uncle Tearle, who is not dead, knows several secrets about his great-grandfather John “Doomy” Ingledew. Vernon copies all of the writings on the walls into a leather-bound journal. He becomes obsessed with the history of Stay More, and even forgets about Jelena. He searches attics. In the attic of the double-doored house of Bevis and Emelda, now abandoned, he finds a box of dozens of photographs, taken early in this Century by Eli Willard, and showing just about everybody who lived in Stay More when its population was over four hundred. In the attic of the old hotel that had been built originally as Jacob Ingledew’s trigeminal house, Vernon finds the unfinished but nearly complete manuscript of The Memoirs of Former Arkansas Governor Jacob Ingledew. He also finds there, in a trunk containing women’s old clothing, concealed beneath the clothing, eighty-nine small journals, diaries, a daily record of the existence of the Woman Whom We Cannot Name from her fourteenth year until the day of her death. He breaks open a rusted safe in the back room of the abandoned general store and finds record books which reveal all of the activities of: (1) the store, (2) the post office and (3) the fraternal organization that was at first the Free and Accepted Masons and later The Grinning and Ogling Tipplers’ Union. It is all there; the chronicle of the birth and growth and decline of Stay More is complete. Our story is, to all intents and purposes, over.

But that gold chronometer wristwatch still has to be repaired. Once again Vernon returns to Harrison, and, after buying paperbacks on genealogy, cosmology, oriental philosophy, folklore, and my three previous novels, he timidly ventures into the watch repairman’s shop, and finds the watch repairman bent over the gold chronometer, delicately making adjustments. The watch repairman looks up and says, “Just a few more minutes, and I’m done with it. But I can’t let you have it. I’ll give you a thousand dollars for it.” Sorry, Vernon says. “Two thousand,” the watch repairman offers. It’s not for sale, Vernon tells him. “Three thousand, for God’s sake,” the watch repairman offers. It’s kind of a heirloom, Vernon points out, and has no price. “Four thousand? Five? Six? You name it,” says the watch repairman. Could I have my watch, please? Vernon requests. “Well, heck, just a minute,” the watch repairman says, and finishes his adjustments and closes the case.

The watch repairman will wind up the watch, and as he does so, time will change to the future tense. The watch repairman will say, “I will have to charge you three hundred and forty-seven dollars and fifty cents for parts and repairs.” Vernon will write him a check, then he will take the watch and go home. One day, he will show the watch to his friends, Day Whittacker and his wife or girlfriend or whoever she is. He will explain to them that if he puts on the watch he will become aware of us. Then he will put on the watch. “Howdy,” he will say to us. He will indicate the couple beside him and will ask us, “Is there anything you would like to say to them?”

“Just give them our regards,” I will reply. And Vernon will give them our regards, and his own, and go on home, where he will find Jelena waiting for him. At the sight of her, he will instantly close his eyes. She will ask, “Why are your eyes closed, Vernon?” He will reply, “Mark said he’d kill me if I ever laid eyes on ye again.” “Are you afraid of him?” she will ask. “I don’t care to git shot,” he will declare, “but man to man without a gun I’m not afraid of him.” “Open your eyes, Vernon,” she will request, “I want to tell you something.” He will point out, “I don’t hear with my eyes.” “Open your eyes, Vernon, or I will go away,” she tells him. That will be what he will want her to do, and he will keep his eyes closed, and she will go away. “You numbskull,” I will tell him, after she is gone, “she wanted to inform you that her husband Mark has taken their two sons and moved to California.” “Oh,” he will say, and will run after her, but will not be able to find her. She will not be at her house, which has a “For Sale” sign on the front of it (but nobody will ever buy it). “Where is she?” he will ask us, and we could, if we would, tell him, but we must let him find her by himself. He will look all over Stay More, he will look all over this book, examining it page by page, picture by picture; he will call our attention, as if we would not know, to the architecture of the book itself: it will be architectural, and he will analyze the architecture of it, showing how the base is heavier, the upper part lighter, and how the roof is pitched, and we will be over the ridge, on the downslope of the roof. He will call our attention to something else that we will not have noticed: that there is a typographical error on page 393, a spelling error on page 144, a grammatical error on page 84 and a historical error on page 84. He will also demonstrate something else that we will not have been aware of: that the initials of the title of the book, The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks, form the acronym TAOTAO, which, he will explain, means “double Tao,” or bigeminal Tao, and for those of us who will not have known, he will point out that “Tao” means “the Way” or “the Path” and refers to a philosophy of life which may be cryptic or paradoxical but seeks to understand the basic order and creativity underlying all architecture and personality and life.

We will find this all very illuminating, but we will be more interested in whether or not he will find Jelena, and we will urge him on. He will return to the moment of her conception, on page 354 and will determine that it was Doris who was in fact her mother, so the Dorisites were right all along, and Vernon, who is a Jelenist, will cease being one and become a Dorisite, and being a Dorisite he will search all the harder for Jelena, tracing her page by page through this book; he will shed a tear over her lonely childhood and he will curse himself for having ignored her when they were growing up, and he will ask for permission to change page 400 so that when on her wedding day she asks him if he will marry her when she grows up he will be able to answer that he will, but we will not be able to grant him that permission, for what will have been done will have been done, so he will go on, turning the page, and when he turns to page 401 he will find her standing at the edge of Leapin Rock, and then he will begin running, running as hard as he has ever run, until he reaches page 419, and reaches Leapin Rock again. She will see him and say, “Don’t come near me, Vernon. I’m going to jump and you can’t stop me. If you come near me, I’m going to jump.”

“If you jump,” he will tell her, “I will jump too.”

“You will?” she will say.

He will nod.

“What reason would you have to jump?” she will want to know. “I’ve got all kinds of reasons. Mark has taken the boys and left me, and you won’t ever marry me.”

He will ask our permission to tell her that he will marry her, but we will be constrained to point out that he has firmly declared that he will never marry.

“Aint a feller got a right to change his mind?” he will ask us.

“You mean you will?” she will say.

“I wasn’t exactly talkin to you, Jelena,” he will say.

Her face will fall. But then he will say, “We could live together, couldn’t we? We don’t have to git married.” And her face will light up again, and she will move away from the precipice and embrace him, and they will make desperate love right there on top of Leapin Rock. Leapin Rock is a hard rock, but they will not seem to notice.

Walking down from the mountain, hand in hand, she will ask him, “How did you know I was up there?”

“It’s a long, long story, Jelena,” he will reply, but he will begin to tell it to her, and when he reaches the third line of page 420 she will remark, “Isn’t this wonderful?” and then she will suggest, “Vernon, let’s run away. You’ve got loads of money, haven’t you? Let’s run away, and go clear around the world, so that we can find out how much we want to stay in Stay More.”

The adventures of Vernon and Jelena in their trip around the world will perhaps furnish material for another volume, but we might notice here that Vernon will find, in an old basement bookstore in Rome, an ancient volume, whose Latin title will translate roughly as The Archaic Architecture of Arcadia; it will be expensive, but he will have, as Jelena will have observed, loads of money, and he will purchase it.

When they will have returned to Stay More after their trip around the world, he will study and learn Latin for the purpose of being able to decipher it; then he will read the volume, which will be about the architecture of a mountain village in ancient Arcadia. The author of the volume will have been a Roman writing at the time of the Decline of the Roman Empire, writing out of nostalgia because of the contrast between his life and the life of ancient Arcadia. Vernon will be amazed to discover that the book, although ostensibly architectural, will actually be about the lives of six generations of a peasant family named Anqualdou, the first of whom, Iakobus, despite being a peasant, will become provincial eparch of Arkhadia, and the last of whom, Vernealos, who will be the last of his line because the woman he will love will not be able to bear children, will discover an ancient Persian manuscript which will trace this whole process back further to a Mesopotamian cylinder cycle and thence to a sheaf of Egyptian papyruses, and on back to the beginning of language.

We don’t change much, Vernon will reflect, and will be further amazed to discover that the person of Vernealos will be himself and that the book will predict everything that will happen to him for the rest of his life. When he will realize this, he will stop reading, just at the page describing one of his epic marathon love-makings with Jelena, and he will close the book and wrap it up and mail it off to the Library of Congress with a covering letter saying the book is theirs on condition that they never let him see it. Vernon will never know what is going to happen to him in the end. He will know only that he will be the last of the Ingledews, that there will be no more, until in some distant future century this whole cycle will be repeated once again.

Being the last of the Ingledews, he will want to stay, for as more as he can. He will not want to end. On his trip around the world, he will have discovered, and been appalled at, how very little the sciences really do understand, all by and by. He will have been struck with wonder at the way mankind is using—and misusing—the resources of this earth, sucking it dry and gouging it bare of its fossil fuels while letting the energy of the sun go to waste, the energy of the wind go to waste, the energy of the tides go to waste. In the obscure illustration of this final chapter, we will at least be able to discern what seems to be a windmill, and conjecture that part of the energy for Vernon’s last domicile is furnished by wind, and we will further assume that the roofs or domes of this domicile will be wired or rigged for solar energy. In fact, Vernon will work so hard just in planning this house that the very planning itself will give him a bad case of the frakes, which will be the last case of the frakes in Newton County. No one, ever again, will have to work hard enough to get the frakes. Frakes, like the plague and smallpox and typhoid fever, will become obsolete. But Vernon will have the last case, from his labors in planning his house. Trying to cure it, he will search again all through this book for the many cases of it, and will discover that not a single one of them was ever cured. Fighting against the terrible itching and the despair that he knows will follow it, Vernon will suddenly discover the cure for the frakes.

To Jelena he will announce, “I do not have the frakes.” “But you do,” she will point out. “Yeah, but I choose to ignore them,” Vernon will say. And, ignoring them, they will go away. They will be no more. Never again will man be punished for his efforts to accomplish something.

And Vernon will accomplish something: ignoring his frakes, he will build this house. Although it will be smudged and obscure to us, it will be very real to him and to Jelena, who will live in it and love in it, for the rest of their days. Although they will enjoy their privacy, they will not be exactly recluses, for they will invite their friends, Day Whittacker and his wife or girlfriend (whose name, we will now know, is Diana Stoving) to visit them. Vernon’s sisters and their husbands will never visit, because his sisters will be ashamed that Vernon will be “living with” and “running around with” his own cousin, and because, in fact, all but one of his sisters will leave Stay More and move to California and St. Louis and Kansas City and Eureka Springs, respectively. (The population of Stay More will be only nine.) The one sister who will stay more will be Patricia, who will be Jelena’s age and will have been her best friend in childhood and who will at least speak to Jelena whenever she sees her, but who will not visit her at home. Vernon’s father will visit occasionally, because, as Hank will remark, “If a feller is crazy enough to build a house like this, I reckon I’m crazy enough to come and see it now and again.” Also Vernon’s great-uncle Tearle, the last survivor of his generation of the Ingledews, will visit occasionally, complaining, “It aint got no porch. Nobody builds a porch to set on no more.” But Jelena will have a beautiful garden bordering the cool spring that bubbles up out of the property, and there will be lawn furniture to sit on in that garden.

I will hope that on my next visit to Stay More I will be invited to sit with them in that garden. I will also hope that Vernon will be willing to discuss the architecture of his house. I will expect him to let me have a look at some of those documents he will have found. I will look forward to sampling some of that fabled Ingledew Ham. The old Ingledew General Store will be disintegrating, and I will attempt to persuade Vernon and his father to allow me to assist them in removing the glass showcase containing the body of Eli Willard and giving it a proper burial in the Stay More cemetery, for even if Eli Willard was not a Stay Moron, he will have to have a permanent resting place, with a permanent headstone, the inscription of which I will be glad to furnish.

I’m sure that Vernon will understand.

Acknowledgments

The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks is not purely a work of the imagination. Over the years I have attempted to read everything about the Ozarks that has been written, as some small consolation for not being able to go there and dwell there as long as I would like. My ancestral roots are deep in the Ozarks, and I know its people and its architecture and its traditions intimately, but I have tried to write this book with a self-imposed detachment which required a geographical detachment too. During the time of the writing of this book, I was able to visit the Ozarks on only one occasion, of one day’s duration, and the roll of film I shot that day did not develop. But here in my small room I am surrounded by books and magazines on the Ozarks, piles of photographs taken earlier, souvenirs of my childhood, letters from Ozark friends and relatives, and a mountainous landscape of notes that I obsessively write to myself. The view from my window is of a sycamore tree exactly like Noah Ingledew’s, backed by a meadow and a mountain.

Some of the more unbelievable situations and people in this novel are based upon “reality”; indeed, the more implausible or incredible an episode or person may seem to be, the more likely that true history is being imitated. For example, John Cecil was an actual person and the Battle of Whiteley’s Mill was an actual battle, fought as described here. The governor of Arkansas during Reconstruction actually was a blue-eyed Ozarks mountaineer. The woman homesteaders from the cities actually did homestead in Newton County. Of course there is an actual Newton County in the actual location of the Ozarks given, with a county seat named Jasper, and another town named Parthenon, and, as far as you and I are concerned, another town named Stay More. I would be happy to show it to you, but I feel I have.

Walter F. Lackey’s History of Newton County, Arkansas was the principle reference for this book, but I have also been influenced by the Ozark writings of Vance Randolph, Otto Ernest Rayburn, Waymon Hogue, Charles Morrow Wilson, John Gould Fletcher and many others, as well as such periodicals as The Ozarks Mountaineer.

Before writing the novel, I corresponded with many persons in the Ozarks. Mrs. Oliver Howard, reference librarian of the State Historical Society of Missouri at Columbia, was especially helpful, and her colleague, Lynn M. Roberts, editorial secretary of the Missouri Historical Review, furnished me with Xerox copies of several illustrations in their collection of Missouri Ozarks buildings, which are strikingly similar to Arkansas Ozarks buildings. Amanda Sarr of the University of Arkansas library furnished me with a complete bibliography of books and articles on Arkansas architecture, and Martha McK. Blum, graduate assistant in the University of Missouri library, did the same for Missouri architecture. I exchanged several letters with Professor Cyrus Sutherland of the Department of Architecture at the University of Arkansas, and I am grateful for his help. I also exchanged several letters with Tom Butler, a resident of Newton County, and with Day Whittacker and Diana Stoving, also residents of that enchanted county. My letters were generously acknowledged by Dorothy Doering of the Drury College library, Christopher Darrouzet of the Missouri State library, John L. Ferguson of the Arkansas History Commission, Robert E. Anderson of the School of the Ozarks library, Charles McRaven, also of the School of the Ozarks, and the anonymous librarian of the Arkansas Gazette.

In its original form, this novel was much more sexually explicit than it is now, replete with such language as “joist,” “beam,” “stud,” “timber,” “pole,” “erection,” “rear elevation,” “door,” “gable,” “sill,” “rail,” and “jamb.” I am very grateful to my editor, Llewellyn Howland iii, for persuading me to leave such things to the reader’s imagination, and I trust that the reader’s imagination has succeeded. My editor was the first person to hear of this project, the first person to encourage it, and the first person to see it when it was finished. In addition to removing certain passages, he made two other sweeping changes of an important nature.

His devoted secretary, Rosemary Gaffney, not only spent many hours making his letters to me legible and coherent, but also spent days tracking down a crucial but elusive doctoral dissertation in the archives of Harvard University. She is simply a wonderful person.

Helpful in a way they did not realize were the few people who wrote letters of appreciation for my previous volumes, and I would like to list them here: George Eades, Katherine Berry, Sandee Jo Joy, Rhode Rapp, Weld Henshaw, Juanita Melchert, Sue Anderson, Mrs. John Ingle, Gretchen Keiser, Linda Gray, Alex Humez, Sharon Karpinski, Joanna Noe, Willie Allen, John Braden, Carol Cross, Eleanor Jacobson, my two United Kingdom “fans,” Capt. Archibald A.J. Dinsmore and Gayle Harrison…and Dione, wherever you are. Without the encouragement of these good people, this book would not exist.

To my students in my architecture classes at Windham College, I am indebted for a spirited give-and-take over the years that has taught me much about architecture, and I apologize to them for never discussing the architecture treated in the present volume.

As to the chapter head illustrations, there is no point in claiming that any resemblance between these buildings and actual buildings living or dead is purely coincidental. Most of these structures no longer stand, but that fact makes them no less “real.” They stood, and that is, like all of us, what matters.

For my daughters: Jennifer, Calico, and Katy, and

my stepson Mickel, who never

heard a bedtime story like this one.

The author is very grateful to Jack Butler for a careful reading of the manuscript. He found what was good and said so; he saw what was missing and wrote it himself.

Contents

INSTAR THE FIRST: The Maiden

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

INSTAR THE SECOND: Maiden No More

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

Chapter ten

Chapter eleven

Chapter twelve

Chapter thirteen

INSTAR THE THIRD: The Rally

Chapter fourteen

Chapter fifteen

Chapter sixteen

Chapter seventeen

Chapter eighteen

Chapter nineteen

Chapter twenty

Chapter twenty-one

Chapter twenty-two

Chapter twenty-three

Chapter twenty-four

INSTAR THE FOURTH: The Consequence

Chapter twenty-five

Chapter twenty-six

Chapter twenty-seven

Chapter twenty-eight

Chapter twenty-nine

Chapter thirty

INSTAR THE FIFTH: The Woman Pays

Chapter thirty-one

Chapter thirty-two

Chapter thirty-three

Chapter thirty-four

Chapter thirty-five

INSTAR THE SIXTH: The Convert

Chapter thirty-six

Chapter thirty-seven

Chapter thirty-eight

IMAGO: The Mockroach’s Song

INSTAR THE FIRST:

The Maiden

Chapter one

One time not too long ago on a beginning of night in the latter part of May, a middle-aged gent was walking homeward along the forest path from Roamin Road to the village of Carlott, behind Holy House in the valley of Stainmoor or Stay More. The six gitalongs that carried him were rickety, and there was a meandering to his gait that gave a whole new meaning to the word Periplaneta. This wanderer gave a smart nod, as if in agreement to a command, though no one had spoken to him yet. His wings were not folded neatly across his back and were neither tidy nor black but flowzy and brownish. Presently he was met by a plump parson whose wings were very black and long and trim like the tails of a coat, and who was humming a hymn, “The Old Shiny Pin.”

“Morsel, Reverend,” said the flowzy gent, and spat, marking his space.

“Good morsel to ye, Squire John,” said the pudgy parson, and spat too.

“Now sir, beggin yore pardon,” the wanderer said, spitting again, “but we bumped inter one another last Sattidy on this path about this same time, and I said, ‘Morsel,’ same as now, and you answered me, ‘Good morsel to ye, Squire John,’ same as now, didn’t ye?”

“More’n likely I did,” said the parson, and spat.

“And seems like once before that, maybe Friday.”

“I might’ve, now ye mention it.”

“Wal, Reverend, then how come ye called me ‘Squar John,’ please tell me, when I’m plain ole Jack Dingletoon, as everbody knows?”

The fat parson strode six steps or twelve nearer. Their spaces intermingled and overlapped.

“I jist had a urr to do it,” he said. The minister’s huge eyes twinkled and his voice had an impish seriousness. “Don’t ye know, I’ve been researchin and studyin folkses pedigrees all over Stay More, if the day comes when Man shall ask of me to call the roll and account fer ever blessit one of you’uns. I’ve crope inter ever crook and nanny of town and talked to everbody about their foreparents as fur back as they can recollect. And it’ll surprise ye to learn, Squire, that you aint a Dingletoon atter all. Nossir, ‘Dingle-toon’ is jist the way that one of yore ancestors long ago got in the way of mispronouncin ‘Ingledew.’”

Jack Dingletoon pondered this. “Naw!” he remarked. “You don’t mean to tell me!”

“Shore as I’m astandin here,” said the parson, and requested, “Tilt up yore jaws thataway, Squire, and let me look at yore face. Yes, that’s the Ingledew touchers and sniffwhips, I’d bet on ’em, a little adulterated, ye might say, no harm meant, please sir. Why, you’re descended from ole Squire Jacob Ingledew hisself, the first rooster-roach to set gitalong in this valley.”

“So’s everbody else, aint they?” Jack observed.

“Wal, not edzackly,” declared Brother Tichborne, for that was his name, and he was no descendant of Jacob Ingledew himself, but of relative newcomers generations later, who were Manfearing Crustians without any record of incest. “As fur as I kin figger, the Dingletoons was a branch what broke off from the Ingledews way back afore the time of Joshua Crust Hisself. You know, the Lord Joshua weren’t no kin of the Ingledews, and matter of fack He prophesied the Ingledews would wester off from the face of the earth, jist lak they been a-westerin. Not on account of the sin of incest, though, but on account of the sin of pride.”

Jack Dingletoon chuckled. “Wal, we couldn’t be no kin of the Ingledews nohow. We aint never had nothin to be proud of.”

Brother Tichborne smiled in agreement. “You shore aint. But maybe the Dingletoons has got jist as much right as the Ingledews to dwell in Partheeny.”

Jack snorted, but all six of his gitalongs tingled. “Haw! That’d be the day, us a-movin inter Partheeny, or even Holy House. That would be the day!” He moved closer and lowered his voice, although no one was eavesdropping except a quartet of crooning katydids and some grazing roly-polies. “Preacher, how long has this news about me been knowed? Have the Ingledew squars been told I’m their kin?”

“Nossir,” said the parson, “nary a soul but me and you knows it.” He explained that he had come across the information while interviewing old Granny Stapleton, virtually deaf, deprived of both her sniff-whips and near west from arthritis but still possessed of exceptional memory. Brother Tichborne had a great talent for separating history from legend and tall tale, and had been able to determine from Granny’s information that the Dingletoons were indeed long-ago scions of the Ingledews. “At first when I heared it, I tole myself, wouldn’t be no sense in passin it along to ye, nohow,” said the parson. “The knowin of it aint got the power of itself to rain down morsels upon ye. But I figgered it won’t do ye no harm neither to know it. Maybe it could uplift yore spirit and take the hump outen yore back.”

Jack Dingletoon involuntarily straightened his pronotum, elevating his shoulders and even his head. His large kidney-shaped eyes seemed to moisten, and the tips of his wings trembled. “Preacher,” he declared solemnly, “that is the best news ever I learned in all my born days. Jist wait till I tell Josie! Won’t her eyes pop outen her skull! But first, let’s us me and you go celebrate with a little drap of brew. Reckon they’d let me inter the cookroom if they knowed I was a Ingledew?”

“Thanks jist the same, Squire John, but I reckon I’d better not,” declined the minister, not from any scruples against intoxicants but from a reluctance to mingle with the frequenters of the cookroom’s beer cans, scarcely a Crustian among them. “I’d best be gittin on back to the Frock.”

“Don’t ye reckon they’d let me jine ’em in the beer can if I was to tell ’em I’m a Ingledew?” Jack Dingletoon repeated with less confidence.

“You could try,” Brother Tichborne allowed. “But more’n likely they wouldn’t believe you. Best not let yore knowin of yore own name git ye inter lordliness. Have you ever tried to enter Holy House afore?”

“Course not,” Jack declared. “But if you was to go with me…”

“Not tonight, thank ye, Squire John,” said Brother Tichborne, and turned to resume his journey. “Say hidy to Josie for me. And a long good night to ye.” The obese parson hitched up his gitalongs and skittered off into the darkness.

Jack walked on, six, nine or eighteen steps in a profound reverie before lowering himself down upon the substratum, beneath some towering grasses silhouetted against the moon, and gave himself over to consideration of the significance of being an Ingledew, not a mere Dingletoon. The whole world was changed. The night was twelve shades of blue now, and thirteen shades of ultraviolet, and the air was beginning to fill with lightning bugs. Within range of Jack’s sniffwhips and eyes a lady lightning bug was perched upon the end of a blade of grass, testing and fine-tuning her lantern. Jack paid her no mind although his ocelli twitched at each neon flash of her summons. Choral groups of katydids were serenading in four-part harmony; here and there a cricket could be heard warming up his instrument of challenge, and in the distance sounded a background of countless Hylae peeping and piping.

The peepers were a variety of frog, mortal predators upon any roosterroach who came near them. The music of the night had its ominous overtones and also its discordant noises: somewhere nearby a huge nightcrawler worm was laboring noisily uphill with many shiftings of gears, backfirings, and faulty rumblings in its transmission. It was sending out signals: “BREAKER ONE OH. DO YOU READ? HOW-BOUTCHA, BIG MAMA? UP THIS HUMP HUNTIN FOR BEAVER LOOKIN FOR A NAP TRAP AND GOTTA LOG SOME Z’S. PEELIN OFF? TEN TWENTY? GIVE A SHOUT.” Lost in thought, Jack ignored the worm, whose language was not in his ken, anyway. From some distant rise another worm answered: “TEN FOUR AND BODACIOUS, GOOD BUDDY. WHAT’S YOUR HANDLE, BUFFALO? ROGER ROLLER SKATE. ONE FOOT ON THE FLOOR, ONE HANGIN OUT THE DOOR, AND SHE JUST WON’T DO MORE. SIXTY-NINE? STACK THEM EIGHTS. WE GONE.”

Jack lowered his sniffwhips and his tailprongs, tucking them all beneath him so that he was no longer confused by the flowering cacophony of sounds and scents, the strident bloom of seeking odors, the yearning blare of efflorescing aromas, the redolent reek of craving commotions, the purple smell of boisterous desires, the lascivious essences of unfolding tones, the rank voices and perfumes of swollen lust.

Although he tuned out the sounds and scents, he could not avoid the spectacle of two katydids mating right in the road beside him, fork-tailed Scudderiae scudling in the dust to the tune of the male’s continuing lavender croon: “Tzeet, baby! Tzek, baby! Oh, tzuk, baby, yeah, yeah!”

Jack had already had, beginning at the crack of dusk, an immoderate dose of Chism’s Dew, the fermented essence of honeydew, scorned by serious drinkers as nothing but rotgut. All his life he had craved a sample of the genuine beer that was a feature of life in Holy House, beyond his reach and station, but he had never even tried to enter Holy House, let alone the cookroom beer cans there, although the cookroom was full of holes and he could have crept through any of them. Now, with the aid of the nerve given him by Chism’s Dew, he might pass through one of those holes and, if accosted and challenged, declare, “Boys, have I got news fer you’uns! I aint a Dingletoon but a Ingledew!” Wouldn’t they jump, if they believed him? If they believed him….

The copulating katydids had flounced jointly on down the trail out of sight, and were replaced by a young roosterroach swain skittering along and whistling “Down in the Arkansas.”

Jack Dingletoon raised his sniffwhips, lashed them back and forth, and called out, “Hey, sonny, come here.”

The lad stopped, turned his head, twitched his tailprongs, flicked his own sniffwhips with considerably more alacrity than Jack could muster, and replied, “Wal, look who’s tryin to boss me around! Why onch you come here, ole Jack?”

Jack did not budge. “I ast ye fust, boy. And don’t ye call me ‘ole Jack’. I’m Squire John Ingledew, boy, and I aint askin you to come here, I’m a-tellin ye to.”

“You and who else, Jack Orv Dingletoon?” the youth taunted, spat, and tossed his head. “Drunk as per usual, I see. Who’d ye say you was?”

Jack drew himself erect, and for a brief moment rose up on his hind gitalongs in the mantis-threat stilt walk, causing the pre-imago adolescent to cower and turn as if to flee. “Now you lissen a me, Freddy Coe! If you know what’s good fer ye, you’ll pay me some mind and not give me no more of yer sass. I’m a Ingledew, boy, and Master of the Cosmos! I’m a cousin of Squire Sam Ingledew or maybe even his half-uncle! Don’t ye know I got the power?” Jack swished his sniffwhips across each other and hoped for some phenomenon to occur to give proof to his power. He hoped the dark blue sky would suddenly fill with lightning. Or that the Great White Mouse would come into view. Or that at least all the sounds of the spring night would join to play the Purple Symphony. But instead, as very ill luck would have it, a centipede suddenly appeared, Scutigeria forceps, scooting forcibly up the trail in search of prey. This centipede, or Santa Fe, as they call it in the Ozarks, had only twenty-eight gitalongs, not a hundred, but its fangs were already dripping with the deadly poison that kills roosterroaches in an instant.

Poor Freddy Coe was so paralyzed with fear that his six gitalongs lost their automatic escape response and he stood there trembling and screaming. I’m a gone rooster, Jack Dingletoon told himself, thinking how briefly he had been allowed to enjoy the pleasure of being an Ingledew before his wretched life was snuffed out by this dragon of a Santa Fe. He felt the multigitalonged monster’s sniffwhips already singling him out for special attention. What would Squire Hank Ingledew do in such a situation? Pray? No, everybody knew Squire Hank and all the Ingledews neither feared nor worshipped Man. My number is up, Jack realized, as he braced himself for the Santa Fe’s fatal lunge. Instinctively he rose again into the mantis posture, a poor sham which wouldn’t fool a Santa Fe even if centipedes were afraid of mantises. This Santa simply smirked with evil mirth and opened its forceps wide. So long, cruel world, Jack said to the cruel world, and prepared for his west.

But in the split instant that the centipede lunged, Squire John Orval Ingledew, without stopping to remember how to unfold and flap his forewings let alone his hindwings (the prescutal process laterally projects close to the tegula which lies medial to the base of the remigium of the wings), took to the air! As if in awe (or was it only the beating of his wings?) the air was filled with the strains of the Purple Symphony in triumphant prelude almost out of keeping with the clumsiness of his blast-off.

He knew he could not maintain the flight for very long, two seconds at best, but he was out of reach of the fatal fangs of the centipede, who did not even pause to register disappointment before diverting its attention to Freddy Coe, still quivering and howling in abject cowardice and terror. Jack’s joy at his own escape was tinged with pity for poor Freddy, who had no wings yet and could neither fly nor flee. But Miz Coe had eleven more just like him in her brood and she might not even notice him missing. He was a snotty kid, no loss to anyone.

Then—he must have been hearing the voices of his brave Ingledew ancestors castigating him—Jack suddenly felt dastardly and selfish, shamed and debased, and he used the last ounce of his flight’s energy to divebomb the Santa Fe’s neck, where he got a good hold and took a good bite and then kicked free from the wildly thrashing gitalongs. He had not really hurt the Santa Fe, but he had scared the shit out of it, and it was beating a quick retreat, leaving a shower of feces in its wake. It disappeared into the forest of the tall grass.

“Now that,” he said to Freddy, “is the way a true Ingledew orter handle the situation.”

Freddy was speechless for a long moment before he could say, “Holy Locust! Squire John, you’re a wizard! I reckon you really are a Ingledew, aint you?”

Chapter two

No, thought Brother Tichborne, as he approached a choice orifice punctured into the wooden wall of Holy House, beyond which he could no longer hear nor smell the scene of Jack, Freddy, and the Santa Fe, that feller aint any more a Ingledew than I am, so why did I have to go and tell him he was?

He had wanted to get Jack Dingletoon to enter Parthenon, that was why, to get him to penetrate that stronghold of irreligious Ingledews who did not even bow down and worship the Woman who lived there. The Reverend Tichborne had seen Her more than once, from afar, or from not any closer than the front yard of Her house, upon the porch of which She sometimes sat at dusk, after Her supper, the leavings of which, if any, were bestowed only upon those two lucky Ingledews who were the squires of Stay More, just as Ingledews had always been squires since the beginning of time, although, true to the Lord Joshua Crust’s prophecy, they were now fast disappearing, and only two remained: Squire Hank and his son, Squire Sam.

It simply wasn’t fair that those two should have Parthenon all to themselves, as if it were a royal castle. All of the other houses of Stay More had been abandoned by Man, except of course for Holy House, where Brother Tichborne made his residence along with most of the other quality roosterroaches of Stay More, who were reduced to fighting each other for the residues of Man’s table (as well as of His bed, His cheer-of-ease, or wherever else He chose to sit and eat). Brother Tichborne thought it a terrible irony that the Ingledews had the exclusive right to whatever morsels were left by the Woman in Parthenon, although they never prayed to Her. The Ingledews were not only atheists, but it was also commonly known that our Lord Joshua Crust had been pinnified by a person of the Ingledew name, a human person. We all take our names from Man.

We take our names from Man, who is our rock and our salvation, although His wrath is great and unceasing. Man had a habit of routinely taking up and firing a revolver at the roosterroaches who dwelt in His house, with westerly accuracy depending on how much He had had to drink. Other ministers before Brother Tichborne had determined that this shooting and westering of chosen roosterroaches was both a form of punishment and an expression of Man’s love, and therefore the shooting, or the act of being shot, was called not a westering but a Rapture.

There are two forms of Rapture, good Crustians believe: there is the instant Rapture of the bullet from Man, which is a guarantee that one will live upon the right hand of Man in the sweet heaven of the hereafter; but there is also the promise of the Rapture after The Bomb, when Man will lift the righteous off the floor and give them eternal life. The good Crustians will be raptured, but the faithless will perish in that holocaust and go to Hell. Hell, as everyone knows and fears, is a place of work. Unless we are righteous and obey the Lord’s commandments, we will find ourselves in Hell, the dominion of the Mockroach, hard at work.

The bullets which Man fired to rapture the chosen Crustians always pierced the floor as well, the wall, the ceiling, a door, or a windowpane of the house, which was called Holy House because of all these holes. Each new hole created a new entrance for more roosterroaches, but it was not permissible for any “furrin” rooster-roach to enter Holy House. Each hole also created drafts, and this past winter had been terrible, causing even Man Himself to take to stronger drink than beer.

If there was any consolation for Brother Tichborne in the gross injustice of the overpopulation of Holy House and underpopulation of Parthenon, it was that the Woman was such a fastidious keeper of Her cookroom and table that rarely did a crust or crumb fall from her table, lap, plate, pan, countertop, or mouth corner. Our Man of Holy House, by contrast, bestowed upon the multitudes a great continuous feast of crusts and crumbs, to say nothing of the countless dregs of beer that kept most Holy Housers nearly as intoxicated as Man Himself. Brother Tichborne was old enough to observe that Man’s use of beer, and of the more poisonous bourbon, was increasing.

The ways of Man are inscrutable. Man giveth, and Man taketh away. Blessed be the Name of Man (though Brother Chidiock Tichborne, who had a fine old name himself, had to admit that he did not know the name of his Man, nor of the Woman either).

Such were his thoughts as he climbed the pier of native fieldstone stacked into a cube which supported one corner, the southeastern, of the abandoned room of Holy House, a room containing a hodgepodge of relics, junk, castoff effects of generations of Man who had inhabited the house. Among this detritus was a heavy and crumpled frock coat, single-breasted, of black alpaca, narrow lapels, three pockets, which still bore traces of the sacred aroma of the sweat of some Man who had worn it an eon ago, possibly before the time of Joshua Crust. Chidiock Tichborne and his fifteen brothers and sisters had been born inside the folds of this frock. He had spent his first instar exploring the smooth lining of Italian cloth, playing hide-and-seek with his siblings through the tunnels of the sleeves, and visiting with other children who lived in the pockets and beneath the tails, for this frock coat had been home and birthplace not just to several generations of Tichbornes but to the Murrisons, the Chisms, the Duckworths, the Plowrights and other fine families of Stay More who, because they lived closest to the cookroom—much closer than the closet-dwelling roosterroaches who lived in an old smock, not a frock—were the higher strata of society in the village, the most prosperous, and, Brother Tichborne would have you know, the most devout, Crustlike, Manfearing, and faithful.

All of Stay More had only one minister, and this was Brother Tichborne.

Brother Tichborne returned home to the frock from his “gloaming constitutional,” as he called it, to find that his wife, Ila Frances, had risen and started breakfast for herself and their children.

“Morsel, Sister Tichborne,” the minister greeted his wife, whom he was wont to address formally. He wished she would do the same, but:

“Mors, Chid,” she said. “What-all’s the news out yander in the world?”

“Hit’s purty nice and fair, the night a-comin on,” he observed. “Six zillion stars out and up.”

“Only six?” she said. “Last night they was seven.”

“Paw, kin we go to the play-party tonight, us younguns?” requested Archy, one of their sons, past his imago, and indicating himself and his siblings, mostly identical brothers.

“Naw, Archibald,” the minister said. “They’s liable to be dancin at thet there play-party.”

“Aw, we kin jist watch,” Archy declared.

Mrs. Tichborne suggested, “They kin keep their sisters out of trouble.”

“Shore, I reckon,” said Archy. “We kin watch out for our sisters.”

“No dancin,” said Brother Tichborne wearily. “None of y’uns do no dancin.”

The dozen-odd Tichborne offspring sprang away from breakfast—the boys skittled away, while the girls flittered away.

Alone together, Brother and Sister Tichborne discussed their plans for the night. Sister Tichborne wanted to go visit her sister, who was married to a Smockroach. Brother Tichborne considered going with her; it would be an opportunity to convert a few of the Smockroaches. His ambition, if he lived long enough, if Man’s bullets did not rapture him and send him west, was to convert everyone into Crustians…even the Ingledews, whose domicile, Parthenon, he wanted to consecrate to Crustianity.

But tonight there was a more pressing chore: Chid Tichborne needed to plan and rehearse his next Sunday prayer meeting and worship service, which, for the first time, he intended to conduct right in the presence of Man, right at Man’s feet, as it were. This bold move would be sure to convert some of the faithless.

And when he had made those preparations, he had better drop in on that play-party, just to make sure that the young folks were behaving themselves….

Chapter three

Sam Ingledew preferred crusts to crumbs, especially when it was crust of Brie, Camembert or Boursin; when it was crust of pretzel or waffle or éclair; when it was crust of brownie or macaroon or ladyfinger; his favorite of all edibles was apple fritter. The crust of beignet aux pommes was the measure of its quality: he could not conceive of a good beignet without a thoroughly crispy crust.

But he was not a Crustian, not in the devotional sense. Certainly he believed that there had existed in ancient Stay More a certain roosterroach with the name of Joshua, who was called the Crust, and Sam was even ready to accept the possibility that this Joshua Crust had been impaled upon a pin by a Man, or Manchild, who had had the venerable Stay More family name of Ingledew. But Sam could not accept the commonly held belief that the roosterroach Joshua was the son of Man, any more than he could accept the idea that roosterroach Ingledews were descended from human ones. Enough, that we adopt the names and ways of Man; too much, that we should claim biological lineage.

By temperament as well as by residence, Sam felt removed from the battles between Crustians and non-Crustians, Frockroaches and Smockroaches. Holy House was a world away, although the two buildings were only a couple of furlongs from each other, at opposite ends of the Roamin Road, which had been the Main Street of the village of Stay More when Stay More was still being proliferated by Ingledews, human and roosterroach alike. Sam’s father, Squire Hank Ingledew, loved to talk of the old days, although Squire Hank himself had never known them, nor had Hank’s immediate grandsires or great-grandsires, all the way back to Isaac Ingledew, who had led the roosterroaches into exile during the generations when Stay More had been totally abandoned by Man.

Ingledews had always been leaders, long before the time of Joshua, and if Sam did not feel inclined to lead anyone, it was because he had even less taste for politics than for religion. A philosopher, an epicure, a naturalist, and a bon vivant, he felt that he was a stranger to the folkways of his kindred. He was a cosmopolite in a world of rustics.

And unless he got busy and overcame his shyness and found a girlfriend, he was the last of the Ingledews. His father, Squire Hank, though still physically powerful, was psychologically impotent and would never again sire offspring. Sam had no brothers and sisters. When his mother had laid the ootheca which had been his prelife capsule, her easteregg, she had slipped away from his father and climbed the mantel above the unused fireplace in the Woman’s bedroom. She had entered this very Clock and deposited her easteregg carefully in one corner, far from the slow gnashing of the Clock’s gears and the swinging of its pendulum, safe from any spiders or scorpions. It was her third easteregg of the season; the other two had entirely failed to hatch.

An ootheca hatches through the combined simultaneous and spontaneous inhalation and exhalation of its fourteen to sixteen inhabitants. Sam remembered—it was his first memory—the awful effort of sucking in and puffing out his abdomen, which failed to crack the crust of the ootheca, failed to hatch the easteregg, and the panic when he realized that the other fifteen “passengers” in the ootheca were not helping because they were west, or rather had not succeeded in eastering. They were stillborn, all of them, and Sam would have been also, despite his frantic and most desperate efforts, had not the Clock exclaimed “SUGARPLUM!” and begun striking seven times with such noise and vibration that the sound alone seemed to rupture the ootheca’s case and release him, squalling in fright and singing in triumph in the same breath, into this life.

His mother had not crusted him “Sam”; that was not his “real” name. There were no Ingledews of any generation, human or roosterroach, with that given name, nor with the name his mother actually gave him, which has been forgotten, even by him (she had been west, lo, since Sam was in his fourth instar and an infestation of the cockroach mite, Pimeliaphilus podapolipophagus, carried her off). She had crusted him with a special name symbolic of the season in which he was born.

“When ye git growed up,” she had explained, “when ye reach yore imago, you can call yoreself anything you like. Names is sorta sniffwhips on the front of yore face. You can wave ’em about, and use ’em to find yore way around in this world, and keep ’em clean all the time, and ye can touch things with ’em, and talk to other folkses with ’em, and all such as thet, but a given name is jist a sniffwhip.”

So in his maturity—he was no longer young, but had lived a full circuit of the earth around the sun—he had dropped his Crustian name and chosen to call himself Gregor Samsa Ingledew, the full meaning of which was known, or appreciated, only by himself. How he learned the significance of it is one of those mysteries as puzzling as the fact that every roosterroach is born with all the knowledge that he needs to get him through to his west.

When the Clock conspired with his mighty efforts to crack the case of his easteregg and he found himself alone with fifteen stillborn siblings on the floor of the Clock, he had no mother to care for him. She was somewhere down below, or in another part of Parthenon, where his infant cries could not reach her. No roosterroach mother can know the instant her easteregg hatches unless she keeps constant watch on it. Few do.

He found himself alone and hungry and ignorant of his strange surroundings, the wheeling gears and meshing cogs and the swinging pendulum, the clacking rack and bobbing cock and ticking deadbeat escapement. He thought the Clock was his mother, but her mechanisms did not quite fit his imprinted genetic memory, and when he tried to talk with her in her own language—rapid clacking verbs, clittering adjectives, thrumming nouns, with tinkling commas, dingling periods, and bonging exclamation points, she would not respond to him. When she said “FONDUE!” he repeated her exactly, but she ignored him. For three days, he went hungry. His first night’s absolute whiteness, which frightened him, as if he were a ghost of himself, mellowed into amber, and then into tan. He prowled the length of the mantelshelf, greatly intimidated by the heights. He considered eating one of his stillborn siblings, for nothing is tastier to a rooster-roach than a westered embryo, but somehow he understood that the toothsome delight under consideration was his sister.

One night (he kept to the darkest corner of the Clock whenever there was a bit of light), he saw the Woman. She stood near the mantelpiece, near enough for his sniffwhips to detect with ravenous recognition what She held in Her hands—in one hand a glass of milk, in the other hand an Oreo, that fabled delectation of chocolate crumbs. He knew She must be his mother, although She looked even less like a mother roosterroach than the Clock did. He felt an overpowering filial love for Her, which was a love not merely for the food She was bringing to him but for Her great beauty; for the golden waves of hair spread upon Her shoulders as white as his own body had lately been, for the surpassing sweetness of Her face, for the grace with which She moved, for the dulcet tones with which She created words—“Now is this Friday? Or is it Saturday? Why, yes, I do believe it’s Saturday.”

Baby Sam returned the words: “Why, yes, I do believe it’s Saturday.” But She, like the Clock, ignored him. She did not even see him. Nor did She give him any of the food which She was bearing. She set the glass of milk down on the mantelshelf and abruptly opened the glass door on the face of the Clock, startling him into withdrawal further back in the shadows. With the hand that had held the milk She steadied the Clock, and with the other hand, the hand that held the Oreo, She stuck a key into the Clock face and began to wind it. The Clock made new sounds that Sam had not heard before, the scritching of the key, the spranging of the spring being tightened.

She turned and turned the key, and in the long course of this labor a tiny corner of the Oreo She held crumbled off and fell to the floor of the Clock.

This minute fragment of Oreo sustained young Sam for over a week, until his true mother arrived and led him down from the Clock and into the world and began explaining to him all the things he did not understand.

She explained to him that certain things are “not nice.” For example, it is not nice to vomit your food while others are watching. “Gobble yore food, but puke in solitude,” was one of her many maxims. Although it is acceptable to speak of discharges from the front end as “puke,” it is not acceptable to speak of discharges from the rear end by any of the numerous scatological words that many roosterroaches, particularly males, employ daily. It is better to speak of “making water,” or “going out” or “going out to see how high the moon is,” or even “heading for the john to do number two.”

Above all, his mother explained, it is not nice, ever, to use the word “cockroach.” The simple reason is that “cock” is one of the unmentionable words for either the male generative organ or the female receptacle of same, depending on who uses either, the word or the organ. His mother called his organ a tallywhacker, and he knew what she meant and wished she would drop the subject, it embarrassed him so. In his sixth instar, just before his imago, Sam learned of the Spanish word cucaracha, which is the origin of the English “cockroach,” and has nothing to do with the male member or even male chickens, but in Stay More nobody with any decency would ever say “cockroach,” nor would they speak of cock in any form, such as cockeyed, cocksure, coxcomb, let alone peacock, and it was best to avoid any utterance of pecker, dick, peter, jemmison, prick, root, ducey, dinger, dood, yingyang, tool, goober, horn, rhubarb, okra or even penis.

Why this prudery? Being already possessed of the uncommon wisdom of the Ingledews, which he refined through countless hours of meditation, Sam Ingledew understood in time that the essential reason for all sexual modesty is to give sex mystery, without which it would be dull, commonplace, obligatory, and uninviting. Modesty makes sex hard-to-get and therefore challenging, and therefore worthy of all one’s waking obsessions and half of one’s dreams. If it were otherwise, the generations would not generate.

“Roosterroach” seemed ludicrous to Sam when it was applied to a female of his species, but, he supposed, no more ludicrous than “cockroach” itself. The female “cock,” he learned from his childhood companions, was called the twat, snatch, pussy, twitchet, moosey, monkey, or simply cunt, a word which his mother, first making him take a bite of a rancid bar of soap after he uttered it, told him should always be replaced by “gillyclicker,” the feminine equivalent of tallywhacker. “Gillyclicker” sounded forbidding and mechanical to Sam, but was still better than gonapophyses, which is unpronounceable.

Sam had to chew soap whenever he spoke the wrong word. When he simply misused a word, he was sniffwhipped. On penalty of a severe sniffwhipping, he was told never to use the shortened “roach” as a substitute for “roosterroach,” as Man does, because properly speaking a roach is a small, silvery freshwater fish, Rutilus rutilus, and in its several slang associations it means such things as a roll of hair, or the cut on the edge of a boat’s sail, or the butt of a marijuana cigarette—a form of “roach” which Sam’s mother once took him on a long jaunt to the edge of Stay More to examine, from a safe distance: it was still smoldering upon the ground, and its faint smoke, if allowed to enter one’s spiracles, would make one drunker than Chism’s Dew. “Now, son, that is a ‘roach,’” his mother had said, “unless you ever see the fish kind of roach, which will eat ye quicker’n ye can git word to Man. So don’t never let me hear you say ‘roach’ when you mean us. Us is always ‘roosterroach.’”

When Sam’s mother westered, he properly grieved for two days, staying awake all during the daylight to mourn, and then he had no further maternal instruction to digest or injunction to obey. His loneliness sometimes compelled him to leave his Clock, whence he had returned to live alone during his fifth instar, and venture out into Stay More to attempt the cultivation of other boys his age, but because he was an Ingledew and destined to be a squire, and because he lived in Parthenon two furlongs away from all the other youth of Stay More, and because he was by nature “different” from other pre-imago roosterroaches his age, he did not succeed in finding a best friend, and the extent of his acceptance by his peers into the youth culture was his learning a few bawdy jokes and bits of gossip about various girls, and learning the practice the boys called “jacking off,” which involved a complicated manipulation of one’s tallywhacker with one’s hind gitalong.

“Jacking off,” a substitute for the act of mating with a female, caused a spermatophore to burst forth from the endophallus with a high degree of physical and emotional pleasure. A favorite game of the hot-blooded imago males of Stay More involved using the ejaculated spermatophores as small, maneuverable spheres in a contest of sniffwhip dexterity within a circle drawn in the dirt; one’s own spermatophore was one’s “shooter,” and the object of the game was to shoot and capture the other spermatophores. The game was known as “marbles.”

When he reached the age of imago, Sam indulged in the game of marbles whenever he could find a group playing it, and sometimes he played it alone, by himself, producing marble after marble, and he scorned those Crustians who claimed that the game was sinful, wicked, and could cause one to lose all one’s marbles, or to go deaf, or blind, or to have hair grow on the sides of one’s sniffwhips.

When he began to lose his hearing, he thought that he had been wrong, the Crustians right, but he learned that none of the other players of marbles were losing theirs. Maybe the other players never played alone, by themselves, as he did. Maybe it really was sinful to play with yourself, and it worried him to the extent that he quit playing the game alone, then quit playing it with others. But still his hearing grew worse.

Although he told no one, it was very difficult to conceal the fact that he was nearly deaf. More and more he kept to himself and to his Clock. In time he had no friends among the Smockroaches or the Frockroaches. He was the Clockroach, and he could still hear the striking of the Clock. But he missed, he sorely missed, being able to hear the Woman. All of the months of his growing up, he had listened to Her. She talked to Herself. Much of what She said to Herself he could not understand, but most of it he was able to figure out, and Sam felt that he probably knew Her better than any other creature knew Her, certainly better than Man knew Her.

Once in a while She talked not to Herself but to a black hard plastic device shaped like an oversized ant, which usually rested upon the back of another black hard plastic device shaped like an oversized beetle. Somehow a person’s voice, another Woman, or, very rarely, a Man, spoke through this device to Her. Usually She spoke back to it, and Sam, before he lost his hearing, could listen to the conversation.

But often She simply twiddled a dial on the beetle and then listened without speaking. Before his hearing began to fail him, Sam had heard a number of these lectures, or whatever they were. A voice would say, “You have dialed Tel-Med program number 147, ‘The Lady Living Alone.’ Through choice or necessity, many women choose to live by themselves. This can result in medical problems as well as social problems. We want to talk to you about them.”

Part of Sam’s education, before his hearing began to go, was to eavesdrop on these Tel-Med programs. More than once he had heard Number 42, “I’m Just Tired, Doctor”; Number 693, “Weight Control While Quitting Smoking”; Number 694, “Why a Woman Should Quit Smoking”; Number 6, “Breast Cancer”; Number 323, “Are You Afraid of the Dentist?”; Number 35, “Understanding Headaches”; and Number 728, “When Should I See a Psychiatrist?”

The last program that Sam heard clearly, a month or so before his hearing went, was Number 945, “So You Love an Alcoholic?”

Chapter four

As for Carlott, it was…well, the most charitable thing to be said for Carlott is that it was the most natural of environments, but even that is arguable if we agree that the true native habitat of the roosterroach is the household of Man, within Man’s providence, bounty, and grace. It was a rare day indeed when a Carlotter tasted any food provided by Man.

All roosterroaches are scavengers in the best sense, not of feeding on westered or decaying organic matter, but of cleaning up the leftovers carelessly neglected by other creatures, Man chief among them. But three hundred and fifty million years before Man climbed down out of trees and learned to cook, roosterroaches were finding something to eat.

The residents of Carlott, though most of them were Crustians and believers in Man, lived on what they could find in the forests, fields, and yard behind and beside Holy House. They never entered Holy House except by invitation from their kinfolk among the Frockroaches and Smockroaches. The Carlott community took its name from the circumstance that its dwellings—rotten logs, hollows in trees and in limbs, concavities beneath old boards and metallic junk—were centered around the rusting hulk of an inoperable automobile, a Ford Fairlane of ancient vintage which was said to have delivered Man to Holy House but was no longer used, and a still operable Ford Torino of more recent manufacture, which Man occasionally drove away and returned in, parking it beside the older car in a small yard in the rear of Holy House. The chassis of the older car was also inhabited by a large nest of Polistes annularis, the paper wasp, who was strictly a daytime creature and never bothered the roosterroaches.

The family Dingletoon, of whom Jack was paterfamilias, occupied a hollow fallen limb or branch of maple on the weed-forested side of Carlott, within sight of the great ruin of the edifice known as the Three-Hole Privy, long ago abandoned entirely by Man, and the exact purpose of which remains a mystery to modern rooster-roaches, although legends abound, particularly concerning the ancient victuals provided there. Jack Dingletoon remembered as a child hearing Gramp Dingletoon tell wondrous tales of how generation upon generation of Dingletoons were sustained and even nourished by the edibles provided in the cellars of the Privy.

But Tish Dingletoon, Jack’s eldest daughter still at home, had not cared for these stories of the Privy food; the stories she picked up from her girlfriends concerned the viands available at Holy House and the rumors of incredibly delectable treats consumed at Parthenon, or Partheeny, as it was pronounced. Tish had never tasted a Twinkie, and could scarce imagine it. She was tortured by descriptions of bismarcks, fritters, crullers, Saratogas, danish, and doughnuts glazed, raised, and jellied. The closest she had ever come to sampling any of these was a bit of white fluff given her by a Smockroach swain, Jim Tom Dinsmore, who said it was “Wonder Bread.” Tish had suspected that Jim Tom was simply preparing her with an appetizer, as it were, to entice her to taste the affy-dizzy of his tergal gland, a forbidden and dangerous potion.

Her mother had taught her always to resist the temptation to lick affy-dizzy, as the exudate of the male tergal gland was called. Some of her girlfriends had tasted it, but Tish had not. To reach it, you practically had to climb up on the boy’s back, beneath his wings, and if you did that, he had you where he wanted you, and might make you take one of his marbles. Taking a marble was supposed to be a right smart of fun, but it also meant you’d soon have to carry a big easteregg sticking out of your rear end for several days before you could drop it somewhere.

Tonight would be a dance. Now as the near woods and the far fields and even the impossibly distant mountainsides began to echo with both the sound and smell of the Purple Symphony, from every covert cranny and hidden nook of Carlott, and down from the holes of Holy House too, crept forth dozens of maiden rooster-roaches, who gathered into two long parallel snaking lines, sniffwhips to one another’s tail-prongs, end to end, two by two, side by side, and began to promenade all over the glens and glades of Stay More, stepping, nearly prancing, in tune to both the smells and the sounds of the symphony.

Some of the girls in this double processional tapped their abdomens to the ground to keep a beat for the others to march to; all of them held their heads high and swung their sniffwhips rhythmically to and fro in the air, and their tailprongs from side to side. Their numbers made them into one giant centipede, nay, a millipede, and the authority that towers in numbers frightened off any predator as well as any harmless creature that might stand in the path of this great undulating chain of femininity. Crickets and katydids alike leapt frantically out of their way, and nightcrawlers plowed off the road and into the median strip with cries of “MAYDAY!” and “THIRTY? THREE!” and “BLOOD BOX!” A great warty toad, Bufo americanus, who ordinarily would have made a meal out of several of these girls at one lick, westered of heart failure. Some of the girls giggled at the sight of his hammy legs in the air, still kicking in west.

The night, and the air, and the music, not to mention the calendar, conspired to make each of these virginal roosterroaches broadcast her own personal perfume, until the downdrifting dew was thoroughly saturated with pheromones, irresistibly sensual, and the mingling of these vampish vapors seeped into every lair of Carlott and hole of Holy House, and even as far away as Parthenon, and all the male roosterroaches banged their heads against the walls of their hiding places in an effort to give themselves the willpower to keep their tergal glands from leaking all their affy-dizzy. For these maidens were only teasing with their powerful pheromones; they did not mean business; they were not ready for mating…yet. The long double chain wound and wound around the hollers and hummocks of the little village.

In certain isolated coves of the Ozark Mountains, up until the most recent times, the folk (both humanfolk and roosterroachfolk) still celebrated, particularly in May as the earth began to grow, what can only be called Cerealia, rites in honor of Ceres, the godhead above the god of Roman Man, or rather goddesshead: Mother Earth herself, protectress of all the fruits of the earth and from whom the sacred word “cereal” comes. The young of Man had often conducted their “play-party” as a form of Cerealia, and the roosterroaches, following Man in all things, did likewise.

This double file of promenading females sashayed up and down the Roamin Road almost as far as Parthenon, almost within sight of the Woman, a substitute for Ceres, who sat on the porch of Parthenon, in Her rocking cheer, not Mother Earth but a sort of Earth Mother although She had never had any children herself. From within Parthenon, through the open screen door behind Her, came the sounds of Her stereo, but it was not the source of the Purple Symphony, and indeed She probably could not hear the latter, even with Her stereo off. Nor could She see the hundreds of roosterroaches turning their train around in Her dooryard.

As the double file of maidens came prancing back down the Roamin Road, one of the females exclaimed, “The Lord-a-Joshuway! Why, Tish Dingletoon, if there aint yore pappy tryin to ketch holt of the end of our train!”

Tish Dingletoon turned her head at this exclamation and swung her sniffwhips to try to detect the distant tail of the roosterroachipede, where Jack Dingletoon was staggering along in pursuit, seeking to imitate the sway of the girls’ sniffwhips with his own, and doing an awful job of copying their prance and posture.

Jack’s head was tilted back and he was singing in cadence to the march: “Hi yoop! I aint no Dingletoon no more! By cracky, I’m a pure dee pure blood Ingledew now, and a squire to boot!”

All the girls tittered, giggled, and pointed, except Tish, in whom a slow heat rose.

“He’s had too much Chism’s Dew, is all he has,” she said hastily, “and he don’t know what he’s sayin.”

One of her companions giggled and said, “Bet he don’t have a Ingledew’s pecker on him! Haw-haw!”

“Now looky here: I won’t march another inch with you’uns if ye say any jokes about him!” Tish cried, and cast down her eyes and her sniffwhips, afraid to hold them up and see if indeed by some hideous chance her father’s tallywhacker might be extending itself or his tergal gland might be leaking affy-dizzy. She would be mortified beyond hope if he were even involuntarily exposing himself or releasing affy-dizzy in the presence of all these females. Tish could not look, nor smell, and she concentrated upon the steps of her own six gitalongs, lest one of them hit a twig or miss a step, and thus, by ignoring whatever spectacle her sire was making of himself (in time she could no longer hear his voice), she managed to continue with the double parade to its conclusion at the Platform, as they called the one door of the Ford Fairlane which Man had removed from its hinges and laid into the weeds, where it served as a pavilion for dances as well as political rallies and an occasional pulpit for Brother Tichborne.

Tish Dingletoon at this time of her life was not yet a beauty, still retaining some of the awkwardness of her pre-imago girlishness: you could sometimes see her fifth instar in her cheeks, or her third instar sparkling from her eyes, and even her second instar would flit over the curves of her mandibles now and then. She assumed that she was just one more Dingletoon female, no more, no less: an attractive, even “cute” country girl, but not a “looker.”

Nothing more was seen, heard or sniffed of Jack Dingletoon in his sportive conduct at the end of the train, and when the parade entered the glade of the Cars, its allotted and magic space (all creatures having a space their very own, wherein they are safe from harm or molestation), the dancing began. The maidens climbed the Platform and formed themselves into “squares” of four and eight for a play-party dance, without partners, or with girl partners, at least in the beginning. Later, when the fumes of the pheromones had settled down, and a virile male could appear without leaking affy-dizzy, the braver, bolder, more self-possessed youths among the idlers and pedestrians might venture to join the girls.

There was an old story, nearly a year old, that Man had appeared in Carlott one night while a play-party was in progress, had violated the magic space of the roosterroaches, had tripped over the Platform, westering several roosterroaches in the crush of His falling, and then, standing up again, had urinated all over the Platform and environs, westering a few more. But that was long ago, almost a whole year, and none of this generation of girls had been born then. They had been told of it by their mothers as a warning always to fear Man, to obey His commandments, to live righteously in reverence of His wrath. Since lowly Carlotters could not enter Holy House and subject themselves to the possibility of Rapture by bullets, this memory of Man’s violation of the Platform gave some Carlotters the hope and expectation of Rapture by piss.

Several squares of the play-party were danced by the girls alone, including “Pig in the Parlor,” “Frog up a Stump,” and “Possum Trot,” before the first males appeared as lookers-on. Among these first brave watchers were several sons of the Frockroach preacher, Brother Tichborne, and one of these, a bold swain named Archy, was the first male to climb the Platform.

“What you fixin to do, Archy?” asked one of his brothers.

“I got a hankerin to jine the dance,” Archy declared.

“You’re out of yore fool haid,” said the brother. “What if Paw was to find out?”

“You aim to tell ’im?” Archy challenged. “Come on, Felix, and the rest of you boys too. Let’s us have us some fun.”

But none of Archy’s brothers would join him. He turned to choose a partner. The girls waited breathlessly to see which of them he would pick. Tish Dingletoon took notice of him, a fine strong handsome boy, and she told herself that her chances of being chosen as his partner were slight, and thus she did not, as some of the other girls were doing, primp and pose and prettify herself.

Sure enough, he did not even seem to notice Tish but selected Spicy Bourne, another Carlotter, like her sisters a feisty beauty and, also like her sisters, rather conceited and smug, but a vivacious dancer.

Archy’s appearance emboldened several other males, who climbed the Platform and joined sniffwhips in a ring for the singing and dancing of “Skip to My Lou”:

Flies in the buttermilk, two by two,

Flies in the buttermilk, shoo fly shoo,

Flies in the buttermilk, two by two,

Skip to my Lou, my darlin.

This was not a “square” so much as a circle, everyone ringing around the dancing couple, who one by one drew others into the center of the circle. Tish hoped she would be drawn by Archy, but she could only stand at her place in the ring, all six of her gitalongs tapping expectantly to the beat of the dance, and fix her eyes and her sniffwhips steadily upon him while he danced with Spicy Bourne. Like most males, he did not devote his attention to his partner; in fact, he seemed to ignore Spicy with his eyes and sniffwhips, which kept roaming around the circle in search of another girl, but the girl he picked was not Tish but Rosa Faye Duckworth. Tish could only wait until he was once again through with his partner and chose a new one.

The play-party is meant to be an innocent frolic. Compared with the more adult and more exciting square dance, the play-party is supposedly a chaste gathering, approved by the most hidebound Crustians, but still the occasional incident of unrestrained lust will occur, off in the “brushes,” the forest of weeds on the edge of Carlott. The couple abandoning the Platform and giving in to their desires do not reappear during the whole night, for the act of sexual congress is a complicated congeries of anatomical hookups, end-to-end splicings and interconnections, from which the couple cannot extricate themselves until the male’s marble has been thoroughly enthroned within the female’s chamber, a process, literally, that takes hour upon hour.

Thus, tonight, while Tish was still waiting for Archy to take notice of her, and the repertoire of games had gone from “Skip to My Lou” to “Shoot the Buffalo” to “Humpin the Santa Fe” and “Spinnin the Spider,” the party was suddenly silenced by the abrupt appearance of Brother Chidiock Tichborne, who was dragging into view the still-conjoined bodies of a youth and maiden whom he had discovered “making the beast with two heads” off in the brushes.

The unfortunate couple were embarrassed beyond all mortification, not simply for having been surprised in the act by the minister but also for their inability to separate, to unclasp, to unlink, to undo all the various latches, clamps and sphincters that linked them together, tail to tail in opposite directions. The girl was weeping piteously, and the boy was growling in helpless rage, with their faces so downcast as to make them unrecognizable.

“Looky here!” shouted Brother Tichborne in a voice that surely carried all the way to Holy House. “Sinners! Afore the sight of the Lord! All of y’uns bow down on yore knees!”

The assembled crowd of young folks, or at least all the Crustians among them, knelt, or crouched, in attitudes of fear and submission. A few remained flagrantly unbowed at first, but Brother Tichborne’s voice and his lashing sniffwhips soon stunned them into prostration.

“These here play-parties and dances has got to stop!” the minister boomed. He expatiated on the temptations of the flesh, the pitfalls of dancing, and the teachings of our Lord Joshua Crust, who had expressly forbidden any activity that might exalt physical pleasure. But he held his ultimate censure for the end of his sermon:

“And who do we have here?” he thundered, and kicked the offending boy under the chin, and then moved along the length of their conjunction to kick the girl also. “Hold up yore heads!” he yelled at them. “Raise yore faces and let all the world and Man see who ye air!” He kicked them again, and the boy and girl slowly raised their eyes to look woefully at the congregation, who, however, did not need this proof of their identity, having already identified them by smell through trembling sniffwhips. The boy was clearly Isham Whitter, a Carlotter, and the girl was just as obviously Lucy Whitter, his sister.

“IN-CEST!” shouted Brother Tichborne. “He that lieth with his own sister is damned to eternal shame! She that lieth with her own brother shall bear monsters as children! Cursed be them both! No sin is more worser in the eyes of Man!” Brother Tichborne began tripping over his own tongue: “The insectuous incest—the incestuous insect is the low-downest, unmanliest, kickworthiest sinner in the world!” And he kicked the couple again.

The minister could have used the awful example of Ish and Lucy Whitter to harangue and exhort the multitude for the rest of the night, but behold! a sudden blinding light flashed upon the scene from the open rear doorway of Holy House, and there stood the towering silhouette of Man Himself!

If the assembly had not already been overwhelmed by Brother Tichborne, they were petrified by the appearance of Man, and all of them crouched as low as they could get. Then when He moved, they all found their gitalongs and scurried in every direction until they were hidden from the sight of Man, either beneath the Platform or into the deepest forest of the grass and weeds.

Brother Tichborne alone, or rather alone with the offending incestuous couple, who still could not unjoin themselves and flee, or were attempting to flee in opposite directions and thus canceling each other’s attempts, remained on the Platform. The minister genuflected into most devout prayer and worship.

A thousand—nay, two thousand, for everyone has two—sniff-whips and four thousand eyes watched warily as Man came stumbling down the back steps of Holy House and staggered out into the direction of Carlott. Man was not carrying His terrible swift revolver. His hands were empty, and free to swing through the air, grab at the air, to balance Himself, to grope His way out into the darkness.

As He approached the Platform, Brother Tichborne raised his head and clasped his touchers and his fore-gitalongs together in abject entreaty. “Lord, if it be Thy will,” he prayed, “piss upon me!”

But Man did not reach the Platform. He stopped, and held His great hands to the sky. “SHARON!” He called in the most deafening voice, and two thousand tailprongs were lowered away from the sound. Even louder He called again, “SHAY-RONNNN!”

Then He pitched forward and fell headlong into the grass of Carlott, where He lay inert and seemingly lifeless for the rest of the night.

Brother Tichborne announced, “The Lord but sleepeth. Let us pray.” He led them in an unenthusiastic prayer, and then he made a few routine announcements: the Crustian Young People’s Fellowship would hold a sunset-to-sunrise hymn-sing Saturday night. And at the Sunday night worship service and prayer meeting, open for the first time to Carlotters, who were free, for the duration of the service, to enter Holy House, there would be a special call to Rapture, right before the very eyes of the Lord Himself. Everybody welcome!

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” a voice said beside Tish, and she turned to see that the roosterroach standing next to her, brushing her body with his own, was Archy Tichborne. He smiled handsomely at her, noticing her for the first time in his life, but she was too bashful even to smile back.

Chapter five

If Greg Sam Ingledew’s tailprongs had not been long since stunned into deafness by the continual announcements of his Clock, he might have heard, all the way to Parthenon, the calling voice of Man, who had cried the name of the Woman twice. She had heard it, across those two furlongs of empty town.

Although Sam could hear only the imagined steady locking of his little chateau, his sense of sight and smell were greatly refined in compensation, and he could detect the slightest changes in Woman as She Herself picked up the distant calling of Her name. She was sitting in Her cheer-of-ease, a marvelous piece of furniture with a high back of padded cushions to support Her spine, other cushions to support Her bottom, other cushions to support and rest Her arms, which ended in lovely hands that held a book, in the wan light of a kerosene lamp on a round table beside Her cheer-of-ease. Sam appreciated that She preferred, although electricity was available to Her, to light Parthenon only with the comfortable glow of kerosene lanterns and lamps. It was easy on all four of his eyes; his ocelli, or stargazers, did not alarm the bejoshua out of him every time She lighted a lamp.

When the distant wail, “Sharon,” wafted through the open screen door of Her room, the Woman dropped Her book into Her lap, involuntarily emitted three different scents of fear, annoyance, and excitement, which Sam’s sniffwhips thoroughly perceived and classified, then spoke aloud, after the second sound of Her name, “Oh, for crying out loud! Larry, why don’t you just drop dead?”

Sam did not hear this, but he could clearly determine that She had heard something from afar, that She was disturbed by it, and that She had spoken out against it. She did not immediately resume reading Her book.

Sam’s mother had in his second or third instar explained to him the circumstances, handed down from Grandpa Ingledew, whereby Woman inhabited Parthenon, which, in ancient Stay More, had been one of the general merchandise stores for a whole population of Man, or Men, as well as Women and Children. The ancestor of this Woman, Sam’s Woman, had been a proprietress of this merchandise store, which occupied the central room of her dwelling, her bedroom and sitting room occupying one side of Parthenon. The ancestor-Woman, a fabled demigoddess named Latha, had later abandoned Parthenon, and it had remained unoccupied through countless generations of roosterroaches, just as all the other buildings of Stay More were uninhabited and most of them disappearing through rot, neglect, windstorm and rainstorm, fire and vandalism. A generation ago (a roosterroach generation from east to west is about two whole years), this Woman, Sharon, suddenly returned to Stay More and reoccupied the dwelling-part but not the store-part of Parthenon. Sharon, Sam had discovered before he lost his hearing, was the actual granddaughter of Latha, and the two Women still communicated by the instrument which sat permanently on the same round table which held the kerosene lamp.

Sam had even seen the ancient demigoddess Latha on more than one occasion, when that Woman had come to visit Her granddaughter, and the two had sat together in rocking cheers on the porch in the dusk, although usually when Latha came it was daylight and Sam was fast asleep. But the one time Latha had come at night and Sam had crawled boldly beneath Her rocking cheer to listen to the two Women talk, his hearing had been excellent and he had been able to catch enough of the conversation to deduce that his Woman, Sharon, although She had grown from earliest childhood to adulthood in Stay More, had gone away and lived for years in a city, then in a town, then in a city again, before coming back to Stay More to clean up and fix up the old Parthenon and live in it alone. The grandmother, Latha, had been concerned that Sharon might become very lonely in the dead village, but Sharon had protested that She would not be. This had been before the Man had come.

Because of his lifelong residence in the Woman’s bedroom, Gregor Samsa Ingledew knew a few things that no other roosterroach of Stay More actually understood, and one of these was the name of the Man, which was Larry. Since the only roosterroaches who now inhabited Parthenon were Sam and his father, Squire Hank Ingledew, and since Squire Hank spent most of his waking hours hanging out at Doc Swain’s place, only Sam had been present on the one occasion when Larry had actually come to Parthenon, one night, and had talked with the Woman at length, had argued with Her, and, about the time the Clock struck “TUTTI-FRUTTI,” had removed the garments which covered Her body, had removed the garments which covered His body, and had climbed together with Her into Her bed, where, beneath the quilt required by the chill of autumn, He and She had made movements which Sam could only conjecture about. Then They had slept. Sam had remained awake beyond dawn, waiting for Them to awaken, but he had finally drifted into sleep and had awakened to find the Man gone and the Woman complaining loudly to Herself about Her stupidity and Her hangover and Her need for a cigarette.

Now Sam watched Sharon, who had heard the calling of her name twice, followed by a long silence. Sam’s sniffwhips detected an unmistakable scent of yearning. The bristles on the lower tier of sniff-whip segments are especially sensitive to scents of yearning, wanting, inexpressible wistfulness, in either one’s fellow roosterroaches or in Man, and it is considered good luck to pick up, on one’s sniffwhips, such a pining smell. There is a popular saying, “More rare than pine is the smell of pining”—which is rare indeed, for there are few pine trees in this part of the Ozarks.

Sharon pined. And because he clearly detected it, Sam grew excited, knowing that some good luck would occur to him. He was not ordinarily superstitious, certainly not like the vast majority of roosterroaches, who could not even turn around without observing some of the most ridiculous beliefs and practices, but Sam believed that superstitions are more credible rules of conduct than religion, for which he had no use whatever: he knew enough to conclude that Woman had not created him; certainly Sharon had not. He did not believe that Joshua Crust had been the son of Sharon or of Larry or of any of Their ancestors. He did not believe that Sharon would continue feeding him only if he sang praises to Her…although he felt like singing praises to Her anyway. He did not believe that when he westered he would go to live forevermore on Her right hand. She wouldn’t want him on Her right hand or Her left. And as for this Rapture business which that mountebank Chidiock Tichborne preached and extolled, Sam would love to be raptured by the Woman but not in the westerly sense, and certainly not by a firearm, which the Woman did not own.

But he did believe that the scent of pining brought good luck, and the very best luck he could wish for, which sometimes he dreamed about in his daily sleep, would be some magic that would either transform the Woman into a roosterroach, or, better, metamorphose Sam into a Man. And yet, desiring this with all his heart, he realized that such metamorphosis was sheer fable.

Sam stepped out from his Clock and crept to the edge of the mantelshelf. The Woman was picking up the black talking-instrument and cradling it against Her ear, while one of Her fingers twiddled the belly of the other half of the instrument around and around. Sam wondered if she was only calling Tel-Med, perhaps for a program with a name like “What to Do When Your Ex-Lover Drunkenly Yells Your Name in the Middle of the Night.” But she began talking into the thing, and one never talks to Tel-Med. Of course Sam could not hear what she was saying, nor could he, this time, even imagine it. Could he hear her if he moved closer? Very close? Say, right up the cheer-of-ease? Dare he?

First he wanted to be sure that he was scrupulously clean, although he had already had his evening bath and it was too early for his morning bath. He scrubbed his head vigorously, then washed both of his sniffwhips, counting each segment as it passed between his lips, 356 segments in all, each responsible for absorbing some information about the world around him. Next he washed and scrubbed his tail-prongs with his rear gitalongs, and tested each prong, wiggling it and standing it erect, for although his tailprongs were no longer sensitive to sound they were still capable of full erection. He could also use them, if the occasion required, for feeling his way backwards; reverse sniffwhips, as it were.

How does a fastidious genteel roosterroach know when his nightly (or thrice-nightly) ablutions are finished? Of the 178 segments on each sniffwhip, the last two, at the very tip, have as their sole function an appraisal of one’s own cleanliness, tidiness, and aroma. Sam no less than any other roosterroach would rather have lost both his tailprongs and been totally deaf than to lose the tips of his sniff-whips. Whenever an individual loses these, through accident, battle, or failure to keep them clean, that individual is almost certain to be dirty, stinking, and flowzy…until he regenerates the tips.

For all Man’s repugnance toward him, the roosterroach is the most immaculate of insects, permitting no speck of dirt or disease to remain upon his body. And Gregor Samsa Ingledew was the most immaculate of roosterroaches. Not just in his person but in his surroundings: he kept the interior of the Clock, and most of its exterior too, spotless. The Woman, who was a fastidious housekeeper Herself, would have been proud of Sam, if She knew he existed. She did not. Didn’t She ever wonder, when She was dusting Her room, why the Clock and the mantelshelf never needed to be dusted?

Sam climbed down the mantel and gained the floor. He was about to approach closer to a female, other than his mother, of any species, than he had ever been since his life began. For all his excellent grooming, which along with his intelligence, squirehood, and residential situation made him the most attractive and eligible bachelor of Stay More, Sam had a congenital flaw more damaging than deafness: he was enormously and painfully shy of females. All Ingledews had been, as long as anyone could remember. It was a family legend, nay, a longstanding family joke: if every Ingledew male had been the subject of some great story of heroic deeds, he was also the butt of some hilarious anecdote involving his shyness toward females and the extraordinary circumstances of fate or feminine intrigue that had permitted at least one male Ingledew in each generation to marry and perpetuate the family name…as well as the congenital dread of females.

But his terrible shyness toward any member of the opposite sex would not now prevent Sam from approaching Sharon, for he did not intend to let Her see him. She was absorbed in Her conversation over the black talking-instrument. He selected the best route to get as close as possible to Her voice without being seen, and climbed up the very back of the tall cheer-of-ease, an easy task of crawling gitalong over gitalong through the nap of the fabric. Reaching the summit, he climbed down the other side, right behind Her head. He was very careful not to touch Her hair, and very careful to keep an escape route in sight in order to vanish in an instant in the unlikely event that She began to turn Her head in his direction.

From this proximity, Her voice was almost booming, although She spoke quietly. He could hear, if not every word, at least some of it.

“…and feel so sorry for him but don’t see that there’s a blessed thing I or anyone could do…” She was saying. She was, Sam assumed, talking to Her grandmother. He had anticipated that She might be putting a call through to the Man Himself, but Holy House did not contain a talking-instrument. Sam was surprised to discover that he was glad She wasn’t talking to Larry, which would have made Sam jealous. Jealous? he said to himself, in wonder. I am jealous of Man? Well, why not?

“…if he could just give up and go away,” She was saying. “Vernon has offered to evict him if I only tell him to. Vernon really hates what he’s doing to that house, letting it go to ruin and shooting it full of holes. No, no, Gran, I’m not worried he’ll shoot me. I never go near the house. He only shoots late at night, when he’s blotto, I guess, and maybe his demons are pursuing him. Yes, maybe he’s shooting at his demons….”

Sam smiled. He would like to tell his kindred the Holy Housers that She had called them “demons.” The Woman suddenly reached back with Her hand, and Sam thought She was going to swat him, but She only wanted to scratch the back of Her neck. Her fingers were lovely. If there was one way in which the Human creature was really superior to the roosterroach in design, Sam reflected, it was in the fingers. Roosterroaches had nothing like them; a roosterroach’s touchers were clumsy stubs by comparison. One of Sharon’s fingers was enwrapped with a dazzling metallic band more yellow than Her hair; the light glittering off it, reflected from the kerosene lamp, nearly blinded Sam.

“…don’t you think? It must have been at least the hundredth one, I don’t even count them. What? Oh, of course I keep them, I’ve got a shoebox full of them. I wouldn’t think of throwing them away, they’re so beautifully written, such elegant language. I can hardly resist the urge to answer one of them, to write him back, at least to tell him that he’ll never get his work done as long as he spends all his time writing letters to me….”

The Woman turned Her head to one side, not enough for Her to see Sam even with peripheral vision, but enough for him to see the iris of Her eye. Her eyes were blue, a lighter blue than any of the shades of the evening air, a blue like the eggs of robins whose nest had fallen in a March storm into the yard of Parthenon, where Sam had come upon it. Roosterroaches do not have the color vision to detect most hues of blue. Their color vision is most perceptive in ultraviolet, which Man cannot even see (one reason Sam was convinced that Man was not the omniscient ruler of the visible world). But Sam could clearly perceive that Sharon’s iris was the azure tint of the robin’s egg. The eyes of all roosterroaches are iridescent shades of green. Sam adored Sharon’s eyes.

“…at least he’s supposed to be doing a long critical essay on Daniel Lyam Montross, which is why he says he has to stay here. No, he hasn’t written any more poetry himself for years. At least he doesn’t write any of it to me, or if he does he doesn’t show it to me. He said he’s having trouble getting started on the Montross thing, but at least he’s started it….”

In those metamorphic dreams he sometimes had, when he became Her lover, Sam preferred not to bring Her down to his level and give Her pheromones, but instead raised himself to Manhood, keeping his affy-dizzy however and tempting Her with it, crawling into Her bed and—no, “crawling” was the wrong word. He was not all that clear what he would do with Man’s body if he had one.

He was so transfixed by Her beauty and his daydream of making love to her that he had not noticed the voice had stopped entirely, the voice had said “Good night, Gran, sleep tight,” and the Woman had returned the talking-instrument to the table beside Her cheer-of-ease. Now She was standing up. Now She was turning….

Sam’s gitalongs went into action and he sprang for the crevice between the cushions of the cheer-of-ease. But he was just a fraction of a second too late. She saw him. He heard Her gasp.

In all the time the Ingledews had enjoyed the privilege of dwelling in Parthenon, they had never allowed themselves to be glimpsed by Her. Sam had violated this tradition, and he felt just rotten and awful. His father would wester him.

Chapter six

Doc Colvin Swain was the seventh son of a seventh son, which Ozark tradition indicates as infallibly as the daily setting of the sun that he was destined to become a physician, even in spite of himself. He was born of a Swain (it is an old, old family name not to be confused with “swain,” the name for an immature pre-imago male roosterroach, the male equivalent of “nymph”) who was the last, or seventh, swain to emerge from his mother’s easteregg, and Colvin himself emerged from his mother’s easteregg last in line following Irvin, Gavin, Alvin, Marvin, Steven, and Vincent.

If being seventh was not enough to doom him to medical practice, Colvin Swain’s name and its sake, which he never had the inclination to change, would have kept him from being a “normal” roosterroach, because the human Colvin Swain had been the greatly beloved physician to the village of Stay More in its last years of existence as a community, eons ago. Not only that, and not even to mention that Doc Swain the roosterroach had taken on Doc Swain the long-westered human’s personality, his speech, his character, and even his habit of making “house calls,” Doc Swain occupied the ruin of the old Swain clinic, on Roamin Road halfway between Holy House and Parthenon, that is, one furlong from each. The collapsing Swain clinic had no inhabitants except Doc (a widower) and a family of Daddies-long-legs who considered Doc too large to eat, and several families of Theridon tepidariorum, your ordinary house spider, whose webs had covered every corner of the interior of the clinic but who, like bats, ate only insects who flew, something Doc hadn’t done since his last escape from the Great White Mouse. Indeed, Doc was rumored to have practiced medicine on various of these arachnid housemates of his; in any case, he was on good terms with the spiders and had the run of the clinic…or rather the hobble of it, since he was missing three unregenerated gitalongs, two on one side, one on the other, lost to the bite of his nemesis, the Great White Mouse, who had ambushed him on one of his errands of mercy into the backbrush…or so he claimed, although an eyewitness had hinted that the mysterious monster-mouse might have had provocation, that Doc was seen attempting to bite off its tail to use in one of the philters or nostrums that he occasionally concocted. It was said that the tip of an albino mouse’s tail is an essential ingredient in the remedy for gout, which afflicted several of Doc’s male patients. But Doc swore the attack of the Great White Mouse upon his person was totally unprovoked, and he constantly plotted revenge.

“Heal thyself,” nobody ever said to him, but ought to have, because he was a wreck of a specimen himself. In addition to the three missing unregenerated gitalongs, his heart was irregular, his digestion faulty, his ocelli, or stargazers, were nearly blind…and he appeared to have the gout. But his mind was sound, and next to Squire Hank Ingledew he was considered the wisest sage in the world.

In fact, next to Squire Ingledew was where he wanted to be, the two old codgers preferring each other’s company to that of lesser mortals, and they could often be found together, of an evening, lounging on the porch of Doc’s clinic, watching the world go by, commenting upon it, and holding court for the various other loafers, mostly older male roosterroaches, who liked to gather there, being forbidden by Squire Hank from congregating on the porch of Parthenon, and leaving the porch of Holy House to other folk.

On any given night, after breakfast, a couple dozen or more members of this Loafer’s Court could be found lolling around Doc Swain and Squire Hank, listening to them holding forth on the ancient stories of Stay More, swapping tall tales, and waxing prophetic about their favorite subject, which was The Bomb, particularly the irreligious, anti-Rapture view of it held by many, who did not believe that Man would save the righteous from that great explosion but rather that Man himself would perish in the holocaust, and the roosterroaches would have the onerous responsibility of inheriting the earth, something they did not particularly desire. No one could conceive of any explosion louder or worse than Man’s bullets, and there were many who thought that Man’s shooting was itself The Bomb, but the True Bombers told the Anabombers that The Bomb would make the explosions of bullets from His revolver seem like mere clearings of the throat.

Tonight, Doc Swain, Squire Hank, and the Loafer’s Court had watched the parade of damsels go sashaying down Roamin Road to Parthenon and back, had seen drunk Jack Dingletoon straggling along in pursuit, and had made comments, jokes, and insinuations about various of the girls, about Jack, about one another, and about anything within the visible or sniffable world.

When the end of the train hove into view and there was comical Jack Dingletoon yelling, “Hi yoop! I aint no Dingeltoon no more! By cracky, I’m a pure dee pure blood Ingledew now, and a squire to boot!” the members of the Loafer’s Court cast glances and sniffs at Squire Hank to see his reaction, and one of them, O.D. Ledbetter, remarked, “Now what d’ye reckon has guv that fool sech a notion?”

“Chism’s Dew allus makes a feller feel bigger than he is,” observed Elbert Kimber. “That’s what it’s suppose to do, aint it?”

Squire Hank did not comment, but spat, and made ruminative gestures of his cheeks. No one could remember when he had ever been silent before.

“Naw,” remarked Doc Swain, “that aint it. He’s jist out of his head, maybe, because I tole him a little while ago that he aint got long for this world afore he goes west. He ast me to look ’im over, and blamed if his old Malpighian tubes aint all kivvered with fatty bodies.”

The loafers stared at Doc and at one another. “Is that a fack?” several said, and “You don’t mean to say so,” said others, and one even said, “What’s a malpigeon tube?” Each of them spat, each in his turn. Most of them had good reason for spitting, not to mark any territory (for all of this territory belonged to Doc), but because among the many other blessings bestowed upon them by Man, He left cigarette butts scattered throughout Holy House, from which an abundance of chewable leaf was salvaged and masticated by most of the male roosterroaches of Stay More. Tobacco did give one’s head a pleasant giddiness and ease, but the chewing and spitting of it was essentially a ritual way of asserting one’s identity and masculinity and the merging of one’s identity with that of the male group.

“The Malpighian tubes,” Doc explained, “are part of the digestive system, sorta wrapped around your gut like little wires. Man calls them ‘kidneys’.”

“Aw, shore,” said Tolbert Duckworth, “I allus have a little drink fer my wife’s kidneys.”

The other loafers laughed, but Doc said, “Not that kind of kidney. This kind is sort of midway between yore gizzard and yore butthole. It sorta strains all the juice that runs through yore system.”

Several of the company nodded their heads in understanding, spat, and Lum Plowright observed, “So ole Jack’s strainer is on the blink?”

“Wal, the fatty bodies has shore squoze up his Malpighian tubes,” Doc declared, feeling just a little guilty for breaking the Hypocritic Oath by openly discussing a patient’s problems.

“His wife is a real fatty body,” Fent Chism remarked, and the assembly guffawed, picturing Josie Dingletoon, a still-shapely dish despite her many and frequent litterings of eastereggs.

“She’ll be a mandamn widow-gal, shore, afore long,” Doc remarked.

This comment caused each loafer to reflect, as loafers will, upon his own mortality, the widow he would leave behind if he were not already widowered, the children who would survive and mourn or not for him, and the nature of west and of life, if any, after west. Such meditations naturally introduced one or the other of their two most popular topics, Janus-faced: the glorious history of now-almost-westered Stay More, and the any-day-now (or any-night-now) advent of The Bomb.

Tonight the court lingered upon each subject until it was exhausted. Perhaps it is unfair to call this assembly “loafers,” because all roosterroaches are by nature gentlefolk of leisure, nonworkers, even vagrants, as the name Periplaneta suggests. Especially in contrast to the busy bee, the hyperactive ant, the industrious termite, the various nest-builders, daubers, potters, borers, and biters whose diurnal or nocturnal existence is of ceaseless activity, the roosterroach, once he has found his nightly share of morsels, crust or crumb, does nothing, knocks off, loiters about, putters, piddles, takes his ease without any responsibility other than the heavy chore of finding ways to fill up the time between dusk breakfast and dawn supper.

No wonder roosterroaches are fond of gossip, philosophy, kidding and kibitzing, jokes, stories, tall tales, legends, superstitions, and half-baked religion. In this natural inclination, roosterroaches are ideally suited to imitate the Man of the Ozarks, or at least Ozark Man as He used to be, in the legendary days of Stay More’s past, when Man, although a farmer, and a capable one, devoted only enough labor to His farm to provide food for His family and His devoted roosterroaches, and spent the major portion of His life in unhurried idleness.

Although there was only one Man left in Stay More for these roosterroaches to depend upon and venerate, and although He was not nearly as interesting as the fabled Stay Morons of yore, He was at least, like them, devoted to leisure. He did not work. He did not farm, though there were rumors that He spent a tiny portion of His daylight hours, late afternoon, before any roosterroach awoke to watch, puttering in a tiny vegetable garden across Roamin Road from Holy House. One night a delegation of roosterroaches had gone there and inspected His puny lettuce. The last of the human Ingledews had been gardeners, if nothing else, famed for their ability to grow onions as big as apples, but also pronouncing them “ingurns” as in the first syllable of their name. This Man did not pronounce them that way…or perhaps He did. It was hard to tell, because He never spoke. He had no one to speak to.

The loafers, if we must call them that, admired their Man because He was a total loafer too, but pitied Him because he had no one to loaf with. None of the roosterroaches now living could ever recall when there was more than one Man, and indeed most of the fundamentalist Crustians believed that there was only one Man in all the world, but the old stories which the loafers told and retold on the porch of Doc Swain’s place always involved a Stay More peopled with many Men, and Men (as well as Women and Children) living together and loafing together in an idyllic Golden Age.

The Golden Age of Stay More would remain only the subject of endless legends and embellished conjectures among the tale-telling roosterroaches until after The Bomb, when according to Crustian belief, Joshua Crust Himself would be resurrected from the west and take everyone in a Rapture to live on the right hand of Man in the perfect Ozark Golden Age of yore. Even those roosterroaches who were such infidels that they could not accept the idea of Joshua Crust and His resurrection still believed that life after The Bomb would become a new Golden Age.

Doc Swain alone did not believe this. Cheerful philosopher as he was, he was an utter pessimist on the subject of The Bomb. The Bomb, in his opinion, was inevitable. Whatever catastrophic form it took—asphyxiation, earthquake, famine, or, most dreadful for heat-loving roosterroaches, a big freeze—it would be horrible.

Roosterroaches are omnivorous, but that would do them no good if there was nothing to eat. “Fellers, if it comes to it,” a loafer posed the question, “can we eat caterpillar shit?”

“After The Bomb,” Doc pointed out, “caterpillars would be the first to wester.”

The one drawback of the roosterroach’s durability, longevity, adaptiveness, and imperishability was that being the last creature alive after the holocaust would pose a great problem: Who, or what, would the roosterroach eat?

“I’d shore hate to be the last roosterroach still east,” Doc remarked to the assembled loafers.

“Nor me neither,” said several of the other loafers, and spat, thoughtfully but decisively, each in his turn.

“Wal, Doc,” Squire Hank Ingledew spoke up, “if you was the last, you’d have to whup me first afore you could commence eatin me, and once you’d et me, then yore biggest problem would be to figger out which part of yoreself to eat first, next.”

The loafers guffawed, and O.D. Ledbetter suggested, “Me, I’d eat my hind end first.”

“Haw,” said Elbert Kimber, “then you wouldn’t have no butthole to ee-liminate what you’d done et!” All the loafers snorted or snickered.

“I reckon I’d eat my sniffwhips first,” said Tolbert Duckworth, “since I wouldn’t be needin ’em no more nohow, what with nobody else around to sniff at.”

“Then you’d never know how much you stunk,” Squire Hank observed.

“Wouldn’t make no difference nohow,” Lum Plowright put in. “But me, what I’d do, since it’d be my last meal on earth, I’d enjoy myself and eat my stomach first!” Several others nodded in agreement, and spat.

“That’d wester ye right off,” Doc Swain said. “Now I tell ye fellers, assumin I could whup Squire Hank and be the last ’stead of him, and assumin I’d done already had the satisfaction of watchin that White Mouse wester a slow, painful west, I reckon I’d jist not eat none of me, but slowly starve to west, and take a last stroll down to Banty Creek and back.”

“Might as well hop in it and drown,” Squire Hank said, and spat.

“Naw,” said Doc Swain. “I’d jist look all around me, at ever livin thing that had westered, includin that putrefied White Mouse, and I would know that I was the very last mandamn livin thing on earth. Wouldn’t that be a satisfaction? Wouldn’t that be a reward for what-all I’d had to live through? Jist to know that? Jist to say to myself, ‘I am the last mandamned livin thing on earth?’”

Since these were mostly heuristic questions, or rhetorical, or both, no one responded. The company of loafers lost themselves in meditation, imagining the scenario that Doc had pictured. At length, Tolbert Duckworth, who was a good Crustian and an elder in the church, remarked, “Hit shore is enough to make a body glad that our Lord Joshua Crust is gonna rapture us and save us from all sech as that, if Man Himself don’t rapture us first.”

Several others nodded, and spat. Neither Squire Hank nor Doc Swain nodded, but they spat.

Chapter seven

Tish Dingletoon tarried beneath the Platform long after the play-party had been broken up by Brother Tichborne and everyone had gone home or elsewhere. She wondered if she would ever again have a chance to attract Archy Tichborne to her, ever to get him within range of her pheromones when she was ready to use them. No, probably the Fate-Thing intended for her to marry a Carlotter. How vain of her to aspire to the attentions of a Holy House roosterroach. Sure, Jim Tom Dinsmore would be glad to have her and would take her to live in the Smock if she would marry him, but he was a puny and unsightly specimen, compared with Archy Tichborne.

Might just as well be getting on back, Tish told herself, and crawled out from under the Platform and turned her steps sadly homeward. But as she sought the path to the hollow log that was the Dingletoon home, she bumped into one of the fingertips of Man, who lay prone with his arms outstretched in the grass of Carlott. The closeness of Him overwhelmed her, even more than His great size. Tish passed her sniffwhips slowly over the tip of His fingernail and attempted to identify the plethora of traces of all that Man had touched, scratched, tickled or tapped within the past several hours. This was the closest she had ever been to Man, and she had never approached any of the things He had touched, scratched, tickled or tapped, so she could not readily identify these strange new sensations on her sniffwhips. She was in total awe, but not in fear. Fear the Lord thy Man, she had heard, again and again, and yet she was not afraid of Him. As she moved closer to the tall grass into which His face was pressed, and then drew so close that the tips of her sniffwhips could touch the tips of His beard-whiskers, whatever fear or worship she was supposed to feel for Him was replaced by a sudden compassion, something she had no business feeling, as if she were better than Him, or more fortunate than Him, or at least much more sober than Him, or not smaller than Him at all but His own size. This would have amounted almost to blasphemous condescension had it not been a pure impulse of sympathy, without any vanity behind it.

“Pore feller,” she said aloud, knowing He couldn’t hear her. “You’re just a critter, like me. Whatever’s troublin Ye aint all that different from the kinds of troubles I got. You git hungry too, don’t Ye? And You git sad too, I bet. And most of all, Man, You git lonely all the time.”

Never mind that if He awakened, and had His gun, He would rapture her quicker than the wink of a stargazer. For this moment, Tish loved Him, and it was not the sort of love that all Crustians spoke of when they said, Love the Lord thy Man.

Tish knew that the Fate-Thing was more powerful than Him, that He was under the dominion of the Fate-Thing just as much as she was. Did the Fate-Thing have a better name? Was its name “Sharon”? Had He been calling out to the Fate-Thing, Sharon? If Sharon was the name of the Fate-Thing, then Tish ought to address her prayers not to Man but to Sharon.

Experimentally, Tish called out, as He had done, “SHARON!” Again she called, louder but questioningly, “SHAY-RONN?” But if that was the Fate-Thing’s name, it—or She—did not respond, any more than it—or She—had responded to the Lord Himself.

Meditating on her walk homeward, Tish realized that perhaps “Sharon” was not the name of any Fate-Thing, but, rather, of the Woman who dwelt in Parthenon. Or perhaps the Woman was the Fate-Thing. Tish had had her very first glimpse of the Woman earlier tonight when the parade of maidens turned their train in the yard of Parthenon, that fabled house which was a private castle for the squires Ingledew. Although Tish had seen Squire Hank around the village often, she had never seen handsome Squire Sam, who, her friends told her, did not mix. Tish’s girlfriends were always having nightdreams in which they were endlessly noticed and courted by Squire Sam, like a commoner by a prince, and perhaps wedded by him and made into a princess and taken to live in his fabulous Clock. Tish could not even conceive of what a Clock looked like, although she heard it distantly every hour, and somehow she associated the sound it made, its chiming of “BUN,” “TART,” etc., with Squire Sam, as if in a sweet pealing voice he were calling out the times of night for her.

These were the thoughts that filled her young head as she walked slowly homeward. As she neared the Dingletoon log, she heard certain rhythmic sounds which she recognized as her mother’s crooning to Tish’s infant siblings:

“Joshua bless yore pitchy eyeses! And yore waxy cheekses! And yore cherry mouthses! And yore scraggly legses! And ever bitty bits of you’unses’ blessit bodies!”

There were so many of them, in the several broods of Jack and Josie Dingletoon, including a freshly hatched litter of fifteen scarcely out of their milk-white babyhood and with their easteregg open like a huge zippered purse in the center of the loafing room. In addition to these babies, who were scampering madly all over the place in search of any scrap that was chewable, there was another brood of a baker’s dozen in their third instar, and still a third brood in their fifth instar, making for quite a large family. Of course the older children of this family could just as well set up their own homes and lives, but the Dingletoons had always been family-oriented and possessed of a strong flocking instinct, like many poor Carlott families—the Flockroaches of Stay More. Tish was the only one of her generation of siblings to remain in the household, and thus a share of the supervision of the younger ones fell upon her.

Mother of them all and veteran of many nights of hauling eastereggs around at the end of her abdomen, Josie Dingletoon still retained much of the freshness and even the plump prettiness of her youth, and it was clear that whatever attractiveness Tish possessed had been inherited from her mother.

“I’ll dance with ’em a while for ye, Momma,” Tish offered, and sought to relieve her mother of the responsibility for keeping the children entertained.

But Josie, always blithe, seemed even more cheerful tonight. “We’ll everbody dance!” she exclaimed. “I’m glad ye’ve come, Letitia hon, but not to spell me with these younguns. We’ve all got reason to party and dance! Jist wait’ll I tell ye!”

“Maw…” said young Jubal, touching his sniffwhip timidly to her, but he was ignored.

“Does it have anything to do with Daddy makin such a joke of hisself tonight?” Tish asked. “Did you hear about it? I was so mortified I wanted to sink into the ground and disappear or be gobbled right up by a frog!”

“Now daughter, that was jist him a-celebratin the news. It has been diskivvered that we air quality folks, and yore father has good reason to be proud! We’ve all got reason to be proud as Punch! We belong to a great fambly that goes back past the time of Joshua Crust Hisself, the time of the fabled pagan Ingledews of yore!”

“Maw…” the boy Jubal attempted to gain her attention again but was again rebuffed.

“What on earth are ye talkin about, Mother?” Tish asked.

“Lissen a me, Tishy hon!” exclaimed Josie, nearly beside herself with excitement. “These news will make yore bosom swell! I swear if we aint all Ingledews! Yore dad wasn’t jist cuttin a dido when he said that! That were no flimflam windy lie-tale he picked up! He’s the rightful descendant of all the big Squire Ingledews!”

“Maw!” persisted the kid Jubal and claimed her notice. “Air we all of us squires now?”

Josie looked down and sniffed down at her son. “No, you fool,” she said to him. “Jist me and yore Paw.”

“I’m right glad to hear it, Mother, if it’s true,” Tish said, “but will it do us any good?”

“Why, naturally, chile,” Josie declared. “We kin all go live in Partheeny!” She paused to let these words caress the lengths of every listening pair of tailprongs. The older siblings whispered dramatically among themselves, Partheeny! and the middle siblings began explaining to the infant siblings what and where Partheeny was.

Tish could not believe this fabulous likelihood, and she began casting about with her sniffwhips in search of her father, to have him confirm the possibility. “Whereabouts is Daddy at?” she asked her mother.

Josie took on a flustered look. “Now don’t you go a-bustin out mad at yore pore ole pappy, Tishia gal, but he got so excited with the news that he went to see if they wouldn’t let him into the cookroom at Holy House.”

“What?” Tish exclaimed. “Why, he’s off his rocker! How could you let him do such a thing?”

Josie hung her head. “Wal, he’s allus had a hankerin fer some real beer, and who’m I to deny him? But I reckon I’d best go fetch him, afore he gits his fool self shot by the Lord.”

“The Lord aint a-rapturin nobody tonight,” Tish said. “He has passed plumb out in the middle of Carlott. I touched Him myself.”

“You did which?” Josie asked, aghast.

“Not with my touchers, just my sniffwhips, I touched Him while He lay, jist to see if He felt real,” Tish declared, with no little pride.

The entire room fell silent. None of the middle siblings, let alone the younger ones, had ever had a glimpse of Him, although every morning they said their prayers to Him at bedtime. To think that their very own big sister, Sis Tish, had actually not only seen Him but also actually and truly really touched Him! They all gathered around her and tried to touch her, as if some of the magic would rub off on them. They all began babbling in excitement at once.

“Hush, you’uns!” Josie demanded, then turned on Tish. “Daughter, I don’t know what to think of ye! Aint I never taught ye no sense? Don’t ye know that you must never, never touch the Lord?”

“But He’s out cold, west-drunk jist like Daddy gits sometimes,” Tish tried to explain.

Josie slapped her. With both sniffwhips the mother lashed the sides of Tish’s face, bringing tears to her eyes. “Hesh yore wicked mouth!” she exclaimed. “That’s blasphemy! The Lord is probably jist a-sleepin, this time of night, and you might’ve disturbed His rest.”

“But He’s drunk as a biled owl!” Tish wailed, telling the truth, although truthfully none of the owls she had seen, of which there were several in the woods of Stay More, were either boiled or drunk.

Josie gasped, hmmphed, and made the sign of the pin with her sniffwhips. “I had best go take a look fer myself,” she said to herself, then told her oldest daughter, “I’d best go look fer yore father.” She began a thorough cleaning of herself in preparation for departure.

“Momma, you aint lightin out for the cookroom too, are ye?” Tish asked.

“If I have to,” Josie said, nearly beside herself with nervous excitement: even if she didn’t get to touch the Lord herself, she might find her husband in the cookroom, where she had never been before, and might get to sample the fabulous edibles there. And maybe she might even be allowed to enter one of those cans of beer. “Now lissen a me, Tish,” she gave instructions, “if I aint back afore daypeep, make shore none of the least-uns watches the mornin star, and git ’em to say their prayers, and keep Jubal outa the sisters’ hidey-hole, and don’t let none of ’em git in the storehole where Paw keeps the morel mushrooms, and be sure nary one of ’em watches the sun rise. Kin you remember all that?” Tish nodded her head, although the list of the injunctions was long, and still another one remained, a formality: “And watch out for the badgers, bats, and beastly bugs!”

“Be keerful, Momma,” Tish said, as Josie left the log, and Tish found herself in charge of the whole family. A dozen or so tickled up to her and begged her for a story, but she put them off, saying she’d give them a story at bedtime. She supervised them as best she could, as they left the log to forage for bits of algae and fungi, edible but not palatable fodder. Her tailprongs picked up the sounds of their stomachs grumbling like a pack of hungry ants. Almost absently, Tish reached up and took one of her sniffwhips into her mouth and began simultaneously to wash, taste, smell, and “count the beads” on it. This process provided her with information about her environment: the temperature (73° and falling), tomorrow’s forecast (partly cloudy, scattered thundershowers), the present locations of each of her brothers and sisters, what they were eating, which ones had intestinal problems or mental problems, which ones had constipation or diarrhea, and how many worms, crickets, and katydids were in the vicinity. Thus she kept track of the passing of the night.

She could no longer find her mother within range of her sniff-whips, so assumed she had reached Holy House and perhaps actually entered the cookroom. Would she ever see her parents again? She tuned in the area of Carlott where He had been lying, and discovered that still He lay. The night passed on.

Continually vigilant toward her siblings, she kept count and discovered one missing. She called Jubal to her, and said, “Jubal, I caint find Joe Don.”

Jubal replied, “Something et him.”

These were sad words. It was sorrowful news when, if a child westered, the reason was announced as “Something he et.” It was more sorrowful if the last two words were transposed. Tish tuned her sniffwhips and picked up the scent of a green frog, Hyla cinerea, but it was climbing back up whatever tree it had come down out of to make a meal of Joe Don. Tish called the rest of the siblings in out of the yard, and told the ones who did not already know that their brother Joe Don had gone west, into the crop of a green frog. Everyone grieved together for a few minutes, and several of the older children declared, “Hit’s the Lord’s will,” but Tish knew that the Lord’s will, at this moment under the influence of alcohol, wasn’t.

“Now tell us a bedtime story, Sis,” Jubal requested, knowing they needed something to take their minds off the westering of Joe Don, and the siblings chorused, “Yep, a story, yep a story Sis.”

She gathered them to her and began, “One time…” She had learned to begin all her stories this way. Such a beginning carried the suggestion not only that the story being told had occurred once upon a time long, long ago, but also that it had occurred only once, a one-time-only unique event. She searched her store of favorite stories, and decided to tell them one about the Mockroach. “One time there was a little roosterroach. He disobeyed his pappy and momma, who told him to be sure and go to sleep at the first peep of light, and to sleep all day. He wanted to stay awake during the day, so’s he could see what was happenin in the world while roosterroaches sleep.”

And she told how the foolhardy roosterroach sallied forth into the daylight and found himself among the diurnal creatures who prey and eat by light, birds of all kinds who fly by day, and snakes and lizards who roam by day, and four-footed animals like squirrels who prowl by day. All of these monsters would have eaten the roosterroach, but he was protected by the Mockroach, who had a test for him.

The Mockroach protected the roosterroach so that he could stay east in the daylight long enough to decide whether he truly wanted to be a day-bug or go on being a night-bug as Man had intended him to be.

The world of daylight was wonderful. Not only was it full of Man, and His Woman and Children, all running around and working and playing in the sunshine, but it was full of open flowers that close at night, and the music of birds that sing only by day, not as sweet as the nightingale but more of them, and there were colors everywhere, not just the hundred grays and blues of night, but yellows and greens and reds!

The roosterroach thought everything was lovely, but the Mock-roach told him that if he wanted to remain a day-bug he would have to decide to be changed either into a day-bug who eats grass or a day-bug who eats other bugs: a herbivore or a carnivore.

Of course no roosterroach had ever eaten grass or eaten another bug, at least not a live one. The Mockroach made him try a sample of each. The roosterroach chewed and chewed on the blade of grass, but he couldn’t swallow it and spat it out. The Mockroach gave him the head of a fly to eat, and he chewed it and chewed it, and swallowed it, but it made him sick, and he puked it up.

The Mockroach told the roosterroach that if he could learn to eat grass, he could become a grasshopper, and dance and sing in the meadows and pastures all day long, all summer long, a happy pastoral life. He could jump great distances and fly with bright yellow wings, and it would be an easy, idyllic existence.

And if the roosterroach could learn to eat other insects, he could become a praying mantis with long powerful forelegs to seize any small thing that flew his way. He could stay put and not have to run around, and could eat anything that he caught, any insect that flew or crawled, and even lizards, frogs, and small birds! The mantis could eat the grasshopper, but the grasshopper couldn’t eat the mantis.

Tish paused, and looked around her at her forty-two brothers and sisters, who were hanging on her every word with their mouths agape in wonder and their small brains almost visibly churning. “Children,” she asked them, “which would you choose to be?”

“The grasshopper!” said Jubal, but he was drowned out by nearly all the others, who were clamoring, “The mantis! The mantis! The praying mantis!”

Tish would have given her story a different ending, if they had voted for the grasshopper. She would have told how the roosterroach was changed into a grasshopper and enjoyed a truly Arcadian life, which, however, ended when he was eaten by a meadow lark. But because they wanted the mantis, she said, “Okay. The Mockroach changed the roosterroach into a praying mantis and told him to pray to him, then hopped on his back and said, ‘Giddyup! You’ve got to be my horsey!’ and the poor mantis had to carry the Mockroach everywhere he went, forevermore. That’s why Man calls the mantis, ‘devil’s horse.’”

The children were downcast with disappointment at the fate of the mantis but, Tish was certain as she ran them off to their beds, they would think twice before ever wanting to be changed into anything.

She herself, if she could be changed, would have chosen to become a cecropia moth, and remain nocturnal. The cecropia had a wingspan of nearly seven inches and was the most beautiful insect Tish had ever seen. But she would wait until the children were older to tell them the story of the cecropia. The best thing about it was that once it was grown up, the cecropia didn’t have to choose between eating vegetables or being a predator. The adult cecropia ate nothing. Its only purpose was love.

INSTAR THE SECOND:

Maiden No More

Chapter eight

Sam waited in the weeds beside the porch of Doc Swain’s clinic for the Loafer’s Court to break up. He would have been welcome to join them—no Ingledew was shy toward his fellow males the way he was toward females—but Sam didn’t want to have it known that he was becoming progressively deaf. He hated even to let Doc himself know, but that was now inevitable. Sam would wait until the others, including his father, had gone.

His father was the last to leave, in the wee hours, well past midnight. It seemed he would never leave. Squire Hank and Doc Swain could talk all night, and often did, and often simultaneously, neither listening to the other, but neither needing to, since they agreed on almost everything and never argued. Once Squire Hank had remarked to his son, explaining his nightly attendance at Doc Swain’s, “Hit shore beats listenin to myself talk.”

In his fifth and sixth instars Sam had sometimes followed his father to the porch of Doc Swain’s clinic, and had listened to them talking with what struck Sam as an uncanny ability to appear to listen to the other’s words while speaking one’s own. At these get-togethers, Sam had learned all there was to know about the glorious past of Stay More, and almost all there was to know about the eventual coming of The Bomb. Sam suspected that Doc Swain knew a few things about The Bomb which he would not even share with Squire Hank.

Sam could not hear these final words that his father spoke to Doc Swain:

“Best be gittin on down back. Come go home with me.”

Nor could he hear Doc Swain’s reply:

“Reckon not tonight. Stay more and spend the day with me.”

But Sam had heard this exchange countless times when he still had his hearing and he knew that they were exchanging polite leave-takings, neither meaning sincerely the formalities he said. Squire Hank would not even consider actually inviting his best friend to Parthenon, and Doc Swain wasn’t really interested in having Squire Hank sleep over through the day. But still the old roosterroaches continued for at least fifteen minutes:

“Caint do that, I reckon. Whyn’t ye jist come along down to my place?”

“Better not. You make yoreself pleasant and stay the whole day.”

“Time to light out fer home. Come and keep me company.”

“Not tonight, Squar. You jist move in here and have you some vittles.”

“Thank ye, Doc, but I’m a mind to git on home. You come with me.”

Neither roosterroach was willing to yield the last word to the other, and thus these invitations and declinings and counter-invitations continued through infinite variations, until finally Doc Swain made a slight change:

“Wal, come again, then, and fix to stay a week.”

“If you’ll come stay a week with me, first. Let’s go.”

“Won’t do it tonight, I reckon, Hank. You keep a eye out for the White Mouse for me.”

“I’ll watch fer ’im. See ye tomorrow night.”

Squire Hank got the last word, and Doc, as a courtesy, let him have it, and Squire Hank hitched up his gitalongs and shuffled along homeward. Sam waited a little while, until his father was completely out of sight and sniff. Doc Swain was alone now, crouched upon his porch, his sniffwhips lying at rest alongside his body, his wise old eyes staring outward into the blackness with a sad expression, as if he were still thinking about The Bomb.

Doc’s sniffwhips snapped to attention as Sam approached. He required a full second to recognize Sam, and then he spat and said, “Wal, if it aint Samuel! Aint seen you in a locust’s age, my boy.”

Sam could not hear this, but he said, “Hidy, Doc. How’s ever little thing with you?”

“Jist fine,” Doc said. “I’m same as usual but what about you? I figgered that Clock had done went and et ye.”

Sam decided not to pretend further that he could hear, and told the kindly physician, “Doc, I’m near about deaf.”

“Huh? Wal, it aint no wonder, that old Clock has done et yore tailprongs, maybe. Want I should look ’em over fer ye?”

Nor did Sam hear this. Doc repeated himself, louder, and Sam saw his mouth working and even felt a waft of his voice along his sniffwhips, but his tailprongs registered no sound. “Am I getting old, Doc?” he asked.

“That aint it. Here, let me have a look at yore prongs,” Doc insisted and moved around and lifted and lowered each of Sam’s cerci, counting the articles on each. “Nineteen is the most anybody could hope to have, per prong,” Doc assured him, then minutely examined the filaments on each article. “They’re all clean as new pins,” he remarked. “No blasphemy meant.” He abruptly bit one prong.

“Ouch!” Sam said.

“Reckon whatever it is,” declared Doc, “it aint likely organic but functional. Know what I think? Samuel, my young friend, I’m afraid that Clock has done went and stunned yore prongs beyond repair. Most all yore life you’ve heared that Clock strike ever hour much too close. It would drive anybody deef.”

Sam heard none of this, but he asked, desperately, “What can I do?”

“Wouldn’t do ye no good to move out of the Clock now, I’m afeared,” Doc said. “The damage is done done.”

“I caint hear you, Doc,” Sam said.

“I SAID, THE DAMAGE IS DONE DONE!” Doc shouted. “WHAT I RECKON YOU NEED IS, IS A WIFE TO TAKE KEER OF YE!”

Sam heard this, and blushed. “Aw, Doc…”

“I fergot,” Doc apologized. “None of you Ingledews has ever had the least bit of nerve when it comes to courtin females. How’re we gonna git ye a wife?” Since Sam could not hear this, Doc was talking more to himself than to Sam, but he was good at that, and continued, “Of course, any gal in Stay More would give her left sniffwhip to be yore wife, but you’d have to perpose, and you’d sooner wester than look a gal in the eye, wouldn’t ye? JIST A MINUTE,” he raised his voice, held up a foreclaw, then disappeared into his clinic. More than a minute passed before he reappeared, dragging behind him something that was almost too heavy for him to pull. It was a pill, of sorts. He presented it to Sam. “HERE,” he said, loudly. “Now don’t ye tell a soul I gave ye this, but haul it along home with ye and keep it, and whenever ye find a gal who strikes yore fancy, why, jist take a nibble or two outen this here pill, and it’ll give ye the nerve to say ‘hidy’ to her.”

Sam heard none of this, except the “here.” “What’s this?” he asked. “HIT’S SANG,” Doc Swain explained. “Root of the ginseng, and powerful scarce to come by.” Sam’s befuddlement was obvious and Doc had to yell and repeat himself and then yell and repeat a complicated explanation of how ginseng root works, and what it tastes like, and what the indications and contraindications were for its use. When, after much yelling and gesturing, Doc was convinced that Sam understood him, Doc said, “Well?”

“Doc,” Sam declared, “I came to see you about my deafness and you give me a remedy for impotence.”

Doc guffawed, and then he explained, loudly and with many repetitions, that the ginseng root would indirectly help Sam’s deafness by giving him the nerve to woo and wed a wife who would become his surrogate tailprongs and do his listening for him.

“But can’t anything be done directly for my tailprongs?” Sam asked.

“Wal…” Doc said, and hesitated, and tried to review in his mind all the cases of deafness that he had heard about or treated. Then Doc held up a foreclaw. “There’s only one substance, and it aint scientific like ginseng. It aint even medical, but it never fails. It aint even somethin I’ve seen work before myself, but my education has been sort of classical, ye know. Most likely you’d call this jist one of them oletimey superstitions, and maybe that’s all it is, but it works.”

“Speak up, Doc,” Sam said. “What is it? Do you have to coat my prongs with mandrake sap or something?”

“Worse than that,” Doc said. “I could go out tonight and find all the mandrake sap you’d ever hope to want, but that aint it. What you need is grease from the mountings of a church bell, and it has to be a church bell recently rung.”

Sam stared at Doc and shook his head, and Doc repeated himself so loudly that the bats in the air folded their ears and covered them with their wings. When the prescription had finally registered, Sam exclaimed, “Joshua H. Crust!” without blasphemy to Doc, since Doc wasn’t a Crustian either. Sam tried to picture in his mind’s eye a church bell. The only bell he had ever seen was the bell in the Stay More schoolhouse, which long ago Men had used on infrequent occasion as a church.

“Grease,” Sam said, and let several moments pass before adding, “from the mountings,” and a long silence ensued before his next words, “of a church bell,” followed by an interminable hiatus preceding his repetition of the words, “recently rung.” Then he sighed loudly and said to Doc, “History has it that that bell in the Stay More schoolhouse was never rung except for school…or for a funeral. There are no more schoolchildren of Man…or of Woman. And for there to be a funeral, one of Them would have to wester. Who will it be? Well, thanks a whole lot, Doc,” Sam said with no little sarcasm. “It does me a lot of good. Let me know if you hear of any reason They should ring the bell. Or let me know if you hear the bell.” Sam prepared to leave.

Doc did not bother with the “stay more” ritual. All he said was, loudly, “DON’T FORGET THIS HERE SANG ROOT.”

Sam stared at the “pill” of ginseng idly, remembered what it was for, and idly dragged it along home, where he ensconced it in a corner of his Clock among his other preserves and collectibles.

Chapter nine

Foredawn, that lambent time when the world becomes westerly quiet and still for nocturnal as well as diurnal creatures, Squire John Ingledew, a.k.a. Jack Dingletoon, found himself belly-up atop a liquid medium. The state, condition, or position of “belly-up” is so characteristic of west that some folks seeking to avoid the unpleasant associations of the word “west” employ the euphemism “belly-up.” No insect would consciously lie on its back unless it were west…and if it were west, it would not be conscious. Any insect who accidentally gets into the belly-up position will, like a turtle on its back, kick and struggle like mad to right itself. But Jack did not kick or struggle. He was happy. He was feeling better than he could ever remember having felt, although he was vaguely troubled by an inability to remember clearly how he had reached this state, condition, or position.

He had been amazed at the welcome he had received in the cookroom of Holy House. He had expected to be denied admission, or at least challenged, and he had been prepared to assert the authority of his lineage. He could not have known that Squire Hank himself had quietly spread word throughout Stay More that Jack Dingletoon should be treated with respect and cordiality, that if Jack actually were an Ingledew then he was due such courtesy, and if he were only deluded into thinking he was an Ingledew he ought to be “humored.”

Jack had been prepared to barge into the cook-room lashing his sniffwhips right and left and declaring, “Outa my way, boys! I’m a Ingledew, by cracky, and I aim to get my share!” But he’d scarcely had the chance to speak before he was greeted with loud exclamations of “Hidy, Squar John!” and “Proud to see ye, Squar John!” and “Light down and set, Squar John!” and before he knew it they were leading him to a right fair-sized puddle of beer on the linoleum. Between lapping up the brew and pausing to munch a morsel of potato chip or something they thrust upon him, he never got a chance to say a word.

Late in the night, or rather early in the morning, he had been surprised to see a female come sashaying into the cookroom, and despite his intoxication, or because of what his fellows were saying about her, Jack learned that the female was his own wife, Josie. The cookroom was an all-male preserve, with strict rules governing attendance and excluding all females, but, strangely, the male rooster-roaches had shown Josie the same courtesy and welcome they tendered to Jack, and it had gone to Josie’s head, making her giddier than the beer on which she was allowed to fill up.

Floating belly-up, Jack wondered, idly, what had become of his wife now. The last he’d paid any notice, she was flirting with Troy Dinsmore, a Smockroach, but it was all just innocent trifling, and old Troy was too drunk to get serious anyhow. Jack turned his head to one side, extended his touchers into the liquid and brought them to his lips. It was a fresher brew than what had been on the linoleum. It still had some fizz to it. Jack wiggled his tailprongs and made it foam a bit.

Then he noticed the other roosterroach, also floating belly-up. It wasn’t Josie. It appeared to be Jaybird Coe, a Frockroach, who, Jack realized, had within the past few hours become his best buddy.

“Aint this the life?” Jack said to Jaybird, and demonstrated how he could paddle with his tailprongs and actually scoot around on the surface of the beer, around and around within the confines of the metal tank. Tailprongs normally are sticking up overhead, or rather overtail, but if one is lying on one’s back, belly-up in beer, then they are extending downward into the liquid. Jack hoped his example would inspire Jaybird to paddle around too, but Jaybird wouldn’t do it. He just lay there, floating on his back. Jack dipped a sniffwhip into the brew and splashed Jaybird with it, right in the face, but Jaybird didn’t seem to mind. “Drunk as a wheelbarrow,” Jack observed, although the only wheelbarrow he had seen, across the road in the Lord’s Garden Patch, was a teetotaller.

Jack studied the ceiling. There was a slot-shaped opening in it, through which poured the first light of dawn. It didn’t bother Jack, but he was vaguely bothered by the memory of having dropped through that slot to reach where he was. That implied, somehow, a problem, though at the moment he couldn’t put his sniffwhips on just what the problem was. He nudged Jaybird. “Hey, Jaybird,” he said. But Jaybird didn’t respond. Jack tickled his face with his sniffwhip. “Come on, Jay, pop out of it,” he urged, and bumped up against Jaybird forcefully, but his friend lay as still as west. West? Jack thought, and began to feel a rising panic.

He heard a distant voice calling his name. Or calling him by the name he used to have, Jack. Now he was Squire John, but this voice didn’t seem to know that. It was a high-pitched female voice, and Jack tried to identify its owner with his sniffwhips, but all he could pick up on his sniffwhips was the smell of the beer all around him, along with a steadily growing scent of westwardness, the west of the belly-up feller beside him, Jaybird.

“Jack, whar air ye?” came the voice, again and again, and Jack realized it was Josie.

He called back, “Josie? I’m down here inside of this beer can!” Soon he saw her face peering down at him from the slot overhead. How had she got up there, to the top of the can? She had no wings. Had someone boosted her up? “Keep back from the aidge!” he cautioned her. “You’ll fall in, too.”

“What’re ye doin down thar, Jack?” she asked.

“Jist a-layin here, floatin around and feelin fine,” he declared.

“You aint drownded, air ye?”

“Noo, but it ’pears thet ole Jaybird might be.”

“How did ye git down thar, Jack?”

“Same way you’re liable to git down here if ye don’t step back,” Jack warned her, but the words were not out of his mouth before he saw her tumbling headlong down into the can. With a gentle splash she landed beside him, and got a snootful of beer.

“Mmm-mmm,” she purred, licking her mandibles. “This is the real stuff!”

“Now look what ye’ve done went and done,” he pointed out. “Now we’re both trapped in here.” He had figured the problem out.

She noticed belly-up Jaybird. “Is he really westered off?” she asked. “That, or he’s drunker’n a fried coot,” Jack said.

Josie had never seen a fried coot. But she sniffed the distinct odor of westwardness that emanated from Jaybird’s corpse, and she felt both a mingling of sorrow for the westered and a sense of responsibility: she wondered which, if any, of the few edibles stored in her larder she could take to Samantha Coe for the funeral feed. Josie didn’t have a scrap of sweetstuff anywhere in the log, what with her big family, but the other ladies would be sure to bring Samantha a bit of pie or cake or at least cookie for the funeral feed, and Josie would look cheap, as usual. She complained to her husband, “I don’t have a blessit thing to take to the funeral feed.”

“Lorgamercy, Maw, is thet all ye kin think of, at a time like this?” Jack demanded. “It aint Jaybird’s funeral we’re concerned with. It’s our own, if we caint git out of here.”

Josie took another sip of the beer that surrounded her, and wondered how long it would take her, with Jack’s help, to drink all of it. “How deep is this, hon?” she asked.

“I aint tried to touch bottom,” he declared. “And I aint so certain I’d keer to try.”

Josie attempted to explain her plan. If they drank all the beer, they couldn’t drown in it.

“Now thet is real, real clever,” Jack commented with sarcasm, tapping his forehead with a toucher. “But jist think about it a minute. Whar is all the beer we drink gonna go?”

Josie thought for a minute. “Oh,” she then said. She lapsed into worried silence, and paddled around idly with her tailprongs, but the fun of it rapidly palled. “Jack,” she asked, “kin ye turn right side up?”

“Maw, I wush ye’d stop callin me ‘Jack.’ You don’t have to call me ‘Squar John’ but at least ‘John’ would be a heap of improvement.”

“Wal John, if you’re shore enough a Ingledew, you orter be able to turn right side up and spread yore wings and fly out of here.”

Jack had a vague but pleasant memory of having recently escaped from a Santa Fe by using his wings. It was worth a try. He rolled to one side, and kicked all six of his gitalongs, but could not flip over onto his stomach. “Give me a shove,” he told his wife.

Josie tried shoving him, to turn him over, but she only succeeded in pushing him across the pool. She pushed him up against the metal wall of the tank, and there, by continued shoving and his own splashing efforts, she was able to turn him right side up. He tried to spread his wings, but they were soaked with beer, and he quickly discovered that he had no buoyancy in this position. He could only float if he was belly-up.

“Halp!” he cried, and sank.

“Oh, Lord, save us!” Josie cried out to Man, who was still sound (or unsound) asleep in the back yard. “Climb the wall, Jack!” she begged her husband, and shoved him hard against the aluminum wall, and he scrabbled with his foreclaws and scratched with his hind claws, and clutched with his touchers and thrashed with his tailprongs and lashed with his sniffwhips, but could get no purchase whatever on the smooth metal. All his frantic efforts only had the effect of flipping Josie over onto her stomach, so that she no longer had any buoyancy either.

They were sinking together. As he had done in the instant before the Santa Fe tried to seize him, Jack reflected upon his life’s brief moment of glory: how fleetingly he had been allowed to enjoy the privileges of Ingledewidity, how transitory the pleasure of fame. But this time he had neither wings nor courage to save him.

Josie thought of her daughter Tish. Would Tish know how to receive properly all the guests who came bearing funeral feeds? Would Tish be certain that each child had a proper share of the bits of pie, cake, or cookie? Would she make certain that the log was scrubbed clean and that each child was thoroughly bathed and spruced up? Then, when the funeral feed was over, would she, as Josie had told Jubal to tell her to do, present herself at Parthenon and claim kin to the Ingledews?

“Tish has got to claim kin to the Ingledews,” Josie said to Jack as they both floundered and sank.

“What?” Jack wondered what nonsense his wife was babbling in her moment of west. “What’s that got to do with us a-westerin? All I kin think of, is when I git to Hell I’ll have to go to work.”

Chapter ten

“If a bird gits me, I deserve it, O Lord,” Brother Tichborne said aloud, as the dawn came up. There was not quite yet enough light for a bird to see him, and the earliest bird would get the worm, not him, but he knew that if he kept going in the direction he was heading, he would never get back to the safety of Holy House before he was visible to all daytime creatures, and west in the clutches of a bird or reptile would be no Rapture at all.

Yes, the Lord still lay. In His profound stupor, He had slightly shifted, no longer flatly supine upon the grass of Carlott but twisted to one side with one of His knees flexed upward toward His chest, and His butt elevated like one of the mountain peaks that rimmed Stay More valley.

It was this peak that Brother Tichborne boldly climbed, having no trouble gaining its summit but feeling shocked at his own audacity in scaling the Lord’s Butt. At the crest of the bluejeans-covered prat he sat, or crouched, and surveyed the world below and around, slowly lightening in the foredawn. He studied the Lord’s profile: a face never seen so near nor so lit up before. How many of his fellow roosterroaches had ever had such a view? There were certain unholy heathens particularly among the closet Smockroaches, who claimed to have crawled upon the Lord’s person while the Lord was in His bed; but Chid Tichborne doubted that any of them had seen His face with so much light upon it.

It was a magnificent face, although the strong, firm jowls were hidden beneath a scraggly, gray-streaked beard. Brother Tichborne would have preferred, somehow, that the beard be all white, more in keeping with his concept of a deity, but the several white hairs or whiskers among the darker ones were enough to give the Lord a scholarly look. Some folks claimed there were other Men in the world; although Chid Tichborne preached against this polytheism, he admitted to himself that it was a possibility, even if he had never seen one of the other Men. But surely no other Man was as smart, as strong, and as all-powerful as our Man.

…Unless, Chid Tichborne thought with a violent shudder, the Lord had westered. Was He stirring at all? Did His chest rise and fall perceptibly with His shallow breathing? In Brother Tichborne’s knees, as in the knees of all roosterroaches, there were special sensors which could detect the slightest vibration in the substratum, but the patch of jeans upon which Chid was perched was totally inert.

If the Lord were west, what would become of His rooster-roaches? Of course they would not starve, but they would get powerfully hungry, and they would have to leave Holy House. Few of them could forage in the woods, like common Carlotters, eating raw algae and fungi. Most of them would want to invade Parthenon, which is exactly what Chid was planning, although everybody feared the Ingledews almost as much as they feared the Lord. Silly of them, because the two Ingledews were vastly outnumbered, no matter what legendary powers of combat they were purported to possess.

If the Holy House roosterroaches conquered the Ingledews and took over Parthenon, Chid realized, he would have to make revisions and alterations in his religion. He could no longer preach the Kingdom of Man, but would have to speak of the Queendom of Woman, and he was not certain he could do that. He had nothing against matriarchy itself; he simply didn’t have much use for females. A female, whether Woman or roosterroach, was all right as far as her functions went: bearing and raising children, keeping the house and all, but you couldn’t very easily base a whole system of theology around one of them. Chid tried to imagine himself beginning a prayer “Our Mother who art in Parthenon…” and felt ridiculous.

Chid’s sniffwhips caused him to shift his gaze from the Lord’s handsome but possibly westered countenance to the grass of Carlott surrounding the Lord, where daytime life was beginning to stir. A nightcrawler had come to a stop near the Lord’s nose and was broadcasting, “BREAKER ONE OH. HOWBOUTCHA, GOOD BUDDY? GOT A DEAD WHALE TO STARBOARD. TUNNEL SIXTEEN BLOCKED.” This was followed by a buzz of static and then a distant nightcrawler on the other side of the Lord answered, “FOUR ROGER. TAKE A SHAKE TO TUNNEL TWENTY-SEVEN, AND SKIRT THE MOTHER. NO BLOCK ON TWENTY-SEVEN. DO YOU READ?”

The nightcrawler shifted gears and changed direction, down the length of the earth beside the Lord’s body in search of another hole in the ground, but he had not gone far before a robin swooped out of the sky, took one hop, and seized the entire nightcrawler and lifted it, wriggling rig and all, off into the sky, its pitiful last message rapidly fading: “WE UP AND AWAY TO GLORYLAND, THREES AND EIGHTS….”

Brother Tichborne scanned the sky nervously for other birds. In the grass near the Lord’s hindquarters Chid saw a lizard, fearsome as a dragon and swifter than a snake, its darting tongue serving as a pronged sniffwhip and already catching the scent of Chid, and approaching.

“Lord, hear this sinner,” Chid prayed aloud, also silently praying that the Lord was not too westered to hear his prayer, “I have done wrong, I know, Lord, and I confess. I have jined ends with my own sister, Lord, and got her with marbles and eastereggs, and married her. I have jined in adultery with other ladies, Lord, amongst them Josie Dingletoon, who hardly ary feller could resist, but she never tempted me, it was my own sinfulness. Now wilt Thou permit the beasts of the field and the critters of the air to consume me, instead of Thy divine Rapture? Lord, I pray that I be saved, to stay east and preach Thy glories to all roosterroachkind, or, if it be Thy will, to be raptured by Thy hand and Thy sacred shootin-arn. But if I am to be westered off by a beast of the field or a critter of the air, let it be swift, O Lord, swift as Thy rapturing, and take me to live on Thy right hand in the Heaven of Stay More Forever. In Joshua’s Blessed Name I pray, Amen.”

And behold, the Lord opened one eye.

Even though the Lord held His one eye opened for only a few jerks of a second and then closed it tightly again, Chid Tichborne took this as a sign that the Lord had heard him and intended to spare him, that the Lord forgave him for his transgressions. A chill shiver ran through Chid; no, he realized it was not his own chill shiver, but one running through the Lord Himself, the Lord’s whole body quivering. Chid saw a bird swooping downward, aimed right at him, but he feared no evil, for the Lord was with him, and the Lord twitched an elbow, which caused the bird to swerve and miss and rise back out of sight. Likewise the lizard in the grass retreated.

The Lord began to rise. He got His knees up under Himself and spread His palms upon the ground, and arched His back. Chid did not want to fall off into the grass, where lizards, snakes, birds, or Lord knows what-all might get him. He clung to the Lord’s jeans and sought to crawl into the Lord’s hip pocket, but the space was too tight. As the Lord rose to His knees, Chid climbed above His belt to the back of His shirt, and as the Lord continued rising to a standing position, Chid crawled up beneath the back of the Lord’s shirt collar. There, out of sight of any creature, even the Lord, he hid, and hung on, as the Lord staggered around the yard of Carlott for a while, kicking into pieces of car junk, then tottering toward the back porch of Holy House.

Although this height and his own boldness made his nerves tingle, Chid felt elevated above his former station in life and almost sanctified, almost possessed of godhead himself. Wouldn’t those infidel Smockroaches be astonished into piety if they could see him? But all roosterroaches had retired for the day into deep slumber, and none were abroad to witness the minister’s daring ride on the back of the Lord’s neck.

The Lord shuffled along through Holy House to His cookroom. He swung open the great door of the Fabulous Fridge, and a blast of cold air pierced Chid and made his mandibles chatter. The Lord just stared for a long time at the interior of the Fridge, as if trying to decide what to take, or perhaps only checking to see that nothing was missing (no roosterroach had ever succeeded in sneaking into the sealed interior). Then the Lord closed the Fridge’s door without removing anything. He bent low over the double-tub Porcelain Sink, a place of frequent wading parties for roosterroaches, and placed His head directly beneath the Fantastic Faucet and turned on the water, causing a great gush of it to splash all over His hair and even the back of His collar, where Chid crouched, only partially sheltered from the spray. For what seemed like a full minute, the Lord held His head beneath the rushing water, then raised His head and shook it vigorously, as if to dry it.

The Lord stumbled against the cookroom table, and in doing so jostled a pile of books stacked on the table alongside an opened beer can. Some of the books fell to the floor but the beer can only tottered; the Lord grabbed it and raised it to His lips. The Lord took a lusty swallow. The Lord gagged, coughed, opened the door leading from the cookroom to the front yard, drew back His arm, and threw the beer can and whatever contents remained across the yard, westward across the weed-grown Roamin Road and into the edge of the Lord’s Garden and Refuse Pile.

Then the Lord made Himself a pot of coffee. The aroma offended Chid, who had once attempted to eat a ground of coffee and been sickened by it. The Lord poured himself a large cup of the stuff, then took down from the cupboard a box and out of the box He drew an oatmeal cookie. Crumbs fell to the floor, and Chid fought the great temptation to drop down from the Lord’s collar and help himself to the food on the floor, but it was full daylight now, and no roosterroach ever dines after dawn.

With His cookie and coffee, the Lord left the cookroom, crossed the eating room and loafing room, and entered the ponder room. Usually all the Lord ever did in this room was sit in a swiveling chair at His desk and stare out the window and ponder. Occasionally the Lord was known, at night when roosterroaches could observe Him, to take one or more or several of the many books which lined the walls of the ponder room, and sit in the loafing room and read. One of the first lessons that roosterroaches were taught in the second or third instar was to leave alone the tempting glue in the bindings of these books. Edible though it was, nutritious though it was, tasty though it was, the consumption of bookbinding glue would be a serious offense unto the Lord, an unforgivable sin, and no rooster-roach bothered the books.

But this morning the Lord neither pondered nor read a book. He sat at His desk, at the machine which was called, from the label Chid deciphered on it, Selec Trick, referring perhaps to the tricks which the Lord made it do, usually by tapping the beast’s fifty eyes, which caused a dancing globe to spread words upon sheets of yellow paper. But this morning He chose white paper and put it into the Selec Trick.

Resisting the powerful urge to scamper down and fetch one of the several crumbs of oatmeal cookie which continued to fall from the Lord’s hand, and trying to avoid the fumes of coffee that insulted his sniffwhips, the Reverend Chidiock Tichborne sat on the Lord’s shoulder and watched Him perform tricks on His Selec Trick.

The first letters were the day of the week, Saturday, no problem for the minister to decipher. These were followed by the month, May, and the date, and the year. The Lord pushed and poked eyes on the Selec Trick which made its dancing globe run and bounce. And the Lord typed: “Dear Sharon,” and paused but the briefest moment, then did tricks all the morning long, and much of the afternoon.

Chapter eleven

Surely, thought Tish, as she woke at the first dim of dusk to find that her parents had not returned, they will come home any minute now that the sun is set. She made all the children wait, before foraging for the night’s first meal, in order to welcome the return of Daddy and Momma. But the full dark came, everyone was ravenous enough to eat dirt, and still there was no sign of the parents. The older children kept their sniffwhips finely tuned in search of the first hint of Jack and/or Josie Dingletoon, and eager Jubal received permission from Tish to leave the log and walk out across Carlott in the direction of Holy House to reconnoiter the expected return. When Jubal did not come home after an hour, Tish went out in search of him, and found him sitting atop the deserted Platform, staring toward Holy House and swinging his sniffwhips slowly but steadily in every direction.

“Reckon ye might as well come on back home, Jubal, boy,” his elder sister said to him. “They’re not a-comin tonight, it don’t look like.”

The boy rose up and glanced around. “Where did the Lord lay?” he asked.

“Right yonder,” Tish pointed a sniffwhip. The impress of the Lord’s body was still detectable in the grass. “His head was there, and His feet were way over there, and out yonder is where I touched His finger.”

The boy climbed down from the Platform and walked slowly homeward beside his sister, retracing their steps. After a while he raised his bent head and with upturned face, with stargazers and big eyes alike, he gazed at the stars, whose cold pulses were beating amid the black hollows above, serenely removed from these two wisps of roosterroach life. Jubal asked Tish how far away those twinklers were, and whether Man was Lord of all those worlds as well as of this one.

“Did ye tell me wunst the stars are worlds, Tish?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“All like ours, with roosterroaches all over all of ’em?”

“I reckon so, Jubal.”

“Do they all have to go west, everywhere, jist like us?”

“Everything goes west, sooner or later. Even those whole stars, each and ever, sputter and go dark and go cold and go west.”

Jubal grew very reflective. “And is our world ever going to go cold?”

Tish realized that Jubal was too young to remember the last winter. She herself had been still too young during the worst part of it to realize its severity. “Yes,” she said. “It will become very cold.”

“When we go live in Partheeny, can we stay warm all the time?”

“Why, Jubal, what gives ye the notion that we could ever go live in Partheeny?”

“If you was to marry a Squar Ingledew, we could!”

Tish could not suppress a great laugh. “I’m not about to marry no Squar Ingledew!” she said. “Whatever give ye such a notion?”

“Momma said.”

“Huh? What-all did Momma say?”

“She said if ever anything happened to her and Daddy, you was to remember that the Dingletoons was actually Ingledews, and that you orter go and visit the squires and claim kin.”

“Claimin kin is one thing,” Tish told Jubal. “Gittin married to one of ’em is a gray moth of a different color. Besides, if we was kin, it’d be incest to marry one. And Brother Tichborne says there’s nothing worser than incest.”

“When will ye claim kin?” he wanted to know.

She was confounded, nay, dumbfounded, by the prospect. From the woods all around came the opening bars of the Purple Symphony, but she mistook these sounds for strains in her own heart: someone had told her that when you hear the Purple Symphony it makes you yearn for something. The lower bristles of her sniffwhips tingled with the scent of pining, and even though she realized the scent was coming from herself, it still meant good luck. Would she have good luck if she tried to claim kin to the Ingledews?

“When will ye claim kin?” Jubal intruded on her reverie once more, and Tish discovered herself back home in the rotlog hovel, surrounded by her siblings, all of whom were picking up Jubal’s question and drumming it at her: When will ye claim kin? When will ye claim kin? When will ye claim kin?

Tish suddenly felt overwhelmed by her responsibility, her duty, and the burden of the knowledge that they were Ingledews. Why had this knowledge come so abruptly, almost as a foretokening of tragedy? If her father had not discovered, on the same night of his westering, that he was an Ingledew, his children would have faced the vicissitudes of their lot in life with the same resignation and the same acceptance of reality that all roosterroaches possess. They would have been content to go on living as Dingletoons. Somewhere, somehow, Tish might have crossed paths with Archy Tichborne again, whom she had encountered so fleetingly at the play-party. “Just to think,” she said to herself morosely, “only last night I danced and laughed!” Now, as the oldest survivor among the Dingletoon children, she had to take over the household…or find a way to move to Parthenon.

“Better claim kin tonight,” Jubal prodded. “Grab time by the sniffwhips, as Momma allus said. The early worm fools the bird.”

“Just leave me be!” Tish wailed, and fled from the house. She climbed the Great Rock to the north of Carlott, a boulder almost as high as Holy House itself, which was in its shadow. On the top of this Great Rock was a small level place, which Man Himself had never visited and could scarcely reach, where a group of small rocks, column-like, had been arranged, some flat ones, post-and-lintel, capping and spanning others, into a circle. According to legend, powerful rooster-roaches years before the time of Joshua Crust had placed the rocks into this circle, although it was not conceivable that any roosterroach, not even a crew of mighty Ingledews, could have budged or nudged any of these stones. Still this circle of stones was a special place, pagan, non-Crustian, and perhaps witchlike, where few roosterroaches ever went any more. One had to traverse deep mosses to reach it. It had been called Hinglerocks, long ago, and Tish knew the name but had never heard anyone else speak of it, or go there. To her Hinglerocks was a private ruined temple, where she could go to escape the puzzles and vexations of life, or, now, to mourn the westering of her parents and try to give herself nerve to claim kin to the Ingledews. Because nothing except moss grew there to tempt any food-searching creature, she was never molested, except en route, when she might encounter a hostile cricket, a Santa Fe or scorpion, or meet up with some fat nightcrawler whose lingo she could not fathom.

From Hinglerocks Tish could see all the way to Parthenon, two furlongs distant; the house-long-ago-converted-into-a-general-storeand-now-back-into-a-house was silhouetted in the moonlight against the holler in which it nestled, a single light burning within one room to the left, a kerosene light, pale as a distant star. The weed-forested Roamin Road led to it; the closest Tish had ever been to Parthenon was the edge of this forest on the Roamin Road just the night before, when the parade of damsels marched there. The Lord never drove His vehicle over this road any more, nor did He even walk it any more, except to put envelopes into the Woman’s mailbox.

For what must have been an hour or more, Tish sat at Hinglerocks gazing out toward Parthenon and summoning her courage to venture there. At last she decided at least to approach the place, and sniff around it.

Another hour was consumed in her journey: as she approached the forest of weeds that loomed between her and her destination, she almost hoped to be spared arrival by some forest-creature: the oblivion of a shrew’s gullet would be preferable to the rigors of interviews with Ingledews. She would rather encounter a badger, a possum, even the weird rare armadillo, than face an Ingledew. Then she remembered that her own dear late father had been an Ingledew, and there had been nothing fearsome about him. For that matter, she was an Ingledew! Suddenly she became very self-conscious, and as she entered the forest of weeds she examined herself. Weren’t her hips and thighs too long and fat? All six of them, or at least four of them? Were her gitalongs too tiny? Was her thorax full enough?

Before she crossed the front yard of Parthenon, she paused to give herself a thorough bath, washing her sniffwhips twice each, and cleaning every spike on her gitalongs; she felt that this was the most important bath she had ever given herself, and she was thorough and meticulous. She passed her sniffwhips slowly over her entire body and examined the result. Did she detect the faintest trace of fragrant pheromone? If so, it was from excitement, not from lust.

She crossed the yard. Among the random patches of grass, the unceremonious expanse of smooth dirt was strewn with commemorative statuary: here a copper penny, there a wad of tinfoil; here a threaded screw and a washer, there a poptop from a beverage can; here a glass bead, there a nacreous button. Tish paused to examine a round glass marble, a Man-child’s plaything, streaked with colors, transparent, wonderful. She considered the contrast of this yard of Parthenon with that of Carlott, which was littered with roller bearings, rusting cotter pins, oily couplings, bent valves, sparkplugs, the miscellaneous detritus of automobile parts. Tish could have spent the whole night examining Parthenon’s marvelous yard, but there ahead of her was the porch of Parthenon itself.

Stone piers supported the porch, and she climbed the one nearest to the window whose light she had seen from afar. She scaled the wooden wall to the ledge of this window, and looked through the screen. There, in a cheer-of-ease, sat the Woman. Tish had heard many legends, reports, histories, descriptions, and rumors about the Woman, but had never seen Her so close before, big as life, bigger than life, almost as big as Man. But Man, when Tish had seen Him the night before and even touched Him, had been deeply asleep, if not drunker than a pied piper. This Woman was wide awake, Her eyes open. She was reading. In Her hands She held some sheets of paper, white, and She was reading one of these. Her hair was as yellow as a comet moth’s wings, and Her smooth mouth was turned up at one corner in a smile. She had a very kind and gentle expression. Tish would have liked to climb up into Her lap and talk with Her, but Tish was old enough to know that the Woman would not tolerate the touch of a roosterroach any more than the Man would.

High on one wall of the room was a mantelshelf, above a boarded-up fireplace, and on the mantelshelf rose a clock, the Clock, of which Tish had heard so much, and whose chimes she had heard all her life. But those chimes, from the distance of Carlott, had sounded like only so many little pings and pongs. Now, as Tish waited and watched, the Clock began to strike the hour, and it said “BUN!” nearly startling Tish off her perch. Then it said, “TART!” A third time it struck: “TRIFLE!” Tish counted a fourth: “FUDGE!” And a fifth: “FONDANT!” The Clock pealed six: “SCONE!” And the Clock struck seven: “SUGARPLUM!” Tish was debating with herself whether it had really said all these things, when it said “EGG!” For nine o’clock, the Clock said “NOU-GAT!” Then it struck ten: “DIVINITY!” with a reverberation that seemed to shake the very ledge that Tish sat upon. The last thing the Clock said was “ECLAIR!” Tish waited for a twelfth chime, and was prepared to count it, but it never came.

The Woman yawned and raised Her long arms overhead. She smiled again. Then yawned again. Then She folded up the sheets of paper and placed them inside an envelope, which She placed inside a book, and closed the book. She stood up from Her cheer-of-ease, blew out Her kerosene lantern, returning the world to its normal intensities and colorations, and then She climbed into Her bed.

Chapter twelve

Gregor Samsa Ingledew was so startled to detect, with the whole length of his sniffwhips, the approach of the scent of none other than his own father, that he instinctively prepared himself for combat, something he had been required to do only once before in his life in the Clock, when a scorpion had attempted entry. The scorpion, a mortal foe of all roosterroaches, is an arachnid, like a spider, but an overgrown one, with crab’s pincers, and a tail like a crane tipped by a deadly stinger. Like the roosterroach, he is a night-prowler, but the roosterroach prowls for garbage and the scorpion prowls for rooster-roaches. A favorite taunt or curse of roosterroach children is to say to one another, “Scorpy on you!” Sam had supposed his Clock a safe refuge from scorpions as well as all other creatures, but one night while winding the Clock the Woman had left the glass front door ajar, and the scorpion had crept in. Sam had often had dreams, or rather daymares, of being attacked by a scorpion, and he had thought he was asleep when he first saw it coming at him, thrice as large as he. He had hoped he would wake up, but discovered that he was already very much awake. If he had been asleep, it would have been his last sleep. Awake, he was able to summon up unrealized reserves of the Ingledew strength, cunning, and martial art.

The scorpion had been no match for him, really. Before he could stop to consider what he was doing, he had confronted it, attacked it, wrestled it, mutilated it. Deftly sidestepping the plunging poisonous stinger, he had bitten off one of the scorpion’s pincers while grabbing the other and twisting, throwing the scorpion over onto its back, rendering the tail ineffective, and had chewed into the underside of the scorpion’s thorax. The scorpion had screamed in pain and fright and had begged mercy in a language totally foreign to Sam, but with a universal sound of piteous beseechment so heartrending that Sam had been tempted to let it go. But he had quickly killed it instead, ripped out its heart and its brain, and dragged its carcass to the edge of the mantelshelf and kicked it off, for the Woman to find and dispose of. Only much later had he begun shivering with wracking fear.

Now he was confronted again, not by a scorpion but a possibly worse intruder, Squire Hank Ingledew, who had never visited the Clock before in the time Sam had lived there, namely, all his life. “Dad?” Sam said in great astonishment, even before catching sight of his father.

Squire Hank hove into view. “Morsel, son,” he said, and immediately began looking around him, and above him, at the great intricate innards of the clockworks, the appurtenances and impedimenta of Sam’s apartment. “Right spiffy-lookin place ye got here,” Squire Hank observed.

Sam could not hear a word. “Morsel, Dad,” he said, and politely asked, “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

Squire Hank laughed. “Queer, aint it? I never wunst clum up here afore.” The elder Ingledew got misty-eyed and waxed reminiscent, “The whole time ye was growin up, yore Momma had all the say in yore raisin, and I hardly never saw ye. Ever since she went and westered off, I’ve been meanin to come drap in on ye, and say hidy and all, but I reckon I’ve jist not had a good reason. Not until now.”

Sam, hearing none of this, assumed his father was awkwardly trying to make conversation about the weather. “Yes,” he said, “I expect we might get a thundershower any time now.”

“Worser than that, I reckon,” his father said. “It’s a gal. A female.”

“But I suppose the flowers need it,” Sam said. “It’s been awful dry.”

“I aint so certain we need her,” Hank said. “She’s come to claim kin to us, and maybe move in on us. One of ole Jack Dingletoon’s daughters, him that thinks he’s discovered he’s a Ingledew. Now she says he’s probably west, and Josie too, and it’s her duty, bein head of household and all, to claim kin to us. So what should I tell her?”

Hearing-impaired persons are good at detecting the asking of a question, even if they do not understand the words. Sam could hear the rising inflection of the question mark, and he assumed his father had shifted the topic of discussion from the weather to Sam’s personal well-being, so he answered, “I have no complaints.”

“You mean you don’t care if she moves in or not?” Squire Hank was incredulous. “You want her to bring her whole caboodle of brothers and sisters too?”

Two question marks. “I’m doing okay, thank you, and finding plenty to eat.” Sam gestured at his neat array of food fragments, of which he was proud. The dozens of them were arranged and catalogued, at least in his own mind, and he had specimens of everything the Woman had ever eaten.

Squire Hank surveyed the larder. “Heck, they’d eat all that plumb up quicker’n ye could count.”

“Thank you,” Sam said. “Yes, that one there is a rare dab of lemon meringue. And this piece is almost a year old, a croissant demisel. Here, try a taste of this one, a butterscotch marzipan.”

Squire Hank idly chewed upon the offering. He asked, “Do you want a slew of them rotlog Dingletoon clodhoppers a-stompin all over these goodies?”

The question mark led Sam to assume that his father was asking for samples of other specimens. He offered a taste of peanut brittle. Then he offered a taste of…“No, I don’t think you want this one. This is a pellet of ginseng root, recently acquired from Doc Swain, which he claims is good for—”

Squire Hank snickered. “Yeah, he guv me a dose of that stuff, wunst. It works, I tell ye. But what use is it fer a feller my age? Come to think of it, you might jist be a-needin it, if you have to talk to this gal I’m tellin ye about, this Letitia Dingletoon, says her name is. You want to talk to her?”

His father was being awfully inquisitive. What was he asking now? Had Sam tried the gingseng himself? “Sure,” he said.

His father stared at him in wonder. “Then you’d better bite off a big hunk right now,” said the elder Ingledew and held out the pellet of gingseng. “Here,” he said. “Eat. EAT!”

Sam heard a word, the first word he had heard his father speak. A command: eat. Although Sam did not understand why his father was insisting on it, he knew that the previous night, when he had sampled a taste of the ginseng, it had given him a kind of convivial glow, which perhaps was all it was intended to do. “I will if you will,” he said to his father, taking a bite and passing it back.

“Maybe I’ll need it too,” said his father, and took a little bite, “if I got to go back down thar and talk to that gal and ’splain to her that she’s got to come up here and claim kin to you herself.”

Sam wished he could hear his father. Possibly his father intended that the two of them share the ginseng and work up a pair of convivial glows that would allow them to be good friends, not just father and son. Sam was on the verge of confessing to his father that his hearing had failed him, but if he did that, there would be no further point in having a conversation with his father anyway. Hoping for quick intoxication, he took another, larger bite of the ginseng. “It has a rather strange taste,” he observed. “Don’t you think? Not like a food but like a drug.”

This comment did not lead to further camaraderie. His father seemed preparing to leave. “Well, it’s your Clock,” Squire Hank said to his son, “and I aint about to tell ye how to live yore life. But iffen it was me, I shore would discourage that gal from any notions she might have about movin in on ye.” Squire Hank gave Sam a mockcuff on the side of the head, and said, “Allrighty, I’ll send her on up. Don’t do nothin I wouldn’t do, ye hear? Hawr-hawr.”

No, he didn’t hear. Squire Hank made his exit. “So long, Dad,” Sam called after him, a bit disappointed the visit had been so brief, and so unproductive of any further bond between the two Ingledews. One of these days, Sam told himself, I’ll just have to tell him that I’m deaf.

Chapter thirteen

Sure enough, her nervousness was about to make her involuntarily release a molecule of pheromone. Like an effort to suppress a belch or a sneeze, the anxiety weakened the effort, and the fragrant pheromone escaped, preceding her like a herald of trumpets into the Clock.

Of the three possible intruders into the Clock—scorpion, father, strange girl—the latter struck Sam as the most to be feared, even with the aid of ginseng, a third and largest bite of which he chomped on the instant the molecule began dancing along the length of his sniffwhip.

The interior overwhelmed her. The parts of the Clock were moving, some swiftly, some imperceptibly, but they all moved, whereas the various cogs and gears littering Carlott were all inert, lifeless. She could not separate the minute quiverings of the mainspring from the tremblings of her mainheart.

Sam, after the initial shock of the cavorting molecule of pheromone had paralyzed his sniffwhip, used his eyes to behold, up close, much too close, a female of his own species: a girl fully developed, with long and strong legs, all six nicely spiked on the tibia, the merons muscular and the trochanters shapely, the arolia small and dainty, the unguiae neatly manicured. Her face, although at the moment it was transfixed in fright, was a comely country girl’s with pastoral beauty and the most delicate suggestion of a feistiness: the scape of the sniffwhip was slightly recessed in its socket, and joined the pedicel firmly and assertively but with a touch of mischievousness. Her mouth had full paraglossae suggestively covered by smooth galeae, while the broad labrum rose up to the clypeus with audacity and authority. Sam thought he was about to faint, either from the sight of her or an overdose of ginseng, or both.

Tish felt sick to her stomach. She had had nothing to eat tonight, but she felt as if she were about to puke, not from nausea but from nerves. It did not help, one bit, that Squire Sam Ingledew—for it was clearly he, handsome as all her girlfriends had gossiped he was—was looking at her as if she were something that had crawled out of a hole in the ground. It had been an effort to crawl up the mantel and reach the Clock, but she had made as dignified an entrance as she could.

Moments passed. Knowing nothing better to say, she asked, “Are you Squire Sam Ingledew?” which struck her as silly, almost like asking of Man, “Are you Man?”

It was the first time a female other than his mother had ever spoken to him, and even if he had heard her, which he had not, he would not have known what to say.

“I met yore daddy, down below,” she went on, wondering if she was babbling, “who said he was Squire Hank Ingledew and is maybe yore daddy, if you’re Squire Sam Ingledew, which I reckon ye must be, if this here is yore Clock. I mean, you look like Squire Sam Ingledew, although I’ve never laid eyes on ye before but you just look just like I just figgered you’d just look!” She ran out of breath and had to stop.

Sam managed two words: “Beg pardon?”

Tish took a deep breath, a very deep one, as much as her sixteen spiracles could draw in, and repeated herself, word for word. But Squire Sam only continued looking at her as if she were something on the end of a stick.

Was the ginseng taking effect? Sam managed to mouth five whole words: “I don’t hear very well.” He gave each of his tailprongs a wiggle as if to demonstrate that they were physically functional although sensorially impaired.

“Oh,” she said, and watched him wiggling his tailprongs. They were cute. She moved closer to one of them, cupped her touchers around her mouth and shouted, “HELLO! I’M TISH!”

Sam jumped. “I’m not that deaf,” he said. Then he thought to ask, “Don’t you know that roosterroaches aren’t allowed in Parthenon…except for us Ingledews, of course?”

Tish hung her head, and mumbled, “Yeah, I know.” Then she raised her voice and tried to explain.

Sam tried to listen. Something about her father. Something about her mother. Something about her forty-three brothers and sisters. Something about claiming kin. He realized he must seem inquisitorial, not hospitable. He reached out and selected a dab of one of his collectibles, and offered it to her. “Vanilla egg custard?” he said.

Her touchers told her it was edible, and she wolfed it down, finding it more than edible: the most delicious thing she’d ever eaten. But almost at once she feared it could have been a dollop of affy-dizzy from his own tergal gland, designed to seduce her. Still she commented, appreciatively, “Yum-yum.”

“Peanut brittle?” he offered. She tasted. He offered her tastes of several of his select little snacks. The crumb of dark Oreo, in particular, seemed to transport her.

“I never had any of that before,” she said, sighing with pleasure.

He led her down the aisles of the neatly arranged foodstuffs, pointing out and describing each, and offering her tastes. She was so appreciative. He was surprised at himself, the volubility of his own voice, talking to a female. Alas, if only he could have heard her random comments of appreciation, her sighs of pleasure, her purrs of delight, but just to see the expressions on her face was reward enough.

The Clock announced the twelfth and final hour: “TUTTIFRUTTI!” Then it was silent. “Midnight,” Sam announced, feeling inane, at a loss.

She wished she could talk to him. Squire Sam, she realized, although he was a mortal creature no greater than she, had something in common with the Fate-Thing: both were deaf. The Fate-Thing could not hear her requests or supplications; it was totally indifferent to her needs. Maybe, she realized, Squire Sam wasn’t actually deaf but only indifferent, like the Fate-Thing. She wished she could ask him, at least, if he believed in anything like the Fate-Thing.

For want of other words, he offered, “Would you like to see the clockworks?” and without waiting for the nod of her head, he commanded, “Here, climb up,” and started her on a hike upward through the intricate innards of the Clock, cautioning her not to catch her gitalongs in any of the gears. “This,” he pointed out, “is the Great Wheel, whose ratchets are regulated by the mainspring, over yonder, which is wound up every eighth day by the Woman of Parthenon. Do you know Her? Now here we have the pinion which turns with the Great Wheel and thrusts through the clock face yonder to join the long, or minute, hand of the dial, which completes a circuit of the dial each hour and thus measures the sixty minutes in the hour. This pinion has only one-twelfth as many teeth as the Great Wheel, see? Do you know fractions?” He attempted to explain to her the mathematical ratios of the sundry pinions and wheels, although math was clearly over her head, as were the pinions and wheels. As they ascended upward through the Clock, he said, “Now this is called the ‘dead escapement,’ or ‘deadbeat escapement.’ Do you know ‘dead’? Humans use it as a euphemism for ‘west.’ Of course this thingumajig is neither east nor west, but its true function is to convert the energy from the spring to the swinging of the pendulum down below, and to ‘fall dead’ after each jerk—that is, go west after each jerk—watch closely there, see?—click, click, dead, click, click, west—you get the idea?” How can I actually be talking so much to a female? he asked himself, astounded at himself, and realized it must be the effect of the ginseng.

Why is he telling me all of this? she wondered, flattered that a handsome feller so painfully shy was actually opening up to her. Maybe, she realized, he is making me familiar with the place so that I can live here! Would he really ask her to live here? But would she really want to live in such a noisy place?

“The idea of the deadbeat escapement,” he said, “is an almost poetic metaphor suggestive of escape through death, or escape by westering, which is getting us into eschatology and leading us dangerously close to the concept of Rapture espoused by your Crustian minister, the Reverend Tichborne. But you don’t know eschatology, do you, Tish? I’ll have to tell you all about it, but not tonight. Step up there, a bit more, we’re almost to the top of the Clock. Yes, this bracket we’re standing upon here—see how it overhangs yonder—is attached to the plate, there, to support the very tiptop of the end of the pendulum. This bracket is called the…the cock.” He studied her closely for any blush or twinge, but there was none, so he bravely asked, “Have you ever heard the word ‘cock’ before?” But her face was blank, as if “eschatology” and “cock” were all the same to her. He wanted to explain how the cock hovers above the deadbeat escapement, and how the cock symbolizes or is a metaphor suggestive of The Bomb. Didn’t she know about The Bomb? “Haven’t you ever heard of The Bomb?” he asked. But again the blank, expressionless, innocent look. “You know, you could sort of nod your head yes or shake your head no when I ask you something.”

She nodded her head. But then she shook her head, no, she had never heard of The Bomb, nor Cock, nor any of it.

He led her down from the clockworks, back to his loafing space, where he offered her a taste of crust of apple fritter, his favorite of foods. Her eyes gleamed in rapture as she devoured it. Rapture? he said to himself, and thought to try to explain to her the complicated distinction between the artificial concept of Rapture as the Crustians saw it and the actuality of the holocaust of The Bomb. She had difficulty grasping the explanation, especially the part about why Man would do it, in the first place, why Man would set off The Bomb, which, she at least understood, was zillions of times more powerful than Man’s bullets, which were awful enough.

She hazarded a word: “Why?”

“Did you speak?” he asked, surprised.

She nodded her head again, and said, right at his tailprongs: “WHY?”

“I have an idea,” he suggested, having a fine idea: he and she could devise a kind of sign language between themselves, a system of gestures, signals, using their sniffwhips, touchers, even tailprongs. “For example, if you wish to ask ‘Why?’ you put a sniffwhip to your forehead and then spread your sniffwhips to make the letter ‘Y,’ like so.” He demonstrated, then waited to see if she could do it. It was much easier, she found, than merely nodding or shaking her head.

She signed, “Why?” A second time, she signed “Why?” It was almost like a game.

“That’s good,” he said. “Your first word. Now, let’s devise the rest of the alphabet. How would you make a V?”

She held her sniffwhips close together, but spread to form a V.

“Very good!” he exclaimed. He touched the tips of his sniffwhips together and slowly spread them into a V, saying, “This slow spreading of my sniffwhips, the slow drawing apart of them, could represent ‘very’ as our first V-word. For ‘good,’ just touch your sniffwhip to your mouth and then place it across your other sniffwhip.”

“Very good,” she signed.

“Very good!” he signed and said. “This is fun.” He flicked the base of one sniffwhip with the tip of the other. “Fun.”

“Fun,” she signed. “Very good fun,” she signed.

He laughed. “This is easier than I thought it would be.” He brushed a sniffwhip upward against another several times in quick succession. “Easy.”

“Easy,” she signed.

“Your turn to make up a sign for a word,” he offered. “How would you do ‘I,’ meaning yourself but also the letter I?”

She needed only a moment to come up with the idea of the tip of a sniffwhip pulled down close to her face and held up in a vertical position like a little i. He signed it after her.

“And ‘you’?” he asked.

“Even easier,” she signed, and simply pointed the same sniffwhip at him for “you.”

He crossed the lengths of his sniffwhips and drew them to his chest as in an embrace. She was transported by apple fritter, he by ginseng. “This is the sign for ‘love,’” he said. Quickly, without thinking, she imitated the sign for “love.” He made the sign for “I,” he made the sign for “love,” he made the sign for “you.”

“I,” she signed. “Love,” she signed. She hesitated. “Not very easy,” she signed.

He blushed, abashed at himself for his audacity. They made up new words, new letters, tried them out, created sample sentences of safer declarations and questions. A question mark is easy: a crooking of the tip of the sniffwhip to describe the figure of the question mark, or both sniffwhips to be emphatic: “??” An exclamation mark is even easier, a stiffening and straightening of the sniffwhip high overhead: “!” Double sniffwhips are twice as exclamatory: “Watch out, there’s a scorpion behind you!!” He was only kidding, and frightened her, but she forgave him, and, entering into the spirit, became the inventor of the combined question and exclamation: “Now why would you have scared me so?!”

Their communication became articulate, their gestural statements prolonged and increasingly complicated. They even reached the point where she could tell him about her belief in Fate-Thing. The sign devised for “thing” was a mere shifting and dropping of one extended sniffwhip, but “fate” was so difficult that, like many of their words, it required not the sniffwhips and touchers alone but also a gitalong or two, a shifting of the body, a semaphoring of the tailprongs.

Tish “talked.” Sam “listened.” The night passed. Their conversation was slowed by the need for stopping to invent a new sign for a word here and there. They were so caught up in their dialogue that neither of them noticed the Clock strike “BUN” or even “TART.” When they had nearly exhausted the subject of the Fate-Thing, she asked him again her original question, “Why The Bomb?” and he attempted as best he could to explain it to her in signs. He even seized upon her conception of the Fate-Thing to support his own theory: that someone or something, perhaps the Fate-Thing, would prevent Man from destroying the earth with The Bomb.

“TRIFLE,” said the Clock.

Sam and Tish “talked” so much their sniffwhips began to ache, a rare occurrence for their species, who keep their sniffwhips in motion anyway all the live-long night, and even, often, during the day, in their sleep.

Tish realized she had “talked” more with Sam than with anyone in her whole life, and when the Clock said “FUDGE,” Tish used her new sign language to express astonishment and dismay and to sign, “Yellow fireball will rise up any minute now.”

“Yellow fireball,” Sam repeated the sign after her. He realized he had not spoken for hours; although she could easily hear him, he was talking only in the language they had invented for him to “hear” her.

“I must go,” Tish signed, “or I shall get caught in daylight.”

“You will get caught in daylight anyway if you try to go now,” he pointed out to her. “Stay more and spend the whole day.”

She thought he was making the polite but insincere formality, the traditional ritual of dialogue translated into signs, and she returned these signs: “Best be getting on down back. Come go home with me.” She realized how ridiculous the invitation was, to ask a Squire Ingledew to come to her rotten log, but she knew he knew she didn’t mean the invitation.

“Better not,” he signed. “You just make yourself pleasant and stay the whole day.”

“Time to light out for home,” she signed. “Come and keep me company.”

“Not this morning, thank you, Tish. Why don’t you just move in here and have you some vittles?”

Oh, if only he meant it! “Can’t do that, I reckon,” she formally signed, reluctantly. “I am a mind to get on home.”

“No, you are not,” he signed. He was breaking the rhythm! He was interpolating! “You are a mind to stay more, and you are going to do it.”

“Huh?” she signed, surprised at his extemporizing the formalities. “What?!”

“You heard me,” he signed.

“But,” she signed. She wondered what to sign next. She tried signing “but” once more, and yet again. She felt she was stuttering in sign language. “But my forty-three brothers and sisters will fear that I have been westered by a bird, chicken, or other fowl.”

“If you leave now,” he pointed out, “you will be westered by a bird, chicken, or other fowl.”

The yellow fireball rose above Dinsmore Mountain, not yellow but orange and huge and hot. Through the screen door of the Woman’s bedroom came the sound of the lifting of the morning breeze and then of birds, chickens, and other fowls reciting their matinals. Through the glass of the face of the Clock, Tish could see the Woman Herself turn over in Her bed and waken, then slowly swing Her feet off the bed to the floor.

“Behold,” signed Tish. “The Woman, goddess of Parthenon, awakes and rises up.”

“Yes,” signed Sam. “Notice how she touches the flat surface beneath her bed with her left gitalong first.”

“Why does she do that?”

“Maybe,” Sam signed, smiling, “it is a superstitious propitiation—” the big words gave him trouble “—to the Fate-Thing.” Then he finger-spelled, or, rather, sniffwhip-and-toucher-spelled, the Woman’s name. “Her name is Sharon. S-H-A-R-O-N.”

“Sharon,” repeated Tish. “I have heard Man call out to Her.” She watched as the Woman removed her nightgown and put on the red flower-print shirt and blue jeans that she would wear that day. “She is so beautiful, pretty, lovely,” signed Tish.

“And lonely,” signed Sam. The sign for “lonely” is to draw the very tip of the right sniffwhip down over the lips, almost as in making the “Shhh” sign for silence, implying “silent and alone.” Sam offered, “Shall I tell you a story about Sharon?” Their sign for “story” had begun as a linking and pulling apart in quick succession several times the tips of the sniffwhips, but now that they had used the word several times between them they found that unconsciously they were joining the tips of one another’s sniffwhips in order to sign it.

“Oh, please do tell me a story!” Tish requested, grabbing at the tips of his sniffwhips with her own.

Sharon, Sam explained, was the granddaughter of a demigoddess named Latha, who once had lived here but now lived east of Stay More. Latha was very old but even more beautiful than Sharon, and during the time of her life that she had dwelt in Parthenon, eons ago, she had lived alone too, and had been lonely, and yearning, and Parthenon had been filled with the luck-bringing scents of yearning. A Man from out of her past, whose name was Every, as in each and every, a different Man not related to the present Man of Stay More, whose name is Larry, had returned to town and become involved in the most fabulous of stories, which Tish must remind Sam to tell her, but not now.

This is the story of Sharon, who decided to move back to Stay More, where She had spent most of Her adolescent years, and not only to move back but to move into the very Parthenon. Was Sharon also expecting a Man from out of Her past to come to Her? If so, was that Man the same who now lived here, Larry? If this was true, why did Sharon refuse to have anything further to do with Larry?

“Yes? Yes?” signed Tish. “Go on. Go on!?”

“That’s all we know, right now,” Sam signed. “The story is continuing. Like the story of you and me.”

If Tish caught the insinuation of this series of gestures, she did not let on. She seemed to sign to herself, “So ‘Larry’ is the name of our Man?” Having an actual name for Him seemed somehow to belittle Him, although thinking of the Woman as Sharon did not belittle Her. Tish watched Sharon, who had entered a small room leading off Her bedroom and sat upon a stool of gleaming white porcelain.

“What does She do?” Tish signed a question.

“She sits upon what is called a toilet,” Sam explained in signs, with some hesitancy, as if the process bothered him. “Listen,” he told her. Although he was deaf, he could remember when his hearing was good and he could hear the sound. Tish listened and heard it: a tinkling, as of rain. She looked at Sam in puzzlement, and Sam signed, “She is making water.”

“Oh, water!?” Tish exclaimed in signs. Then Tish signed a question, “Has She ever had a rock-a-bye?”

Sam mulled the possibility. Although he had once thought of Sharon as his own mother, he had long ago given up the possibility that he had hatched from an ootheca laid by Her. “I don’t think so,” he answered. “If she had rock-a-byes, none of them have ever come to Parthenon.”

“How,” Tish wondered aloud, signing absently, “do Man and Woman twist and pound rock-a-byes?”

Sam was charmed by her question and the artless gestures she used to ask it. How, indeed, did humans make babies? He remembered the one night, or rather early morning, when he had observed the Woman with Larry in Her bed. Had they been engaged in a baby-making thing? If so, the Woman had not had a baby as a result of it. “I suppose,” he signed, “it is not too awfully different—” he crossed and uncrossed his sniffwhips, for different “—from the way that roosterroaches do it.”

She laughed uproariously. Perhaps her embarrassment contributed to the excessiveness of her laughter, he thought.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, speaking aloud for the first time in hours, but then he signed it: “What’s so funny??”

She signed: “Just the way you sign ‘roosterroach.’ I recognized the sign, although we have not used it before. I never thought of roosterroaches that way before. I guess you have to see everything in a different language to understand it.”

It was his turn to laugh. He repeated the signs after her: You have to see everything in a different language to understand it. Then he signed, “I love that.” He loved this girl. He loved her so much that his tergal gland began to leak a drop of affy-dizzy. He backed away from her, but not quickly enough, not far enough. She sniffed the heady male aroma. No vanilla custard, no apple fritter on earth, can equal it in attraction. She was tantalized, and involuntarily made a step in his direction, causing him to back into a corner of the Clock.

The Woman left Her toilet room, recrossed Her bedroom to another door. From another room came the sounds of pots and pans rattling.

Sam realized his back, all along the underside of his wings, was lathered with affy-dizzy.

Had hours passed since Tish had stuffed herself on fritter? She felt her appetite returning with a gush and whispered with timid signs (if signs can whisper), “Just a taste.”

Now, there is no such thing as “just a taste” of the irresistible nectar of love which is called affy-dizzy. Like a bee drawn to a flower, a female is held by it, is lured to climb the male’s back so that she can reach the fount of the affy-dizzy and greedily lap it up, the taste of which, unlike even the finest crumb fallen from Man’s (or Woman’s) table, is the most delectable substance ever to reach her touchers and her lips, and it stimulates her appetite to consume all of it, every droplet, and each taste of it excites her more.

Because no female had ever lapped his affy-dizzy before, but because he had in his dreams, and night fantasies too, imagined the procedure, Sam was surprised to take leave of his body, or, rather, to observe his body take leave of him: once the female has been maneuvered into position to reach and taste the affy-dizzy, one of three specialized clamps in the male’s genitalia reaches up and seizes one of three specialized latches in the female’s genitalia. This clamp will remain firmly manacled to this latch for at least two hours.

When the clamp and the latch were firmly affixed, in an instant, Sam attempted to sign, “Oops!” but could only spell it, and Tish was too distracted to notice.

The intricate anatomy of the mechanisms of reproduction is astonishing: there are not one but two phallomeres, and it is the right one which first probes the female.

“Sam!” she cried out, and then attempted to spell it, “S-A0M-!-!” but he could not see her; their bodies were already turning into the opposed position, end to end at 180 degrees.

The second clamp, whose function is titillation as well as coupling, clinched a second latch and began tickling and was tickled in return. The third clamp grabbed the third latch.

The sunlight coming into the room, into the face of the Clock, brightly blinded both of them, clamper and latcher alike. Above them rolled the ancient ceaseless workings of the Clock; within them rolled the classic machinery of their sex, in which the complexities of movement were no less involute, convolute, and revolute. The Clock would scream “SCONE!” and then it would groan “SUGARPLUM!” before Tish and Sam were finished. Tish had wanted to know a simple answer to a simple question, how Man and Woman twist and pound their babies. Indeed, for humans it is comparatively simple; for the species of Sam and Tish, it took hours, and inward constructions beyond all imagining.

INSTAR THE THIRD:

The Rally

Chapter fourteen

When Tish awoke, not to any inner biological clock but to strange sounds, it was already beyond gloaming. She required more than a minute to determine not only the source of the sounds but her very location: above her head were not the familiar rotting grains of wood in her sleeping cranny at the log, a homey sight her eyes had seen every waking evening of her life, but instead the smooth wooden-toothed edges of gears and wheels, like a magnified daymare of the interior of some creature’s gullet and gizzard, grinding away at her who had been swallowed whole. She tried to stifle a cry, the choked squeak escaping without disturbing the deep sleep of her companion, who, she suddenly remembered, was deaf. She stared at him, waved both sniffwhips over him to perceive the depth of his slumberscent, and determined that he was indeed far away in dreamland. There was a smile at the edges of his handsome mouth. But the sounds he was making! He was snoring. She had heard her late father snore, particularly during days after he had consumed too much Chism’s Dew, but nothing like this, the snores of a feller who could not hear himself snore! It would have been bearable except that each of his twenty spiracles was snoring in a different pitch, so that the effect reminded her of an assembly of cicadas drumming and shrilling in discord.

She jumped, not simply in response to the grating sounds but in sudden recollection of the activity that had consumed most of her morning. She felt a fullness in her abdomen which was…it was quite pleasant, even wonderful, nothing at all like a stomach ache, but strange and somehow conclusive, final, as if to say to her, That’s all there is to it. Her sense of immeasurable gratification and satiety was tinged with a certain sadness, a feeling of loss, not simply the loss of her innocence and virginity but the loss of all her life that had led up to this event, as if the adult cecropia, designed for love alone, discovers after the act that love was not worth all that bother and metamorphosis. Her expectations were not entirely disappointed, save for the gnawing realization that it could have consequences in the form of sixteen passengers in an easteregg. She licked her lips and could still faintly taste the affy-dizzy. Had it all been worth the taste?

And now she was hungry again! Not for more affy-dizzy, but for solid food, for breakfast. She explored Sam’s larder, the row upon neat row of crusts and crumbs of every conceivable provision, more a hoard than a pantry. Her touchers told her that all of these items were arranged and catalogued not only according to variety and sugar content but also according to age, as well as to crustiness and crumbiness, and many of them were older than she, even older than he! She selected a bit of well-ripened Twinkie, consumed it with gusto, and followed it up with an assortment of dabs of pudding, bits of candy, flecks of frosting, and specks of meringue. She noticed that one wall of the Clock was hung with the six cast-off moults of the owner, Squire Sam: the moults ranged in size from a first-instar scarcely larger than her head to a sixth-instar as large as she, which would almost still fit him. Why had he kept them? Not to eat, surely. Souvenirs of his childhood?

Tish stepped out of the Clock to take her bath, and gave herself a thorough washing on the edge of the mantelshelf, while she surveyed the room, the Woman’s bed-and-sitting room, which did not have Sharon in it at the moment. Everything looked cozy and comfortable, as Tish had noticed the night before—had it been only one night before? It seemed like ages.

A terrible noise almost knocked Tish off the mantelshelf. It was not the Clock. The Clock had said, almost politely, a few minutes ago, “NOUGAT,” and Tish was becoming accustomed to the things the Clock said. This was a shrill noise coming from a gigantic black insect perched upon a small table beside the Woman’s bed. The insistent tintinnabulation lasted for a full second before abruptly ceasing, but Tish scarcely had time to retreat within the safety of the Clock before it roared another long burst of the same skirling cry. She stood transfixed, staring at the creature, the like of which she had never seen, unless it was two creatures: a huge carpenter ant mounted across the back of a huge rhinoceros beetle. Yes, perhaps the ant was killing the beetle, and it was the wailing westering howls of the beetle that were making such an urgent, horrible jangle. The howls did not waken Sam, but of course he was deaf. Tish was tempted to shake him awake. A third time now the big beetle screamed for mercy, and the Woman Sharon Herself came into the room and seized the huge ant and plucked it off the beetle’s back. But then, instead of comforting the stricken beetle, She held the ant against Her cheek tenderly and spoke to it, saying, “Hi, Gran.” The ant was Sharon’s grandmother?!? The ant spoke to Sharon, but Tish could not hear the ant’s words. Sharon sat down on the edge of Her bed, still holding the ant against Her cheek, and listened to it for a long moment, then said, “Oh, the radio said that too, but we haven’t had a sign of it yet, have we?” Then She listened to more of the ant’s words, and said, “I tried oiling it, but still it sticks.”

The ant, Tish perceived, had no sniffwhips nor gitalongs. It had a head and a thorax and an abdomen, and a long, long tail which, in fact, was attached to the beetle! It spoke some more to the Woman, who answered, “No, but I had another letter from him yesterday, and it took my breath away. He’s never written so beautifully, and if he has to get drunk to write like that, he might as well stay drunk! It was all I could do to keep from rushing right over there and hugging him!”

The ant spoke for a long time to Sharon, who only contributed an occasional, “Yes, Gran,” or “I know that, Gran,” or “You’re right, Gran.” Then Sharon said, “At least I’ve done something I haven’t done before. I’ve written an answer. No, I haven’t mailed it. Where would I mail it? Oh? But this is Sunday, isn’t it? Where? Oh. Is that his mailbox, that thing? Well, I guess I could just poke it in there, but would he find it? I feel I have to say something to him, and maybe it’s the only way. I think he expects an answer. I told him in the letter that if he could just go for one solid week without a drink, I’d come and talk to him. I don’t know. What? I’d just have to take his word for it, I guess. He thinks I might let him move in here. It’s out of the question, the way things stand.”

Sharon listened for a while longer, then said, “Well, thanks, Gran, I appreciate that. How’s everything up your way?” Another minute of listening followed, and then Sharon said, “Take care of yourself too, Gran. Oh, wait, by the way, I meant to ask. The other night I saw a cockroach. Did you ever have those when you lived here?” Listening, Tish thought: cockroach? and wondered if she had heard correctly. The Woman would not have said Smockroach or Frockroach; all of those lived at Holy House and were never allowed to come here. Maybe She had said “Clockroach,” and was referring to Sam? But would Squire Sam have allowed himself to be seen by the Woman?

“…So I called this toll-free number up at Harrison, you know, the one called Tel-Med sponsored by the Arkansas Regional Medical Program, which plays these tapes with advice on everything. I dialed the tape called ‘Cockroaches—Menace or Nuisance’ and got five minutes of stuff about their history, they’re the oldest insect on earth, haven’t changed for three hundred and fifty million years, and there are fifty-five different kinds of them in the United States. It said they have filth all over their legs and bodies, because they like to live in filth, and they’ll spread this filth all over your food, and they’ll puke and crap in your food too. It said to look out for their eggs, which are sort of leathery pouches that look like tiny pinto beans, and if you see an egg, destroy it, because it’s got a dozen or more baby cockroaches inside of it. The tape said that cockroaches are a sign of poor housekeeping, and that if you keep your house clean and sanitary, they won’t bother you. I was so ashamed when I heard that! This house isn’t dirty, Gran, you know that….”

Listening. Listening. Was Gran giving Sharon advice on how to get rid of roosterroaches? Tish wished she could hear the voice coming through the ant, and she strained to hear, but could not.

At length Sharon said, “Well. The tape warned that the disgusting little buggers will give you salmonella poisoning, diarrhea, nausea, dysentery, and even polio and TB, so if I don’t answer the next time you call, you know I’m bad sick!” Sharon laughed, and Tish heard some laughter from the ant, and then Sharon said, “Well, I guess I’d better go mail my letter before I die! Goodnight, Gran. Sleep tight.”

The Woman returned the ant to the top of the beetle, but the beetle did not scream again; truly it must have been westered by the ant. Then the Woman reached under the bed and brought out a shiny and silvery stick with one great eye at the end. The Woman squeezed it, and it lit up like a zillion lightning bugs flashing at once, only it remained lit and did not twinkle off. The Woman picked up an envelope and carried it out of the room and to Her porch.

Quickly Tish climbed down the mantel and followed, squeezing under the screen door as its spring closed it. The Woman was descending the porch steps as Tish gained the porch. Tish observed that the Woman was pointing ahead of Her with the great lighting stick, which was casting a circle of illumination out into the yard, and the Woman walked out into this circle. Overhead the dark sky was filled with heavy clouds full of water. Tish scrambled along behind the Woman as fast as her six gitalongs could carry her.

Chapter fifteen

The Loafer’s Court, gathered around Doc Swain and Squire Hank on Doc’s porch, had an unexpected visitor, who arrived right while O.D. Ledbetter was telling a really good ’un, raunchy as all git out, about this feller what claimed he had not just two pricks but three. “He was fixin to marry this gal up on Banty Creek,” old O.D. was saying, “but she accidental seen him a-takin a piss one night behind the wall, and she commenced hollerin that the weddin was called off. ‘That pecker a yourn is jist too big fer a little ole gal lak me!’ she tole ’im. But he jist laughs and says to her, ‘Sweetheart, I got three of ’em. One is the tickler size, another’n is the prober size, and the great big ’un is the depositer size. I always use the depositer size to piss with.’

“So they went ahead and got theirselfs married,” O.D. told it, “and the first night he tried the tickler size, and everything was just fine. So the second night she ast fer the prober size, and he tried that ’un on her too, and it was just fine. Wal sirs, the third night she begged for the depositer size, and it was the best of all. Him and her had the finest couple a hours you could imagine, and it looked like they’d live happy ever after.

“But about three weeks after the weddin the girl woke up one evenin and she says to him, ‘Hon, do you reckon you could find a rubber band anywheres?’ And he says yeah, they’s some rubber bands in Man’s writin-desk over to Holy House, but what does she want with one? ‘Wal, I jist thought of somethin,’ she told him. ‘If we can tie all three of yore pricks together, I might could git a decent fuckin for a change!’”

Every loafer laughed fit to bust a gut, and complimented O.D. that that was the best ’un they ever heard, and challenged Squire Hank to tell a better one, and Squire was jist hitching himself up to do it, when they noticed that one of the loafers, who hadn’t laughed, was coughing pretty bad. They looked at the loafer and discovered that he wasn’t a loafer after all, at least not a regular one, but the preacher himself! Brother Chid Tichborne had climbed the porch unnoticed and moved in amongst them.

O.D. apologized, “Heck, Preacher, I wudn’t never of tole such a brash tale iffen I’d knowed ye was listenin.”

Tolbert Duckworth put in, “Yeah, Preacher, and I shore didn’t mean to laugh, neither. Why, I thought that there was the nastiest story ever I heared. Phew!”

Fent Chism put in, “Yeah, and this is the Lord’s Day, and all. We ort to be ashamed, tellin dirty tales on the Lord’s Day.”

“Wal, boys,” said Brother Chid. “I hope I don’t never hear of none you’uns stealin the Lord’s rubber bands.”

“Hit was jist a story-tale,” O.D. protested. “Wudn’t never nothin ever really happent lak thet, nohow.”

“Naw,” said Elbert Kimber. “Wunst she had been fucked with the tickler size, that was all she could take!”

Everybody laughed again, except the preacher, who frowned at Elbert’s language. Everybody stopped laughing abruptly, and studied the preacher’s frown, and waited for him to say something else. But Brother Tichborne only looked properly pious and disapproving.

Finally Doc Swain himself had the boldness to ask, “Wal, Reverend, what brings you to my place tonight?” This was a fine question to ask, because it reminded the preacher that he wasn’t a regular member of the Loafer’s Court.

At least half of the loafers, Chid had mentally counted, were Crustians, and members of his congregation. Tolbert Duckworth was even an elder in the church, and Fent Chism was a deacon. It was to these good Crustians rather than to Doc that Chid addressed his next words, “Brethren, the Lord moves in mysterious ways. Though He giveth thee the bread of life, He also planneth to taketh it away from thee.”

“Amen,” said Tolbert Duckworth.

“Praise His name,” said Fent Chism.

“And as ye may know,” Chid announced, “tonight we are havin the prayer meetin and worship service right at the Lord’s gitalongs, with Him awake and all, and ready to cast judgment upon us.”

“Amen,” said Fent Chism, and “Praise His name,” said Tolbert Duckworth.

“No doubt He will rapture right and left,” Chid observed. “No doubt a many and a many of us will know Rapture. Amen. Praise His name. And et cetera. But fellers—” Chid paused for dramatic effect, changing his tone and his tune “—I am here to tell ye the news that the Lord is fixin to try to move into Partheeny!” Chid glanced at Squire Hank to see his reaction, but the Squire remained expressionless. The others, however, stared open-mouthed at the minister, and then at one another, and then at Squire Hank, to see what he would say.

Squire Hank squinted at Chid and asked, “How do ye know?”

How could Chid tell them? He had preached at them every Sunday, and sometimes on Wednesday night prayer meeting too, never to touch the Lord, never even to think about going near His Person, and here he had been up underside the Lord’s shirt collar himself, and that was how he knew that the Lord had written a letter to the Woman of Parthenon, in which He had hinted, or actually requested—well, to be honest, begged—to be allowed to move His “things,” including His self, into Parthenon.

“I have done seen a letter,” Chid revealed. “I caint quote you His exact words, but He more or less informed Her that it was his intention to abandon Holy House and move into Partheeny.”

Again all the loafers looked at Squire Hank for his comment, and finally the Squire declared, “I misdoubt that She would ever think of allowin Him to move in on Her.”

“Maybe She invited Him, who knows?” suggested Tolbert Duckworth.

“Yeah,” Chid allowed. “One way or th’other, He jist might do it, and then what would we do? Maybe we had better be ready to move out, ourselfs.”

“Or maybe,” Squire Hank said, “all of you’uns ought to be prayin to yore Lord to stay put.”

“Good idee, Squar!” said Fent Chism. “Yeah, Brother Tichborne, maybe tonight at the prayer meetin when we’re all assembled right there at the Lord’s gitalongs, maybe we had ort to pray to Him and beg Him not to leave Holy House.”

“That’s what we ort!” agreed Elder Duckworth.

But Chid said, “Naw. It wouldn’t do no good to beseech the Lord in that wise. Maybe the one we ort to beseech is Squire Hank, right here. Maybe we ort to be askin Squire Hank if he would ever let every last blessit one of us move into Partheeny when the Lord does.”

All eyes and sniffwhips were upon Squire Hank. He ruminated. He spat. He frowned a bit. He ruminated some more. Then a trace of a smile crept upon the corner of his face, and he said, “Why don’t you’uns ask Her that?”

“Speak of the Mockroach!” exclaimed Mont Dinsmore, who was sitting on the north edge of the crowd nearest that direction, and suddenly thrashed his sniffwhips. He exclaimed, “Hey, fellers, lookee who’s a-comin yonder!”

Every one turned and tuned their sniffwhips, and beheld the approach of none other than the subject of discussion, the Woman Herself. The great circular beam of Her flashlight preceded Her, but only briefly did the flashlight illuminate the front of Doc Swain’s clinic, and it did not shine upon the porch floor where the mob of loafers crouched. The Woman was strolling slowly down one rut of the Roamin Road. No one could ever remember having seen Her on this part of the Road before, approaching Holy House. Hardly was She out of sight when all the roosterroaches began a busy prattling amongst themselves.

“Wal strike me blind!” Tolbert Duckworth said. “If that aint the—!”

“Maybe She’s a-gorn to visit Him!” Fent Chism voiced the thoughts of several.

“What’re we a-waitin fer?” Chid Tichborne said. “Let’s go see!”

At that moment a girl roosterroach came running down the Road, following in the steps of the Woman, but scrambling as fast as her gitalongs would carry her. When she came within sight and sniff of the Loafer’s Court, she stopped, pausing for breath and to cast an anxious glance at all the loafers.

“Morsel, gal,” called Doc Swain. “What’s the rush?”

The girl looked from one to another of the loafers. She was panting. “Howdy, sirs, and morsels to y’uns,” she said timidly, between wheezes.

“Somethin chasin ye?” Doc Swain asked. “Have you seen the White Mouse?”

The girl looked over her shoulder, and appeared uncertain. “Yessir, I think there’s some kind of booger a-follerin me,” she declared.

The loafers laughed, and one of them teased, “Was it white? What color was it?”

But the girl did not answer. Taking a deep breath, she resumed her journey, as fast as she could skitter.

“Now who-all was thet?” asked a loafer.

“I do believe that was little ole Tish Dingletoon, Jack Dingletoon’s biggest gal,” declared another.

Another loafer asked, “Did ye hear that ole Jack has done went and westered off?”

“Yeah, him and Josie both, together,” said another.

“Maybe she’s jist a-lookin for to find them,” suggested still another.

“Wal, fellers, that’s sorrowful news,” commented Brother Chid Tichborne, “and I don’t know about you’uns, but me, I’m gonna git right back to Holy House and see what’s up.” He straightened his gitalongs and rose up from the porch floor. He paused to see if any other loafer would budge, but the others remained crouched. “Wal?” he said. “Aint none of you’uns interested in goin with me?”

Tolbert Duckworth asked Doc Swain, “Hey, Doc, what you aimin to do?”

“Me?” Doc said. “Why, I don’t rightly know. How about you, Squire Hank?”

“Wal…” said Squire Hank, but showed no sign of budging from his crouch. Everyone watched him closely for a sign of a budge, and then they watched Doc Swain for a sign of a budge. Squire Hank spat, and said, “I thought maybe that booger she was afeared of might jist be my boy Sam, but it don’t look like he’s a-follerin her. Don’t look like any boogers a-follerin her.”

Chid Tichborne said, “Wal, I don’t know about the rest of you boogers, but I aim to foller her.” He took another couple of steps toward the edge of the porch, but there was no sign of a budge from any of the others.

Finally Doc Swain remarked, “Jist think, fellers. This might could be the only chance we ever have in our lifetimes to see Her speak to Him, or vice versa.” Doc creakingly rose up from his crouch and stood upon his still-remaining three gitalongs, wobbling unsteadily, and moved over beside Chid.

Squire Hank said, “Could be She’s jist going to tell Him to stay away from Her.” He too rose up, stretched, and prepared to go. With the Squire leading, all of the assembled loafers decamped from Doc’s porch and ambled off down Roamin Road in the direction of the Woman’s flashlight, now just a pinpoint of light nearly a furlong away, rapidly merging with the light coming from a window of Holy House.

Chapter sixteen

But the Woman did not climb the porch of Holy House. The Roamin Road skirts within sniffing distance of the porch, but the Woman stayed on the Road, and Tish stayed on Her heels, or close behind, almost to the edge of Banty Creek, where a small dirt road led from Carlott to the old low-water cement bridge over the stream and provided the Lord’s vehicle with access to the outside world. It also provided access for the mail vehicle from the outside world to stop at the Lord’s mailbox, which was a piece of metal junk, a World War ii cartridge case mounted upon a pole stuck in the ground amid brambles and brush. Here the mail carrier, driving out of Jasper, the county seat eighty furlongs to the north, stopped every morning to leave a copy of the Arkansas Gazette (daily), the Newton County Times (Thursdays), the New York Review of Books (biweekly), Arkansas Times (monthly), Audubon (bimonthly), and Poetry, the Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, and PMLA (all quarterly), and various circulars, fliers, handouts, and other promotional material and appeals from purchasers of mailing lists for “literate middleclass natureloving bookreading forties white males.” The only exercise the Lord was ever known to take, apart from the late-afternoon inspection of the weeds in His Garden, was to walk from Holy House to His Holy Mailbox, a distance of maybe half a furlong. Very rarely did He get a letter.

The Woman found the cartridge case with Her flashlight, opened its lid, and dropped the letter into it. “There,” Tish heard Her say to Herself, “I hope the mailman doesn’t think it’s an outgoing letter.” Tish wondered what an outgoing letter was; one that was friendly and sociable?

The Woman did not pause before turning around, and Tish had to leap to get out of the way of Her footsteps as the Woman began retracing Her path. She walked faster on the return journey, and Tish did not even try to keep up with Her.

The loafers saw Her coming back. They were nearly abreast of Holy House, wherein their families were doing whatever they could to entertain themselves through the night, when one of the loafers shouted, “Yonder She comes back again!” and another bellowed, “Let’s us git off the Road!” and all of them scrambled to get out of Her way. One of them, Luke Whitter, was a step too late, and was ground into the earth by the Woman’s shoe. Doc Swain rushed to check him over, but Luke was pretty thoroughly squashed, and was groaning his last. There was nothing Doc could do.

“The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away,” said Chid Tichborne. “Our Joshua Crust saith, ‘Be thou faithful unto west, and I will give thee a crown of life.’” And he made a mental note to remember to include Luke Whitter’s name among the several obituaries he would have to deliver tonight at the services.

“Amen,” said the Crustian loafers, and turned Luke’s carcass over into the belly-up position and covered it with blades of grass.

“Wal,” observed Doc, “hit don’t look like the Womarn was aimin to visit Holy House after all.”

Mont Dinsmore announced, “Yonder comes that gal again.”

Tish wanted to enter the forest of weeds to avoid walking through the mob of loafers, but the scent of west coming from Luke’s carcass frightened her, and she passed onward among the roosterroaches.

“That booger still after ye?” Doc Swain asked her.

“Nossir,” she said, smiling, “I reckon he drowned in Banty Creek.”

“You aint a-follerin that Womarn, air ye?” he asked. Tish nodded her head. “Where’d She go? What’s She up to?”

“She jist went to mail a letter,” Tish said. “She mailed a letter to the Lord, and put it in His box.”

Brother Chid Tichborne solemnly declared, “I shore wush they was some way we could find out what-all that letter says in it.”

But not even the most irreverent among them was in the mood for going to the Lord’s Holy Mailbox and attempting to tamper with His mail. Most of them still remembered the story of a family of Ledbetters who had gone to the cartridge case one night, dined on the gray flocking that stuffed the lining of a Jiffy bookmailing bag, and were sound asleep when the Lord surprised them there the next day, and swatted them all west with a rolled-up Gazette.

Instead of venturing onward to the mailbox, the mob of loafers entered Holy House, not through the same hole but through several. At a respectful distance, Tish followed. If nothing else, she could satisfy her curiosity about the interior of Holy House. She might even get some information about her missing parents. She kept as close as she could to Squire Hank, as if she might need his protection, and sure enough, just as she entered the loafing room she was accosted by a large lady roosterroach who challenged her territorial rights.

“Jist who d’ye think you air?” demanded Mrs. Kimber.

Squire Hank placed himself between the two females and said to Mrs. Kimber, “She’s with me.”

“Oh, beggin yore pardon, Squar, I didn’t know,” Mrs. Kimber apologized, and got out of the way.

The loafing room was dark except for one corner, and none of them went near it, for it contained the awake Man. A lone lamp cast its pointed beam upon the pages of a book held in the lap of the Lord. All the air around and over His head was swathed in the fumes of smoke from the cigarette burning between His fingers. On a table beside His Great Cheer-of-Ease was His Great Sacred Crystal Ashtray, a marvelous cube of glass with tapered corners rising to four concave troughs for holding His burning cigarette when He chose to put it down, and the interior of the cube was filled with extinguished butts. On one side of the Great Sacred Crystal Ashtray lay a pair of pencils, long yellow logs with rubber tips and pointed lead ends, and beyond those was a tall tumbler holding ice cubes and amber liquid. And beside the drinking glass was His Terrible Swift Rapturing Revolver Shootin-Gun.

One of the loafers announced, “He aint a-drinkin no beer tonight. They aint been a single blessit can opened out to the cook-room.”

Another loafer observed with an expression of disgust, “Jist that pizen hard stuff. Old Granddad. Westerly as scorpion-piss.”

Another loafer announced, “They’s a couple of Fritos on the cookroom floor. Better hurry.” Several dozen of the loafers decamped from the loafing room toward the cookroom.

Tish whispered to Squire Hank, “I wish there was some way to tell Him He’s got a letter from Her.”

Squire Hank did not respond, but continued observing the Lord. Was he as deaf as his son?

Chapter seventeen

The deaf son rose long after the deaf sun had set. The Clock had struck the news, “DIVINITY!” a reference not to any Godhead or Manhead but to the divinely delicious confection, white as a newborn nymph, stuffed with chopped nutmeats. Sam felt as if he were stuffed with chopped nutmeats. He required a long minute to realize the lateness of the hour, and the fact that he had done something unimaginable, something totally beyond his normal powers, something wonderful but terrible: he had planted a marble! But where was the girl? Frantically he searched the Clock. What had her name been? Yes: Tish. “TISH!” he called out, and realized that he was simultaneously sniffwhip-spelling it, and remembered the delightful means of communication they had devised. Further, he remembered with a shock that he was in love with her. There was no mistake. It was not simple lust, not merely a desire to give her a marble, nor even a wish to confer upon her the motherhood of the next and possibly last generation of Ingledews. He loved her!

But she was neither in nor around the Clock, and his sniffwhips could find no trace of her, save a faint lingering touch of the pheromone that she had sprayed the morning before. He climbed down from the Clock, and was vaguely disturbed by an out-of-the-ordinary situation: the Woman was not in Her cheer-of-ease, as usually She was during the hour of Divinity; Her stereo phonograph was not playing; Her kerosene lamps were all unlit; Her presence could not be detected within the Parthenon. She was not at home.

Sam rushed into the cookroom, hollering, “Dad! Have you seen a girl?” but his father was not there. It was likely that his father was hanging out, as usual, at Doc Swain’s place. Sam scrambled out of Parthenon and gained the Roamin Road, and headed off toward Doc’s place.

There was nobody there! The nightly Loafer’s Court was not convening. No patients waited to see the physician. Sam felt an unearthly sense of abandonment. Where was everybody? Sam was assailed by a metaphysical qualm: had the world of his ken and kin deserted him because of his sinning with Tish? But had it been a sin? Premarital fornication, yes, but had he seduced her? No, it had been entirely mutual; in fact, her pheromone had escaped before his affy-dizzy had escaped.

He decided to journey onward to Holy House in search of his fellow creatures. In his haste and near-panic, he bumped into a cricket. It is almost impossible for anyone with good hearing to bump into a cricket, because they are the most raucous of sound-producing insects, their so-called “chirp” audible from great distances, eight or nine furlongs. Actually the “chirp” is a monotonous reiterated challenge of the male to his fellow males, an expression, “Shy ye, feller, up,” meaning “You, sir, back away from me.” Unlike the calls of other male bugs, which are meant to attract females, it is meant to scare off the competition, much in the same way that the fighting of horn beetles and stag beetles is simply an elimination of the weaker. The loudest cricket wins. When two male crickets meet, they will holler “Shy ye feller up” at one another insistently until one of them gives way and retreats.

Even if he had not been in such a hurry, Sam Ingledew, not hearing the cricket, would have bumped into him. He gave the cricket a bad start, because no other bug had ever bumped into him before.

When he had recovered, the cricket said, “I say, shy ye feller up.”

“Beg pardon,” Sam returned, apologizing both for having bumped into him and for being unable to hear him. As a general rule, he detested crickets, but he was nothing if not polite.

“SHY YE FELLER UP!” the cricket repeated, so loudly that Sam couldn’t help hearing him.

“Sorry,” Sam said, and made to move around the cricket, but the hostile cricket shifted his position, blocking Sam’s way. The cricket was not much larger than Sam, although he had the long thick thighs and gitalongs of an athlete; his sniffwhips were much longer than Sam’s, and he had a belligerent expression on his face. “Look, buddy,” Sam said, “if you’ll just step aside, I’ll give you no trouble.” Again he tried to get around the cricket, but the cricket continued to block his way and continued to repeat his mindless warning.

One fact of life which had led Sam to question the infallibility and wisdom of Man—not particularly the Man of Holy House but all Men—was that Man venerated or at least cherished the cricket but despised the cockroach. Crickets to Man were cute, adorable, and charming, and it was thought to be very bad luck to kill one of them. Sam had never heard of a cricket being killed by Man…or by Woman. But cockroaches, of basically the same size, shape, color, and configuration, in fact more sleek and streamlined than crickets, simply because they lacked the stupidity to rub their wings together and make “music,” were therefore not “cute,” but objects of revulsion and enmity. It wasn’t fair; it wasn’t cricket.

“Listen, my friend,” Sam said to the cricket, “I don’t want your old lady. She isn’t of the least attraction to me. Fat thighs look okay on a fellow, but on a girl they’re lousy. Step aside.”

If the cricket understood what Sam was saying to him (and Sam doubted their intelligence too), he gave no sign of it, but only continued saying, “Shy ye feller up.”

Sam decided that the only thing to do was to lower himself to the cricket’s level and communicate in his own tongue. “Shy ye feller up, yourself,” he said to the cricket.

This was a mistake. For a moment it stunned the cricket into silence, but then he resumed, louder than ever, “SHY YE FELLER UP!”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Sam said, and attempted to shove the cricket aside. But the cricket rose up on his long rear legs and cuffed Sam a blow on the side of his head that rang his bell. Sam slugged him back. The cricket punched Sam full in the face. Sam clobbered the cricket on his chops.

This scuffle drew the combatants off the Roamin Road and into the forest of weeds, and thus Sam was not aware that the Woman, Sharon, returning from her postal errand, had passed by, heading home.

Sam and the cricket circled one another warily with their dukes raised. The cricket jumped and bit Sam painfully on the abdomen. Sam remembered that crickets, though usually vegetarian, are capable of being carnivores. The cricket was now screaming at the top of his wings, “SHY YE SHY YE FELLER UP FELLER UP SHY YE FELLER UP SHY YE!!!” Sam lashed him with both sniffwhips, gave him a series of one-two punches with his touchers to the face, then kicked him over onto his back, jumped onto his chest and got in several good pokes into his soft underside.

Undaunted, the cricket arched his back, flipped over and threw Sam off of him, then sank his teeth into Sam’s thorax and held on. Sam clawed furiously at the cricket, inflicting wounds all over the cricket’s body until the cricket released his bite on Sam.

Sam was aware that a number of other male crickets had formed themselves into a ring of spectators around the fighters. Even if Sam was to defeat this cricket, might he not be attacked by the cricket’s kinsmen? For a moment this prospect weakened him, and he caught two hard blows from his opponent.

He went down. Remember you’re an Ingledew, he told himself, and all Ingledews have the power. He struggled to his gitalongs, righted himself, and realized the other crickets were cheering him! “Strike ye, feller, up!” one of the crickets urged. “Hit him, feller, up alongside his head!” another said.

Sam kicked out and tripped his foe off his gitalongs, and as the cricket went down, Sam bashed him a good lick on the side of his head, then a mighty blow on top of the head that plowed the cricket’s nose into the earth. The cricket tried to rise, and made two good efforts at getting up, then collapsed all of a heap.

The other crickets beat their wings in applause. They clapped and smiled and cheered, and Sam took a little bow, then went on his way. The sky, he noticed, was fully darkened by clouds, and the weather segments of his sniffwhips had upped the chances of thundershowers from 30? to 85?.

His fears that he had been totally abandoned were soon relieved by the sight of the interior of Holy House, which was crawling with roosterroaches. The cookroom, which Sam visited first, was aswarm with Frockroaches and Smockroaches battling one another over bits of Frito on the floor, and upon the table there was a mob scene in the arena of a paper plate containing the remains of Man’s supper: chicken à la king on toast. Although hungry, Sam did not join in. He moved unnoticed and unrecognized among the Holy House rooster-roaches. He left the cookroom and entered the loafing room, where a crowd had gathered around Brother Chidiock Tichborne, who was preaching. Sam realized that it was Sunday night, time for the usual Sabbath service, but there was something different about this one: they were meeting right in the presence of the Lord, Who, however, did not seem to notice the hundreds of them gathered together in His Name on the floor around His cheer-of-ease, in which He sat drinking and reading.

“Sinners! Look in yore hearts!” the minister was exhorting the congregation, who were mostly Crustians and did not include those the minister considered true sinners. “Who amongst us can look in his heart and say, ‘Lord, I am free from sin’? Up yonder sits our Lord Hisself, and verily I say unto ye, though He may have a book in His lap, His eye is upon ye, His all-seeing eye is lookin into yore heart, and He knows which of ye have kept His commandments and which of ye have sinned! Repent, for His terrible wrath is soon to be visited upon ye!”

Of course Sam could hear none of this, but he was impressed with the minister’s ability to hold his audience, who included, Sam was startled to notice, his own father, Squire Hank, crouched at one edge of the crowd, almost unnoticed except by a girl whispering at one of his tailprongs. The girl, Sam was further surprised to discover, was Tish, his own beloved. Why was his father here? Why was she here?

“Oh, what a blessed privilege it is,” the minister went on, “for us pore sinners to come together tonight right smack dab in the Lord’s Own Mighty Presence, where few of us has been before, to lay our hearts bare before Him and invite His judgment. Repent, I say, for the hour of reckoning is at hand! No one of ye is free from sin! Who amongst ye has tasted of the crumb when the crust would do? Who amongst ye has jined in lust and sin with thine own kindred in incest? Who amongst ye has adulterated? And who amongst ye has fornicated?”

Though Sam could not hear, he could see, and he saw Tish trembling. Was she a Crustian? He recalled her belief in the Fate-Thing, such a naive but passionate conviction, and he wondered if she had room in her heart for belief in the Crustian drivel espoused by Chid Tichborne.

“Oh yes, my friends, don’t ye doubt for a minute that He won’t rise up against the sinners in yore midst and smite them! He will smite thee with his bullets! His Holy Revolver is loaded and ready! Hit’s up yonder right alongside His Great Sacred Crystal Ashtray, and it’s ready to use! Look in yore heart, I tell ye, and ask: Is it me, O Lord? Am I the one who deserves Thy punishment? Have my sins offended Thee, O Lord?”

Sam was tempted to join his father and his beloved. He noticed that his father was the only member of the audience unaffected by the preacher’s oratory. The others, including Tish, seemed to verge on hysteric frenzy. Several had bowed their heads to the floor in abject propitiation. Others, mostly males, were rising up and wringing their sniffwhips together in anguish. Still others, mostly females, were raising both touchers and sniffwhips in the direction of Man, in imploration. All of these prostrated themselves when the minister shouted:

“Let us pray! Almighty Man, our Father who art Lord of all the world, we beseech Thee to heed our solemn prayer.” So loud was Chid’s voice, with his face turned upward toward Man, that one would have thought that Man, if not Sam, could have heard him. Indeed, Sam could catch a word or two here and there. “All of us are guilty of wickedness! And transgression! And iniquity! And unrighteousness! And evil! O Lord our Man, if it be Thy will, rise up against these sinners and smite them with Thy Holy Gun!”

And verily, the Lord rose up. He put His book down and stood. But He did not lift up His revolver. He lifted up His empty glass and took it to the cookroom, for a refill. He had not even appeared to notice the assembly of worship on the floor of His loafing room. Many of them had scrambled and scurried for the nearest hiding place at the instant the Lord’s knee-hinges straightened Him upward. But most of them had remained crouched where they were, increasing the fervor of their prayer.

Tish, Sam noticed, was among those staying in place and praying almost aloud. Sam’s father, he saw, was looking at her with pity.

Chapter eighteen

Chid was disappointed. It had been one of his finest sermons, and one of his most eloquent prayers, inspired not only by the occasion of their meeting for the first time at the Lord’s gitalongs but also by Chid’s having Squire Hank himself in the audience, though only on the fringe of it, not down front among the oldest elders and deacons, where he could rightfully crouch if he so desired. What was the Squire, that infidel, doing here, at all? Hoping to see Chid make a fool of himself? Well, the Squire would be surprised. Even if the Lord had not risen up with His revolver, as Chid had been almost certain He would do, the night was still young, the worship service was just getting started, the Lord hadn’t consumed more than a halfpint of the quart He usually drank, and Chid, if he used his best devices, might yet get a rise out of Him.

“Brethering and sistering,” he addressed the crowd, attempting to summon back those who had fled, “the Lord goeth away, yea, He goeth to His cookroom to open His Fabulous Fridge and get more ice cubes, but He shall come again! Be ye faithful and watchful with me, friends, ere the Lord returneth. Meanwhile, a few announcements.”

The Ladies’ Aid would next meet on Thursday night. The Gents’ Saturday Prayer Breakfast would have a guest speaker. The Crustian Young People’s Fellowship would go on an outing to Banty Creek Tuesday night.

“Brother Duckworth,” Chid requested, “would ye kindly report on the membership rolls?”

Chid yielded the floor to Elder Duckworth, and Tolbert stood to announce, “Brethern and sistern, the elders and deacons of this here church is proud to announce that sixty-three young folks has done reached the age of imago and jined up; seven roosterroaches has repented of their past sins and atoned for their expulsions and has asked to be taken back into the fold. The deacons and elders is powerful sorrow to announce the following expulsions from the church: Brother Theron Coe, who has been found guilty of incest with seven of his daughters, is no longer with us. Brother Jesse Clendenen, Junior, has been found guilty of excessive profanity, and is expelled. Brother Hector Duckworth, who I am glad to say aint no brother a mine, has confessed to incest with five of his sisters and is removed from the rolls. Sister Nancy Whitter has committed incest with eight of her sons and is no longer amongst us….”

Chid listened idly to this recitation of transgressions, backslidings, expulsions, and reprimands, and noted that it was no worse than usual. His eye and his sniffwhip roamed the congregation, to note their reactions to this tabulation of wrongdoing, and all of them were looking properly solemn and contrite…all except one, who was grinning. Who was that stranger? Why, yes, it appeared to be Squire Hank’s boy, name of Samuel. What was Squire Sam doing here? Worse, why was he wearing such an idiotic grin during this public declaration of awful sin? Did he think it was funny that so many church members were being expelled and castigated?

Chid’s eye and sniffwhip moved onward, pausing here and there, until he noticed his own family, his wife Ila Frances and some of their children—but where was Archibald? Oh, yes, there was Archibald, over to the other side of the congregation, near Squire Hank but talking to some girl, that same female who had been out there in the Roamin Road earlier this evening, who had seen the Woman mail Her letter to the Lord. Chid realized she was Josie Dingletoon’s daughter, and, probably because she was the result of that there marble that Chid had given Josie in a moment (or two hours) of weakness and temptation, Chid’s very own daughter too, therefore a half-sister of Archy. Chid would have to remember to give Archy a little lecture about getting so chummy with his half-sister. If nothing else, Chid would have to tell the boy not to talk to her during the worship service.

But Chid remembered that Tish was probably in mourning for her parents, and this reminded the minister that he had to give the funeralizations, so when Brother Duckworth finished the expulsion announcements and crouched back down, Chid rose again and said, “Well, brethering and sistering, maybe we’ve got time before the Lord returneth to take care of this week’s funeralizations. The following has done went and westered off lately since our last meetin, and we do hereby commend their souls to the Lord: Malvina Swain Murrison has gone west of old age in her twenty-seventh month; James T. Bourne, beloved son of Millard and Gladys Bourne, in only his third instar, has been eaten by a salamander; the childern of Nolan and Bertha Coe, sixteen in number, in their third instar, has been chewed up and westered by mites; nine of the fourth-instar children of Fred and Florence Chism has been consumed by pismires.

“Let’s see, now,” Chid went on, searching his memory, “Brother Rodney Stapleton has been eaten by a nightingale. And oh yes, the entire family of Clarence and Beatrice Whitter and their sixteen imago childern, fifteen fourth-instar childern, sixteen second-instar childern, and thirteen newborn nymphs and swains, has all been consumed by a opposum, may Our Lord and Saviour Joshua Crust take them each and every to live forevermore on the Right Hand of Man! Now, let’s see, yes, also little Joseph Donald Dingletoon, eaten by a green frog, has predeceased his parents, John or Jack Orville Dingletoon and wife Josephine, logdwellers of Carlott, who was last seen in a beercan in the Lord’s cookroom, where they had no business in the first place.

“And last but not least, just a few minutes ago, out yonder in the Roamin Road, before my very own eyes, Brother Luke Whitter was crushed beneath the sole of the Woman of Parthenon! Now, my friends, I wish I could tell ye that She did it of a purpose, that She had seen him and stomped on him to punish him or to rapture him, but I do believe it was pure accidental-like. But who is to say? Maybe Luke didn’t care, or maybe he thought he had it coming to him, on account of his wife Nancy….”

Chid detected a murmur running through the crowd, but it was not because of his words. Those in the back of the audience had detected the footsteps of the return of the Lord! Once again, many of the congregation dashed away beneath the rug or pieces of furniture, but once again the majority of them remained rooted and watched in adoration as the Lord walked back to His cheer-of-ease and plunked down into it. Chid was glad to have the Lord back. Why had He taken so long? Maybe he had grabbed Hisself a snack in the cookroom, which meant there might be more crusts and crumbs littering the floor. Yes, a few of the faithful were becoming unfaithful and edging away in the direction of the cookroom.

“Hold on there!” Chid shouted, stopping them in their tracks. “This here service aint over yet! Why, no, my friends, we are hardly started! I’ve got a real important message fer ye tonight! But first, Brother Chism, supposing ye lead us in a hymn or two?”

Deacon Fent Chism rose and, using both of his sniffwhips to set the tempo, led the gathering in a four-part harmonization of “I’ll Meet You in the Morning on That Glorious Shore of the Sweet Bye and Bye Right Along Topside of His Blessed Hand.” After four verses and chorus of this, Fent Chism conducted them through “At The Old Shiny Pin Where My Saviour Did Bleed I Shall Lean on Those Everlasting Arms and Get Ready to Leave This World and Go to Gloryland.”

Now for the best part, Chid said to himself as the last chorus faded off and he picked up its last word to open his resumed sermon: “Glory land! How sweet the sound! Yes, brethering and sistering, we shall all meet in Gloryland! But who will be waiting for us there? Why, of course, those I’ve jist funeralized, what has been eaten by frogs and salamanders and possums and mites and what-all, and them that has westered of plain old age or jist disappeared, but most of all, my friends, I tell ye, the ones that will be waiting to save us a place will be them that have already been dispatched by His Holy Gun!

“You know I didn’t mention none of them in my funeralizations for this week. You know why I didn’t mention ’em, because they don’t need no funerals! Nossiree, their souls is already in Gloryland! This past week, the following has not westered a natural west nor been eaten by critters, but has been raptured and pulverized into smithereens by the Holy Bullets of the Lord! Brother John Thomas Murrison! Brother Carl Henry Duckworth! Brother Arnold Justin Chism! Sister Jessamine Sue Plowright! Sister Sophronia Marabelle Coe! And Brother Oscar Robert Whitter! These are the saints who have been raptured and sanctified in the fire of His Fire!”

This was the moment that Chid liked best, and he paused for breath, and to let the mood be set for his next words: “Who will jine them tonight? Who amongst ye has already been chosen for the Sacred Fire? Who will stand bravely with head upraised and ask, ‘Is it I, Lord?’ Search your hearts, I say, and ask yourselfs, ‘Am I ready?’” Chid felt no guilt over this contradiction. The best way to hold them, he knew, was to confuse them. Let them be uncertain whether the westering by gunfire was punishment for sin or a rapturing and reward for faith, whether the pulverization into smithereens was to be avoided by clean living or sought as the ultimate salvation. No school of theology had implanted Chidiock Tichborne with this fundamental lesson of evangelism: perplexity is the foundation for faith. Do we live our eastering in order to seek west or avoid it?

Already the more susceptible were whipped into a frenzy of postures and devotions, some of them shouting aloud, “Is it I, Lord?” and “Am I ready?” while still others strained their entire bodies in the direction of Man and declared “It is I, Lord!” and “I am ready!” Surely, Chid thought, the Lord Himself could hear them. He was pleased to notice that Squire Sam Ingledew had stopped grinning his stupid grin and was looking around himself in wonder. And then, as if the young squire could not bear the sight of so much faith and fervor, he slipped away from the crowd and disappeared into the darkness. Good riddance, thought Chid.

It sure would do me a right smart of good, Chid thought, if the Lord would shoot one of them Ingledews. It would not only strengthen Chid’s power over the unbelievers and the Crustian backsliders, but it would also reduce by one the obstacles to the Crustian takeover of Parthenon.

“Just a little more hubbub,” Chid said to himself, “and the Lord Hisself may hear us.” He shouted to the crowd, “WHO IS READY?!?” and he commanded them, “PRAISE HIM! PRAISE HIS HOLY NAME!”

A great tumult of sound rose from the congregation, a blending of cries of “I AM READY!” and “CHOOSE ME, LORD!” and “BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD!” And Deacon Fent Chism managed to get a few dozen of them to harmonize on a loud chorus of “Gettin Ready to Leave This World of Sorrow to Head My Gitalongs for the Gloryland Up Yonder.”

Even Archibald, Chid was pleased to note, had stopped fooling around with that Dingletoon gal and was getting into the spirit of things. But Chid silently prayed to the Lord to spare Archibald and all the rest of his own family, including especially himself, although he quickly added, “But if it be Thy will, Lord, and You don’t need me no more to watch after Yore flock, why then just Rapture me too.”

Then, somehow, the tumult of all those prayers and songs, the very loudness of those hundreds of voices raised in worship and supplication, must have reached Him. He closed the book He was reading, and seemed to stare off into space for a moment as if He were thinking about what He had just read, but then He reached up and turned His reading lamp so that it shone full upon the entire congregation. The Lord leaped out of His cheer-of-ease.

“Shit!” spake the Lord, and snatched up His revolver. “BANG!” spake the Holy Gun, and dispatched Deacon Fent Chism to the Gloryland he was singing about. So many of the faithful were so close to the Lord’s gitalongs that the Lord began stomping at the same time he was shooting, and westered several at a time beneath his shoes, narrowly missing Chid himself. “KER-POW!” spake the Holy Gun again, and obliterated Ila Frances Tichborne, Chid’s wife. “Oh, take me next!” Chid cried, in a curious mixture of grief for his wife and elation at his own imminent Rapture.

But the Lord was not aiming at him. The Lord was aiming at one in a group of three: Archibald Tichborne, Tish Dingletoon, and Squire Hank Ingledew. “Oh, let it be the Squire!” Chid screamed.

“PLEW!” spake the Holy Gun, and Chid looked to see which of the three was hit, but none of them were. The Lord had missed? Chid looked up, and saw that the Lord’s eyelid, the lid of His sighting eye, was covered by a clinging roosterroach! Some blasphemous roosterroach had climbed up the Lord’s person and dropped off the top of His head at the instant of His firing, seizing Him by the sighting eye’s lid! The Lord had been made to miss!

“AAAAGGHH!” spake the Lord, and dropped His revolver, which crushed the Stapletons, and swatted at His own face, knocking the offending rooster-roach away, then raised and clutched His gitalong. The Lord had shot Himself in His own gitalong!

Chapter nineteen

When Tish heard the fourth explosion she thought it was one more discharge of the Lord’s Holy Bullets, but how could that be? The Holy Revolver was on the floor, lying atop poor westered Mr. and Mrs. Horace Stapleton, and the Lord Himself was sprawled out on His loafing couch, clutching His gitalong in agony, moaning and cursing. No, the fourth explosion must have been somebody else shooting a gun, but who?

Tish found that one of her gitalongs was enwrapped by the sniffwhip tip of Archy Tichborne, who was pulling at her and saying, “Come on, gal, let’s skedaddle out of here!” He led her through an old bullethole in the wall and into the space behind the walls, a deserted corridor, where they were squeezed together in their hiding. Hiding from what? Tish wondered. Then a fifth explosion sounded, and she jumped, mashing up against Archy, who enfolded her with his sniffwhips and said, “Easy, sweetheart, He caint git us here.”

“He’s not trying to get us,” Tish said. “He’s shot. Somebody is shooting Him.”

“That aint gunfire any more,” Archy declared, knowledgeably. “That’s thunder. It’s comin on to rain.”

“Nobody’s shooting Him?” Tish asked.

“He shot Hisself,” Archy said. “He was aimin right at me but He missed and shot Hisself.”

“Is He west?” Tish asked in awe.

“Naw, He jist blasted a big hole in His gitalong and fell on his loafin couch.”

“But He’s a-westerin,” Tish declared with concern.

“I misdoubt it,” Archy said. “He jist won’t be walkin around much.”

“Then why are we hiding?” she asked.

“It’s still dangerous out there,” Archy said.

A sixth explosion sounded, causing Tish and Archy to jump again and to hold one another more tightly. Even though they knew it was thunder, not gunfire, it was so close, so loud, and so shaking that it seemed as if the walls of Holy House would collapse. There is nothing like danger to promote intimacy, and Tish was surprised to find that she and Archy were such close friends already, almost as if she had known him all her life. Had it been only the night before last that she first saw him at the Carlott play-party, and admired him, and wished he would take notice of her? He was certainly noticing her now. The proximity of their bodies reminded her of that night too, when the two of them had hidden together from the Lord. Was there a cosmic parallel here, that once again they were hiding from the Lord? Or were they only hiding from the thunder? Or from what?

The thunder increased, as if it were seeking them out, and even the confines of the wall in which they hid were no blanket against the flashes of lightning. She could hear now the steady drumbeat of rain high up against the roof and even against the sides of the house and the windowpanes.

After a long time, Tish asked, “Shouldn’t we go see?”

“See what?” Archy asked.

“If Man is all right,” she said. “If He’s not a-westerin.”

“We darsen go nowhere,” Archy said. Then he gave her a little kiss. “Let’s us jist stay here all night.” He gave her a bigger kiss.

Tish was thrilled. One thing Squire Sam had never done, even though he had given her a marble, was to give her a kiss. She thought about Squire Sam, and about last night and this morning. But she did not want to think about Squire Sam at a time like this. Her thoughts were already torn between Archy, so close beside her and so increasingly intimate, and Man, who might be in peril and was at least in agony. Archy had such beautiful big eyes. And such an easy-going manner. For a minister’s son, he seemed almost indifferent to the Lord’s distress and wounding. Or maybe, being the minister’s son, he knew things about the Lord that she did not know. He knew, perhaps, that the Lord was immortal and could not wester.

“If He caint walk, how can He get something to eat?” she asked.

“Who?”

“The Lord.”

“Oh, Him. Is He all you can think about, at a time like this?”

“Like what?”

“Like here and now, like this: I got both my sniffwhips around you, babe.” Archy kissed her again, full on the lips.

Tish had believed the old wives’ tale that once a girl has been impregnated with a boy’s marble, she can’t send out pheromones any more. Thus she was surprised to discover that she was giving off a tiny bit of her special perfume, with which, in the closed confines of this corridor-in-the-wall, she could not avoid gently showering Archy.

“Ummm,” he said, quivering his sniffwhips in recognition of her scent. “Wow, honeybunch, if you aint keerful I’m liable to start oozin some of my affy-dizzy.”

There was one old wives’ tale, however, which was sure-enough no mistake: once a girl has taken a boy’s marble, she can’t take another one. Thus, when Archy’s wings rose to reveal a back lathered with affy-dizzy, she was able to resist the temptation, despite her hunger.

“Come on, sweetheart, try a taste,” he urged.

“Thank you, I’ve done already eaten tonight,” she lied.

“Huh?” He looked at her strangely. “No gal is able to pass up affy-dizzy, irregardless of how much she’s done et,” he explained, as if she didn’t know.

Inside the wall it was so snug and cozy and romantic. Outside the wall the sound of the thunder went on and on and on, and the steady beat of the rain. In all her life, Tish had never heard, seen, smelled, or felt a thunderstorm like this one, and she began to wonder if it was not merely a great raining but something more. The Lord had shot Himself. The world was changing. Perhaps the world was ending. Perhaps all those dreadful sounds out there were not merely thunderclaps but The Bomb.

Almost absent-mindedly she reached out and dabbed at the affy-dizzy and brought it to her mouth.

Chapter twenty

Mandamn that preacher all to hell, Doc swore to himself, hobbling among the bodies of the injured and the westered. Then he involuntarily chuckled at the awful irony of his own oath: it had been the Mandamning which had done this. Unfortunately the Mandamning hadn’t Mandamned the sonofabitchin preacher but had sure Mandamned the east out of several good folks: there lay the fragmented remains of Fent Chism, beyond all help from Doc. Here were several folks squashed past all recognition, although one of the bodies smelled like old Jonce Ledbetter, and at the edge of a fresh bullet hole Doc picked up a broken sniffwhip and took a good sniff of it and identified it as all that remained of Ila Frances Tichborne, the preacher’s own wife. Where was the preacher? Didn’t he even care? Maybe, Doc thought, that last shot had got the preacher himself. But no, it was clear that the last shot had gone right smack into Man’s own gitalong, between the tarsal and the metatarsal bones; the bullet had passed through the shoe, come out through the sole and left one more hole, a bloody one, in the floor. “Sorry, mister, I caint do a thing fer ye,” Doc said irreverently to Man, who lay in obvious suffering on His couch. “But iffen I was you, I’d git up and put more than a Band-Aid on thet thang.” Doc turned his attention away from bleeding Man to the bleeding roosterroaches, those who still had a spark of east left in them and could use his help. Horace Stapleton had had all his midgut squeezed to soup by the falling revolver-gun and was already west, but his wife Martha was still a bit to the east, her thorax caved in but her abdomen almost intact. Doc soothed her. “You’ll be all right, Marthy. Jist lay easy, and don’t try to move.”

When the fourth explosion sounded, Doc did not twitch, recognizing it for what it was: thunder. Up in the sky. Outside. The greater gods, thought Doc, who believed in greater gods, are firing their pistols. His stargazers were too blind to detect the distant flash of light heralding the fifth explosion, but his main eyes caught it, verifying that it was indeed lightning, and when the boom came, he judged the stormclouds were approaching. We shore need a good sprinkle, he thought. Like any roosterroach he loved rain but hated lightning, not because of the noise but because of the light.

Between the booms of thunder, he heard another sound: a moaning, coming not from Man but from a roosterroach. Another survivor of Man’s wrath or the preacher’s provocation, or both, was somewhere out of sight. Doc tuned his sniffwhips and tried to locate the victim by scent. He was drawn to the proximity of Man’s cheer-of-ease; the scents and sounds were coming from somewhere up among the cushions of the cheer, high above. “Who’s up yonder?” Doc called, then repeated himself, but got no answer. Either the victim was hurt beyond the ability to reply…or else was deaf. More likely the latter, thought Doc. He needed a boost to get up the side of the cheer. He looked around for someone to boost him. Six of Martha Stapleton’s sons, Dick, Vic, Rick, Mick, Nick, and Jick, were gathered around her, and a few other ambulatory survivors were wandering around in a daze, but most of the roosterroaches had decamped back to their frock, smock, or car lot.

Doc would just have to scale the cheer as best he could, unassisted. He reached up with his one good gitalong on the left side, took a grip of the fabric of the cheer, and pulled himself up, then gripped with the two on the right side of his tripodal purchase, and slowly hauled himself gitalong over gitalong up the side of the cheer until he reached the edge of the seat cushion and could stop climbing. Winded, and his heart pounding, he prowled around the edges of the seat cushion until, in the crevice at the very back, he found the belly-up roosterroach he had suspected he would find. The boy was still east, breathing, and still intact, with no gitalong or sniffwhip missing, but he had been knocked into a daze, stunned senseless. There was no serious trauma or visible lesions but a flow of ichor from the mouth and around the pedicel of one sniffwhip. Doc took his pulse, which was weak and erratic. “It’s a wonder,” he said, “that the blow didn’t stun yore tailprongs back into usefulness again.” But the poor devil couldn’t hear him. He raised his voice. “THAT WAS A BRAVE SMART THING YE DONE!” he shouted at one tail-prong. “NOBODY ON EARTH BUT YOU WOULD’VE BEEN ABLE TO DO IT.”

The boy focused his eyes and stared at Doc, and tried to smile, then tried to speak, but Doc shushed him. Moving him was out of the question; he would have to remain absolutely still for several hours, which would be critical. “MAYBE YOU’LL STAY EAST,” Doc said, even if it was a white lie, “BUT YOU’VE GOT TO JIST LAY EASY, AND TRY NOT TO MOVE.” The boy let his eyes fade out of focus, and Doc settled himself down into a crouch alongside, where he could monitor the heartbeat and respiration. He wiped away the ichor dribbling from the lips, and was pleased to see that it did not continue to flow. He forced the sniffwhips into the relaxed horizontal position alongside the body, and patted them gently to keep them from springing up again.

The rainfall could be heard now as well as smelled. The thunder went on and on, and the periodic flashes of lightning illuminated the interior of the loafing room, but the omnipresent sound was of the rain beating down. From his position, as the minutes passed, Doc could see Man but not the floor; he could not tell what was happening among the victims and survivors down below, but he could see that Man had rolled over onto His back, on the couch, and had perhaps passed into unconsciousness, from pain or loss of blood. “YOU’D BEST STAY AWAKE!” Doc shouted at Him, and his patient snapped into watchfulness again, and Doc apologized, “I DIDN’T MEAN YOU. I WAS A-HOLLERIN AT THE LORD. BUT COME TO THINK OF IT, YOU STAY AWAKE, TOO.”

“Thanks, Doc,” the patient mumbled.

“DON’T TALK,” Doc yelled. “DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT TRYIN TO TALK. You jist let me do the talkin. Man is all belly-up yonder on His couch, with the awfulest wound in his gitalong. You made Him shoot Hisself in the gitalong, did ye know that? Shut up, don’t answer. You didn’t do it a purpose, I reckon. When you clumb up onto His haid and made Him miss yore dad and yore sweetheart, you didn’t know that if He missed He’d hit Hisself in His own gitalong, did ye? Hush. He orter known better Hisself, a-playin around with that pistol of His’n the way He allus does. He orter known He’d shoot Hisself if He didn’t watch out. But maybe you done Him a favor. Yeah, maybe He would’ve done somethin worse bye and bye iffen ye hadn’t taught ’im a lesson. All he’s got is maybe a fractured metatarsal bone or two, and no doubt a splintered part of the second and third cuneiform tarsal bones as well, but he won’t be walkin again for a right smart spell.”

As if to give the lie to Doc’s prognosis, Man suddenly heaved Himself into a sitting position, stood up on one gitalong, and hopped, then hobbled, then hopped, right back toward His cheer-of-ease! Doc feared that the Lord would plop His butt right smack down on top of both him and his patient, and he cringed, and debated with himself whether to try to stuff himself and his patient further down into the crevice between the cushions. But the Lord merely came to get His tumbler of bourbon off the table beside the cheer, lifted it to His mouth and drained it off in a couple of swallows, then turned and hopped, and hobbled, not back to the couch but toward the cookroom. He was leaving a trail of blood all over the carpets and linoleum. “YOU EEJIT!” Doc yelled, blasphemy be damned, “GIT OFF THEM GITALONGS! TIE A TURNICUT OVER THET THANG!”

As if the Lord had heard him, when He returned, He was bearing in one hand His unopened new bottle of bourbon and in the other hand a linen tablecloth. Flouncing down again onto the couch, He first opened the bottle and drank directly from it. Doc shouted, “PORE A LEETLE ON THE WOUND, FOR A ANTY-SETTIC!” but he was ignored, or unheard. Man then proceeded to rip the tablecloth into shreds. With one strip of cloth He tied a clumsy, drunken tourniquet around His ankle and tightened it. Then He removed and tossed away His shoe, which bore a gaping bloody bullethole in the instep, another in the sole, and removed His sock, which was soaked with blood. Doc had a fleeting glimpse of the ugly wound before Man began to wrap His gitalong with strips of the tablecloth. Doc winced at the sight of both the wound and the dressing, unsterile rags of linen that would likely establish a colony of staphylococci all around and in the wound, to say nothing of tetanus.

The amateur bandaging finished, the Man took a few more lusty swallows from the bottle, smacked His lips, sighed, then lay back down on the couch and closed His eyes again. Lightning and thunder continued, but the sound of the rain was loudest. A toad-strangling downpour, Doc reflected. He hoped so. He lost no love on toads. He reached out and checked the breathing and pulse of his patient; the breathing was deeper, the pulse was steadier but fainter. The boy was still conscious. Why do I keep callin him boy? Doc asked himself. He’s a full-growed feller, stout as a tumble-turd. “Yeah, maybe you done the Lord a favor,” Doc repeated himself, although he was aware that he was not speaking loudly enough for the deafened tailprongs to hear him, “maybe you done us all a favor, if the Lord has learned His lesson not to fool around with that firearm no more.” Doc chuckled. “Maybe you put the preacher out of business with his Rapture thing and all. And maybe,” Doc paused and reflected on the magnitude of the notion, “jist maybe there won’t never be no Bomb.” He was surprised at himself for having such a thought, which went counter to his usual pessimism on the subject, his unshakable faith in the cataclysm that would obliterate the world as we know it.

Unless…and this was another, different thought…unless this event now, tonight, was The Bomb. Perhaps The Bomb was just this one pistol shot into the gitalong of Man, that would start Him westering, if not wester Him off completely for good for once and for all, so that He would no longer be here to provide for His roosterroaches, who would have to seek their salvation elsewhere or starve to west.

“Theology is really complicated,” Doc Swain said to his patient, remembering again but not caring that his patient was too deaf to hear him, and as the night hours passed he went on talking. The patient kept his eyes focused on Doc Swain’s face almost as if reading his lips, and kept his useless tailprongs erect, and gave the semblance of listening. Doc Swain talked about the Stay More of old, that he had never known but only studied and still diurnally dreamed of, the Stay More populated with almost as many Men, and Women, and Children, as there were now roosterroaches remaining with the one Man. This Man, our Man, was not even of any kinship to those ancient folk of Stay More; He was a furriner, from distant parts, an outlander, a newcomer, even if He had lived in Holy House longer than all but the oldest roosterroaches could remember. Doc Swain was one of these: he could remember, as a child, nearly two years before, watching Man move into the old Stay More Hotel, which had once been the home for human Ingledews before becoming a hotel, and had been abandoned for years before Man moved into it and installed the Fabulous Fridge and the pantry and breadbasket and grocery sack and other good things. Although the Man did not dress like the ancient Men of Stay More, or talk like Them, or practice Their customs, He was still Man, and the only Man we had. He might not be as Almighty as the Crustians thought He was, but He was the Lord.

“LORD, DON’T PASS OUT!” Doc Swain called, because it was evident that He intended to anesthetize His pain into oblivion with the bourbon. Doc was tempted to make his way over to Him, climb on Him, tickle Him, try to keep Him awake and conscious, or, failing that, persuade others to join in the effort. To do so, he would have to leave his patient, and as far as he was concerned, even apart from the sense of loyalty to his own kind, if Doc had to choose between Man and Sam, he would pick Sam, any old day.

It was day now. The rain was letting up, but only for a moment, as if pausing to catch its breath before trying harder.

Chapter twenty-one

“Hit’s pourin down pitchforks, cats and dogs!” Jack observed, flinching from the pelting rain. He didn’t mind the wet, which couldn’t penetrate his cutin, but the force of the heavy drops kept knocking him off his gitalongs, and the drops were cold.

Josie thought, which kept her from minding the long hike. “Do some folks think that cats and dogs fall with the rain?” she asked, and belched.

“Huh?” said Jack. “Naw, that’s jist one a them ole sayins, pourin down cats and dogs. You ever see a dog fall from the sky?”

“I aint never seen a dog,” Josie said, and tripped over a pebble of sandstone and fell down.

“You still drunk as a fiddler’s bitch?” Jack asked her, helping her to her gitalongs. He wasn’t exactly sober himself, but they would never get home if his old lady didn’t stop falling down and asking dumb questions and burping like a grasshopper.

“What’s a fiddler’s bitch?” Josie asked.

“Aw, that’s jist a breed of dog,” he said. “Now shut up, Maw, and watch where you’re going.” He raised a limb of grass to clear her sniffwhips, then passed under himself. It was hard going. Ever since the previous night, except for the bright daylight hours which had forced them to seek darkness in an abandoned ants’ burrow, they had been making their way slowly homeward from the Lord’s Garden and Refuse Pile, where they had been lost for the entire length of time it took them to sober up enough to walk. Jack would never forget the terror of those impossibly long moments he was airborne, inside the beer can hurtling into the unknown, the dregs of beer swirling all around and over them and getting into their mouths and spiracles, and the weightlessness that went on and on, until, with a horrible jolt and crash, the can landed amidst a pile of other cans, not just empty beer cans but cans of emptied pork and beans, cans of emptied pineapple, cans of emptied ravioli, cans of emptied 30 w motor oil. If I hadn’t of been a Ingledew, Jack told himself, I would of been westered shore as shootin. They had spent hours recovering from the crash, sustained by nothing more than whatever beer remained in the can, quite a lot of it, and then they had found their way out through the opening of the lid of the can, which fortunately lay on its side, and had found themselves among all those other cans, the exploration of which, and the escape from which, had consumed all of the rest of their night.

The Lord’s Refuse Pile was a fabulous place, and Jack was determined to return with his whole family there on an outing and picnic, some night when the weather was fair. Tonight the weather was awful unfair, and the flashes of lightning had panicked Josie and driven Jack not into complete sobriety but into a partial cure of his hangover. There was so much illumination from the sky’s electrical display that Jack feared he would be easy prey for any nocturnal creature, until he realized two things: the nocturnal creatures of prey were just as unsettled by the lightning as he was, and they were all getting wet and seeking shelter. If I had the sense Man gave to a flea, Jack told himself, I’d seek shelter too, but he knew that if this rain kept going the way it was going, so much of it would fall that the ground would be cut by new rivulets and rills and runlets, and they would never reach home. Already it was a struggle to keep to relatively high ground. Of course Jack was a fair swimmer, and so was Josie, but swimming made slow and tedious progress.

The paths that Man had trod from Carlott to His Refuse Pile, or vice versa, were few and infrequent, and thus the forest of grass and weeds impeded their long journey. The distance could not have been half a furlong, but it seemed like miles, and it was nearly morning when Jack and Josie straggled around a corner of Holy House and espied their native Carlott once again, with a mixture of exultation and weariness.

The last mile of any journey is the hardest, and it seemed they would never reach home before daylight. The cats and dogs stopped falling once they crossed the threshold of their familiar log. All of their children were already self-tucked into their sleeping crannies…all except one, the boy Jubal, crouched in the center of the main hall amid a pile of tiny smidgens of foodstuffs, with some of which he was attempting to stuff himself. As the two adult roosterroaches staggered, wet and weary, into the room, Jubal’s mouth dropped open and he sprang into full alert. But his sniffwhips recognized the two as his parents.

“Maw?!” said Jubal. “Paw?!” He rushed to them and passed his sniffwhips all over them and felt them with his touchers. “Air ye still east?!”

“Howdy, hon,” said Josie. “How’s ever little thang?”

“But, but,” said Jubal. “But, but, but but but.”

“Whar’s Tish?” asked Jack.

“But, but,” said Jubal, “but ever body said you’uns had done went and westered off!” He indicated the pile of foodstuff fragments. “Folkses has done already started bringin the funeral feeds.”

“My, my,” said Josie, and reached out to sample a crumb of Hostess chocolate cupcake, her very first taste of chocolate, of which so much had been said and rumored and gossiped. Then she tried a pinch of peach fried pie, a snippet of oatmeal cookie, a tittle of zwieback, and a fleck of cough drop. “I never in all my born days dreamt that we’uns was so popular!” she observed. She asked Jubal, “Did ye remember who-all brung which-all? Did Sally Dinsmore bring us ary a thang?”

Jubal hung his head. “Yes’m, she brung some whitish lookin stuff, but I done et it.”

“Marshmaller!” cried Josie. “How dast ye?” She drew back a sniffwhip as if to slap the youngun.

Jack stopped her. “Whar is yore big sister Tish at?” he asked the boy.

“She did lak ye said, Momma, Tish did. She up and took herself to Partheeny, for to claim kin to the Ingledews.”

“Naw!” said Jack and Josie together, and looked at one another and then looked back at Jubal. “Did she really, now?” Josie asked. “Why, bless her heart! Here we aint been west two nights and already she’s done went and done it!”

“We aint west, Maw,” Jack pointed out. To Jubal he said, “When did ye see her last? How do ye know she went to Partheeny? What-all else do ye know?”

Jubal told them everything he knew, or had heard. He had not left the Dingletoon bungalow, because Tish had made him promise to watch out for his brothers and sisters during her absence. When she had passed beyond reach of his sniffwhips, night before last, she was heading toward Hinglerocks, but she did that all the time anyway and she hadn’t come home, so Jubal figured that if she hadn’t been et by something, she had gone on to Parthenon.

“My, my,” Josie said to Jack. “Do you suppose our Letitia is a-dwellin at Partheeny now?”

“If she wasn’t et by some critter along the way,” Jack said.

“Why, if she has done went and moved into Partheeny, she’s probably expectin us to come and visit and stay the night or even forever!” Josie said.

“She thinks you’uns is both west,” Jubal declared.

“Let’s go susprise her!” Josie urged Jack.

“Not today, Maw,” Jack said, stretching and yawning. “We aint goin nowhere in the daylight. I aim to git me some sleep.” He took a particle of some creamy looking stuff from the pile of funeral feed, and said, “Jubal, you turn in, now, and leave these here eats alone.”

Jack and Josie turned in, too, and slept all day, deeply and soundly, recuperating from their long journey and their ordeal, and woke at the dip of dusk almost completely sober, to greet their assembled offspring, share with them in the consumption of a fraction of the funeral feeds, caution them not to breathe a word to any other visitors bearing funeral feeds that their parents were not solemnly west, and then announce that they intended to sneak off to Parthenon to check up on Letitia and see if she might have prepared the way for all of them to move into Parthenon.

The children, between mouthfuls of funeral feeds, cheered and hugged one another and thanked their lucky stars, and wished their parents the very best of luck.

Jubal was still trying to get them to hush up when Jack and Josie disappeared into the still-falling rain on their journey toward Parthenon. Jubal had just lost scent of his parents on his sniffwhips when he picked up a different scent: that of his sister, Tish, returning home from another direction.

Chapter twenty-two

She had not allowed him to accompany her all of the way home. She didn’t want her brothers and sisters to see him, and get wrong ideas about what she had been doing, out all day. She felt wracked with guilt, on several counts, the least of which was she had no business staying away from home so long. But she hadn’t done anything wrong…not with Archy, anyway. It was funny. They had spent the entire rest of the night together, and even slept together all day, almost side by side, but he hadn’t actually given her a marble. Not that he hadn’t tried to, and not that she wouldn’t have let him at least try, but the process of making connection, as she had already discovered with Squire Sam, was such a complicated procedure of fastening the right latches and hooking the right clamps and putting this thing alongside of that thing, and then the other thing inside of the round thing, that in the process of all the maneuvering and straining Archy had lost his marble. Well, it hadn’t been completely lost, it was still there, rolling around on the floor, and eventually they even made a kind of game, playing with it, rolling it around and bouncing it.

Archy had tried to make the whole business seem all right by declaring that he was glad he hadn’t been able to take her virginity, that he hoped she would remain a virgin until they got married. He hadn’t come right out and proposed to her. He hadn’t asked her, “Let’s me and you git hitched,” or anything like that. He had simply said he wanted her to remain a virgin until they could do it properly with the approval of the church. Of course she hadn’t told him that she already had a marble inside her, Squire Sam’s marble. She hadn’t even mentioned Squire Sam.

As a substitute for the hours they would have spent properly hooked up, joining together, fused, Archy had told her practically the entire story of his life, past, present and future: his dreams of adventure, his plans for exploring the world, his desire to travel in search of fabled houses far away, even outside of Stay More. He had talked a blue streak, never showing any concern over the incident of Man’s shooting Himself, nor ever once expressing grief over the westering of his mother. Hadn’t he noticed? Tish wondered, without asking him, if he had seen, heard, or smelled the erasure of Ila Frances Tichborne by the second bullet of the Lord. Maybe he was happy for her Rapture, or maybe he didn’t care; there were countless roosterroaches, particularly males, who felt no attachment to their mothers.

Squire Sam’s mother had died when he was in his fourth instar, but Sam had not talked much about her to Tish: one of the very few things Sam and Archy had in common was a reluctance to mention their mothers. Tish had wished they would, so she could talk about hers, so recently westered. She really needed to tell someone how much she had loved her mother, and how much she missed her already. Her father too, of course, but Jack Dingletoon hadn’t been much of a family man; he had been a happy-go-lucky drunkard, and Tish had never felt really close to him, not the way she had toward her mother, even if her mother was rather giddy and even silly at times.

There had been moments when Tish had almost blurted to Archy, “Don’t you even care about your mom?” but she had kept her mouth shut and let him do all the talking. He had spoken a great deal about his father, Brother Chidiock Tichborne, who was his ideal of Manliness and malehood, although Archy had turned a deaf tailprong to his father’s attempts to get Archy to follow him in the “preacherin business.” Two of Archy’s brothers were preparing for the ministry, but Archy had decided against it. Of course, there was always the possibility, if he found himself in some foreign land where the folks needed a preacher but didn’t have one, that Archy might change his mind. Tish didn’t want to be a preacher’s wife, now did she? No, she didn’t.

The confines of the corridor in which they laid low throughout the hours of conversation had been snug and cozy for a while but had eventually become stifling and dank. There were strong odors of mouse scat, snail-slime, fly-spittle, termite-trail, and ant-spoor; generations of critters had used this corridor for a passageway, and the offensive smells destroyed Tish’s pheromone and were magnified by an increasing humidity because of the rain: yes, the world outside Holy House was being deluged, as the weather station of her sniffwhip told her: a real frog-choker. She loved rain and hated frogs.

She wished Archy would take her out to the porch, such a glamorous architectural wonder, where she had never been, so that the two of them could watch the rain, but she did not suggest it to him. She wondered if he might take her to his home, in the frock, in some distant room of Holy House, and introduce her to his brothers and sisters. Maybe he had sisters who needed comforting because of the loss of their mother. Maybe if Tish comforted them for their loss, they would comfort her for hers. At this thought she had begun to weep, quietly, and finally Archy had stopped talking long enough to ask her why she was crying; had his narration of his childhood and his outlining of his dreams for the bright future made her cry? She could not explain that she was thinking there was no one to comfort her that her mother was west, no one to comfort her that she had foolishly thrown away her virginity, no one to aid her in this time of loss and stress and confusion, no one but Archy, who could only talk on and on about the great world away out yonder that he planned to conquer.

She had fallen asleep. Day was coming anyway, or, if not day, because the stormclouds would never let the sun appear, the time of sleep, almost automatic for roosterroaches, but not quite for Archy, who went on talking for some time before he noticed that she slept, and then he went to sleep himself.

Upon awakening at eventide she had told him that she must return to Carlott, to the family log, to see about her brothers and sisters. He had insisted upon going with her, because the rain was still pouring down. They found that three rivers ran around and through Carlott, where none had been before, and no doubt Tish would never have been able to ford these rivers without the help of Archy, who assisted her in swimming across or, in the case of the worse torrent, devised a raft of weedstems and floated the two of them over. The water was nearly up to the level of the Platform, and most of the automotive thingumajigs and doomahitchies littering the ground were submerged. Water was up to the hubcaps of the Lord’s nonjunk vehicle, His Ford Torino. Some of the dwellings of Carlott were underwater or washed away, and the refugees, Tish’s neighbors, were milling in confusion and fright on patches of higher ground above the village. In the distance she could see her home: the log was not submerged, but waves lapped at its door.

“You’d best turn back, and get on home before this rain gets any worse,” she told Archy.

“But I’d be proud to meet yore mother,” Archy insisted.

“My momma has westered, same as yours,” Tish declared.

“Mine?” he said. “What gives ye the idee my momma has westered?”

“You didn’t see?” Tish asked, and realized, too late, that indeed he had not watched the shooting of Ila Frances Tichborne and, all this time, had no idea his mother was west. Should she tell him? Yes, she had better: “Last night, didn’t ye notice, the second bullet of the Lord hit your momma and Raptured her.”

“No!” Archy exclaimed. “Don’t tell me that! When did you hear this?”

“I didn’t hear it,” she said. “I mean, I didn’t only hear it. I saw it too.”

“Are ye certain it was her?” he asked her. “How do ye know?”

“Everybody knows the preacher’s wife,” she declared.

Archy continued to appear incredulous, then became credulous, then grew angry. “Why didn’t ye tell me?” he asked.

“I thought ye knew,” she said.

“You mean all this time I been so sweet to ye, all this time I was a-lovin ye and talkin so nice to ye and all, all this time ye knew I was motherless?”

Tish could only nod. Then she added, softly, “I’m motherless too.”

Archy snorted a hollow laugh. “I was fixin to ast ye to come and meet my momma tomorrow night and have breakfast with us,” he declared. “But it don’t look like I can, do it?” When she did not respond to this rhetorical question, he said, “Well, I’ll see you around, somewhere, sooner or later,” and he swung his six gitalongs around to decamp.

“Archy!” she called after him, but he did not turn.

Sadly, she entered her home, finding it waterlogged but all her brothers and sisters not only safe but manic with joy, jumping up and down, hugging one another, and babbling about “Partheeny.” The highest up-and-down jumper was Jubal, who exclaimed, “Wal, looky who’s here!”

“Hidy, Jubal, how’s stuff?” she said.

“I’ll tell ye how stuff is!” he exclaimed. “Paw aint west! Neither is Maw! Both of ’em is jist as eastern as me and you!”

“What!?” said Tish, and began searching with her sniffwhips. “Where are they?”

“They done went to Partheeny to look for you.”

“Me? But I’m here.”

“But aint ye been to PARTHEENY? Didn’t ye claim kin to the Ingledews?”

“Well, sort of,” she admitted.

“Aint we’uns all gonna move into Partheeny?” he asked, and the question was picked up and chorused by the assembled brothers and sisters, who kept chanting, “Aint we’uns all?” and “We’uns gonna?” and “Move into?” and “Partheeny?”

“Let me sit down and try to explain,” Tish protested, and crouched to the loggy floor and sighed, “I’m wore to a frazzel,” and asked, “Could ye scare me up a bite of fungus?”

“Fungus, heck!” Jubal said. “Lookee here at what-all we got to eat!” and shooed aside the mob of siblings to reveal the pile of funeral feeds. Tish recognized them for what they were; it is the dream and dread of every young roosterroach to experience the mixture of grief and delight that comes from a funeral feed.

“This is called ‘peanut brickle,’” she knowledgeably explained to Jubal, as she helped herself to a bite.

Not to be out-knowledged, he said, “This is called marshmaller,” and showed her a bit he had been hoarding.

The assorted Dingletoon offspring surrounded the funeral feed and dined, while Tish, between bites, attempted to tell them the story of her visit to Parthenon, omitting, of course, her indiscretion with Squire Sam. When she had finished, all the children rattled and blathered, “When air we’uns gonna move into Partheeny?” and “When air?” and “Move into?” and “Partheeny?” and “We’uns gonna?” Tish attempted to explain that Parthenon was the exclusive domain of the Squires Ingledew, and even if the Dingletoons were Ingledews, they couldn’t just go rushing all of a heap into that marvelous house.

When she had finished the story of Parthenon, her brothers and sisters urged, “Tell us another’n, Sis!” so she told the story of the latest shootings at the church-meetin at Holy House, one shot of which had wounded the Lord Himself. They could not believe that part. Man is bulletproof, they said; Man is punctureproof, He is holeproof. Not so, Tish insisted; she had seen the Holy Blood. She described it. It was red. It was thicker than ichor.

She told of the couch on which the Lord lay, and she detailed the character of the corridors inside the walls and the awful smells of the trails and spoors of critters who crawled and crept in the spaces. She made Holy House sound like both a marvelous place and a terrible place, and the children listened with their glossae agape and their tailprongs twitching.

They would have eaten all the funeral feeds if she had not made them draw a line, a literal line which they were not allowed to cross. She explained that the intended honorees of the funeral, their mother and father, ought to have a share of the feeds unto themselves, and that whatever was left over should be saved and used to present as funeral feeds to the survivors of those who had been westered the night before at Holy House, including Nancy Whitter, Luke’s widow and outcast, and the children, including Archy, of Ila Frances Tichborne. She would give Archy the last hunklet of peanut brickle herself.

Near onto dawn Tish talked and entertained her siblings, and then she sent them all to bed. She needed to think. She needed to remember what had been happening to her, and to conjecture what was now going to come of it. The Fate-Thing had plans for her, but she had to make her own as well. The Fate-Thing can make your plans, but you have to carry them out…unless you try to carry out plans the Fate-Thing doesn’t have for you: then the Fate-Thing will stop you.

There was that marble of Squire Sam’s caught and held within her ovary. How exactly had it come to rest there? Dreamily Tish dwelt upon the mood of the long hours of conjunction, the pleasurable shuttling back and forth between the resistance to the bondage and the giving in to it, with the accompanying necessary tension building to a peak. She reflected upon the shape and form of all the instruments of the bondage, Sam’s natural anatomical manacles, cuffs, collars, buckles, trusses, which had gripped and clamped Tish’s natural anatomical latches, hasps, hitches, and hooks, holding her fast and tight.

Why that need for bondage? Did the female have to be restrained or did she want to be? At no time during the process had Tish felt an actual urge to disjoin and decamp, so why had Man created her body, and Sam’s, with all those fasteners? Why was it so pleasurable to be seized, grasped, clutched, held?

Holding is all. All: to hold is to wish to be held. To be held is to hold. To embrace is to enchant. Making love was like making stories, storyteller Tish realized. The story that enchants also embraces. The storyteller wishes to be embraced, as the lover wishes to be loved. The genital clasper grabs hold as the story grabs hold. The story expects resistance, and the resister disbelieves in order to be won over. The holding back, the resisting, the subjection and seduction….

Tish realized that her easteregg was growing within her, starting from nothing as a story starts from nothing, and needing to be fertilized by a touch from the other: Sam’s marble released the first of the many copies of himself that it contained, baby Ingledews having a family reunion with their longlost kindred Dingletoon cousins. Even if she could never dwell in Parthenon, now Parthenon dwelt in her.

And began to protrude.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a strange sensation in her body, a rocking motion, an unsettled feeling in her six sensitive knee joints which told her that the substratum was in upheaval. Is this what pregnancy feels like? she wondered. Did the protrusion of the easteregg cause the floor to tilt?

“Tish!” cried Jubal, rushing into her room and into her reverie. “Our house is floating away!”

Chapter twenty-three

“Godhead above my Man, are you there still?” Chid whispered, and listened, but heard nothing, save the endless droning drumbeat of the rain upon the shingles of the roof. This sound was so loud because he was right next to it, up there alongside the rafters, in the place that he thought of as his private refuge, secret and safe. If he had known of Tish’s fondness for Hinglerocks, he would have understood it, for this abandoned dirt dobber’s nest served the same function for him: a quiet and magical place to meditate and try to come to terms with the great mysteries of life. For Chid, a central mystery of life was whether or not there might be some force greater than Man, some Absolute Mover and Shaker more Infinite and Omnipotent than Man, some Everlasting Eternal Being who did not drink bourbon or coffee, smoke cigarettes, pass out, fire pistols, write love letters, and urinate. This Supreme Soul Chid envisioned as dwelling somewhere far overhead, somewhere that not even Man could reach. Thus the abandoned dirt dobber’s nest up under the roof of Holy House was closer to the Entity whom Chid was inclined to call, for want of a better name, by the name that Chid had heard Man Himself use, when, most lately, He lay on His couch of suffering, pain, and blood, and cried, “Oh, God.”

Chid had for several long moments refused to accept the possibility that Man could have shot Himself, that He was not only mortal but woundable, bleedable. And once this possibility had established itself in Chid’s consciousness, blotting out even the awful event of the atomization of his wife Ila Frances, he had fled, upstairs, upattic, up and up to this haven, this hermitage of rest and contemplation.

The dirt dobber, also called mud-dauber (Sceliphron coementarium), is a wasp who makes not the paper nest of the poliste or the hornet but a grouping of cells of clay, or, in places such as Stay More, where there is little natural clay, just dirt and dust from the earth moistened into mud and overlapped into tan tubules. Therein, the female lays her eggs, along with the bodies of spiders caught and paralyzed for the larvae’s nourishment. Dirt dobbers had rid Holy House of spiders, and, although they were not above dining upon a roosterroach when they could, they were strictly diurnal and only killed the occasional roosterroach found wandering after dawn. Once a nest has served its function for one generation of wasps, it is never used again, and the rafters of Holy House were encrusted with abandoned nests. Chidiock Tichborne could easily crawl into one and feel snug and safe and meditative.

If the truth be told, his lamentation over his wife Ila Frances was not as great as his grief for poor Josie Dingletoon, who had been, albeit briefly, the true love of his life, at least in terms of compatible sexuality. Ila Frances, after all, had been his own sister, although no one knew this except the two of them.

Sometimes Chid questioned whether Man really cared that Chid had been incestuous. Even Joshua Crust, as far as Chid could recall, had never spoken out against incest. Why, then, did Chid decry it? Because the roosterroach populations of Stay More would decline into no better than termites if they continued breeding incestuously.

No, Man did not care, but there was a godhead greater than Man, some Cosmic Immutable Force Who had planned the whole world more ably than Man could do, and Who had determined that incest was bad for you. This Force was not susceptible to pistol bullets, or even to The Bomb. This Force wanted the roosterroaches of Holy House to move into Parthenon, if need be, after puny Man had westered, or, even if He didn’t wester but took up with the Woman, or, even if the Woman moved into Holy House instead of having Him move into Parthenon…whatever, the Force clearly wanted Chid and his followers in Parthenon.

But Brother Tichborne ought to have his contingencies ready; he ought to know his options and be prepared for the time when he would have to counsel his congregation to cease worshipping Man and begin worshipping Woman instead.

As for himself, what was to keep him from worshipping the Force, calling it God, and reserving to It alone the honorific of “Lord”? He didn’t have to tell anyone else about God. Indeed, it would be better if he kept God as his own private, personal deity, just as Tish Dingletoon had made a personal deity out of the Fate-Thing. The image of God, in Chid’s imagination, was not that of Man at all, but rather an amorphous arthropod with six mighty gitalongs, an infinitely vast head, thorax, and abdomen, and all-knowing sniffwhips.

Would it be hypocrisy for Chid to pay lip service to Man and secretly petition God? All through the night and into the next day, Chid lay in the snug confines of the dirt dobber’s nest and ruminated about this matter. The following night, he left his hermitage: he had to comfort the survivors, arrange for further funeralizations, and confer sainthood upon those westered by bullets. He also had to find a bite to eat.

This latter gave him the most difficulty. Visiting the cookroom, he found that it had been stripped, although several fellows were scrambling about trying to scare up some victuals.

“Morsel, boys,” Chid greeted them. “Slim pickins tonight?”

“Morsel, yoreself, Reverend,” Tolbert Duckworth said. “Aint no pickins of no kind. There aint a gaum of grub to be found nowheres. If rain was syrup, we’d all be gorged, but there aint enough sup to make a housefly floop his snoot.”

“Hasn’t the Lord supped at all?” Chid asked.

“The Lord aint riz, a bit,” Tolbert answered. “He jist lays thar, west to the world.”

“I’d better have a look,” Chid declared, and hied himself toward the loafing room, where the reading lamp, still burning from the night before, cast its beam vacantly out upon the scene of last night’s carnage. The floor was now empty except for the three new bullet holes. Chid peered down into one of them, and stuck one of his sniffwhips down into it, and could detect only the faintest trace of whatever molecules Ila Frances had become. He made the sign of the pin over the hole, and then raised a sniffwhip just in time to detect a roosterroach climbing the side of the cheer-of-ease. The roosterroach had a suspicion of food between his touchers! Chid recognized him as Doc Swain, clawing his way slowly up the fabric on three gitalongs. Chid wanted to call out, “Hey, Doc, where’d you get them eats?” but he held his tongue and decided instead to follow stealthily and see where Doc was taking the provender.

Chid climbed up to one arm of the cheer-of-ease and gazed down upon the cushion, where Doc was urging the food, an ancient sop of bland white bread, upon an injured, recumbent roosterroach whom Chid identified as Squire Sam Ingledew. Squire Sam could scarcely move at all, but managed to raise his head and nibble at the sop and swallow.

Chid realized that injured Squire Sam must have been the culprit who had climbed the Lord’s person, causing the Lord to shoot himself in his own gitalong. Of course! Squire Sam must have done it of a purpose, not accidental-like: his father had been in the line of fire, perhaps the Lord’s intended target. Hmm, said Chid to himself, I should of knowed; nobody but an Ingledew would’ve been both fool enough and strong enough to try a stunt like that. Hmm, hummed Chid, trying to determine from a distance the extent of Squire Sam’s injuries. Looks like he’s pretty well banged up. Hmm. Don’t look like he could get up and go back to Parthenon and help his father keep anyone who wanted to from barging in and taking over the place. Hmm. I could round up the deacons and elders of the church and we could just walk into Parthenon and run old Squire Hank off. HHHMMM.

Chid hummed so loudly that he drew the attention of Doc Swain, who turned and caught a glimpse of him before Chid was able to drop out of sight down the side of the cheer. Well, that was no skin off Chid’s sniffwhip; Doc couldn’t do anything; Doc wasn’t in much better shape than his patient.

Chid did not even stop to examine the Lord, or give Him more than a glance, just enough to see that He was unconscious upon His couch, sprawled akimbo and supine and agape, an empty bourbon bottle’s neck clasped in the fingers of the hand that had dropped to the floor. For the first time in his life, Chid felt a sort of contempt for the Lord, the drunken fool.

“Wal, Brother Duckworth,” Chid said, back in the cookroom, “I do believe you’re right. The Lord is west to the world, and no tellin but what He might actually and completely wester off.”

“Aw, naw!” exclaimed Tolbert Duckworth. “Aint no chance He could do that. The Lord completely wester?!? Why, the whole world would wester afore the Lord Hisself would! Naw, Reverend, He’s jist sleepin another one off, as usual.”

The other fellers in the cookroom, mostly all good Crustians, nodded in agreement but with hesitant conviction, as if waiting to see if the preacher would persuade them otherwise.

“Brethering,” Chid said solemnly, “our Lord is all-powerful, He is mighty, He is our rock and our shield, the Lord is our fortress and our strength, yea, Man abideth though the mountains shake and the waters roar—” The preacher’s words were underscored by a renewed pouring down of rain outside the house. “Our Man is our refuge and our ark, He is our deliverer and our provider and restorer, praise His Holy Name!”

“Praise HIM!” shouted the brethren, and “Amen!” and “Lord be praised!” and “Blessed be the Name of the Lord!”

“But—” Chid interrupted their hosannas, “though He provideth for us everlastingly, yet might not the case be that with His right gitalong shot nearly plumb off they’s no way He could git up and feed Hisself, let alone that He could feed the rest of us?” Chid let his question mark hover and flutter and cast uncertainty upon their faces. In one fell swoop Chid was making immortal Man into a mortal, and there was no turning back. “The Man is a worse drunkard than ary a feller amongst us!” Chid pointed out truthfully. “Why, jist in the past twenty-four hours, since He shot Hisself in the gitalong, He’s done already drunk enough hard bourbon whiskey to wester every roosterroach in Stay More! No tellin when He’ll wake up! No tellin if He’ll wake up! Could be He won’t never wake up! Then what’ll we do? Huh? Then where will we be? Huh? I ast you, brethering, what’ll we be without that Man?!?”

The roosterroaches silently stared at him and then at one another, with expressions of anxiety and fear, and perhaps with no little wonder or dismay at Chid’s apostasy. One of the younger ones, Jim Bob Murrison, offered timidly, “But we’re all gonna go live on His right hand when we wester….”

“What good’s His right hand gonna do us if it’s westered?” Chid asked. No one answered this rhetorical question, and he continued, “Fellers, I say we had better start thinkin about movin into Parthenon!”

The murmur went through the crowd: “Partheeny!”

“There’s scads of room and food galore!” one of them shouted.

“Right!” said Chid. “So what are we waitin for?”

“We’re waiting for the rain to stop, Reverend,” said Tolbert Duckworth. “Aint no way we could make it to Partheeny in this rain.”

Chid sighed. “That’s a fact, Tol. But I’d ’preciate it iffen ye would git all the other elders and deacons together, to have a special meetin with me right soon, tonight.”

The gathering of foodseeking roosterroaches disbanded, to return to their homes in the other rooms of Holy House, in the Frock or the Smock. Their wives and children were greatly disappointed that they returned empty-touchered, without any food. The fellows told their wives of Brother Tichborne’s shocking reversal, but the wives, when they heard of his plan to move into Parthenon, realized that it was not so much backsliding as a new understanding of the Gospel made necessary by the prospect this time of great famine. For his part, Chid hoped he could soon deliver a rousing sermon to one and all, setting forth the Lord’s shortcomings and inadequacies and worthlessness, and explaining the need for worshipping Woman instead. Yes: Chid looked forward to working up a real sniffwhiplashing peroration on the subject.

Chapter twenty-four

“Doc, you know I can’t hear, so just answer some yes-or-no questions for me, all right? Just nod or shake your head. First question: am I going to stay east?” A nod, belated and hesitant. “How long do I have to keep lying here? No, that’s not a yes-or-no question. Do I have to stay here all of tonight?” A nod. “All of tomorrow night too?” Another nod. “All of the night after that too?” A shrug, a shake of the head, a nod of the head, and another shrug. “Well, have I got any permanent injuries or impairments?” A nod. “What? Where?” A touch of the sniffwhip to each tailprong. “Oh. My prongs. They were already impaired. Nothing else?” A shake. “Doc, did I cause the Man to miss His aim? Did he hit my dad?” A shake. “Did He hit Tish?” A shake. “Why isn’t He sitting down in this cheer any more? Why am I staying here, when He might come and sit down on me and squash me? That’s not a yes-or-no, is it?” A shake. “Has He left Holy House?” A shake. “Is He out in the cookroom?” A shake. “Is He in His ponder room?” A shake.

“SAM…” Doc shouted at his tailprong, then pantomimed what he wanted Sam to do: wiggle his fore gitalongs. Okay. Wiggle his middle gitalongs. Okay. Wiggle his hind gitalongs. Okay. All six of his gitalongs could wiggle. “NOW SCROOCH OVER THIS AWAY, REAL EASY AND SLOW,” Doc ordered him, and led Sam very slowly and carefully to the edge of the cushion, a distance of several inches, inches of agony and pain. Then Doc pointed. From this vantage, Sam could see out across the room, he could see the Man’s couch, with the Man supine upon it, akimbo and agape.

“Is He just west drunk?” Sam asked. Doc shook his head. “He’s not west, is He?” Sam asked. Doc shook his head, then brought two sniffwhips close together, to signify “a little” or “near” or “almost.” Doc pointed to his own gitalong, then pointed at the Man. Sam looked. The Man’s gitalong, divested of His shoe, was swaddled in strips of cloth, soaked with blood. Sam understood. “The last bullet…” he said. “The last bullet didn’t hit Dad or Tish but hit Him in His own gitalong?” Doc nodded, he nodded and nodded. And smiled a bit. Sam couldn’t help grinning a bit himself. “I see,” said Sam.

In a flash the scene of the night before returned to him, the impulsiveness of his own deed, the precariousness, the harrowing moment: the quick dashing climb straight up the Man’s back, across His collar, up through His hair to the summit of His head, then clutching onto His forelock until just the right moment, when he dropped down, at just the right angle, to seize the eyelash and then the eyelid, hoping that the right eye was the right eye, the sighting eye, not the left, as is sometimes the case with binocular shootists, and then the awful stunning pain of the back of the Man’s hand slamming against Sam, knocking him off, and through the air, and into the cheer, where he had lain ever since. The Man had been his adversary, and still was, and Sam shouldn’t feel any pity for him, but still there it was: this wave of fellow-feeling.

“Isn’t it dangerous for Him to be in a coma from booze when he’s so badly hurt?” Sam asked Doc, and Doc nodded vigorously. “Can you do anything for Him?” Doc shook his head, sadly. “Couldn’t you go and tell others what the situation is, and maybe get some help to try and wake Him?” Doc slowly nodded his head. “Where’s my dad?” Sam asked. “Find my dad, and get him to help, too.” Doc nodded, and then lay his sniffwhips down heavily upon Sam’s, indicating he should rest and be still. Then Doc left.

Only after Doc had gone did Sam begin to think of an endless string of additional questions that he wanted to ask. Did anyone else know that Sam was convalescing up here? Where was Tish? What had become of her after the incident? She had been with Archy Tichborne; had she fled with him? What had become of Tichborne’s father, Chid, who had instigated the disaster? Perhaps “instigated” was the wrong word; yet Sam, being able only to watch but not hear the minister’s ranting exhortation of the mob, had had the impression that Chid had willed the shooting.

Sam began to feel sorry for himself, not so much because he was weak and unable to get out and discover what was going on in the world, but because he was deaf and had no business trying to discover, let alone control things. He should remain an observer, not be a participant. But if he had not acted when he did, either his father or Tish might be west at this very moment. How had he known that the third bullet was directed at one of them? How had he known the instant when he needed to spoil the Man’s aim? Maybe, he told himself, there was a Fate-Thing, and he had been acting as the Fate-Thing’s agent.

If so, it was not his father but Tish whom the Fate-Thing was protecting. The Fate-Thing had great plans for her. If nothing else, she was destined to become the mother of the next generation of Ingledews, perhaps a generation of Ingledews who would lead Stay More through the post-Bomb period and pave the way for a new Golden Age. Perhaps his job, his whole reason for existence, had been simply to plant that marble in her. Perhaps all the countless meals he had found and eaten had been simply sustenance to keep him alive for that responsibility of propagation.

His purpose in life, he realized, was now to protect Tish from the bullets of Man or from whatever other dangers awaited her. He was the Fate-Thing’s lieutenant and aide-de-camp. But where was Tish? Why had she taken leave of him and of his Clock without any further word (or sign) to him? Perhaps their sexual linking, wonderful though it had been, had been too soon, too sudden. Their hours of “talk” in sign-language had made them as familiar with each other as they would ever be with anyone, but still, wasn’t it wrong to fuck on the first date?

During the interminable hours that Sam was required to lay immobile, convalescing, helpless, his mind dwelt upon all these things, over and over again. It replayed for him those hours of that one act of lovemaking, when their bodies were joined end-to-end together, and the alternatively slow and fast rubbings of all the points of contact, each in a different tempo, counterpoint and syncopation, building slowly to an almost unbearable pitch…. Thinking thus, Sam began to realize something important about Larry and Sharon. Larry had known Sharon in some distant place, had experienced one or more sexual couplings with Her, and, when She returned to Stay More, to the world of Her youth, He had followed Her, because He loved Her and wanted to experience again the act of Their lovemaking, or even, if denied the chance to do that, to watch out for Her, to protect Her. Larry, Sam realized, was the lieutenant and aide-de-camp of Sharon’s Fate-Thing.

But now, because He was injured, She should help Him. Who am I talking about? Sam asked himself. He was talking about all four of Them: Larry and Sam and Sharon and Tish together. He knew that Sharon had to help Larry. And he knew he could certainly use some help from Tish, if nothing else, to help him understand what was happening in the world, to be his surrogate tailprongs, to “translate” into sign language for him what others were saying. But where was Tish? And where was Sharon, who had been so strangely absent from Her room when he had last been there?

Sam kept his sniffwhips tuned to the room he was in. The comings and goings of roosterroaches down below registered dully on his olfaction. He lost track of time. He slept, even during the night, which he had never done before. He slept, of course, all the daylight hours. He had a dream, which he did not know was a daydream or a nightdream, of Tish as captain of a ship. Waking, he tried to interpret it: he had seen her clearly, on the quarterdeck of a brigantine or something, giving orders to the boatswain. The vessel was being tossed on the waves, and was in peril of being dashed against rocks. Maybe the vessel was called Fate-Thing, though Sam could not read that name clearly across the bow in the dream. The ship was swarming with deckhands trying to heed the boatswain’s orders, relayed from Captain Tish. Was that boatswain Archy Tichborne? No, he was younger. Sam went back to sleep and tried to follow the rest of the dream, but it drifted downstream away from him.

He woke to a scene that seemed even more a dream, another swarm of deckhands, but they were not scurrying over the rigging of a ship but over the rigging of a body, Man’s. The captain was not Tish but Squire Hank, and the boatswain was Doc Swain. The deckhands, Sam recognized, were non-Crustians, every one of them, and thus not hindered by the impious act they were performing: trying to wake Man. They were crawling on His face, floundering through the thickets of His beard, tickling His eyelids, stomping in and out of His gaping mouth, creeping in and out of His nostrils, in and out of His ears. Surely He was not insensate to such unbearable tickling. Squire Hank was shouting orders, urging them on, although his voice did not move Sam’s westered tailprongs. But there was no effect whatever upon Man, except the slightest involuntary twitch of His facial muscles. Man was not totally west, yet. Goading them on to renewed effort, Squire Hank himself leapt into the rally, climbing Larry’s lip and disappearing into His mouth.

Sam discovered that he was standing up now, though his gitalongs were weak. He was standing and cheering, rooting for his father.

Abruptly Man’s jaws clamped shut.

INSTAR THE FOURTH:

The Consequence

Chapter twenty-five

Doc was at a loss. The Patient’s skin was moist, clammy, cool, and it had, in what light fell upon it from the reading lamp, a distinctly morbid grayish hue. The Patient’s pulse was weak, almost imperceptible, but quite rapid, so rapid that the pauses between beats could barely be detected: more a hum than a pulse. The Patient’s respiration was hardly discernible. All of the symptoms of shock were present, but, Doc was the first to admit to himself, he had no experience with shock in human beings, and shock in roosterroaches manifests itself in somewhat different sequelae. Quite possibly the signs here were of shock exacerbated by intoxication, or vice versa. Whatever the exact condition and its prognosis, the Patient, in addition to His other traumas and pathology, now had a Periplaneta lodged in the oral cavity somewhere between the palatine papilla, or the palatine raphe, and the sulcus terminalis linguae. The immediate concern, as Doc saw it, was that the patient might swallow, involuntarily, with unfavorable consequences to both the Patient and the Periplaneta, who could become lodged in the esophagus or, worse, the trachea…or, worse still, as far as the Periplaneta was concerned, end up in the stomach. Even if the Periplaneta remained in the anterior oral cavity, the prognosis was especially complicated by the possibility that Bacillus tetani had entered the gunshot wound of the patient and might within forty-eight hours release tetanospasmin toxins, resulting in rigidity of musculature around the jaw, or lockjaw. Doc checked for any sign of risus sardonicus, the sardonic smile sometimes seen in the early stages of the disease, but the particular twist of the patient’s mouth could be the result of a natural sardonic smile, not the onset of lockjaw.

Examining up close the configuration of the smile, Doc thought to holler, “HEY, HANK, ARE YE IN THAR?” but the Patient’s teeth and lips were so firmly clamped as to preclude any sound escaping from behind them. Nor could Doc’s sniffwhips detect any scent of the Squire, overwhelmed as it was by scents of bourbon whiskey, unbrushed teeth, nicotine, and a general effluvium of westwardliness.

Should efforts continue to wake the Patient? Thus far everything had failed, including the attempt of the squire himself to excite the interior of the Patient’s mouth. “Boys, we might as well take a rest,” Doc called to his helpers, who were still clambering upon Man’s face. If the Patient woke too suddenly, He might gasp, indrawing air that would swallow Squire Hank. Better to just keep an eye on things and think, Doc told himself.

Hours passed. Doc wondered what his friend the squire was doing. If it was me, Doc told himself, I would be a-kickin and ajumpin and carryin on and doin somersaults and backflips even. But knowing Squire Hank, he was probably just laying low, keeping as still as could be, not wanting to make any move that would cause Man to swallow. That, or he was already in Man’s stomach, being slowly disintegrated by the juices there. Even if he weren’t swallowed, Squire Hank’s body would be diluted by salivary secretions and possibly even decomposed by the enzyme ptyalin.

One possibility eventually occurred to Doc: perhaps Man had one or more missing teeth. If so, and it were possible to determine where the missing tooth was located, the lips covering that spot might be forced apart, with the combined efforts of all his helpers, sufficiently to permit Squire Hank to squeeze through. Roosterroaches are, after all, designed to flatten their bodies for passage through the most narrow openings; the squire could easily pass through the space of a missing tooth. But was a tooth missing?

Doc sent his helpers to spread the news throughout Holy House and Carlott, and to ask if anyone could recall having seen the Lord’s face close enough to determine whether or not a tooth was missing. Several individuals reported back that, yes, they had seen the Lord’s face only recently when he was lying in the grass of Carlott, but he had not had his teeth bared. A fellow was located who claimed to have been still awake one morning, in the Lord’s washing room, when the Lord was brushing His teeth, but he had not been able to see the teeth because they were all covered with the white frothy and foaming toothpaste.

Somebody reported that there was an image of the Lord on the wall in the ponder room, and the teeth were exposed in a smile. Doc himself went to investigate, instructing his helpers to keep a close watch on Man’s Adam’s apple, in case Man showed any signs of swallowing. Doc had never been to the ponder room before, and he was impressed. The walls were lined with books, the several filing cabinets climbing halfway up the wall, Man’s great oak desk topped with the black creature of fifty eyes staring upward, a “typewriter” it was called. On one wall, sure enough, there were several glass-covered images, icons, representations of Man alone and Man with other Men and Women, Man with rows of other Men, Man holding an infant, Man delivering a lecture in some kind of arena. Only in this picture did Man have His mouth open, but His teeth were not visible. But there was one portrait, the only picture of Man alone, in which Man was smiling, and His teeth were visible, His front teeth at least. It was not exactly the sardonic smile that Man naturally wore; it was more of a forced, artificial, obligatory smile; edges of the first molars were visible, all of the bicuspids, canines, and incisors, none of them missing. Doc sighed.

While he was in the ponder room, Doc could not resist, as long as he had climbed up the wall to take a close look at the picture, climbing further along the wall to the bookshelves, and examining Man’s library, which, from what little Doc knew of literature, was almost exclusively concerned with poetry: complete sets of complete works of complete poets, incomplete sets of incomplete works of incomplete poets; poets of all centuries, major poets and minor poets, biographies of poets, and critical studies and interpretations of poets. Even the few prose writers were those who wrote poetically. In what seemed a place of honor near Man’s desk were double copies or triple copies of four titles: Where Knock Is Open Wide: The Life and Work of Christopher Smart, by Lawrence Brace; Yet What I Am Who Cares: The Life and Work of John Clare, by Lawrence Brace; The Heart without Story: A Sort of Life and Work of Richard Jefferies, by Lawrence Brace; and Life Is Whose Song?: The Wrong Life and Right Work of John Gould Fletcher, by Lawrence Brace. There were six copies of the latter, and Doc concluded that that was all that had been printed.

The desktop itself was a mess, surrounding the typewriter, the black creature with fifty eyes, which, Doc discovered on closer examination, were not eyes but, rather, nodules imprinted with letters of the alphabet, numerals, and doodads. A strange steady purr came from the machine. Doc observed that one of the elongated nodules bore at either end two contradictory messages: “On” at the depressed upper end, and, at the raised lower end, “Off.” Beside the typewriter were piles of white note cards, small slips of paper, some of them blank, others scribbled with an indecipherable handwriting, and a stack of books: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Roget’s International Thesaurus, and Clement Wood’s Complete Rhyming Dictionary.

Wrapped around the roller of the typewriter was a sheet of paper, which had typed at one corner of the top, “Stay More, Arkansas,” and beneath that, “Lawrence Brace,” and in the center of the page, “Myth, Meaning and Narrative in the Poems of Daniel Lyam Montross,” and then the beginning of a sentence, “What are we to make of” The rest of the sentence was incomplete…or at least Doc, losing his footing on the paper and sliding off the roller down into the innards of the typewriter, could not later recall having read more than that. He climbed up out of the machine and returned to the loafing room, where Lawrence Brace had not changed position upon the couch, had not moved, had not stirred, and was wearing the distinct beginnings of a sardonic smile, with parts of two upper bicuspids visible. Neither tooth, alas, was missing. But there was a minute crack between them, and Doc was able to press up to this crack and yell, “AHOY, SQUIRE HANK, AIR YE ANYWHERES ROUND ABOUT IN THAR?” Quickly Doc stuck a tailprong anent the crack, and heard his words echoing eerily in the chamber of the oral cavity.

Then came a voice, muffled, liquescent, irritated, but calm, “Is it daylight yet out yonder? Can I go to sleep yet?”

“Naw, Squire, it’s still night, but gittin onwards to dawn,” Doc called in answer, conversationally. “Are you all right?”

“Wal, it’s purty damp and all,” Squire Hank allowed. “Too wet to plow, I’d say.”

Doc laughed. “Have you seen the White Mouse?” he called.

“There’s somethin real furry in here,” Squire Hank said, “but I think it’s His tongue.”

Doc laughed again but asked solicitously, “How’s yore outsides? Any itches or irritations? Anything that feels like it might be a-sloughin off?”

“Hard to tell, Doc,” Squire Hank answered. “Hit’s so blamed dank and cloudy, I caint tell what’s mine and what’s His’n.”

“You jist take it easy,” Doc called, “and we’ll figger out some way to git ye out of thar.” Then he asked, “Could ye sort of feel around and see if any teeth are missing?”

There was a long silence, and then Squire Hank replied, “Wal, my uppers is kind of wobbly, but there’re all here.”

“Not your teeth, Squire,” Doc said. “His teeth. See if one of ’em’s missing big enough for you to crawl through.”

Another long silence, then Squire Hank answered, “Yeah, they’s one of ’em gone, but it’s way down in the back.”

“Third lower molar,” Doc said to himself, “the wisdom tooth.” He called out to his helpers, “Okay, boys, here’s what we got to try to do.” He explained to them the plan, and then he explained it to Squire Hank. A dozen of the strongest fellers would simultaneously press against the lower lip at its corner, forcing it downward enough to uncover enough of the missing molar for the squire to squeeze through. It would have to be well-timed, because they could only exert so much force for just a fraction of a second. Doc selected, from his knowledge of their medical histories, the twelve strongest fellows, and arranged them in position, and said, “Now, when I give the signal, shove as hard as ye can!”

Doc gave the signal and everybody shoved, with much grunting and groaning, and managed to move the corner of the lower lip a tiny fraction of a millimeter, not even enough to reveal the edge of any gap of any missing molar.

“Hey!” came the voice of Squire Hank from within. “Which side of the mouth are you fellers on?”

“The left,” Doc Swain hollered back.

“Which left?” Squire Hank answered. “Your left or His left?”

It took Doc more than a moment to figure it out, wiggling his left toucher and then his right toucher, and he realized he meant, scientifically of course, the Patient’s left, that is, Larry Brace’s left, which would be Doc’s right side as Doc faced Him. That would also be Squire Hank’s left, assuming Squire Hank was facing this way.

“Wal, the tooth that’s missing is over on the right side,” Squire Hank informed them. “His right side.”

Doc directed the Stay Morons to shift position from the left side to the right, and once again he gave the signal and called “SHOVE!” and once again they strained and grunted and squealed and managed to move the right lower corner of the mouth back and downward a larger fraction of a millimeter, just enough to uncover a distant view of a missing molar, behind which Squire Hank’s face was expectantly waiting.

But it was not enough. The gang collapsed, panting and sighing, and the corner of the mouth snapped back into its original sardonic smile. Doc realized he needed some stronger roosterroaches. Who was the strongest roosterroach in Stay More? Why, Squire Hank, of course, but he was on the wrong side. Who was the second strongest roosterroach in Stay More? Unquestionably that would be Squire Hank’s only son, Squire Sam, but he…

Doc realized with a pang of conscience that he had been so busy attending this Patient, Larry Brace, and then trying to rescue Squire Hank, that he had woefully neglected his original patient, Squire Sam. Excusing himself from the company once again, and reminding them to keep a close watch on the Adam’s apple for any sign of swallowing, Doc made his way down from Larry Brace and over to the cheer-of-ease, and up it to the seat cushion, where Squire Sam lay as before, near the edge, taking in the view of the bustling activity on the couch across the way.

“How you doing?” Doc asked, but received no answer because Sam couldn’t hear him. He checked Sam over. Respiration normal. Pulse normal. He tested Sam’s reflexes. Reflexes normal. Eyes okay. Prongs deaf. Sniffwhips straight and keen. He poked at Sam’s thorax and abdomen, to test for any internal injuries, but Sam did not flinch, nor wince. He spoke closely to one prong: “HOW YOU FEEL?”

“Hungry,” Sam admitted.

That was good, but Doc Swain had nothing more at hand to feed him, and everybody in Holy House was grumbling with hunger. Maybe Doc could persuade some of the folks to give up their funeral feeds for the worthy cause of nourishing convalescent Sam. Doc wondered how to explain to the deaf boy the task that was expected of him. “THINK YOU CAN WALK?” Doc asked loudly of one prong.

Sam nodded, and said, “I’ve been watching. You want me to get over there and help, is that it? I’ve just been waiting for the doctor’s permission.”

“YOU GOT IT,” Doc said. “CAN YOU STAND UP?”

Squire Sam stood up. His six gitalongs were rickety and wavered a bit. Slowly Sam walked around in circles on the seat cushion, then widened the circle with stiffer gitalongs. He really oughtn’t to be exerting himself, Doc realized, but it was a matter of life and death for his father. He motioned for Sam to follow as he led the way down the side of the cheer.

It was slow going, getting Squire Sam down off the cheer-of-ease to the floor. They could’ve flown, but the landing would’ve been jarring for both. Sam clung frantically to the fabric of the side of the cheer and lowered himself tail first, an unusual and clumsy manner of descent. They crossed the floor to the couch, and prepared to ascend a leg of Larry Brace, but were met by a mob of Crustians blocking the way, with Preacher Chid in the forefront.

“Morsel, Chid,” Doc said, and eyed him warily.

Chid did not return the greeting, but intoned solemnly, “The Lord is west.”

“Not yet he aint,” Doc replied, but wondered if in his absence Lawrence Brace’s vital functions might have ceased. He moved to get a closer look, but Chid blocked the way.

“Yea, verily I say unto ye,” Chid raised his voice, addressing not just Doc but the entire crowd of Crustians and non-Crustians alike, “our Lord has westered off and abandoned us. I don’t aim to preach His funeral. But the elders and deacons of my church has decided, and I agree, that we will have to move on out of Holy House and seek our salvation elsewhere.” A chorus of affirmations went up from the crowd, folks yelling, “You bet!” and “Shore thang!” and “Yessirreebob!” and “Yo’re darn tootin” and “Tell it, preacher!” and “Amen” and “Let’s eat!” Chid waved his sniffwhips for silence, and went on, looking straight at Doc Swain, “And there is only one place for our salvation, and that is Parthenon.”

“So?” said Doc Swain. “How does this concern me? I got a few patients here to take keer of, including one who’s got his body all covered with a Man’s mouth.”

“Wal, that ’un’s west too, as far as we’re concerned,” Chid said. “Aint no way you can git him out.” He pointed at Squire Sam. “And aint no way that this one can stop us by hisself from taking over Parthenon.”

“Chid, you’re lucky he cain’t hear ye,” Doc said. “He’d make ye eat them words iffen he could hear ye. Now step out of my way, so’s we can git up yonder and see about them other two patients.”

“Deef, is he?” Chid looked curiously at Sam, and then spoke to him, “Did you get yore prongs hurt as punishment for what ye did to the Lord?”

Squire Sam, of course, could not hear this question, but Doc answered for him, “That wasn’t what did it. And he may be deef, but he’s still powerful enough to keep ye out of Partheeny.”

“Keep us out of Partheeny?” Chid said, and scornfully laughed. “Heck, Doc, you don’t understand. You got it backwards. It’s gonna be us keepin him out of Partheeny, once he ever gits thar. Time he gits thar, we’ll already have the whole place to our-selfs. Right, folks?” The crowd of hungry followers of Chid chorused, “Yeah Brother!” and “I mean!” and “Betcha boots!” and “Pon my word!” and “Let’s eat!” Chid took six or twelve dramatic steps in the direction of an exit hole out of Holy House and shouted, “What are we waitin fer? Let’s go!”

Tolbert Duckworth exclaimed, “Wait, Preacher! Half the country between here and Partheeny is under water!”

“And more comin down,” someone said.

“Pitchforks, cats and dogs,” added a third.

“WE CAN SWIM, CAIN’T WE?” Chidiock Tichborne screamed.

As if in answer to this question, as if the Lord Himself, west to all the world, had spoken a final word, a word of protest against His people abandoning Him, there was a sudden near flash of lightning, followed instantly by the most enormous crack of thunder anyone had ever heard. It literally knocked the multitudes off their feet. The light of the reading lamp, the only illumination in the great loafing room, went out. The electricity throughout the house went out. Clocks stopped. The Fabulous Fridge westered. The typewriter went off.

In addition to the three patients he already had, Doc had to minister to several ladies and one or two males who had fainted. The rest of them, those who could get back on their gitalongs again, dispersed, either to their favorite hiding places or to places where they could pray to their Lord, who, Doc was both gladdened and disturbed to notice, showed signs of rousing from His coma, as if the thunderclap had awakened Him. There was not a minute to lose: Doc grabbed Sam by a gitalong and the two of them scurried up the body of Lawrence Brace to His face, which was twitching in imminent threat of preparation for one big swallow. They fought their way through the thicket of hairs in His beard.

Chid, when he recovered from the thundershock, declared bravely, “Well, I can swim to Parthenon by myself, if need be. Anybody going with me?”

Only a half-dozen Crustian deacons volunteered to accompany their minister on his brave outing, and they exited through a hole in the front of Holy House.

Doc pantomimed the force he wanted Sam to exert against the corner of Larry’s mouth, and Sam went at it, with all his strength, which was still considerable despite the weakness of his convalescence. With fractions of a millisecond to spare, Sam threw his body against the right corner of the lips of Larry and pushed the flesh back just enough to uncover the missing tooth, making a gap through which Squire Hank instantly squeezed with an exclamation of deliverance.

Man swallowed.

Squire Hank did something he had never done before and might never do again: he embraced his son.

Chapter twenty-six

“If you cain’t shet yore mouth, Maw,” Jack warned, “you’re liable to git a midge caught in it.” For the longest time, from the moment they had first entered Parthenon, Josie, even in her sleep, had been hanging her mouth open like a nymph gaping at a swallowtail butterfly. There weren’t any butterflies in Parthenon, but the things Josie kept gawking at were no less stunning, if stationary: furniture of brass! tables of teak! machinery of mahogany! and shelves, ledges, benches, brackets, blocks, bends, knobs, pulls, handles, cribs, cubbies, curtains, and clothes! The walls were covered with images! Patterns, pictures, pretties everywhere! Neither Jack nor Josie had ever, even in their dreams of the houses of Man, conceived of anything like it. Jack himself, who had sense enough not to hang his mouth wide open as his wife was doing, still wondered if perhaps they might have westered after all and were now in heaven. But if this were heaven, they were not going to sit on the right hand of Man…or Woman, who clearly had the run of the place and didn’t look as if She had any intention of bending over and placing Jack or Josie or anybody on Her right hand.

Their best instincts told Jack and Josie to stay out of Her sight, and they did. They waited until She was asleep before exploring the house, and then they seemed to have it all to themselves. There was no sign or scent of their daughter, Tish. What was more peculiar, there was no sign or scent of the Squires Ingledew, who, everybody knew, were the lords of the manor. For the longest time, Jack, without expressing his doubts to Josie, had feared that they might have entered the wrong house, that this was not Parthenon, that there was a third inhabited house in Stay More…but there were certain clues that this was the right place. In the cookroom, for example (a fabulous wonderland that put the cookroom of Holy House to shame, nay, to utter disgrace), they discovered a hidden apartment that obviously was the personal lodgings of Squire Hank, but without Squire Hank in it.

Maybe, Jack decided, after waiting hours in the cookroom for the squires or Tish to return, the squires had taken Tish off to tour the rest of the fabulous castle. He decided to search elsewhere in Parthenon for them, but first he and Josie had to rest up from their long hike—and their swim—from Carlott, a more perilous journey than their recent attempt to get home from the Lord’s Refuse Pile. Jack realized he wasn’t in the very best of condition—hadn’t Doc said something about his pigeon tubes being squoze up by fatty bodies?—and he had traveled more in the past three nights than in all the rest of his life put together.

Their first night at Parthenon, Jack and Josie dined lavishly in the cookroom on an assortment of particles they found beneath one of the stoves (there were two: an old woodstove and a modern electric range) and spent the rest of the night confining their explorations to the cookroom alone. Since Squire Hank appeared to have it to himself, except for occasional forages from the son squire, and the two squires could not hope to consume even a fraction of the scraps that the fastidious Woman overlooked, there was still an untouched bounty of edibles here and there, in cracks, crevices, and beneath things. Not alone on the floor beneath the stoves but on the countertops too, their sniffwhips kept drawing them to fresh discoveries of snippets of food.

“Close yore mouth and eat,” Jack commanded his wife, but she was too awe-struck even to speak, let alone eat, and Jack could not remember when Josie had ever been at a loss for words.

It was away along in the second night before a situation arose which finally moved Josie to close her mouth and speak. This night, after the Woman had climbed into her great fabulous brass bed and her slumber-scent wafted across the room, Jack and Josie began to explore this room and a small room adjoining. Josie’s mouth opened even wider at the sight of such things as a large oval rug braided of strips of colored wool, and Josie spent an hour just running around the grooves of the braids like a racehorse on an oval track.

The adjoining room, the Woman’s washing room, contained a marvelous dresser, which Jack and Josie climbed, to explore such things as the Woman’s hairbrush, comb, and bottles from which emanated exotic fragrances. From a corner of the dresser they had a view of a pool of water, enclosed in a white porcelain bowl framed in a wooden oval, which gave them much wonder and conversation. It looked like a private swimming pool, but one much too small for the Woman. Did she have a pet fish? Or perhaps it was a birdbath—but there were no birds inside of Parthenon. Josie closed her mouth in fear of the water.

They resumed their tour of the house, but when the Clock, in foppish tones, uttered “TUTTI-FRUTTI,” Josie’s mouth fell open again. Ever since entering Parthenon, they had been hearing the chiming of the Clock, although not close enough to distinguish “NOUGAT” from “ECLAIR.” But now, Josie exclaimed to Jack, “Did ye hear what that thing called me?”

“Aw, now, he wasn’t speakin to you personal, Maw,” Jack assured her. “He probably calls everybody that.”

Nothing would do but that they climb up the mantel and explore the Clock themselves, finding it every bit as enchanting as their daughter had, several nights previously, and finding even a trace of the scent of their daughter. Jack was smart enough to figure out that the interior of the Clock, with its library of edibles and the little wardrobe of Sam’s moults, was Sam’s apartment, and had been inhabited, at least overday, by his daughter. But where was she? Where was Sam?

They left Sam’s apartment and explored the rest of Parthenon. Next to the Woman’s room was the great vacant room which had once been the general store and post office of the humans of Stay More, but was now unused, dusty, moldy, cobwebby, and contained only a few pieces of furniture attesting to its former use: the antique wood-and-glass post-office boxes and the postal counter, empty shelves, a couple of glass showcases, spool cabinets, and, on the walls, a variety of old advertisements for Garrett’s Snuff, Brown Mule Chewing Tobacco, Carter’s Little Liver Pills, Putnam Dyes, and Lydia Pinkham Remedies. This room, lost in time, was as foreign to Sharon Herself as it was to Jack and Josie Dingletoon. There was scarcely a thing to eat here that had been overlooked by previous generations of Ingledew roosterroaches or by other scavenging creatures. Indeed, there was no evidence of other living creatures in this room; even the Cobb spiders had long since given it up.

Their third night in Parthenon, Jack and Josie convinced themselves that they had the place all to themselves, except for the Woman, who had a regular schedule: She was finished with Her supper and the washing of its dishes each night when Jack and Josie awoke, and then, while they had breakfast, She sat on the porch in Her rocking cheer until dark, watching lightning bugs, then spent the balance of the evening, before bedtime, sitting in Her cheer-of-ease with a book, and listening to music not at all like the Purple Symphony, music of many instruments and voices that came from two separate large boxes placed on the floor of Her listening corner. The third night, Jack left Josie in the cookroom and sallied forth into the Woman’s room while the Woman was still awake and listening to the music. He kept out of sight along the edge of the wall, then crawled beneath Her cheer-of-ease, where he was able to perceive the reason there were two boxes from which music came. He discovered, by placing his body so that each of his tailprongs received the same amount of sound from each of the separate boxes, that the music surrounded him, it seemed to come not simply from the boxes but from the four walls and ceiling of the room, and it captivated his tailprongs. For a long time he listened to the music, which, whenever it came to a long silence, the Woman would start up again by turning over great circular black plates.

But once the Woman stopped the music before it came to its silence; She interrupted it, made it stop, because the giant black ant perched on the giant black beetle, who had given Tish such cause for wonder, was now making a discordant music louder than the music from the boxes. But Jack, or Squire John as he truly ought to be called when sober (and he had endured nearly four nights now without a drop), understood that these were not insectile creatures but mechanical, metallic thingumajimmies.

For three nights he had heard the Woman muttering aloud, talking to Herself, indistinguishably, in entire paragraphs, but now She was speaking aloud, clearly, into one end of the thingumajimmy.

“Hi, Gran. Just fine. No, not yet. Yes, I know. Um-huh. Wouldn’t you think? Yeah. Well, I couldn’t. That’s right. If I did. Sometimes. You’ve got me. Of course. Soon, I hope. You’re kidding. Well, possibly. Oh, come on. No, Gran. Never. Don’t say that. Huh? Ah, me. So what did you say? That bad, huh? You didn’t. And what did she say? Oh, no. Well, I’ll be. Um-huh. Unt-hum. Hunt-uh. Maybe. Who knows. Tomorrow morning. But not last night. If we get one more drop, I’ll go nuts. Did it? Well, you never know. If I don’t, he would. Yeah. What I’m telling you. Could be. Any time. Right. Bye-bye. Sleep tight.”

Squire John sat for a long moment puzzling over the significance of what he had heard. At a loss, he returned to the cookroom, where he had left Josie feasting upon a bit of strawberry shortcake fallen from the Woman’s supper dessert, and repeated to Josie, word for word, what the Woman had said. Then he asked, “What do ye make of that?”

“Wait a jerk, and let me git this straight,” Josie said. “What did She say right after ‘But not last night’?”

“She said, ‘If we git one more drop, I’ll go nuts.’”

“That’s what I thought ye said She said,” Josie said, and resumed munching her strawberry shortcake.

Squire John waited. At length he said, “Wal? What do you think?”

“I think this strawberry shortcake is the best thang ever I et,” Josie declared.

“I mean,” said Squire John, “what d’ye make of Her words? You’re a female, like Her. What-all kind of womenfolk talk is that-all?”

“Wal,” said Josie at length, finishing her food and cleaning her chops, “hit’s plain as the sniffwhip on yore face that She was a-talkin to Her grandmother. What did the Other Lady look like?”

Squire John tried to explain that there were no pictures, only words, on the thingumajimmy. Josie was dubious, but she explained to Squire John, “The Granny-Woman asked Her how She was doing, and She said She was doing just fine. Then Grandmaw says, ‘You haven’t gone to bed, have you?’ and the Woman says, ‘No, not yet.’ Grandmaw says, ‘The ten o’clock news said that Sheriff Tate was defeated in the run-off,’ and the Woman says, ‘Yes, I know.’ And Grandmaw says, ‘Did you vote for him?’ and the Woman says, ‘Um-huh.’ Then Grandmaw asks…”

Squire John’s mouth was hanging open; he listened in amazement as his wife, with a female intuition beyond his grasp, told him word for word the conversation between the Woman named Sharon and the Grandmother named Latha. The subjects covered, in addition to the aforementioned county election, were: the use of rotenone as a duster for vegetable crops, the progress of Sharon’s strawberry crop, the approaching visit of Sharon’s Sister coming from a place called California, the Sister’s divorce from her Husband, an earlier conversation on the telephone between the Grandmother and the Wife of Sharon’s Brother Vernon, the current duration, amount and possible future of the rainfall, and, finally, the current status of the ongoing relationship, or lack thereof, between Sharon and Man Our Lord of Holy House.

His wife, Squire John decided, had some intelligence that he had not given her credit for.

Josie had a troubled look. “It don’t appear that neither one of them Women has any idee that Man shot Hisself in His gitalong.”

But here Squire John’s sniffwhips detected the scent of rooster-roaches, and he spun around, expecting to see the Squires Ingledew and Tish.

Instead he saw, coming into the cookroom as if they owned it, three Holy House deacons, led by the preacher, Brother Chidiock Tichborne.

“Morsel, Reverend,” Squire John said, and added, “Morsel, boys,” and spat, marking his space.

“Good morsel to ye, Squire John,” said the parson, and spat too. Each of his confederates also spat.

Chapter twenty-seven

Would this redundant rain ever stop? All her life, or at least since the first cold rain she could remember, from her childhood back in November, Tish had loved the rain, its power to magnify all the scents of the world, its ability to quench thirst simply through the vapors it left in the air, to be squeezed from one’s sniffwhips. Without this moisture she would not have grown, no less than the zillion plants whose roots were constantly nourished by the water. But enough was enough, the rain had been falling constantly for five days, and continuously since the ark of Tish’s log home had come to rest atop a sandbar called Ararat many furlongs down Swain’s Creek from Stay More.

Would she ever find her way home again? Did she even want to—to reveal to all the world this easteregg that kept edging its way out of the end of her abdomen? Maybe the Fate-Thing had intended the rain to wash her and her house away until the easteregg dropped off the end of her abdomen and was hidden somewhere, or abandoned, or at least left her body unmarked and disemburdened.

Jubal had been the first to notice it, and during the downstream voyage, when it was clear he had nothing better to do than take his attention away from the roiling current to observe the condition of the passengers on the vessel, had remarked to her, matter-of-factly, “Looks like somebody has done went and knocked ye up.” She had flinched and been unable to say anything or divert her attention from the direction of the current that was carrying the log down the now-raging creek. Others of her brothers and sisters had remarked, “Tish is in a family way,” or “Tish is p.g.,” or “Tish has got a cake in her oven,” or “Tish has swallered a turnipseed,” or they had said that she was any one of the following: teeming, heavy, ketched, gravid, great with child, anticipating, sprung, pizened, or coming fresh. But mostly they said that she was “prego,” and Tish thought she would go crazy hearing them ask, “Are you prego, Tish?” and “How did you get so prego, Tish?” and “How prego are you, Tish?” and simply, “Preg, oh, Tish?”

But if it had not been for their interest in her easteregg, they might have been more frightened than they were by their plight, the undirected wandering plunge of the ark down the stream. In the course of the voyage nearly all of them had become seasick, and, despite all their mother had taught them about the need for puking in solitude, they had vomited in one another’s presence, openly and unashamedly, and now nobody could stand to go near the remainder of the pile of funeral feeds. Nobody had any appetite.

Despite her best efforts to captain the ship and keep everybody safe, Tish had lost several passengers. It wasn’t her fault. She had urged them all to stay off the top of the log, to keep inside of it, and they had, but the log kept crashing into rocks, or the shore, or tree limbs or roots, and each time this happened Tish would count heads afterwards and discover one or more passengers had been dislodged from the vessel and fallen into the tide, never to be seen again. The population of her brothers and sisters was now down from forty-two to thirty-one, and Tish wondered if Brother Tichborne could even keep track of all their names in his next funeralization.

Tish realized that the next funeralization was going to have to run all night and maybe have a matinee. Not alone for roosterroaches but for all critter-kind: the stream was full of the corpses of every conceivable insect. Not just insects of every possible configuration of soggy sniffwhips and drenched wings, but furred and feathered creatures too: when the brothers and sisters were not busy making remarks about Tish’s pregnancy they were observing and commenting upon the westered wildlife floating past. They saw drowned birds, they saw drowned rodents, they saw a drowned pig, a drowned possum, even a drowned fish. There were drowned frogs and drowned snakes and drowned turtles, and then, when the ark landed and lodged on the sandbar, there came a drowned mouse.

It was not just a mouse which washed up beside their log. It was the Great White Mouse himself…or maybe herself, nobody had the nerve to approach near enough to check, even if it was clearly drowned. The shore of the sandbar was littered with other corpses, drowned bugs and beetles and spiders, drowned slugs and leeches and snails, drowned ants and moths and flies, but the only drowned mammal on this stretch of shore was the Great White Mouse. Although she had never seen it before, Tish knew it at once, because she had heard many stories about it, and had in turn told many stories about it to her brothers and sisters, so that simply her hushed utterance of “The Great White Mouse!” at the sight of it sent thirty of them scurrying into the innermost recesses of their ark.

“Looks west to me,” declared Jubal, who alone beside Tish had not hidden himself.

“You don’t want to step over there and find out, do you?” she said.

“Me? I aint that dumb. Let’s jist wait and see if it moves.”

Tish and Jubal watched the Great White Mouse for a long time. He (they began to assume it was male) lay on his side, one gitalong bent at an odd angle, his eyes closed tight, his albino fur thoroughly soaked and grimed and matted.

“Do you smell any westwardness?” Tish asked Jubal.

He waved his sniffwhips slowly, turning them and tuning them closely. “Jist only all them other west critters. Pew.”

She could not detect any mammalian westwardness on her sniffwhips, but perhaps it was too soon; perhaps the Great White Mouse’s heart had stopped beating only within the past hour and the corpse had not yet begun decomposing. Tish stepped down from the entrance of the ark onto the sands, and took a few steps closer to the Mouse.

“Watcha doing?!” Jubal cried. “Don’t ye git no nearer to that thang!”

“He looks bad hurt,” Tish observed.

“Don’t ye jist hope he’s hurt west?” Jubal said. “I shore hope he’s hurt as west as ye can go! Now git yoreself back in here!”

But until a renewed pouring down of the rain drove her back into the log, Tish stood and stared at the Great White Mouse, and even from the shelter of the log she continued to watch the Mouse, having tired of watching the rain long ago. Eventually her vigilance was rewarded.

Beside her, Jubal jumped an inch and exclaimed, “Did ye see that!? His tongue crope out a bit!”

Sure enough, the Mouse’s tongue, as pink as the interior of his ears and the edges of the closed eyes, had poked out one corner of his mouth. Then, more unmistakable, the tip of the long scaly tail twitched ever so slightly.

“He’s still east!” Tish said, and realized she was whispering, as if the Mouse might hear her.

Then they began to hear a sound coming from the Mouse: a high-pitched nasal whining, a sort of squeaky hum coming from the throat and larynx and nasal passages all combined. The one intonation of this hum rose into a higher note and then piped into a droning, unmelodious melody, slightly liquid and gurgling because of all the water the animal had soaked up.

The Great White Mouse slightly opened one eye, which seemed to attempt to focus upon Tish and Jubal. The eye was pink all over, and turned up at the edge evilly like a snake’s. The Mouse hummed a feeble word, which sounded like “Mawris?” Tish and Jubal exchanged glances, and mumbled the word to each other, questioningly. Then the Mouse hummed, “Mawris, juicy da lim?”

“What?” Tish said aloud, although Jubal frantically tried to hush her. “What did ye say?”

The eye attempted to look at her. The great head attempted to lift from the sand. The voice, humming, droned, “Juicy da lim what bunked me?” Then the voice faltered another hum of “Mawris?” and the head lifted, then fell, and the voice moaned, “Ya aint Mawris. Who ah ya?”

Tish understood this question, and she answered, “Letitia Dingletoon.”

“Anudda friggin cockroach,” hummed the Mouse. “Way’s Mawris?”

“Mawris who?”

“My brudda,” hummed the Mouse. Then the rain stopped. The Mouse hummed, “Comere alidda closa, toots. I can’t see ya.”

Although Jubal grabbed at her to stop her, Tish shook him off and moved closer to the Mouse, not close enough for him to reach her, unless he was just pretending to be injured. “Are you hurt?” she asked him.

“A tree lim bunked me on da head,” he said. “Juicy it?”

“No,” she said. “Can I do anything for you?”

“Howsbout sum teet?” the Mouse hummed.

Tish could not understand him. It was a very peculiar foreign language that he was speaking. She had to ask him to repeat himself, and then she repeated it to Jubal, “Howsbout sum teet?” and Jubal thought at first the Mouse was referring to a tit, or teat, which mammals have. But that was not it.

At length, Tish asked, “Are you askin for somethin to eat?”

“What I said awready,” hummed the Mouse. “Whatcha got? Come alidda bit closa, kiddo.”

Jubal whispered behind her, “He wants to eat you, Tish! Don’t go no nearer than that!”

Tish returned to the log, but only long enough to search the pile of funeral feeds for a scrap of something, which she carried in her touchers bravely within chomping distance of the Mouse, who could have swallowed her up whole, but did not. Instead he took the offering in his teeth. “Cheese I know,” he said. “Velveeta?” He gulped it down. “Say, dat’s simply delish, snooks. If ya’ll ponny spression.”

She fetched him another morsel, a cupcake fragment. And then another. She even took him a tad she had been saving for herself: the last bit of peanut brickle.

“Dis I don’t know,” he said, humming appreciatively. “But it takes da cake. If ya’ll ponny spression.”

She carried to the Mouse every last crust and crumb remaining in the pile of funeral feeds, and then she announced, “That’s all. There’s not any more.”

“Donkey shay, angel. Way ja get all dat stuff?”

Tish attempted to explain to the Mouse the custom of the funeral feeds, and further to explain that although the funeral feeds had been intended in observation of the westering of her mother and father, they weren’t actually west but had only been presumed to be, and that she and her forty-two—no, now it was only thirty-one—brothers and sisters had been adrift on their log home for nights, until now, and were all too seasick to eat any more of it, so the Mouse was welcome to it, and it was hoped that he had had enough to eat that he wouldn’t feel like eating any of them.

“Hey, right, lambchop,” the Mouse commented. “So why should I wanna eat my benefactors, fa crissake, if ya’ll ponny spression awready?” He successfully raised himself into a sitting position.

Tish did not know “benefactor,” but assumed it was another of this foreigner’s strange words. “You sure talk right funny,” she observed.

“Jeez, chick, ya sound fahrin yasself, ya know,” he said.

“Fahrin,” she repeated after him, and then she understood it, and pronounced it her way, as if correcting him: “furrin.” She said it again: “Furrin.”

“Awright, furrin,” he said. “Whatcha say ya name was again?”

“Letitia. Everyone calls me Tish. What’s yours?”

“Hoimin. Please ta meetcha.” He extended one clawed paw as if for a shake, but of course she could not take it.

“How do you spell ‘Hoimin’?” she asked.

“Lady, I don’t spell, period.”

The rain was starting up, once more. Tish wanted to invite the Great Mouse into the shelter of the log, but she was hesitant. “Don’t you generally eat roosterroaches?” she asked.

“Do which? Na, I genly eat jiggers, bedbugs, cooties, whatevah. Cockroaches I don’t like. Dey gimme gas, if ya’ll ponny spression.”

Still she was hesitant, but she invited him in, out of the now drenching downpour. It was a tight squeeze; he took up almost all their loafing room, leaving no space for her brothers and sisters, who wouldn’t come out of hiding, anyway, except Jubal, who kept jumping around nervously from one gitalong to the other, as if he had to go potty.

Hoimin really liked to talk. As he lay there, snug in the dry confines of the log’s main chamber, he told to Tish, and to hopping Jubal too, his story. He talked most of the night. Jubal crept off to find his brothers and sisters and urge them out of their hiding places. “His name is Hoimin because he’s always hummin,” Jubal explained to them excitedly, “and now he’s hummin the beatinest story ever ye heared!” One by one the brothers and sisters crept within earshot—or rather prongshot—of the Great White Mouse and listened to his story.

He had been born and raised in a great city, far away to the east—and “east” meant not “alive” to him but merely a direction he called “Dataway.” East Dataway was a city of zillions of human beings who lived in houses stacked one atop another until they reached to heaven. Hoimin had been born in a cage high up in one of these fabulous towers of East Dataway, and along with his brothers and sisters he had lived the life of someone named Riley, well-fed and cared for, but once Hoimin had reached adulthood, full size, he was daily subjected to certain indignities, and he chronicled each of them for his listeners, followed by the question, “Hodda ya like dat?” He was stuck with needles; Human Beings picked him up and stuck needles into his “butt” and injected some kind of fluid into him. “Hodda ya like dat?” He was put into boxes with labyrinthine passageways that he was required to find his way out of. “Hodda ya like dat?”

Tish was not certain how to answer his repeated question. She did like that, in the sense that she liked the telling of the story, but she did not like that, in the sense of all the strange things that were done to Hoimin. So each time he asked “Hodda ya like dat?” Tish would usually reply, “I don’t like that.”

Eventually Hoimin plotted his escape from the Human Beings who were doing crazy things to him. There was a Man who each day brought into Hoimin’s room a flattish box called a “briefkez.” This Man, whose name apparently was A. Sun Poddy, as Hoimin referred to him, sometimes left the briefkez open, and one day Hoimin saw his chance when A. Sun Poddy’s back was turned, found his way completely out of the labyrinth in which he was caught, and snuggled into a pile of papers in A. Sun Poddy’s briefkez. Later that day A. Sun Poddy shut up the briefkez and it remained closed for several days, during which Hoimin experienced sensations of being carried, and then of flight, and being carried again, and then more flight, weightlessness almost, in the deafening roar of great engines, and then being carried again, until, at last, the briefkez was opened on a table top and Hoimin emerged to see many Human Beings standing around him, including A. Sun Poddy, who exclaimed, “What the shit?!”

The Humans tried to grab Hoimin but he leapt off the table and gained the floor and made it out through a door and into a long corridor and down some steps and to the curb of a street where many four-wheeled vehicles were dashing past. One of them stopped at the curb and its rear door opened and a Human stepped out and Hoimin jumped in. He hid beneath a seat in the vehicle and rode for two nights and a day until the vehicle came to a stop, and he jumped out and found himself on the dirt road that led to Stay More, the strangest country he had ever imagined.

For over a year now Hoimin had attempted to adapt himself to life in the woods and fields of Stay More, encountering all sorts of creatures and having countless close brushes with west, experiencing enough adventures to keep his listeners entertained for a month of Sundays. But now the sky was lightening up in the east, dataway, and the sun would soon rise, and Hoimin intended to get caught up on his sleep.

Tish yawned and realized it was bedtime for herself and all her brothers and sisters too; and she realized something else—the rain had stopped, for good, or at least for a long long time. But before she could think of sleeping in the same log with a rodent creature who ate insects, she had to ask him a question. She remembered all the stories of Doc Swain’s encounters with the Great White Mouse, and assumed it was Hoimin.

“Didn’t you ever try to eat a roosterroach?” she asked Hoimin.

“Yeah, once, maybe,” he admitted. “A sun poddy what tried to bite off the tip of my tail.”

“That wasn’t A. Sun Poddy!” Tish said. “That was Doc Swain.”

“Huh? Lisn, buttercup, he was a sun poddy what took a bite on my tail! Hodda ya like dat? But I dint try teet da bug, I was ony goin skeer da bejeesus outa him. If ya’ll ponny spression.”

Tish yawned again, and said, “Well.” She shooed all her brothers and sisters off to bed. “Tonight we’ve got a long way to go. We can’t float this log back upstream, so we’re going to have to walk.” She spoke these words to her siblings but loud enough for Hoimin to hear, and then she said to Hoimin, “If we’re not here when you wake up, you can have our house. We won’t be needing it any more.”

“What izzis, toodlum? Ya don’t like my looks maybe? Lemme go witcha, awready, hey? Just lemme grab a few Z’s first, okay? Den we’ll talk. Gimme a break. So I’m a type person what’s hod to know maybe but just gimme a chance, hey, lidda dew-drop…?”

Still babbling, the Mouse drifted off to slumberland.

Chapter twenty-eight

Parthenon surpassed the wildest stretches of his fancy, Chid thought, and he had seen only the cookroom so far. When would Josie offer him some of that strawberry shortcake? (If she didn’t invite him to taste it soon, he might have to come right out and ask her.) Parthenon was a heaven on earth; no, it was not even earthly, it was kingdom come, the promised land, the world above. It surpassed his most vivid preachments. It was a mansion in the sky, the hereafter come hither.

Chid realized he was drooling. He glanced at his deacons, and they were drooling too. That hike-and-swim all the way from Holy House to Parthenon would have given anybody an appetite sufficient to eat a loaf of bread. And Parthenon was clean and tidy compared with Holy House; there was no dirt, no clutter, no grime or filth to require one to wash oneself unnecessarily. Chid realized he could probably get by with only two baths a day when he lived here.

The three drooling deacons, Brothers Sizemore, Ledbetter, and Stapleton, represented only half of the party who had started out from Holy House on the expedition to Parthenon; the other three deacons had been drowned on the perilous voyage. There had been moments when Chid himself had doubted his ability to stay afloat, moments when he had prayed, not to useless Man, nor even to anticipated Woman, but to God, Chid’s private solace and salvation. The fact that Chid had survived, and was now standing east and whole in the Paradise of Parthenon, seemed to indicate to him that there was a God who was concerned with his well-being.

“Josie,” he said, in the same seductive voice with which he had persuaded her nearly a year ago to sample his affy-dizzy, “do ye reckon ye could see yore way to let us fellers have a taste or two of thet thar strawberry shortcake?”

“Why, jist look at me!” Josie exclaimed, lashing herself on her face with her sniffwhip. “Aint I awful? Here I’ve done went and fergot my manners! Jist hep yoreself, Reverend, and take all ye want.”

Chid attacked the strawberry shortcake, and, with the help of the three deacons, reduced it instantly to nothing. His stomach stopped raising a howl and putting up a squawk. He was so grateful to Josie that he decided to spare her when he executed her husband.

He turned to the latter and observed, “Wal, Squire John, it ’pears like ye aint done went and westered off, atter all, don’t it? How did that come about? I’ve done already preached yore funeralization.”

“Wal, thanks a heap, Reverend, I ’preciate it,” Squire John replied, “but what happened was, that thar beer can didn’t never drown me nohow, nor did it wester me when it crashed, as was thought.”

“Good to hear it,” Chid lied, and then wanted to know, “Does anybody else know you’re still east?”

“Only Josie,” Squire John said.

Chid told Jack and Josie the story of recent events at Holy House up to the swallowing of Squire Hank by Man.

“Wal, strike me three shades of pink, if that aint the beatinest thang ever I heared!” Jack declared, when Chid finished the story. “I’ll be switched!”

“So it appears that the Ingledews are no longer masters of Parthenon, but rather you, Squire John, are the lord of the manor now.”

“Is that a fack?” Squire John said with wonder, and glanced vain-gloriously at his wife, who was all worshipful toward her husband.

“And our blessed Savior and Redeemer is no longer Man, whose gitalongs were of clay, who has been weighed in the balance and been found wanting, and who was drunker’n a tinker besides, but instead Woman, most fair, most mighty, most graceful, most merciful and most perfect!” Chid enjoyed these new intonations coming from his mouth. He turned to Squire John and asked, “Where is She?”

“Reckon She’s sound asleep in Her bedroom yonder,” Squire John said.

“Show me, that I might pray unto Her,” Chid requested. Squire John led him toward the bedroom. The others started to follow, but Chid turned and said, “Josie, why don’t ye give our brethring a tour of the cookroom?” He wanted to be alone with Squire John.

Chid had not yet determined the best way to perform murder upon the person of Squire John. He could, conceivably, simply bite Squire John’s thorax, and chew into the vitals, but that might be messy. And it might not look like an accident. No, better to wait, bide his time, proceed with caution.

The Woman was not, they discovered, asleep. A kerosene lamp burned on Her night table, and She was propped up against Her pillows, holding in Her hands sheets of paper, which Chid recognized as the sheets upon which Man had composed letters to Her. Squire John suggested to Chid that they climb the mantel to the mantelshelf, where they had a good view of the Woman, and they watched Her: She would read a few sheets of paper, then refold them, put them into an envelope, return them to a box, and take out from the box another envelope and unfold its sheets of paper. Often She smiled. Occasionally She laughed aloud, causing Chid to jump. He realized She had not received a new letter from Man but was merely rereading His old ones. Chid had never heard Human laughter before. Man had never laughed, and rarely even smiled.

If the Woman’s little bursts of laughter caught him by surprise, he was in for a bigger one. Right behind him, a huge voice clanged, “ECLAIR!” causing Chid to leap several inches in the air and then fall off the mantelshelf to the floor. All the way down he screeched a loud wail of “HHHELPPP!” But the loudness of his scream was not enough to reach the Woman, who would not even have noticed him had She not been staring in that direction to confirm the clockhands’ verification of the aural announcement of the hour.

Her eye, glancing at the Clock, saw the black roosterroach fall, and Her laughter at Her reading was interrupted by noises of fright and disgust. She sprang out of bed, put Her gitalongs into coverings, and then began attempting with those coverings to stomp upon Brother Chidiock Tichborne. The fall from the mantelshelf had not hurt him in any way, only stunned him momentarily, but now he was compelled to seek an avenue of escape from Her stomping gitalongs. He was reminded of the last Rapturing by Man, whose shoe-clad gitalongs were more fearsome than Woman’s slipper-clad gitalongs. Perhaps it would be more of a Rapture to be trampled by Woman’s slipper than by Man’s shoe. He was almost tempted to give in, to yield to the experience of the Rapture, to see what it was like. But Chid could not give in to a Rapture so soon after moving into Parthenon, not without experiencing the other joys the great house had to offer.

Seeing his chance, he stopped darting to and fro and made a beeline for the underside of the Woman’s bed. There, She could not stomp him. She got down on Her knees and tried to see him, where he crouched panting and wheezing, but it was too dark for Her to see him, although he could see every configuration of wrath and disgust upon Her lovely face, which hurt his feelings. He was grievously insulted by Her attitude. He had intended to pray to Her, to worship Her, to pay Her lip service unendingly, but now he scowled at Her and said, “Woman, you aint a damn bit better than me. Yore shit stinks the same as mine. God is gonna wester you one of these days.”

As if She had heard him, She rose up and disappeared. She passed entirely out of range of his sniffwhips. She was no longer in the room. Chid remained hiding under the bed for a while, then crawled out from beneath, grabbed hold of the coverlet, climbed the bed, marched upon the sheets, the bedsheets as well as the lettersheets; he was close enough to read the lettersheets, the florid sentiments that drunken Man had poured out to Her, His eloquent expressions of yearning, His hopes for their life together, His extravagant similes comparing her to the pastoral springtime unfolding around Them. Chid spat upon the sheets. He spat upon the lettersheets as well as upon the bedsheets.

He climbed upon the Woman’s pillow and squatted and squeezed his haunches and deposited a black pellet of feces upon Her pillow. He was about to squeeze out a second one when She returned, coming back into the room, holding in Her hand a can. Chid darted beneath the pillow and watched Her. It appeared to be a can like the cans of beer that Man drank, but it had some sort of button-like gadget on top that She began to push with Her thumb, creating a most noxious spray. She got down on Her hands and knees again and sprayed the underside of the bed. The poisonous fumes rose and assaulted Chid’s sniffwhips, and he crept deeper under the pillow, and remained there, sheltered from the worst brunt of the gas, but still he smelled it, and knew it to be fatal.

At length the Woman stopped Her spraying and sat down upon the side of the bed, speaking aloud, “There, you vermin, I hope that dissolves you into goo.”

Chid was not dissolved into goo, but the vapors from the spray were so strong that some of their molecules penetrated into his hiding place and knocked him out. When he woke up, much later, he did not know where he was. He felt a tremendous pressure bearing down on him, almost but not quite squashing him, almost but not quite like he imagined the rupture of Rapture to be. He squirmed out from beneath it, and freed himself from the confines of the pillow. The pressure, he discovered, came from the Woman’s head, which was lying upon the pillow. Still dizzy and disoriented from the poisonous fumes, and suffering a terrible hangover from them, he could not at first determine what his attitude toward Her should be: should he hate Her for trying to gas him? Or had he been westered by the gas and was now in the promised heaven of his afterlife? He climbed upon Her right hand. The muscles in the hand twitched but She did not wake. Chid sat there for a long time, waiting for his wits to return to him, waiting for his hangover to go away, waiting to see if there was anything really pleasurable about sitting on the right hand of Woman, but he ultimately decided that it was not pleasurable; in fact, it was terribly boring. He could not conceive of spending eternity on the right hand of Woman.

The sun rose. Chid watched the dreaded rays streaming into the room. He gazed at the mantelshelf, where the machine which had startled him into falling off the mantelshelf was now rumbling, and now clearing its throat, and now crying, “SCONE!”

“Scone, yoreself,” Chid said back to it. His gaze scanned the mantelshelf for any sign of Squire John, but there was none. Most likely Squire John had succumbed to the deadly fumes of the Woman’s spray, but where was his corpse?

Later, the mantel machine crooned, “SUGARPLUM!” but Chid was not charmed. He ignored it. The Woman, however, stirred, and began to rise. Chid jumped off Her right hand and scurried beneath the sheets. The Woman did not leave the bed, She just sat there, Her knees drawn up to Her chin and Her eyes gazing at nothing off in some corner. Then Her reverie—and Chid’s watching—were invaded by the screaming blare of the giant black beetle with the giant black ant on top of it. Chid watched in awe as She lifted the ant and held it against Her face.

“Good morning, Gran,” he heard Her say to the ant.

But this grandmother ant was mute, or else she communicated extrasensorily, while She kept speaking as if in reply to her. “No, that’s all right,” the Woman said. Then She said, as if answering a question, “Just this morning.” Chid listened with growing fascination as She went on: “I’ve decided that my letter probably angered him, he doesn’t want to be nagged, he doesn’t need me commenting upon his drinking habits. He probably thinks it sounded like a bribe: I’ll talk to him if he stops drinking. I guess it is a bribe, come to think of it. And of course he has no intention of stopping. So instead of answering my letter, he’s just giving me the silent treatment. Well, let him. I’ve been here longer than he has, and I intend to stay here after he’s gone, if he ever goes. Sometimes I wish he would. But maybe he intends to do the Montross book first. Yes, I think maybe one reason he hasn’t answered my letter is that he’s going back to work on that paper about Montross he was planning to write for The Southern Review. It could be he has sobered up enough to write it. At least I haven’t heard him shooting off his pistol for several days now. That must mean he’s not drinking too much. What? Um-huh. Unt-huh. Well, yes. Maybe you’re right, but I hadn’t thought of it that way. Could be. Well, I’ll tell you what, Gran. I think I’ll wait until the end of this week, just to see if he might answer my letter, okay? I don’t want to seem pushy, or anxious. I’ll wait until the end of this week, and if he still hasn’t answered my letter, I’ll write him another one. How does that sound? I’ll write to him again, and sort of apologize, if I offended him. Yes. Um-huh. That’s right. Well, thank you, Gran, I really appreciate it, I surely do.

“And listen, one other thing. I think I do have a roach problem. I saw another one. It was climbing on my mantel, and fell off, or jumped off. I tried to mash it underfoot, but those things can really scoot, you know? It ran up under my bed. I tried to find some bug spray, but I don’t have any. All I could find was hair spray. I don’t know if it worked or not, but I didn’t see it again.

“Don’t laugh. Anyway, after I sprayed the hair spray, I poured myself a drink, to calm my nerves. A hard drink. It’s the first one I’ve had since the last time he was over here. I wanted also, and you’d better not laugh at this, to see if I couldn’t find out, by drinking, why he likes to drink so much. No, I didn’t discover any answers. But I might try it again. Do you want to come over this afternoon and have a gin-and-tonic with me? Oh? Well, tomorrow then?…”

Chapter twenty-nine

If only you were with me, Tish, to be my interpreter. If only I had you here to tell me what these guys are saying. They are all talking at once, and have been at it for nights. One great difficulty that we deaf souls have, Tish, is that we lose selective hearing: we cannot single out a particular voice or sound to concentrate upon, but instead hear only the general hubbub of all sounds merging into one confusing noise. Your sweet cute tailprongs have the power to focus upon the voice of your choosing and banish all others into background noise, but my poor prongs cannot discriminate among the voices of: Doc Swain, my father, Archy and other youths, meddlesome Crustians and busybody butt-ins. Everybody talking at once. Where are you, Tish, my love?

Everyone is discussing what can be done to help the helpless Man. For indeed He is helpless, if not beyond all help, not just from us but from His fellow men in this world, if there are any, and I’m sure there must be, other than Sharon. He is still east. Sometimes He even opens His eyes. His mouth, that dungeon from which my father escaped, with my help, is dry and parched and cracked. But He is immobile, confined to His couch, drifting in and out of consciousness, mostly out, terribly thirsty, and Doc Swain keeps shaking his head, to himself, just at the sight of Him.

The atmosphere is distinctly unpleasant, the air of the loafing room muggy with the must of west, the fetors of rot and gangrene and disease, and the foul odor of Man’s incontinence, which has soaked His couch. If He once had worshippers, they no longer find anything worth worshipping in Him. No one prays to Him or venerates Him or propitiates Him. The Reverend, His Holiness Tichborne, had abandoned Him already, and has not returned from, I suppose, Parthenon, where he is up to who knows what mischief—I almost said “Lord knows what mischief,” but the “Lord” knows nothing. The Lord has been invaded lately by bedbugs, bloodthirsty little creatures, dumb and determined. We search and destroy among them, but not fast enough to keep them from gorging themselves on the helpless Man’s blood.

Because I cannot hear, I can only talk. One more voice, and a loud one, in the general clamor. But everyone listens to me. They listen as if I alone know the answer to this predicament, and maybe I do, but if I do, I haven’t quite discovered it yet myself. I have made a number of suggestions. They have been considered, and examined, and debated, and argued, but none of them have been tried….

…except my suggestion that, before beginning to eat one another, we attempt to break into the cartons of the cookroom’s cabinets. We had been reduced to eating soap from the cookroom sink’s soapdish and from the bathroom shower’s soapdish. Have you ever eaten soap, Tish? Depending on the brand, it is edible and even palatable, and of course it contains essential nutrients and minerals: fats, alkali, potassium, glycerides, whatever, and there are Stay More legends of roosterroaches who survived the ancient depopulation of the village by discovering old bars of lye soap, terribly caustic but tastier than the perfumed modern stuff.

Doc Swain and I are both proud of our collections of foodstuffs, but I’m sure that neither he nor I want to share our larders with all of our fellow villagers, except as the very last resort. Doc himself was with us the other night when we were gathered around the cookroom’s soapdish, having a supper of sorts, our mouths ludicrously foaming with suds and all of the fellows making jokes (which I could not hear) about the taste of the meal and our appearance or whatever they joked about.

I told the others of my plan: to climb up into the cabinets above the cookroom’s counters and see if we couldn’t chew our way into some of the containers of cardboard, paper-board, pasteboard, whatever, and find something edible and more tasty than soap.

We did, and there are, we discovered, enough boxes of cookies, crackers, wafers, chips, pretzels, Melba toasts, saltines, etc., etc., to sustain the populations of Holy House, and of Carlott too, until, and possibly beyond, doomsday. There will never be any need for these folks to invade Parthenon in search of salvation for their stomachs or their souls. Doc Swain yelled at my tailprongs the information that the roosterroaches of Stay More have been so overjoyed at the discovery revealed by my suggestion that they have referred to this immense treasure of sustenance as “samfood.” My own gratification over my resourcefulness, and my pride, are dampened only at the thought that you are not here with us, Tish, to share in this endless banquet. Where are you, my darling? Your Carlott neighbors, who have moved, one and all, into Holy House, report that nothing further of you, or any of your family, has been seen. Your new “boyfriend,” Archibald Tichborne, is almost as pining for you as I am; every night he goes out and searches Stay More for you. He comes home, shaking his head slowly, drooping his sniffwhips, languishing, anguishing. I am almost tempted to commiserate with him, but we are rivals, after all.

The general jubilation over the discovery of samfood threatens to make us complaisant, sated, and indifferent to the plight of Lawrence Brace, who westers slowly. But Doc Swain and my father and I, at least, and a few others, even Archy, when he’s not out sniffing around for you, continue to discuss and plot ways to get help for Man.

I suggested that we attempt to get word to Woman, to Sharon. I proposed that we attempt to write to Her. All my life I wanted to write a love letter to Sharon, but there was no way to make the words. Not even with the help of all the strongest roosterroaches, including my mighty father, could we even lift the cumbrous log of a pencil, let alone manipulate it.

“Ink, maybe,” Doc suggested. “The old-timey kind that comes in a bottle and Humanfolk used to dip a goose-feather in.”

Hunting through and upon Lawrence Brace’s writing desk for nonexistent ink, we discovered—or rather I should give Archy proper credit for it, for it was he who first climbed the machine and summoned the rest of us to observe it—the IBM Selectric, with its “on” button still engaged and its vitals humming. Doc told the others some things I could not hear, concerning his previous exploration of the machine and his own theories of its use and function. The several of us climbed all over it, hopping from letter-button to letter-button, reading the letters and numerals there. It was Archy who realized that if enough pressure was exerted against the buttons, it would cause the machine to impress a letter upon the sheet of paper which contained only the words already impressed: “Stay More, Arkansas,” and “Lawrence Brace,” and “Myth, Meaning and Narrative in the Poems of Daniel Lyam Montross,” and then the fragment of a sentence, “What are we to make of.”

Archy began jumping up and down on the “I” key, yelling “THIS ORTER DO THE TRICK!” But for all his efforts, nothing whatever happened. The machine went on humming, but remained inactive. Your young fellow Archy is strong, stout, and agile, Tish, but for all his acrobatics—-jumps, backflips, somersaults—his weight was not enough to budge that “I” key. I tried, myself, and in all modesty I am the strongest of us all. I too jumped high and came down hard, and, while I could not do backflips and somersaults like Archy, I could exert more downward push upon the key. But to no avail. My father, the second-strongest roosterroach in all Stay More, tried to climb up and join me, but the key would scarcely accommodate both our bodies, and one or the other kept slipping off. We could, however, push downward on its edges, and, with Archy jumping up and down on the top, and Doc pulling down on one side too, we managed, with much grunting determination and super-physical exertion, to depress the key!

The type-ball jerked, clattered, and slammed against the page. We fell down, panting, sighing, but victorious. There it was, our handiwork upon the page.

What are we to make of I

“Now, a comma, quick!” I exclaimed, exulting.

“WHAT’S A COMMA?” Archy asked.

“Down there!” I pointed, and he leapt upon the comma key, followed by us three others, and we got it down, down, down:

What are we to make of I,

“Where’s the ‘W’?” I asked, scampering about, and we all hunted.

“UP OVER THAR!” my father called, and we joined him two rows up, and used all our strength to complete a three-letter word, “WHO.” Getting that “O” down nearly exhausted me, and we fell to the bottom key, which wasn’t a key at all, but the space bar, an easy bar to depress, but, for readability, an essential bar.

None of them had the energy to heed my command, “Now let’s find the ‘A’ key!” They crouched and rested on the space bar, and then my father suggested we all needed a bite to eat to recoup our strength. After a visit to the cookroom for a heavy snack, the lot of us returned to the writing machine and continued our labors for another hour, until the whole bunch of us were exhausted. I began to wonder if this was really the afterlife, the prophesied Hell, in which we non-Crustians, true to predictions, had to work. We were all working for the first and only time in our lives, and it was not pleasant.

A major difficulty occurred when the typing of the words reached the extreme right of the page, and we were at a loss for the means of moving the type-ball back. We could not budge it. Again it was clever Archy who figured out that the very large key inscribed RETURN might have something to do with moving the type-ball. But even with six of us crowded upon it and jumping up and down in unison, we could not depress it. Archy squeezed between the keys and discovered that the underside of the RETURN key was attached to a bar which, if a dozen strong rooster-roaches pulled down on it at the same time a dozen others piled on top of the key, would cause it to lower sufficiently to activate the violent return shuttle of the type-ball.

After hours of this hell, we observed our creation, and it was good:

What are we to make of I, WHO AM HURT BADLY SHOT MYSELF IN GITALONG CAN’T MOVE PLEASE HELP SEND HELP AT ONCE

I studied it, and wondered if, grammatically speaking, we shouldn’t have put in some more punctuation, but decided it wasn’t necessary. The several of us, after another big meal and a rest, and the recruitment of additional help from other Holy House and Carlott males (we had to threaten to withhold their samfood unless they helped), began the laborious task of chewing through the remainder of the sheet of paper and removing the written portion from out of the writing machine.

Then came the tricky part. We had to take the message, now freed from the machine, carry it like an enormous sheet, forty or fifty of us holding it around the edges, down from the machine, down from the desk to the floor, across the floor, out of the ponder room, through the loafing room to the front door, which was shut tight; but, like all doors, with a narrow space between the bottom of the door and the top of the sill. By careful manipulation—a couple dozen or so went out through a bullethole and tugged from the opposite side—we were able to slide the sheet under and onto the porch.

I collapsed. A combination of relief and weariness enfeebled me. I still had not fully recovered from the ordeal of several nights previous, when I had been hit by Man, the same Man whom I was now so determined to save. Doc Swain hobbled over to my side and told me to stay put for a while. I had overexerted myself, writing the message and supervising its removal from Holy House. Now, Doc said, he and my father would supervise the carrying of the message to Parthenon and leave it there where the Woman would see it, providing, of course, that they didn’t encounter much opposition from Chid and the deacons who, it was presumed, had laid claim to Parthenon. Doc said I should stay and rest. There was only an hour or so until dawn, and the “messengers,” fifty strong, had to get the message to Parthenon before daylight. The rain had stopped, the Roamin Road was now reasonably dry, and fifty valiant roosterroaches carried the sheet of paper down into it, and headed for Parthenon.

I could only watch. I wanted to help, or at least to go with them, but truly I was tired unto west. So I remained on the porch and watched the message procession. The white sheet shone in the moonlight as it moved slowly along the Roamin Road.

Then a morning wind uprose, and I could feel its force along the length of my sniffwhips, which also told me that it was a dry wind, not a rain wind. Good weather was coming…but for our purposes, bad weather, because the wind itself, a gentle but firm breeze, swept up under the sheet of the message and snatched it loose from its carriers—or from most of them; some, a dozen or so, clung desperately to it, and were carried aloft. Most of these dropped away and fell safely to earth, but a few, including my father, continued clinging to the sheet as the wind lifted it high like a kite into the night sky, westward out across the so-called “Lord’s Garden and Refuse Pile,” out across a fallow field, out toward a line of trees bordering Swain’s Creek, then downward over the creek, off into the night, out of sight. Whether the precious sheet of paper had landed in the creek or sailed beyond it, I could not tell. As author of the message, I could only feel the frustration of having no ultimate reader of it.

Eventually, the dejected messengers returned to Holy House. Doc Swain hobbled over to where I was crouched, and sank wearily down beside me, shaking his head and sighing almost audibly. I could not speak to him, because of my disappointment, and he could not speak to me, for a long time.

Dawn came. Doc went to watch over his “patient,” who, we were convinced, was now in the last day of His life. I slept. I dreamed, around noon and thereafter, of you, Tish, and of my father, and of skyscrapers, and fabulous food, and of all the things I have ever dreamed of, but mainly of you: you and my father were meeting by a creek bank, and you were saving him, or he was saving you. I dreamed of an angellike snow-white rodent. I dreamed, finally, of the Woman, Sharon, and of a person who was both myself and Lawrence Brace.

The vividness of the dream woke me. It was still daylight, but I discovered that Doc and Archy too were already awake, unable to sleep or troubled by their dreams. Despite the full daylight, we began to wake the others, and to assemble in a hubbub of complaining and of discussion. Archy came up with the bright idea of setting the house on fire, in hopes the fire would attract Her attention. When Doc scoffed and said the fire might burn the Man and most of us before it was noticed, Archy suggested that we might set fire instead to the old three-hole privy out back beyond Carlott. Okay, but how? There were kitchen matches, and these could be carried laboriously, two rooster-roaches at each end, up to the privy, where we could attempt to create enough friction on one of them to ignite it, possibly at the expense of igniting whoever made the effort. But what if we simply could not get the privy to burn?

I grew tired of trying to listen to all of this. “All right, fellows, that’s enough,” I said firmly. “Now listen to me. I want every able-bodied roosterroach of Stay More—excluding, of course, those who are already at Parthenon—to assemble here in the loafing room immediately. Is that clear? Wake up all of those who are still asleep.”

My order was promptly carried out. Within minutes I had an audience of a thousand.

“Neighbors, friends, and good folks of Stay More, all of you,” I began. “Crustians and non-Crustians, Smockroaches and Frockroaches, and Carlotters, the future of Stay More is in your hands, or rather in your gitalongs, which are needed today as they have never been needed before, not to run and hide but to march, purposefully and resolutely, in order to save the life of the Man Who established this home and Who nourished most all of you from infancy. You Crustians once adored Him and praised Him and asked favors of Him, and you non-Crustians who were indifferent to Him still fed from the crumbs fallen from His table. None of you would be east were it not for Him!”

I paused, both for dramatic emphasis and to gauge their reactions. Many of them were nodding their heads in agreement, but all of them were eagerly awaiting the heart of my message. I went on. “We have different beliefs, different religions, different customs, and different opinions, but one thing we all have in common: we share Man’s table! His habits are always such that He has leftovers, and we clean up the leftovers. Even you Carlotters, ye wretched of this earth, who have not until recently been able to dine on Man’s foodstuffs but instead scavenged in His back yard, you have chosen your proximity to Him! Why not live in the remote forest, far from Man? Because everything in you desires that nearness to Him, that occasional sight of Him, despite the abuse that He has occasionally heaped upon you.

“Let’s face it, we love Him! In spite of ourselves, almost, and certainly in spite of Him, we love Him. And yet He now lies westering, and we do nothing. Oh, the bravest of us have tried to help and failed, but there is something remaining that all of us can do.

“And this is what it is. The Woman of Parthenon, who alone can summon help for Him, and provide help for Him that we cannot, does not know that He is westering. We must inform Her. How? Here’s what I propose: all of us should go immediately down the Roamin Road to Parthenon, where She always sits on Her porch in the hour of gloaming, before it gets too dark for Her to see us. We will form ourselves, all our numbers, into an arrow, which will point in the direction of Holy House and begin moving slowly but steadily back in this direction, drawing her attention this way.”

My words were interrupted by a great murmur of protests. I could not hear any of it, but I could see that they were all talking at once, to each other, and in my direction. Some of them shouted questions at me, a few of which I could hear. How did we dare journey to Parthenon while it was still daylight? The diurnal creatures—birds and reptiles and mammals—would devour us all! We would all be eaten!

I waved my sniffwhips for silence. “Not if there are so many of us!” I cried. “In our numbers is our strength! In our numbers is our safety!” My eyes searched the crowd for a sign of bravery, and fell upon a cluster of young damsels. In other circumstances I would have been petrified by shyness in their presence, but this was an exceptional situation. “Girls,” I said, “don’t you remember your ‘train’ on the night of the play-party, just the other night? The Cerealia? Don’t you remember how the sight of so many of you scared all other creatures out of your path? And gave a heart attack to a toadfrog?”

The girls of Stay More, at this reminder, raised their heads proudly, then raised their sniffwhips to volunteer, one and all. Above their upraised sniffwhips, the windows of the loafing room presented me with a view of the setting sun.

“We don’t have any time to lose!” I cried. My lieutenants, at a signal from me, began distributing crumbs of chocolate chip cookies, high in energy. Everybody had an early breakfast as I concluded, “Fellows in the vanguard, ladies in the train, children last! Our cry shall be, ‘SAVE HIM!’ Okay, let’s go!”

“SAVE HIM!” shouted the multitude and finished the breakfast, then headed for the exit holes of Holy House.

On the Roamin Road to Parthenon, we did not yet form ourselves into any figure, file or shape, but rushed in a body, myself leading, toward the house two furlongs away. Birds circled over us, and some of them dived for a closer look, but none dared attack. Snakes slithered out of our path. A possum couldn’t believe his luck, but then was afraid to, and scampered off. A tarantula leaped frantically to get out of our way. A praying mantis prayed, but not for prey. We reached Parthenon without the loss of a single roosterroach.

As I expected, Sharon sat on Her porch, in Her rocker, one hand holding a drink, which She raised to Her lips. She was listening to music coming from within Her house, and Her gaze drifted toward Holy House.

Quickly I directed my lieutenants, Archy chief among them, to arrange everybody into a shape:

I myself took the position at the extreme front point of the arrow, with Archy at the lower point flanking my right and Doc Swain hobbling along at the upper point on the left. I counted cadence: “Hup, two, six, twelve! Hup, two, six, twelve!” The crowd yelled “SAVE HIM!” continuously. We moved steadily but not slowly in the direction of Holy House until I was sure we were out of sight, then we broke ranks and rushed back to the yard of Parthenon, reformed, and repeated the whole process. The third time the arrow was formed, I relinquished my position to Archy and rushed to the porch of Parthenon to observe the arrow from Sharon’s vantage, and, more importantly, to observe Sharon, to see what She was doing.

She was doing nothing. If She even saw the arrow, I could not tell. Her gaze was not directed downward toward the yard, toward the road, toward the huge throng of marchers, but rather outward toward Holy House. I thought of rushing up into Her lap to attract Her attention, to shift Her gaze out of its fixation on Holy House and downward, but I decided it wouldn’t work; it would only perhaps scare Her and make Her rush into Her house.

Dusk was rapidly approaching. Soon it would be too dark for Her to see the arrow even if She looked in that direction. I was at a loss, and becoming hopelessly dejected.

Suddenly the entire mob making up the arrow began rushing back toward Parthenon. I thought at first they were coming back to reform one more time. But they were running in fear from a creature who was not intimidated by their numbers or their arrow-shape. A great white mouse. The Great White Mouse. And following the mouse was a female roosterroach who, my eyes and then my sniffwhips told me, was you.

Chapter thirty

Doc didn’t follow. He abandoned his position as leader of the left flank, broke rank, and stood aside on his three weary legs to watch the frantic retreat. He felt rage and helplessness, futility. These folks had not been frightened of the snake, the tarantula, the mantis, the birds, and the possum that had been in the path to Parthenon, and yet they were now running from the Great White Mouse. He didn’t blame them, but Doc had told himself that he would never run from it again. In all his idle hours he had plotted and planned what he would do when he met up with it again, and now he was ready. “Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, White Mouse!” he yelled at it, and stood his ground, albeit standing on only three gitalongs, having lost the other three to the aforesaid Mouse on the aforesaid occasion.

“Don’t skeer all those folks, Hoimin!” a female voice called, and Doc saw that there was a girl standing right behind the White Mouse. The girl was Tish Dingletoon, reported drowned days ago; daughter of Jack and Josie (reported westered in a crash days ago); reported sweetheart of Squire Sam, who was now running toward her from the north, also unafraid of the White Mouse; the same Tish who was, Doc recalled, also the reported sweetheart of Archy Tich-borne, who was now running toward her from the south, also unafraid of the White Mouse.

“TISH!” shouted Squire Sam and Archy simultaneously, and ran to embrace her.

The poor girl could not look in both directions simultaneously, but she had one sniffwhip fixed on Sam and the other on Archy. Doc had both of his fixed on the White Mouse, who, however, was not paying him any attention whatever.

Then Tish did a very strange thing. She introduced the Mouse to Doc. “Hoimin,” she said to it, “I want you to meet Doc Swain. You owe him three apologies.”

The Mouse spoke to Doc! “Haughty,” it said. “If ya’ll ponny spression. Please da meetcha. Da lidda pigeon says ta me I should big ya poddon I ate ya legs off. It was mistook identity, belive me. I taught ya was a edible bug, ya know?”

Tish and Squire Sam were doing some kind of dance with their sniffwhips. The Mouse kept on talking to Doc. Doc thought he was dreaming. Suddenly from down the Roamin Road came strolling Squire Hank Ingledew. Doc knew he was dreaming.

“Like to skeered yore other three gitalongs off, I bet!” Squire Hank said to Doc. “Aint this some critter? Name is Hoimin, which is jist the way he misspeaks Herman. Got a story as long as my right sniffwhip, but he caint talk good English. Lissen to him!”

The injunction was hardly necessary, because Doc couldn’t avoid listening to him; the Mouse wouldn’t stop talking. Every other utterance seemed to be “ya know?” or “if ya’ll ponny spression” and the Mouse kept asking Doc, “Hodda ya like dat?”

“Where did ye find this?” Doc asked Squire Hank, and reached out to touch the white fur.

“Tish found him, down the creek a ways,” Squire Hank said. “Doc, I got a long story to tell, myself. But what’s a-gorn on here? What’s all these folks doing? Trying to deliver another message?”

When Squire Hank had been brought up to date on events, he commented, “Now that is the pure-dee dumbest notion ever I heared!” and he turned to his son and said, “Sam, boy, why in blazes didn’t ye jist try writin another message on the typin machine?”

Squire Sam looked blankly at his father, not hearing him. Then the younger squire turned to his girlfriend and asked, “What did he say, Tish?” and Tish waved and wiggled her sniffwhips into all sorts of odd positions, and Sam said, “Oh,” then he said to his father, “There wasn’t time, Dad. And there wasn’t any guarantee the wind wouldn’t have blown the second message away too. We’ve got to get Her attention before dark!”

“Wal, why don’t ye jist run up thar and hop in Her lap?” Squire Hank asked.

Tish seemed to be taking the older squire’s words and translating them into some kind of sign language for the younger squire.

“What good would that do?” Sam said to his father. “You’ve told me never to reveal myself to Her, and if I did, it would just frighten Her.”

Tish spoke, timidly but with conviction. “I have an idea, sirs. What if we had Hoimin march at the front of the arrow? The Woman would see Hoimin because he’s white.” As she spoke, she expressed this in her sign language for Sam’s benefit.

The two squires looked at each other, then looked at Doc, and Doc looked at them and then at Tish and at Archy and at Hoimin, who was looking at each of the others in turn and saying, “Hey, ya know sumthin? Da lidda sweety is positively kerspang on da button, ya know? Attawaygo, beby!”

If he were dreaming, Doc did not want to wake up. The reason he knew he was dreaming was that there was no possible way a fellow who had endured all that he had been through for the past several days could even hope to stay awake. He had to be asleep. He hadn’t had a good day’s sleep since the day before the night Lawrence Brace had shot himself in the gitalong. Doc was somewhat ashamed of himself for falling asleep right in the middle of the most dramatic and essential portion of the rescue operations, but it couldn’t be helped. He was asleep, and here was this preposterous daymare of this great nemesis of his, the White Mouse, who was suddenly speaking like a laboratory rat with a Brooklyn accent and who was about to become the hero of the whole affair.

The nice thing about dreams is that you don’t really have to exert yourself and be active. You can sit back and just watch all these things happening to you and to others, and you don’t even have to respond, if you don’t feel like it. Doc wasn’t even required to resume his position at the left flank of the arrow. Squire Hank took that place, and Doc just stood over to one side—or, if he was dreaming, just crouched asleep over to one side—and watched.

The arrow of hundreds of roosterroaches of Stay More, under the direction of Squire Hank and Squire Sam, and Tish, the latter practically riding on Hoimin’s long pink scaly tail, reformed itself in the yard of Parthenon, right beneath the porch upon which the Woman sat, gazing at Holy House. The arrow began moving out across the yard, with Hoimin at the head, or point. “Hey, lookit me!” Hoimin hummed. The arrow followed Hoimin. “C’mon, Lady, lookit me!” Hoimin squealed, over his shoulder. “Fevinsakes awready, Lady, willya lookit me?!?!”

And the Lady looked at him. When Her gaze shifted downward, caught by a ball of fur hopping, skipping, bouncing, and dancing, someone—it appeared to be Squire Sam—dropped back and arranged the last few hundred roosterroaches into a new formation:

A great philosophical question which had often preoccupied Doc Swain in his casual musings was the possibility that in dreams not only is the dreamer dreaming but also every participant in the dream is dreaming. If I dream that you are there, you in turn are dreaming that I am here. Therefore, Doc reflected as he watched this procession, every last one of those roosterroaches out there is only dreaming that he (or she) is doing this, and also, of course, the Great White Mouse is dreaming.

…and also, of course, the Woman was dreaming. Surely She Herself had to think that She was dreaming, seeing this strange sight. (I think I dream, therefore I dream I think I am. Et cetera. Philosophy was complicated, Doc realized.)

So the Woman went on thinking She dreamed, as the procession slowly wound its way down the Roamin Road toward Holy House. But then the Woman stood up, unsteadily, and put down the glass of whatever had been responsible for the dreaming. Then, instead of going out into Her yard to follow the arrow to Holy House, She turned, and went into Parthenon. She was gone for a moment, and then returned, muttering loudly to Herself, “Goddamn Newton County Telephone Company!” She raised one hand to become a visor on Her forehead, and peered out across the Roamin Road into the gathering dusk, where the arrow was fading into the direction of Holy House. She took a step down Her front steps. “Gran, I’ve only had four gin-and-tonics,” She said to the air. “Well, maybe it was five. But I’m not drunk. I swear. I know what I’m seeing. Unless I’m dreaming.”

She took the rest of the steps down into Her yard and began walking in the direction of the arrow. “Well, it wouldn’t hurt to just go see, would it?” She asked.

“No, it wouldn’t, Ma’am,” Doc said. “You’d be mighty surprised what You would discover. Hurry!”

The Woman began walking rapidly, as fast as She could. Doc followed. Hobbling for all he was worth, he could not keep up with Her. The procession of the arrow had almost reached Holy House. As the Woman caught up with it, it was already at the steps to Holy House, where, as the Woman reached it, the roosterroaches disbanded and decamped. The Woman climbed the porch of Holy House, knocked at one of the three front doors, knocked again, and disappeared inside. Doc had scarcely reached his own clinic, halfway between Parthenon and Holy House, when he watched the Woman enter the latter.

He kept going, but was still a hundred yards short of Holy House when the Woman came out of it again. She looked up and down the Roamin Road as if looking for someone else, but saw no one. Then She began running. Not toward Parthenon but in the opposite direction, toward the Man’s mailbox. But She did not stop at the mailbox. She kept running out into the county road and across the WPA low-water bridge.

She disappeared in the direction of the old canning factory. Doc could not understand what reason She might have to go to the abandoned canning factory. But maybe She was going beyond it. What was beyond it? Far beyond it, up the mountain, lived other humans, or so the old legends told. But they were a long way off. No, nearer beyond the canning factory was the old schoolhouse. But why was She going to the old schoolhouse?

Before he could figure it out, Doc heard the sound. He had never heard it before, but had heard from oldtimers who had in turn heard from their ancestors what the sound was like. “BOMMBBB!” it said. The sound reverberated all over everything and seemed to drip from the trees. There was an instant’s interval to let the sound rumble and roll all over Stay More valley, and then a slightly different sound pealed. “DOOMMM!” it said. Doc noticed that not he alone but all the roosterroaches in sight were standing frozen, their tailprongs erect and tingling from the sounds.

“BOMMBBB!!” the great sound came again. “DOOMMM!!” Doc understood what was producing the sound, and who was causing it, and even how.

“BOMB!” “DOOM!” Doc decided he wasn’t dreaming, after all, because in dreams you don’t hear such sounds. In dreams you don’t hear sounds you’ve never heard before.

“BOMB!”

“DOOM!”

There was, Doc reflected, a kind of irony involved in the meaning of the words the bell spoke. “Bomb” suggested that indeed the advent of The Bomb was at hand, or that, as Doc had suspected, The Bomb consisted only of Man shooting Himself in the gitalong. “Doom” suggested that now we were sure in for it. But the Bombing and the Dooming were sounds that meant help and hope, and a solution to the problem of Man. Doc understood why the Woman was ringing the bell.

“BOMB!”

“DOOM!”

Wasn’t the Woman’s arm getting tired, pulling the bellrope? It went on and on. Then Doc’s tailprongs began to pick up a different sound: the engines of cars and pick-ups, converging on Stay More from every direction.

INSTAR THE FIFTH:

The Woman Pays

Chapter thirty-one

Squire John Dingletoon/Ingledew, pro tempore lord of the manor of Parthenon, began to suspect that his house guest, the Reverend Chidiock Tichborne, was cooking up murder. The minister’s behavior was such that Squire John believed he was plotting to commit insecticide, possibly upon Squire John’s own person. Squire John this morning had even voiced his suspicions to the lady of the manor, Josie, but Josie had replied, “Huh? Now what-for would Brother Chid want to do a thing like thet for?”

“For to git rid of me,” Squire John patiently explained. “So’s he could be the boss squire of Partheeny, and have all these goodies to hisself.”

“Why, we’ve got more’n a plenty, hon,” Josie pointed out. “He don’t have to wester nobody to git all he can eat. He don’t even have to ask. I’m always tellin ’em, ‘Jist hep yoresefs.’” Josie yawned. “Now it’s way past our bedtime, Squire John.”

Squire John did not believe he could sleep. Long after the sun rose, and Josie had drifted into the arms of slumber, he crouched awake, his sniffwhips raised and waving steadily to and fro. He wondered, but doubted, if Chid and the deacons were asleep. Chid, when last seen and smelled, just before midnight, the hour of Tutti-Frutti, had been evacuating upon the Woman’s pillow. Squire John had been offended and angered by Chid’s rudeness, and had started down from the mantelshelf toward the bed, fully intent upon first removing the pellet of feces from the Woman’s pillow and then removing Chid from the bed, and, if need be, from Parthenon itself. But then the Woman had returned to the room and done something to the air. The beer can she held had fizzed, but the fizz hadn’t been like any beerfizz Squire John had ever smelled before. It was globulous and sticky and Squire John knew that it would asphyxiate him. He had fled as fast as his gitalongs could skedaddle, but not fast enough. He had decamped the room entirely, but the fumes of the fizz had already, if not asphyxiated, intoxicated him. He had become drunker than an Englishman, whatever one of them was. The rest of the night he had spent in the abandoned store part of Parthenon, the old post office, wandering around in a kind of hallucination, in which he envisioned that Chid was stalking him with a variety of murder weapons: a candlestick, a knife, a lead pipe, a wrench, a revolver, a rope, and poison. When the effect of the fumes had eventually worn off and the hallucinations ceased, Squire John had returned to Josie in the apartment they had made for themselves in a cabinet beneath the cookroom sink. The Woman had come and fixed Her breakfast, left a few traces of it behind, and left the cookroom.

Like most Carlotters, Squire John could not read, and thus was not able to decipher the labels on the containers with which he and Josie shared the cook-room cabinet beneath the sink: Drano, Lysol, Oxydol, Ajax, Electrasol, Dawn, Drench, Pledge, Behold, Future, Glory, Windex, Fantastik, Spic and Span, 409, Mop & Glo, and Mr. Clean. None of these, Squire John could tell by sniffwhipping alone, was potable or edible. Sheer instinct led him now in the throes of insomnia to conceal himself behind a can of Lysol and spy upon the boudoir where Josie crouched in slumber.

Soon Chid Tichborne stealthily entered the cabinet through a crevice and advanced upon the master bedplace. He carried a wrench. No, Squire John corrected himself, a lead pipe, in any case some instrument with which he intended to murder sleeping Squire John. But Squire John was not asleep, and he stepped around from behind the Lysol and said, “Morsel, Reverend, have ye lost yore way home?”

Whatever the murder weapon was, it disappeared. Chid wheeled around to confront Squire John, coughed, gulped, and stammered, “Why, hidy, Squire John, I figgered ye would be asleep.”

“I aint,” Squire John observed.

“Wal, I was jist checkin up on ye,” Chid declared. “Jist wanted to make shore that both of you’uns was comfy and cozy and all, you know. It’s a hot day, aint it?”

“Real hot,” Squire John allowed.

“Couldn’t sleep a wink, myself. Got to wonderin if you and Josie was comfy and cozy and all, what with all this heat, you know. Seems like it’s too hot fer roosterroaches or beasts.”

“Aint it, though?” Squire John agreed.

“Reckon ye seen as how I nearly got trompled by the Woman in yonder,” Chid said. “And I aint been able to sleep good, since.”

“Was that how come ye to crap on her bed piller?” Squire John demanded. He realized the noise of his voice threatened to waken Josie, who began to mumble in her sleep. “Let’s step outside,” Squire John suggested.

They resumed their conversation on the cookroom floor. They were beyond prongshot of Josie but still Chid kept his voice low, conspiratorial. “Squire John, I have some terrible news for us all. The Woman aint holy and divine, after all. She aint the Lord, or even the Lady. Maybe She’s a Witch. Anyway, She’s in cahoots with a giant ant that is probably Her grandmother, and She talks to it.”

“Is that a fack?” Squire John said. “Are ye shore it’s a ant?”

“I’d show ye,” Chid offered, “but I aint a-gorn back in yonder again. I tell ye, it’s nearly enough to sour a feller on religion forever. First, our Man turns out to be undependable and worthless, and now the Woman turns out to be a Witch.”

“Looks like you might be out of business, Reverend, if you aint got nobody to worship or preach about,” Squire John reflected aloud. Then he asked, “Did ye notice, was that there ‘ant’ connected to anything?”

“Connected? Yeah, now you mention it, the ant had some kind of real long tail that run all the way down to the beetle, and the beetle’s tail run down to the floor and out through a hole.”

“Them wasn’t tails, Reverend. Them is called ‘wires.’ Like all the ’lectric wires in Holy House, only they aint quite so electrified.”

Squire John was about to explain the mechanics of thingumajimmies to the minister, but the conversation was interrupted by the quivering of the substratum that warned of the approach of Woman Herself. The two roosterroaches had just enough time to scurry beneath the cabinet’s toeboard before the Woman came into the cookroom. They watched as She removed two bottles from Her Fridge, along with a small green fruit of some kind, and then a tray of ice cubes from the freezer. On the countertop She began mixing the first of the drinks She would have that day. She took Her glass, to which a wedge of the green fruit had been added, back to Her room and thence out to the porch of Parthenon.

Both roosterroaches waved their sniffwhips and picked up the distant aroma of the liquids she had mixed. Brother Tichborne suggested, “How about a sample, Squire?” and the two of them scooted up the cabinet to the counter. A lone housefly was already there. Neither roosterroach had had much experience with the diurnal housefly or could understand its strange dialect. Among the many other things that roosterroaches have in common with human beings is their mutual disdain for houseflies, who lack other insects’ sense of personal hygiene and are careless disseminators of baneful microbes—not to mention their sheer ugliness: the hoglike snoot, the huge goggled eyes, the pudgy, bristly body. “Shoo, fly,” Squire John said to it, and jumped at it. The fly, likely alarmed at the encounter with an unfamiliar and nocturnal creature, flew.

Squire John and Chid sampled the juice of the green fruit cut open on a cutting board, and found its sharp, tangy citrus flavor interesting but not exciting. They sampled a droplet of one of the two clear liquids, which the minister, from his experience at Holy House’s cookroom, identified as quinine, reputed to be a good cure for mosquito bite, not that he himself had ever been bitten by a mosquito. They approached, finally, a spilled droplet of the other clear liquid.

“This here is called ‘gin,’” Chid explained. “Not being the drinking sort myself, Squire, or not usually, anyhow, I’ll have to pass on it, and let ye have it all to yoreself.”

Squire John tasted it, and jumped an inch. It was powerful stuff. It had a kick like nothing Squire John had ever tried. Chism’s Dew was like Kool-Aid by comparison, not that he had ever tried Kool-Aid. The merest taste of the gin sent shivers through his brain. “Great jumpin Jehoshaphat!” he exclaimed. “A whole drap of that stuff would wester a feller!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Chid said. “Try it and see.”

Squire John began to suspect that Chid was trying to poison him, but he couldn’t resist the beverage and its scalding bite. Before he knew it, he had magically shrunk the preacher to the size of a third instar roosterroach. “Ex-preacher,” he corrected himself, for it was apparent that Chid Tichborne no longer had a reputable deity to venerate. If Chid gave up preaching and became just an ordinary feller, he might not be such a bad sort, after all. He wouldn’t be any better than Squire John. Already he wasn’t half as big as Squire John. Squire John and him could be good pals, if they gave it a try.

“Come on here there,” Squire John urged the shrinking ex-preacher, slurring his words, “and try a leetle snort of this here gin yoreself.”

“It’s all your’n,” Chid declined. “Take the whole drap.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Squire John remarked, and proceeded to lap up the entire droplet of gin. The preacher shrank to nothing.

Nighttime came at broad day. How awful, that a feller in bad need of sleep, and thinking it the west middle of the daytime, should suddenly find it nighttime, after all. But Squire John didn’t care. He just drifted off to dreamland. Blackness surrounded him. Even with his good night vision Squire John could see no trace of the ex-preacher. Jack Orville Dingletoon was Boss Squire of Parthenon and had it all to himself and could dream his whole life there, a cockroach in the Land of Cockaigne, the floors paved with pastry, the walls of barley sugar and cakes and pies.

When he woke, and discovered that his old head felt as if his sniffwhips had been pulled wrongside out, it was indeed nighttime, or at least completely dark all around him. His supersensitive night vision could see nothing, not even his sniffwhips in front of his face. He could only attempt to feel his way around, and it was hard going, terrible going. He had a vague memory of having been on a countertop in the Parthenon cookroom, but that was not where he was now. He was surrounded by substances. Sticky stuff, gooey stuff, coarse stuff, slime and gaum and gunk and goop and glop: garbage, yes, it was some kind of hodge-podge of sheer garbage that surrounded Squire John. A feller ought to be able to find paradise in garbage, but Squire John thought he had gone to hell. None of this was really edible: coffee grounds, black and damp and murky, foul-smelling. Chicken egg shells. The squeezed pulp and rind of a fruit that he identified as the green stuff the Woman had put in Her drink. Several strands of the Woman’s hair. Floor sweepings of dust, grime, dirt, and only a particle or two of edibles. With his touchers and sniffwhips Squire John explored further and found unrecognizable messy substances and liquids, and he found the body of the housefly he had encountered earlier. It had been crushed by a swatter, and stank to high heaven. Elsewhere in this prison were empty cartons, containers, and crumpled pieces of paper. The walls of this prison were of some resilient shiny smooth material, black as pitch, which Squire John could not bite through. He heaved himself against it, and it gave with his weight, but only slightly, and sprang back, mocking him. He explored in every direction, but the shiny smooth black material had no exit. The one place where it puckered and narrowed to an apparent exit was bound tightly from without.

“Josie?!” Squire John called, pathetically, futilely. “Chid?!” he wailed. “Anybody?!” he tried. He was alone, and had the worst hangover he could ever have imagined, and although he was not west, he might as well have been, because there was no way out, no escape, no going back to the world of folks and love.

“What did I do to deserve this?” he cried aloud. There was no answer. Not yet. And then came one. As he crouched in abject despair, convinced that he had gone to Hell, he had his conviction confirmed by the sound. “BOMB,” it said to him. “DOOM,” it added.

It kept saying the same thing, over and over.

Chapter thirty-two

She knew that Archy wanted to take her far away. His belief that the world contained fabled houses far better than Holy House or Parthenon was confirmed by the sudden presence, in and around Holy House, of so many human beings. A dozen or more, she couldn’t count them all. Big and little, male and female, thin and fat, young and old. Tish had grown up being taught that there was one Man, and only one, who was supreme over all creatures. She had loved that Man as her Lord, and prayed to Him, and expected that when she went west she would live on His right hand forevermore. Then she had come to know that Man was just a man, large and drunk and prone in the grass of Carlott, lonely and vulnerable and somehow lovable in a different way. But now Man was west and being carried out of Holy House by other Men, Who looked more handsome and lordly than our Man, and Who lifted Him up and removed His body from Holy House and carried Him out to a vehicle, which took Him entirely away from Stay More, just as His own vehicle had done every now and again, but with Him driving. Now He was not driving, but lay spread out in the back seat of another Man’s vehicle, and the door was closed upon Him, and He was driven away. The Woman got into one of the other vehicles, which another Man was driving, and it too gained the county road and disappeared. One by one, the other Human Beings, hanging back at Holy House to explore it and then to lock it up, returned to Their vehicles and drove away. The roosterroaches of Stay More, and the one rodent of Stay More, watched all this to its conclusion.

The sniffwhip-spelling sign for “west” is the same as that for “belly-up”: a turning over of the two sniffwhips to signify the turning over of the body into the belly-up position. Tish went up to Squire Sam, who was talking to Doc Swain and his father, and in sign language she asked Sam, “Is He west?”

With his sniffwhip gestures Sam answered her, “We don’t know. Doc didn’t have a chance to check His pulse before They took Him away. Doc was too busy helping us try to get help for Him.”

“What are you two talking about, thataway?” Doc asked her.

“I was asking him if Man is west,” Tish said to Doc, “and he told me that you didn’t have a chance to find out before They took Him away.”

“But didje notice,” Doc said to others around him as well as to her, “one of them Men who drug Him out of the house had one of these here things around His neck, I do believe it’s called a stereoscope or something like that, that listens to the heartbeat. There’s one of ’em a-hangin on the wall in my clinic, covered with dust. Anyhow, He had the business end of that stereoscope up against Man’s chest, and He was noddin His head yes, as if to say yes, He could hear that Man still had some heartbeat.”

This information was spread from mouth to prong throughout the crowd, until everyone in Stay More understood it.

“What d’ye reckon They’re fixin to do with Him?” Squire Hank asked Doc.

“Where are They taking Him?” Tish asked. She was still busy “translating” Doc’s words into signs Sam could understand, and she was slowly spelling out s-t-e-r-e-o-s-c-o-p-e.

“Wal,” Doc said, “I’ll tell ye. I used to hear it told that far off and away, beyond the mountains, there is a big old kind of house, not a house where Humanfolks live, but a big house where the Humanfolks take keer of Their sick and the lame and the westerin, and this house is called a House Pittle. I reckon They’ve took Man to the House Pittle, to keep ’Im until He gets better.”

Tish was aware that Archy stood to one side, watching her intently, curiously, and somewhat jealously.

Sam too was aware of Archy, and he signed to her, “I’m sure you’ve got things to discuss with him too”—he imperceptibly pointed a sniffwhip in the direction of Archy—“so why don’t we get together alone later? We’ve got so much to talk about.”

“Yes,” Tish agreed. “I’ve got to tell you how Hoimin helped me hide my easteregg.”

“Hide your easteregg???” Sam duplicated the signs with emphasis but added three question marks with a rhythmic flourish of his sniffwhip tips.

In sign language, “See you later” is a combination of the conventional “see” with “you” and a flip of one toucher over the other in a forward direction indicating “later.” She gave this to him.

Then she went to Archy and asked, “Do you want to talk?” The last of day was gone now; night, the element of roosterroaches, had come fully again, and they were in it.

“I caint wiggle my sniffwhips like he can,” Archy said.

“You don’t have to,” she said. “Because you’ve got good hearing, I reckon.”

“But I aint nobody around here lately, in all this excitement,” he observed. “Yore squire has been runnin the whole show.”

“With your help, Archy,” she corrected, trying to be encouraging. “He couldn’t have done it without your help.”

“And yours, and the big mouse’s,” Archy pointed out. He smiled. “Did ye know, you’re the famousest gal in the whole town, now? You’re quite a shucks. All the other gals is green-eyed with envy.”

Tish blushed, and protested, “Aw, Archy, they’re all green-eyed anyway.” Which was true, because all roosterroach eyes are that color. But she had to admit to herself that she enjoyed being the center of attention; she relished having these two males competing with each other for her favor. The other girls of Stay More were whispering among themselves all over the place, and casting covetous looks at Tish. Wouldn’t her parents be proud of her! But where were her parents? “Have you seen my folks?” she asked Archy.

“No, nor mine neither,” he said, with an insinuation of reproach, because he remembered painfully how she had been the one who had informed him of his mother’s west, and she remembered that the last time she saw him she told him that she was motherless too.

“I heard they went to Parthenon, lookin for me,” she said.

“Well, that’s a coincidence,” Archy declared. “My dad has gone to Parthenon, too. Why don’t we jist mosey up yonder and see what’s what?”

So Tish and Archy began a little journey to Parthenon, and it was along the way that he told Tish he wanted to take her not just to Parthenon, but far, far away.

“I don’t reckon as how that Man will ever come back,” Archy said. “Even if He aint west, They’ll keep Him in that House Pittle for the rest of His east. Even if They let Him go, He won’t come back here. Holy House is a-gorn to be deserted like the other houses of Stay More, and then where would we be? No, I think it’s gonna be every feller for hisself, and Mockroach take the hindmost, and I don’t aim to hang around and wait to see if Man ever comes back.”

“Just which way do you plan to go?” Tish asked him.

“I’ve thought about it.” He gestured with one of his sniffwhips toward the mountain, to the west, that some folks had called Mount Staymore. “I’d like to head thataway. I hear tell there’s People up yonder live in fine houses.”

“I’ve heard tell,” she said, “that the nearest house, up that way, is a dozen furlongs off, and several creeks to cross.”

“What of it?” he said. “Nobody never got nothing in this world without a little effort. It might take us a week or more to get there, but it’d be a good trip for us.”

“Us?” she said.

“Me ’n you,” he said mildly. He stopped. He entwined her sniffwhips almost playfully with his own. “Tish, honey, I wouldn’t even start in to think about going by myself, without you. I’d lief as stay here in Stay More if you wouldn’t go with me.” He studied both her eyes up close, and added, “You will go with me, won’t you?”

“Why, Archibald Tichborne, you haven’t even proposed to me, yet,” she said.

“What do you think I’m doing, right now?” he asked.

“I don’t hear you saying it,” she said.

“Don’t make me put it in words,” he protested. “I caint jist come right out and speak of marriage.”

“Why not?”

“Wal…it’s not…it’s not manly.”

“Manly?” She wondered if he meant manly in the manner of Lawrence Brace.

“Aw, heck, shoot,” he complained, and kicked at pebbles with one fore gitalong. “You know what I mean,” he protested. “It aint proper I should git down on my knees and perpose to ye, like folks used to do in the old-timey days.”

“How do folks do it nowadays?” she wondered aloud.

“They jist git hitched,” he said.

“And how do they do that?” she asked innocently.

“Wal, they find ’em a preacher, and he preforms the ceremony.”

“The only preacher’s your dad,” she pointed out.

“That’s right,” he said. “And yonder he is!”

Their stroll had taken them to the yard of Parthenon, right back to the point where the procession of the arrow had originated, but now, instead of the Woman sitting in Her rocker on the porch, the porch was dominated by Brother Tichborne, who crouched on its edge as if he owned it, and crouching beside him was Tish’s own mother! Keeping to the shadows behind them were three deacons of the church, Brothers Sizemore, Ledbetter, and Stapleton.

“Momma!” Tish squealed, and ran up the steps to greet her.

“Poppa!” Archy called, and ran right behind Tish, overtook her, and was the first to embrace his parent. “I didn’t know if you had drownded, or what!” Archy said to his father.

“I didn’t know if you had drowned, or what,” Tish said to her mother.

“I shore didn’t know where-at you might’ve drownded yoreself,” Josie said to her daughter. Then she asked, “Where’s all yore brothers and sisters?”

Tish hung her head. “Jubal and them are down at Holy House,” she reported. “Some of them. There aint but thirty-one left now, Momma. Our house got washed away in the flood, and we lost Julie, Japhet, Jenny, Jick, June, Jay, Jill, Jock, Jarvis, Jewel, Jayne, Junior…”

“Never mind,” Josie interrupted her, and announced solemnly, “There is worse news. We have all lost your father.”

“No!” Tish cried, and searched her mother’s face for the truth of this, but her mother lowered her eyes. Tish looked to the preacher, who was solemnly nodding.

“The Woman destroyed him,” Brother Tichborne announced. “She westered him, and threw him out with the garbage. I saw Her do it with my own eyes. Let us pray,” he automatically added and lowered his head in prayer but instantly raised it again. “Wait a minute. There aint nobody to pray to. Man is west, aint He?” He glanced at his son.

“They don’t know,” Archy said, and related to his father the recent events at Holy House. “Didn’t you’uns see the arrow? Didn’t you’uns see the Great White Mouse?” he asked his father, the deacons, and Josie.

“Arrow?” they said. “Mouse?” they said. Archy explained. Archy’s father appeared to be distressed at the news that Squire Hank was still east.

Archy concluded, “Dad, didn’t ye hear the bell ring? When the bell rung, it brought Human-people from all over the mountains down into Holy House, to get the Man and take Him to a House Pittle. It’s jist like I been tellin ye, Dad, there aint one Man but many of ’em. The world’s full of ’em!”

“I know, I know,” Brother Tichborne said solemnly. “And Women too. And Woman is the worst. Before He drunk Hisself silly and shot Hisself in His own gitalong, Man was great, Man was good, Man was our King. But Woman…” The preacher’s eyes shone with malice and there was a murderous rumble in his throat. “Woman is vile, and evil, and unmanly; She is not a Queen, but a Witch. I won’t never worship Her.”

“Then you aint a preacher no more?” Archy inquired of his father.

“I’m afraid not,” Chid said. “I’m fixin to stay right here in Parthenon, but I won’t never bend one knee in worship to Woman! I won’t never go back to Holy House! I am now the Boss Squire of Parthenon, and I don’t aim to let the Ingledews git it back! I will—”

The preacher ranted onward, but Tish could not listen. All she could think about was her westered father. She discovered that she was weeping.

When the ex-preacher paused to catch his breath, Archy interrupted, “Dad, if you aint a preacher no more, I don’t guess you can marry me and Tish. If you aint a preacher, who is? How are we gonna git married?”

Chapter thirty-three

Chid was stumped. Not by the question of his no longer being of the cloth, as it were, nor by the question of who else might still be a minister—Chid assumed that elsewhere in the world there were other ministers, albeit of different religions, Hindoo and such, none of them Crustian. In Stay More, Chid had been the only minister, the only direct spiritual descendant of Joshua Crust Himself. If he denied Man, wasn’t he denying Crust also? This was a tricky question, but it wasn’t the question that stumped Chid. The question that had Chid stumped was how his son could get married to Tish Dingletoon, who was, all unbeknownst to him, his sister, or at least his half-sister, offspring of that long-ago congress between Chid and Josie.

But what was wrong with that? Somehow, incest didn’t bother Chid the way it had when he was still a parson and servant of Man. Now that he didn’t have any evangelical responsibilities, it seemed to Chid that incest was just fine. Sisters and brothers, fathers and daughters, sex was sex, and a heap of fun. Thinking of it, he became impatient to enjoy his rights and privileges as Boss Squire of Parthenon, including his right to move into Josie’s boudoir and act out that sexual paradise he kept conjuring up in his itching fantasies. He sure would like to give Josie a marble. For that matter, since he was going to enjoy le droit du seigneur, or Jus primae noctis, among his other rights as lord of the manor, he wouldn’t mind giving a marble to Tish too, who was a whole lot younger and fresher and prettier than Josie. Chid licked his chops, appraising her.

And then he said to his son, “Well, Archy, I don’t reckon I’ve forgot how to do a weddin. After all, I’ve married everbody in Stay More that ever got married, for the past year or so. If you and her aim to jine in wedlock, I can give ye the bonds of matrimony right here and now. Only it won’t be holy matrimony. Might even be unholy matrimony, ye might say.”

“Whatever’s legal,” Archy said.

“Son, anything I do, from here on out, is legal,” Chid declared solemnly. “Okay. Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here tonight, not in the sight of Man, who is west or leastways gone off some’ers, nor in the sight of Woman, who—”

“Wait!” Tish said. “I haven’t even said I will.”

“That comes later,” Chid pointed out patiently. “First, I have to ask him. Do you, Archibald, take this gal, Tish, to be yore lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and health, till west do ye part?”

“I do,” Archy said.

“Okay. Now then, Tish, do you, Letitia, take this fine feller, Archy, to be yore lawful wedded husband, to love, honor, cherish and obey, in sickness and in health, till west do ye part?”

“No, I do not,” Tish said.

Chid wondered if his tailprongs needed cleaning. In all the weddings he had officiated—four hundred or more, he had lost count—not once had the bride ever said anything other than a modest “Ah do” at this point in the ceremony. He regarded Tish with curiosity. Possibly, he realized, she was feeling bereaved for her father, and was in mourning, and not really herself. “You don’t?” he said.

She nodded her head. But then she shook her head. She was confused, obviously, and he tried coaching her, “When I ask that question, you’re supposed to lower yore head and smile real sweet and say, ‘I do.’ Okay? Let’s try it again. Do you, Letitia, take this feller, Archibald, to—”

“No,” Tish said. “No. Stop. This aint a weddin!”

Chid looked to Josie for help, as if Josie might be able to put some sense into the poor girl’s head.

“Hon,” Josie said to her daughter, “watch yore manners. You’re embarrassin me.”

“Mother, I don’t want to get married tonight,” Tish protested. “How could we even have a weddin when we ought to be having Daddy’s funeral?”

“Yore father done had his funeralization a week ago,” Josie pointed out.

“But he wasn’t west then,” Tish said.

The girl had a point, Chid admitted, but it was academic, and besides, he wasn’t in the mood for preaching any more funerals. For that matter, he wasn’t in the mood for preaching the rest of this wedding. He didn’t have to have the girl say “I do.” As Boss Squire and Lord of the Manor, Chid had the right, among all his other droits, simply to decree the marriage, without the consent of either party. “Well, Dearly Beloved,” he announced, “since we aint gittin full cooperation in this matter, looks like I’ll jist have to git it all over with. I now pronounce you’uns husband and wife.” He added, to Archy, “You may kiss the bride.”

Archy tried to do his duty, but Tish pushed him away. “You can’t do this!” she protested. “I aint married! I don’t want to be ‘Tish Tichborne.’ It sounds like somebody clucking!”

The girl was probably in need of a good marbling, Chid decided, but it could wait until noctis. Meanwhile, the girl could probably use a good meal. Traditionally in the Ozarks the groom’s family is supposed to sponsor the enfare, or wedding feed, which occurs the night after the wedding night, but the bride’s family is responsible for the refreshments immediately following the wedding. Chid did some mental calculating, and determined that he was both the groom’s family and the bride’s family, since he was the bride’s actual father, so he ought to be the host for all the eats. “Let’s have the wedding feed, folks,” Chid announced, and led the way into the Parthenon, towards the cookroom.

But the problem was, the Woman, confound Her witchy bones, had skipped supper. Maybe because with all of those gin-and-tonics She was sipping all afternoon, She hadn’t had any appetite. Anyway, She hadn’t had a blessit thing to eat for supper, and the floor of the cookroom contained not the faintest trace of crust or crumb, and the countertops had nothing except the lethal drops of gin and the unfilling tonic water and lime. When would the Woman return? It didn’t appear that She was coming back tonight.

Chid’s sniffwhips told him that some where in Parthenon was a cache of crusts and crumbs, but whenever he tried to fine-tune the direction of the signal, it only seemed to come from the vicinity of that same mantelshelf he had fallen off of, when the machine had said “ECLAIR!” so rudely to him. Perhaps the machine ate crusts and crumbs, and had a supply of them, but Chid wasn’t about to climb up there again and mess around with it.

“Brother Sizemore,” he said to one of his deacons, “suppose ye scoot up yonder to the mantelshelf in the Woman’s sleepin room and see if ye caint find out where the smell of all them goodies is a-comin from?” Chid realized he would have to think of a better name for ole Leroy Sizemore than “Brother,” because, without religion, they weren’t brethering and sistering any more.

Leroy Sizemore climbed the mantel, with his sniffwhips flicking in every direction, and homed in on the source of the scent of the yum-yums. As he approached the Clock, it greeted him loudly with “NOUGAT!” and he duplicated exactly the plunge that Chid had taken the night before, off the shelf and down to the floor. After picking himself up, he sheepishly claimed, “Lost my balance,” and then he said, “Shore nuff, they’s a power of victuals up yonder inside thet machine.”

They waited until the machine had chimed its nine bongs, then Chid dispatched Brothers Ledbetter and Stapleton up to investigate, and they returned with their mouths and touchers full of exotic foodstuffs.

“Stop!” Tish yelled angrily. “That’s Sam’s blancmange!” And she tried to pull Brother Stapleton’s mouthful away from him. “This is Sam’s prize mammon chiffon!” she cried. Any roosterroach who encounters another insect attempting to interfere with his feeding will quickly swallow whatever he’s got in his mouth, and Brother Ledbetter nearly choked getting down his mouthful. “Oh no!” Tish cried. “You’ve eaten Sam’s brazo demercedes!”

Chid wondered what was bothering the girl, but before he could put his concern into words, his son beat him to it. “Tish!” exclaimed Archy. “How do you know so much about Sam’s stuff?!” The question seemed to stun the girl into realizing she had given away some secret; she hung her head and could not answer. “Have you been up to the Clock before?” Archy demanded of her. She continued silent, but feebly nodded her head. “When?!” he asked, but she would not speak. “Maybe,” he said, “you and me had better have us a little talk.” He took her by one of her gitalongs and said, “Excuse us, folks,” and led her away, into another room.

“So that,” Chid observed, staring upward, “is Squire Sam’s famous Clock?”

“Yeah, and it’s jist chock full o’ goodies!” Brother Stapleton declared.

“Well, we might as well start the weddin feed without the principals,” Chid declared. “Gene and Stan”—for so he had decided to begin calling Stapleton and Ledbetter—“you fellers scoot back up there and jist git all the food out and kick it off the mantelshelf, and we’ll stack it up right here.”

Soon the floor beneath the mantel had a sizeable little pile of assorted tidbits stacked up, and Chid was attempting to sample all of them, remembering, of course, his manners, and offering Josie a sample of each also.

“My, my,” Josie commented, eating. “Did ye ever? If this aint the. I swan. Fancy! Lord a mercy. Mmm-mmm. Hot diggety dog! O sweet papa.”

Chid was mildly concerned that the transfer of the arsenal of food from the Clock to the floor of the Woman’s sleeping room might increase the danger that the Woman, returning, would sweep it all away. But he dismissed this thought for several reasons, one, the Woman didn’t look as if She intended to return, not tonight, anyway; two, the wedding party would probably consume the whole pile before morning, anyhow; and three, he wasn’t a damn bit afraid of the Woman, Who didn’t scare him in the slightest. But just as a precaution, he said to Brother Sizemore, “Leroy, eat yore fill, and then git out thar on the porch and keep a eye out in case the Woman comes back.” Leroy gobbled his fill and did as he was told.

The others settled in for some serious eating, making determined inroads on the pile of wedding feeds. Archy and Tish had better get theirselfs back before too long, Chid chuckled, or else they wouldn’t get nary a bite! Chid was determined, for once in his life, to gluttonize. God, who had created him, had intended for him to be an eater. God had given the roosterroach a svelte, streamlined, trim body only to enable him to squeeze into tight places for purposes of escape. Chid had no further intention of running away from anything or anyone; he didn’t need to be skinny; he could afford, at last, to reach his full girth.

And Josie, his new consort, always somewhat pleasantly plump, could now afford to take on the dimensions of a Queen of the Colony. Just as the Queen of Termites, their remote cousins, was an obese giantess compared with her subjects, it was proper that Chid’s queen outweigh all the other females of Stay More. She didn’t have to look like a roly-poly, let alone the grotesquely bloated Termite Queen, but it would give Josie a certain stature in the eyes of other Stay Morons if her volume came to match that of the—yes, Chid permitted himself to use the word, the King. “King,” he said aloud, testing the sound of it.

“What did you say, hon?” Josie inquired.

Chid liked the little endearment she attached to the end of her question. They were going to get along together famously. “Mmmmph, um,” he replied, and passed her another piece of the mercedes, or whatever Tish had called it.

Still and all, Chid reflected, as his imagination allowed him to step deeper and deeper into the waters of monarchy, he was going to miss certain aspects of the ministry. As King, how would he ever find time to continue his hobby of local history and genealogy? No, he would have to give up interviewing little old ladies and learning the pedigrees of all the Stay More folks. He wouldn’t mind giving up the tedious preaching of funeralizations and weddings and baptisms and Wednesday-night prayer meetings, and he certainly wouldn’t miss attending the teas of the Ladies’ Aid Society and giving pep talks and sermonettes to the Crustian Young People’s Fellowship.

But he was going to miss—yes, he had to admit it—he was going to miss his special relationship with the Lord. Never mind that the Lord had turned out to be a nondeity: a drunken wastrel unworthy of simple love, let alone veneration. All his life Chid had devoted his time and his energy and his thoughts to the service of that Man; he had come to identify with that Man; he had believed that that Man had created him, Chid, if not in His own image, at least in the image of what He, Man, deemed the most intelligent and best-designed of all insects. For all His foibles and frailties and flaws, it was still sad to lose Him.

“DIVINITY!” cried the Clock, and Chid knew that this time, without question, the Clock or whatever Cosmic Force controlled it was speaking directly to him. He spat out his mouthful of blancmange.

“What’s the matter, hon?” Josie asked. “You find a fishbone in your food, tee hee?”

“Divinity,” said Chid, with much feeling.

“Naw, that aint none of that,” Josie observed. “Tish said it was ‘block mash,’ or somethin. That there is the divinity.” She reached out and grabbed some white stuff off the pile and offered it to him.

Chid rejected it. “Divinity,” he said again. “The Clock said ‘divinity’ to me. I have lost divinity.”

“Aw, he wasn’t speakin to you, personal,” Josie said. “He calls everbody that.”

But Chid prostrated himself and prayed. His prayer was interrupted by the return of his son. Archy did not have Tish with him, and he looked terrible. He was grumbling and mumbling a string of profanities and obscenities. Josie offered the white stuff to him, but he declined with a curse.

Chid was disturbed by his son’s indelicate language. “What’s eatin ye, boy?” he asked.

Archy raised his drooping head and regarded his father with large eyes that were stricken. “Tish aint a virgin,” he declared.

“How could ye tell?” Josie inquired.

“She told me. She confessed. Her and Squire Sam have done went and done it. Right up yonder in that Clock. Reckon you’ll have to unmarry us, Dad.”

“Divorce aint so simple as that, boy,” Chid said. “You have to take it to court, and get a Justice of the Peace to approve.”

“Who’s the Justice of the Peace?” Archy asked.

“That would be ole Doc Swain,” Chid announced.

Archy hung his head again, and muttered, “Wal, I might as well git on down to see him, then.”

“Where’s Tish?” Josie asked.

“I don’t keer,” Archy said. “I don’t honestly keer. She could be in Hell for all I keer.”

“Son, don’t take it so bad,” Chid attempted to comfort his boy. “Maybe it would make ye feel better to know that Tish was your half-sister, so it would’ve been incest anyhow.”

“What?!” Archy demanded.

“Aint that right, Josie?” Chid said.

“What?!” Josie demanded.

“Why, Josie, don’t ye remember?” Chid asked gently and fondly. “Don’t ye remember that night when me and you was out in the grass after my brush arbor meetin, last fall?”

“Huh?” Josie said, and seemed to try to recall. “Was that you? Whoever it was, I couldn’t see him because we was jined end to end, the way it’s supposed to be, you know. Was that you, Reverend?”

It was the first time anyone had called him “Reverend” ever since the late lamented Jack Dingletoon had employed the title, and Chid realized he missed it. “Why, of course it was, Josie, and I gave ye the marble that Tish come out of.”

“You couldn’t a done that, Reverend,” Josie replied, “because I had done met up with handsome Jack Dingletoon, and he had done sweet-talked me into having his marble, and, as anybody knows, once a lady has took a marble, she can’t take another’n.”

“What?!” Chid demanded.

This interesting discussion was interrupted by the abrupt appearance of Leroy Sizemore, the lookout, who was scampering into the room, calling out, “Chid! Chid! He’s coming!”

“He?” said Chid. “It was She I tole ye to look out for.”

Leroy was all out of breath and he had to insufflate noisily through all his spiracles before he could continue, “Naw, I don’t mean Him. I mean him.”

“Whom?” Chid demanded.

“Squire Hank! He’s comin this way, up the Roamin Road. He’s comin home!”

“Who’s with him?” Chid asked. “Is Sam with him?”

“Nossir, he’s alone.”

“Then what are we worryin about?” Chid demanded.

Chapter thirty-four

Sam went out for a stroll. It was after midnight, the air was clear and clean, the sky was black and spangled with a zillion zillion stars. I might be one of only two squires in Stay More, Sam reflected, but there are a zillion zillion other squires in Arkansas alone, and that’s just a little part of this world, which is only one of a zillion zillion worlds circling through the universe. Is it not enough to learn one’s own garden? Sam noticed that the heavy rains had nurtured the burgeoning of plants, and particularly weeds, the roosterroaches of the plant kingdom, eating up the spare, leftover patches of soil not taken by the cultivated plants. Dandelion, plantain, dock, horsenettle, toad-flax, sowthistle: their names, to Sam, suggested unwanted, creeping, striving, but thriving things, like roosterroaches, despised by man but useful, each with its purpose in the grand scheme. When he was a child, Sam used to climb the tall ragweed, a beautiful, large-bladed, spreading, rank, and succulent plant, as high as a dozen feet or more above the ground; he had felt an affinity for it even before he learned that it was a pest, like himself.

A drought was coming, Sam knew. The one thing certain about too much rainfall was that it would be followed by too little, or none. Meanwhile, the weeds took hold, and thrived, and perfumed the night air with their vegetable voices. Sam hoped he would live long enough to understand the peculiar communication of one plant speaking to another in the night, by fragrance alone. He needed no tailprongs to study the voices of plants. But thinking of tailprongs made him think of what he was deliberately avoiding the thought of, with all this meditation on stars and weeds: Tish, and her power to talk gently to him in signs. There were now only two persons he could “hear”: Hoimin with his thrumming boom, and Tish with her soft gestures. How could he hope to exercise his duties as squire of Stay More if he could not hear his townsfolk? Even with Hoimin’s help, with Tish’s too, he could not listen to his people…or minister to them, and he realized that now that Chid Tichborne was abandoning the faith, he would have to replace him, not as an espouser of the Crustian religion but as a pastor of sorts in a confused pastoral populace. If not a pastor, a kind of schoolmaster, perhaps….

His eye fell upon the distant little tower of the schoolhouse. Sam found himself stopped in the middle of Roamin Road, with two directions to turn, a choice to make: north toward Parthenon, to reclaim his Clock and his girlfriend, or south toward the schoolhouse, to reclaim his hearing. If he chose the latter, he would not return before dawn. And he had no guarantee that the expedition would succeed, little faith in the efficacy of the cure.

He could not decide. While he stood immobile in Roamin Road, turning first toward the north and gazing with longing at Parthenon’s roof, and then turning south and trying to make out the belfry of the ancient schoolhouse, another roosterroach approached him, and his sniffwhips told him it was his father. “Morsel, Dad,” he said.

His father said something he could not hear; he assumed it was simply a return of the greeting. But then his father began talking, and Sam could tell from the expressions on his father’s face and the gestures of his sniffwhips that he was not simply making idle conversation; he was talking seriously to his son. Futilely Sam strained his tailprongs to hear.

His father’s tone indicated that now his father was asking him a question, and Sam had to remind him, “Dad, you know I can’t hear very well.”

His father looked irritated, and then committed a mistake that many of normal hearing make toward the hearing-impaired: he began to pronounce each word slowly, tonelessly, in an artificial rhythm that made it impossible for Sam to re-create a coherent sentence from the sounds. “How,” he thought he heard his father say, “come” seemed to be the following word, “her” was pronounced imperfectly, “to” seemed to open up one end of an infinitive that went on infinitely, followed by a rising inflection of a question mark following “that.”

“I’m sorry, Dad, I just can’t tell what you’re saying,” Sam declared.

His father’s expression changed to disgust and then he attempted a crude sign language of his own: Squire Hank pointed at himself, he pointed at the road, he pointed in the direction of Parthenon, he made the motions of walking, and he said one word Sam could hear clearly: “home.”

Sam was able to determine that his father was declaring his intention of returning to Parthenon. The decision that Sam was having so much trouble making was being made for him: he would have to go with his father, to help his father overcome any resistance from Chid and the deacons. But Sam was forced also to confront his reluctance, not to tussle with Chid, but to find that Archy might have proposed to Tish. He realized that he did not want to see Tish until after she had successfully escaped from Archy, if she wanted to, and returned to him.

His father made one more unintelligible statement, then turned to go. “Dad, I’ll go with you,” Sam offered, and walked alongside. But his father stopped, shook his head, said something else, and gestured for Sam to return to Holy House. “No, Dad, you might have trouble with Chid, and you’ll need me,” Sam protested. His father again shook his head, stamped his gitalong, and pointed at Holy House, then left his son standing there as he moved at a rapid clip toward Parthenon.

Sam felt ashamed, both of his own indecisiveness and his inability to hear his father. He muttered, to his father’s disappearing back, “The next time you see me, I’ll hear you.”

Then he turned and marched resolutely in the direction of the schoolhouse.

The journey to the schoolhouse took the rest of the night. No roosterroach in recent memory had made the journey, and there was no scent of anyone’s spit anywhere along the trail…or along the way, for there was no trail. The footsteps of the Woman had mashed down the grass and weeds in places, but not enough to clear a path for Sam, who walked under and through the thick forests of grass. He encountered hostile crickets, and was required to box a few of them out of his way. He encountered a fearsome Santa Fe, and had to fly above it. He was caught in the net of a funnel-web spider, and had to fight and kill the spider before he could laboriously break loose from the sticky ropes. Then, within prongshot of the schoolhouse, if there had been anyone there to hear his cry, he was pounced upon by a tarantula, who surely would have crushed him in its jaws, had he not danced a wild tarantella, whirling beyond the creature’s grasp.

He was exhausted, and the first slice of dawn was served upon the distant ridge when he gained the steps of the schoolhouse and collapsed upon them to rest. He did not rest for long. Soon, he entered the building and found his way to the bell-rope, so recently burnished by Sharon’s hands and therefore still smelling strongly of Her. He climbed beyond Her scent.

The bell-rope was coarse and easy to cling to, but it seemed to rise forever. He had climbed only half-way, too far to fall but still too far to go, when he felt but could not hear, bouncing off his prongs and his very cutin, the shrill echo that is broadcast by the vicious vespertilionidus, the big brown bat, in search of its prey by echo-location. Sam saw the bat at the same instant the bat located Sam—not only with bouncing echoes but with vision—and prepared to strike. Sam’s reflexes were much too slow to avoid the flying mammal. The bat’s needle-sharp teeth were opening to strike, and the evil eyes and ears were both focused on him. Sam did not even have time for his whole life to flash through his memory.

At the instant Sam braced himself for his fatal impalement on the bat’s teeth, a great insect interceded! A broad-winged roosterroach, screaming a curse that drowned out the bat’s echo-signal, flew into the space between the bat’s teeth intended for Sam, and bit the bat on the lips! Then bit the bat again! And again! The bat’s wings were in disarray as it tried to stop its flight and reverse course, and the great-winged roosterroach kept attacking it. The turbulence of the thrashing wings almost blew Sam off the rope, to which he clung desperately. Now the vicious bat was totally frightened and cowed into a frantic retreat, but as it tried to fly away, the roosterroach kept striking and biting until the bat decamped. Then the roosterroach flew back to Sam, and hovered before him like a hummingbird.

The roosterroach was a stranger, to put it mildly; at least Sam had never seen him around Stay More before, or at least not in conscious “reality”; perhaps Sam had seen him in dreams or in stories. He was the most powerful-looking, not to say the handsomest roosterroach that Sam had ever seen, dreamt, or imagined, but the look he gave Sam was enough to freeze the ichor in his veins. He spoke. “You may proceed.” He motioned for Sam to continue his climb up the bell-rope. Sam was stunned to realize that he could hear these words clearly, although the stranger had not raised his voice. It took a moment before Sam could raise one gitalong above the other and continue his climb up the bell-rope, and the roosterroach flew along beside him, in complete defiance of the known fact that the flight of a roosterroach may never last more than a few seconds.

Sam was not convinced that he was a roosterroach, but Sam continued climbing until he reached the bell, and stood precariously on the iron arm where the rope terminated. The stranger alighted and confronted him. With his wings at rest, the stranger did not seem quite so large; still, he was much bigger than Sam.

“Who are you?” Sam asked.

The stranger laughed. It was the first laughter that Sam had been able to pick up on his weakened tailprongs in a long time; it was almost a tonic, to hear laughter again. Then the stranger introduced himself by saying, “Most of your kinsmen call me the Mockroach, but that is not my name.”

“You…you’re Satan?” Sam asked.

Again the laughter. “Old Scratch. Old Split-foot. Old Harry. I go by many names.”

“You don’t look like the Devil,” Sam observed.

Again, the hearty guffaws, which made Sam understand why the creature was called the Mockroach. Was the laughter mocking? “How does the Devil look?” the Mockroach asked.

“Well…diabolical,” Sam ventured. “Sinister. Fiendish. You could almost pass for a nice guy.”

The stranger scarcely stopped laughing. “I’d like to think that my intentions are benevolent, not evil.”

“You saved me,” Sam said.

“For a while there you were doing just fine, handling whatever came your way. But that bat was a different proposition.”

“Then you’ve been looking out for me?” Sam turned the observation into a question at the last moment. “You know everything that’s going on?”

The Mockroach bowed, and smiled, but said nothing.

“I can’t believe you’re real,” Sam declared. “But here you are, aren’t you? When I was little, I heard the wildest stories about you. I suppose they’re all true. I didn’t believe them, but nobody would believe me if I told them how you scared that bat away.” The Mockroach continued his almost mocking smile. “Can you tell me,” Sam requested, “if Man still lives?”

“Mankind still lives,” the Mockroach said.

“But Lawrence Brace…does He live?”

The Mockroach would not answer. Instead he said, “Behold the bell,” and gestured at it, the huge, bronze, black shape beside them, its shape comparable only to that of certain flowers Sam had seen in bloom, canterburies and lilies, but hard, impervious, and infinitely larger than any flower. “Read it,” the Mockroach commanded him.

Around one edge of the rim of the bell were letters cast into the metal, and Sam read these aloud: “Samuels Foundry Works, St. Louis.”

“Not those,” the Mockroach said. “Higher up.”

Higher on the rim was an inscription in Latin, which Sam could not even pronounce, let alone understand:

Nunquam aedepol temere tinnit tintinnabulum

Nisi quis illud tractat aut movet, mutum est

“Now what does that mean?” Sam asked.

“You’ll find out before this story is done.”

“Story? Is this only a story?”

“Everything that I become involved in,” said the Mockroach “is only a story. To hear them tell it.” He laughed once more, at his own joke this time, and then reminded Sam, “Don’t forget what you came up here for,” and at the instant Sam remembered, the Mockroach flew away as quickly as he had come.

For a long time, before he could continue on the errand that had brought him here, Sam pondered whether the Mockroach had been “real.” But certainly that bat had been real, and Sam would not be “real” himself any longer if the bat had eaten him.

The basic structure of the bell and its housing was much less complicated than that of his Clock: cast into the top of the bell was a large bolt which rested and balanced upon cradles in the mountings at the sides of the bell, from one of which sprang a metal lever attached to the end of the bell-rope, the pulling of which caused the bell to rock back and forth. Its motion was lubricated by grease in the cradles: this grease was very old, and dried, and caked, but the friction of its recent employment had thinned and solved the grease enough that Sam could daub a bit upon his touchers and taste it; it must have been rendered from hog lard; it was rancid and bitter. But he chewed off enough of it to smear along the lengths of his tailprongs. He anointed his prongs thoroughly. Nothing happened. He felt foolish. One of Doc’s old wives’ tales of a home remedy, that was more likely to dissolve his tailprongs than to treat them. Sam wondered how long he was supposed to wait, or whether the treatment required repeated applications at intervals; he became impatient and nervous. Daylight was in full upheaval now; somewhere roosters, toward whom he felt not even the affiliation of part of his generic name, were crowing an announcement he could not hear: WORK THE HERD OF LURKING DIRTY BIRDS!

The long ordeal of his journey to the schoolhouse and up the belfry, his encounter with the Mockroach, and now the uncertainty, took their toll, and he realized how many hours had passed since he had fed, but had nothing to eat now except vintage hog lard. He was hungry and tired and impatient and nervous and felt foolish.

At last he fell asleep, resting upon the framework of the bell housing, and a pigeon flew down and studied him and said to him, “You! You! You!” but Sam did not hear, nor wake. The pigeon decided he was not edible, and did not eat him…or perhaps the Mockroach was still protecting him.

He slept all day, and when he woke at evening, it was because he had been awakened by the music of katydids, and the melodies of cicadas, and, yes, the sweet strains of crickets, and, yes yes, the lovely tunes of frogs, and yes yes yes, even the far-distant aria of his very own Clock calling, “EGG”—the last song it ever sang.

Chapter thirty-five

Eight o’clock, Doc thinks idly, or even unconsciously, or conscious only of the fact that it is the time the Loafer’s Court usually begins to assemble on his porch, but now he has the porch all to himself. Has? “Ortent thet to be ‘had’?” he wonders aloud, trying to get the tense correct. No, he has the porch to himself, and it is the present. The eighth hour, and the night after the leaving of Man, and of Woman. Neither has returned, and the Woman has not been home to tend to Parthenon, to wind the Clock, which is an eight-day affair that was last wound nine days ago, and now, with the strike of “EGG,” has breathed its last.

There is no more time, in the counting sense, for Clocks or roosterroaches, and Doc Swain sits, or crouches, on the porch of his clinic, removed from time, aware that the Loafer’s Court is not convening at its usual hour—or, wait a minute, the days have gotten longer and the nights shorter, and it’s still daylight at eight o’clock, this night in early June, and the Loafer’s Court might or might not come along later. Fent Chism will not be there, because he’s west, and Squire Hank possibly won’t, because Squire Hank, the fool, has gone home to Parthenon and likely got hisself westered by the preacher and his gang.

Nobody but me and the spiders, Doc observes, and even though it is still daylight at eight o’clock, the spiders have gone to sleep for the night. This is the way things ought to be, he reflects. This is how Stay More should be all the time: no excitement, nothing happening, a full belly, and the cool of the evening (but it’s a mite too dry and don’t look like it aims to rain again for quite a while), and the old familiar sounds out there in the yard and the road and the grass a-stirrin themselves up into the Purple Symphony. Doc Swain could just sit here forever, and hardly even breathe. Maybe spit now and again, not to mark his space, nor because he’s chewing tobacco or anything, but just to spit for the pure cussed sake of spitting.

Now that the Clock has stopped, Time is resting. It isn’t the Woman’s fault, for Her failure to wind the Clock well before leaving, nor for Her failure to return and wind it again. In the stillness, Doc reflects that the Woman ought to have returned today, if not late last night, after seeing that the Man was safely in the House Pittle. Is She required to stay in the House Pittle too? Is She giving blood transfusions? Is the Man’s heart hooked up to Hers? Or, perish the thought, if Man has westered, or was already west to begin with before They took Him from Stay More, is the Woman simply busy handling the funeral arrangements, or the arrangements for the shipment of the body to whatever place Man had come from before? Doc cannot understand why the Woman is not returning. He can detect no sign of life over at Parthenon…although he knows that there is some roosterroach life there, Chid and his gang cavorting around and stirring up mischief.

One other possibility occurs to Doc, to explain Woman’s non-return: She is so fond of Man that She is staying by His side. Yeah, that’s probably it, Doc says to himself, and wishes there were others around, any of the old loafers, to say it to.

As if in response to his wish, one of the old loafers appears, but he is clearly more a patient than a loafer. Leroy Sizemore is missing two gitalongs, and dragging two others behind the two that will still work; one of his sniffwhips is cracked in two, with half dangling uselessly across his face. The remains of his wings are in tatters. He cannot even climb up to the porch where Doc is crouching, but halts out in the yard, barely able to raise his head and groan, “Doc, I’ve got some complaints.”

“It shore looks like it, Brother Sizemore,” Doc observes.

“I aint ‘Brother’ Sizemore no more,” Leroy declares. “I aint no brother nothin.” He takes three more steps in Doc’s direction, and collapses into the dust, lacking only the belly-up position to appear completely west.

Doc hobbles down off the porch and feels for Leroy’s pulse, which is still faintly beating. “What happened to ye, son?” Doc asks.

Without raising his head from the dust, Leroy narrates, “We was mobbed by Squire Hank. He come into Partheeny and druv us all out.”

“All seven of you?” Doc asks.

“They wasn’t but four of us,” Leroy protests, as if the reduced numbers made the story more likely. “Not countin Chid’s boy Archy, I mean. Just us three used-to-be deacons, and Chid. The other three used-to-be deacons is used-to-be, period. I reckon they westered in the flood. But just me and Stan and Gene, who aint deacons of nothin no more on account of Chid has done went and did away with religion, and we was about to resign from whatever fellowship Chid had in mind for us, when Squire Hank come back home to Partheeny and threw us all out.”

“Threw you out?” Doc asks.

“Yeah, sort of. He flang ole Gene right out the door, and picked up ole Stan and chunked him off the porch, then he lit into me, and I was stupid enough to try to fight back, and look what he done to me!”

“What did he do to Chid?” Doc asks.

“Lord knows,” Leroy says. “Naw, the Lord don’t know, does He? Wherever He is. Archy says some human beans come and took His body away. He aint in Holy House no more, is He?” Doc shakes his head, and Leroy asks, “Do you think I’ll easter long enough to see Holy House again, and my wife and kids?”

“You ort to be in the House Pittle,” Doc declares.

“Say what?”

“Let’s see if we caint git you inside, so’s ye can lay easy and rest a good bit,” Doc says, and helps Leroy struggle up the porch and into the infirmary. A canopy of cobwebs rises above Leroy’s bed, but the spiders have gone to sleep for the night, and they won’t bother Leroy anyhow. In fact, those ordinary house spiders will help, because the sticky strands of their webs are good for binding and dressing Leroy’s wounds.

Before the night is over, Doc has two other patients in his house pittle, ex-deacons Gene Stapleton and Stan Ledbetter. The former lapses into unconsciousness and possible coma, but the latter is able to talk enough to corroborate Leroy’s story of the eviction of the three of them from Parthenon by Squire Hank, and, although he had not witnessed it, the presumed banishment of Chid too.

“What about Archy and Tish?” Doc asks.

“Him and her is hitched,” Stan declares, “so the Squire tole ’em they might as well stay in Partheeny for their honeymoon.”

Doc does all he can for his patients, although it appears that Gene Stapleton is a goner. Doc wishes he had a nurse or two to help out. What’s a house pittle without a nurse? Doc doesn’t even have a receptionist. In his mind’s eye he sees the House Pittle where Lawrence Brace lies, attended and waited on by a receptionist, a secretary, a registered nurse, a practical nurse, a nurse’s aide, a respiratory therapist, a dietitian, and the health insurance officer, not to mention twelve different kinds of doctors, and an orderly. The human race is quite a bit advanced over the roosterroach race, Doc reflects, and allows himself a fleeting moment of self-pity.

But there isn’t all that much to be done in his house pittle, and he knows it. Once the missing gitalongs are swabbed and cleaned and wrapped in cobweb to regenerate (or, like Doc’s own unregenerate legs, have healthy stubs), and the patient is made comfortable and given an occasional temperature check and pulse check, there really isn’t much to do. Often Doc can return to his porch and watch the world go by, or what little of it happens to be going by on this dull, still, typical lazy night. A youth, Freddy Coe, is ambling along the way, and he pauses just long enough to wave his whips and say, “Morsel, Doc.”

“Morsel, Freddy,” Doc returns.

The boy stops, and twitches his whips. “You got some sick folks in thar, smells like?”

“Yeah, got me a regular house pittle,” Doc says, with no little pride. A thought occurs to him. “How’d you like a job, as orderly?”

“Job?” says Freddy. “Orderly?”

“It don’t take much,” Doc assures him. “I got three fellers banged up kind of bad, and I need somebody to help me look after ’em.”

“Maw says I’m right disorderly,” Freddy confesses.

“Wouldn’t ye like to be a doctor when you grow up?” Doc suggests. “I could train ye how.”

“Grow up?” Freddy says, offended. “Doc, I done reached my imago last week, didn’t ye notice?”

Sure enough, the boy is full grown, in imago, but it’s hard for Doc to realize that children like Freddy, who had been coming to Doc for treatment ever since Freddy was in his first instar, have a habit of getting mature and old. “All the more reason I can use ye,” Doc says.

“Wal, I reckon there are worse things to do,” Freddy allows, and climbs the steps.

And Freddy is right. There are worse things to do. Thus childless Doc Swain, without sons of his own to follow in his footsteps, acquires a protégé, pupil, and intern. His first night on the job, Freddy is green and slow to learn. He wonders if he should remove the cobwebs from the house pittle, and has to be instructed in their uses. He is told the names of the sleeping spiders but is not eager to be introduced to them when they wake. He is shown the store of edibles and given a feeding schedule for the three patients, or rather the two who can eat, but he is not able to resist consuming a share of the food himself. But the patients like him, and they ask him to run an errand for them: go to Holy House and summon their wives and children to come to the house pittle during visiting hours.

Freddy asks Doc, “What did ye say the name of this business is?”

“House pittle,” Doc tells him again for the third or fourth time.

“Okay. When is visiting hours?”

Doc hasn’t decided, and he tries to decide, but remembers that Time is resting, the present tense is with us, and we are stuck in the here and now, without any hours. “Oh, just whenever,” he tells Freddy, and Freddy receives permission to run his errand.

Almeda Sizemore comes from Holy House with her twenty-three children to visit Leroy, Claudine Ledbetter brings her seventeen children to visit Stan, but poor Gene Stapleton the goner is also a bachelor and has no visitors except his old mother, Hester. Even villains have mothers, not to mention wives and children. Did you ever think of that?

“What?” says Freddy.

“In any story,” Doc tells his pupil, “the bad guy, regardless of how bad, still has mothers and sweethearts and wifes just like all the rest of us, jist as much as the good guy, if not more so.”

Freddy mulls over this philosophy. With the house pittle full of visitors, he would just as soon sit out here on the porch with Doc, watching the world go by and mulling over philosophical thoughts. “You may be right,” he allows, to his teacher.

The world goes by. A stately, strong-looking roosterroach comes up the road, his head held high. “Morsel, Doc,” he says, and climbs the porch.

“MORSEL, SAM,” Doc says, raising his voice so much that Freddy jumps. To his student he explains, “Squire Sam is deef as a post.”

“What’s a post?” Freddy wants to know.

“A figure of speech,” Doc says. He asks of Squire Sam, “HOW’S EVERTHANG OVER AT HOLY HOUSE?”

“I haven’t been over there since last night,” Sam says. “I thought maybe you could tell me, but I see you’ve moved back to your clinic.”

“IT’S A HOUSE PITTLE NOW,” Doc declares, and attempts to pantomime the care and treatment and feeding of patients. Freddy joins in with the pantomime, especially the feeding part, but is overdoing the pantomime to the point of clowning. “He’s just deef, Freddy,” Doc cautions. “He aint stupid.” To Sam he invites, “COME LOOK WHO WE GOT.” He leads Sam into the house pittle and shows him the three villains.

“What happened to them?” Sam whispers,

Doc does not whisper. “YORE DAD WHOPPED THE SOUP OUTEN ’EM.”

“Oh,” Sam says, and manages to figure it all out, without any further yelling from Doc or pantomiming. The ladies are looking accusingly at Sam, as if he were the assailant who had mutilated their loved ones. Sam returns to the porch, and crouches. He stares in the direction of Parthenon.

“His sweetheart is up yonder at Partheeny,” Doc explains to Freddy. “Squire Sam don’t know it, but his sweetheart has done went and married another feller, Archy Tichborne, the preacher’s boy, and they’re up yonder honeymooning at that house.” Doc raises his voice and asks Sam, “YOU FIXIN TO GO HOME?” Sam doesn’t answer for a while. Doc says to Freddy, “I don’t know if I should warn him, or not.” Freddy shakes his head.

“Maybe not,” Sam says at length. “Maybe I ought to just go live in Holy House, and watch out for things in this corner of Stay More.”

“GOOD IDEE,” Doc says. “YORE CLOCK HAS DONE STOPPED ANYHOW.”

“Yes,” Sam says. “I know.” Doc wonders how he knows. Has someone told him? He can’t hear the Clock striking, or rather he can’t hear the Clock not striking, which is even harder to hear than the Clock striking. Sam adds, “We’re stuck in the present tense.”

“That’s what I figured,” Doc agrees. “But maybe not forever. Maybe the Man and the Woman will come back.” He realizes he isn’t raising his voice, that he has wasted his words. He starts to repeat himself, “THAT’S WHAT I?” but Sam interrupts.

“The present tense can’t be cured by starting the Clock again, or by restoring what has been lost. The present tense always creates a mood of expectancy. But maybe expectancy sometimes lasts forever.”

“Freddy, are you payin attention?” Doc asks of his protégé. “That’s pure-dee genuine philosophy, and Squire Sam is going to be our philosopher. We’ve had enough of preachers and religion. Now we’re going to have some philosophy!” Doc wishes he could volunteer to be a deacon in whatever kind of church Sam is going to establish.

“Is Man gonna come back?” Freddy inquires of the new philosopher.

“You’ll have to ask it louder,” Doc tells Freddy. “Speak up, so’s he can hear you.”

“Yes, Man will always come back,” Sam says without waiting for Freddy to repeat himself. “But that’s future tense.” Then, seeing that Doc looks astounded that he can hear, he adds, “Doc, you know, that grease from the mountings of a bell recently rung really works.”

INSTAR THE SIXTH:

The Convert

Chapter thirty-six

Though they do not exactly sleep together, Tish and Archy retire for the daylight hours in each other’s company to the inside of the vanity in Sharon’s bathroom, where they hide before the wrath of Squire Hank, who has banished the three deacons from Parthenon, has chased Chidiock Tichborne from one end of the house to the other without catching him, and has told Archy that he and his “bride” are welcome to spend the day but must vacate the premises at sunset. Tish has tried to protest to the Squire that she and Archy are not actually married; she has wanted to return to Holy House in search of Sam and her good friend Hoimin, but Squire Hank, in a foul mood, hasn’t listened to a word she has said. Now she and Archy, not before having a newlyweds’ quarrel that has virtually estranged them and left her in copious tears, are attempting to sleep inside this vanity, and Archy at least has been able to fall into fitful slumber. Archy has declared his intention to get them unmarried as soon as he can present the case to the Justice of the Peace, who is Doc Swain. As soon as he gets them unmarried, Archy intends to strike out alone for Mount Staymore or the world beyond. It has been his fondest wish to take Tish with him, but he does not want a nonvirgin even as a traveling companion. Now he feels no love for her. “I wouldn’t give ye a marble if you begged for it!” he has declared.

Did she err in telling him of her brief affair with Squire Sam? He had demanded the whole truth; she had had no choice, but stopped short of telling him she had borne an easteregg. She had had to explain how she knew the names of all the collectibles in Sam’s food treasury. Archy had already guessed that there was something going on between Sam and Tish, what with the way Sam had saved her life by spoiling Man’s aim of a bullet at her, the consequences of which had created all this turmoil in Stay More. Archy had even become friends with Sam during the nights they attempted to do something for Man, and, while Sam had told Archy nothing about his feelings for Tish, Archy guessed that they were “sweethearts.” Tish simply had to confess to what Archy already suspected, and Tish had never told a lie in her life.

She can understand Archy’s bitterness and it hurts her, for she really likes Archy. If Sam had not come into her life, she would have been thrilled at the prospect of being married to Archy. Any girl in Stay More would give her right sniffwhip to be Archy’s wife. Compared with Sam, Archy is so matter-of-fact, down to earth, commonsensical, not to mention much more handsome. Sam’s not bad-looking at all, but he just doesn’t have Archy’s big eyes and firm mandibles and sleek wings. And somehow Tish feels much more comfortable with Archy. Sam, even apart from his deafness, seems somehow remote, unnatural, not of this world. He is not “just folks,” the way Archy is. He is too different, even though it is unlikely that he will ever want to live again in that peculiar apartment inside the Clock, now that the Clock has stopped.

Will Sharon ever come home and wind the Clock? What would life be like for Tish if she stayed here in Parthenon when Sharon returns? Even if Sharon returns, and Tish doubts it as much as Archy does, Tish is not certain she would want to live with Sam in Parthenon (assuming, of course, he ever asked her to). She would get lonesome for the folks of Carlott and Holy House, for her brothers and sisters, her mother and f—. Tish thinks again of her westered father, and sheds another tear.

Unable to sleep, she climbs to the top of the vanity and explores it, half-blinded by daylight and stumbling among the paraphernalia that Woman uses to prettify Herself, although Tish cannot at first determine the function of each of the items: the brush and the comb are obviously for the hair, but what are all the plastic rollers for? And the board with thousands of grains of sand stuck to it? Is that for cleaning the teeth? The various bottles and jars, tubes and cylinders, vials and compacts intrigue her, and, although she can read, she can only guess at their contents and uses.

She is not alone. She turns and sees Archy approaching her, stiffly, his gitalongs moving strangely along the countertop, and, more strangely, her sniffwhips detect the unmistakable odor of his slumberscent. He is asleep, yet walking! His eyes are vacant. As he moves toward her, he murmurs in sad, despairing tones, “West! west! west!”

She is so startled she cannot speak, but she is not afraid of him. She waits. He comes up to her, and lifts her up in his strong touchers with the aid of his fore-gitalongs. He carries her.

“My wife—west, west!” he says.

He carries her toward the edge of the countertop. Does he intend to throw her off? Or, in his dream, does he imagine he can fly away with her? Is the “west” he keeps repeating the west of his intended directional destination, or is it the west of nonexistence? What is he doing with her? At the edge of the countertop he stops, holds her even higher for a moment above his head, and she has a panoramic view down below of an oval pond of water enclosed in a glistening white porcelain bowl elevated above the floor, a pool of crystal water framed in its wooden shore.

She tries to speak, but he silences her with a kiss, a profound, passionate, and yet anguished kiss. Then he heaves her out into the air! And she drifts down inexorably toward the waiting waters. She beats her nonexistent wings futilely and kicks with her gitalongs and manages to cry, “Oh, Archy, how could you?” but the last syllable and the question mark are strangled in the water.

Tish does not panic and drown. She treads water with her gitalongs and keeps her sniffwhips dry. The shore is too high, but the wall of the porcelain bowl, aglint in the afternoon sunlight, is not far, and she swims slowly toward it, reaches it, and seeks purchase with the tips of her gitalongs, but the wall is smooth and impervious; she cannot grip anywhere. She scrambles, she claws, she lunges and crawls, but cannot clutch hold of the wall. It is the same all the way around, an unbroken bank of mockingly white and pure enamel. “Archy!” she calls upward, hoping to wake him and summon his aid, although she cannot imagine what aid he might give her. But he has disappeared, he has gone back to wherever he had begun his dream, to finish it, or he has wandered sleepwalking into some other part of Parthenon.

She floats. She does not tire, yet, and she keeps as calm as she can, telling herself that the merest thought of despair might weaken her or unsettle her, and let her drown. Time passes, or, since time has ceased to exist, and it is only the present tense, the tense presence remains definite, suspended and endless. Daylight passes. Tish feels hunger and knows that it’s breakfasttime. If the Clock still worked, it would say “EGG,” but the Clock is west. Tish thinks of Egg, she thinks of Easteregg, she wonders how her sixteen babies are coming along, growing steadily in their capsule in the place where she and Hoimin hid it. Another long month or so will pass before the capsule hatches, cracks, and lets the sixteen out into this cruel world. Will any of them find their way back to Stay More and will anyone in Stay More tell them of their mother, drowned and westered in a—, in a—? Tish has been in this water so long, she has gradually fathomed its purpose: it is not a reservoir of drinking water, or washing water, but a water which has been forced from some subterranean source like a spring and will return to a subterranean location to carry away the wastes of Woman. It is therefore a water potty. Will anyone tell those sixteen poor babes that their poor mother westered in a water potty?

When will Sharon return to find a black bug, perhaps still alive, floating in Her water potty, and cause the water to flush the bug away? For that seems to be Tish’s only fate. Thinking of fate, she remembers her fairy godmother, the Fate-Thing, and wonders why that kind protectress wants to wester her in this fashion. Perhaps, Tish reflects as night comes on, the Fate-Thing knows that everyone must wester eventually, and the Fate-Thing has chosen for Tish this dramatic, exceptional, extraordinary west.

From time to time, or, since there is no Time but only a sense of the necessity of repetition, Tish calls out, “HELP!” She cannot know that her father, presumed west himself, is also occasionally, between bites of lime peel and egg shell, summoning the strength to holler, “HELP!” In this same household, their cries go unheard, the father’s because his is encased and muffled by thick plastic bagging, the daughter’s because hers is confined within the solid walls of the porcelain bowl, which indeed serves as a megaphone directing the cries of “HELP” upward, if only there were someone to hear her….

There is someone to hear her. He appears, perched like a guardian angel on the edge of the round wooden seat, peering down at her. It is not Archy. Tish tries to sign “Help me,” with gestures, but she cannot work her gestures in the water. She tries to sniffwhipspell “H-E-L-P,” but her sniffwhips are too wet to spell. She can only moan, in exasperation and relief, “Oh, Sam!”

“Tish,” he says. “Mrs. Tish Tichborne. You know, it sounds like someone clucking.”

“I KNOW! I KNOW!” she yells, hoping he can hear her. “BUT I’M NOT! HONEST I’M NOT!” She sobs, and having used up the strength of her voice, can only sigh, “If you could get me out of here, I could explain it to you.” She talks to herself.

“Explain it to me now,” he says, as if he has heard her.

“You can’t hear me,” she declares, “and I’m too tired to holler or try to spell with my sniffwhips.”

“I can hear you,” he declares.

“You can?”

“Yes, Doc prescribed something for my prongs which apparently works. I can hear whatever you have to say.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” she exclaims. “So listen careful.” And she begins to talk, as fast as she can. She relates to Sam the whole story of her recent dealings with Archy, and of sleepwalking Archy’s unconscious attempt to wester her by throwing her into the water potty. She is careful to explain that the wedding took place without her consent or active participation, that the marriage was practically decreed by the groom’s father. She is also careful to express her opinion that Archy did not deliberately intend to wester her, but was only acting unconsciously out of some deep-seated frustration or disappointment. She concludes the entire story by remarking, “I don’t really think we’re married. Do you?”

“Not if the officiant was a defrocked Frockroach, as it were,” Sam says. “Chid had no authority to perform the marriage.” Sam relates to Tish how his father, Squire Hank, is at this moment looking all over Stay More for Chid. Chid dare not return to Holy House, for the roosterroaches there feel that Chid has abandoned them, and they are in a mood to wester him if he ever shows up there again. “But as for Archy…”

“I think Archy has gone west,” Tish declares. “I mean westward west, I mean thataway.” She attempts to gesture. “In any case, I don’t care if I never see him again.”

And now, having said this, Tish is surprised to discover that Squire Gregor Samsa Ingledew is proposing to her. “Tish, will you marry me?” he has asked. Has she heard him correctly?

How can he propose to her in such an unromantic place as a toilet? “You’d have to get me out of here,” she replies. “And you can’t.”

“I’ll get you out of there,” he says, and for a moment he disappears from the wooden rim of the seat, but reappears beneath the seat, on the edge of the porcelain bowl, which he is scratching at with his gitalongs.

“Don’t try to climb down!” she cautions him. “You’ll get stuck yourself, and we’ll both drown.”

“Then I’ll drown with you, because I don’t want to live without you,” he says. “Listen. I’m going to try something. I don’t know if it will work, but we can try. I’m going to fly down there, see, and then you catch hold of my rear gitalongs, and I’ll fly you out of there!”

“But you can’t fly that long!” she protests. “No roosterroach has ever flown for more than three full seconds.”

“Time has stopped,” he says. “There are no seconds. But assuming there are: one second down, one second for you to grab hold, one second to get you out. Okay? Let’s try it. Here goes!”

And before she can further protest, dear Sam springs off the edge of the bowl, his wings fluttering frantically in the clumsy way that roosterroaches have of using their useless wings on rare occasions, and he comes steadily through the air down to her, until he yells, “Grab hold!” and she bites into one of his rear gitalongs, firmly enough to hang on but not so tight as to bite off his gitalong, and then she can actually hear the beat of his wings! He thrashes his wings, and she can feel herself being lifted, slowly, out of the water! But so slowly! Surely three seconds have passed already. He rises upward, beating his wings until it would seem his heart would give out, and she herself senses that the three seconds have expired. Time is up, Time is out, Time is over, and if she continues clinging to him she will wester him. And just in the instant before his heart can fail, she releases her bite on his gitalong, and drops, falls, back down into the water, and he has strength only to give his wings one last solid beat that lands him back on the edge of the wooden seat.

He collapses there. She collapses into the water, shaken and with only enough of her wits remaining to remember to keep herself afloat. She can hear Sam panting and wheezing, and it seems to take forever for him to regain his voice and ask her, “Why did you let go?”

“If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have made it,” she says. “You know that.”

He seems to know that. “Well, let’s try it again,” he suggests.

“No,” she says firmly. “You’ve already used up your strength. You couldn’t possibly succeed on the second try.”

“Well,” he says, “I suppose I can just sit here and try to keep Sharon from flushing you away whenever She comes back.”

It takes Tish a while to realize that Sam is attempting to make a kind of half-serious joke. She does not laugh. “When do you think She’ll be coming back?” she asks.

“The question is not when but if,” Sam says. “There is some doubt that She will be coming back at all. But I for one know that She will, eventually.”

“And when She does, She’ll flush me.”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Sam, Sam, listen, in case She flushes me, I want to tell you where my easteregg is hidden—our easteregg, because it’s yours too—I want you to find it, and make sure our babies get back home to Stay More, and then someday you can tell them about me.” The pathos of this declaration makes Tish begin to cry.

“Hoimin’s already told me how to find it,” Sam says. “We’ll find it. You and I will find it, and when our babies hatch we’ll give a party.”

The prospect of that almost comforts Tish; she snivels and tries to summon up the Fate-Thing to keep her company during the coming hours.

Chapter thirty-seven

Sam will always remember the toilet seat as the place where he got religion. It is of golden oak, with chrome hinges attaching it to the back of the bowl, and he has spent hours and hours on it, either perched at the edge, talking with Tish, or impatiently, anxiously, nervously walking around it, around and around and around it, as on a racetrack. He must keep talking to Tish, so she won’t fall asleep, because if she falls asleep she will drown.

“Funny,” she has remarked to him, once, trying to sound light, “all that time my house was floating down the creek, and so many of my brothers and sisters were drowning, it never occurred to me that I might ever wester by water. And now…”

He is desperate with worry, and it is precisely such states which drive some folks into religion, although this is not to say that there aren’t many deeply and truly religious persons who have never been worried, or frantic, or feeling so utterly helpless. Not once does it ever dawn on Sam to pray—not to Man, certainly, or to Woman, or even to God, although he is well aware of the presumed fact of God’s existence, a fact which all generations of Ingledews have steadfastly denied. And Sam is not about to become religious in the sense of accepting that fact, let alone praying to God. No, Sam is about to become religious in the sense of believing that there is not one Man, or one Woman, but many of Them, and They have not perished from this earth, and never will, and if we continue to worship Them, and honor Them, and love Them, They have the power to keep all of us staying more, forever and ever, amen. Call this religion polytheism or myriotheism; call it secular humanism, even; Sam is about to become a passionate convert to it, and eventually a preacher of it, and he will always remember (and relate to his audiences) that his conversion took place on the seat of a toilet wherein his true love floated in peril of drowning or being flushed away.

To pass the time while they wait for an outcome unknown, a fate unimagined, Sam even tells Tish of his conversion, his new belief, and his plan to preach it. Tish laughs, perhaps at the thought of him preaching. It is good, at least, to hear her laughing.

But now his tailprongs pick up a sound he has not heard since he first began to lose his hearing: the engine of an automobile. He runs to the front porch and sees a car driving into the yard. From the passenger seat, Sharon emerges, and, before closing Her door, speaks at length with the Driver, Her voice too distant for Sam to hear. Nor can he see the Driver. Sharon closes the door. The automobile leaves. Sharon turns and approaches Her house. She begins to climb the steps. Squire Sam rushes back into Her bedroom, telling himself to keep calm, at all costs. Do not panic, he says to himself, more than once. But think, he says to himself. Think. Think! There must be some way to keep the Woman out of Her bathroom, or keep Her from flushing the toilet.

The Woman enters Her bedroom. She flings Herself across Her bed, and simply lies there, face down. Sam from this low perspective cannot see Her face. Are Her eyes closed? He waves his sniffwhips for a long time, trying to detect Her slumberscent. There is none. Is the Woman silently crying? Has Man westered, after all? Is Sharon alone in this world? For the longest time, or, since Time has stopped and the Clock sits west and silent on its mantelshelf, there is no movement or sound from the Woman.

Sam begins climbing the coverlet. He will not let Her see him, but he wants to get as close as possible to Her. He wants to see Her beautiful face, to tell if he can if She is grieving, if She is mourning the west of Man. Yes, Her eyes are open, but She looks not at him or at anything but off toward the general direction of the mantel, not looking at it but just toward it. If there is grief or even sadness in Her face, Sam cannot tell. She looks simply tired, very tired. “Sleep,” he says to Her. “Why don’t you sleep?”

If only She would fall asleep, he could have a grace period in which to make one last effort to save Tish. Sam has decided that if he cannot prevent Tish from being flushed away, he will go with her. Even if it is to westwardness and oblivion in a subterranean septic tank, he will join her on that last journey. If there is any chance in this world that the pipe leads not to an enclosed septic tank but to a drain field or even to the creek, there is always the chance that Tish could survive, if he is with her, to help her and guide her. But his many walks and hikes in the vicinity of Parthenon have never shown him any hole which could be the outlet of the drain, so probably its outlet is within the tank. Probably he and Tish both would drown before they reached the tank. But whatever her destiny, it shall be his too.

The Woman lies prone, staring vacantly into space for a very long time. If She remains much longer, inevitably She will have to get up and go use Her bathroom. As he is thinking this thought, Sharon moves. She turns over, raises Her upper body, and sits up. But She does not stand. Sitting on the edge of the bed, She reaches for the telephone, holds it to Her ear and listens for a long moment, then pokes Her finger into the dial and turns the dial, then again, several times.

“Gran,” Sharon says, “I’m home. Yes. Vernon drove to the airport and got me. Are you all right? How long have I been gone? I would have called you from Little Rock, but Vernon said he talked to you. That’s right. Yes. Um-hmm. Yes. Unt-uh. No, he didn’t. That was before. Probably Friday afternoon, they said. I hope. What day is this? It is? Gosh, Gran, are you sure? It seems like time has stopped. Just completely stopped. I’ll look. Yes, it says eight o’clock, isn’t that ridiculous? I’ll wind it. I thought something was funny, because it hasn’t bonged once since I got home. I don’t know. Are you sure you don’t want me to…. Well, thanks, yes, I guess. Of course I paid all his expenses, the doctors’ bills too, and all. The least I could do. Well, I’ll let you know. Thanks again. Goodnight, Gran. Sleep tight.”

Sharon puts the phone back where it was. Now She stands. Sam jumps off the bed and heads for the bathroom, intending to place his own person between Her and the bathroom door. But She does not move to the bathroom. She moves to the mantel. She opens the Clock face, lifts the key, inserts it into the Clock, and begins to wind. Sam can hear the old familiar scritches and grindings of the Clock’s internal vitals. Sharon continues to wind. Soon the Clock will be east again. Soon the Clock will run. Soon Time will…

Chapter thirty-eight

…Shift entirely into the future tense, because Sharon winds the Clock too tightly, too far, too easterly, too much: the mainspring will go haywire, the secondary gear will slip off the tertiary gear, something will snap, and the Clock will begin to keep exceptional Time, Time too fast and all future: it will be Time which will not have happened yet but will always stand in possibility of happening.

Sharon will exclaim, most unladylike, “Oh, shit.” Then she will sigh and say, “Oh well, I’ll just get a new one, an electric one that doesn’t have to be wound. Maybe I’ll just get a clock-radio for the bedside.”

Then, at last, she will head for the bathroom. She will see a cockroach standing in her path to the bathroom. She will gasp, and then she will stamp her foot, but the cockroach will just stand there, as if he is not afraid of her, as if he’s trying to block her way to the bathroom.

“Out of my way, Alfonse,” she will say, “or whatever your name is.”

Will it be just her weariness that will make her think the cockroach will be speaking in reply to her? Will she just fancy the bug will be trying to talk to her?

Since he will not budge, she will step over him, resisting an impulse to step onto him, and in her bathroom she will discover another cockroach floating in the toilet bowl, alive and kicking. “You little buggers really think you can take over my house while I’m gone?” she will say. “What are you trying to do?” She will stare down at the bug in the water, who will be staring back at her. She will impulsively reach for the handle which flushes the toilet. The first cockroach, the one she will have called Alfonse, will fly into the air, and hover above her hand without quite touching it, and she will draw back her hand, exclaiming, “Jesus! I didn’t know cockroaches could fly!” She will watch Alfonse fly down and land in the water of the bowl where the other roach will be. Now there will be two roaches in her toilet bowl.

“Are y’all trying to commit suicide, or some-thing?” she will ask them. “Or is this just your idea of a skinny-dip, huh, Gaston?” She will have decided to address the other one as Gaston, the lesser of the two; it has no wings like Alfonse. But then she will say, “Oh, I get it. You are a female, huh, Gaston? Then I’ll call you…I’ll call you Letitia, which means happiness.” Sharon will smile to herself, and look at herself in the vanity mirror, the dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep, the unkempt hair. She will speak to her image, “I am being so silly.”

For the briefest instant, she will reach once again for the handle that makes the water swirl and lower and disappear in the bottom of the bowl of the toilet. But she will not. Instead, she will wad up a handful of toilet paper, and she will hold the wad down close to the water, close enough to touch the bugs or be touched by them, and she will suggest to them, “All right, Alfonse and Letitia, climb aboard.” The two cockroaches will not; they will seem to be conferring with each other about the meaning of her gesture; they will seem to be trying to back away from the offered wad of tissue.

But finally the one she will be calling Alfonse will actually nudge Letitia, pushing her toward the wad, and the one Sharon will be calling Letitia will climb onto the wad of tissue, and Sharon will lift the wad out and hold it close to the floor and give it a shake, and Letitia will be on the floor. Then Sharon will return the wad to the bowl and hold it close to the other one and she will say, “And now, Alfonse, you climb on too.” And he will. And then she will set him down on the floor beside Letitia.

The two bugs will seem reluctant to decamp. They will almost seem to be having a discussion on whether or not to decamp.

But then they will walk together, side by side, out through the door, and Sharon will be alone.

Before going to bed, she will set out a saucer with some milk in it, and a cookie on the edge of it. She will study the saucer for a while, as if she will be waiting to see if her cockroaches will come to it. They will not.

In the morning, she will look to see if any of the milk will be gone. It will not be. Nor will the cookie appear to have been sampled. She will throw the milk into the sink, and untie the garbage bag to put the cookie into the garbage. When she will untie the garbage bag, a cockroach will leap out of it, startling her. “Alfonse?!” she will cry. But there will have been no way the cockroach she will have called Alfonse will have been able to get inside that tied garbage bag.

The cockroach liberated from the garbage bag will make a beeline for the front door, and the porch, and she will follow, watching the cockroach scamper down from the porch and off in the direction of Larry’s house. The same direction that the whole horde of cockroaches had seemed to point, that evening, oh so many evenings ago.

She will be tempted to follow, for she will intend to be going that way, anyway, soon. But first she will have her breakfast, and an extra cup of coffee, to dispel the remnant of the possibility that she will be imagining things.

Still, she will be edgy and nervous when she will at length walk to Larry’s house, and the sight of his car parked behind the house will cause her to stumble and grab a tree for support, until she will remember that the car will never have been moved. Or will it have?

It will be a beautiful morning in Stay More, a gorgeous morning, one of those sunny springtime (or early summer) days, more rare than June is rare, and she will be almost reluctant to go indoors. She will want to stay out here in the sunshine, breathing the nice air. It will be unpleasant inside the house.

It will be unpleasant inside the house: it will be unpleasant on the porch, as she will climb it. As she will climb the steps, she will see a strange little thing: right in the way, at the top of the steps, stuck into the wooden porch floor, there will be a cockroach impaled upon a straight pin. It will be a fat cockroach, much fatter than her Alfonse. The way the pin is stuck through the roach’s body and into the floor will remind her of the bug collection her brother Vernon kept inside a cigar box. But Vernon will not have done this. Larry could not have done it…unless…

The cockroach, fat and stupid-looking, will somehow arouse a fleeting pity in Sharon, pity that she will not have felt if it will not have been for the pity she will have taken on Alfonse and Letitia, sparing them. This dead, impaled cockroach, over which she will step as she will have stepped over Alfonse the day before, will cause her to recite aloud some old snatch of an elegy she has read in school: “And now I live, and now my life is done.”

Sharon will not know why she will be saying that aloud, but, thinking of poetry, she will be not totally unprepared for what she will find inside the house, in Larry’s study, in his typewriter: a poem. She will have known, of course, that he sometimes attempted poetry when he wasn’t analyzing it, and she will assume, even before reading it, that this will be his own creation. His black IBM Selectric will still be running, still be on. She will reach down to feel how warm it will be, and in doing so she will cause to fly up an enormous cockroach. This will not be, cannot be, Alfonse, nor the one she liberated from the garbage bag, nor any other cockroach she will ever have seen; it will be too large, and although she will have discovered, just yesterday, that cockroaches can fly, this one will be flying all over the place, like a bird, like a bat, and she will be much more afraid of it than of any insect she has ever seen. But it will at length fly through the door and away, and she will never see it again.

She will have one more fright before she can read the poem. She will see a mouse. If it will have been a black mouse, or a gray mouse, it will have made her cry out and jump, but it will be a white mouse, and it will not be totally a stranger, because it will be the same mouse who led the horde of cockroaches in their directive arrow and message.

The white mouse will be on the floor near Larry’s desk, and it will be looking at her, twitching its whiskers and bobbing its nose. And then it too, like the oversize roach, will decamp.

Sharon will return her glance to the poem, and read its title and begin reading it.

We will see her standing there, at Larry’s desk, reading. It will be almost like a painting by Vermeer. The lovely lady, the wonderful morning sunlight which seems to caress her face and her hands and the white, white sheet. She will read. She will smile.

And when the reading will be done, she will raise her eyes from the poem in the typewriter, and she will address the house: “Larry?”

IMAGO:

The Mockroach’s Song

If roach were man and man were roach,

the subjects both would brood and broach

are love, dependency, survival.

We trust you in your rearrival

to read this fable in reverse

and keep the world from getting worse.

We are the scurry of your ugly

despisèd motives—humble, bugly,

but not so bad we should be kaput.

You shot yourself in your own foot,

went nearly west. We kept you easter.

Before you blast off your own keister,

wise up, stay more, re-ken your kin.

We know you out, we know you in.

We drink your nectar, eat your shit.

We haven’t had enough of it.

You think you pine with love and grief?

Yet think how pitiful and brief

we are, your small, unloved familiars:

our hearts will bridge the Void. Will yours?

Some say your world will end in fire

and ours survive. Not so. No choir

can hymn or hum inhumanly.

Thou needest us. We needest Thee.

Grow up, earn Love, like us conceive

a God to pray to and believe.

Ring out bomb-doom and ring us true.

You live, we are, you die, we do.

Ding-dong the dang dumb don’ts to soundless hell.

In purple sympathy we twain shall dwell.

For Llewellyn Howland III

Once a great editor; still a great friend

The novelist wishes to thank Bob Razer, librarian, his perennial advocate among Arkansas readers, who once upon a time invited the novelist to serve as a judge for the essay contest of the Pulaski County Historical Association, one entry to which was a biography of a courageous Arkansas woman who sought to rescue an Ozarks mountaineer condemned to the electric chair. The author of that entry (which alas did not win the contest despite the novelist’s admiration for it) was Marcia Camp, who further assisted him by furnishing the original manuscript of that Arkansas woman’s memoirs, and by suggesting that he should convert the woman from a novelist, which she was, into an artist, which she is herein.

Some of the people in this work of fiction are as “real” as the places. The governor of Arkansas during 1913–1917 was George Washington Hays, who may actually have been as bad or as good as he seems to appear here, and he was replaced in 1917 by Charles Hillman Brough, who was better. The state penitentiary at Little Rock was a place called The Walls, and conditions there were just as terrible as the novelist has attempted to depict them here.

Steve Chism offered the novelist access to numerous materials that enabled him to stick close enough to the facts to give this story the semblance of life and truth. And copy editor Douglas Woodyard took the novelist’s words and gave them syntax, style, and sense.

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Far off

The mind, that ocean where each kind

Does straight its own resemblance find;

Yet it creates, transcending these,

Far other worlds, and other seas,

Annihilating all that’s made

To a green thought in a green shade.

—Andrew Marvell “The Garden,” stanza 6

Constable said that the superiority of the green he uses for his landscapes derives from the fact that it is composed of a multitude of different greens. What causes the lack of intensity and of life in verdure as it is painted by the common run of landscapists is that they ordinarily do it with a uniform tint. What he said about the green of the meadows can be applied to all the other shades.

—Eugène Delacroix Journals

On

At sundown, when they led him to the chair, Nail Chism began to understand the meaning of the name of his hometown, Stay More. Down through the years, citizens have theorized about the origin of the name, but Nail Chism had always taken it for granted: it was just a name, like you call a tree a pine: you don’t wonder if the tree’s name is a behest too, telling you to yearn or to long or something. But now it suddenly dawned on Nail that the name of the village of his birth and rearing might contain some kind of message, urging him not to go to the chair but to hang around awhile and see what the world was a-coming to.

How could he do that, in the last few yards of walking space left to him? Now they were trying to budge open the rusty iron door that led into Old Sparky’s room. The hinges needed grease, and the thing hadn’t been opened since they had cooked that colored boy, Skip, on Halloween. Fat Gabe spoke: “Chism, lean your shoulder into that. That’s the ticket, here she goes.” The iron door creaked open. The guests had already come into Old Sparky’s room from their designated door.

But there weren’t twelve of them. Nail Chism stopped thinking about the meaning of the name Stay More just long enough to squint into the dark room and take a head count. There weren’t but nine, including Fat Gabe and Short Leg, his guards, and Bobo, at the switch. The law said you were required to have twelve witnesses. Nail himself had been brought in to stand witness for Skip the colored boy, and before him for that mother-killer Clarence Smead, who sure enough had at least eleven other witnesses besides Nail.

Could this be a sign? Could it be that the presence of only nine witnesses indicated that it wouldn’t happen, that Nail would stay more? Or maybe they just hadn’t all arrived yet? Or maybe in the dark corners he’d missed one or two? Maybe they’d have to wait awhile for the others to show up, and that would be long enough for Nail to determine if they really intended to go through with it, before he made up his mind to do what he had to do, if it was clear that he wasn’t going to stay more.

What he had to do, at the last minute, if it became clear they intended to make him sit and tried to tie the straps, was take as many as he could with him. Beneath his dirty gray jacket, on a string around his neck, hidden by his jacket collar being buttoned, was the blade: a common steel table knife purloined two weeks ago from the mess hall, and then slowly sharpened on the concrete floor, hour upon hour, silently, until it was pointed like a dagger and razor-sharp on both sides. He was going to get Fat Gabe first, then Short Leg, and then take their guns out of their holsters and shoot the rest of the witnesses. He was going to save Bobo for last, right after shooting the warden. He wanted to watch Bobo sweat. He wanted to be sure that Bobo was sober enough to understand what was happening to him, and then he would make Bobo sit down in the chair and get a few low-voltage jolts of his own medicine. He would make Bobo learn a few things before he died.

Jimmie Mac the preacher stepped up to him and said, “Brother Chism, have you managed to say any prayers?” Jimmie Mac’s breath frosted like smoke in the cold air. Nail shook his head and wondered in what order of execution he would have to kill Jimmie Mac. Maybe right before the warden. Right after he did the lady.

The lady, wrapped in a double-breasted melton coat but wearing a simple hat without feathers or anything fancy, wasn’t supposed to be there. The law said you got twelve witnesses, and all twelve had to be men. You couldn’t invite your mother or your sister or your girlfriend. It wasn’t decent to make a woman sit through such a thing, to make her hear the hollering and the sizzling, to make her watch the twisting and jerking, to make her smell the awful stink of roasting flesh. It was sure to make her puke, or swoon, or both.

But this lady worked for the newspaper. She had sat beside Nail when they watched Skip get it, and when Nail himself had screamed at Bobo, “Goddamn you, Bobo, turn up the juice and leave it on!” she had put a hand gently on his arm to calm him down. The hand she had rested on his arm held a drawing-stick, a charcoal pencil she’d been using to make a sketch of the black boy, and in resting her hand on his arm she’d accidentally left a mark of charcoal on the back of his hand, and he had worn that mark for days and days before washing it off, as a reminder of what he’d watched, and what she’d done. She was a cool customer. Probably she wasn’t even a lady. She probably cussed and drank and even smoked cigarettes when nobody was looking. Her red hair wasn’t as long as a lady’s hair ought to be. She drew good pictures, and Nail had never even heard of a lady artist. Maybe he would shoot her between the warden and Bobo.

The warden, Mr. Burdell, stepped up beside Jimmie Mac and said, “Okay, McPhee, you can say a short prayer for him.”

“He aint repented,” Jimmie Mac told the warden.

“Skip the prayer, then,” Mr. Burdell said, and turned to Nail. “Chism, you got any last words?”

“Yessir, I do,” Nail said. “How come there aint but nine witnesses?”

Mr. Burdell looked around the room, moving his lips and his index finger as he counted. He spoke the last two aloud: “…eight…nine…” He hesitated, then grinned. “Ten, counting you, Chism. Aint you gonna witness this yourself? And if you want to count Ole Sparky hisself, there, that makes eleven.” Fat Gabe and Short Leg laughed at their boss’s wit.

“That’s still one short,” Nail protested.

Mr. Burdell stopped grinning and looked tired and irritated. He said, “It don’t make no difference.”

“It aint legal,” Nail said. “Also, it aint legal to have that lady there.”

The warden turned to the woman and smiled. “Miss Monday,” he said. “Are you legal?”

She did not return his smile. She shook her head.

The warden glowered fiercely at Nail and said to him, “Okay, Chism, it’s cold in here and the sun’s fixin to go down, and it’s gittin real cold. Let’s git this over with. You want to say anything important? You been actin like you’re just out on a stroll to a picnic or something. You gonna be a real good boy and take this peaceful-like and easy, huh? Or do you want to start hollerin a bit and git it out of your system?”

Nail looked down at his hands. The trees were singing, Stay more, stay more. His hands were still bound together with cuffs. They would have to unlock the cuffs in order to strap his arms to the chair. In the instant between, he would reach inside his shirt for the razor-sharp dagger. He was conscious of the woman sketching his picture in her drawing-pad. With his head shaved smooth as an egg, he wasn’t much of a sight. The picture she’d drawn of Skip had made him look old and scared to death, although he was just sixteen and real brave for a colored boy. Nail wondered if the picture she was drawing of him was honest.

“Any last request?” Mr. Burdell asked him. “You aint got time for a cigarette.”

Nail inclined his head toward the woman. “Could I see the pitcher she’s drawin? That’s all.”

Mr. Burdell walked over and leaned down and spoke to Miss Monday. She said something to the warden. He returned and spoke to Nail: “She aint finished with it yet.”

“Could we jist wait jist a second, till she’s done?” Nail requested.

Mr. Burdell grunted, and hauled out his pocket watch and opened the gold cover of it. He stared at it for a time. He glanced at Miss Monday, and then at Nail. “Law says you got to be dead before the sun disappears,” he said. He walked back over to where Miss Monday was sitting, and stood behind her chair, watching her draw. He looked back and forth between her drawing and Nail’s face, as if he were comparing the two. Nail tried to look pleasant. He stared straight at Miss Monday, and from time to time she raised her head from her work and looked him right in the eye for a long moment. She was a pretty girl, even if she was cold as ice. Her eyes were sort of greenish…it was hard to tell in this light. Her skin was the palest, whitest flesh he’d ever seen. Red hair, green eyes, white skin: she was a picture herself.

While he posed in the last minutes of his life, he planned every move that he would make, trying to guess exactly what they would do while they were still able, before he took over. Fat Gabe would unlock the handcuffs. Short Leg would push him down into the chair. Fat Gabe would commence strapping his left arm while Short Leg would reach for the strap to do his right, and at that instant Nail would whip out the blade and slash it across Fat Gabe’s throat in one left-to-right motion that, continuing, would bring the point of the dagger in line with Short Leg’s heart, where Nail would thrust it forward, reaching in the same blink of an eye for Short Leg’s holster…

Oh stay more! sang the trees, and Nail sang back, I’m doing my best! And apart from the singing the only sound in the cold, darkening room was the skritch-skritch of the woman’s charcoal pencil as she drew on and on.

Off

Up on the lilting mountain far above the village is a farmplace so old the trees still sing of it, but nobody else does. The trees, a fat maple and a gangling walnut, left to grow for shade a hundred years ago when they were already old, about the time Nail Chism was born, don’t really talk each other’s language, but they sing a tune together, a kind of soughing ballad, a ditty maybe just of fragrances, leaf-smells in the sunlight that drop an octave in the moonlight, heard or smelled attentively by owls who roost there, and a nightingale, wondering at a treesong about people named Chism, whose farmplace it was when sheep still grazed the orchard grass, yarrow, and sweet-scented vernal, now grown to scrub, tangled with emerald vines and turquoise nettles. The leaning house behind the tilted white-paling gate was lived in for a few years just recently by some young people from another state who raised goats and marijuana, distant echoes of the sheep who had once grazed there and the corn whiskey moonlighted in the hollow down below.

Nail Chism helped his older brother Waymon and his kid brother Luther in the making of Chism’s Dew when the moon was right, but neither brother helped Nail in the keeping of the sheep, who were his alone, or even in the shearing of them, when the moon was right, in its waxing. There were a hundred and sixty acres on the Chism place: eighty downhill plowed to corn for the making of vernacular bourbon, eighty upland sown to timothy, meadow foxtail, white clover, and fescue, with a good bit of parsley mixed in among the yarrow and the sweet-scented vernal, to feed Nail’s flock, which numbered rarely less than a hundred or more than two hundred, including three or four rams to service.

The colors of the pasture grasses rose from deep jade and Kelly to light Nile and spring green, and each midsummer Nail sowed the bare spots of the fields with a bushel of mustardseed, the mustard adding sulphur to the diet of the sheep and adding yellow-green to the colors of the pasture, intensifying them in keeping with the heat of the sun and Nail’s keeping. The rape was sown in July and August for a fall feeding.

Rape, a primitive cabbage, Brassica cousin to mustard, is a purplish shade of green at its base, but the leaves are an intense phthalo green (pronounced without the ph, which reminds me of the one they used to tell about Nail in his schooldays: the new schoolmarm steered clear of questions that might get an argument out of him, and she wouldn’t protest when he told her right off that he didn’t intend to spell “taters” with a p, regardless of what the book says). Two pounds of rapeseed sown to the acre is enough; too much rape will cause the sheep to bloat. Some folks who didn’t like the word “rape” called it colza, but the rest of us never knew what they were talking about.

But it is the other kind of rape that dwells at the heart of this story, so it won’t do to confuse the issue by describing all that rape out in Nail’s pastures. He also grew a lot of turnips, because his sheep liked both the tops for forage and the pulverized roots as a main treat in the winter, and turnips never got anybody thrown into the penitentiary. The turnip top is a light, whitish green, not very intense, cool, a gentle shade that belies its pungent taste. Of course Nail never broadcast the turnip seeds but grew them separately in a fenced-off garden.

He grew a different kind of turnip for his mother to cook for greens with sowbelly, or mashed up like taters, or baked into a pie (yes, with sorghum sweetening, turnip pie is the best there is). In the Ozark Mountains garden truck is generally the womenfolk’s work, and some people raised an eyebrow at Nail Chism out yonder under his felt hat in the garden patch a-chopping weeds out of the ingerns, or onions, but most folks just said that was the least of his peculiarities, and better to let it go.

The sheep were his principal peculiarity. Not that sheep were so rare in the Ozarks (they weren’t at all in those days), but that a genuine shepherd was. If a man wanted to make a dollar or two every April from selling the wool, he’d keep a ewe (anybody who had one pronounced it “yo”) out behind the house where the dogs couldn’t get it. He wouldn’t think of eating it; nobody ate mutton, let alone lamb, in the Ozarks, where “meat” meant only pork, nothing else. (Pork can be salted and cured and preserved, but mutton cannot.) When the ewe got too old to be sheared, fourteen or so, and hadn’t died of natural old age, its owner would just let it go to rot or rust through neglect, and bury it, or take down the fence separating it from the dogs.

Nail Chism was the only man anybody knew, or even heard of, or read in the papers about, who kept a whole pastureful of sheep, and he spent most of his time, when he wasn’t tending the vegetable patch or helping his brothers with the whiskey still, living with the sheep and watching after them. We could hear him up there a mile off calling, “Sheep! sheep! sheepsheepsheep!” He knew everything there was to be known about sheep. He knew how to get the yolk just right—for anybody else, that meant the yellow part of an egg, but Nail would explain it was the soapy or greasy stuff on the fleece: too little yolk, and the sheep wasn’t getting the right mix of greens or else had been sired by an inferior ram, and the fleece would be dry and coarse; too much yolk, and twenty pounds of sheared fleece would weigh only four pounds after the first washing.

Every April, Nail Chism rented from Willis Ingledew’s livery a wagon, which he loaded with fleece to the sky, or at least to the lowest tree branches, and drove to Harrison, a week’s journey there and back, where he got the best dollar for his “crop.” Some folks wondered why Nail Chism even needed to join his brothers in the manufacture of illicit vernacular bourbon (those weren’t their words for the stuff) if he made a downright good living year in and year out from what he got at Harrison for his fleece. The answer, if you troubled to ask him, was simply that the Chisms had been making the best drinking-whiskey in the Ozarks ever since Nail’s grandaddy had come from Tennessee back in 18 and 39.

It was a family tradition, which Seth Chism had elevated to just about the acme of quality and repute and had instilled in his sons from the earliest they’d been able to plow the corn or fire the biler. Nail, Seth’s middle boy, had been made superintendent of the biler at the age of fourteen and had become a professional moonshiner long before the day he became a captive audience for a traveling peddler, name of Eli Willard, who was trying to unload a pair of Cotswold lambs he’d been swapped for out of something in Kentucky.

In those days the village reached its top size, the closest Stay More ever came to being a real town, with the Ingledews running a big three-floor general store as well as the post office and the gristmill, and getting competition from no fewer than three other general stores; there was almost a genuine Main Street of the kind associated with the motion picture called a western (although the surrounding countryside looked nothing at all like the stark badlands of the westerns: it was too green, had too many shades of green, was too lush and too uplifting, the hills rising steep and pastured and forested and bluffed), and along this Main Street there were two doctors’ offices and two dentists as well as Jim Tom Duckworth’s law office and at least three blacksmiths with the latest tripod gear-driven quickblast forges, and even, by the time this story really gets going good, a bonafide bank waiting to be robbed, and around the corner you’d find such things as Murrison’s sawmill and William Dill’s wagon factory, making some of the best horse-drawn vehicles still competing with the just-arrived automobile.

Eli Willard hadn’t yet discovered the automobile when he arrived in the thriving village with two Cotswolds in the back end of his wagon (a William Dill spring-platform model he’d bought at the factory his last trip to town, and reputedly driven to Connecticut and back without a broken wheel). Everyone in the Ozarks who did have sheep had a breed called American Merino, but the Cotswold, unbeknownst to Nail, who knew nothing about sheep at that point, is superior to the Merino for the production of wool.

The peddler Eli Willard was not in the business of purveying livestock; he just happened to have the two lambs this trip around, which actually was devoted to the selling of musical instruments, everything from parlor organs to Jew’s harps. For thirty-five cents Nail also bought from him a harmonica, a fitting accompaniment to sheep-raising. It was an M. Hohner Marine Band Tremolo Echo, and Nail taught himself how to make it tremble and to make it echo, when he wasn’t too busy teaching himself how to keep Cotswolds happy and healthy and reproductive. The trials and errors of this operation, had they been known to the other people of Stay More, would have made for all the jokes anyone would ever want to tell on Nail Chism, but he suffered his self-education in absolute privacy, and he practiced “Fisher’s Hornpipe” and “Billy in the Low Ground” and “Sook Pied, Sook Pied, Come an’ Git Yore Nubbins,” in complete seclusion from any ears except those of his sheep, who seemed to appreciate him and would sometimes blaat along.

What did he look like? He was very tall, the loftiest of the Chism brothers, at six feet three inches, and muscular without seeming strong, with a shock of very light brown hair, not quite blond as the newspapers would describe it, stuck up in what folks chose to call his sheeplick. He had blue eyes. The Arkansas Gazette’s drawing of him in December of 1914, by their staff artist Viridis Monday, does not fairly represent him, with that head shaved of its prematurely whitening locks (he was not yet twenty-eight) and that splendid physique looking frail beneath its prison clothes. Only the eyes in the Monday drawing seem to be the Nail Chism that most of us remembered: pale, gentle, comical, inquisitive, curious, and brighter-than-you’d-like-to-think: certainly not the eyes of a man on his way to the electric chair. Nail Chism was nobody’s fool. And yet there were those who liked to think that he was everybody’s fool.

One of those was his brother-in-law Sewell Jerram, of Jasper, the county seat, some ten miles north of Stay More. Sewell, or Sull as everybody but his mother pronounced it, had been born in Stay More but thought of himself as a town boy, although Jasper back then was already what it still is: the smallest county seat in the state of Arkansas, with just a few hundred people, and being a town boy in a small village didn’t leave Sull Jerram conspicuously different from a country boy; an outsider from, say, Little Rock wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart. But Sull Jerram didn’t know anything about farming, and the three brothers of Irene Chism, when Sull was courting her, got considerable amusement out of observing Sull’s ignorance of country ways and customs.

Irene Chism was but a half-sister to Nail and his two brothers. Her mother, and senior by only fifteen years, was Nancy Nail Coe, whose father Jethro Nail, one of the first settlers of Newton County, had married a Choctaw Indian girl, making Nancy Nail a half-breed, and thus Irene and her brothers Waymon, Nail, and Luther were quarter-breed Indian, although the only thing about Viridis Monday’s portrait of Nail to indicate such Indian ancestry is his somewhat long nose and his intense but blue eyes beneath their heavy, crowding eyebrows.

Nancy Nail had been taken to wife at the age of just fourteen by a Stay Moron named Columbus Coe, but she had been widowed at the age of sixteen, when Irene was an infant, and had inherited a homestead of eighty acres northeast of Stay More, which she was determined to manage on her own and succeeded in running—cornpatch, pigpen, cowlot, and orchard—for nearly a year before asking her neighbor, Seth Chism, for a little help with the heavy lifting. Seth was covetous of that cornpatch, a few acres to supplement his own, which all went to the making of his whiskey, and he proposed marriage to the young widow Nancy Nail Coe not so much out of desire for her as need of her cornpatch and her help running the still.

Waymon Chism was born just under two years after Irene, and they grew up together until Nail joined them. The three were in their teens, and had been joined by Seth and Nancy’s last-born, little Luther, before their parents explained to them how it had come about that Irene was only a half-sister, not a full sister. That made no difference to Waymon, and the only difference it made to Nail was to explain to him how Irene was sexually different from the three brothers: she had only half, or less than half, of whatever between-the-legs equipment the boys possessed. But then Irene began to acquire more than twice as much above-the-waist equipment, and Nail began to watch as his sister was courted by the town boy Sull Jerram.

Nail was Irene’s favorite half-brother, the one she had given most of her attention and care in his upbringing, the one she (lacking a sister or a girlfriend) trusted with her secrets, and the one she chose to chaperone her whenever Sull Jerram came to call. In those days a girl never ever went off anywhere alone with a boy, not even walking together from the schoolhouse to home, not even walking together from Willis Ingledew’s store to Jerram’s store (owned by Sull’s brother) down the road. It just wasn’t done. A girl had to have someone else with her, even (lacking a sister or a girlfriend) her kid brother.

Country boys understood this, and nobody expected to get a girl alone by herself, or to find a girl alone by herself, much less, finding such a one, to speak to her. You had to be content to spark her as best you could with somebody eavesdropping, or at least with her sister or someone in the same room, or sitting on the next log, or walking a few paces behind. Maybe eventually, after you’d proposed to her and she had accepted and the date had been set for the wedding, you might get a chance to sit with her out on the porch or in the dogtrot for an hour or so without anybody else in sight, because the others would stay politely behind the door.

Maybe town boys didn’t understand this. Sull Jerram always seemed annoyed when Nail tagged along on what passed for dates between Sull and Irene. Of course Sull was a good bit older: he was already twenty-five, they said, when he first came to Stay More to call on Irene when she was just sixteen, and presumably he’d had some experience with some of the town girls who didn’t have the sense to keep from finding themselves alone with him. Lord knows what those town girls did. The stories were enough to turn your ears pink. It’s very doubtful a person from Little Rock could see a bit of difference between a Jasper girl and a Stay More girl, except the former might be wearing shoes, but probably not. People wondered why Sull Jerram didn’t just stay in Jasper.

But Irene Chism was a very pretty gal, and her above-the-waist fixtures were full and high and firm, and, as Nail would have been the first to tell you, she had a voice that could have beguiled the Devil himself: sweet and musical and colorful. Her voice was almost as if she were touching you and patting you and stroking you and sliding herself all over you. Possibly Sull Jerram didn’t care about her voice, but he sure cared enough about all the rest of her to spend every minute of his free time trying to get Nail to wander off and leave them alone for half an hour.

And Sull Jerram seemed to have an awful lot of free time. Nobody knew for sure what he did for a living. Nobody asked him. People who visited Jasper from time to time reported that “he’s jist one of them fellers who hangs out at the courthouse”: not the old men who sit on benches in the shade of the courthouse yard all day long telling lies, and not the lawyers who seem to hurry from room to room telling bigger lies, but the men who are just loitering in the lobby or the hallways, leaning up against the wall talking to one another in hushed voices as if they were cooking up lies that could be translated into money.

“Yeah, I reckon ye could say Sull’s cookin up mischief,” Jim Tom Duckworth told Seth Chism when Jim Tom dropped by to get his demijohn refilled. Jim Tom was Stay More’s own native-born lawyer, our representative to the courthouse, our spokesman and champion before the bar of justice. “But jist whut-all mischief he’s into, I couldn’t tell ye. I do know that he’s aimin to see if he caint git hisself elected ass-essor, and I tell ye, once a man gits to be ass-essor, next thing you know he’s runnin fer treasurer, and then watch out if he don’t run fer sherf, or even jedge.”

Whatever Sull Jerram was running for, it didn’t claim any of the attention he devoted to pursuing Irene Chism, or to trying to get Nail to leave them alone for a little bit. Nail couldn’t be bribed. He couldn’t be threatened. He could be cajoled, that is, he would politely listen to cajolery, but he wouldn’t necessarily respond to it.

The first words Sull Jerram ever spoke to Nail Chism were: “Go tell yore momma she’s a-lookin fer ye.”

And young, green Nail actually took several steps in the direction of carrying out this request before it dawned on him that it was a trick, a foolery of words; Sull and Irene were laughing at him. Some time later Nail was wary when Sull told him he’d seen a man just back up the road a little ways giving away puppies. “Hurry, and you’d catch him,” Sull suggested, and Nail was almost out of sight, this time, before he realized it was just another trick.

Once, eventually, Sull Jerram told Nail that he and Irene and Nail, just the three of them, were going to walk up to a glade on the side of Ledbetter Mountain where there were a lot of snipes. A snipe is a kind of bird, Sull explained, although Nail wondered why a town boy would claim to know more ornithology than he himself knew, and he knew there weren’t any snipes, not of the sandpiper sort, in the vicinity of Ledbetter Mountain. Sull explained that these snipes only migrated through at certain seasons, and there was this glade up yonder where them snipes liked to visit. Sull gave Nail a towsack made of burlap. “Now what we’re gonna do is,” Sull explained when they got to the glade, “is me and Irene are gonna go over thar in that bresh and wave our arms about and flush ’em out of thar, and you stand over yere with this yere sack, and when they come a-runnin, you jist herd ’em into the sack. See?”

“Birds don’t run,” Nail said. “They fly.”

“Not these yere snipes,” Sull said. “Now you jist do like I tell ye, and we’ll have us a mess of good eatin fer supper tonight.”

Nail watched them disappear, or almost. It is very bad luck to watch someone walk all the way out of sight. He had never seen anybody walk out of sight, least of all his sister Irene, who had rarely ever been out of his sight before, except when she’d gone out to the bushes on a call of nature. Maybe, he thought, waiting and turning aside so as not to watch them disappear, she’s on another call of nature, kind of.

They did not return, nor were there any snipes or other birds, except a pair of prothonotary warblers. After half an hour Nail began to look for Irene and Sull, and then to call for his sister, but he got no answer. That night she apologized for the trick Sull had played on him.

“Where did you’uns go?” Nail asked. “What didje do?”

“Oh, honey,” she said in her musical voice, “sometimes I jist need to git away from you.” She asked him not to tell anybody else what had happened.

He was careful not to let her out of his sight again, and he was within earshot when he heard his mother start in to faulting Irene for being “knocked up,” whatever that was. He listened. His mother began hollering. Then she called for him, and he came, and she said, “Nail, chile, you was sposed to keep a eye on her and Sull, and watch ’em, and pick gooseberries, and take keer of her.”

“I did,” Nail lied.

His mother slapped him. It was the first time she had ever hit him in the face. His pappy had clobbered him frequently, but never before had she slapped his face. Irene protested in tears that it wasn’t Nail’s fault, that Sull had pulled one on him, that there wasn’t no call to hit Nail for what Sull had done. But Nail didn’t hang around to listen to the rest of it. He fled up the mountainside to a cavern by a waterfall and stayed there, meditating on the injustices of life in this world.

He didn’t go to the wedding. It wasn’t much of a thing anyhow, although his brothers told him of all the food he’d missed out on, pies you’d never heard of before. Nor did he join the shivaree that was thrown to tease the newlyweds. He couldn’t stand the sight of Sull Jerram, and any man with any sense at all should have been able to tell from Nail’s eyes that he couldn’t stand the sight of him and wanted him off the earth, but Sull was a town boy and all he saw in Nail’s eyes was a dumb, sullen kid.

Irene Chism Jerram miscarried her baby and never had any children after that. The years went by. Sull was elected assessor, and folks said the only thing that kept him from running for sheriff was he was too trigger-happy. Irene lived in Jasper but would come home about twice a year for a long visit until Sull came to get her. One of the times he came to get her, or tried to, was in an automobile, the first car to get that far. Eli Willard had driven the first automobile to appear in Stay More, but he hadn’t been able to drive up Right Prong, because there wasn’t any road, just a trail; when Sull Jerram tried it, there wasn’t any road either, but he was mad to get Irene back and he drove over some boulders and plowed down some saplings to get up to the Chism place and spooked the livestock and, according to Seth Chism, spoiled a whole batch of sour mash a-brewing at the hooch plant. Irene wouldn’t go with him. He stayed for a few days, arguing with her, trying to persuade Nancy or Seth to talk some sense into her, and, finally, appealing to Nail himself.

“You’re the only one she listens to,” Sull told Nail. “She don’t listen to me nor nobody. You tell her that she caint spend the rest of her life up here on this mountain.”

“Why caint she?” Nail asked. He wasn’t a kid anymore and was half a head higher than Sull Jerram and still remembered as if it were yesterday the tricks Sull used to pull on him.

“Why, because, she’s, don’t you see? she’s my wife, and if she wants to be my wife she’s got to live in Jasper.” Sull paused and studied Nail’s eyes. “Don’t that make no sense to ye? Do you want me to say it again?”

“If I was you,” Nail said, “I’d git that piece of machinery back down the mountain while it will still roll. Come tomorrow, you might not find any wheels left on it.”

But Sull Jerram did not go back to Jasper. Someone said he’d spent the night down at the Whitter place, and folks laughed and said the Whitters was probably the only ones who’d give him a bed, he was that low, they was that low, the Whitters. Some years before, not long after the turn of the century, the only criminal Stay More ever had, in its peaceful history, had come from that family. Ike Whitter had killed a man and terrorized the sheriff himself before a lynch mob led by John Ingledew ganged up on him and stopped him and lynched him. But Ike’s father Simon Whitter still ran the farm and kept his head high and apologized to no man for having sired the only bully, felon, and cutthroat in the history of the village, and some of Ike’s younger brothers threatened to become as wayward as he had been, while his baby sister Dorinda was growing up into a turtledove who, it was said, would drive men to rash deeds and early graves.

After a few nights at the Whitter place, Sull loaded all the Whitter boys into his vehicle and took them into Jasper to see the sights. Dorinda would have gone too, young as she was, if she’d had her way about it, but not even the Whitters, low as they were, would have condoned a young girl going off to the county seat with a married man and nobody to chaperone her but her brothers.

Dorinda threw a tantrum that almost cost her the friendship of her best girlfriend, who was me. The south benches of Ledbetter Mountain were all that separated the Whitter place from the Bourne place, and my dad Saltus Bourne was all that separated Simon Whitter from being the poorest farmer in Stay More. This isn’t my story, and I’m not going to say anything more about my father, except that he and Simon Whitter were friends only because nobody else would have anything to do with them, just as people used to say of me that I was Dorinda’s only friend because neither she nor I was able to find anyone else as cheap or as bad or—they said this too—as beautiful as ourselves.

Oh, she was beautiful, there’s no dispute of that, and those who wondered how a man as grossly repulsive as Ike Whitter could have had a baby sister as magnificent as Dorinda were the same who said that Saltus and Fannie Bourne must have adopted me. But I’m not going to say much else about myself, except that I was Dorinda’s best friend, off and on, for all the years that this story took place. We always sat together in school at the same double-desk, even when Miss Blankinship kept on holding Dorinda back a grade after promoting me, because Dorinda simply didn’t want to learn how to read, or couldn’t, and we always put our arms around one another at recess, and kept them there, and in the days of our growing up and filling out we always compared ourselves in every little detail and told each other that you are more pretty than me.

Now, that day Sull Jerram took her brothers to Jasper and wouldn’t take her, she had a fit and cussed and broke up some things in our playhouse. The back of her father’s forty met the back of my father’s forty at a basso profundo oak tree way up on the ridge of Ledbetter Mountain, and beneath that oak we’d long ago carried some planks of scrap lumber from Murrison’s and stacked and nailed them against one another in a shelter against the wind and rain and winter chill, and inside that small space we had our secret home with a few shards of china and mostly stoneware, some chipped glasses and rag napkins, dolls we’d outgrown now and cast-off calendars for the years from 1908 to 1911, when we’d still been children. Dorinda was not a virgin. Sure, I’ve heard the jape that by definition hereabouts it’s a five-year-old girl who can outrun her brothers, and Dorinda was way past five and had six brothers. Ironically, it was the only one of the six brothers who was younger than her. We had invited him to the playhouse, Lewis, when he was just ten, I was nearly twelve, and Dorinda was already twelve. Although she was older than me, I had “accomplished” one thing she had not: I had lost my virginity, and without the help of any brothers, for I had none. He was a cousin, and twice-removed at that, named Every Dill, a year older than me, a year ahead of me in school, and a virgin himself. It had been almost happenstance, not premeditated, one night when I’d been left alone at his folks’ cabin while they and my folks and sisters and everybody else went off to a funeral. Nothing I’d care to go into here, except to say that Dorinda knew about it and envied me it, and now was determined to lose hers too, even if to her own brother Lewis. He was the first boy ever to go inside our secret house, and Dorinda had dared me to do it with him since I already had experience, and I’d taken the dare but lost my nerve while he was trying to position himself atop me, and she’d said, when I got cold feet, that she’d do it herself, and Lewis didn’t care which one of us it was, so long as he had a hole he could enter. Of course he wasn’t old enough to make babies, but he was sure old enough to do it, in the sense of what they actually placed inside of what, and how they moved, and how long it lasted, and the noises they made. I watched, but they seemed to forget I was there. Watching them do it, I wondered if I had looked like that and sounded like that and smelled like that when I had done it with my cousin Every.

There was one big difference, I learned later. I had fooled around that one time with my cousin Every out of curiosity and pleasure and maybe even something approaching love. But Rindy had done it for revenge. She was bloody, and she showed the blood to her mother and told her parents who had done it, and Simon Whitter thrashed poor Lewis nearly to death, and later Rindy told me and laughed and said that was her way of getting even with Lewis because he was his mother’s favorite and got extra dessert when she didn’t.

So when Dorinda told me, much later, that she wanted Sull Jerram, wanted him real badly, my first reaction was to ask, “What’s he done to ye that ye want to git back at him for?”

She laughed and said no, she wanted him because he was a big grown man and would really know how to do it and make her feel good. “Rindy,” I said in exasperation, “he’s married to Irene Chism, and has been for years and years, and besides he’s old enough to be your father.” She didn’t care, and for a long time I thought it was just his automobile she lusted after, the same way, years later when automobiles became common, that most silly girls (myself included, once) couldn’t tell the difference between a boy and his car.

Whatever it was that Sull Jerram took her brothers to Jasper for, they began spending most of their time there, hanging out, if not in the actual corridors of the courthouse, somewhere in the vicinity where mischief was a-cooking. Sull Jerram ran for the office of county judge in 1913, and Irene moved back to Jasper and lived with him during the campaign. Now, I don’t know about other states, but in Arkansas a county judge is just a kind of administrator, not a magistrate, no, not in any way a legal arbitrator; all he judges is whether or not a road ought to be fixed up or a new roof put on the jail. But he’s the most powerful politician. Dorinda’s brothers scoured the county on Sull’s behalf, and some folks said that they used coercion and bribery and ballot-stuffing. Most of Stay More voted for Sull’s opponent, and Sull didn’t like us for it, and he never let us forget it after he was elected.

That election made him into “Judge” Sull Jerram at the same time it offered him a way to get rich. It was the same general election when most of the counties of Arkansas voted dry, six years in advance of national Prohibition. Newton County had always been dry, and always would be, so there was always a good local market for Chism’s Dew, and always had been, and there still is. When the first Chism came from Tennessee in 1839, he didn’t intend to break any laws or make a lot of money, he just wanted to do what he knew how to do: make good sour mash drinking-whiskey. There was a time when Seth Chism had some trouble in the 1870s with the government for the manufacture, possession, and sale, but apart from that the Chisms had been moonshining through four generations with impunity, free hands, and honesty. No sheriff of Newton County would come near the Chism place, as long as the product was sold on the premises, which it always had been, or at least not any farther from the premises than “downtown” Stay More, where, in the autumn, a man could buy a pumpkin from little Luther Chism on Saturday afternoon and find a refilled jar or jug inside of it.

Chism’s Dew had a reputation beyond the boundaries of Newton County, and there were even Little Rock politicians, lawyers, and bankers who obtained quantities of it for their personal use and to entertain guests, but the Chisms had never made any effort to market their commodity outside of Stay More…until the 1913 state “drought” created a demand, and the politicians up at Jasper saw a way to get rich from it. At the same time Sull Jerram became county judge, a friend of his got elected the new sheriff, a fellow from somewhere over in eastern Newton County named Duster Snow, who had worked his way up from assessor and surveyor, with a couple of years as a deputy revenue marshal, so he knew the liquor trade inside out. We got a new county clerk and a new county treasurer, and Judge Sull Jerram found himself presiding over a gang of courthouse liars and ruffians and mischief-makers who lost no time in cooking up a surefire scheme for getting rich: marketing Chism’s Dew to the outside world.

Judge Jerram was still Seth Chism’s son-in-law, which didn’t entitle him to a better price than anyone else—he paid the same two dollars per gallon—but he began to buy up every last drop that Seth and his boys could make, as fast as they could make it, and Sull had it hauled off to Jasper, where it was loaded onto a big newfangled vehicle called a motortruck and taken off to Harrison. The Chisms ran out of containers; every jug and gallon demijohn in Stay More had been rinsed and refilled and sold to Sull Jerram, and all the jugs and demijohns that he could bring in from Jasper, Parthenon, Spunkwater, Swain, Nail, Deer—whatever community might have a few—he rounded them up and the Chisms filled them and they found their way to Harrison. When all the jugs and demijohns in Newton County had disappeared, they began to use bean pots, cream pitchers, stone jars, wash pitchers, chicken fountains, soup tureens, punchbowls, compotes, gravy boats, even slop jars or thundermugs.

The Chisms ran out of corn. Or, rather, the Ingledews’ gristmill could not furnish any more cornmeal, having ground up everything the Chisms had raised. My father even made a little pin money selling the hard-dent corn out of his corncrib, and so did everyone else, until all of that was gone, and there were a lot of hungry hogs and chickens that winter. Sull Jerram arranged with whoever was buying the finished product in Harrison to start supplying the raw product, and the motortruck that was transporting the load of containers into Harrison would return with a load of corn or cornmeal.

What the Chisms didn’t know then was that Sull Jerram and his courthouse gang were buying the Chisms’ whiskey for two dollars a gallon and sending it to Harrison, where they were getting four, five, and then six dollars a gallon for it.

But one night in the spring of 1914, the Boone County sheriff and his deputies stopped that motortruck at the Boone County line and confiscated a whole load of whiskey, arrested and jailed the driver, and kept the motortruck. Sull Jerram’s entire bootlegging operation came to a halt. Our new sheriff Duster Snow talked to the Boone County sheriff, but the latter was incorruptible. Judge Jerram tried to work out a deal with the Boone County judge, but the latter was, while not incorruptible, unswayed by Sull’s terms.

Seth Chism, visiting his daughter Irene and her husband the judge at their new Jasper house, had been impressed with their improved standard of living. He himself had built a new barn, put a new roof on his still, replaced his thirty-five-gallon pot still with a hundred-gallon copper still, and replaced the old bedrock furnace with a snail shell furnace, all with the profits from his increased production. And his wife Nancy took to wearing Sears, Roebuck dresses to church. Seth appreciated these improvements, and he was sympathetic when he heard about the confiscation of the motortruck, and he said he’d talk to his boy Nail when Judge Jerram suggested that Nail might be willing to transport a load of whiskey inside his wagon of sheep’s wool, which was going to Harrison anyway.

Nail said he didn’t have any room, that his fleece wagon was loaded down with fleece and the axles would break if he took on a cargo of concealed whiskey. He was just telling the truth. He didn’t really object to his brother-in-law’s bootlegging, although he had resented the extra time he’d had to spend working the still, time spent away from his sheep, who needed him, especially now that shearing time had come. Nail liked making whiskey, and he liked drinking it, and he liked selling it, or he liked seeing his father sell so much of it that the farmplace was getting some improvements. But he just couldn’t see his way to risking a broken axle or two by carrying a load of whiskey inside the load of fleece.

“You’re jist afraid of gittin caught,” Sull Jerram taunted him.

“No, I aint afraid of that,” Nail protested. “Who’d stop me anyhow?”

“What’s wrong with makin two trips?” Sull wanted to know. “Or twenty, if you have to?”

“Yeah,” Seth said to his son, “you don’t have to take it all at once, and you could bring us back a load of corn.”

So Nail agreed to take a load to Harrison inside his load of fleece, although he’d be delivering only half as much fleece as the wool agent was expecting, and he’d have to explain that to the wool agent, and he’d have to deliver and unload the whiskey beforehand. He took his kid brother Luther for company and whatever help he might need, the two of them riding side by side on the buckboard the long trip, Nail telling the boy tales or entertaining them both with his harmonica, playing “Red Wing,” “Turkey in the Straw,” and “Paddy on the Turnpike.”

They didn’t have any problems on the trip into Harrison; but coming home, with the wagon piled high with sacks of cornmeal, a wheel broke and came off, and while they were trying to repair it, a sheriff’s deputy rode up and offered some help and then observed, “Thet shore is a mighty heavy load of corn you’uns is haulin. Whar ye headin with all such as thet?”

Luther, who was fifteen, answered politely, “Stay More,” before his brother could nudge him into silence.

The deputy laughed and said, “I hear tell Newton County is plumb out of corn. The eatin kind, that is.” The deputy helped them fix the wheel, and then he said, “I jist hope you fellers aint aimin to bring none of this here corn back to Boone County in another form. The sherf is real sot in his ways and he’d th’ow ye in jail so hard you’d never git out.”

They drove on and crossed back into Newton County. On the last stretch of road between Parthenon and Stay More they met Judge Sull Jerram in his automobile. Sull didn’t stop. He only waved, and he had a girl with him. The girl was Dorinda Whitter, on her way to Jasper at last. A cloud of thick dust billowed out from the rear end of the Model T and obscured the disappearance of the couple.

“Rindy,” I said to her later, “you were jist out of your fool haid. Don’t you know that everbody in Stay More is talkin about ye?” I guess I knew better than anyone else, except Miss Blankinship, just how dumb Dorinda could be.

“You should’ve seen them boys over to Jasper,” she said. “They hung their mouths open like they never seen a pair of tits before! And I jist wiggled my bosom at ’em! And Judge Sull, he jist took me ever place like he owned the town, and I do believe he does!”

There were some folks, later, who speculated that Nail Chism had had a crush on Dorinda for a long time. If that was true, he was certainly keeping it to himself. As far as I know, he never spoke to her before that June. Some folks were inclined to wonder if he had been “following” her, or at least itching for her. The fact that he was, at twenty-seven, still a bachelor did not of itself raise any eyebrows; we had plenty of single men in Stay More. It ran in families, even: all of the sons of banker John Ingledew were unmarried, six of the most eligible and handsome bachelors in town, and not one of them could get up his nerve to court a girl, let alone propose to one, and all six of them were past marrying age, except for maybe Raymond, the youngest, and I had my eye on him and was cooking up ways to get him to speak to me, or at least notice me. Nail Chism wasn’t like the Ingledew brothers, who were congenitally so shy of any female they couldn’t talk to their own sister Lola; at least Nail was able to talk to Irene…and he did talk to her and asked her if she knew that Sull Jerram was fooling around with Dorinda Whitter, and Dorinda not but thirteen. Irene told her brother that all she knew was what everybody else seemed to be talking about.

Nail found Sull at the courthouse, and right there in the lobby, within earshot of lawyer Jim Tom Duckworth and Sheriff Duster Snow and whoever else was paying them any attention, Nail told Sull, “I aint runnin any more goods fer ye.”

“That so?” Sull said. “Got skeert bad this run, huh?”

“Naw, but me and Luther did have a little talk with a Boone County deppity.”

Jim Tom and the Sheriff moved a little closer, to hear better, but Nail didn’t elaborate upon his conversation with the deputy. Sull said, “Well, Nail, son, I’m sorry to tell ye, but you aint got any choice. Everbody’s dependin on ye to run that stuff.”

“Find somebody else to depend on,” Nail said calmly, but he was beginning to get angry.

“Aint nobody else with a wagon full of wool,” Sull said.

“I want ye to stop sparkin Dorinda,” Nail said.

Sull laughed. “You sweet on her?”

“Naw, but I’m sweet on Irene, and I don’t want ye treatin her like that.”

“Yo’re welcome to Irene,” Sull said. “Nobody else wants her.”

Nail hit Sull. According to Jim Tom, who told it later around Stay More, Nail just clenched a fist and lifted it faster than anybody could watch and caught Sull under the chin with it and lifted him about a foot off the floor and slammed him up against the wall. Just one punch, and Sull sort of peeled down the wall and into a heap on the floor. Nail turned and walked off, and Jim Tom and Duster Snow lifted Sull into a chair and worked him over to get him awake, and to pacify him Sheriff Snow said to Sull, “I’ll have a little talk with ole Seth fer ye.” And that night the sheriff came to Stay More for the first time and rode his horse up to the Chism place up there on the mountain and sat on the porch with Seth Chism until well past dark, and even spent the night, at Seth’s invitation.

The next morning, as the sheriff was saddling his horse, Nail Chism came down from the pastures where he’d spent the night with his sheep, and walked right up to Duster Snow and said, “Sheriff, you and Sull aint about to make me run any more goods fer ye.”

“We’ll jist see about that, son,” Duster Snow said.

“Yeah,” said Seth Chism to Nail, “you’d best listen to what I got to tell ye, boy. We don’t want to make Mr. Snow mad. He could bust up our still, ye know.”

Nail became very angry. “Go ahead and dust it, Buster!” he snarled at the sheriff, but corrected himself: “Go ahead and bust it, Duster! You bust our still, and I’ll tell the federal law the names of everbody who’s been runnin liquor to Harrison.”

“Reckon yo’re under arrest, boy,” Duster informed him. The sheriff arrested Nail on a charge of assault and battery against the county judge, Sull, and took Nail into Jasper and put him into that big stone jail that’s still there, off the square. Jim Tom tried to bail him out but couldn’t get Nail to meet the condition: to retract his threat to expose the bootleggers to the federal law. So the sheriff let Nail stew for a week in the jailhouse. Jim Tom said the courthouse politicians, of which he was not one himself, were scared of Nail. The politicians, especially the county judge himself, were scared Nail might carry out the threat, he might try to contact Raiding Deputy Collector John T. Burris of the U.S. Revenue Service, or (they hoped Nail was too ignorant to know of the existence of the legendary Burris) he might at least have a chat with Isaac Stapleton, Stay More’s own former deputy collector and onetime assistant to Burris, recently retired from a long career of working downstate busting up stills in Perry and Scott counties. If Stapleton told Nail how to contact Burris, that might blow the lid off the bootlegging operation.

Nail said he wouldn’t have minded staying in the Jasper jail, awful as it was, except that there was nobody to take care of his sheep. His brothers Waymon and Luther visited him, and he tried to explain to them how to do the many little jobs that a shepherd must handle in the month of May, but it was clear that Waymon and Luther didn’t know anything about sheep. The law couldn’t keep Nail in the Jasper jail forever, and Jim Tom convinced Sull and the courthouse gang of politicians of that, so they “released him on his own recognizance,” whatever that meant, but first the entire courthouse gang took him into the jury room and sat around the table with him and talked to him for half the night, and then Sull Jerram told him they would let him go if he’d keep his mouth shut.

But Nail refused to make any promises.

“Oh, Latha, he loves me!” Dorinda exclaimed to me one morning in June on our way to school. It was the last week of the seventh grade for us, and Miss Blankinship was quitting after that, and we’d get us a new teacher the next year, and we could hardly wait to see her go, and meanwhile the weather was beautiful and cool for that time of year, although it was very dry and hadn’t rained since May 4th and wouldn’t rain again for the rest of the summer.

“Who does?” I asked. I wasn’t sure but what she might have heard some of the gossip about Nail Chism having a crush on her, as his motive for hitting Sull Jerram.

“Sull!” she said. “The judge! He told me so! Well, he didn’t come right out and use that word, but he said to me, says, ‘Rindy, sugar babe, you shore make my ole heart beat fast!’ and guess what? He plans to up and leave that Irene for good!”

“Rindy honey sister sweety dear,” I said as nicely as I could, “you have just got to be careful, I know in my bones that a feller like Sull Jerram just wants to get under your dress.”

“So?” she said. “I aint skeert. He’d do it real nice, and I’d even enjoy it myself, I bet ye.”

“And you’d find yourself swole up with a woodscolt!”

“Then he’d dist have to marry me!”

“He’s already married, you fool!”

But trying to talk some sense into Dorinda Whitter was like teaching a kitten to eat apples. She didn’t give a hoot what the world thought of her, and I doubt she cared for my opinions either. When we were still children, she had said to me, “You’re whole lots smarter than me, and that’s how come I lak ye so, but dist don’t never try to tell me what to do.” No use trying to convince her that she was pretty enough to get the best husband in the country if she’d only take her time and behave herself instead of chasing after the first man with an auto to come to town. Sure, Sull Jerram was handsome and sightly, and smart and smooth, and now he was rich to boot, but I wouldn’t have gone into the bushes with him if he’d had three silver balls!

A few days later, after school let out, Dorinda and I were taking a shortcut up through the woods toward our playhouse on the south slope of Ledbetter Mountain. There’s an old cowpath runs up through that copse of chanting walnuts, and we were just tripping along one behind the other up that cowpath when here come Nail Chism, nearly running over us, except he wasn’t running, just walking the way he did, with long, gangling strides.

“Howdy, girls,” was all he said, and grinned bashfully in that woman-shy way that bachelors have.

Rindy and I were so astonished to find somebody on that old cowpath in the woods that we didn’t say anything, and he walked around us and went on his way, and we went on ours, but Rindy kept looking back over her shoulder, as if he might have turned, and once when she did that I challenged her: “You think he’s follerin us?”

“Shhh,” she hushed me, and whispered, “I know he’s follerin us!”

I said, “Why would he do that?”

“Shhh! Why do you think, you silly?!” she whispered, and said, “Ess go!” and began running. We ran all the way up the hill out of the woods and into the meadow and kept running until we reached our playhouse. We got ourselves inside of it, and Rindy knelt at the one little window and peered out, panting and watching, panting and watching. I looked around me, at the poor interior of our old playhouse, and realized that we had outgrown it and would soon be having to give it up.

“Nail Chism wouldn’t foller us,” I declared.

“You don’t think so?” she demanded. “Then tell me who’s that, Miss Smarty! Santy Claus?” She pointed, and there, down at the edge of the woods, edge of the meadow, far off, stood a man. He was just looking up the hillside toward our playhouse. My heart skipped a couple of beats. Was it Nail? He wasn’t close enough to tell for sure, and you couldn’t tell by his clothes: the men all dressed alike in blue denim overalls and a store shirt and a felt hat. Even those courthouse politicians dressed that way. He just stood there, looking in our direction. We waited. I said to her that whoever it was, he wouldn’t come up to our playhouse and bother us, because there were two of us and we could handle him, but I think I was just talking to myself, not to her.

Finally he disappeared back into the woods. We stayed in the playhouse for a long time, but we were too old for play, and when we left it, we were leaving it for good. Dorinda asked me if I’d come spend the night with her. Sure, I said. “Go ask your mother,” she said. I said she could come with me while I asked my mother. She said no, she’d go on home and do her chores and tell her mother to set out another plate for supper, and for me to just come on whenever I was able.

I went home and told my mother I wanted to spend the night at Dorinda’s. My mother didn’t mind, but I had to slop the hogs and milk the cow before I went. I did, and then I went to Dorinda’s.

The Whitter place was set back up into a hollow on the west side of Ledbetter Mountain: just a two-room log cabin that had a couple of sleeping-lofts and a shed behind the kitchen, which was Dorinda’s room. There were several horses tied to cedar posts in the front yard, and I assumed they were just the riding-beasts of the Whitter boys, but then I remembered the Whitters were too poor to own more than one horse.

One of those horses belonged to Doc Plowright, and he was inside. Another belonged to Hoy Murrison, who was a Stay More sheriff’s deputy, and a third was that of Alonzo Swain, our justice of the peace. While I was there, some other horses arrived, with men on them.

When I said to Mrs. Whitter, “Did Rindy tell ye, I’ve come to stay the night?” she looked at me as if I’d said I was flying off to the moon, and she ignored me while she told the new arrivals, “Doc and Hoy is with her in yonder house.” And the new arrivals climbed the porch and went in. Then she looked back at me, not as if I’d said I was flying off to the moon but as if I had returned from it, and she seemed to recognize me, and said, “Latha, hon, my baby has been ravaged.”

Then she began to cry.

Sheriff Snow sat with me on the edge of the porch. He asked me to tell him what time it was I’d seen her last, and I said I’d just have to guess, it was maybe 4:30 P.M. He asked me to tell him what we’d been doing, and I told him we’d been to our playhouse. He asked where the playhouse was. Dorinda and I had sworn each other to eternal secrecy that we would never tell anyone else about the location of our playhouse, and I couldn’t tell Sheriff Snow. I think I told him, “Up yonderways,” and gestured vaguely toward the east.

“Did you see anybody else up in that vicinity?” he asked, pronouncing it vi-sinitty. There was a man, I said. He was a right far ways off and I couldn’t see him too well, and I didn’t know who he was. “What was he doin?” the sheriff asked. Just standing there, down below, a good ways off, staring toward our playhouse. And then he went away. “You didn’t see him good enough to tell who he was?” the sheriff persisted. I shook my head and shook it again. “You didn’t think it was maybe Nail Chism?” he suggested.

“What makes you think it was Nail Chism?” I wanted to know.

“You let me ast the questions, gal,” he said sternly. “Did you think it could’ve been him?”

It could’ve been, I allowed.

He asked me to tell him my full name and exactly where I lived, and then he said to me, “Do you understand what awful thing was done to thet pore girl?” I nodded my head, uncertainly because I didn’t know if he meant did I know what rape was or did I understand how awful it had been. Sheriff Snow said, “Iffen I was you, and anybody ast me who done it, I’d tell ’em Nail Chism.” I started to protest, but the sheriff said with conviction, “He was the one who done it, no doubt about it. No doubt whatsoever. He’s already confessed. Now you jist tell ’em he’s the one you saw if anybody asts ye. Hear me?”

They wouldn’t let me see her. Doc Plowright gave her something to calm her down and make her sleep, and she slept a long time. I didn’t get to see her until several days later, when Jim Tom Duckworth drove me in his buggy (with my older sisters Barb and Mandy as chaperones) into Jasper to the courthouse. “Do you gals know what a grand jury is?” Jim Tom asked us. We said we didn’t, although Barb often was ready to claim she knew everything. Jim Tom explained, “This here grand jury aint gonna find nobody guilty, or even innocent neither, as far as that goes. There’s twenty-three of these fellers and they jist sit and listen, as long as it takes, and it aint really a trial, jist a kind of preliminary trial to find out if we have to have us a real trial. I don’t know why they’re called grand, tell ye the honest truth. Aint nothin grand about ’em, they jist sit and listen, and some of ’em fall asleep, and some of ’em are kind of drunk to start with, and they aint a jury at all with the power to decide pore Nail’s fate, they’ll jist see if they think he needs to be in-dited. ‘Indited’ means you aint guilty of nothin, you’ve jist been accused of somethin that maybe you didn’t do. So, Latha, gal, I’d jist ’preciate it iffen ye’d tell those fellers exactly what ye tole me: that you couldn’t tell if it was Nail or not.”

I wasn’t called until late in the afternoon, and, just as Jim Tom had said, by that time many of the so-called grand jurors were already asleep or drunk or just not paying much attention to me. Before my turn came, I got to watch the rest of it. I watched with wonder as my best friend was led into the room, wearing her only good Sunday dress but walking as if it pained her to move, and wincing at every step. I listened with wonder as she told what had happened. And I began to question whether she was capable of giving the performance that it seemed to be. It seemed to me somebody else was speaking through her mouth.

She pointed at me when she said, “I left Latha yonder and started out towards our place, stayin far as I could git away from the woods where we’d seen Nail dist before. But to git to our place, I had to go through this yere kind of thicket of ellum saplins, and there he was! He dist jumped right out at me, and he says, ‘Now, don’t ye holler, or I’ll crack ye on the haid with this yere rock.’ And I seen he had a sharp-pointed rock about this big in one of his hands. He says, ‘Now I tell ye what I want fer ye to do, and ye better do it, or I’ll break yore haid open with this yere rock.’ And he reached in his pants and pulled out his thing, which was this long, and he stuck it straight out at my face and said, ‘Now, Rindy, you better suck on this, and not stop till I tell ye, or I’ll bash in yore haid.’ And I said, ‘Nail Chism, you couldn’t make me suck on that thing if you gave me a million dollars,’ and he said, says, I think he said, ‘You dist better, iffen you know what’s good fer ye,’ and he grabbed my hair and pulled my head up against his thing and tried to get me to open my mouth, but I wouldn’t so he took that rock and tapped me real hard right on top of my haid, I’ve still got the bump right here, see? and it nearly knocked me out and I said ‘Oh!’ and when I said ‘Oh!’ my mouth opened up like this, and he poked that thing right inside and then he commenced running it in and out of my mouth, and I was so dizzy from gittin cracked on the haid I didn’t think to bite him, and he dist kept on jabbin it into my mouth on and on until all of this hot wet stuff come gushin down my goozle…”

The so-called grand jurors were all wide awake and paying very close attention, and some of them were fidgeting in their chairs, and one of them, I swear, was letting some spittle dribble down his chin. Mr. Thurl Bean, the prosecutor, asked, “Was that all he done?” as if it hadn’t been enough.

“Oh, no!” Dorinda said. “That was dist the start. He had dist started. He says to me, says, ‘Now it’s my turn to do you,’ and he made me lie down and lifted up my dress and mashed his mouth right down between my legs and started in to lickin me up and down and all over, right here. He done that for a good long while till he was satisfied, and then he taken his thing and put it where his mouth had been and give a real hard push, but…” (Dorinda seemed trying very hard to cry, and not doing it convincingly) “…but I’d never been done like that afore, and he couldn’t git it in easy. He kept on and kept on, a-pushin and a-shovin that thing, and had my back up against this ellum saplin, and he took a deep breath and grunted hard and somethin broke, and there was blood, and he had that thing, this long, all the way up in me, as fur as he could git…”

When it came time for Jim Tom Duckworth to ask her questions, Jim Tom wanted to know only two things: One, he said, was she real hundred-percent sure about that sharp rock business? because it seemed to Jim Tom, “and you grand gentlemen of the jury has got to agree, that a big stout powerful feller like Nail Chism wouldn’t need no sharp rock to threaten her with, he could manage her with his bare hands, or leastways with that there bowie knife that he always carried on his belt, so jist what is this here rock business?” And Dorinda swore it was a sharp, heavy rock, this big. Well, secondly, was Dorinda absolutely certain that she “had never been done like that afore,” because, after all, here she was, what? thirteen years of age, “and as everbody knows that’s kind of old not to have no experience whatsoever in the loss-of-virginity business, at least not where I come from, which is Stay More, same place where she comes from, and her with six brothers…”

“Objection!” hollered Mr. Thurl Bean, and began to rant that it was a crime to say such things, and the defense attorney had better watch his mouth or he’d find himself in-dited for public indecency and obscenity, and Mr. Bean didn’t know about Stay More, but where he came from, Mt. Judea east of here where folks is God-fearing and moral and law-abiding, it wasn’t at all uncommon to find virgins who were fourteen or even fifteen.

Doc J.M. Plowright of Stay More was called to testify. He had been one of our two physicians as long as I could remember, since he’d assisted at my birth and looked at me when I’d had measles and diphtheria and impetigo. He had, he said, examined the young lady immediately after the alleged misfortune had occurred, that is to say, as soon as Simon Whitter had come and got him, less than an hour after the said violation had happened, and he found her in a condition of near-shock as a result of the imputed assault and discovered that “she still had, no doubt about it, some feller’s jism a-tricklin down her laig, and she had a sure-enough lump on her haid like from a rock bouncin offen it, and yes, it sure did look like her maidenhead had been took, she sure wasn’t no virgin no more, and the blood was still fresh all over the gash.”

“Gash?” said Mr. Thurl Bean, and became indignant. “You mean that monster there done went and inflicted a cut on the pore gal?”

“Naw,” Doc Plowright said, turning crimson. “I was jist referrin to her slit, I mean, her, you know, her natural openin.”

When I was summoned, I had to put my hand on the Bible and take an oath, and give my name and age and address, and please tell the court how long I’d known the victim. Then Mr. Thurl Bean asked me to tell what had happened that afternoon in my own words to the best of my ability and recollection, and I told everything I knew, except the precise location of our playhouse. When I finished, Mr. Thurl Bean said, “Now, gal, this yere man that you saw from the winder of yore dollhouse, is he a-settin anywheres in this room?”

I looked around. “He could be,” I said.

“Which’un is he?” asked Mr. Bean.

I pointed at Jim Tom Duckworth. “It could’ve been him.” I pointed at Nail Chism. “Or it could’ve been him.” Then I pointed at Judge Sull Jerram, who was sitting in the audience, and left my finger sticking in his direction. “But for all I know, it was jist as likely him.”

He asked me some more questions, trying to get me to say for sure that it was Nail, and making me tell over again that it had been Nail we’d seen in the woods not long before. But he couldn’t get me to swear that it was Nail who had been looking at our playhouse, and as I was leaving the stand to return to my seat, Sheriff Duster Snow said to me out of the side of his mouth, “You forgot what you was tole.” He looked fierce.

Finally Nail Chism was put on the stand. His wrists were fastened together with handcuffs, and nobody had bothered to comb his hair for him, so it stuck up and out in several sheeplicks. He seemed very sad, and I thought at first that maybe he had done it and was feeling guilty about it.

But he denied everything. That cowpath, he said, was the way he used every afternoon to get from his sheep pastures up on Ledbetter Mountain down into the village. Every afternoon this time of year, when the weather was nice, he’d go down to the Ingledew store and sit on the porch with the other fellers, whittling and spitting, just passing the time, you know, and watching the world go by, and swapping dogs and knives and tales, they’ve been doing that in Stay More ever since there was a storeporch to set on. He had gone straight from his sheep pasture down to Ingledew’s, and sure he had seen the two girls, Dorinda Whitter and Latha Bourne, on that cowpath, and to the best of his recollection he had said howdy to them and gone on. He sure had not doubled back and waited to rape Dorinda. That was a baldface lie, and he didn’t know why a sweet young girl like her would make up such a story, or, if she wasn’t making it up, why she’d try to put the blame on him. She didn’t have anything against him, now, did she?

“Not before,” said Mr. Thurl Bean, and then he said, “Mr. Chism, let me ast ye a question: do you lak women?”

“What-all kind of question is that?” Nail wanted to know.

“Answer it. Do ye or don’t ye?”

“Why, shore, same as the next feller,” Nail replied.

“Maybe more’n the next feller,” Mr. Bean put in. “You bein a bachelor-feller and unmarried and all. Would ye say that you’ve got a normal desire for the fair sex? Don’t ye git to feelin some passion ever wunst in a while?” Nail just stared at him, not knowing how to reply. “Or is it true,” Mr. Bean said, “that you have been known to obtain carnal gratification from one of yore sheep, now and again?”

“Objection!” said Jim Tom Duckworth, and he began to holler that the prosecuting attorney had better watch his mouth and not go imputing imputations against his client that were not substantiated by bonafide facts, and that maybe those folks over around Mt. Judea got their jollies from screwing ewes, but Stay More people had better sense, not to mention taste.

The judge, or magistrate (he wasn’t Judge Villines, our circuit judge, but just a J.P.), had to pound his gavel for order, and then he sustained Jim Tom’s objection and instructed the prosecutor to make an effort to stick to the facts.

Mr. Thurl Bean eventually gave up trying to prove that Nail Chism was a sex maniac, and asked Nail if it was not true that he had publicly accosted Judge Sewell Jerram yonder right here in the halls of this seat of justice and told said Judge Jerram to leave his said girlfriend Dorinda alone.

“I never called her my girlfriend,” Nail said.

“But you tole said Judge Jerram yonder to leave her alone.”

“Yeah, ’cause he’s married to my sister and hadn’t no business foolin around with Dorinda.”

“Or maybe ye was jist jealous,” Mr. Bean said, and without giving Nail a chance to deny it he turned and said, “Thar you are, grand gents of the jury, thar is yore motive: Nail Chism was sweet on that gal, he was green as a gourd with jealousy, and he let it be known, and then he went and done that vile abomination unto her.”

Jim Tom Duckworth called as witnesses the men who gathered every afternoon on Ingledew’s storeporch, one of whom, Fentrick Bullen, testified, “I could set my watch by the minute that ole Nail comes down to the store of an evenin, and he was right on time. He never had no dalliance.”

One by one the sitters of the storeporch, fifteen in number, testified that Nail Chism had arrived at the store at exactly his usual time. But the grand jury voted, ten to nine, with four abstentions (two drunk, two asleep), to indict Nail Chism for sodomy, perversion, assault, battery, and sexual violation of a female beneath the age of consent and against her will. Trial was set for August.

The next time I saw Dorinda was not at our playhouse (we never went there again, at least not together) but on the front porch of my house, one afternoon when she came over, bringing with her the 1914 Sears, Roebuck and Company Consumer’s Guide, which had been loaned to her by somebody in Jasper. She said she wanted my help in picking out a couple of dresses and a pair of shoes. It wasn’t play-like picking either, not the kind of wishing I did whenever I could see one of those catalogs. She had ten dollars actual cash money. I’d never seen that much real money in my entire life.

“Where did you git it, Rindy?” I inquired.

“They gave it to me,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” I said, and I waited a long time for her to elaborate. She began to leaf through the pages of the catalog, sighing and cooing at the pictures of dresses, and sometimes asking me to read for her what it said under the picture. After doing this for a while, I said, “They who?”

“Mr. Snow and them,” she said.

“The sheriff gave you ten dollars?” I asked. “What for?”

“To pay for my dresses and shoes, silly,” she said. “Don’t ye know, I’ve got to go to that there trial, come August? What does it say under this yere one?”

“‘Made of finest quality white lawn.’ How’s the knot on your head?”

She raised her hand and felt the top of her head. “It’s gone, I reckon. What’s ‘lawn’?”

“Sheer linen. Did you really git raped, Rindy?”

“Yep, I did. What does this one say?”

“‘A handsome white India lawn wrapper.’ You don’t want that one, it’d be too hot for August. Was it really Nail?”

“Then what about this one?”

“That’s taffeta silk and would make you look like a whore. Honest, did Nail really rape you?”

“Latha, ladybird lollypop, we swore we’d never ever tell a story to each other. Didn’t we? So don’t you git me to tell ye a story.”

In July most of Nail Chism’s sheep took sick and began to die. He was in that stone jail at Jasper, and although Waymon and Luther visited him and described to him the sheep’s symptoms, their diarrhea or scours, their choking and catarrh, their pining and staggers, Nail was helpless to do aught but instruct Waymon and Luther in comforts and solaces that didn’t even cure the sheep of whatever was ailing them, and it takes a shepherd to comfort and solace. But the best shepherd can’t produce rainfall, which is what we desperately needed. The sheep were thirsting to death, and so was the grass.

In August the men who sat on Willis Ingledew’s storeporch complained of the drought, and the heat, and they spent some time speculating about the upcoming trial, and they devoted only a small bit of discussion to what was happening far across the sea: some duke had been murdered in Austria, and the Russians and Germans were starting a fracas, and the English and French were getting into it too. The Jasper newspaper carried very little national news, let alone international news, and throughout that month of August, as the Germans invaded Belgium and the French invaded Lorraine, nobody in Stay More knew that the whole world was starting the Great War to End All Wars.

On a Monday in August the men on the Ingledew storeporch rode their horses or their mules, or drove their spring wagons if they had them, sometimes with families in them, to Jasper for the trial, to watch if not to participate. Jim Tom had explained to them it wouldn’t be any use for all of the storeporch crowd to keep saying the same thing over and over, that Nail was there at his usual time; three or four repetitions of that testimony were all that the court would tolerate.

I rode in with Jim Tom again, and this time my father and mother came along too, although it turned out they couldn’t get into the courthouse, it was so crowded. My father had been impressed that the county sheriff himself had paid us a visit the night before. Duster Snow had even had supper with us, unexpectedly, because he arrived at suppertime and Momma had to be polite. After my father and Duster had eaten (in those days the custom was always that the women and girls would wait until after the menfolk had finished before having their own supper), the sheriff said he wanted to talk to me while I ate; maybe he figured I couldn’t talk back to him with my mouth full.

Before I was separated from my parents at the courthouse, my father squeezed my arm very hard and said, “Gal, don’t you go and bring no embarrassment upon us. You do what the sheriff tole ye to do, hear me?”

I knew I would be punished for it (and I was, later), but I disobeyed my father and the sheriff: I refused to tell the court that Nail Chism was the man I had seen looking at our playhouse. Judge Villines himself started in to asking me questions, helping out the prosecutor, but I swore the man I saw looking at our playhouse was not Nail Chism.

Fat lot of good it did. Dorinda Whitter sat there in her purewhite Sears, Roebuck lawn dress and told her story again as if she had been rehearsing it every spare minute of July, with somebody helping her rehearse; as if she had been practicing how to cry, and she did a real good job of crying. There was a lot of crying in the audience when she cried. And a lot of gasping. And more than one of the jurors had spittle dribbling down his chin. There were just twelve men this time, and none of them were sleeping or drunk, at least not while testimony was given and the summations were made, all in one afternoon. Juries in those days were never sequestered overnight, and a rumor went around that Sull J. held a quiet little party that night at his house, two blocks from the courthouse, with plenty of Chism’s Dew, ironically, I thought, and that certain of the jurymen had been present and had imbibed freely and had made up their minds then and there before they returned the next morning and required only forty-five minutes of deliberation to find Nail Chism guilty.

When Nail was asked by Judge Villines if he had anything to say before sentence was passed upon him, he said, “I jist want to ask one question: is there ary man, woman, or child in this here courtroom who honestly believes I raped that girl? If so, stand up and look me in the eye.”

For a full minute not one person stood, except Nail, who was already standing, towering over every man. Then, finally, the prosecutor and Sull Jerram nodded at each other and seemed to agree to rise up together, and those two stood. Then the foreman of the jury stood up. Three other jurymen rose, that’s all. After a few moments Judge Villines himself stood.

Maybe she was too dumb, but Dorinda herself never did think to stand up.

Judge Villines, still standing, along with those half-dozen others, said, “Nail Chism, it is the sentence of this yere court that you be committed to the custody of the Arkansas State Penitentiary in Little Rock and that there you be put to death according to law. May Gawd have mercy on yore soul.”

On the storeporch at Ingledew’s, in the days following, the men talked of the drought, and that ruckus in Europe, and not so much the guilt or innocence of Nail Chism as the exceptional speed of the trial (“Like them courthouse critters had made up their minds in advance,” one said) and the exceptional severity of the sentence. Nobody from Newton County had ever gone to the electric chair. It was an awesome fate, and not fully understood, since there was no electricity in Newton County—Jasper itself was still several years away from the first primitive attempts at electrification. The closest anybody could conceive of a lesson to explain it was getting lightningstruck, like old Haskins Duckworth, who couldn’t move one side of his face and was bald on that one side but was still alive, they thought. The only time anybody had been convicted of rape, not in my lifetime but back in the last century, they’d simply cut off his testicles and let him choose whether to sing soprano or stop going to church, and he chose the latter.

August is an awful month in the best of years, but that August the trees stopped singing, or they murmured dirges. Only the weeds and wildflowers throve: there was still yellow in the sneezeweed, coneflower, and goldenrod, the penstemons and great mulleins still held their heads high, and the wild bergamot and verbena must have found moisture in the air, but there was little green, just dusty shades of olive, drab shades of terreverte, faded shades of green ocher.

But the day they took Nail Chism off to Little Rock, it rained. Not a real toadstrangling pourdown but enough to settle the dust and sprinkle the dirt on the hogs’ backs. Not enough to save Nail’s sheep, who all died before he was scheduled to. In a bad drought, when people have a hard enough time feeding themselves, they tend to stop feeding their pets, and all the dogs of Stay More, hungry, began to run down the last of Nail’s lambs and to fight over the remains.

For the rest of the summer until school started I was confined to the house for disobedience (“grounded” in those days meant only what happened to you when you’d overdosed on Chism’s Dew). I didn’t see Dorinda again until school started, and we had a new teacher, Mr. Perry, who insisted we sit by grade, not by friendship, and I wouldn’t have sat with her by either.

Once at recess she tried to talk to me. “Latha, how come everbody acts like I done somethin wrong? How come it’s my fault I got raped?”

I just looked her in the eye for a while before I asked, “Did you get yourself raped?”

“Yes!” she yelled, and the other pupils stopped what they were playing to look at us. “Honest! I did! It hurt! It hurt me real bad!” She burst into tears. Whether or not she had faked her crying in the courtroom, she wasn’t pretending now.

“What’s the trouble here?” Mr. Perry said. He was new, and no one had ever told him.

“She hurts,” I said, and that’s all I said.

On

“Lady, that’s enough now,” Warden Burdell said, and he held out his hand toward her as if asking her for the next dance. She stared at his hand, a chubby, gnarled, knobby, and hairy paw with dirt beneath each of the fingernails. It required a moment for her to realize that he was holding out his hand to be given the sheet of paper on which she was making her drawing, but she was in no hurry to hand it over to him. She had enjoyed these minutes of reprieve that her art had procured. Not that she had any wish to delay the execution of a convicted rapist, especially not one who had brutally abused and raped a child, but that this man’s last request, to see her drawing, had been an acknowledgment of the existence of her art. Nobody commented on her art—well, scarcely anybody other than her sister and Mr. Fletcher, the managing editor, who gave her these assignments and felt, doubtless, duty-bound to make some remarks about her work: “Good likeness,” “Clever lines,” “Fancy,” “Shows feeling,” or “It’ll do.”

She wanted to give her drawing of Nail Chism a final glance before handing it over to Warden Harris Burdell. Something wasn’t right. The ears perhaps; they really did stick out that much, but the shaved head seemed to exaggerate the protuberance of the ears into almost a caricature, and she did not want to seem to be making any sort of mockery. Actually, Nail Chism had been an exceptionally good-looking man when first she’d seen him, sitting beside her at the execution of the Negro Skipper Thomas. Chism had had his full head of hair then, although its yellow was already prematurely frosting white in places, and he’d worn some red bruises on his cheeks and temples as if he’d been in a fight…or been beaten.

Too, his heavy eyebrows, a darker blond than his hair had been, grew thicker as they met each other above the bridge of his nose, and this seemed to give him a coarse look, and to accentuate the effect of the shaved head. She had been especially careful with the skull, not to strain the shading of its bumps and general shape, because it was a fine cranium, almost Grecian. But what difference did such subtle shading make? The printed picture, on page 5 or 6 of tomorrow’s Gazette, wouldn’t retain the subtleties of her chiaroscuro.

She tore the sheet from its pad and handed it over to Warden Burdell. He took it and stared at it with a frown, as if seeing a Cezanne for the first time. Then he grinned his penitentiary smirk and said, “Hey, Chism, I caint show you this. It’ll give you the swell-head.” But he turned the drawing around and held it up by the corners so that Nail Chism could see it, held it as if Mr. Chism’s eyesight might be poor. “How ’bout that?” the warden asked. “Don’t that make you look like Miss Monday has done went and fell in love with you?” The doomed man squinted his eyes as if indeed his eyesight were bad, and focused on the drawing, and the trace of a smile gave sfumato to the edges of his mouth. He said nothing, however. “Are you satisfied?” the warden asked, expecting an answer, and waited.

“I reckon I look pretty awful,” the convict said. “I aint seen a mirror in a month. But leastways I don’t have to worry about my hair shootin out ever which way, like it always done.” He grinned.

“What do you say to the lady?” the warden prompted.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Nail Chism said, looking her right in the eye again, the way he had throughout his sitting, or standing, rather. It had disconcerted her, and perhaps even slowed down the progress of the drawing, the fixedness of his stare, his eyes trying to tell her his whole life’s story in these last minutes of it. “I’m much obliged to ye,” he said.

She spoke, for the first time, not knowing exactly what to say: “You’re welcome.”

That should have been the end of the exchange, but Nail Chism continued it: “You gave me a few more minutes of life, ma’am. I hope you’ll remember that. I hope it’ll be some comfort to ye.”

What could she say? He seemed to be expecting some response from her. The warden too was looking at her, waiting for her remark on that. She couldn’t think of anything to say. “I’m just doing my job,” she said modestly.

“HAW! I’M JUST DOIN MY JOB!” said Irvin Bobo, the executioner, and, in his bad idea of a joke, gave the switch a couple of practice jolts, which darkened the one green-shaded overhead light and made everyone except Bobo jump.

“Cut the shit, Bobo!” Warden Burdell said. Then he apologized to Viridis: “Pardon me, ma’am. He’s drunk, as usual. I reckon I’d git drunk too, I had to throw that switch on a feller. But Bobo’s impatient, and I don’t blame him, we’re all standin around talkin like it’s a goddamn tea party. Come on, boys, let’s get him to sit.”

For a second there Viridis thought he was referring to Irvin Bobo, as the one to sit. But then the two guards flanking Nail Chism, Gabriel “Fat Gabe” McChristian and James “Short Leg” Fancher, took the prisoner’s arms and led him to the electric chair and backed him up to it, and sat him down in it. From the moment he had first come into the room, the prisoner had amazed Viridis Monday by his composure and poise, and now in his last moments he was not struggling at all. Mr. McChristian took a small key from a chain on his belt and inserted it into the handcuffs that bound the prisoner’s wrists, and he unlocked and removed the handcuffs.

Only then did the prisoner begin to struggle. He seemed to reach for his heart to still it, he seemed to be trying to thrust his hand inside his jacket, but Mr. Francher grabbed the hand and slammed it down on the armrest of the electric chair and began strapping it. Mr. McChristian quickly strapped the other hand. Then they strapped his ankles to the lower parts of the chair. Nail Chism went on twisting and struggling for just another moment before seeming to realize that he was trapped and could not get loose, and then he remained absolutely still, with his eyes closed, while they lowered the metal cap to the top of his head.

This was the third time Viridis had been through this ordeal, and she had asked herself which of the many long moments in the execution process was the worst. Someone else would doubtless have chosen the instant of the first jolt of electricity. Someone with imagination might have chosen the moment when the convict first catches sight of the waiting chair. But for Viridis, trying to empathize, it was the instant that the black hemisphere of the metal cap, cold as the room was terribly cold, touched the raw, bare scalp of the man. She noticed Nail Chism shiver.

“Our Father Which Art in Heaven,” the Reverend James S. McPhee began to intone. “Jimmie Mac,” as they called him, was not actually a minister of any particular church, or an ordained minister at all, but a railroad conductor who, with his wife Estelle, made a hobby of “bringing religion” to The Walls. Viridis had surreptitiously drawn his portrait more than once, not that she intended to publish it, but that McPhee was a character study in pious asceticism.

They never let Estelle McPhee join her husband to witness these executions, much as she agitated to be allowed to witness. She was a woman and women were not allowed. Oh, she hollered and screamed that they would allow Viridis to attend but wouldn’t let her, who was like a sister to these poor doomed sinners. They’d had some trouble explaining to Estelle that Viridis was a “newspaperwoman” and thus exempt from the restriction.

Actually, it had been Tom Fletcher, the managing editor, who’d arranged for Viridis to attend. Warden Burdell was in Mr. Fletcher’s debt for a few favors regarding privacy of information, and Tom had used the privilege to get Viridis under the ban, and consequently to get some exclusive pictures of the condemned men in their last moments. Photographs were strictly forbidden, there was no getting around that.

Viridis wasn’t actually a “newspaperwoman.” Her reportage was graphic, not verbal, although she was not above, on occasion, such as now, doing double duty as reporter and illustrator, careful to get the correct names of all the witnesses and to record such things as the exact time, and what the prisoner said, and so forth. For an important execution, for a murderer such as that heinous Clarence Smead, who had butchered his parents, the Gazette sent an actual reporter along with Viridis (and her drawing of Smead weeping like a baby in his last moments had made the front page), but for some reason known only to the men whose fraternity the new science of “journalism” consecrated, the crime of rape was considered a lesser offense, perhaps excusable, even if it had been perpetrated upon a thirteen-year-old hillbilly girl of subnormal intelligence by a tall, brutal moonshiner. “He’s all yours, Very,” Tom Fletcher had said to her, informing her that the Gazette would not send a regular reporter to the electrocution of Nail Chism.

The two guards, McChristian and Fancher, moved to the side of the room where the witnesses sat. Warden Burdell moved to the wall where Irvin Bobo stood beside the switch. The prisoner was alone in his chair in a small room that suddenly seemed much larger because of his isolation, as if the walls and ceiling had expanded to make him smaller and lonelier. Viridis snapped her charcoal pencil in two, between her clenched fingers, and abruptly realized it was the only sound in the silence, and was embarrassed, as if she had broken wind.

“Ready, Bobo?” the warden said, and raised one hand.

Bobo nodded.

“…for Thine is the Power and the Glory, Forever and Ever…” intoned Jimmie Mac, in hardly more than a whisper, but it was booming.

Viridis Monday had an uncanny sensation of hearing a kind of singing, a choir of voices, but they were not human voices. The sound seemed to be—and remembering it later, she couldn’t account for the strange thought—the sound seemed as if the trees themselves (but there were no trees!) were singing. Later she would remember two questions occurring to her at that moment: Can trees sing? and What trees?

She could not answer either question.

The swelling sound of the song, or cantata, was punctuated by tympana, a drumroll, and in the instant that the warden’s hand fell she realized that the drumroll was somebody knocking on a door and the warden was lowering his hand not to signal Bobo to pull the switch but to point at the door and say, “Somebody get that!”

Gabriel McChristian opened the door, which had been latched. Standing in the door was Michael O. Shoptaw, the turnkey, who said, “Scuse me, Warden, sir, but Governor Hays is calling up on the telephone.”

“Who?” demanded Mr. Burdell. “Which telephone?”

“The governor, sir. That telephone in your office.”

“Don’t he know we’re doing a execution?” Mr. Burdell said. “What’s he want at a time like this?”

“Wants to talk to you, is all I know, sir,” said Mr. Shoptaw.

“Caint it wait till we’re done?”

“Sir, I’m just tellin you what Williams come and tole me. He says the telephone is ringin in your office and he answers it like he’s sposed to, aint he? and it’s the secretary of the governor, and says the governor wants to talk to you right now.”

“Right now, huh?” said Mr. Burdell, and seemed to be deliberating. “Governor Hays himself, huh?” He looked around at the others in the room, waiting for someone to advise him. No one spoke. “Well, I reckon I better go see what he wants.” No one objected. The warden turned to Bobo. “Bobo, you just cook him real slow till I git back, and make sure he aint done before I git here.” Several people failed to laugh at the warden’s wit, and he realized his joke had fallen flat, and retracted it. “Aw, I’m just kiddin you, Bobo. Stand back from that switch till I tell you. I’ll be right back.”

The warden marched out of the room. The turnkey followed. The condemned man opened his eyes, which had been closed as though in meditation. He stared right at her, at Viridis. She didn’t know what to do or say. She smiled slightly, and wanted to say, See, you get a few more minutes of life, not just from me. The trees she had been hearing singing, perhaps just in her head, had changed their tune: it was not a mournful carol but a hymn of joy. If it was the trees. If it was only inside her head. She wished Nail Chism would stop looking at her. Was he going to look at her the whole time they waited for the warden to return?

The others did not seem to know what to do. Gabriel McChristian and Short Leg Fancher chatted, too quietly for her to hear. Jimmie Mac was rubbing his hands together as if he had a bar of soap inside them and was washing them. Irvin Bobo reached inside his coat and produced a flat glass bottle, which he unscrewed and tilted up to his lips.

“Now, I wonder,” said Jimmie Mac, “what-all that is about. Could be something important. Could be, even,” he looked down at the convict and spoke the rest of the sentence to him, “could be the governor has granted you a stay, or something.”

Nail Chism did not appear to hear him. He continued to stare at Viridis, seeming to see her for the first time. His eyes, she realized, were not as dark as she had rendered them. She put the drawing back on top of the pad and used a kneaded eraser to lighten the pupils of his eyes. His eyes were a kind of hazel-tinged blue. She wasn’t too uncomfortable staring into them as long as she was examining them for the purpose of her drawing.

Suddenly his eyes grew enormously large, and his whole body jumped, and the green-shaded overhead light dimmed. Bobo had thrown the switch! She heard a frantic screech, and realized it was herself. She had thrown down the sketchpad and jumped up from her chair and lunged toward Bobo and the switch, and she found herself clawing at Bobo and the switch and protesting as fast as she could talk, too fast to be understood.

McChristian and Fancher were restraining her. “Take it easy, lady,” the obese McChristian was saying to her. “The switch aint on. It aint on. Bobo was jist foolin! He jist give it a teensy little spark, jist fer a joke.” To the executioner McChristian said, “Okay, Bobo, enough’s enough, you better jist wait for the warden and don’t be foolin around.”

Viridis shook herself loose from the hands of McChristian and Fancher and looked at both of them indignantly, then gave Bobo her most scornful glower and asked, “What kind of monster are you?”

“Hey, lady, I was jist givin him a little sample,” Bobo said. “He hardly felt it. But if ole Burdell don’t git back here soon, I might jist let my hand slip and give him the full dose.” Bobo fished out his bottle and took another swig, then offered it to Viridis. “Here. You act like a man, so be a man. You’re the only wo-man that ever watched me. Kind of guts it takes to do that can shore stand a swaller of this stuff. Drink it.”

Viridis shook her head and returned to her seat, picking up the sketchpad from the floor. The drawing was smudged. She’d have to do one side of the face again. Her charcoal pencil was broken in half; she had another in her purse, but they hadn’t let her bring her purse into the execution chamber. She would use half the pencil as best she could, sharpening it with her fingernails. But first she took a scrap of newsprint out of her pocket and carefully wrote down exactly what Irvin Bobo had done and said. She intended to put it into the story if Tom Fletcher would let her write it.

The subject was still staring at her, but this time, when her eyes met his, Nail Chism smiled and said, “Thank you.” Then he said, “You’re very brave. You could have got yourself hurt.”

“There’s some things I can’t stand,” she said. It was the first almost conversational remark she had made in a long while.

Warden Harris Burdell returned and, forgetting there was a woman present, began to speak coarse profanity. He swore obscenely, and then he announced, “The goddamn governor has done gone and granted Chism a stay. Git the fucker out of the chair, boys, and throw him back in his fuckin cell.” He turned and saw her. “Oh, shee-it, Miss Monday, I forgot you was here.”

Off

The last time I was in Little Rock, just a few years ago, for my sister Mandy’s funeral, I took some time off to go out Arch Street and look for the house where Viridis Monday had spent all of her childhood and adolescence. My granddaughter Sharon drove me, at my request; she’ll know why when she reads this. The house is still there, and the present owners have lovingly restored it to what must have been its original appearance, when the architect Charles L. Thompson designed it for bank vice-president Cyril J. Monday. I would guess that the original two colors of the house were a sort of tarragon with a trim of sage, and the present owners have taken pains to duplicate these colors exactly, giving the house its Victorian feeling of elegance relieved by fanciness and playfulness. It is a storybook house. Sixteen rooms, seven porches, two turrets (one with a domed cupola), a steeple, lots of wrought-iron trim and jigsaw decoration, fishscale shingles, miles of turned balusters and spindles, and maybe (I didn’t count) two dozen roof pitches, no two of them alike. I learned that this is called Queen Anne—inappropriately, because it had nothing to do with the era or the personality of Queen Anne—and that its dominant characteristic is an avoidance of symmetry. The rooms shoot off and up in every direction, and one of them up there was Viridis’ aerie: her studio and her bower.

Most such urban houses, on huge high lots with leaf-dappled lawns, were intended for large families at a time when large families were desirable, but Cyril and Elsie Monday had only five children; they would have had more, but Elsie’s health was not good after the birth of Viridis, who was the first girl, fourth child. The last-born, also a girl, Cyrilla, was frail from infancy, although she outlived them all.

The house is a short, brisk hike from downtown Little Rock, not far from the governor’s mansion. All its neighbors are distinctively individual but large and rambling houses of the 1890s and early 1900s. Although the Mondays had servants, a black couple who handled the yard work and kitchen work, Viridis told me, years later when she was filling in the pieces of her life for me, “I remember at an early age being placed in charge of them, in charge of the household, since my mother was either too ill or too indisposed to give orders to the servants. The black couple, a man named Samuel and his wife Ruby, called me Missy V, and they did not seem to mind taking orders from me, and I was careful never to give orders in a demanding or supercilious fashion.”

Cyril Monday had originated in Malvern, Arkansas, and so had Elsie. Malvern was in the flat timberlands southwest of the capital, and Cyril, although he liked to claim that he was a “self-made” man, was the son of a prosperous lumber baron, who, however, had insisted that each of his sons attend “the College of Hard Knocks.” So Cyril at seventeen became a driver for the stagecoach that ran from the depot to the resort spa at Hot Springs. One of his regular passengers was the Little Rock banker Henry T. Worthen, who took young Cyril under his wing, persuaded him to move to Little Rock, and gave him a job in his bank. Within five years Cyril had risen from clerk to teller to vice-president. “But never more than that,” Viridis told me. “All of my growing-up years I had to listen to my father complain that he was not ever going to realize his ambition to become president of the bank. He was a very frustrated man.”

Cyril Monday may have remained only a frustrated vice-president for all of his working life, but he was a very wealthy one, and he and his family were “comfortable”—a word then meaning without a care in this world, except that Elsie was often in poor health, and when she wasn’t spending long periods in Hot Springs taking one “cure” or another, sometimes for addiction to drink, she was convalescing at home, not bedridden but spending most of the time in her garden, which covered nearly half an acre behind the Monday mansion. “In good weather, if I wanted to speak to my mother,” Viridis told me, “I tried the garden first. If my mother wasn’t there, she was in Hot Springs. I was seventeen and in college before it suddenly dawned on me that my mother had never had any friends.”

Henry Worthen once suggested to Cyril Monday that he would never become president, of the bank or of any of the civic and fraternal organizations to which he belonged, unless and until his wife Elsie began to “entertain.” Cyril Monday did not apologize for Elsie. Some women, he felt, were not cut out to entertain, and he himself was not fond of large dinner parties at which a fortune was spent on food that remained unappreciated because the eater was too busy either trying to keep stains off his or her clothing or else carrying on a conversation to pay any attention to what was being eaten.

Nor did the girls, Viridis and Cyrilla, do any entertaining in the form of inviting friends to come to the Monday mansion for food or play or casual conversation. Cyrilla was almost as delicate as her mother, and in fact she began at the age of twelve to accompany her mother on the regular cures to Hot Springs. What social life existed at all within the confines of the Queen Anne house was that of the three sons Matthew, Dallas, and Henry, who frequently invited their classmates to come and visit, to explore the countless cupboards and crannies of the endless house, to play croquet or badminton on the lawns, to shoot billiards on the third floor, to climb even higher into the fifth floor of the domed turret and shoot pigeons on the roof.

“I remember the house as being overrun by males,” Viridis said to me. “When my mother and sister were gone to Hot Springs for long stretches, and my three brothers had three or more of their friends spending the night or longer, I had no one to talk to except my father, and he had very little time to listen to me, although we did spend much time together, evenings especially.”

(It is hard for me to get out of the habit of thinking of “evening” as meaning “afternoon,” as it always did in Stay More and the Ozarks. Evening was the time before supper, night was the time after supper, but to say that Viridis and her father spent their nights together is misleading…somewhat.)

Days, when she had any time free from managing the household, from meeting with the tutors who came regularly to give private lessons in voice, piano, French, and Spanish to her and her sister, from planning the lunches for her brothers and their friends, from dusting the spots that Ruby had missed, from shopping in the markets along lower Main, Viridis would climb the smaller north turret, not the south one the boys used as a pigeon blind, to the room that was her studio, which she had created at the age of eleven when one of the books she’d got from her Grandmother Monday at Christmas was The Young People’s Concise Doorway to the Fine Arts, wherein she had learned what an easel is, a palette, a mahlstick, and the names of such colors as madder, alizarin, ocher, umber, sienna, and, her delightful discovery, viridian. “Neither my father nor my mother, who hadn’t known it themselves, had ever told me the meaning of my given name, which had been bestowed upon me, my mother had said, because she had ‘found it in a novel’ and had thought it ‘was pretty and unusual.’ My mother had not been able to remember which novel, and once I searched their library without finding it. My father couldn’t even pronounce the name, or, if he could, he chose to mispronounce it roguishly to rhyme with ‘paradise.’” She was destined to endure from other people its mispronunciations and misspellings (Viridas, Viredes, Vyradis, Veredis, etc.) all of her life.

She spelled it for me, and she told me it was pronounced properly Vera Dis, although she didn’t mind that I had been saying it Verdus, which was the way Nail Chism had pronounced it too.

“I have too many eyes,” I thought she said, but she was saying that she had a surplus of the letter i in her name, three of them, and I jokingly called her Three-Eyes when I was irritated with her, which was not often: she was fourteen years older than I, and I loved her dearly.

Sometimes I’ve wondered if she couldn’t tell this whole story of her growing up and becoming a woman much better than I could do it. What follows I have put into her words, pretending it’s what she spoke to me, but it wasn’t then, that year I first met her, and it wasn’t even over the many years following that I knew her and we would sit endless hours together rocking away on the porch while she told me the whole story of her life. No, what follows is a kind of combination of bits and pieces she told me over the years, and some other things I learned from other people who knew her, and parts of it, perhaps the best parts of it, not from what she or they said but from what she wrote, in her private diaries, which came into my hands after her death many years later. So yes, I will let her tell this:

That studio, up there in the top of that turret, behind that large northern light. No one (except my father) was ever allowed into it, and it became my cloister, my nunnery, my ivory tower, as well as my autodidactic academy. It is not true, as some newspapers have said, that I was self-taught. But Little Rock High School, a seven-block walk east of my house, offered no courses in art, just as it offered nothing in Spanish, French, voice, or piano. I had begged to be allowed to go off to Arcadia College, an Ursuline Academy for Young Ladies in Arcadia, Missouri; I knew nothing about it except that it offered classes in art and had a wonderful pastoral name; but my father would not let me leave Little Rock. So for most of the years of my adolescence I had to learn art from trial and error and what books I could find or order. At the age of eleven, and continuing until the age of…well, until I removed myself forever from that house, I used that little turret studio as a private place for working out my ideas about the making of pictures.

My father wasn’t a miser, but he didn’t throw his money around either, and when his children wanted something we had to beg for it and justify it and remind him several times and then promise to do something in return for it. I always managed to get what I needed for my studio: the easel, the palette, the mahlstick, and all the tubes of paint, and yards of canvas, and endless sheets of drawing-paper. Daddy did not approve of the expenditure; he did not want me to become an artist; for that matter, he didn’t want me to “become” anything, other than grown-up…and he wasn’t sure he wanted me to grow up. But Mother had her garden, and she would not let me help her in it. My father faulted her for that, and even yelled at her about it, but Mother would not accept help even from the Negro Samuel with the tender plants that she considered her real babies, in the garden. So the north turret studio was my garden, and the only green in it was what I painted. Daddy hoped I would outgrow it.

My only fond memory of Little Rock High School was that I achieved popularity among the other girls by painting for each of them an excellent copy of a Gibson girl as a reasonable likeness of themselves. I was the only “artist” any of them had ever even heard about.

When I told my father that I wanted to go away to the Chicago Art Institute to study art, he was horrified. Or, rather, he was at first very puzzled, because he didn’t know there was such a thing as an art college that would accept women, and then, when I showed him the brochure, he was scornful, and only later, after I had got up my nerve to tell him that I definitely intended to go, did he become horrified. He stormed and shouted. He railed and ranted. He sulked. He plotted: he told my older brothers of my intention, and they, all in college themselves at that time (Matthew had gone to Vanderbilt, Dallas was at Southern Methodist, while Henry settled for the University of Arkansas), filled my ears with stories of college life, how difficult it was, how impossible for the “fair sex,” who were always, if they could be admitted at all, viewed as ornaments, oddities, or odalisques.

“What’s an odalisque?” Daddy asked my brother Matthew.

“A concubine,” Matthew explained.

“Is that what you want to be?” my father demanded of me.

“If I could be one of the kind Ingres painted,” I told him.

“Who?”

When I gave up my dream of the Chicago Art Institute and instead actually began to make plans to apply for admission to the University of Arkansas, and needed my father’s signature on the application, he flatly refused and said he’d rather see me walking the streets. I did not particularly want to go to Fayetteville anyway; in that year, 1904, the University offered only two courses in art, both taught by a woman whose specialty was penmanship. At the last minute before the opening of the fall term, I applied for and was accepted at Conway Central College and Conservatory of Fine Arts, a women’s school in the college town of Conway, less than two hours by train from Little Rock. Somehow I got my father to sign the papers, perhaps by my promise to come home every weekend. And I did: I caught the 4:15 every Friday afternoon and went back on the 6:45 every Sunday P.M. The house went to hell during the week. I tried to persuade Cyrilla to assume my duties as manager of the household, but Cyrilla, while willing, wasn’t constitutionally strong enough and wasn’t able to give orders or instructions to Samuel and Ruby. Daddy kept complaining that the house was going to hell.

There was one teacher, Miss Opaline Dearasaugh, at 4-c F.A. (as it was called, pronounced Fourcie Effie), who was reasonably talented at drawing and could impart the rudiments of watercolor technique, so my time there wasn’t entirely wasted. But I reflected that the hours I spent in travel, going home every weekend, could have been better spent doing my homework and polishing my drawings, or, at worst, accepting one of the frequent invitations I received from the young men at Hendrix, a Methodist college in Conway. Most of the girls at Fourcie Effie were enrolled there because of its proximity to Hendrix, where they hoped to find an eligible swain. It did not take me long to discover that my classmates were less interested in the fine arts than in men, and that all of the girls were indeed ornaments, oddities, or odalisques.

Our first assignment in Miss Dearasaugh’s class was to do a self-portrait, and I’ve shown you the pastel I did in the mirror and have kept, and which you have called, I thank you, beautiful. I took no great pride in my features, but men—or boys—seemed to be quick to notice me…although slow to do anything about it. A Hendrix premedical student named Jason Sample stopped me on the sidewalk in downtown Conway and introduced himself and apologized for his forwardness and asked me to allow him to be my escort for the Hendrix Christmas cotillion. I smiled sweetly and thanked him and declined, not on the grounds that I didn’t know him and hadn’t been properly introduced by a responsible party but that I didn’t know how to dance…which was true. He smiled engagingly and told me that he didn’t either, that the two of us could watch the others and use the event as an excuse to get acquainted, because all he wanted to do was learn my life’s story. I smiled again and said that my life had no story. “Then I would like to start its story,” he offered—and I loved that, the way he said that, and I wanted to say, Oh yes I’d love to go with you to the Christmas cotillion (any of my Fourcie classmates would have given an arm to have been invited), but I said that since the cotillion was on a Saturday night and my presence was required in Little Rock each weekend, I would have to forgo the kind invitation. Any other young man, after half an hour attempting such persuasion, would have abandoned the effort, but Jason Sample persisted, and at length I admitted that it just might be possible for me to get out of the trip to Little Rock, and the next day I wrote my father (I could have waited until the weekend and spoken it to him, but I thought a letter would be more effective) and told him I was going to the Hendrix Christmas cotillion. My father did not reply, nor did he mention it when he saw me that weekend, and I wondered if he had received the letter. I waited, and two more weekends went by without mention of the letter. As I was leaving Little Rock the weekend before the cotillion, I said simply, “I won’t be home next weekend.”

“Yes you will,” my father said.

“No I won’t,” I said, and I was not. I went to the cotillion with Jason Sample, and I loved it. But Daddy came to Conway the next day and told me he was taking me out of school. And he did.

In the months and months following, Jason Sample wrote to me several times and asked if he could come to Little Rock to see me. I attempted to discourage him and told him it was unlikely that we could continue to see each other. He wanted reasons, he demanded explanations, and all I could do, eventually, was ignore him. Alone in my turret studio I was learning more about art than I had in Miss Dearasaugh’s classes, and I did not miss Conway at all; it was such a provincial village compared with Little Rock.

By accident, in conversation, Daddy’s boss Henry Worthen learned that I was interested in art, and he arranged for me to meet his “daubing cousin” Spotiswode Worthen, who was a legendary Little Rock eccentric, a strange old man in his seventies and virtually a recluse. Apparently, Henry Worthen was in charge of Spotiswode’s financial affairs, and he thought it would be “useful” if his “unemployed” cousin agreed to give “lessons” to the daughter of his vice-president. Spotiswode Worthen had not given lessons during the previous twenty years, nor had he made any sort of social contact, and I remember how terribly rusty his voice sounded at our first meeting. He wasn’t an unkind man, and he knew much about the entire history of Western painting up to but not including the time of the Impressionists, who, he felt, were demoralizing the visual culture of civilization. Do you know the Impressionists, Latha? No? Well, they had revolutionized the art of that time, but Spotiswode Worthen had no use for them. The last great painter, he believed, had been Fantin-Latour—a mediocre academic hack—but Bouguereau—a somewhat more talented hack—remained “promising,” although he was in the last year of his life (Bouguereau, not Worthen, who would live two more years).

Spotiswode Worthen was the first “real” artist that I had ever known, although the few paintings of his that I was permitted to see did not impress me, except with their technical facility. His style was…oh, what can I call it if you don’t know art? His style was constipated. It was hard and dark and fecal. Yet it was smooth and slick. But I tell you, “Spot” Worthen could paint! More than paint, he could draw. His paintings were actually just colored drawings, the colors reserved and drab. In his first lesson he made me sit for three hours drawing, with nothing but a lead pencil, a single egg. In the second lesson he moved the egg from the tabletop to the windowsill, into the direct sunlight, and made me spend three more hours with it. Sometimes I thought that I must be cackling or clucking in my sleep.

Well, I spent two years, three times a week, receiving assignments and criticisms from Spot Worthen. I never asked my father, or Henry Worthen, what tuition was being paid to the man, who always dressed and smelled as if he were penniless. On my own I did bright watercolors of the Little Rock parks and the Little Rock townscape and the view of the river from Spotiswode Worthen’s studio, but my teacher did not appreciate these; he was scornful of “views.” His studio and living quarters were in an antebellum warehouse fronting the Arkansas River, down on Markham Street, half an hour’s walk from my house. The north windows had a fine vista of the muddy river and the picturesque village of Argenta on the opposite shore, but it never was a subject for him. The human figure, he told me, contained heavenly horizons more sublime than any landscape. He parked me in front of endless plaster casts of torsos and elbows, noses and knees, ankles and navels.

Once I asked my sister Cyrilla to pose for me without her clothing, and she was willing, but her figure was so scrawny and limp that the result, when I showed it to my teacher, curled his lip in scorn. “Use a mirror,” he suggested, and I followed his suggestion, in warm weather, spending many long hours at a dresser, studying and drawing the full front view of my own naked body. When I showed the drawings to Spot Worthen, I was surprised (and maybe a little pleased) to see that his aged, wan cheeks actually blushed.

“Good,” he said. “Certainly good. Continue. But notice…” and he pointed out the various muscles I had missed or slighted.

He did not give me art history lessons as such, that is, no instruction in appreciation of the great artists of the past, but occasionally he talked about theory, and about the great masters (B.F.L., I came to call them: “before Fantin-Latour”). “Do you know why all of the great painters have been men?” he asked me once, and without giving me a chance to point out that Artemisia Gentileschi, Marietta Tintoretto, and Judith Leyster, to name only three, were female, he said, “Because only the male has a body which is charged with divine afflatus.” Modesty prevented a sarcastic comment I could have made on that, and I kept silent as he went on to explain how the female body is a lovely and graceful subject, analogous to soft, slow music, but only the male body was truly heroic, capable of grand mordents and cadenzas. The great Michelangelo had a good reason for making even his nude females look masculine.

One day toward the end of my second year of study with Spotiswode Worthen, he impetuously swept his hand against the plaster cast I was drawing, knocking it to the floor, broken, and yelled, “Tate!” and summoned the black youth who sometimes came to the warehouse to clean it. He was a young man, perhaps not as old as I (I was twenty), tall, not dark-black but light-brown, and frightened, or clearly uneasy, in my presence. Here in the Ozarks, where there are virtually no Negroes, you would never understand how delicate the relationship between black men and white women must be. He took off his hat and held it in his hand as he bowed his head to Spot Worthen and waited for orders.

“Do you have a dollar on you?” Spot Worthen asked me.

“I think I may have a dollar,” I declared.

“Give it to him, and he’ll pose for you.”

“I’m not certain I want him to pose for me,” I said.

“Because he’s a nigger? They make good models. Velázquez, Copley, Géricault, they all used niggers. Your Edmonia Lewis did a lot of niggers, although she made ’em look like burr-headed whites, but what can you do in white marble? Give him the dollar.”

The epithet did not make me flinch; in Little Rock in those days everybody called them niggers; I myself had sometimes referred to Samuel as “our nigger.” But except for Samuel, a loyal old family servant, I had never been in a room with a black man before, certainly not one, as this one was now doing, at Worthen’s command, removing his clothing. Before Tate removed his trousers, however, Worthen whispered something into his ear and handed him a rag, a long strip of bedsheeting, and pointed toward the part of the studio that was Worthen’s living quarters. Tate went in there and returned a minute later wearing nothing but the strip of cloth wrapped clumsily around his hips. Worthen made adjustments to it so that as much as possible of the pelvis was revealed without sacrifice of decency, then he commanded me, “Draw.”

I drew. For a dollar the black youth posed for three hours, never seeming to tire. He was extremely muscular, and his taut skin glistened with sweat. I did a front view, a side view, a back view, and an “action” pose of him holding a broom overhead as if it were a sword. The next time I came to Worthen’s I did details of the muscles of the latissimus dorsi, the rectus abdominis, the gluteus maximus. I devoted a whole afternoon, once, to his hands, getting the ligamentum carpi volare just right. I drew him asleep, or pretending to be. I drew him stretching and bending and twisting and throwing. I drew him, or tried to catch him, falling and leaping and running and jumping and kicking. I spent almost forty dollars on the Negro, and once when, accidentally, the loincloth slipped down without his notice or Worthen’s (the old artist had taken to sleeping through these sessions), I drew also what it had concealed, fascinated with the structure, although my face was so hot my eyes watered until I could hardly see.

That one drawing was my undoing. I kept it in my portfolio in my studio at home, along with the hundreds of other sketches of the Negro. Occasionally my father climbed up to my studio, and he was the only other person permitted there. Once when he came up for a visit, I had a group of the drawings spread out on the floor and was reviewing them.

“Jesus Christ, Viridis, who is this nigger?” he asked.

“His name is Tate Coleman, and he is Spotiswode Worthen’s janitor and occasional model.”

“Model? You mean he stands around like this with his clothes off?”

“When he’s asked to.”

“With you watching him?”

“That’s how I did these drawings, Daddy.”

“You drew these pictures?” He began to pick them up, one by one, and then to drop them, as if they were contaminated. He took my portfolio and opened it and exclaimed, “How many times did you do it?” I had momentarily forgotten about the one improper drawing, or I would have sought to stop my father’s ransacking of my portfolio. By the time I remembered, it was too late. He held the offending sketch at arm’s length and emitted a long whistle with his pursed lips. Then he said, not to me but to himself, “Yep, they’re long, all right.” Then he asked me, “Did you have to rub it to get it to be that long?”

“Daddy!” I said.

He ripped the drawing in two. Then he ripped it in four. Then eight, and into tiny fragments. He threw his handfuls of torn paper into the air and they drifted down like snowflakes. “Why don’t you give up this art foolishness and take up a nice hobby? Have you ever thought of riding? Would you like to have a horse?” I shook my head. “I’m getting you a gelding,” he said, and he walked out.

To preserve all of the art I had completed up until that point—several portfolios and a number of canvases—I hid it in the attic. My father removed all the rest of the contents of my studio, locked it, and bought for a high price a chestnut Arabian gelding, which I named Géricault after a famous artist who painted horses, although the groom, servants, and everyone else called him Jericho. Spotiswode Worthen had to go to a hospital. I sneaked away from my riding lesson to visit him there. The old artist was very ill and could scarcely talk. I said I was sorry I’d had to discontinue my lessons with him. I had learned a lot, I said. I was very grateful. It had been a meaningful experience for me. Nothing that I had ever drawn had been as interesting as the body of Tate Coleman.

“That body,” Spotiswode Worthen managed slowly to speak, “was found, with a large rock tied to the neck, in the river, downstream a ways.”

I tried to lose myself in my riding: with all the fervor I had devoted to painting and drawing, I studied and practiced manège, a fancy word for fancy horsemanship. At a time when most women still rode sidesaddle in their long dresses, I raised eyebrows with my jodhpurs and English jumping saddle. I took Géricault for long rides in Pulaski Heights, west of Little Rock; I rode out as far as Pinnacle Mountain, and I rode back so fast and furious that passersby thought I was being pursued. Sometimes mounted policemen did pursue me, to see if I needed assistance or to find out why a woman was wearing pants in the city limits of Little Rock, but they never could catch me or stop me. I jumped ever-higher fences and walls and fallen tree trunks, anything that got in my way. It is a wonder I didn’t break my neck. I took lessons in how to fall, and I had several falls, and more than once I was cut and bruised but never broke anything…except, eventually, one of Géricault’s legs, broken so badly that he had to be shot.

The day after Géricault was shot, in August of 1908, I packed a trunk and took a train for Chicago. I had been gone for several days before my mother or sister or the one brother still at home, Henry, noticed that I was missing, and Cyrilla wrote to tell me how they expressed astonishment that Daddy had not only permitted me to leave but had wired a Chicago bank with funds sufficient to keep me there for a year. Was he mellowing in his middle age? Did he feel guilty for depriving me of my art? He wasn’t simply letting me leave the nest, was he? How would they all do without me? How would Daddy do without me? He was saying he hoped that Cyrilla could learn to take my place, and nobody knew then, yet, just exactly what he meant, but Cyrilla knew, and she asked me in the letter if it was true that she was going to be expected to substitute for me in that regard as well. I told her I would not let him do that to her.

Two bronze lions flanked the entrance to the Chicago Art Institute, a huge new building in the popular Italian Renaissance style. I felt when I passed between the lions the same way the ancient Hittites and the Mycenaeans felt at their lion gates—that I was acquiring the animals’ strength and energy, that I could do anything I wanted, that nothing was going to stop me. Thus I was prepared for the shock of the pictures I saw inside the museum. Remember, now, I had never seen art in the original before, except for a few paintings of his own that Spotiswode had shown me. There were no museums in Arkansas. The poor reproductions in black-and-white in the cheap art books I owned or could borrow had not prepared me for encountering the originals. Now I saw why Spotiswode had abhorred the Impressionists: they violated all the rules he had drilled into me. And the modern artists, more recent than the Impressionists, were even more extravagant. I stood a long time before an enormous tapestry-like park scene done all in tiny dots by an artist named Georges Seurat. But even his color was mild compared with that of another Frenchman by the name of Paul Gauguin, who, I was sad to discover, had died five years before. If only I could have studied with him instead of with Spotiswode! I spent a very long time standing in front of the paintings by Gauguin.

Finally I tore myself away from the museum and visited the classrooms and studios. The fall semester had not begun, but the rooms were ready, row upon row of easels like a factory of some sort, and the walls held examples of student work from the previous year. I examined these, finding the drawings and paintings staid and stodgy and amateurish compared with the art I had just seen in the museum. I noticed that each painting or drawing had a date and a circled number: 1, or 2, or 3, and I assumed, correctly as it turned out, that these numbers were the monthly ranking of each student’s work, following the French academic teaching system. Would I ever achieve a No. 1 or even a No. 2? On a bulletin board I found a list of the names and numerical ranking of the student body. Nine hundred and thirty-seven aspiring artists! I noted the name of No. 937, Marybelle Curtis, and reflected that the poor girl must feel terrible. What if I myself became No. 938? No, I was too good, I was too confident, but I did not like the thought of all that competition.

Chicago was such a huge place. I had prepared myself to find it a hundred times bigger than Little Rock, but I had not known it would be so dense, and so dark, and so vertical, and so flat, and so windy, and so crowded, and so smoky, and so dark, and so noisy. I had trouble understanding the way people talked, and they seemed totally unable to understand what I was saying and asking. After a particularly exasperating attempt at communicating with a streetcar conductor, I said aloud, “I might as well be in France!”

That casual remark stunned me into long and serious reflection.

Those bold artists whose work was hanging at the Institute, Seurat and Gauguin, had been French. Spotiswode Worthen had told me that all of the great painters of the last hundred years had been French, without exception (only before Fantin-Latour, of course). I had read an article in one of Spotiswode’s art magazines about an American woman with a French name, Miss Mary Cassatt, who was living in Paris, in her sixties, after having studied for years with the Impressionists, especially the one who could draw best, a man named Edgar Degas, now blind and in his seventies. Miss Cassatt was, like me, the daughter of a wealthy American banker. Would she be sympathetic to my story and situation if I could meet her and talk with her? Might she introduce me to Monsieur Degas?

I never enrolled at the Chicago Art Institute. I would never meet Mary Cassatt, let alone Edgar Degas, but I did put my trunk back on the train, after withdrawing all of the money my father had sent to the Chicago bank. I sent my father a telegram, which read: CHANGED MIND STOP GOING TO PARIS STOP YES GO AHEAD STOP YOU MAY HAVE CYRILLA STOP LOVE VIRIDIS.

The terrible guilt I should have felt for saying that was obliterated by the excitement of what I was about to do.

In New York I discovered that I would need a passport and would have to wait a few days for it, and I used the opportunity to visit the museums there, where I saw more and more of those Impressionists and the moderns. Some of the paintings had labels reading: ACQUIRED THROUGH THE GENEROSITY OF MISS MARY CASSATT, and I had a constant fantasy of what the generosity of Miss Mary Cassatt was going to do for my life.

That fantasy sustained me during a horrible ocean crossing. Can you imagine the ocean, Latha? Can you picture water in every direction, with waves of it rising up fifty or sixty feet? The boat I was on, a steamship called the Lusitania, the same one that would be sunk by a submarine seven years later during the Great War, was a huge craft of over thirty thousand tons, but even with that great size it was tossed on the waves like a toy. The sea was so rough that the crew themselves became frightened and convinced that we would sink. All the passengers were sick or scared to death or both. I began to believe that death at sea would be my punishment for letting my father have Cyrilla.

But the voyage itself seemed punishment enough, and lasted nearly a week. When Nail escaped the electric chair that first time, I already knew the feeling of survival, of being given another chance. And the elation of survival stayed with me during some of the disappointments that came soon afterward: when I arrived in Paris eager to meet Miss Mary Cassatt, I discovered that the American lady had returned to Philadelphia for an extended visit. I attempted on my own to visit Edgar Degas but was told that he was not receiving visitors.

They call Paris the City of Light, but it struck me from the beginning as the City of Dirt: grimy streets filled with grimy people rushing madly nowhere. If Chicago had intimidated me, Paris left me terrorstruck. You cannot imagine it. From the moment of my arrival in Chicago, I had been uncomfortable walking alone in the city; the feeling had increased in New York, and now, in Paris, it was almost unbearable. Men and women stared at me, or I thought they did, and made remarks among themselves, or I thought they did, understanding a few of their words, having not forgotten my home-tutoring in French. When I heard a man exclaim to his companion, “Tu as vu ces émeraudes?” I knew that he was referring only to the color of my eyes, but I was embarrassed.

My first days in Paris I tried to stay off the streets by retreating into the great museums, the Louvre and the Luxembourg, but the splendor of their masterpieces, my first sight of such incredible paintings by Botticelli and Titian and Poussin, gave me the firm conviction that I could never paint anything worthy of the canvas on which it would be painted.

Strange and huge and dirty as Paris was, I would not have remained there if I had not had a chance encounter with another American girl my own age, in October, named Marguerite Thompson, who was from Fresno, California, and was staying with her aunt in Paris. Like myself, Marguerite wanted to study art and intended to enroll at the École des Beaux-Arts. She and I discovered we had a common background, having grown up in small American cities with well-to-do fathers who had arranged for private tutors in French, and both of us had made copies of Gibson girls for friends in high school. But Marguerite had never drawn from the nude, not even the female nude, not even herself in private, and when the entrance examination for the École des Beaux-Arts required us to draw from the male nude (loinclothed, of course), Marguerite could scarcely hold her pencil steady and came close to fainting. I passed the examination with no difficulty, but Marguerite was required to enroll at the École de la Grande Chaumière instead, and she and I drifted apart. But not before we had gone together to be introduced by Marguerite’s aunt to an American woman named Miss Gertrude Stein, who lived on rue de Fleurus in a wonderful house with a friend, Miss Alice Toklas. Marguerite’s aunt, Miss Adelaide Harris, herself a painter, had attended Christian Science Sunday school in San Francisco with Miss Stein, and they were old friends. During my brief chat with Miss Stein, who impressed me as the most emancipated woman I had ever met, I learned that she had a low opinion of the École des Beaux-Arts, and I myself was beginning to question how it was any better than the Chicago Art Institute. After a few weeks there, I transferred to the Académie Julian, where I was much happier. I remained there almost three years. Some of my classmates, as obscure then as I was, were destined to become celebrated.

In November I spent an entire Saturday and Sunday at the exhibition of the Salon d’Automne, where I saw for the first time the paintings of a group of yet little-known artists who were called derisively fauves, meaning “the wild ones.” I learned at this exhibition the three qualities I wanted my own art to acquire: color, simplicity, and spontaneity. The Sunday I discovered the Fauves I also made the acquaintance of the girl who would become my best friend for the next several years, a French girl two years older than myself but appearing younger, called Coco. She has become recently very famous, but you would not recognize her name. In those years she was as much a nobody as I, although she knew some artists who were already on their way to reputation and money.

Coco was not enrolled at the Académie Julian but had attended the Académie Humbert and was now earning her living painting designs on porcelain. Her background was not at all like mine; Coco had never known her father, or even known who he was, and had until recently lived with her mother, a strange recluse who supported herself embroidering designs Coco drew for her. But Coco had quarreled with her mother and had recently moved into her own apartment in Auteuil in the western part of Paris. She needed a roommate to help with the rent, and I needed a companion in the lonely world of the big city. So perhaps we were destined for each other.

Coco and I, despite our differences in background, language (but I picked up French slang from Coco as fast as she spoke it), and temperament (I thought of myself as more serious and reserved than my flighty French friend), became very fond of each other. Coco, for all her lighthearted, capricious, even scatterbrained manner, was devoted to “modern” art, and to becoming a good painter with her own style, and she and I talked much about art. Auteuil is on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, a great woodsy park, and there we took long walks together and talked about the differences between the Fauves and the more recent, geometrical painters called Cubists. I was delighted to discover that Auteuil had a famous steeplechase, where I could watch horses leaping hurdles as high as Géricault had done, and Coco and I went to the races together, although we couldn’t afford to wager.

Coco had some friends she wanted me to meet: in particular, a Spanish painter by the name of Pablo, and a mistress of his who helped support him, named Fernande. I had never met a “mistress,” and I was titillated by the idea.

But Coco herself was on her way to becoming a mistress to a dark-haired Pole she called Willy—which she pronounced Vee-lee—and she was quite eager to have me—whose name she pronounced Vee-ree-dee—meet him after he returned from traveling in Holland. Willy was twenty-eight (the same age that Nail Chism was when I first met him), and Coco said he “knew everybody” and wrote absolutely fabulous wild poetry. Coco had been introduced to him by their mutual friend Pablo.

Coco was wispy and tall, with an unusual oval face and dark hair, but I never thought she was especially pretty, and in fact she considered herself quite homely. But she aroused envy in me because she had such a boyfriend, whom she never tired of bragging about, and because she had just sold her first painting! I had never sold a painting and couldn’t yet conceive of it. But Coco had, and she asked me to help her deliver the painting, and I recognized the address, because I had been there before: 27 rue de Fleurus. “Mademoiselle Gertrude Stein,” I said. Coco asked, “You know her?” “We have met,” I said, and indeed my compatriot Miss Stein received me cordially when I accompanied Coco to deliver the painting, which depicted Willy in the center flanked by Coco and their friends Pablo and Fernande. Miss Stein, it turned out, was interested in buying Coco’s picture primarily because it portrayed Pablo, for whom she had an extravagant regard, and she showed me a brutal portrait of her that Pablo had done. Later Coco took me to see the Spaniard’s squalid, cluttered studio in a building nicknamed The Wash-Boat at the top of the Butte Montmartre in order to show me an outrageous painting the Spaniard had recently finished. It showed a group of five misshapen prostitutes, and Coco claimed that she had posed for, or at least been the inspiration for, the second “lady” from the left, and I had to concede that at least that lady had a better face and figure than the other four, who were grotesque. I thought I was open-minded—or tried to be—but I thought that Pablo was not simply fauve but fou, and that this was the worst painting I had ever seen.

The painting that Coco had been working on for some time (and one of the important lessons I learned from Coco is that it’s perfectly all right to spend months and months on one painting, even if it ends up looking as if it had been dashed off in one morning) was an expansion of the one she had sold to Gertrude Stein: it was a much larger canvas, and would show eight or nine people gathered around Willy. Two of these people were Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo. Coco had painted Miss Stein much more flatteringly than Pablo had done—perhaps in hopes that Miss Stein might want to buy the painting when it was finished, and would pay enough to keep her in clothes and food for the coming year. The painting already included portraits of Willy and an unflattering self-portrait of Coco, as well as Pablo and Fernande. Now Coco wanted me to pose so she could include me in the group scene, and she proceeded to paint me into the picture, the third figure from the left, beneath one of the extravagant flowered hats that Coco liked to dress me up in. It is a kind of paraphrase, not a copy but a restatement—of course without the grotesqueness—of Pablo’s painting of the five prostitutes. There is even a pastoral landscape in the background, with the Pont de Passy, a bridge we liked to sketch. The painting makes me look prettier than I am. Recently I saw a photo of it an art magazine. That painting is done in the same style that later created the reputation Coco has: seductive and charming color, mostly pastels, pale blues and viridians, incomparable pinks, but essentially somewhat naïve, decorative, fashionable, transient, and without substance or depth. But that painting may be my only small claim to immortality. Each person has the enormous irises that became Coco’s signature or trademark, and although my irises are bright-green, they do not convey any of my identity or personality. Coco’s people never seemed to possess souls.

Coco finally introduced her Vee-lee to her Vee-ree-dee, and his first words to me (after bending low to give me the first hand-kiss I’d ever had) were “We’ve already met.” When I looked puzzled, trying to remember where I’d met him, he gestured at the now-completed painting of Coco’s and said, “That’s you up there, my sweet one.” I was surprised to see that Coco had flattered him somewhat in his central reigning position in the ensemble: he was actually fat—or, well, not coarsely fat, but fleshy, what people here would call pudgy, and not quite as dashing as Coco or her portrait of him had led me to expect. And the next thing he said to me, the first of many questions he would ask me without giving me a chance to answer them, was “Are you a virgin? No, you are not. And how do I know? Because of the shape of your forehead, there, and because of your fragrance. Ask Madonna if I have ever been wrong. Eh, Madonna? No, your forehead and your fragrance tell me that you long ago lost your virginity. Am I wrong?”

I had to shake my head, not because he was wrong or to tell him that he was not wrong but in wonder that he should know that. Often thereafter when looking at myself in the mirror I would pay particular attention to my forehead but was not able to tell what there was about it that gave away my secret.

Willy spent the night. Although I had my own room in the apartment, I could hear them, and I lay awake a long time, ashamed at myself for eavesdropping, shocked at Coco, disgusted by Willy, enthralled, transported, delighted, puzzled, dismayed, offended, and, I have to tell you, aroused, lustful, burning.

The next afternoon, after Willy had left, I had a brave impulse to ask Coco, “How many times did you and he…copulate?”

“Copulate?” said Coco, and laughed. “Oh, now, Veereedee, do you mean what Willy calls ‘the game of navels’ or do you mean ‘midnight snack’ or ‘the ride’ or ‘the beast with two backs’ or ‘plucking the rose’ or ‘knitting wings’ or ‘the combat’ or ‘burying the pinecone’ or ‘yodeling’ or something else? There are so many ways. We do them all. I don’t keep tally. You say you are not a virgin. How do you do it?”

“Carefully,” I said, remembering a joke I had heard about porcupines. Coco laughed, and we two girlfriends, uncomfortable talking about sexual matters, changed the subject.

But if girls are ill at ease discussing sex, just as I am at this moment with you, men are in their element, and I was always scandalized, or pretended to be, whenever Willy, Pablo, and their friend Max were telling dirty stories or making sexual commentary in our presence. Coco told me that she was glad for them when they became obscene, because it kept them from becoming violent, which is what happened whenever they talked about art.

Max was not an artist, just a clerk in a department store who wrote occasional strange poetry. Max was madly in love with Pablo, although he was not a homosexual. Pablo kept trying to get Max to take me to the opera. Max said he would if he had clothes to wear, but his clothing was terrible, threadbare and soiled. Pablo asked him why he didn’t steal some decent clothes from the department store he worked in. Because his department didn’t carry men’s clothes. Why didn’t he just take me boating? Or for a Sunday afternoon stroll up at La Grande Jatte? Because he wasn’t fond of the out-of-doors. Why didn’t he just take me to bed?

Nobody asked me what I would say if Max finally did ask to take me anywhere. I didn’t think I would say yes. Max was, in addition to his awful attire, nearly bald, bespectacled, and shorter than I, which wasn’t so bad, but he also had a chest covered with thick, curly black hair, which he exposed as often as he could, especially when he was doing his skit impersonating “the barefoot dancing girl,” which was hilarious but scandalous. He was also a Jew. I had never known or seen a Jew before (the few in Little Rock were tavernkeepers or merchants I never traded with), but if all Jews were like Max, I was afraid that I might come to dislike all of them. He was loudmouthed, clownish, and crazy, with a malicious streak. When Willy, Pablo, and Max were sitting around scorching their enemies and arguing art, Max could become vocally more vicious than the other two. At these get-togethers, which usually took place at The Wash-Boat, or sometimes at Austen’s, a bar in the rue d’Amsterdam they liked to frequent, the three men would become loud and vehement while we three women watched and listened, or Coco and I would chat and ignore Fernande, whom neither of us liked, and the feeling was mutual.

I developed a fondness for absinthe, which is a favorite French liqueur, green and bitter and tasting like licorice. But I had to be careful. I knew my mother was an alcoholic, and I didn’t want to be like her. Willy and Coco were not heavy drinkers. Everyone had a bottle of wine at meals, and I had to be careful there too because I became genuinely fond of both white and red, but none of them drank heavily, except that about once a month Willy and Pablo and Max would decide to have one of their binges, which, oddly enough, did not make them more violent or misbehaving but, rather, excessively polite and courteous with one another and with us girls.

Willy slept at Coco’s apartment about three times a week; Coco went to Willy’s about once a week. Coco didn’t like it at his place, she told me—they always had to make love in an armchair, because his bed was “sacred.” Willy had many strange ideas, which Coco detailed for me.

Whenever Coco went to spend the night at Willy’s and I was alone, I began to suffer from homesickness: not that my lonely nights in Little Rock had been a bit more enjoyable or even more comfortable than my lonely nights in Paris, but that being alone in Arkansas was a condition you took for granted, a natural state, whereas being alone in Paris was unnatural and hard to bear. I was even tempted to encourage Max. Sleeping with Max might be better than spending the night imagining what Coco and Willy were doing at that moment.

One Saturday night in the summer of 1909, I was having my usual reverie about Coco and Willy when there was a knock at the door, and I, wondering if it might be Max at last, opened it to find Willy. “Why, Willy!” I exclaimed. “I thought Coco was at your place.”

“She is,” he said. “May I come in?” Without waiting for a reply he entered the apartment, and as soon as I closed the door he embraced me passionately and attempted to kiss me.

I turned my head to one side to avoid his kiss and pushed against his large chest. “Willy! What are you doing?!”

“Ô combien je t’aime!” he breathed directly into my ear. “I adore you! I must have you! Meet my lips with yours!”

I stared into his eyes, which were hazel, and large, like Coco’s, seeming even larger in contrast to his mouth, which was as tiny as a pimento. I permitted the pimento to mash against my mouth for a moment before I shoved against him again and asked, “Did you and Coco have another fight?”

“I haven’t seen Madonna tonight,” he explained. “I left her a note saying I had to go out for a while and would soon return and asking her to wait for me. I did that so that I could steal away to this place and be with you.”

“That was a sneaky trick,” I said. “Coco will be furious with you.”

“You won’t tell her,” he said. “Come, let me recite for you a poem you have inspired.” He unfolded a sheet a paper from one of his pockets and read it to me. The poem was called “Lundi après mon lundi,” a play upon my name, Monday, and it was written as if he had composed it the next Monday after this weekend we had made love. He described our love-making as if it were a fait accompli and he were remembering it in graphic detail but with flattering sentiments: Cette femme était si belle qu’elle me faisait peur (That woman was so beautiful she frightened me) and Elle balla mimant un rythme de l’existence (As she danced she imitated a rhythm of existence) and Qu’elle les dresse ses mains énamourées devant mon sexe (Have her lift her lovesick hands before my sex), and so forth. I tried to remember if I had heard any of these lines before. I was touched that such a great poet—Pablo had called him the greatest poet of the epoch—would write an original poem for me…if it was original—even if the poem was less concerned with my specific identity as a person than with sex acts we had not yet performed. When he’d finished the poem, he looked with those hazel eyes longingly into my eyes and said, “Quickly, now, let us do it!”

I said French words which mean, crudely but honestly, “You just came here to fuck.”

Willy was taken aback. But he was ready for it: “No, of course not,” he said. “I came here because I need to have your opinions of Pablo’s latest paintings, but I think we can talk more freely after we have put the nightingale in his cage.”

I was ready for that: “I’d rather listen to the nightingale sing first.”

“He is mute, for now. He wants only his cage. The cage is new, and he has never been there before, but he knows it is made of beautiful, warm red gold.”

Willy stayed for two hours, longer than Coco should have had to wait for him, and when he saw that his finest blandishments would not work, he even tried solicitation of my intellect, a great effort on his part: “Well, if you can’t open your legs, open your mind and tell me what you think of Pablo’s pictures.”

I was game. “I haven’t seen his most recent things, what you call his Scientific Cubism. I did not like the Demoiselles.”

“Hah! Nor did I. What did you find wanting in it, Mademoiselle Monday? The transformation of Negro sculpture? The mislocated physiognomies?”

“I think,” I declared, “that Nature admires geometry but improves upon it in all Her creations. The artist should not return to geometry.”

Willy stared at me, as if he had not been listening but now was ready to. “Would you mind repeating that?”

I then proceeded to elaborate on this idea—quite a firm conviction of mine, at the time and ever since—that geometry should not be emphasized at the expense of actual appearance. This was more than poor, lecherous Willy had bargained for; as he appeared to be dozing off, I produced an example that woke him up a bit: “It’s as if I drew a skeleton of you and called it your portrait. Not that you wouldn’t look better if you were more skeletal.” I laughed teasingly.

But he only replied, petulantly, “You’re saying I’m obese.”

“No, I’m making a point.”

“If I were thin, would you have sex with me?”

“No. You are Coco’s.”

“I am not hers! Nor anybody’s! I’m mine! She doesn’t own me, nor do I own her. We aren’t even married.”

“‘We are wed in all but fact,’ she said you told her,” I said.

He tried another tack. “You’re an American,” he said with contempt. “You Americans are all prudes, and you are probably frigid.”

I had never heard that word in its sexual sense; I interpreted glaciale in the sense of unfeeling, which I was not, or reticent, which I unfortunately was, to my embarrassment. “You French,” I said without reticence, and forgetting that he was not French but Slav, “are all libertines, and you are lecherous.”

“We appreciate sex as we appreciate wine. Life without it is inconceivable.”

“But not at every meal.”

“Why not? You say you are not a virgin, my Viridis, and I believe you, but have you ever indulged to satiety? Have you ever even done it twice in one night? No, I think not. Sex is a thirst, and an appetite. Have you ever been satisfied? Are your orgasmes powerful?”

I had not heard of orgasmes and could not guess that what he was referring to was…what was that expression you used? “Get over the mountain”? Yes, I did not know that he was referring to getting over the mountain. I was not a virgin, no, not by a long shot, but je n’avais jamais joui comme ça, I had never been satisfaite, I had never been made to go over the mountain. Willy seemed to be waiting for an answer—this man who never wanted answers to his self-answering questions. I said nothing.

He took a different slant. “Show me your paintings. Let me look at your art. If I cannot admire the beauty of your unadorned body, let me see your most intimate croquis.”

“All of my pictures,” I told him, “are in my cabinet at the Académie Julian. I have nothing here.”

He sighed, and seemed about to give up, but tried once more, one last ploy. “Are you ovulating and afraid you’ll get pregnant? Very well, let me try ta neuvième porte.”

“My ninth door? What is that?”

“Don’t be naïve. Count your openings. Which is ninth and last?” When I seemed puzzled, he guided me: “Start with your ears, two, your eyes, two, your nostrils, two, your mouth, one, downward.”

“Oh,” I said. “No,” I said.

“Ta douce rose. You are still a virgin there, no? I will be gentle. I will take your rose very slowly and with the most delightful sensations. You will love it. You will become addicted to it, so that whenever I ask again, it will be mine, alone. You will even beg me to have it whenever I am able to stiffen my monument.”

I laughed as an escape from embarrassment. I laughed at those words, faire raidir mon monument, such a conceited conceit. I drew a picture in my mind of his penis as a monument approaching my ninth door, and found it hilarious, and couldn’t stop laughing. Willy’s face began to grow very red, and he gave me a disdainful look and vanished.

I did not tell Coco of the visit, of course. Whenever I saw Willy after that, always in the company of Coco, I couldn’t suppress a short, quiet giggle, like a spontaneous belch, or a short hike partway up the mountain, and he tried very hard to pretend that I did not exist. But I found myself in private, lonely moments imagining what it would be like if I allowed Willy’s monument to enter my ninth door.

I ran out of money. The funds that my father had calculated would last me a year in Chicago did not last a year in Paris. I had put off writing home to ask for more. Now I had to. It was a difficult letter, and an apologetic one. I described the Académie Julian and my teachers there, particularly Monsieur Lévy, who was responsible for my having the rating of No. 3 in the school and who had encouraged me in resisting the temptation to become more fauve. I explained, or tried to explain, what Fauvism is, but then I realized that these pages were not going to make any impression whatsoever on my father, so I brought my letter quickly to its conclusion: that I was fulfilling myself, that I wanted very much to stay another year or so in Paris, that I hoped he would understand, and that I hoped he would send the money as expeditiously as possible.

I mailed the letter but realized that a month or more could pass before it reached him and brought his response back to me, and I could not borrow from my friends, who were no better off than I. I told Monsieur Lévy that I would have to drop out of the Académie Julian because I couldn’t pay the tuition. He suggested that I try to sell some of my paintings, and he arranged with a friend, the director of a small gallery, to give me a showing. I selected, with the help of Coco and the advice of Pablo and Max (Willy abstaining), my best fifteen paintings, including portraits of my friends, views of the Bois de Boulogne, but chiefly interiors of intimate rooms, usually without figures, and Pablo lent me some frames that fit, for the duration of the show. The gallery could give me only one week, and it was not the best season, and I sold only one painting, my portrait of Pablo, to a person who, I suspected, was simply a patron of his.

The profit from that sale lasted scarcely two weeks, and I was not able to help Coco meet the month’s rent on our appartement in Auteuil. The day I took down my show, the gallery had a last-minute visitor, my wealthy friend Marguerite Thompson. Marguerite admired the paintings although she did not want to buy one. The two of us had a Pernod together at a nearby café, and I learned that Marguerite had left the École de la Grande Chaumière, which had been too conservative for her, and was now at the École la Palette, where she was quickly becoming a little Fauve. Marguerite also wrote a weekly column for her hometown newspaper, the Fresno Morning Republican, a sort of “American in Paris” description of her experiences as an art student, and she wanted to use me and my show as the subject of this week’s column, in which she intended to mention my “famous” friends: Willy, Coco, and especially Pablo.

“I didn’t know they were so famous,” I said.

“Close friends are never famous,” Marguerite said, and took out her notebook and began to ask me questions about them.

“Do they pay you for writing the column?” I asked.

“Sure,” said Marguerite. “Ten dollars a throw.”

Without waiting to see if my father was going to answer my letter, I wrote to the editor of the Arkansas Gazette, enclosing a sample of one of Marguerite’s columns and asking if the Gazette might be interested in having me write something similar for them, on a weekly basis, or even daily, if they wanted it.

Waiting for a reply from the Gazette sustained me through a dark period of poverty that culminated in the arrival of this letter from home:

Dear Viridis—

Glad to hear from you at last. Wondered whatever had become of you. Sounds like you are doing okay. Always wanted to see Gay Paree myself but never could. Sounds like there is lots to see there and lots to do. Glad to know the teachers think you are doing okay.

Wish we could say the same but things are not going too hot here. Problems with your sister. The boys are all doing okay, Matthew got married in June, didn’t know where to send you the invite. Your mother stays over to Hot Springs just about all the time. Doctors don’t seem to know what to do, just keep her happy and reasonable sober.

Viridis, I am not dictating this to my secretary but writing it out myself. You should have known that Cyrilla could never match up to you. I don’t know why I let you think that. She just plain could not take it, and I didn’t know what to do. I guess I was desperate and tried too hard, and she couldn’t take it, and tried to do away with herself. You don’t want to hear the details, it would make you feel as awful as I did. I am going broke paying for her fancy treatments now on top of your mother’s.

So if you think I’ve got loads of money laying around loose to keep you in high style in Gay Paree, you got another guess or two coming to you, girl. I think you better just catch the next boat home. I mean this. You do what I tell you, and come right on home. The enclosed draft on Credet Lyonnaize (sp) is to pay for your boat ticket, and your train ticket from NY to LR, and not for anything else, hear me?

Your poor old father really does love you and miss you something terrible and can’t wait to hold you again and tell you many, many sweet things. See you soon.

C.J.M.

The days after that letter came are still a dream, or at least I remember them no better than we remember our dreams. Coco said that I spent many weeks just sitting in my room doing nothing except staring at my useless hands.

What saved me finally, or restored me, was my first real memory of those days: looking down at my useless hands and discovering that they contained a letter, which I vividly recall reading almost as if it were my salvation, a letter from Thomas Fletcher, the features editor of the Arkansas Gazette, who said that, yes, they would be interested in seeing a column I might wish to write, with a view toward regular publication (weekly, at best, not daily). I roused myself out of my fugue or funk, or whatever depression I was in, and wrote a column, which I titled “An Arkansawyer in Paris,” trying to capture for the homefolks the sights and sounds and smells of Paris. My first column was devoted to the life of the streets: the quay along the Seine, with its many bookstalls where you could buy books and prints very cheap; the street musicians; a barrel organ pulled by a donkey; the strong, gray draught horses with their heavy carts; the colorful, picturesque caps the women wore, and the failure of the caps to cover the sadness in their eyes. For weeks after mailing it off to Thomas Fletcher, I feared that my column had captured the melancholy and suffering of Paris but not its gaiety. Yet finally Thomas Fletcher wrote back to say that the Gazette would be happy to use it and subsequent columns on a regular basis—although style or usage required them to change the title to “An Arkansan in Paris,” and Thomas Fletcher was required to blue-pencil my references to Bohemian free love, drinking, and “abstract” art. The Gazette began to run my column weekly, and in Paris in those days it was possible, though difficult, to live on the $8.50 a week that the Gazette paid me.

Marguerite Thompson came into my life again, asking me if I wanted to join the American Women’s Art Association of Paris and to show my work at the annual exhibition of the American Art Students’ Club. I said yes, and took the opportunity to thank her for having suggested what was now my sole means of livelihood, my column for the Gazette. We two columnists exchanged notes and experiences. Marguerite was leaving Paris soon to travel in Bordeaux and perhaps Spain. Would I like to go with her? I couldn’t afford it. Marguerite generously offered to pay my expenses. Why? “Because I like you,” Marguerite said. “I like your work. You need to travel more, broaden your sense of landscape, get into the sunny South. Or are you afraid to leave your famous friends?”

No, I was all too eager to escape my famous friends, especially Willy, who could never take no for an answer and still attempted whenever he could to seduce me and, failing that, to insult me. As for Coco, our friendship was becoming strained, not by her suspicions (she suspected that Willy was unfaithful to her with every woman he knew…except me) but by our artistic differences: Coco’s painting was becoming increasingly charming, sweet, fashionable, and, yes, feminine; she was pleased with its feminine daintiness and sought to capitalize on it; I thought her painting was becoming more superficial and losing substance in both subject and form, and I couldn’t help telling her my reservations. In retaliation for my critical remarks on her feminine style, Coco called me an interior decorator who was all eye and no mind. Actually, her paintings and mine at that particular time were more similar than our arguments would have indicated, but we went our separate ways ideologically and, at last, geographically. I went with Marguerite to Bordeaux.

I never returned to Paris, except when passing through. With Marguerite I traveled to Burgos and Madrid during May and back to southern France for June; in July we traveled through Switzerland and to Germany (Nuremberg, Strasbourg, Heidelberg, and Munich). In August we rented a studio for six weeks in Bruges. Then we went to London for a while. I loved hearing English spoken again, and I decided to change the title of my column to “An Arkansawyer in London”—which became in Tom Fletcher’s hands, of course, “An Arkansan in London.” Tom had a cousin living there, a Little Rock man named John Gould Fletcher, who was becoming a well-known poet, or trying to, and when Marguerite decided to go back to Paris (to study at La Palette, where she would meet her future husband, the artist William Zorach), John Gould Fletcher helped me find a room off St. Martin’s Lane, and Tom Fletcher raised my “salary” to ten dollars per column. I remained in London all that winter.

Before Marguerite returned to the United States and married Zorach, she invited me to rejoin her in the spring and summer of 1911, and we painted together in Avignon, Saint-Rémy, Aries, Les Baux, Martigues, and Marseilles. She and I shared a great love for the work of Vincent van Gogh and wished we had known him, and we tried to find the places he had painted in Arles, and we each painted our own versions of a little café in Arles that van Gogh had loved; neither of us imitated van Gogh, but we were inspired by him and felt a little of his passion. In those days not much was yet known or written about the life of van Gogh, who is very famous now, but I knew that he had been a very religious man who had remained a complete skeptic, and I knew that he had danced on the edge of insanity for a long time. I also knew that he had sold only one painting during his whole life, and although he had received slightly more for it than I had received for the portrait of Pablo, he had lived in wretched neglect and poverty. The painting I am proudest of having done during that period, which now hangs in the offices of the Gazette, is called Olive Trees in Arles, and it shows a quartet of low, twisting trees writhing and chanting in the southern sunshine against a background of mountains more like Cézanne’s than van Gogh’s. I did not use olive green in the picture but several shades of green that give the total effect of being olive: there are patterns of apple green, pea green, sea green, beryl, reseda, Kendal and Dartmouth greens, choiring together. The picture is suffused with a sense of hope, joy, and youth, although I wept the entire time I was painting it. Marguerite could not understand why I was crying my heart out while painting such a happy picture.

In October, Marguerite and her aunt and another friend prepared to sail on a voyage that would last seven months and take them to San Francisco by way of the Orient. Marguerite invited me to come, and assured me that I could make a good rail connection from Fresno to Little Rock—after, she hoped, serving as a bridesmaid at her wedding. I was homesick, and I said yes. We sailed from Venice, and I began to write for Tom Fletcher articles entitled “An Arkansawyer in Cairo,” “An Arkansawyer in Alexandria,” “An Arkansawyer in Palestine,” “An Arkansawyer in Port Said,” “An Arkansawyer in Calcutta,” “An Arkansawyer in Mandalay,” “An Arkansawyer in Hong Kong,” and “An Arkansawyer in Yokohama.” Needless to add, Tom Fletcher insisted each time on transforming me into an “Arkansan” before the columns saw print, but otherwise he ran most of them as I’d written them. He personally met my train when it arrived in Little Rock, because he alone had been wired from Fresno that I was coming home.

My father did not know, until he looked up from his desk in his private office at the bank one day and said, “Well, lookee who’s here! You sure have gone all the way around the world, haven’t you? Are you home to stay?”

From my purse I took a snub-nosed derringer I had been given by an art dealer in Los Angeles, and I let my father look into the barrel of it, and I said, “I’m home to stay, Daddy, but if you ever try to fuck me again, I’ll kill you.”

On

He did not know what to say. His eyes filled with tears. There was no mistaking the singing of the trees as their green boughs swayed, their limbs danced, their leaves rustled and trembled and quivered in quaver with their voices. A song of life.

“Well, Chism, you son of a bitch, what do you have to say?” the warden demanded.

“I,” said Nail. It was all he could get out for a moment, as if he had said “aye.” And at last he said the rest of it: “I’m right glad of that.”

“You better be ‘right glad,’ you bastard,” the warden commented. “Gabe, put the cuffs back on him. Take his stuff out of that death cell and throw him in with the others in the stockade. Let me know how he likes that.”

The two guards took his arms once again and started to lead him out of Old Sparky’s room. Fat Gabe was fit to be tied, he was so disappointed that Nail hadn’t got it. Nail was going to be in real trouble with Fat Gabe.

“Wait, Mr. Burdell,” said the lady from the newspaper, the one called Miss Monday. “Would it be possible for me to interview the prisoner before you return him to his cell?”

“Interview him?” said the warden. “What for?”

“Well,” she said, “I’d just like to write up how it feels to escape death.”

The warden snorted. “You jist heard him say he’s ‘right glad,’ didn’t you? What else could any man say?”

“Could I just ask him a few questions?” she requested.

The warden looked back and forth between the lady and Nail. “Okay,” the warden said. “Here he is. Ask him.”

“Do you mind?” she said. “He’s not going to feel free to talk with everyone standing around like this.”

“Well, I aint gon let y’all use the visit room,” Burdell told her. “We don’t let condemned men use the visit room.”

“He isn’t condemned anymore, is he?”

“He aint been pardoned, Miss Monday. He’s only been reprieved.”

The lady gestured at the witnesses’ chairs, two rows of wooden folding chairs at one side of Old Sparky’s room. “Couldn’t we just sit here a few minutes?” she asked.

Again the warden needed time to make up his mind. His brains is real slow, Nail reflected. “Well, okay, I guess,” he said finally. “I’ll have to leave Gabe here with y’all, and let me remind you, ma’am, this person is a convicted rapist and is dangerous. I ought to hang around too, but, hell, I’m late for my supper already.”

“Mr. McChristian can handle it,” the lady said, calling Fat Gabe by his proper name.

“Mister McChristian, huh?” the warden said, as if he’d never heard nobody call ole Gabe that before. “Well, Mister McChristian, you watch ’im, and if he tries any funny stuff you beat the everlastin sh—horse hockey out of him.”

The warden and the others left the room. Nail sat down in the same chair he’d sat in to watch Skip get electrocuted, and Miss Monday sat in the same chair where she’d been sitting. Fat Gabe watched them as if they were getting ready to pull something funny. A sudden inspiration occurred to Nail: he could reach inside his jacket, take his blade, kill Fat Gabe with it, then take the woman hostage and break out of here. He would have to handle it carefully: right now Fat Gabe was far enough away to pull his gun beforehand. Nail would have to get him closer. But with these handcuffs back on his wrists, he wasn’t sure that he could handle it, even if he got Fat Gabe close enough and moved fast enough. He hadn’t even had a chance when he’d tried to reach his blade as Fat Gabe and Short Leg were putting him into the chair. They hadn’t even given him enough time to—

“Hello.”

The lady had spoken to him. He realized he wasn’t paying her much attention. He looked at her. She had her notepad out, and a broken piece of charcoal pencil, which was all she had to write with, the same pencil she’d made that mark on his hand with before, the same pencil she’d used to draw that portrait of him that made him look so awful, the pencil now broken. “Howdy,” he said.

“How does it feel?” she asked. “Or is that a stupid question? Were you all prepared to die?”

“No, ma’am,” he answered her. “I’ll never be prepared to die, until I’m real old and there aint nothin to live for no more.”

She wrote this down, or tried to, the dull charcoal pencil making big clumsy letters, with few to a sheet before she had to turn the page over. Then she asked, “Did you really think it was going to happen? The execution, I mean. Did you still hope you might get a reprieve at the last minute?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he admitted.

“Could you tell me what was going through your mind during those last minutes?” she asked, and added, “If it’s not too hard.”

“Well,” he said. He thought. Both of them were looking not at each other but at Old Sparky sitting there forlorn and cheated but vengeful. He did not know quite how to say it, or even whether to try to tell her. Would she think he was nuts? Or just misunderstand? “I wasn’t really thinkin,” he said. “I was just listenin to the trees singin.”

Her mouth fell open. She thinks I’m crazy, he said to himself, and cursed himself for having tried to tell her. She asked, very quietly, almost whispering, “What did you say?”

“Never mind,” he said.

“No, tell me. Did you say—?”

“Forget it,” he said. “I didn’t know what I was sayin.”

“You said,” she said, “didn’t you? that you were listening to the trees singing? Did you say that?”

“Maybe,” he admitted. “I been feelin awful, tell you the truth, I don’t know what I was sayin.”

She laid a hand on his arm. “That’s strange, because—”

“Don’t touch the prisoner!” Fat Gabe hollered. “No con-tack allowed!”

She removed her hand and continued her sentence: “Because I was hearing the same thing. Trees. I heard trees singing. I swear.” She laughed, and observed, “I didn’t even know trees can sing.”

A strange lady. He smiled at her and waited for her to ask something else.

“Can they?” she asked.

“Can who what?” he said.

“Trees. Sing.”

“These were.”

“What kind of song?”

“Want me to play it for ye on my harmonica?”

“Yes! Would you?”

“Fat Gabe, would you fetch my harmonica?” he asked, grinning so Fat Gabe would know he was just funning.

Fat Gabe snarled, “I’d like to shove that mouth organ up your—Listen, Chism, why don’t y’all jist shut up this love song and git your goddamn talkin finished?”

“Do you really have a harmonica?” the lady asked Nail.

“Yes’m, I do,” he said.

“I hope—” she said. “I hope sometime I can have a chance to hear you play it.” Then she held out her hand. “My name is Viridis Monday.” He did not take her hand, and then she must have remembered that Fat Gabe had forbidden their touching, for she withdrew her hand.

“I reckon you know my name,” he said. “Pleased to meet ye. And you know, don’t ye? that I wouldn’t be alive right this minute if you hadn’t drew that pitcher.”

She smiled. She had such a nice, pretty, clean smile, teeth real good and straight and white. She didn’t use a whole lot of lip-rouge either, the way most women did these days. She said, “Mr. Chism, I’d like to help you. I’d like to do some investigating. I’m not really a reporter, I suppose you know. I’m just an illustrator. But I know how to do what reporters do, such as checking into facts. There’s one fact I’d like to determine: whether or not you…you actually did what they said you did, to that thirteen-year-old girl.”

Nobody had made any reference to Rindy in a long time, and at the mention of her Nail clenched his jaw, narrowed his eyes, and took an involuntary deep breath. “Lady,” he said, “there’s only three people on this earth who honestly and truly believe that I’m innocent. One of ’em is me, of course. The other’n is my mother. And the third one—” he paused, and gritted his teeth to pronounce her name: “is Miss Dorinda Whitter, the so-called victim.”

“I would like,” Miss Monday announced, “to talk to all three of you. Right now I’m talking to you. Why do you think the girl would have falsely accused you?”

“Now, that’s a real long story,” he said. “Fat Gabe aint et his supper either, and he aint gonna want to hang around and let me tell it to you. Right, Fat Gabe?”

“Boy,” Fat Gabe snarled, “I’ve tole you before: you don’t never ask me no questions. I do the askin, you hear me?”

“Yes, boss,” Nail said, knowing that Fat Gabe was going to get real mean with him as soon as this lady left. Again he flirted with the notion of killing Fat Gabe now and taking this lady hostage, but this lady, he decided, was too nice to have to be subjected to something like that.

“The first thing I’m going to do,” Miss Monday declared, “is find out the status of your reprieve. If Governor Hays did it himself, on his own, it’s probably got some political motive and is very temporary. If the Supreme Court made him do it, it might be permanent.” She stood up and stuck her notepad into the pocket of her coat, then pulled the coat tighter around herself. The sun had gone down; the room was very cold now. But Nail, despite the thinness of his cotton jacket, did not suffer the cold. The kindness of this lady warmed him.

He stood up too. “Lady—” he began, but decided that wasn’t polite enough. “Miss Monday, why are you doing this for me?”

Again that pretty smile. “I don’t know what song the trees sang,” she said. “But somehow it told me that the trees would be very sad if you were killed for something you didn’t do.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I thank you kindly.” And he reached out his handcuffs and shook hands with her.

“I said no con-tack, dammit!” Fat Gabe hollered, and moved closer.

They separated their hands. “I’d like to meet the trees,” she said, with one last of those smiles.

“This time of year,” he observed, “they’re as bare as bare can be.”

Off

Fat Gabe and Short Leg beat him up. He shouldn’t have talked back to them. They took him from the death room downstairs to his cell, that dark, dank, cold, tomb-like little space that had been his home for months, since the day in August they’d brought him to The Walls. The cell was in a sort of basement of the electric light and power building that held not just Old Sparky’s room but the transformers and dynamos and generators and the rest of that stuff that charged up Old Sparky and all the lights in The Walls and even some of the freeworld neighborhood out beyond in southwest Little Rock, along the Hot Springs highway. Fat Gabe and Short Leg took him back down to that hole, and Fat Gabe said, “Get your stuff.”

He didn’t have much to get: his change of underwear, his comb (he wouldn’t need it) and toothbrush, his harmonica, his 1914 calendar nearly all marked up, just twenty-nine days unmarked left to go, the Bible that Jimmie Mac had lent him and which he read for entertainment: the action stories of those old Israelites fighting the Moabites and Midianites and Ammonites and Philistines, and Old King Solomon’s song, which didn’t have much excitement in it but was real pretty, what the king said to that lady; that, and his copy of Dr. Hood’s Plain Talks and Common Sense Medical Advisor, which somebody had left behind in the death cell, eight hundred and ninety-seven pages he’d already read three times, no stories but interesting topics like “Sexual Isolation,” “Prostitution,” “Prevention of Conception,” “Diseases of Women,” and “Unhappy Marriages,” and hundreds of pictures he knew by heart now: vital organs, anatomy of men and women, diseases of the ear, eye, and throat. He thought of leaving it, but you never could tell when he might want to use the pages for the makes of a cigarette, not that he had any tobacco left, but you never could tell.

“I like it here,” Nail observed. “Why’ve I gotta move to the stockade?”

Fat Gabe hit him with the back of his hand swung hard across his face. “That’s twice this evenin you’ve ast me a question, Chism.”

Short Leg, who wasn’t as bad as Fat Gabe, had the kindness to explain: “You aint condemned anymore, at least not for right now. You caint stay in the death hole till you get another date set up with Old Sparky.”

Nail wiped the blood from his mouth and turned to call goodbye and good luck to Ramsey, the quiet murderer who’d been moved into Skip’s cell when Skip was killed. Ramsey did not answer. Then the two guards marched Nail up out of the electric light and power building, across the yard, and into the main building, to the stockade, which was just one huge room, a barracks with few windows covered with wire mesh as well as thick bars, in which three hundred men were crowded together. The beds were double-tiered, and, as Nail discovered, four men slept together in each bed. He had slept in the same bed with his brothers Waymon and Luther; he knew how to sleep with other men, but those had been his own kinfolks, not strangers. The blacks and the whites were separated: the three men he would have to sleep with were all, more or less, the same color as he. Those three were sitting on the edge of their double-bunk or standing around it, waiting to see who the new man would be, and they sized him up; he was taller than any of them.

“Don’t I get any supper before bedtime?” Nail asked his guards before they abandoned him there.

Fat Gabe stood on tiptoe to hit him again, in the face, then slugged him in the stomach to bend him down to his own level, and backhanded him once more across the face, to knock him down. “That’s three questions you’ve ast me, Chism. When will you know better?”

Short Leg removed his handcuffs. Nail wanted to take out his dagger and slash up both of them, especially Fat Gabe, but it wasn’t the right moment yet. He had suffered worse beatings than this. He remained sitting on the floor, holding his arms around his knees.

“New boy, what’s your name?” asked one of the three men at his double-bunk. He was a young man nearly as corpulent as Fat Gabe but not as muscular. Nail Chism told them his name. He learned theirs, or, rather, their nicknames, for each man in the prison was known only by his nickname, and his sentence, or “time.” The fat one was called Toy, doing two years for stealing a bicycle. There was a thin one called Stardust, who did not look at Nail when he was introduced, who did not look at anything, who seemed to be staring at something impossibly far away. He had written bad checks and was doing three. The third one, doing five for safecracking, was a glowering, ugly, scarfaced man not as tall as Nail but more powerfully built, called, for a reason Nail never learned, Thirteen.

Nail’s bunkmates understood his name to be Nails, and thence-forward everyone called him that; it stood him in good stead, because it suggested being tough as nails, mean as nails, hungry enough to eat nails. He got a chance to earn his nickname that first night: Thirteen tried to persuade Nail to let him put his penis in Nail’s mouth; Nail declined rudely, and later, when they’d gone to bed and Thirteen was sleeping behind Nail, Thirteen tried to force himself into Nail’s anus; Nail whipped around and hit him, and Thirteen fought back viciously. The two men slugged and whomped and whacked each other all over the barracks before the night guards came in with wooden clubs and knocked them both senseless.

When Nail regained consciousness in the short hours of the morning, he found he was on the cement floor between bunks. The floor smelled of piss, tobacco spit, and shit, and it was harder than nails, but at least he had it to himself. He rolled over and cradled his head on his arm and settled himself for sleep, but he became aware of the sounds: a general steady, grinding hum of many noses snoring in unison and counterpoint, punctuated by voices mumbling in nightmares or severe dreams; occasional grunts, snorts, creaking of bedframes; and, reminding him of bullfrogs croaking on the creek-bank, a chorus of farts. He listened to this mixture of sounds for a long time until it became almost monotonous, no longer novel and interesting. He rolled over to cradle his head on the other arm. He found himself thinking, for a while, of Miss Monday. What had she said her first name was? Something he’d never heard before. Maris or Berdice or Vernice. She was a real looker, good for the eyes, classy and sniptious, spiffy and neat. In fact she was the spiffiest creature ever he’d seen. She was friendly too. And nice! Why, there’d been few women he’d ever known, his sister Irene for one, who were as nice. Had Berdice Monday really meant that about the trees? Or had she just been saying that to humor him? What call did she have to make him feel good? Anyway, he did feel real good, thinking of her, and it helped him fall asleep at last.

Hers was the first face he saw in deep sleep, that lovely smile, only this time it wasn’t smiling but looking sad because he was sitting in Old Sparky waiting for Bobo to pull the switch. Only it wasn’t really him, it couldn’t be him, because there he sat beside Vernice Monday, that was sure enough him. Then who was this him sitting here in this electric chair? He looked at his strapped arms and saw they were black. He realized that this evening wasn’t the evening of the day before, December 2nd, his day, but the evening of October 31st, time had gone all the way back to Halloween, more than a month before, and he was a black boy named Skipper Thomas, who had been accused of killing his white lady that he worked for, although nobody’d ever seen him do it or had any evidence whatever and he’d worked for her long enough to know that it was her own nephew who’d done it so he’d get the money she left, but it was too late now, there was Mr. Burdell the warden with his hand in the air, and now he drops his hand, and I feels it! I feels the current coming up my legs and down from my head and meeting in my innards and there’s Mr. Bobo with his dull dumb blank look like he’s just absentmindedly broken off a limb from a bush, only it’s not a limb it’s the switch-handle, the switch-handle is down, the current is surging, my body is rumbling like a freight train, my head is shaking awful, I am biting my tongue nearly in two and trying to say to the trees, Save me, trees! Oh trees, save me! I’m not ready to die-ie-ie-ie! and I am trying hard to keep my heart still beating, my heart is pounding to keep from ever stopping, my heart will go on and on, although my head begins to hurt like no headache I’ve ever known, my legs are shot through with the pain of a thousand needles, my skin is all on fire, my stomach is boiling and about to come up through my gullet and into my mouth, I am in awful pain! and Mr. Bobo unbreaks the broken twig, he raises the switch-handle back up to where it was, and I know that I have lived! The current has not killed me, my heart beats strong, I am still alive, but the pain! The good God never intended for any of His mortal creatures to feel a pain as terrible as this, to burn like this. I look at Miss Maris Monday and her face is all stricken in what she knows must be my pain, and I look at Mr. Nail Chism sitting there beside her and he too has clenched his jaw and his eyes are stricken not because he knows this is what he too is going to have to endure come December but because he knows that no human being not even a worthless black nigger like me who shouldn’t have been born in the first place ought to bear such hideous agony as this death that burns and tears and strips all of my flesh and soul except my heart which still beats strong and wants to live! and Mr. Nail Chism’s eyes get wet and he yells, “Goddamn you, Bobo, turn up the juice and leave it on!” and sweet-faced lady Miss Berdis Monday puts her hand on his arm to calm him down. Mr. Bobo looks at Mr. Burdell the warden and Mr. Burdell nods his head once and Mr. Bobo pushes the switch-handle back down and once more I feels it! Once more I feels the divine almighty current charge like a thousand horses running through my veins and the violent fire burns away my pain for one long forever although my teeth are one by one jarred loose in my mouth and my eyeballs get rolled back inside my head so that I am blind and can no longer see the sweet but stunned face of Miss Vernice Monday and the sympathetic scowl of Mr. Nail Chism and I can’t see nothing only the raging of the horses that trample upon my heart but still can’t make it stop. The horses give up. The current stops. My eyes are blind, my nose is stopped by the stink of my burning skin, only my ears can hear the voice, it’s no angel coming for to carry me home but that warden Mr. Burdell: “Is he dead?” No, I am not dead, but I have now abandoned God before He ever had a chance to abandon me: I have done went and quit Him for eternity because no God however powerful or wrathful could create the kind of pain that wracks me now: this kind of pain could only be the work of Satan; only the Devil Himself could be evil enough to create such unspeakable torture and punishment as this burning pain.

I spit out my fallen teeth to free my tongue, and I cry, “Mo juice! In de name ob de Debbil, mo juice!”

A hand was shaking Nail’s shoulder, and he raised his head from the concrete floor. The first light of dawn was coming into the barracks, and the face peering into his own was that of the mute Stardust, who was not now mute: “Is it orange juice you’re asking for? We don’t have any.”

Nail sat up and gave his head a toss to clear it. “What?” he said.

“You were screaming for juice,” Stardust said. “We haven’t even water to drink. If you are very thirsty, I will pee for you.”

“Leave me alone,” Nail said, and turned away and tried to sleep again.

The only advantage to being in the stockade instead of the death hole, he discovered later that day, was that in the stockade you were sometimes allowed to go to the visit room, a wooden shack built up against the high brick wall of The Walls, which had one door leading through the wall to an anteroom, beyond which was the outside world. The visit room was divided down the middle by a screen of heavy wire that nothing larger than a nail could pass through. A trusty-guard with a shotgun and a pair of bolstered six-shooters guarded the room. Once a month you were allowed one visit to the visit room, for not more than fifteen minutes…if you had anyone who wanted to come and talk to you. Many of the men never had any visitors. If you were in the death hole, you were not allowed to go to the visit room; the only visitor who could come to the death hole was Jimmie Mac the preacher, or your lawyer, if you had a good one, or, the day before your death, your mother or wife or sweetheart. Nail’s mother had not been able to make the long trip from Stay More.

But Nail had a visitor his first day out of the death hole. Short Leg came and got him and escorted him to the visit room. It had been so long since he’d last seen his older brother that he hardly knew him.

“Waymon!” Nail said, and he wanted to ram his manacled hands through the wire screen so he could shake hands with old Waymon. “What’re you doin here?”

Waymon grinned. “Came to take yore body home,” he said. “You know them two ole mules, Spiff and Greeny, that you used to hire out from Ingledew’s to take yore wool to Harrison? Wal, I’ve got ’em right out’s yonder, hitched to a wagon with a coffin in it, purtiest piece of carpentry ye ever seen. Took me ten days to git to Little Rock, cold as it’s been.”

Nail couldn’t help laughing, and when he laughed, so did Waymon. The guard looked at them as if they’d gone crazy. “I shore hate to disappoint you,” Nail said, “and make you go home empty-handed.”

“What have they done to ye?” Waymon asked. “Brother, you look lak somethin the cat drug in. Got a knot on yore bald haid the size of a baseball. And all them bruises! What did they beat ye up fer?”

“Askin too many questions,” Nail said. “Leastways, I’m alive.”

“Shit, I never liked to stand around through a funeral, nohow,” Waymon said. “And it would’ve cost us forty dollars for yore headstone. Paw spent the last cent we had for that new lawyer, Cobb.”

Nail did not find that funny. “That right? He oughtn’t’ve done that.”

“And mortgaged the farm besides.”

“Mortgaged?” Nail was indignant. “Who put the mortgage on us?”

“John Ingledew,” Waymon said. “The Jasper bank wouldn’t even talk about it. But Ingledew’s bank needed the business, I reckon, and he give Paw three hunderd dollars for the whole place, includin Maw’s old eighty.”

Nail’s hands spread against the chain of the handcuffs as if he were trying to break it. “I’ll kill that son of a bitch.”

“Naw, Nail,” Waymon said. “Ingledew’s doin us a favor. All them Jasper folks is on the side of Sull and Duster Snow and them. Wasn’t for John Ingledew, we couldn’t never’ve got ye that new lawyer.”

“How is Paw?” Nail wanted to know.

“Porely,” Waymon said. “But not on account of this business. You know he’s had that heart dropsy for some years. Doc Plowright says he ort to go up to the hospital up to Harrison.”

“Why don’t he?” Nail asked, and when Waymon did not answer but just hung his head, Nail asked, “Don’t he have none of that three hunderd dollars left?”

Waymon tried to explain. It was complicated. That new lawyer they’d hired, Farrell Cobb of Little Rock, wasn’t charging them the whole three hundred dollars for his appeal to the Supreme Court. Part of it was a “retainer,” which, Waymon attempted to explain, was to make sure that Mr. Cobb would do everything he could, for as long as it took, to get Nail out. The agreement with Cobb stipulated that in the event of Nail’s electrocution, Seth Chism would get a partial refund.

“Shit,” Nail commented. “Paw’d be better off if I was fried, after all.”

“Don’t ye talk lak thet, Nail,” Waymon pled. “Yore life is worth a whole lot more than three hunderd dollars.”

“It aint worth more than our whole damn farm!” Nail said. Then he asked, “How’s my sheep?”

Again Waymon hung his head. “Nail, I hate to tell ye. You know I hate to tell ye. What few of them sheep the drought didn’t git, the dogs got.”

“Ever last one of ’em?” Nail asked. “Didn’t they leave me a lamb or two?”

Waymon shook his head.

“Well,” Nail said, and pictured his pastures empty of their flocks. Right now there would be no grass: the last of the autumn grass would be gone, and the spring grass not started yet. He asked, “How’s Maw?”

“Jist fine,” Waymon said. “She wanted to come with me, but Paw wouldn’t let her. She’ll shore be glad to see that I’m bringin a empty box home.”

“Irene? How’s she been?” Nail asked of their sister.

Waymon gave his head a tilt and dip. “Lonesome, don’t ye know? But she’s a big help to Maw, and they keep each other company, I reckon.”

“She don’t see Sull no more?”

Waymon shook his head. “She aint been back to Jasper one time since yore trial.”

They talked until their fifteen minutes were up. Waymon told him that he had accosted Sull Jerram on the square in Jasper and told him that he, Waymon, intended to put him in his grave if Nail died in the chair. Waymon’s parting words to his brother were “Well, you didn’t die in the chair, but I’m a mind to put Sull in his grave anyhow, for what he done to ye.”

Waymon was not the only visitor he had that day. Two more visitors came before dark. You were supposed to get only one visit a month, but these two didn’t count, because they were the preacher and the lawyer. The preacher was Jimmie Mac, who said he just wanted to say he was real happy that Nail was still alive and he wondered if Nail had had time yet to make up his mind that the good Lord Himself had seen fit to spare him, and wasn’t that enough to convince him that the good Lord really did exist and cared for him? Jimmie Mac was disappointed to learn that Nail had not followed his advice and spent his last hours in prayer, but he could understand how a feller might have other things on his mind at such a time. But now that the execution had been postponed, didn’t Nail think he had some time to seek out the Lord and take it to Him in prayer and ask Him for His forgiveness and blessing and promise of salvation forevermore? Didn’t Nail know that God loved him? Didn’t Nail realize that God works in mysterious ways and we are not to question His wisdom but glory in His deeds? Had Nail read Hebrews the twelfth chapter and the verses three through thirteenth, especially the sixth verse: “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth”? Didn’t Nail wish to be a son of the Lord and endure the Father’s chastisement? Couldn’t Nail understand what a challenge it was to be chastened and punished and to survive whole and pure in the sight of God and reap the rewards of life everlasting and the fruits of righteousness?

“No,” replied Nail.

“No which?” asked Jimmie Mac.

“No I don’t have much use for that Lord,” he said.

The lawyer came just before suppertime and wasn’t required to use the visit room but was allowed to sit with Nail right in the mess hall. The lawyer was right at home here in The Walls and had been here many times before. “The missus is expecting me shortly or I’d break bread with you,” he apologized, wedging himself in between Nail and the fat convict named Toy on the long bench. There were only two tables in the mess hall, but each of them was the length of the room; all of the white men sat at one table, all of the black men at the other. “No reflection on the quality of the food, you understand,” Farrell Cobb remarked, lowering his voice conspiratorially. The food was the same Nail had for lunch and for breakfast, the same food they’d served him when he was in the death hole, the same food everybody got three times a day, seven days a week: one piece of cold cornbread, one small chunk of mostly fat probably from beef but hard to tell, one cup of something warm that Nail had never been able to determine was supposed to be taken for coffee or soup but that could be either, or neither. The butcher shops of Little Rock were swept of their scraps at the end of the business day, and the fatty scraps were served at the Arkansas State Penitentiary.

Farrell Cobb stared at Nail’s plate, and his lips formed themselves into a suggestion of nausea. “In Mississippi,” he whispered, “they don’t get any meat whatsoever.” He looked around to see if any of the other men crowded along the benches were listening, but none of them were paying any attention to him, having already noted his suit and tie, his heavy overcoat which protected him against this biting cold, and having either recognized him or stopped wondering what he was doing here; or having never cared to begin with. “Just beans or cowpeas,” Cobb added, and added to that, “Well, I guess you’d not mind a serving of beans or some other vegetables too, but my experience is, the prisoners given a choice would always rather have a bit of fat meat than a bit of beans.” Nail ate. “Now, here we are discussing the menu when we ought to be considering more important matters, such as those contusions and risings you’ve recently acquired. Can you hear me?” Farrell Cobb kept his voice low and his mouth close to Nail’s ear. “If your beatings were provoked, all I can advise is to be very careful, to follow all the rules, to show proper respect for your keepers and superiors, to strive at all times to conform to the system, and to do nothing that might be construed as rebellious or aggravating. On the other hand, if you were beaten without provocation, that is indeed a sorry state of affairs, and one that I have protested time and time again, to little effect, I’m afraid, since, as you may have observed, it appears to be the routine in this institution, as everywhere else. I suppose we ought to condone a little corporal punishment in our efforts to wipe out capital punishment. But I know it hurts. I don’t approve of the strap, let me tell you.” Cobb’s gaze wandered up and down the table, seeking out the men who had obviously been victims of the strap and had recent cuts, welts, stripes, or scars to show for it. Nail kept chewing and let his eyes follow Cobb’s. He had not received any strap yet himself, only the backs and fronts of hands, and wooden clubs, which were bad enough. They had better not try to use any strap on him. “Well now, here we are talking about the mistreatment of prisoners as if anything could be done about it, when that is not really what I’m here to talk about at all. What I came to say was to give you a little report on our little efforts to get you out of that little old hot squat.” Cobb’s chuckle was audible to the other men, who raised their eyes from their plates to see what humor was the cause of it. Cobb noted his audience, and appeared on the verge of repeating his clever term for Old Sparky in order to amuse them. But he did not. Instead, he asked Nail, “Well, what do you say?”

“What do I say?” Nail asked.

“Yes: what do you have to say?”

“I’m fine, I reckon. How about you?”

“No, I mean, aren’t you going to say anything to me for what I did to get you a stay of execution?”

“Oh,” Nail said. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome. Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. I was on the telephone all of Tuesday night and most of yesterday. Thank God and Alexander Graham Bell. I’ll have you know I even placed through a telephone call to Fort Smith, to reach Judge Bourland, and that’s what? a hundred and fifty miles of telephone wire. If that wire hadn’t been there, you wouldn’t be here right now. It was Judge Bourland who got the Supreme Court to agree to hear your appeal, and it was his special-delivery letter hand-delivered to Governor Hays at 4:50 P.M. yesterday, just ten minutes short of the time the governor was to quit for the day, that persuaded him to use his authority to stop the execution.”

The gong clanged to signal the end of suppertime. The men stood as one, executed a right face—except Farrell Cobb, who turned the wrong way—and marched out in lockstep. Mr. Cobb got himself in line and attempted the lockstep in following after Nail, continuing to talk into his ear from behind but having to crane his neck to do so: “Judge Bourland said, and I quote him, that your defense was ‘butchered.’ Without naming names, he as much as called your James Thomas Duckworth a dolt and a bungling idiot who ought to be disbarred. I know that if we get the case to the full court when it meets again in January, we can convince them that Duckworth didn’t take the proper steps for appeal, not to mention that he made a perfect shambles of the trial itself.” At the door to the barracks, which Farrell Cobb could not enter, he quickly asked, “Is there anything I can do for you? Anything you need?”

“You said you’d get me home for Christmas,” Nail reminded him.

“Well, I am always an optimist,” Cobb said. “In this profession you must be constantly hopeful and confident. What say let’s shoot for Valentine’s Day, at the latest?”

Later Fat Gabe came to his bunk, with Short Leg and two of the Negro trusties, whose job, he discovered, was restraint more than anything else. “Uh-oh,” said Toy, and Stardust looked off into the next century, and Thirteen pretended he didn’t exist.

Fat Gabe said to Nail, “Who told you to talk to that man?”

“He did most of the talkin,” Nail replied.

“You think you’re some kind of privileged person? You think just because you beat the chair you can have special treatment? You think you can have company at supper?”

“I didn’t invite him,” Nail pointed out. “He’s a lawyer.”

“You talkin back to me?” Fat Gabe yelled.

“Nope, I’m jist tellin ye who’s who and who’s what.”

“That lawyer was Farrell Cobb, the biggest ass-licker in Pulaski County,” Fat Gabe said.

“You may be right,” Nail said.

“You sayin I’m not right?” Fat Gabe said.

“Naw, I said you may be right.”

“That’s what I thought you said, Chism. You think you’re somebody important, don’t you, just because you beat the chair? The chair couldn’t kill you, but I’ve got a notion to do it. Take down your pants.”

“Huh?” Nail said. “It’s too cold.”

“TAKE DOWN YOUR PANTS!” Fat Gabe yelled into his face. Nail did nothing. Fat Gabe looked at the two Negro trusties, each in turn. “What are you coons just standin there for? Take off his pants.”

While one of the Negroes and Short Leg held him, the other Negro pulled off his pants and then ripped off his underwear. “Turn ’im around,” Fat Gabe said, and they turned him to face the bunk and held his arms along the upper bunk. Nail could not see the instrument of punishment, but as soon as the first blow had fallen, he could picture it exactly: a strap of harness leather two and a half feet long by two and a half inches wide, attached to a wooden handle sixteen inches long, held in Fat Gabe’s hand, and swung back as far as he could reach. The other convicts made way to give Fat Gabe swinging room. Nail’s father Seth had tanned his hide, the last time, with a length of plow harness, when Nail was eleven years old and had refused to get up in the middle of the night to stoke the boiler in the still. Nail could still remember it, and he remembered counting the blows: ten in all, which had been enough to persuade him to obey his father the next time Seth asked him to do anything. I haven’t disobeyed anybody, Nail thought now, except I wouldn’t take down my pants like he asked me to, and I had a good reason for that: it’s freezing in here. But he felt already the heat of his smarting buttocks warming his whole body. He wasn’t cold anymore, just incredibly sore, and he counted the number of licks beyond ten: eleven and twelve and thirteen. You’d think Fat Gabe’s arm would tire out, but it didn’t. Something wet was trickling down the back of his legs, and he hoped it was shit but knew it was blood. Fourteen and fifteen and sixteen. As long as the blows had been falling on his skin it had been possible to bear them, but now each lash cut into wounded flesh and seared the raw underskin. Seventeen was an awful one unto itself. Eighteen was unbearable. Nineteen made him feel faint. Twenty…

He heard a voice say, “Turn him around,” and the two blacks who were keeping him from reaching his dagger and murdering Fat Gabe turned him toward his assailant, who was wearing a look as if he were not tired but enjoying himself, and who swung back the strap aiming to lash Nail on his genitals.

He begged for the first time in his life. “No!”

But Fat Gabe hit him there, and it was much worse than being hit on his buttocks. Even the torturer seemed to retain a shred of fellow-feeling to realize how hideous the scourging must have felt, and he was not putting the full force of his swing into the blows but checking them so that they slapped against Nail’s genitals without cutting, only stinging and bruising. Nail lost consciousness.

How much later he came to he couldn’t tell, except that it was dark and there was a face close to his own, speaking to him. The voice was Toy’s, and Toy had very bad teeth, which gave his breath a rancid stench, especially so close: they were lying side by side in the lower bunk. “They done that to me last week,” said Toy. “It helps if you kind of draw your knees up towards your chest. Here, you can have my space to draw up your knees. Like that. It keeps your balls from killing you. Don’t it? Do you feel some better that way?”

“Hush,” Nail said. “Let me sleep. Thanks.”

“You know what they strapped me for?” Toy went on. “At dinner once Stardust wouldn’t eat his bread, sometimes he don’t eat at all, and once when he left his bread like that I was real hungry so I took it and ate it. You know we aint supposed to touch nobody else’s food ’ceptin our own?”

“Yeah, that’s the rule,” Nail said. “Let’s be quiet now and go to sleep.”

“One of them nigger waiters saw me grab it, and he reported me, and I got twenty lashes behind and ten in front.” Toy sighed, and his sigh carried a full blast of fetor.

“Fat Gabe is the meanest feller on this earth,” Nail remarked. “Now hush. Shh. Let me sleep.”

“It wasn’t Fat Gabe that put the strap to me. It was the warden,” Toy said. “Mr. Burdell.” And Toy went on talking. He seemed on the verge of telling Nail his whole life’s story, and Nail began to crave some ventilation. Toy was born in Lonoke, Arkansas, and had been all the way to Memphis, a big town. He once went to a whorehouse in Memphis. He’d saved up his money from picking strawberries and wanted to find out what having two women simultaneously would be like. He picked out a light-haired one and a dark-haired one. Nail told himself that Toy must have had better teeth in those days, or no woman would have come near him. Toy began to tell what each of the women had done to him, or let him do to them.

“’scuse me,” Nail interrupted suddenly. “I need to go out real bad.” He climbed out of the bunk and painfully stood up, clutching his groin. He was not going out, of course, but he needed to find the pot, not just to get away from Toy; he was suddenly very sick in his bowels. If he didn’t get to the pot soon, he’d mess his pants. The barracks had a couple of those enameled tin slop buckets: a white enamel one for white men, a black enamel one for black men. In the dark it was hard to tell them apart, but Nail didn’t care. At least he had the decency to use the pot; most of the men thought that using the slop buckets was dandified, pretentious, effeminate: they preferred using the floor, and you had to be careful where you walked, especially if you were barefoot, as many of them were who couldn’t afford shoes. Nail never took off his brogans, but still he could feel an occasional squish beneath his feet as he stumbled through the rows of bunks, feeling his way with his hands, and touching an arm or a foot here and there, and unwittingly waking a man or two, who cursed. He reached one of the pots, black or white, just in the nick of time. The pot smelled far worse than Toy’s breath, and Nail poured into it a searing torrent of distress from his guts. He continued to squat there until long after the stabs and quakes had stopped tearing within him. He hoped that if he waited long enough, Toy would be asleep when he returned to the bunk.

But Toy suffered from insomnia and welcomed him back and resumed his long story of the Memphis brothel. Then he thought of an even better story: the time he found that nymphomaniac in the strawberry patch. He had to interrupt this story twice to allow Nail to stumble off into the darkness to the commode. Toy was still breathing his vile story when Nail managed at last to doze off.

The five o’clock gong woke him. Toy was still talking but had rolled onto his back and was telling his story to the ceiling, a tale of some De Valls Bluff girls who gang-raped a twelve-year-old Lonoke boy, not Toy but his cousin Virgil. At the fifth clang of the gong a guard yelled, “Rise and shine ’em, squad up and jump.” When Nail tried to get out of bed, he knew he was not going to be able to rise or to shine, to squad up or even to eat, let alone to jump. He was sicker than a dog, and it wasn’t any food he’d eaten that had done it either.

As Toy, Stardust, and Thirteen lined up and prepared to get into lock-step, Nail said to them, “Tell ’em I need a doctor.”

Much later in the morning two Negro trusties, not the same two who had held him when Fat Gabe laid the strap on him, came and got him and dragged him upstairs to the attic. It wasn’t a bare attic but had been fixed up into a kind of room. It had two windows, both of them rendered almost opaque by flyspecks. There were dirt-dobber nests on the rafters. The black men put him on one of the two cots and left him there. He was too sick to get up and reconnoiter the surroundings, but from where he lay he could see the blurred shapes of black bars through each flyspeck-frosted windowpane. The whole room smelled foul in a new kind of foulness that was almost a relief from the smell of Toy’s breath and the slop bucket because it was different: a smell of sickness and decay and, yes, something that Nail realized he’d never smelled before: death. The cot that Nail lay on had gray sheets that were ripped and stained but appeared to have been washed recently, while the other cot had sheets and blankets that were thick with dried blood and other discharges. The room was terribly cold yet not absolutely frigid; Nail realized that because it was in the building’s attic it received some warmth rising up from the barracks below, what little body heat the three hundred men had generated. The extreme cold of the room would not ordinarily have bothered him, but now in this sickness he was weak and began to shiver uncontrollably. Nail had enough strength to reach the other cot and remove its bloody blanket and wrap himself in it.

Eventually a man came in, accompanied by two more of the black trusties. He was dressed like them, dressed like Nail, in clothing printed with wide gray stripes. He wore thick spectacles and did not look like a criminal. He stared down at Nail not with curiosity or kindness but with a kind of boredom, and he asked, “What do you need?”

“I need a doctor, I reckon,” Nail said.

“You won’t get one,” the man said. “I used to be one. I’m the closest to one you’ll find. Gode’s my name. Now what do you need?”

“Something for my stomach,” Nail said. “Or my bowels. Or both.”

“Gaumed up or trots?”

“Trots.”

“Wee-wawed any?”

“Wee-wawed?”

Doc Gode did a pantomime of vomiting. “Puked.”

Nail shook his head and pointed at his mouth. “Not at this end.”

The man was staring at the top of his shaved head. “You been in the death hole? Your head’s peeled.”

Nail nodded. “I cheated the old hot squat,” he said, and smiled.

Doc Gode didn’t smile back. He reached inside his pocket and took out a key. On the wall of the flyspeck room was a wooden cabinet, its two doors latched and padlocked. The man unlocked and opened the cabinet. The two shelves inside contained a blue bottle, a brown bottle, and two bottles in shades of green, as well as a roll of gauze and a few other items. From where he lay Nail could only read the label on the brown bottle: CARBOLIC ACID. The ex-doctor took down one of the green bottles, uncorked it, and handed it to Nail. “Take just two swallows of this,” he commanded.

The label read: PAREGORIC. The name sounded sinister. “What does it do?” Nail asked.

“It will ease your guts,” the man said. “Come on. Take two swigs and hand it back.”

The stuff didn’t taste too bad. After a second swallow Nail handed the green bottle back, and Doc Gode returned it to the cabinet. Before he could close the cabinet, Nail requested, “Could you take a look at my behind? I reckon I may need a bandage back there.”

The man motioned for him to turn over, then pulled down the back of his pants, took a look, and said to the black trusties, “Hold ’im, boys.” The two Negroes grabbed Nail’s arms and gripped tightly, and soon Nail felt a burning on his butt worse than the licking he’d received, and he screamed.

When he got his voice back and could see through the tears in his eyes, he saw Doc Gode holding the unstoppered brown bottle, CARBOLIC ACID, and he said, “Ye gods! What was that for?”

“A little disinfectant,” Doc Gode said. “It’ll keep the germs out. But I can’t waste any wrappings on that. Just don’t sit on it for a week.”

There was a commotion on the stairs, the door flew open with a crash, and two more of the black trusties came into the room, carrying the limp form of a middle-aged white convict, naked, his entire body flayed: flaps of his flesh were dangling loose, two-inch strips of skin hung from wounds that looked as if they had been scorched with a hot iron, and he was covered with blood.

The blacks dumped the body onto the other cot. One of them said, “Marse Gabe done really laid it on ’im.” There was almost admiration in his voice, as well as awe. “Ole Marse Gabe done whupped de daylights out ob dis po buckra.”

Doc Gode lifted the man’s dangling arms and folded them over his chest. He opened one of the man’s eyelids and looked closely at the unseeing eye. He felt the man’s pulse. He turned his head and looked at Nail and asked disdainfully, “Now you see why I couldn’t waste any bandages on you?” Doc Gode took down the roll of gauze from the cabinet and the bottle of carbolic acid. He gave Nail one more look. “You don’t want to watch this.”

Nail turned his head away. He listened but heard no sounds coming from the victim, and a good while later, when he stole a glance in that direction, he saw that the victim’s worse wounds had been wrapped and taped, but many areas of his body were still raw and bloody.

Mr. Burdell came into the room. “What’s goin on up here?” he demanded. “Y’all havin a party?” He saw Nail and said, “What’re you doin here, Chism? Playin off?”

“Doc Gode’s been treatin me for what ails me,” Nail said.

The warden looked at the ex-doctor. “What’s wrong with Chism?”

“Dysentery,” said Doc Gode.

“No shit?” the warden said.

“Too much shit,” Doc Gode said.

Nail couldn’t help laughing, even though it was a serious matter if Doc Gode was truthful: Nail recalled reading about it in Dr. Hood’s Plain Talks and Common Sense Medical Advisor. But Doc Gode too was chuckling a bit, and maybe he wasn’t serious.

“What’s so funny?” the warden demanded, but then he seemed to become smart enough to catch the joke, and he smirked and said, “Well, if you got any shit left in you, Chism, we will beat it out.” The warden lost interest in Nail and began studying the other patient. “He don’t look too good, does he?” Burdell said.

“Very weak pulse,” Doc Gode said.

The other fellow looked done for, Nail observed. He couldn’t recall ever having seen the man before; he was just one more convict among the hundreds; but Nail suddenly found himself inventing the man’s life: he had a wife somewhere out in the country and a whole bunch of children; he had a mother still living, and some sisters and brothers; he had worked hard all of his life, toiling in the sun, until the day he got in trouble and was sent to the pen. Probably he was hoping he could get a Christmas pardon and be home with his family.

“Mr. Burdell, sir, could I say somethin?” Nail discovered himself requesting before he could have the sense to stop himself. The warden turned away from the dying man and looked at Nail. Burdell didn’t say, Yes, go ahead, but he didn’t say, No, keep your trap shut, so Nail went ahead and said what he had to say: “Sir, I know that Fat—I know that Mr. Gabriel McChristian is jist doin his job, and I know it aint a easy job either. But I jist wonder sometimes if you know, sir, how evil he is. Evil. This world is full of cussed wickedness and cruelty, but when a feller gits a crazy pleasure out of causin awful pain to another human bein, he aint jist wicked or cruel, he’s evil, he’s criminal, he’s sick in the head. Don’t that bother ye none, sir?”

The warden just stared at him. Then the warden and Doc Gode exchanged looks. The black trusties exchanged looks, and one of them rolled his eyes up into his head. Finally the warden prefaced whatever response he was going to make by saying severely, “Chism—” but then he seemed to change his mind and adopt a milder tone, although it was a strain on him. “Nail, I know we aint perfect, none of us,” he said. “And ole Gabe is prob’ly the least perfect amongst us, shall we say? But evil? Evil, did you say?” The warden abandoned the effort to be polite. “Who the fuck are you to tell me about evil? You raped a kid, Chism. You grabbed a little girl and knocked her down and rammed your hot cock into her tiny little cunt! You tell me about evil! She begged you for mercy, and did you have any? Don’t you talk to me about evil, you miserable son of a bitch! I’ll show you what evil really is before you git your ass fried!” The warden whipped around and yelled at the trusties, “Git this bastard out to the yard!” As the trusties dragged Nail off his cot and toward the door, Burdell spoke up close to his face, shaking a long, trembling finger at the man dying on the other cot. “You know why he got beat? Huh? Because he was tryin to escape! I swear, Chism, when we git through with you, you’re gonna try real hard to escape.”

They took Nail out of the flyspeck room, out of the building, into the yard. It was a big yard, acres of empty ground between the building and the wall. They stood Nail up and told him to walk. But he couldn’t walk. They picked him up again and kicked him and hit on him and told him to walk. He walked a bit. It began to snow. At first just feathers but then heavy flurries. His bare head and his shoulders became covered with flakes. And his back, when he fell. The rest of the day they kept picking him up and making him walk. The blacks complained to one another of the futility of it, the dumbness of it, the monotony of it, but they kept on with their job.

The man in the flyspeck room died. Before they hauled him off for burial, they placed his body on the floor at one end of the barracks. Warden Burdell made a short speech warning against attempted escape, and Fat Gabe and Short Leg moved among the men, clubbing one who protested that the dead man had never tried to escape. When Burdell’s speech was finished, all three hundred of the men were lined up in slow lockstep, and each man, black and white, was required to bend down and shake hands with the corpse and say good-bye. Each man except Nail, who couldn’t lift his head from his bunk.

Fat Gabe came to his bunk. “Can’t move a finger, hey?” Fat Gabe asked, but Nail couldn’t even talk. Fat Gabe moved his face close so that his words spattered Nail with flecks of spittle: “I got a mind to move a few fingers for you, boy. But not tonight. I’m gonna save you. I’m gonna save you till you’re strong enough to ’preciate what I’m gonna do to you. You got to be able to move to ’preciate what I’m gonna do. Gonna let you know what evil is. Gonna make you learn what sick in the head is. Gonna do crimes on you that spell out what criminal is.” Fat Gabe cleared his throat twice, hawked, and spat at Nail a faceful of phlegm.

Nail lost track of time. He couldn’t remember having had anything to eat, he couldn’t recall ever being able to get up and go with the others to the mess hall, but he didn’t have any memory of anybody bringing him anything to eat. Probably he didn’t eat at all, for a week or so. But he didn’t have any memory of having to get up and go to the slop bucket either. Or use the floor. Strange, he didn’t know thirst even. His bunkmates began to try their best to pretend he wasn’t there. Toy said to him once, wonderingly, “Did you really truly rape a little girl?” All that Nail could manage was to mumble, “She wasn’t little.” And when it occurred to him to add, “And I didn’t rape her neither,” Toy had disappeared, and never spoke to him again after that. Another time, in the night, someone—he figured it was Thirteen—tried to insert a penis into his mouth. Nail had just enough strength to raise a hand to stop the action. The owner of the penis said, and it sounded like Thirteen, “You did it to that little girl, didn’t you?”

Nail discovered that if he tried hard enough he could shut out entirely the Arkansas State Penitentiary in bitter December and make it into a hillside of Stay More in the middle of June with his sheep all around him. He could do anything he wanted to, with those sheep. They would gambol into square dances when he played the right tunes on his mouth organ. The fescue was cropped a bronze-green by their grazing, but the orchard grass was still like emerald, and behind the green meadow rose the turquoise mountain, and beyond it the blue-green hills, and beyond those the light smoky blue of faraway Reynolds Mountain. When the sheep finished their dancing, they would crawl up leaf-dappled under the green shade of the big oaks at the edge of the meadow, and there they would kneel and nap, and Nail would nap with them, long in the summer afternoon, listening to the clear spring gurgle down the talus. When they woke up from their nap, they were whole and sound and sane and ready to play some more, and Nail would play his harmonica for them and feel almost well.

His bedclothes were often damp with blood and pus, and he couldn’t understand why, because his wounds seemed to have scabbed over enough not to be bleeding. Eventually he was able to determine that the blood and pus were coming from his bedmate, who was now Stardust, and he didn’t know if it was because they were flogging Stardust too; he tried not to listen when they were flogging somebody and the poor devil was screaming his head off. Stardust was not one to talk, anyway. But then Stardust began noticeably to take leave of his senses, as if he had not already left them long ago: he could be observed standing beside the bunk, moving his hands in the air as if building imaginary trees, root to bough, twig to trunk. That’s all he did, when he was not crooning. He would stand for hours making trees until Fat Gabe would come and cut him down and dump him in beside Nail, where he would bleed and ooze. Finally Stardust and his few belongings were gathered up and taken away to the state hospital for the insane…which, I have good reason to know, was not a better place.

As soon as Stardust’s spot was empty, they filled it with a new man, or a kid, rather, a boy maybe fifteen, sixteen at the most, whose hair reminded Nail of that woman’s, what was her nice lady name who came and what was it she pretty girl had hair that same reddish sort of, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, yes her name was Monday, that lady, this boy his hair is like hers, red, he could pass for her kid brother only she was too nice a lady to have a kid brother to get hisself in trouble and thrown in the pen. This boy had stolen a horse. Nail listened, which was all he did these days and nights, when he wasn’t running off to those sheep-cluttered hills in Stay More. The boy’s name was Ernest something, but they were calling him Timbo Red because he came from Timbo, Arkansas, up in the hills of Stone County. Timbo Red talked more or less the same way that folks up home talked. Most of these fellers in here sounded like east Arkansas or downstate somewheres or probably outlanders from some other state, but Timbo Red sounded nearly just like Nail’s kid brother Luther, and Nail took an interest in what he was doing and saying, and he took a special interest that first night when Thirteen tried to seduce the kid. Nail still couldn’t talk very strong, but he had enough strength to raise himself up and say to Timbo Red, “Boy, don’t ye let this here feller show ye his jemmison, or you’ll hate it.”

Thirteen turned on Nail. “My what?” he said.

“Keep yore pecker in yore pants, Thirteen,” Nail said.

“Shit, mine is better than yours,” Thirteen snarled. “You want to git him to yourself? I claimed him first. He’s good ripe cherry punk, and I got him, and I aint gon let no man mess with my bride.” He put his full palm over Nail’s face and pushed down hard and mashed Nail’s head down into the bunk. Then he resumed his seduction of Timbo Red, telling the kid that it wouldn’t hurt a bit, not anywhere like the way the kid would get hurt if he didn’t get his sweet ass out of those pants real damn fast.

Nail listened. He tried to tell if the kid was scared or eager or what. Some boys liked that kind of thing; there was a big old boy several bunks over who couldn’t seem to get enough of it and would drop his pants for any feller who asked, and sometimes even went around asking them. Nail listened and thought he could hear Timbo Red asking to be let alone. The way Nail’s mind ran away from him these days and wound up in that Stay More meadow faster than he could think, his mind was now beginning to believe that Timbo Red was Miss Friday or Miss Monday herself, asking old Thirteen to leave her be. Nail couldn’t just lie here and let that nice lady be took against her wishes, or even took with her wishes by somebody foul like Thirteen. Now she seemed to be squealing. It wasn’t a very happy sort of squeal. Nail’s fingers were absently fooling with the collar of his jacket, and then slipping inside the jacket and fooling with the string around his neck. And then his fingers touched that steel. It was still there; he had almost forgotten about it in the what? weeks or days or months or whatever time had passed since he had intended to use it. He still had to remember not to roll over onto his stomach at night, or, if he did, to do it carefully so the razor-sharp dagger didn’t cut his chest.

He took a deep breath and somehow got his legs up and under him so he could crouch and use what energy he had left to reach over and fall against Thirteen and pin him down and hold the dagger up to his eyes so he could get a good look at it, and then Nail said to him, “Thirteen, d’ye want to try out the edge of this and see how sharp it is? Or will you jist take my word for it?—it’ll leave a gash from one of your ears to th’other’un in jist one swipe.”

Thirteen scrambled away from the kid and away from Nail. “Where’d you git that shiv?” Thirteen asked.

“Been savin it fer ye,” Nail said. “And I’ll use it on ye if you touch her again.”

“‘Her’?” Thirteen said. “You want ‘her’ for yourself, huh?”

“Him,” Nail said, flustered. “He ast ye to leave him alone. I’m askin ye to leave him alone. Or die. You choose.”

“Them guards catch you with that pigsticker, they gon make you die,” Thirteen grumbled, but he didn’t bother the kid for the rest of that night, and maybe not for the next few nights either, Nail couldn’t tell how many nights went by, one after the other, without the kid being bothered.

One night Timbo Red just tapped Nail on the shoulder and said, “I thank ye, mister.”

Timbo Red did not lose his virginity before Christmas, but he got the dose of the strap that Fat Gabe measured out to let anybody new know who was boss. Nail, listening, was not able to determine that it had been provoked. Probably not. Timbo Red seemed to be trying his best to get along with people; his lockstep was always right in line, and he tried to be well behaved and inconspicuous. Somewhere he had found a piece of white chalk, the same kind you write on blackboards with, and he would sit on the concrete floor drawing pictures on it. He could draw pretty fair. More than pretty fair, really. He could make an eagle that looked like an eagle and a black walnut tree that looked like a black walnut. The way he would sit and draw also reminded Nail of Miss Monday. Timbo Red’s drawings got walked on, but he didn’t care, and somebody always pissed on the drawings during the night and erased them that way, but Timbo Red would just start a fresh one the next morning. If Timbo Red ever did anything that might have provoked Fat Gabe, it must have had something to do with the way he was arting up the floor.

But more than likely, Fat Gabe just felt it was time to let the kid know what the strap felt like. Coming from a dirt farm in Stone County, Timbo Red probably knew the feel of harness leather on his hide the same way that Nail did, and he took the first ten lashes without even flinching. Fat Gabe was halfway through the second ten, and panting like a horse, before Timbo Red gave any sign that he even noticed what was happening to his behind. But along about the fourteenth lick the boy started to weaken. He whimpered. At the nineteenth lick he was broken and sobbing. Fat Gabe didn’t stop at twenty. Usually, twenty swings of the strap was all that Fat Gabe could manage at one time, but he was mad because the boy had tried to hold out on him like that, and he kept going. The boy kept sobbing like a child.

Nail didn’t bring out his dagger, although he was tempted. Instead, he brought out his harmonica. He had never played it before where anybody could hear him. He had played it all the time when he was alone in the death hole, but not once since then, and he missed it. Now he wasn’t even sure he could get the tune right, but from the first note he blew into it, he knew he could do a fair job. He played “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” He played it loud, he played it lively, he played if with his tongue and lungs and heart. He played it loud enough to drown out Timbo Red’s crying. He played it louder than the crack of Fat Gabe’s strap.

Everyone listened. A few men tried to hum in tune. From several bunks away a good tenor voice picked up at: “…above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by…”

“Pack it up, Chism!” Fat Gabe hollered, and he stopped beating Timbo Red and started swinging at Nail, who scooted over to the far side of the bunk so Fat Gabe couldn’t reach him without going around. Nail finished the carol and started playing “Deck the Halls.”

One by one or in groups of several, the men of the hall joined in singing the words, and the blacks joined the chorus with: “Deck de haws wif baws ob holly!” One man at the end of the barracks climbed to an upper bunk and stood up and began to conduct the choir, waving his arms as if he’d once been a high-school band director. Everyone was singing.

Fat Gabe stopped beating on Timbo Red and shyly tried to sing, “Fa la la? La la? La la LAH LAH!”

Nail Chism played “Good King Wenceslaus.” He played “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.” The three hundred voices singing, or trying to, drifted beyond the wall and reached the warden’s house, the big two-story Victorian on the downslope to the highway. When the warden arrived at the barracks, Nail was playing “Silent Night,” which was the last one that he knew. Mr. Burdell arrived in time to contribute “Sleep in heavenly peace,” twice.

Then he smiled. No one had seen Mr. Burdell smile before. He said, “Well, gentlemen, it looks like you’re already in the spirit of the season.” He took from his pocket a letter, which he unfolded. “This year Governor Hays has seen fit to grant Christmas pardons to a total of thirty men. As follows.” One by one the warden read the names, pausing after each to allow time for the men to whoop and holler and slap backs and carry on. Of course the two hundred and seventy men who were not pardoned were feeling low, and this included Nail, although he hadn’t expected to hear his name on the list.

But his Christmas did not go unnoticed. Farrell Cobb came to visit, and stood beside Nail’s bunk for a while, and gave him a present. “The missus fixed it,” Cobb explained. “Hope you like fruitcake, although it’s such a tiny one.” Nail sampled a few bites, his first ever. Before the lawyer left, saying he hoped to bring good news from the state Supreme Court when he came again in January, he elaborately looked all around them to see if anybody was watching. Nobody was. Nobody cared what Cobb was doing there, or who he was speaking to. The nearest black trusties were shooting dice against the wall. “You can read, can’t you?” Cobb asked, and when Nail nodded, the lawyer reached inside his coat and brought out an envelope and handed it to him. The lawyer put his finger to his lips and said “Shhh,” and then he winked and departed.

Nail tried to sit up in his bunk to open the envelope. It contained several sheets of paper and something very small wrapped in tissue. Nail read the signature first and, thrilled, backed up and read each word with deliberate slowness.

December 22, 1914

Dear Mr. Chism,

They haven’t let you see any of my previous letters, have they? I asked your attorney, Mr. T. Farrell Cobb, if it might be that the “authorities” are not allowing you to receive your mail. He said that it is a common practice for the warden and his assistants to open and read letters to check for contraband, inflammatory statements, scurrility, or information damaging to the morals and well-being of inmates. None of my previous letters to you contained any of these things.

Shortly after I last saw you, I attempted to visit you at the penitentiary, but I was told that you are permitted to have only one visit per month, and that you had already had your December visit, so I will have to wait until January. I went straight home (I live here in Little Rock) and wrote to you.

Have you, I asked myself, chosen not to reply to my letters? That is possible, and you certainly have no obligation to respond. I did not ask you anything that required an answer, with the exception of my request for the whereabouts of your hometown, Staymore. I have, without any vanity, reread the first drafts of my letters to you several times, in order to discover what they might have contained that could have accounted for your silence. I have not been able to determine anything possibly untoward or disagreeable in them. Thus, I like to think, and I do not like to think: they wouldn’t let you have my letters.

So I am resorting to this expedient of asking Mr. Cobb to “smuggle” this letter to you. He said that he would. He seems a kind and well-meaning person, and I say this not to flatter him in case he is reading it too (Mr. Cobb, if you are reading it, please honor our agreement and deliver it as promised) but because there are so few decent, humane, compassionate men in this world. You are one yourself, Nail Chism, and you are rare, and that is the reason I have chosen to burden you with my attentions and devotion. If I have little else in the way of qualifications for existence, I have the ability—some would call it talent—to draw and paint the human likeness, and in the process to “read” the…whatever you wish to call it: soul, psyche, spirit, essence, of the subject, sitter, victim, poser, person. I am not bragging, and I do not boast that the finished work of art conveys this inner character of the person (or even that it is a “work of art,” whatever that is), but I am sure of my knack for seeing it, and when I saw your spirit in those terrible moments that were presumed to be your last, there in that awful room with that hideous chair, I knew you, and I understood you, and I intuited you, and I appreciated you in a way that I have not been allowed to feel toward another human being.

Yes, I know you may be telling yourself: here is one more of those many lonely ladies who like to cultivate convicts, and who visit or correspond with prisoners, especially those condemned to die, and play upon the men’s desperate need for sympathy in order to gratify their own wish for an imaginative relationship safe from entanglement, safe from physical contact, and above all safe from permanence. Some of these women see themselves as substitute mothers or nurses or sisters, and they think they are purely altruistic and they glory in their charity, while other women—widows, spinsters, the jilted and the frustrated—who have had unpleasant experiences with men who were free to touch them and free to hurt them, are craving a liaison which now permits them to have the upper hand, to be free to say no, free to manage and schedule every aspect of the association, and free to quit at any moment.

Please believe that I have never before written to a prisoner…or, for that matter, written a letter as long as this one to anybody. And please believe that my only interest in you is a deep certainty of your innocence, and a consuming desire to prove it.

When I first knew you, I was disposed to hate you. Do you remember our first meeting? We were both members of the “audience” at an execution. Before I was permitted to enter that room, I was lectured by Mr. Harris Burdell, the warden, who only with great reluctance had acceded to the request of my employer, Mr. Thomas Fletcher, managing editor of the Arkansas Gazette, that I be allowed to make a drawing of the condemned man, a young Negro. Mr. Burdell warned me that I would be sitting next to you, and he told me the crimes of which you had been accused and convicted and for which you had been sentenced to die. I suppose that Mr. Burdell was simply trying to frighten me, having failed to dissuade me from experiencing the horrors of the execution itself. But I was not afraid of you, because I despised you so intensely. The Gazette had carried a story of your original trial, and although the details had struck me as a ludicrous miscarriage of rustic backwoods justice, there was no mistaking the nature of the offense itself: a girl of only thirteen brutally abused and raped. Mr. Burdell personally checked my hair to make sure that I was not wearing a long hatpin with which I might stab your heart or put out your eyes. But I had not even seen you! When you were led into the room and given your seat beside me, I steeled myself to behold in your eyes the corruption and savagery which would have permitted you to commit such an abomination, and thus I was greatly surprised to detect such gentleness, such goodness, and such compassion as would preclude your hurting anyone, let alone a thirteen-year-old girl.

And you remember, I’m sure, how you inveighed against that butcher of an executioner, Mr. Irvin Bobo, when the first charge of electricity failed to remove the poor Negro from this world. You called upon God to damn Mr. Bobo, and although I had the feeling that you were spontaneously invoking God without any real belief in Him, you conveyed exactly the words that I would have spoken myself if I had not temporarily closed myself off from all feeling.

Often at night when I am trying to fall asleep I hear your voice shouting those words. And when you yourself sat down in the chair and the warden lifted his hand and Mr. Bobo placed his hand upon the switch, I said aloud, “Goddamn you, Bobo, turn up the juice and leave it on!”

But you were spared! Although you weren’t pardoned or your sentence commuted, you were not murdered. I have learned as much as I can about the reprieve: I’ve talked to Mr. Cobb (hello again, Farrell!), I’ve talked to Judge J.V. Bourland and Judge Jesse Hart; I’ve even had a short audience with His Excellency George W. Hays Himself (although the governor, I regret to say, doesn’t even seem to know who you are), and I know that you are still very much in peril of having another date set for the electrocution. I intend to do whatever I can to prevent this.

I have received permission from my employer, Thomas Fletcher (who is another of the rare breed of gentle and kind men), to investigate the case completely. As I told you, I’m not one of the Gazette’s regular reporters, only a member of the layout and design department, where I am usually found trying to enliven the margins of inner pages with my little sketches. But I have written for the Gazette in the past—the longest thing I ever wrote, before this letter, was an article, “An Arkansawyer in Calcutta,” a place where I saw some of this world’s most unkind and uncompassionate men. Mr. Fletcher has promised to free me from my usual duties long enough to permit me to finish my investigation.

Only these severe winter storms we’ve been having have prevented me from attempting to find and to visit Staymore. But when we get a thaw in January, I’m going to locate it…even if I can only reach it on horseback! (I should have said I have two talents: the other one is that I am a “cowgirl.”)

I have three requests, if you will be so kind:

1. Where is Staymore? I have a map showing Newton County but cannot locate your town. Is it north of Jasper? What kind of roads lead to it?

2. What people should I talk to? Can you give me the names of any witnesses who can account for your whereabouts at the time of the crime? Also, any character witnesses. Who was your best friend?

3. Before I go, is there anything I can do for you? Is there anything you need? Will they allow me to send you a basket of fruit and some cookies? May I smuggle you a book or two? Do you enjoy reading? Any favorite authors? Are you well clothed? Do you need any personal articles? Please do not hesitate to respond to these requests, and do not think of the expense. Meanwhile please accept the enclosed trifle as a token, a talisman, a keepsake, a substitute for a real Yuletide. Merry Christmas, and many more.

Sincerely,

Viridis Monday

Nail Chism read this a second time before he opened his present. In due course he would come to know it by heart. He would unfold it and read it when no one else was looking (and no one else ever was), again and again, until its creases broke and it began to turn dirty and frayed. But for now he read it only twice, and then he picked open the tiny wad of tissue paper.

Inside was a gent’s charm, the kind of chain ornament you hook on one end of your watch chain, if you have a watch, but Nail didn’t. It was made of gold and must have cost her several dollars. But she must have had it special-made by some jeweler, because it didn’t look like a store-boughten gent’s charm. It was in the shape of a tree. Not a Christmas pine or a cedar, nor a hardwood you’d be able to recognize, but just a tree tree, no mistake. Nail turned it over. She’d had the trunk on the backside of the tree engraved in tiny letters: To N.C. from V.M. XMAS 14.

Even if he’d had a watch, and a watchpocket to put it in, he wouldn’t have worn this on a chain for all the world to see. Instead, he attached it to the string around his neck that held his dagger, and wore them both hidden inside his shirt and jacket. It was the nicest Christmas present he’d ever gotten. He could hear that little tree singing to him.

And on Christmas afternoon the Salvation Army was permitted to come into the building and serve a soup that actually had some chicken in it, and with real biscuit besides. The men were required to sit through a long sermon before they were allowed to drink the soup, which was cold by then, but Nail was able to make it to the mess hall on his own legs, for the first time in weeks, and to drink his soup.

Afterward, as the men were waiting to leave the mess hall, required to keep lockstepping in place until the line could move again, Nail discovered that he was lifting and setting his feet right beside the standing figure of Mr. Harris Burdell, who was observing the Christmas festivities.

“Warden Burdell, sir,” Nail managed to say, although his words were nearly drowned by the men tramping the floor with their feet. “I sure do ’preciate you lettin us men have a good Christmas dinner like this. I know I don’t deserve it, and I know I don’t deserve nothin on account of my misbehavior. But I jist want to thank you, sir. It is real good of you. And Merry Christmas to you, Mr. Burdell.”

“Same to you, Chism,” Burdell said, without smiling but without any rancor or malice in his voice.

“Sir, my brother told me that our ole mother is a-dyin, and he ast me could I jist send her a few last words. Sir, would there be any way I could git me some writin-paper and a pencil? Sir, I’d do jist anything if I could have me somethin to write a letter to my dyin mother.”

The line was beginning to move. Nail looked pleadingly over his shoulder at Mr. Burdell, who did not seem to have heard him. But a few days later one of the blacks who waited on the table at dinner wordlessly placed beside Nail’s plate a lead pencil and a penny tablet of lined paper, which, Nail counted, contained twenty sheets. He used a sheet dutifully to write a letter for Mr. Burdell to see, censor, and mail:

Dear Momma,

Waymon told me about you. I hope you are better. You know we are going to meet again in Heaven, where they are saving a special place for you. I’m sorry you did not get to see me again. Waymon said you were not able to come with him to Little Rock, and I understand. You must try to take care of your self better. I wish there was something I could say to make you feel better but all I can say is I love you and do not worry about me. What happens to me is in the hands of some one far better than me. And I aim to see you, all bye and bye, and you can count on it. Please be happy.

Your son with love for ever,

Nail

His mother might puzzle just a little over that—if she got it—but he knew that Waymon would help her understand any of it that she couldn’t, and he would explain the rest of it to her when he saw her, not in Heaven, which was a strange land to him, but in Stay More, one of these days.

Then he used several sheets of the penny tablet to write the following, which he did not give to Mr. Burdell to see, censor, and keep from mailing.

December 29–31, 1914

Dear Miss Monday,

How can I hope to answer? You write like the morning breeze soughing through the cedars, like a hive full of honey, like sun climb on the ridge, you write easy as breathing, like an angel’s sigh, and I am dumb.

How can I hope to thank you? You give me more than a gift, far more than this tiny tree trophy I’m wearing now next to my lungs, far more than any fruit basket or book you want to bring me, even far more than the many hours you’ve done already spent talking to folks on my behalf. You give me hope, real hope, but that is not the greatest gift. You give me your “attentions and devotion,” although you call them a burden and they aren’t, but they are not the greatest gift either. You give me words nice as music singing where my merit hides, but they are not the gift which gladdens me greatestly.

The gift which greatestly humbles me beyond any speaking of thanks is that this world don’t have very many women in it who are able to like themself enough so that they have so much left over they can give some to a man, and you are one of those, you give me some of that self-respect or self-liking that you have left over after you get done helping yourself to it.

I would beg you please don’t misunderstand if I did not think you know what I mean without any insult or accusing you of pride or airs or vanity, which I don’t mean at all. You are not just a uncommon kind woman, Viridis Monday, but a woman more uncommon than that: a smart kind woman. Not a woman who is kind because she is too dumb to know any better and goes around trusting everbody and being sweet and stupid and benevolent because there’s not a thought in her head to keep her from thinking she ought to trust and be sweet. No, you have thought it all over. You have even thought about how much of that trust and sweetness you ought to spend on yourself before you go throwing it around to others less deserving.

And then you discovered you had enough to spare and you shared it with me. I can accept it from you with gladness and gratefulness because I know you can afford to spend it, which maybe you can’t afford to do on a basket of fruit or a book, not to mention this solid gold gent’s charm you gave me. You won’t misunderstand this either: that I sure do appreciate the gent’s charm, and I do know exactly why it’s a tree, and why you asked them to make it like that, and I will still be wearing it to my grave or old age, whichever comes first, but it bothers me some that it cost you money that maybe you couldn’t afford, the way you can afford to let me have some of that leftover self-respect.

You do not know me. I believe that you are blessed with some kind of ability to look a person in the eye before doing their picture and tell whether that person is good, bad, or not worth shooting. You make better pictures than I ever even drempt was possible to draw. I don’t know you either but I know that you must have seen all kinds of eyes. Clear, squinty, keen, beady, bright, dim, smiling, pink, crossed, hawk, walled, dull, catty, goggled, popped, bug, glared, blinked, squinched, cataracted. Enough of all kinds to be able to look in their eye and tell what demons are afollowing them or what angels are aleading them.

But you don’t know me or any of my life except what they said I done to that girl, which you know I didn’t do. You don’t even know how the way that I was raised and what I come to want to do with my life was such that I couldn’t never even have thought about doing it to her. You don’t know the hills of Stay More, and you don’t know the Ingledews, Duckworths, Bournes, Whitters, Plowrights, Coes, Bullens, Murrisons, Dinsmores, Kimbers, and Swains, and only one Chism, me, and not much of me. Even if you did know ever last one of them, you’d just have the makings of a start on knowing somebody like Sull Jerram, who is waiting at the end of your investigation like a toad sitting on a rock all day long waiting for a butterfly to get within shot of his tongue.

But Sull Jerram is not real Stay More folks, though he was born there. The closest Judge Jerram ever come to being Stay More folks was somehow persuading my nice but not very bright sister Irene into marrying him. She’s my half sister, actually. But I am not even going to start in trying to tell you about all these people. If you want to begin from scratch and try to get to know Stay More, in the dead of winter, or at any time, you would probably enjoy it, even if you never found a shred of proof that I didn’t rape Dorinda Whitter.

She’s not the one you should start with. She’s the so-called victim, and many a time I have told myself that she couldn’t be just playing off that way, that somebody actually must have done it to her. And I think maybe whoever done it to her done it just so the law would believe her when she got up and said what he told her to say.

There is another girl you ought to talk to first, if you are really of a mind to visit Stay More. Her name is Latha Bourne, and she is about the same age as Dorinda, and I reckon you could say they was best friends at one time, maybe still. But she is another one of them females who like yourself is able to be honest enough with herself to have some left over to be honest and kind and smart with other people. If you want to look into a pair of eyes, start with hers.

As for character witnesses, any man, woman or child in Stay More who ever knew me or just saw me out yonder in the pasture with my sheep will likely tell you whatever you need to know. But you should be sure and talk to the fellows that sit on Ingledew’s store porch, except this time of year they won’t be out there on the porch, they’ll be inside sitting around his potbelly stove. And Willis Ingledew himself can tell you I was there on that porch that time they said she claimed it was done to her. I’m sorry to have to say, though, that there isn’t one of those folks who could let me call them best friend.

I’m not too sure just what that is, tell you the honest truth. My brothers are both real good friends but they’re brothers so maybe that don’t count.

Right now I feel like you are my best friend.

On the back side of this sheet I’ve drawed a sort of map that ought to help you get from Jasper to Stay More (that is the way it is always spelled, not Staymore all one word the way you did it). All the roads thereabouts are hell on autos. But I have to tell you, Viridis Monday, I can’t imagine a lady riding a horse into Stay More. Nobody there has ever heard tell of a cowgirl and their tongues are sure to wag out of their faces.

But come to think on it, let them wag. This time of year they don’t have nothing to talk about anyhow. Just give each and ever one of those Stay More folks that smile of yours, which is I swear the nicest smile I ever saw on any creature except one of my late lamented sheep. Tell everbody I said hello, and give them all my love.

And to you, good lady, there are no words, except:

Your friend,

Nail

P.S. I really can’t use anything myself I don’t already have, but if you’d like to bring something the next time you come or send Mr. Cobb with it, there is a boy here who is a friend of mine and very good at drawing like you and even has hair like yours but he has nothing to draw with excepting a piece of chalk. If you could smuggle one of those drawing pencils like you use and that type of pad. We would appreciate it.

Then he just had to wait for a chance to get the letter out to her via Farrell Cobb. He did not have an envelope, but he kept the pages folded three times and pressed inside his copy of Dr. Hood’s Plain Talks and Common Sense Medical Advisor, where he could get the letter out and slip it to Cobb the next time he showed up.

January came, a new year, 1915, without any observance or notice. The few men who had old calendars ripped them up, and the fewer men who had new calendars brought them out and began to mark off the days. The flyspeck room always had a waiting list of patients suffering frostbite from being sent off to work at the lumber yard or the brickyard or on the Rock Island railroad. Nail was able to walk around pretty well, although he’d lost forty pounds and wouldn’t have known himself if he’d had a mirror to meet himself in, which he didn’t, but he was not able to be sent out to work, even if it was permitted, which it wasn’t. Convicts under sentence of death, according to law, could not be made to work, or even volunteer to work, and he was still under sentence of death although he wore stripes like the other men (condemned men, by the same law, could not be made to wear stripes since it was assumed they would never escape). He could tell by feel that his hair was growing back in; it was just as well he couldn’t see that it was coming back in irregular patches of white and his usual old brownish blond.

He didn’t have a calendar, but he was well enough and sane enough to keep count of the days, and to know that two weeks of January went by before he ever got a chance to “mail” his letter in care of his lawyer. Those two weeks were restless ones. The other men weren’t speaking to him. If his harmonica at Christmas had temporarily thawed the chill of their hatred for a child-molester, it was just as temporary as the thaw in Fat Gabe’s cold blood. Nobody spoke to Nail except Timbo Red.

The boy sensed that Nail was a fellow mountaineer, even without recognizing it in his voice. One morning while marking up the floor with his chalk as Nail watched him, Timbo Red looked up and said, “Do you ’member what a bar looks lak?”

“Why, shore,” Nail said, a bit surprised that someone had spoken to him.

“Could ye draw one fer me?”

Nail laughed. He could see a bear as plain as if one were sitting on the edge of the bunk, but he couldn’t draw a bear, or anything else. “Son, I can just barely draw my name,” he said. “But why don’t ye give it a try, and I’ll tell ye what’s right and what aint.”

So Timbo Red commenced attempting to draw a bear from memory or imagination, and Nail would point out that the ears were a little off, or the nose was too flat, and the eyes looked a little more gentle than that, et cetera. Soon, between Nail’s talking and Timbo’s drawing, they had themselves a pretty fair bear.

Nail wanted to tell Timbo Red about Miss Monday. He wanted to tell the boy that he hoped to get him one of those drawing-sticks made of charcoal that real artists use, and something to draw on more permanent than a pissed-on floor. But he didn’t want to count his chickens before they hatched, and he hadn’t even been able to send the request off to the lady.

Nail and Timbo Red talked about other things. They talked about hunting and fishing, and which was the best gun for a squirrel and the best bait for a bass. Timbo Red had never seen a panther up close, and Nail described one and their habits and how to shoot one if you had to.

Sometimes, when they weren’t talking about wildlife, Nail would tell the boy some of the old tall tales that he’d heard from the oldtimers: tales of kings and princesses and monsters, tales of trickery and daring and brave escape. Nail had never before been a storyteller, just a listener, and he was a little surprised to discover he had a talent for it. The boy made a rapt audience, especially for the stories about brave escape, and that helped.

Out of the blue one evening Timbo Red asked him, “Was the gal ye took willin, or didje really have to force her?”

Nail stared at the boy, not understanding the question for a long moment. Then he simply said, “There wasn’t no gal.”

Timbo Red, for one, believed him. He got Nail to tell him the history, to tell him about Dorinda Whitter and Judge Sull Jerram and the county sheriff and the moonshine business and all that. When Nail had finished the long story, Timbo Red declared, “I knew a gal lak thet wunst.” Timbo Red talked about this old Stone County gal who was cut from the same bolt of gingham that Rindy was, and who got an innocent man in bad trouble, although he left the country before they could send him to the chair. “What’s thet cheer like?” Timbo Red inquired, and wanted Nail to give him a complete description of Old Sparky. On the floor Timbo Red drew a chalk picture of Old Sparky that was amazing, considering he had never actually seen the chair himself. For some reason that drawing was allowed to remain for several days before it got pissed away.

One day Nail was telling Timbo Red the story of the king and his daughter Rhonda, who was beheaded by her father because she wouldn’t let him seduce her. The climax of this awful tale was interrupted by the appearance of Farrell Cobb. Nail just looked up from watching the reactions of his listener to his tale and there was the lawyer standing there, unsmiling. Farrell Cobb himself looked like someone who’d just been required to behead his own daughter. He looked like a preacher at a funeral. Nail’s heart took a jump and got caught in his throat.

“Bad news, huh?” Nail said.

Cobb nodded. “I regret to say,” he obviously regretted to say, “that the state Supreme Court doesn’t want to hear your appeal.”

“What do you mean?” Nail asked. “Did they shut the door on ye?”

“Figuratively, yes. Literally, I was allowed to present my request to be heard. They gave me all of an hour. Most of them listened. Judge Bourland spoke to them also, on your behalf. Judge Hart asked some intelligent questions and seemed genuinely interested in our case, but the others…” Farrell Cobb raised his hands as if trying to lift an impossible weight off his shoulders. “I’m sorry. The general feeling seems to be that unless Circuit Judge Villines recommends commutation of his original sentence, that sentence must be carried out.”

“But Villines is in cahoots with those fellers who did it!” Nail protested.

“Did what?” Cobb asked.

“Raped the girl and tried to pin it on me!”

“Why would Judge Villines want to do that?”

“That’s a long story, and I’m surprised at ye that you haven’t heard it.”

But, as always, Farrell Cobb was not disposed to hang around for chitchat or complicated stories. He drew a piece of paper out of his pocket and said, “Sign this, please. It’s a shot in the dark, a hundred-to-one chance, but it’s all we can do. Do you understand what a habeas corpus is?” When Nail shook his head, the lawyer explained, “The writ might get you out of here and into a courtroom for a hearing. But as I say, probably not. And if not, your execution has been reset for April 20th.”

Before Cobb could leave, Nail remembered Dr. Hood and got the book from under the bunk and took out the letter for Miss Monday. He looked around. Nobody was watching or paying any attention except Timbo Red, and he was a friend. “Mr. Cobb, could you deliver this for me?” Nail asked his lawyer. “Or someway get it to her? It’s my answer to what she wrote.”

Cobb grinned, winked conspiratorially, took the letter, and put it inside his coat. “I feel like Cupid,” he remarked.

“Look,” Nail said, “if they’re gonna go ahead and electercute me in April, I don’t guess there’s anything she could do to stop them. So tell her that, would ye?”

“She already knows,” Cobb said. “But I think she’s still determined to save you. How, I don’t know.”

When Cobb had left, Timbo Red said to Nail, “Now I reckon I know why you carry that blade around yore neck. You aim to use it if they try to kill ye. Just hurtin ye aint enough, but if they try to kill ye, you’ll take a few to Hell with ye.”

For the rest of January, Nail waited to see if Cobb would come again with more news or another letter from Viridis Monday. He did not. Just as Viridis Monday had reread her earlier letters to Nail to determine why he hadn’t answered them (when in fact he hadn’t received them), Nail began to call up the words he had written to her and wonder if he had said anything that might have offended her or put her off. All he could find in his memory of his letter was that business about his sheep having a better smile than hers. Maybe that insulted her. But maybe she was planning to come see him instead of write to him again. Nail was owed a fifteen-minute trip to the visit room this month, and he kept hoping that Short Leg would come and take him there, but Short Leg did not.

Most of the men who were not taken out each day to work were transferred to the new prison farm at Tucker downstate, where conditions were supposed to be even worse than here, and there were afternoons when Nail had the barracks practically all to himself, because even Timbo Red was out somewhere working. The only ones besides Nail who didn’t get sent out to work were those too sick or too frostbitten or too injured from floggings to be able to move. Nail wasn’t sick anymore, but they wouldn’t send him out, because of the law.

He never left the building until, late in the afternoon on January 30th, Short Leg came and got him. Nail’s low spirits soared up, and he walked so briskly that Short Leg had to grab him at one point when he was heading toward the visit room and say, “Not that way, Chism. This way,” and then led him into the power and light building where Old Sparky was. For one terrible moment Nail thought perhaps he’d misunderstood the lawyer and that Farrell Cobb hadn’t said April 20th but January 30th, or maybe it was already April 20th and Nail hadn’t been paying good attention.

But it was just that he was required to witness again. It was time for Ramsey. Nail was the first witness to sit, and before the others came he had to sit a long time, expecting and hoping that any minute the door would open and in would walk Miss Monday to do her drawing of Ramsey. Nail looked at the window and calculated that sundown was maybe still half an hour off, and maybe Viridis Monday could come and sit beside him and they could talk for a while, and if no one was looking he’d even sneak her a peek at his tree-shaped gent’s charm. He’d thank her again in a way he couldn’t do in writing because he couldn’t express himself that way. He’d thank her most for wanting to go to Stay More and meet folks and try to find someone who could help get him commuted. He’d tell her what had been on his mind these past few days: that when April 20th came around, he’d appreciate it if she would stay at home. He didn’t want her coming to his execution, not even to yell at Bobo.

He didn’t have to yell at Bobo this time. The other witnesses came, but Viridis Monday wasn’t one of them. Burdell came. Fat Gabe came, bringing Ramsey, who was twisting and screaming at the top of his lungs and begging Jesus to save him. For a minute there Nail couldn’t believe it was Ramsey, who had been so silent and withdrawn. But it was him, changed into a wild lunatic. At one point he broke loose from Fat Gabe and fell down at Mr. Burdell’s feet and wrapped his arms around the warden’s legs and begged and pled and said everything he could think of that might move him, but Mr. Burdell just motioned for Fat Gabe and Short Leg to get him back up and into the chair, and they did. Jimmie Mac tried to say the final prayer, but his words were drowned out by Ramsey trying to get people to believe that if he had just one more chance he’d be the best man the world ever knew since Jesus Himself.

Bobo seemed to be relieved to shut out that noise; he seemed to be pushing down a lever that would turn off all that screaming and pleading, and he left that lever down. He left it down too long, and the room filled up with the choking fumes of blackened flesh. One of the witnesses fainted and knocked over another one while he was falling. Another witness vomited all over himself and one of the others.

It was just as well Miss Monday hadn’t been there.

February came. He imagined the buds were a-swelling. The trees were not going to sing for another month or more, but the buds swole up as if the trees were humming in practice and tune-up. The grimy windows of the barracks seemed to be admitting more sunlight. Timbo Red took to drawing daffodils on the floor, not just stick figures with ball flowers stuck on them but real convincing daffodils that you could almost touch, that looked as if they were bright-yellow although they were black-and-white, that smelled like daffodils although they really smelled like piss.

The men who had “sweethearts” among the other men, the punks and queers, had a Valentine’s party and exchanged modest gifts or sentiments. A lucky few men got to go to the visit room to see their real female sweethearts.

The powers of observation of men in prison take one of two directions: either they become oblivious to all but the most glaring sights around them, or they develop an ability to notice the most insignificant and inconspicuous little details. Nail one day noticed that Fat Gabe’s belt had small notches cut along the upper edge, and he counted them, eighteen, and one day after another one of the beaten prisoners had passed away Nail counted again and there were nineteen notches.

One night in bed Timbo Red whispered into Nail’s ear, “Sometimes I git so pruney and itchy I got a mind to go ahead and let Thirteen have me. Unless you want me. I druther it was you.” Nail could not answer that, or respond, but later in the night, when it was clear the boy was not going to be able to sleep, Nail used his hand to get the boy over the mountain.

Often Nail asked himself why it was that he hadn’t been returned to the death hole. If another date had been set for his delayed execution, April 20th, and he was once more condemned, then why wasn’t he back in his old cell in the basement of the power and light? He preferred it there. It was dark and solitary and even scary, but he didn’t have to put up with anybody except whoever was in the other cell, like Ramsey or Skip, who had been all right, for a couple of murderers. Sometimes he was tempted to request that Mr. Burdell return him to the death hole. Only two things kept him from it: one was he was genuinely fond of Timbo Red and wanted to keep an eye out for the boy and help him in whatever way he could, even if it meant what he had done that one night, which wasn’t a queer thing to do but just handy and charitable; and the other reason was that in the death hole he’d never get to go to the visit room.

Not that he ever got summoned to the visit room. As February drew to its foreshortened close, he consciously prevented thoughts of the visit room from ever again torturing him. Some men in prison are capable of such self-control of their minds; they are able to put themselves to sleep at night or to resume sleep after springing awake in the middle of a nightmare by preventing their minds from thinking too much, or thinking about the wrong things. The visit room was a wrong thought, and Nail succeeded at last in abolishing it entirely from his consciousness.

Thus he was totally surprised one morning in late February when Short Leg came to his bunk, kicked his foot to draw his attention, and held out the handcuffs. “Visit room, Chism. There’s a lady waiting to see you.”

On

He looked terrible. His hair was growing back in uneven patches, which were white as well as blond, reminding her of dustings of snow on the Stay More hillsides beneath the dark branches of trees. But his head was still splendid compared with his body, which looked starved and emaciated. He was smiling at her as if he’d never been happier in his life, but his body looked as if it had already died. She held out her hands to the screen that separated them, a screen so fine that she could not even get her fingertips through it to touch him. He put his hands up to hers, and although their hands did not touch, it was almost as if they were in contact. The guard motioned with the end of his shotgun barrel for them to remove their hands from the screen. Dropping her hands, she found her voice: “Hello, Nail.” It did not cause her any discomfort to address him familiarly; she felt she knew him very well; indeed, she now knew many things about him that he probably did not know himself.

“Howdy, Miss M—” He started to address her formally but then asked, politely, as if making an important request, “What can I call ye?” And then suggested an answer: “Do you want me to call ye Viridis?” She nodded. “I’ve been lookin for ye,” he said in a way that told her he had been counting the hours waiting for her.

“I’ve done a bit of traveling,” she said. “I’ve been to your Stay More and back. It took me a while.”

“On a horse?” he asked, grinning.

She nodded. “A mare, actually. Named Rosabone.”

“You rode Rosabone all the way to Stay More?”

“No, we took the train as far as Clarksville.”

“‘We’? Oh, you mean you and the mare?”

She nodded. He laughed. She declared, “Stay More is a beautiful place. A fabulous place.”

“This time of year?” He raised his heavy eyebrows, which were the only good hair he had remaining on his head. “Swains Creek must be froze.”

“Banty Creek is iced over, but not Swains Creek.”

“You went up Banty Creek?”

“I went everywhere.”

“Even my—even the Chism place?”

“Especially the Chism place.”

“You met my momma?”

“I had some long talks with your mother.”

“And Paw—how is he?”

“Middlin to fair.”

Nail chuckled. “‘Middlin to fair,’ huh? Who taught ye that?”

“Who does it sound like?”

“Him. Paw. You said it almost like he was standin right here.”

“He wishes he were. He said to tell you, ‘Boy, don’t ye never fergit, yo’re a Chism, and Chisms don’t never quit.’”

Nail shook his head in wonder. “It’s almost like you brought his voice with ye.”

“I brought all their voices with me.” She looked him closely in the eye, as near as the screen would permit. “And the voices of the trees too. In your front yard, looking out over the whole valley and the next valley over, there are two huge trees. Sockdolager old trees!”

“‘Sockdolager…’” Nail chuckled. “You didn’t hear that one from Paw.”

“No, from Willis Ingledew. But he wasn’t talking about your trees. Nobody called your trees that, except the trees themselves.”

Nail squinted his eyes intently. “They spoke to ye?”

She smiled. “In a manner of speaking. They don’t use our language, of course. And you and I are both crazier than coots.”

Laughing, he said, “Those trees are a walnut and a maple. I used to climb that walnut plumb nearly to the top, and I could see all the way to Jasper. And that old maple, the peckerwoods would ring it and make the awfulest racket while I was tryin to build play roads around the roots.”

She saw him again at the age of nine, alone, building his play roads beneath the maple. Alone because, Nancy Nail Chism had told her, the nearest kid his own age, E.H. Ingledew (always called E.H.), now the village dentist (who’d sat Viridis in his chair while he answered her questions because that was the only way he could talk to anyone), lived a long way off and was from a better family that didn’t “mix” with the Chisms.

A precious one of their fifteen allotted minutes escaped while Nail reminisced about the trees in his yard and Viridis again pictured him there. She was hoping he wouldn’t ask about his brother Waymon so that she wouldn’t have to tell him.

“Well,” he said at length, “didje git to talk to Latha Bourne?”

“Oh, yes!” Viridis exclaimed. “You told me once there were only three people who really know you are innocent: yourself, your mother, and Dorinda. That’s a very conservative estimate. Everyone in Stay More believes you are innocent, but Latha Bourne knows you are innocent. She’s a remarkable young lady. She is, as you told me, honest and smart and kind. I’m very fond of Latha Bourne.”

Nail shook his head. “What I could never figure is how come a nice girl like her become chummy with Rindy Whitter in the first place.”

She looked at him. She did not know how to say this, but she tried: “Dorinda Whitter is not totally bad. She’s not very intelligent, and what little sense she has is corrupted by her greed and selfishness, but she is not hopelessly malignant.”

“Oh, so you talked to her too?”

“I talked to everyone, Nail.”

“Everyone? That’s an awful lot of people.”

Their allotted time was running out. She opened her purse and took out the bundle of pages and peeled off the top sheet. “Let me read the beginning,” she said, and read: “‘To His Excellency Governor George W. Hays. We, the undersigned, residents and voters of Newton County, Arkansas, do hereby solemnly petition Your Excellency to consider the sentence of death under which our friend, Nail Chism, has been placed, wrongly we feel. We each and severally believe him to be innocent of the crime of which he was charged, and we humbly entreat Your Excellency to wield your authority to pardon him, or at least to commute the sentence of death.’”

Viridis held up the many sheets so that Nail could see the signatures. “There are 2,806 names here, in all,” she said. “Of course, many of them are just X’s, but in each case where the person was unable to write his or her name, I have filled it in beside the X. See?” She held up page after page for his scrutiny.

Nail peered at the sheets as closely as the screen would allow. “I declare, you’ve got everbody on there!” he exclaimed. And she did, and she knew it: people from all over Newton County but particularly the Stay Morons: all the Ingledews, Duckworths, Plowrights, Swains, Coes, Chisms, Bullens, Bournes, Murrisons, Cluleys, Dinsmores, Kimbers…yes, even the Whitters. Of course all of the names were male; a voteless woman’s name carried no weight with the governor. But there was one female name, and Viridis held her forefinger on it and said, “Now, here’s an X, but beside it there’s an attempt to spell out the name. Can you make out the letters?”

Nail slowly read and spoke each letter. “D,” he said. “O, and R, and I, and N, and—” He stopped, he looked up at Viridis, and his eyes were questioning so that what he said next sounded almost like a question but was actually a statement, just whispered: “It’s her.”

Viridis nodded. “Now, listen, Nail. Our time is almost up. I’m going to go home and try to write you some of the things that I don’t have time to tell you, and I’ll get Farrell Cobb to bring you the letter within a week. There’s so much I have to tell you about my trip to Stay More. I have to tell you about Judge Jerram…”

“Don’t tell me you met him too?”

“I had some very unpleasant encounters with Judge Sull Jerram. I’ll tell you about it. I’ve got so many things to tell you, but for now our time has run out.”

“Hell,” Nail said. “They ought to give us thirty minutes, on account of I didn’t get any visit time during January. I’m owed twice as much, aren’t I?”

“You certainly are,” she said. “But I can have only half of it. I’ve talked to Mr. Fancher—the one you call Short Leg—and he says that you can have another fifteen minutes for the time you didn’t have in January.” She smiled. “But not with me. There’s someone else here waiting to see you. I’ve got to go. I’ll be your first visitor for March. Good-bye for now, Nail. Take care, and promise me you’ll try to eat whatever they give you.”

“Who—? What—? Hey!” Nail protested, but before he could say anything else, she got herself out of there. In the anteroom she gave a sigh both of relief at getting out on time, in fifteen minutes, and of disappointment at not having been able to talk to him more.

Then she turned to the bench where the girl was sitting. “All right, Dorinda,” she said. “You be a good girl and get yourself on in there.”

Off

Off she had gone to Stay More, in the middle of the winter, and we had met. To me, at first, she had been simply that stranger-lady everybody was already talking about so much that the gossip reached me before she did. The first I had ever heard of Viridis Monday was Bertha Kimber telling my mother, “Ay-law, Fannie, they’s a womarn a-stayin down to the Ingledew big house and done rid her mare plumb from Little Rock!”

But Viridis did not ride the mare all the way from Little Rock, which would have taken forever even if she and the horse both had not frozen to death. No, she put the mare on a train, and they rode the train for most of the way, and she rode the mare only the last sixty miles or so of the trip…but that is getting ahead of the story.

Tom Fletcher did not want her to do it. The Gazette’s managing editor tried not just once but on several occasions through December and January to dissuade Viridis from making the trip. When it became obvious to him that she would not be discouraged by the weather reports, deterred by horrendous descriptions of the Newton County terrain and roads (or lack of them), daunted by the obvious futility of the mission (Fletcher himself, he later confessed to her, had done some checking and sent a couple of seasoned statehouse reporters out to gather the facts and determine that Nail Chism was guilty, and that unless and until Arkansas joined the other states that had abolished the death penalty for rape there was not going to be any way to get the sentence commuted), diverted by a more interesting assignment (he offered to let her cover the legislature’s debate on whether or not Arkansas would go totally dry)—only then did he attempt to kid her out of the “mission” by making it seem an adventure into terra incognita: She would need, he said, to hire some guides, and an interpreter, and a band of bearers. She would need an English-Ozarkian dictionary and phrasebook. She would have to get herself a raccoon coat and a coonskin cap and carry an elephant gun. As a joke, Tom Fletcher had the boys down in the pressroom print up a mock article, “Elephants in the Ozarks,” which he left on her desk.

When it became clear to him (and he was a wise man as well as a practical joker) that nothing would stop her from going to Stay More, he called her to his desk and sat her down and apologized for having belittled her plan, and announced that he had given it some serious thought and decided not only to let her go but to take her himself. If she could just wait until early March when it warmed up a bit, he could get a few days off and borrow a Columbia touring car, which would get the two of them up there and back to Little Rock in no time. He had checked the route as far as Jasper, where, he knew, there was a fair hotel called the Buckhorn they could put up at. Separate rooms, of course, he added, and winked.

Viridis liked Tom Fletcher quite a lot, but she did not like the idea of waiting until March, or of having her own investigation paced and directed by her boss. If it was all the same to him, she said, she’d appreciate having her total independence.

When the time of her furlough from the Gazette approached, he called her to his desk again and laid out before her the timetables of the railroads. She could take the St. Louis & Iron Mountain train westbound as far as Van Buren, transfer there (after a night’s layover at a fair hotel) to a St. Louis & San Francisco (or “Frisco”) train, which would take her north to Fayetteville, or, rather, to Fayette Junction, the terminus of the Frisco’s spur eastward to Pettigrew, where, after a night (at a fair hotel), she could hire a driver and buggy to take her over the mountains a day’s ride (or a day and a half, at most) to Stay More. She ought to be able to make the whole trip, there and back, in a week.

Viridis thanked Tom Fletcher for his concern and his help, but she had already planned her itinerary, and her modus operandi. She intended to put her own Arabian mare aboard the Iron Mountain train, which she would ride only as far as Clarksville, then alight there and ride the mare northward for two days until she reached Stay More.

Tom Fletcher consulted his maps and tables. “But there aren’t any fair hotels in that wilderness,” he said. “And you’re not going to camp out under the stars in this weather.”

She smiled and told him she would manage, without any camping out. She was not taking a bedroll or any equipment other than a spare blanket for extra warmth if she needed it, and a heavy horse blanket for her mare. Her saddlebags—and she was using an American western saddle, not an English riding-saddle—would contain only her changes of clothing, one dress neatly folded, spare jodhpurs, extra shoes, her writing-pads, pencils, and her sketchbooks and drawing-supplies.

“Aren’t you going to be armed?” Tom Fletcher asked, and when she showed him the derringer she kept in her purse, he laughed and said it might deter human molesters but wouldn’t work against an elephant…or, okay, there weren’t any of those, but there were real wolves, bears, and panthers. He persuaded her to accept the loan of a Smith & Wesson revolver, which, he said, would not kill wolves, bears, or panthers but would certainly intimidate them. Since, he warned, facility in the use of a revolver is not easily acquired, he offered to give her some lessons. “Let’s climb into my Ford and drive over to Big Rock and shoot bottles.”

That was their first “date.” Emboldened, a day later he asked her to dinner. Tom Fletcher was a thirty-two-year-old bachelor possessed of a strong, handsome face despite overly bulging eyeballs, and, as we’ve noted, wisdom and humor. He was a first cousin of a Little Rock literary light, then living in England, named John Gould Fletcher, who would later acquire a reputation as one of the Imagist poets. At dinner, in the restaurant of the Capital Hotel, Tom made one last effort to talk Viridis out of her “quixotical quest.” Failing, he declared, “I’m awfully fond of you, Very, and if anything happened to you, I’d kill myself.”

Nothing, really, happened to her, except for a couple of scares. She had the time of her life. Even her horse seemed enlivened by the adventure. The mare, which she’d owned now for nearly a year, was a grandniece of Géricault, her jumping horse of old, and although Viridis did not jump her a lot, she was capable of it. Viridis had named her after a famous French woman painter of the last century who had specialized in horses, Rosa Bonheur, but Viridis had shortened this to the playful “Rosabone,” to which the mare responded. Before her sudden interest in Nail Chism, Viridis spoke only to Rosabone. Tom Fletcher pointed out to her the similarity between “Rosabone” and “Rocinante,” the wretched horse of Don Quixote.

Rosabone did not balk at being loaded onto a cattle car of the Iron Mountain train; it was an enclosed car, albeit an unheated one, and Viridis draped her liberally with a thick horse blanket. Then Viridis settled down in the passenger car to watch as the train maneuvered the Baring Cross bridge over the Arkansas River into Argenta. The stations they passed, or at which they briefly took on mail or an occasional passenger, on the way to Conway—Amboy, Marché, Wilder, Palarm, Mayflower, Gold Creek—were the same little jerkwaters and whistlestops she’d passed through twice every weekend during her semester’s attendance at Conway Central College and Conservatory of Fine Arts, and the sight of those familiar, almost identical clusters of wooden false-fronted stores and the little railroad depots brought back to her the impoverishment of her collegiate experience. She had come so far since those days, and yet, going back again now, especially as the train pulled in and stopped for a while at Conway, within sight of her old campus, she felt as if she were recapturing something she had lost, or getting another opportunity to do something she had neglected, the first time around.

Conway had really been the limit of her penetration into the Arkansas hinterland, and now, as the train left it and gathered speed to the northwest and the uplands, which she could see already in the distance, she felt that she was going to explore some recesses of her native state that she had not known before. The train followed a generally westward course paralleling the Arkansas River and passing through towns, some of good size, that seemed to have been created by the railroad and had avenues flanking the tracks, and new business buildings: drugstores, hardware stores, furniture stores, even a small theater or two. Passing through Atkins, she had a clear view of the new brick façade of the J.M. Maus Company, a two-story block that was more like a Little Rock department store than a backwoods general emporium. To one side of the store the wagons of trappers were unloading their contents of furs, fox and possum skins, to be traded for merchandise. The people, especially the men, did not exhibit any pretense or cultivation in their appearance; they were an anticipation of the roughcast yeomen she would encounter in Newton County.

She rode into the sunset at Russellville, and thereafter the little stations the train passed were illuminated only by single lights over their depot signs: Ouita, Mill Creek, London, Scotia, Piney. There are so many little towns out there, she reflected, and so many little lives, all of them strange to me. There are two aspects of travel by rail that she was acutely aware of: one is the sense of “out-thereness,” of all that lies on both sides of this passage; and the other is of this passage itself, this channel, this extended tube through which one is passed, with a beginning and an end.

She broke free in the middle. Halfway between Conway and Fort Smith, at Clarksville, she left this tube and entered the out-there. After a night at the St. James Hotel, where she sheltered Rosabone in the hotel’s horse-barn, and after a good early breakfast of oats for the mare and oatmeal for the rider, they struck out northward along a winding road pointing toward the mountains. The morning was very cold but clear, the air bracing. Viridis let Rosabone set her own pace, with an occasional run on the downslope of hills. Horse and rider had not gone more than a few miles, as far as Ludwig, before they encountered the first signs of astonishment in bystanders or other riders. The other riders were all male, and they had to look twice to see that she was not, and then, if there were two or more of them, they had to do a lot of talking among themselves about this exceptional circumstance of a lone woman in pants riding astraddle. Yard dogs who ordinarily would have chased a passing horse for a while ran out and took one sniff and gave her a tilted-head look. Women stood with their hands on their hips and their mouths open.

But there were not a lot of people. North of Harmony, which she reached at midmorning (and paused to admire the quaint stone church there), the fields gave way mostly to forests, with only an occasional farm before she reached the village of Ozone. How did she know, and later tell me, these names of towns—Ludwig, Harmony, Ozone? (There were no road signs in those days.) Because, in every village she passed, she stopped to ask someone, just to be sure she was on the right road to Newton County. In the case of the last place, she said, “Ozone? That’s an unusual name. Is it because of the quality of the air?” The air there, as elsewhere in the Ozarks, was sweet and clear and heady. “Couldn’t rightly tell ye, ma’am,” the man said. “Hit’s jist been called thet, fur back as I can recall.”

When, shortly after dark, at the top of a steep climb up Moon Hull Mountain, she reached a village that had a hotel, or something resembling one, although the simple sign said only HOTELL, and inquired of the village’s name, a man told her it was called Loafer’s Glory. Which indeed was its name (I had been there once with my mother, who had an aunt living there; it was the farthest I’d ever been from home), but officially, as far as the United States Post Office Department was concerned, an institution that often made unfeeling mistakes, as I would come to learn to my sorrow, the place was named Fallsville, which it is still called on maps, at least those few maps which show it. There’s nothing wrong with “Fallsville,” and there was, as Viridis discovered the next morning, a pretty waterfall in the headwaters of the Mulberry River, but Loafer’s Glory is a fine name for a town, almost as fine as Stay More. The Dixons, Bowens, Habbards, Rykers, Cowans, Durhams, and Sutherlands did as much loafing in their village as the folks in ours did of staying, which is to say, for as long as they could, until neither loafing nor staying was any longer possible or glorious.

Loafer’s Glory is down in the southwest corner of Newton County, but Viridis didn’t realize she had already reached the county of her destination. She still had a hard day’s ride to go to reach Stay More. She and Rosabone needed a good night’s rest, which the “Hotell,” Sutherland’s, provided. It was like no hotel she had been in before: two guest rooms upstairs sharing a common washstand, her room just large enough for an old-fashioned iron bedstead with a cornshuck mattress and a pair of light down quilts over it. The occupant of the other room was a traveling “drummer,” or salesman, for a wholesale grocery outfit in Fayetteville. He tried to get friendly. He suggested to Viridis that they might get warmed up with a little peach brandy he had with him, but she declined, saying she’d had a hard ride today and expected a harder one tomorrow. She got up in the morning before he did and beat him to the washstand, and was finished with her breakfast before he came downstairs.

There is a Y in the main road at Loafer’s Glory, and the left fork would have taken her into Madison County and toward Pettigrew, which Tom Fletcher had suggested as the terminus of her rail ride, but she took the right fork eastward toward Swain and Nail, a village named for the maternal grandfather of Viridis’ obsession. She did not know this then, but she reached it in midafternoon, and, inquiring the distance and direction to Stay More (for it was here she would have to turn north again), was told that it was only six miles, but six rough, crooked, uphill miles, and she wouldn’t be able to make it before dark.

She should have spent the night in Nail. Although the village had no hotel, or anything approximating one, any villager would have shown her hospitality and could probably have regaled her with stories about Jethro Nail, that maternal grandfather, from whom the hero of this story acquired a large measure of his sense of humor as well as his sense of injustice. But, so close to her destination, Viridis was eager to get on.

She would discover that Stay More had no hotel, or anything approximating one either…when she reached it. The reaching was hard. Of the whole journey from Clarksville, of her entire experience with bridle paths and trails and roads, those last six miles were the hardest. Indeed, that road from Nail to Stay More no longer exists today; it was the first road to be given back to the forest when the Ozark National Forest was set up; the southern entrance to, or egress from, Stay More has been closed off ever since. You could almost say that Viridis found a place you can no longer get to. Or, at least, that she used a path that can no longer be traversed. Or even that both place and path existed only in the creation of her fancy at that specific circumstance of time.

There were stretches where she had to get down and lead Rosabone. Places where Rosabone stumbled in the snow. Places where Viridis, down and walking, stumbled in the snow. Rosabone was getting very tired. It was growing dark, the forest canopy was obscuring what sky light there was, and Rosabone could not understand why they weren’t stopping if it was dark. Viridis tried to talk to her, but she was talking to herself, whistling in the dark, afraid. Once, as both she and Rosabone stood panting at the top of some defile they’d climbed, surrounded by huge boulders and enormous trees, she heard a noise, as of branches snapping, which caused her to fetch the revolver Tom Fletcher had lent her and make sure it was loaded, and to walk on for a while with the revolver in one hand and the mare’s reins in the other. She emerged into a clearing, dimly lit but still with enough light for her to witness the sudden spectacle of a huge bird swooping down and seizing a rabbit. She could not tell what sort of bird it was—eagle, hawk, falcon—but she could clearly identify the big white rabbit, who, strangely, she thought, made no protest or sound of any sort as the talons of the raptor lifted it off the ground and carried it ever higher out across the treetops and over the valley.

She moved on until she could see that valley, then stood looking into it for a very long while, resting, letting Rosabone rest. The last strips of the sunlit sky sank beyond the westward mountains. The moon rose, and it was full, and every star was there. The northern slopes of hills that she faced still were covered with snow, against which the black trunks and branches of trees made a vast and intricate tracery. The snow, in this light, seemed more blue than white, and everything was silent and still. One by one, far down below, people here and there lit their kerosene lanterns, and the pinpoints of light scattered across the valley forewarned Viridis of the number of people she must encounter before her mission would be accomplished. The whole scene reminded her of a village landscape at night as painted by van Gogh, although he had seen the moon and the stars far more passionately than she could now feel. “Well, Rosabone,” Viridis said, as she remounted the mare, “that is the end of our journey.”

It was downhill from there on. When she reached the village, it was full dark, but the great moon and a few kerosene lanterns in windows gave some illumination to the buildings along Stay More’s main street. Weeks after she had left Stay More, the next time the moon was full, I walked through the village one night attempting to see it as she had first laid eyes on it. Of course I knew each building, each house, and each store in a way that she did not: I recognized the dark, looming shape of Isaac Ingledew’s gristmill, closed then because the Chism moonshining operation had used up all the cornmeal; another large building, whose triangular gable rose three floors up, I knew, pretending to be Viridis, would be one of my objectives: Willis Ingledew’s General Store, where the men who would testify for Nail Chism congregated nearly every day, winter or summer; pretending to ride my horse on up the street, as she had, I passed between the two doctors’ clinics, on my left old Doc Plowright’s board-and-batten wooden shack with false front, he who had examined Rindy Whitter, and on my right across the street the new clinic of Plowright’s only competition, young Doc Colvin Swain, a Stay More boy, just out of his training in St. Louis. The next building up from Doc Swain’s was our principal business building, the ashlar stone Swains Creek Bank and Trust Company. I stood where Viridis had stopped her horse to stare at it, and then, as she had done, I let my eyes shift northward across the Right Prong Road (which she would take to get to my house as well as to the Chism place) to the only other general store on that stretch of main road, T.L. Jerram’s, run by Sull’s brother Tilbert. I must have stared at that one a little longer than she had, although then I couldn’t even guess that one day I would own it and live there and have the post office in it, and that even at this present time my granddaughter Sharon would be living there still.

Viridis looked at what wouldn’t become Latha Bourne’s General Store and Post Office until June of 1932; there were lights of kerosene lanterns burning within the two wings of the store that were living quarters, and she was tempted to stop there first, just to ask for directions. It would have been ironic to ask Tilbert Jerram for help in the beginning of what would become her fight against his brother. But she did not. She turned Rosabone around and began to ride slowly back down Main Street. There were lights burning at Doc Plowright’s, but I don’t blame her for having a sense, even then, that he wouldn’t be very sociable. Across the road she could see through the window of Doc Swain’s, where Colvin was sitting at a table peering through a microscope, and something about that—and the moonlit shingle hanging out front: C.U. SWAIN, M.D., DOCTOR OF HUMAN MEDICINE—convinced her that he was a very busy young man who wouldn’t take kindly to an interruption. She only wanted to ask for directions.

Didn’t dogs bark at her? When I attempted to retrace her movements through the village and the surrounding countryside, weeks later in the moonlight, pretending to be her, some of the dogs pretended I was her too, and although they knew me they barked at me. Doc Swain’s great big old hound Galen nearly attacked me, and Doc Swain raised his head from the microscope and came outside and said, “Hush, Galen! Down, you dumb bawler! Oh, it’s you, Latha. What are you doin out this time o’ night?”

“Jist a-playin like I was her,” I said, and he knew who I meant. “And I was jist wonderin, did dogs bark at her that first night? Galen must’ve.”

“I reckon he did, but I never took no notice,” Doc Swain said.

If there was anyone who heard the village dogs barking at her and thought to go see who or what the dogs were barking at, it was probably that old lady who lived two doors down from Doc Swain, in the big fine two-story house directly across the road from Willis Ingledew’s store. This house had been built way back around the time of the War Between the States by old Jacob Ingledew, who died the year before I was born. He had been the founder of Stay More, he and his brother Noah, and right after that war he had served for a time as the governor of the whole state of Arkansas. Compared with Governor Hays, who wouldn’t pardon Nail Chism, he…but I’m digressing. This lady had been a friend of his wife’s when they lived in Little Rock at the governor’s mansion, and when Sarah Ingledew came back to Stay More she brought her friend with her, to stay. In this year of 1915 both Jacob and Sarah had been in the Stay More cemetery for going on fifteen years, but this lady, who inherited the house, still lived on there, and would continue to do so until sometime in the early twenties (I wasn’t living in Stay More the year of her death, so I don’t remember). To tell the honest truth, I never knew her name. Older folks who had known Sarah Ingledew just called her Sarah’s Friend, and in fact that’s all that you’ll find on her tombstone. If she ever told Viridis her name, and she must have, it’s not recorded.

But she came out on her front porch, wrapped in a thick afghan shawl, to see what the dogs were barking at…assuming the dogs were barking. That porch runs the whole length of the big house, and it has fancy jigsaw Gothic balusters running along the edge of it, hardly more than an arm’s length from the road, and the lady stood up against that porch rail and looked at that moonlit figure on horseback. Viridis stopped and turned Rosabone toward the lady and said, in that genteel Little Rock/Paris voice of hers, “Good evening, madam. This is Stay More, is it not? I’ve just arrived in town, and I’d like directions for finding the Right Prong Road that goes to the Chism farm.”

The lady smiled. “Which part of Little Rock are you from?” she asked.

Viridis was taken aback, to put it mildly, and her first thought was of some kind of conspiracy: somebody, maybe Nail himself, had gotten word to these people that Viridis was coming. But this woman was asking her which part of Little Rock she was from, as if there were divisions or distinctions, and—Viridis could not help noticing—this woman was not asking the question in the mode of expression or voice she would expect from a native of these parts.

“Why, the central part,” Viridis answered. “Why?”

“Louisiana Street, Center, Spring, or Broadway?” the old woman asked.

“West of that,” Viridis said. “Arch Street.”

“I guessed as much. That’s not exactly central. Well, as they say hereabouts, light down and hitch, rest your saddle. Come in and eat you some supper.”

“I’m just trying to find the Chism place,” Viridis said.

“You won’t find it in the dark, or even this fine moonlight. Are they expecting you? They won’t be able to give you a decent bed.”

“I don’t want to impose on you,” Viridis said.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve room for your whole family, if you’d brought them with you. Well, maybe one of your brothers would have to sleep on the floor.”

Viridis was delighted. She accepted the offer of hospitality and discovered that the woman had the whole large house to herself, eleven rooms, simply but tastefully furnished. Behind the house was a small stable, where Rosabone was housed comfortably for the night.

The woman had just been starting to prepare her own supper at the time Viridis arrived, and it was no trouble for her to make a double serving of everything: roast pork, boiled potatoes in their skins with chopped parsley, fresh garden kale (it survives January’s freeze) cooked like spinach, and a light wheaten roll baked in a manner called Parker House. Viridis watched as these things came off of and out of a huge cast-iron and white enamel cookstove that gave off an additional fragrance of burning cedar logs, and of the sweet-potato pie they would have for dessert.

“Now,” said the old lady, “if I can just remember where the governor left that bottle of Alsace wine. Excuse me.” She disappeared upstairs, climbing the staircase with an agility that belied her years, more than eighty of them, Viridis guessed, and within a minute she returned, wiping the dust from, sure enough, a tall, narrow bottle of Gewürztraminer.

During the meal Viridis remarked, “You mentioned the governor. Were you speaking in the familiar sense of one’s husband, father, superior, or employer?”

The old woman smiled with amusement. “He was not my husband, but he was my ‘father,’ you could say. He was definitely my superior, and certainly my employer.” She paused to sip her wine, then added, “But Jacob Ingledew was also the governor.”

“Of Arkansas?” Viridis asked.

“Don’t the schools of Little Rock teach Arkansas history anymore?” the woman asked.

Viridis had actually taken mandatory Arkansas history in the eighth and ninth grades, but there had been so many governors and she couldn’t remember their names. She asked, with a smile, “Which part of Little Rock are you from?”

“East of Main,” the woman said. “Do you know the Pike mansion?”

“Of course!” Viridis replied. Her boss’s cousins, the Fletchers, owned the mansion that had been built by Albert Pike. “Did you live there?”

“No,” the woman said, smiling as if to excuse herself for misleading her guest, “but in the neighborhood, just a few doors to the east.”

The conversation died for a few moments before Viridis decided to ask, “What are you doing in Stay More?”

“I’ll be happy to tell you,” the woman said. “But first you must tell me: what are you doing in Stay More?”

These two Little Rock ladies, the one eighty-six, the other sixty years younger, stayed up talking until bedtime, and even beyond, telling each other their stories and their reasons, very good ones, for being in Stay More. The old woman certainly knew about the trial and conviction of Nail Chism, although she did not know enough of the facts of the case to have any opinion on Nail’s guilt or innocence. Summers she sat on her front porch and observed the men sitting on the storeporch across the way, and she knew which one was Nail, because he was taller than the others, younger than most of them, quieter, less inclined to joking although a quick audience for others’ jokes, but of course she was in no position to say whether he had been there at his usual time on that particular afternoon, which was just one more June day in a passage of rare ones. Yes, she knew of the Whitters; they were the “dregs” of Stay More society, and Dorinda’s oldest brother Ike had been the town’s ruffian and rowdy until the day the lynch mob disposed of him. The woman showed Viridis a number of plugged-up bullet holes in the walls of her front rooms, souvenirs of a raging gun battle Ike Whitter and his cronies had fought with the lynch mob, who had commandeered her house and required her to cower in a back room, frightened out of her wits, while every pane of glass in her house was shattered. This had happened ten years before, but the old woman still trembled sometimes in recollection of it.

At breakfast the next morning (Viridis had slept wonderfully and warmly on a thick mattress stuffed with goose down, beneath several heirloom quilts, in a big walnut four-poster in the one of the three front rooms that had been Sarah Ingledew’s) the gracious old woman, urging a second helping of bacon and eggs on Viridis, said, “You aren’t intending to wear those today, are you?” and indicated Viridis’ jodhpurs.

“I expect to do a good bit of riding,” Viridis explained.

The woman shook her head. “You might do some riding, but you won’t do any visiting if you wear those.” And when breakfast was finished, she suggested they take their third cups of coffee back into Sarah’s room. Viridis, the woman observed, was the same size that Sarah had been. The woman opened a walnut wardrobe, then took down a dress and held it against Viridis for a moment, replaced it, and took down another, until she had one that she considered “not too dressy but good enough.” Viridis protested that she couldn’t ride Rosabone in that dress. “You aren’t going to ride Rosabone,” the woman said, and then selected the shoes, which were twenty years out of style and unlike any that Viridis had ever worn. And then the hat, or bonnet, rather. And a shawl. “And now the finishing touch, what Sarah called her thanky-poke,” the woman said, giving Viridis a purse to carry, a purse larger and fancier than any she would ever have dared hold in Little Rock. The woman turned Viridis to look at herself in the mirror and commented, “I declare, if it weren’t for your red hair, you are Sarah.” Viridis felt a bit uncomfortable, not because of the fit of the clothes or their being twenty years out of fashion but because she felt she had no right to be wearing the clothing of the former first lady of Arkansas. She expected to do a lot of local traveling and interviewing today, and she didn’t want to expose the clothes to dirt and dust and snow and mud.

The old woman dressed herself in attire that was also from an earlier era, the 1890s, and then she led Viridis out of the house, down the steps, and across the road to Willis Ingledew’s General Store. The storekeeper (who was also postmaster of Stay More that year) was in his customary captain’s chair facing the large potbellied stove whose stovepipe rose three floors straight up to the roof as the centerpiece surrounded by the balcony of the second floor, where the clothing and shoe departments were. There were a dozen other men sitting in chairs or on bulging wooden kegs within the radius of the stove’s warmth. Two of these men faced each other across a cracker barrel atop which a checkerboard had been placed, but the men, Viridis noticed at once, were playing chess, not checkers.

One by one the men looked away from the stove or from the chessplayers and took notice of the two ladies who had entered the store. One by one the men’s jaws dropped open.

“How be ye, boys?” the old woman said. The response, she later explained with a light laugh to Viridis, was exceptional: it was customary for a man greeting a woman simply to touch the brim of his hat, or perhaps just to raise his hand in the direction of the brim, or, at the very most, to grasp the crown of the hat and gently raise it before setting it back down. Each one of these men whipped his hat entirely off his head and held it to his heart, and some of them even stood up. Holding their hats thus, they chorused, each and severally, “Howdy do, ladies,” and “Fine mornin, ma’ams.”

The storekeeper, Willis, standing up, was nearly as tall as Nail. “I’ll be jimjohned,” he exclaimed, looking at Viridis. “You shore guv me a turn. I thought fer a secont thar ye were Grammaw. Don’t she put ye in mind of Grammaw, Paw?” he said to one of the seated men, a very old man who simply nodded and didn’t take his eyes off her.

“This here gal is Miss Verdus Monday,” the old woman said, in a thick approximation of the local speech. “She hails from Little Rock, and come all the way here jist to see what she can see about Nail Chism’s trouble. She thinks he’s blameless. Don’t ye, gal?”

Viridis had never before in her life been called upon to speak in front of a group, especially not a males-only enclave of general-store loungers. At first she could only nod in response to the question, but then she found enough voice to add, “Yes, and I hope all of you do too.” She looked around at them, one by one. Each man was nodding his head.

“Willis, have ye still got that phaeton yore grampaw was so partial to?” the old woman asked the storekeeper, and when he nodded, she said, “We’d be obleeged to ye iffen ye’d hitch her up so’s this gal could git up towards the Chism place.”

“I’ll carry ye myself, ma’am,” Willis offered.

But the old woman said, “No need of that, Willis. Jist hitch it up to two of yore best hosses and bring it around.”

As Willis exited through the rear of the store toward his livery barn, one of the others said to the women, “Don’t ye gals be rushin off. Stay more and pull ye up some cheers or kaigs.”

“Yeah,” invited another man, “lift yore hats and rest yore wraps.”

“She’ll be back directly, I reckon,” the old woman said. “Won’t ye, gal?”

“I’d like to talk with each one of you about Nail,” Viridis said.

“Shore thang,” they spoke or grunted assent: “Any old time.” “You bet.” “Come back when ye can visit more.”

Outside, the old woman indicated the phaeton that Willis was bringing into the road and asked Viridis, “Ever driven one of these? I’d go with you, but I think you’d feel more comfortable on your own, wouldn’t you, now? Look, you turn right at Jerram’s corner up there and you’re on the Right Prong Road. Stay on it eastward without turning off to the left or right until you’ve reached the top of that mountain yonder. You’ll see the Chisms’ house on a cleared knoll set back from the road a ways on your left. Nancy Chism is going to be tickled to see you. So will they all. If I don’t see you at bedtime, I’ll know they talked you into staying. But come back when you can.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Viridis admitted.

“You’ll thank me enough with the pleasure of your company,” the lady said.

Viridis drove the two-horse phaeton without any trouble, although she’d never driven one before. She drove in the direction she had ridden Rosabone the night before, up between the clinics of the two doctors, past the stone bank building, right at Jerram’s store, which would become mine, right on the road I live on but not turning to the left on the Bournes’ trail. I wasn’t there anyway that morning. I was in school, across the creek, the other way. All oblivious to her driving the fine phaeton of Governor Ingledew right past my turnoff, I was standing at my desk reciting for Mr. Perry a poem from our reader, William Wordsworth’s “Lucy Gray: Or, Solitude.” It is about a lonesome young girl who gets sent on an errand in a winter storm and disappears, and it always brought a tear to my eye, especially when they traced her footprints in the snow as far as the middle of the bridge, and then no more.

—Yet some maintain that to this day

She is a living child;

That you may see sweet Lucy Gray

Upon the lonesome wild.

O’er rough and smooth she trips along,

And never looks behind;

And sings a solitary song

That whistles in the wind.

I never thought that “behind” could rhyme with “wind”; you’d have to change the way you say one or the other, and I didn’t, as I read it, and Mr. Perry didn’t correct me, and the way I pronounced “wind” was lost anyway beneath the sound of a sob from Dorinda, who then commenced another one of the crying jags she had all the time these days. As I said before, she no longer shared my desk; she had been moved, first down to where the third-graders sat, but then Mr. Perry had completely lost patience with her and had her sit over to one side of the first-graders, big enough to be their mother but too big to share a desk with any of them, so she was just sitting on the stool that Mr. Perry sometimes used for the dunce’s corner and had to borrow from her when he needed to make somebody sit on it there, and of course there were jokes about her being our permanent dunce, with or without the corner. Whether or not she was dumb enough to be with the first-graders was questionable, but she certainly cried more than any of them ever did. The least little thing would set her off, and I should have known when I read “Lucy Gray” that it was going to give her a real fit of weeping. If only she knew that the lady who was going to save her soul was on her way up to the Chism place!

Up on the lilting mountain far above the village is a farmplace so old the trees still sing of it. There is a pretty trail rising from the village of Stay More to the farmplace; the trail meanders all over creation before it gets up there, and from places along it you can see forever across the hollers and the hills. The trees singing their fool heads off were a fat maple whose name I wish I knew and a gangling walnut I’d have to call a lady’s name were I to dub it, neither of them with even a leftover brown leaf from last autumn, although their buds were swelling and the only green in sight, save the copse of cedars and the first sign of new grass, were the nests of mistletoe in the upper limbs of the maple, mistletoe a shade of green that you only see in winter, winter’s green, which has a special song of its own. I wish Viridis could have heard these trees a-yodeling like crazy as she drove into sight of them, and maybe she did, for all I know. I don’t know everything about this story.

I know how Nancy Nail Chism had been listening, not to her trees a-warbling but to the coffeepot a-rattling on the stove, sometime before: a sure sign that company was coming. While she was drying the breakfast dishes, she had dropped the towel, and that means a stranger will arrive very soon; she watched to see if she’d drop it a second time, which means the stranger will be hungry and need something to eat, but she didn’t. Seth Chism had dropped his case knife while he was eating: that was proof the stranger coming would be a female; if he’d dropped his fork, it would have been a man on his way up the mountain. “Seth!” she’d said to him when he helped himself to some more of the elderberry jam even though he already had some on his plate; if you absent-mindedly help yourself to something you’ve already got on your plate, it means the stranger coming will be hungry for the same thing. While she’d drunk her own coffee, Nancy had paid close attention to the cup and noticed that coffee grounds were clinging to the sides of it, which was a sign that the visitor would be bringing good news. Also, her left eye was itching; if her right eye had started itching, it would have meant that the visitor had bad news.

So even before Viridis drove into sight, Nancy knew this much about her: she was a woman, and she was coming to visit, and she would want some elderberry jam, and she would bring good news. Thus the only thing surprising when Viridis came driving up into the Chisms’ yard was that she was driving old Jake Ingledew’s phaeton and was wearing old Sarey Ingledew’s visiting-clothes. Nancy’s first thought was that the lady had the wrong house, but all those signs couldn’t have been so far wrong. So Nancy went ahead and declared, “Howdy. We’ve been lookin fer ye.”

Had Nail got word to them? Viridis wondered. She saw at once how Nail resembled his mother: Nancy had given him not just his eyes but his eyebrows, his long nose with its strongly shaped end, and his full mouth. Nancy was in good health, and it was almost like seeing Nail the way he ought to be.

“I’m Viridis Chism,” she said, but then she put her hand to her mouth and corrected herself. “I mean, I’m Viridis Monday. You must be Nancy Chism.”

“Yes’m, that’s me,” Nancy acknowledged.

“I’ve come from Little Rock to talk to you about your son Nail.”

As Nancy told it later, the good news that she’d learned to expect when she’d seen the coffee grounds on the side of her cup was simply that Viridis Monday was here. Not that she brought word of any governor’s pardon or Nail’s escape or even that Nail was in good health, but that Viridis Monday was here to tell what she knew, to find out what she wanted to find out, to do what she wanted: to learn everything about Nail; to convince herself of what she already believed: there was no way Nail could have done what he’d been convicted of; and then to do what she intended to do: get everybody to sign a petition, which would go to the governor.

Viridis spent the whole day with the Chisms, not just Nancy but also Nail’s father Seth, and his younger brother Luther, and Nail’s older sister Irene, who had once been the wife of Sull Jerram and was, in fact, still married to him. Viridis would come back again later, several times, but this first day she would talk with the Chisms all day, or until time for school to let out, when she would come looking for me. Viridis listened to Nancy tell the whole story of Nail’s life, such as it was, not very exciting or eventful or anything to brag about. In the whole house she had just a couple of photographs of Nail that she could show to Viridis, one taken by Eli Willard the year he first brought the camera to Stay More, and another one Nail had made up in Eureka Springs, the farthest he’d ever been from home until they took him off to Little Rock. The Eureka photograph was one of those trick pictures with props where you pose in front of a fake scene, and it showed Nail dressed in some Wild West costume with sheepskin chaps and a ten-gallon hat and a pair of six-shooters, standing in front of the Palace of Versailles, an incongruity that was lost on subject and photographer. But it was a good picture of Nail at the age of nineteen, handsome and sightly. Viridis asked if she could borrow the picture and have her newspaper make a copy of it, and she would return the original.

Spreading her elderberry jam on her biscuit, Viridis asked, “Did Nail ever have a girlfriend?”

Nancy Chism laughed a bit. “I have to tell ye a little story,” she said, and she told about Nail’s very first girlfriend, sort of. When the McCoys used to live at the next place down the road, the place where Waymon Chism lives now with his wife, there was a little girl named Dorothea Lea McCoy, about the same age as Nail, three, and sometimes when Mrs. McCoy came to visit with Nancy, she’d put “Dorthlee,” as everybody called her, out in the yard to play with little Nail, under that maple tree that he thought was his own. Sometimes Dorthlee would get permission to walk up the road from her house to play with Nail under the maple even when her mother wasn’t visiting Nancy. One day Dorthlee came running into the Chism house hollering, “Miz Chism, Nail’s a-pickin yore flars!” and Nancy went out to discover that Nail was helping himself to the marigolds, making a bouquet. “Course I had to whup ’im fer it, for he knew better,” Nancy explained to Viridis. Another time, later in the summer, Dorthlee again came running into the house, saying, “Miz Chism, Nail’s a-pickin yore flars!” And once again Nancy found her son out in the flower garden, making a bouquet of zinnias. And once again she had to take the hairbrush to his backside.

Dorthlee’s father decided to move to Oklahoma, where some of the good Indian lands were being opened to settlement, and the McCoys left Stay More. “Not too fur along after that,” Nancy told Viridis, “in August I reckon it was, I happent to look out the winder and I seen little Nail out yonder there again in my flar gyarden. I snuck up behind ’im and susprised ’im.” Nancy paused, wearing a great smile of fond reminiscence and wonder, and then she finished: “And Nail looked up at me, holdin this yere bouquet of flars, and he said, ‘Miz Chism, Nail’s a-pickin yore flars.’”

Viridis laughed, although a tear touched the edge of her eye, and said, “And you were so tickled you didn’t punish him that time?”

“That’s right. I jist busted out laughin. The funniest thing was, was the way he said it. He sounded jist exactly lak Dorthlee!”

Seth Chism too told some stories of his experience with the young Nail. One of these stories, he said, was famous all over Newton County: When Nail was just seven or eight, and hadn’t yet started helping out at the still but knew where it was, he was playing out under his maple tree one day—he spent nearly all his time a-cootering around beneath that old maple out in the front yard—when a stranger rode up, a man on a big horse. Others who had seen the man said later that they couldn’t tell whether or not the man was a government agent but it sure was a government horse. Anyway, he asked Nail where his daddy was, and Nail come right out and said, “Oh, Paw’s down in the holler, makin whiskey.” And the man asked, “Well, where’s your mother?” and Nail said, “Maw’s down there a-holpin him.” “Sonny,” said the man, “I’ll give ye fifty cents if you’ll tell me how to get to where your father and mother are at.” Young Nail just held out his hand for the fifty cents, but the man said, “No. No. I’ll give ye the money when I git back.” Nail shook his head and continued holding out his hand. “You aint a-comin back,” he said.

At noon Nancy Chism stepped on the porch to sound a dinner triangle, and the ringing of it brought Waymon Chism and his wife Faye up from the house below, and they all had dinner together. Nail’s older brother, Viridis observed, didn’t look much like him; he wasn’t as tall, or as sinewy, and his eyes didn’t have the quality that Nail’s had, of seeming to understand everything at a glance with not simply intelligence but tolerance and quiet understanding. Like his parents and Irene and Luther, Waymon was eager to talk about Nail. Just a few more hours would pass before I would discover for myself what it was about Viridis Monday that could get Waymon Chism to open up and talk in a way that he wouldn’t talk with strangers, let alone women: not just that he sensed she was there to help, or honestly intended to do everything she could to help; possibly she even had the power to help. In this regard she impressed Waymon in a way that Farrell Cobb had not.

But Viridis’ presence in the Chism household almost started a family quarrel. If there was only one quality of Nail’s that his brother Waymon possessed, it was a sense of outrage, a quick temper that bridled at injustice. The Chisms may have been lawbreakers, in that moonshining was illegal, but Seth Chism had taught his sons principles of honesty and justice from childhood. Seth had taught his boys never to start a fight but, if the other fellow started it, to finish it quickly to the other fellow’s sorrow. Waymon Chism had told so many people that he intended to kill Sull Jerram if anything happened to Nail that word of this threat had reached Sull, and now Sull was threatening to kill Waymon first. This was understandable, but something nobody who knew Sull could understand was that Waymon intended to do the killing with his bare hands.

While Viridis was talking to Nancy Chism at the dinner table, she kept hearing mention of a gun in a conversation among Waymon, Seth, and Irene. She attempted to eavesdrop more closely, but every time she and Nancy stopped talking the others would hush.

It was Nancy who spoke up: “What’s this here about a shootin arn?”

Irene started to speak, but Waymon shushed her. “No, Waymon,” Irene blurted, “Maw oughta know it. Sull has got him one of these here automatic pistols, a Colt .45, and he carries it around with him. If Waymon don’t keep away from him, Sull might jist use it on him.”

“He’ll have to draw it first,” Waymon said. “He don’t carry it in no hip-holster like the sherf does. If he started to pull that thang on me, I’d strangle him before he could git his finger to the right place on it.”

“Son, you’d jist better git yoreself a arn,” Seth said to Waymon, and the argument resumed as if Viridis were not listening to it. She sat and listened and tried to figure it out. Waymon refused to carry any weapon other than a pocketknife, which every man carried, not as a weapon but a tool, a utensil. Waymon wasn’t planning to do any violence to Sull Jerram unless something happened to Nail, and now it looked as if maybe this lady Miss Monday could stop them from killing Nail.

But Waymon’s parents and Irene were convinced that Sull Jerram intended to kill Waymon, not so much in actual self-defense as in prevention of Waymon’s ever placing him in a position of having to defend himself. They tried to get Waymon to remember that the sheriff was on Sull’s side, and in fact Sull’s being county judge made him the sheriff’s boss, even if they weren’t such good buddies. But Waymon insisted he wasn’t afraid of no sheriff neither.

After Waymon and Faye had gone home, Nancy and Irene put on their winter wraps and took Viridis out to look at the place. After a big midday dinner they needed a hike, and they walked all the way down into the holler where the big Chism still was perched beside the spring branch on a ledge beneath a bluff. It wasn’t in operation at that time, but Nancy gave Viridis an explanation of how it worked, and Viridis wanted to know which part of the procedure Nail had been responsible for, and they showed her. Then Viridis wanted to see Nail’s sheep pastures, and they took her to them, although they were bare of sheep and even of most grass, just patches of snow melting in the afternoon sun on the hillsides. Coming back to the house, they showed Viridis the maple tree at one corner of the front yard, its branches doing their best to wave at her because she couldn’t quite hear its gentle singing. Viridis stood at the base of the tree and looked at the roots over which Nail had built highways for his toy wagons, and she could almost see his tin soldiers fighting on the parapets of the roots’ knees.

Then Viridis was exposed awkwardly to her first experience of what we all of us take for granted: the traditional ritual of leave-taking and exchanging of polite, conventional invitations and counterinvitations.

Viridis said she had to find the Bourne place and talk with young Latha, as Nail had suggested.

Nancy looked properly stricken and said, “Don’t be a-rushin off! Better take supper with us and stay all night.”

Viridis was supposed to counter by asking Nancy to come and go home with her, but Viridis didn’t know this. She just said she’d be back the next day, or soon, and she thanked Nancy for the hospitality and the generous heaping of Nail she’d served up. Nancy told her which turns to take to get to the Bourne place.

And here she came! I was just home from school and doing my chores, redding up the front porch with a broom, when here came that Ingledew phaeton (although I didn’t know that’s what it was; the last time the governor had driven it was before my time) a-turning into our yard. You could have swept me off the porch with a feather. Later, long after she’d gone, I would look at myself in the mirror with my lower jaw a-hanging open, just to see how awful I looked that way: she could probably see the bad teeth that E.H. Ingledew hadn’t pulled yet. It’s a wonder I had sense enough finally to close my mouth and answer her eventually, some time after she’d said, “You must be Latha.”

Surely I had the sense to at least nod my head before I could find my voice? Maybe not. Maybe I couldn’t even find my voice, because she went on and said, “My name is Viridis Monday, and I’m from Little Rock. I work for a newspaper. We’re doing a story about Nail Chism of Stay More, who has been condemned to die in the electric chair, and I was told that you could give me some information that would help us.”

Still I couldn’t find my voice, except to say to Rouser, our dog, “Hush, Rouser! You jist hush!” His barking soon brought my father and mother and my sisters Barb and Mandy out of the house. Paw kicked old Rouser off the porch, and that shut him up. Momma said, and I could have died of mortification, “We caint buy nothin today, thank ye.”

The lady smiled. She was the most beautiful lady I’d ever seen even a picture of, and she had the nicest smile I’d ever thought a body could have, and I’ve been practicing it ever since. “I’m not selling anything,” she said, and then she repeated word for word what she’d just said to me, and she added, “Nail Chism suggested that I might talk with your daughter Latha about the circumstances of the case. He feels that she can tell me the truth.”

“Wal, come on in and set by the far,” Maw invited her, and we all went into the house, into the front room that was my parents’ bedroom but also served as our parlor, so to speak, because you could sit on a divan as well as the bed, and the divan was up anent the fireplace. They gave her Paw’s chair, and Paw had to sit on the divan with Momma, and all three of us girls sat side by side on the edge of the bed, with me in the middle, until Momma said, “Latha, why don’t ye brew us up a pot of that coffee I save for the preacher?”

And I jumped up and started for the kitchen, but the lady said, “No, thank you, please, I’ve been drinking coffee all day up at the Chisms’.”

“Oh,” Momma said. “You’ve done talked to them, have ye?”

“Yes,” Viridis said, and she was wondering how she could politely get me alone to herself, so she added, “and I’m trying to talk to as many people as I can while I’m in Stay More. I’d like to talk with each one of you, but I’d like to talk to you one at a time, if that’s all right, and I want to start with Latha.”

Paw gave Momma the elbow in her ribs, and a severe look. Mandy and Barb looked at each other like they’d just remembered it was Friday and they had something to do to get ready to go into Jasper tomorrow. Momma was the last to leave the room, and said, “But don’t ye be a-rushin off, ma’am. Better jist take supper with us, and stay all night.” By this time Viridis was beginning to understand that that was just what everybody said, all the time, whether they wanted you to or not.

The lady did stay to supper, but only because it was already getting cold on the table before she got done talking with me and she couldn’t very well walk out and leave it to get even colder after they’d waited for us. We talked from right then, when my parents and sisters went out of the parlor and left us alone, until suppertime and then some past, before Viridis finally knew what to say the third or fourth time my mother asked her to spend the night, and even then she didn’t know that you’re supposed to counter it by saying, Come go home with me, so she just said, finally, that she was expected back by the old woman living in Jacob Ingledew’s house, where she’d left her horse, and had to return this team and buggy to Willis Ingledew’s livery. We were relieved, I guess, because we wouldn’t have had anyplace for the lady to sleep, although I’d have been more than pleased to fix myself a pallet on the floor and let her have my place in the bed with Mandy and Barb. That’s how much I loved her, by then.

But all of that didn’t come until past dark. We still had an hour or so of daylight left. After the others left us alone in the parlor, Viridis looked at me and gave me that galuptious smile again and tried to hold me with her eyes. I was still too shy to look her in the eye at first, and I reckon I must have kept pawing the rug with my feet and trying to find something to do with my hands besides sit on them. I still hadn’t said a word.

“Nail thinks you believe he’s innocent,” she said.

Finally I had to look her in the eye to let her know that I meant this: “I don’t jist believe it. I know it.” That was the first thing I ever said to Viridis Monday, I want it recorded here.

“You have nice eyes,” she remarked. “He said you did.”

I guess I blushed furiously. “You have better’uns,” I declared.

Again that smile, and I must have tried to ape it without letting her see my bad teeth again. She reached out and put her hand lightly on my arm. “You know I’m here to save him,” she said.

“Here?” was all I could think to say, as if it were here in this house that he was facing that electric chair.

“Here on earth,” she said.

I was brave, and I said, “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

“Would you show me the playhouse?” she asked.

I had to think about that, I’m sorry to say. Looking back, I should have just nodded my head eagerly and said, “Come on!” But I couldn’t quite yet bring myself to violate so easily a solemn oath, even if I didn’t care a fig for the person I’d made the oath to. So I had to think about it, for a long moment, with the clock a-ticking away on the fireboard. Finally I said, “We swore we’d never tell anybody where it is.”

“I understand,” she said. And another long minute went by before she said, “Well, maybe you could just describe it to me.”

I stood up. “No, I’ll take ye. What I swore don’t matter anymore. Not to me, it don’t.” I fetched my wrap and told Momma we’d be back in time for supper.

We weren’t. It’s a good brisk hike any time of year up the mountainside to the place where that old playhouse leans up against that old basso profundo oak tree. On that late-winter afternoon we had to walk around the snowy places, and she was being extra careful not to get the hem of her fancy dress in the mud. She talked a lot, telling me every little detail of how she’d come to stay with the old woman at Jacob Ingledew’s and how the old woman had let her dress in Sarah’s costume from twenty years before.

She seemed more impressed with that oak tree than with the playhouse, which was just a pile of lumber anyhow. She stood there looking up at the tree for the longest time. I told her it was a white oak tree. It was over a hundred feet high (I’d climbed it once as far as I could go and measured it with a ball of twine), and it must have been overlooked when they cut nearly every white oak in the county to make staves for whiskey barrels…not for Chism’s Dew but shipped off to the big government distillers in far places like Kentucky. I’m not even sure that tree was on land that belonged to my father, but I knew I owned that tree as much as anybody did.

“Did you know,” she said quietly, looking up at the great tree, “that Nail thinks trees can sing?”

I was surprised that she would say it like that, almost as if she didn’t quite believe it herself. It wasn’t till later that I learned she believed it just as fiercely as he did. I was also surprised at what I said myself then: “That makes two of us.”

“Oh, do you believe it too?” she said, looking at me with delight, as if somehow all this business about singing trees were more important than the question of Nail’s innocence. And then she asked, “Is this tree singing right now?”

I honestly couldn’t have said that it was, at least I wasn’t hearing anything, but I looked at her as if she were deaf, and said, “Don’t you hear it?” I was just being playful, sort of teasing, but she looked startled and then began listening. When she perked up her ears like that, I did too.

We heard it.

Yes, the tree was intoning some sorrowful, deep spiritual, and there is no mistake that what we heard was the tree, but there was another sound in there besides. We listened, and even if the tree’s keening had been our imaginations, because we wanted the tree to sing, that was not the main sound we heard. Because the tree was, I keep saying, a basso profundo, and this sound was more a mezzo-soprano, and it was coming not from the tree but from inside the playhouse.

I pushed aside the old discarded quilt that served as a doorflap for the playhouse, and I looked inside. There was Rindy, kneeling, head bowed, clutching against her bosom one of our oldest discarded dolls. She was swaying slowly to and fro, rocking the headless and mouldering dollbaby and crooning a sort of lullaby to it. She was wearing an old rag of a coat, a threadbare thing that couldn’t be keeping her warm. Viridis followed me into the playhouse.

“Miss Monday,” I said, making the introductions, “this here is Dorinda June Whitter.”

Viridis Monday stayed a whole week in Stay More. Every night, sometimes before dark if she could manage it, she would return the team and buggy to Ingledew’s Livery and then cross the road to Jacob Ingledew’s house and sit up until bedtime talking to the old woman. That ancient dowager would serve a fortified wine from a Spanish town called Jerez. Usually Viridis reported in detail to the woman on what she had achieved during the day, and sometimes the woman would give her advice or at least make commentary on that day’s events and accomplishments. It was the old woman who (out of her experience as social secretary to the state’s first lady) drafted the wording of the petition to the governor, for Viridis to take with her on her rounds of interviewing the citizens of Stay More and some other places in Newton County, for their signatures or their X’s. Surely, I thought, the woman herself would have been the first to sign the petition, but she was not, because, you have to remember, that was still four years before suffrage, four years before that June day when Congress would give women the right to vote or even to sign effective petitions. Except for Dorinda’s, all of the signatures and X’s on Viridis’ petition were men’s…including nine of the original twelve jurymen who had convicted Nail. If she could have found them, she would have had all twelve.

Viridis invited Dorinda and me to ride with her in the phaeton when she set off for Jasper to hunt up some of the jurymen. It was a Sunday, and sunny, the first really warm day we’d had that year, with the last of the patches of snow melting into the earth; a good day for a drive, without the road too muddy yet. Rindy and I both wore our best; hers was that same white Sears lawn dress she’d worn for the trial, which was out of season for February but all she had that would look good for going into the county seat on a Sunday. She was cheerful. I hadn’t seen her so happy since this whole business had started back in June of the year before. Whatever burden of guilt had been mashing down on her was lifted by the confession she readily gave to Viridis, making a clean breast of it, exonerating poor Nail completely. She wouldn’t yet give Viridis the details of just how Sull Jerram had put her up to it, but she was ready to swear that Nail had never even touched her. She was awfully sorry. She’d had no idea at all that they would take him off and put him in that electric chair and try to kill him. Why, she’d been led to believe the most they’d ever do to him was make him say he was sorry he threatened to sic the federal law on Sull and his courthouse pals.

The first to put his big John Hancock on Viridis’ petition was Jim Tom Duckworth, who had been Nail’s lawyer before they got rid of him in favor of that Farrell Cobb, and he didn’t have any bitterness for having been dismissed and was a real gentleman about it: he not only signed the petition but wrote out an exact copy of it and put on his hat and coat and went off to get a whole bunch of signatures or X’s himself. He was the one who gave Viridis the names and general addresses of the twelve jurymen. On her own it would have taken the whole week to find just those twelve, scattered as they were, but most of them lived in or near Jasper, and we spent that Sunday tracking them down. By the time Viridis had finished talking with two or three of them, the word had quickly spread and got ahead of us, and some of the jurymen we visited seemed to be expecting us. Some of them claimed they had been mistaken in the first place and had already done changed their minds long ago, and the few who hadn’t, said that all they needed was to hear Rindy say that it weren’t so, and here she was, to say it, if need be.

We got lost trying to find the jury’s foreman, who lived on the Little Buffalo River up on the north edge of Jasper, and while we were driving around looking for his house we came across an Oldsmobile parked broadside blocking the road. Sitting behind the steering-wheel was Sheriff Duster Snow with three of his deputies there in the vehicle with him, all four men wearing their silver stars pinned to the outside of their overcoats. The sheriff asked Viridis who she was looking for, and she told him, and he said that that individual was not available. Those were his words. Then he asked did she mind if he had a look at that piece of paper she was carrying around. She showed the petition to him, and he studied it and looked as if he’d like to chew it up and swallow it. He kept throwing fierce looks at Rindy and me. Rindy watched me to see what sort of fierce look I was throwing back at him, and she did a fair job of imitating mine. Finally he passed the petition back to Viridis and bobbed his Adam’s apple a few times and said, “Now lookee yere, ma’am, we caint allow no furriners a-comin in yere and a-stirrin up trouble.” Viridis said she wasn’t a foreigner but an American citizen, a native Arkansawyer. “You aint from Newton County,” Sheriff Snow said, “and this yere aint none of yore business and hit’s again the law to go stirrin up the jurymen such-a-way as this-all, and I don’t aim to stand fer it. Now you better jist git yoreself on back to wharever ye came from, and stay out of this country, if ye know what’s good fer ye.”

Viridis simply took out her Eagle fountain pen and unscrewed the cap and held the pen out toward the automobile and said, “Would any of you gentlemen like to sign this petition?” and one of the deputies reached out to do it before Sheriff Snow slapped his hand away.

Later, when we found that lost jury foreman on the Little Buffalo, we got an idea of why the sheriff hadn’t wanted us to find him: not only was he ready to sign the petition, but he wanted to make a confession of his own, that he had never been convinced of Nail’s guilt, that he had tried to hang the jury but had voted with them only after the sheriff had threatened to run him out of the country if he didn’t. Now, if Viridis would let him make a copy of that petition, he knew a good many fellows whose signatures he could obtain. He was still afraid of the sheriff, but he’d just as soon be run out of the country as have to go on the rest of his life feeling bad about sending an innocent man to that electric chair.

By the time we’d given up trying to locate one more of the jurymen, who’d gone off visiting relatives in Western Grove, it was getting so late in the afternoon that we knew we wouldn’t make it back to Stay More before dark. And we’d be sure to freeze if we tried. So Viridis decided to spend the night at the Buckhorn Hotel, an old landmark in Jasper. Rindy and I would have to miss school Monday, but we didn’t care; we’d never even dreamt of staying at the Buckhorn before, and we were so excited we couldn’t sleep. Viridis had to entertain us past bedtime. She drew our pictures (I’ve still got mine, framed, one of my prized possessions), and she told us stories and descriptions of Paris and her trip around the world.

It was way past bedtime when a knock came at the door, and Viridis opened it, and there stood Judge Sull Jerram. He didn’t have any of his henchmen or cronies with him. He just pointed past Viridis…at Rindy, who was sitting on the bed, and said, “I want to talk to her.” Viridis said she was sorry but he hadn’t even had the courtesy to introduce himself and she wasn’t in the mood to entertain strangers at this late hour. Sull looked like she had spit in his face, and he said, “Lady, they tell me yo’re from Little Rock. Okay, that’s where that nuthouse is, aint it? That’s whar she belongs. Rindy is rampin tetched in her haid, and ary fool thing she says to ye won’t be but some lie-tale she jist imagined. Now send her out here before I come in thar and git her.” But Viridis stood in the doorway and told him that if Dorinda was mentally unsound it would not be wise for her to talk with a man who was both mentally deficient and irascible. From where I sat I could tell that it took Sull a while to figure out those words, and then he got even more irascible. “I swear to God, lady, I’ll make ye wush ye was never born! You don’t know who yo’re talkin to. You might be some big somebody down thar to Little Rock, but this yere is Jasper, Newton County, by God, and I’m the by-God county jedge! Now, I got some words to say to Rindy aint nary bit of yore be-ness, and I aim to say ’em to her! Rindy! You thar now, Rindy! Gitch yore hide out chere!” Poor Dorinda was trembling something terrible and making little motions as if she were trying to obey him by getting up out of the bed, but she couldn’t really move. Viridis told him to leave or she’d call the manager. “Call him, goddammit!” Sull hollered at the top of his voice. “He’s a good friend of mine lak everbody else in this town! Call him and see what he does to ye! Snoopin meddler bitch!” Viridis put her hands up on his chest and gave him a shove that pushed him clean to the other side of the hall, and then she slammed the door and bolted it. She motioned for us to get back into the bed, and she took a step in our direction just in time to avoid the bullets that came blasting through the door. Sull fired three shots real quick that left three big holes in the door panel and broke the mirror on the dresser. Rindy screamed, and I guess I must have hollered myself. Viridis tilted the whole bed up on its side and got us down behind it, so it partly shielded us from the door. She crawled on her stomach to reach where she’d left her purse, and she opened that purse and took out her big six-shooter and cocked it and kept it pointed toward the door. But Sull didn’t fire any more shots. Some other people in the hotel down the hall must have come out to see what was happening and were yelling at him, and then a man, it must have been the owner, was yelling at him, “Jedge! Jedge, have you done gone crazy?” I couldn’t hear all the words out there in the hall, but finally the man said, “Git out of here, Jedge!” and repeated it a few times. Sull stepped back to the door, and his voice came through those bullet holes: “Rindy, now you lissen a me, gal! You jist keep yore trap shut, hear me? You keep that trap shut or I’ve got a bullet with yore name writ all over it!” Then it got quiet. After a while there was a knock and the manager asked if everything was okay. Viridis wouldn’t open the door. She asked the manager to summon the constable. The manager said there wasn’t no constable, just the sheriff. “Snow?” she said, and the manager called back through the door, “Yes ma’am. Want me to git him?” “Never mind,” she said, and she straightened up the bed and turned off the lamp and we tried our best to sleep.

But of course none of us could sleep. By and by Viridis asked, “Do you know any good stories you could tell?” and I told the best ghost story I could remember, and that passed some time. “Rindy?” Viridis said. “Do you know any stories?”

For a minute I thought she might have already fallen asleep, but she hadn’t. “Could I tell a real story?” she finally asked. “Not a tellin-story, no, not a windy, but the pure fack?” We didn’t tell her she couldn’t, so she did. “I’ll tell you’uns how it come about that Sull Jerram ruint me.”

From that night on, Dorinda and I were best friends again. We hardly had time to enjoy it, though, before Viridis took her off to Little Rock. Most people thought that Viridis took Dorinda to Little Rock as a kind of “living signature” on that petition to the governor. It looked to everybody as if all the governor would need in order to give Nail a full pardon would be a complete confession from Dorinda, in person. But a big part of the reason Viridis took her to Little Rock was to save her from Sull: Viridis was convinced that Sull would kill Dorinda to silence her if he had the chance.

When the word got around Stay More that we had spent the night at the Buckhorn and been fired upon by Sull, some people were of the mind that Viridis should have known better than to spend the night in Jasper, right in the hornet’s nest, you might say. If it had been them, some people said, they would have groped in the dark on hands and knees to get back to Stay More rather than spend the night in Jasper. But the Chisms, at least, protested that Viridis had no idea what she was getting into and was smart to hole up in the Buckhorn instead of risking her neck and ours on the road after dark.

Waymon Chism was fit to be tied, and that’s what they should have done to him. As soon as he heard what had happened, he disappeared. His wife Faye looked all over Stay More for him, and we heard from her how angry he was. Waymon didn’t own a horse or other conveyance; remember, he’d had to rent those mules and that wagon from Willis Ingledew to go to Little Rock for Nail’s body, which wasn’t yet available. This time Willis said he hadn’t rented any mule or horse, either one. He just disappeared, and later word came that he had been seen, on foot, walking into Jasper. It’s an all-day hike if you leave early in the morning. He must have been too tired when he got there to do anything that would require physical strength, like wringing Sull’s neck. Which was, apparently, what he intended to do. He had no gun. A cousin in Jasper who gave him a bed for the night said that he had tried to persuade Waymon to borrow his pistol. Waymon refused and set out from the cousin’s house right after breakfast to walk the few blocks to Sull’s house. The cousin stalked him, from a distance, to see what was up. It was worse than walking into the hornet’s nest, except for one thing: the hornet was alone. He didn’t have Waymon’s sister sleeping with him anymore, he didn’t have children, he didn’t have an old mother to fight for her wayward son, and, best of all, he didn’t have Sheriff Duster Snow and his deputies to be his bodyguards and sidekicks, not that early in the morning. All he had was his gun. And Waymon got to him before he could even remember which pocket he’d left it in, in the clothes he took off the night before. Waymon got to him before he could get dressed. Waymon got to him before he could get word to God. The cousin described it: “Ole Waymon jist kicked the door down and walked right on in thar. Purty soon he had drug that jedge out to the front porch, whar he commenced to toss him amongst the furniture and reduce it to kindlin and flinders. Shore, ole Sull hit him back, or tried to. Sull got in a couple of licks, one of ’em a lucky round arm swing that knocked Waymon off the porch, but Waymon jist reached back up thar and grabbed Sull by his laig and flang him out into the yard, whar he really set in to clobberin the daylights outen that feller. I swear, I don’t see how Sull ever got off the ground again. He was jist laid plumb out, purt nigh boggy and half-dead, while Waymon stood thar and guv him a leetle lecture, a sermon I couldn’t hear on account of I was standin behind a tree too fur off, but Waymon hollered at him fer a good little bit, and Sull jist had to lay there and listen to it. Finally Waymon turned and stomped off. He was headin the opposite way from me, was the reason he couldn’t hear me when I hollered. He’d done already got too fur off and guv Sull time to git up and dash in the house for his shootin-piece and come back out and run right up behind pore Waymon, when I hollered as loud as I could, but he was too fur off from me to hear me. I reckon he did hear me, but by the time he commenced to turn around, Sull had done already shot him in the back.”

The bullet entered Waymon low in the backbone. Sull’s second shot missed, and by then Waymon had turned and grabbed the automatic by the barrel and yanked it right out of Sull’s hand and then hammered him atop his head with the butt of it, nearly fracturing Sull’s skull. By the time the cousin reached them, they were both unconscious. He ran for a doctor. The doctor summoned another doctor. They tended to Sull first, because he was the county judge, the leading citizen of Jasper, well known to them both. After they had revived Sull, and Sull was busy telling his friend Sheriff Snow how he had shot Waymon in clear self-defense, the doctors decided to carry Waymon into one of the doctors’ houses, where they operated. Between the two of them, after several hours of cutting and gouging, they managed to get the lead bullet out without completely ruining Waymon’s spine. But they had to keep Waymon there in Jasper for the rest of the week and more.

Folks in Stay More were just about ready to declare war on Jasper. The Ingledews themselves were furious, and before you get an Ingledew riled up, you’d better have kinfolks two counties over who can keep you awhile. John Ingledew, our leading citizen, the same man who ten years before had assembled the lynch mob that took care of that desperado Ike Whitter, and who owned one of the two automobiles of Stay More (his brother Willis owned the other), was in favor of organizing the men of Stay More into an army, marching into Jasper, and taking control of the county government and law enforcement in a coup d’état. It was the time of year when most men didn’t have anything to do anyway: too early to plow, nothing to raise except Cain, and the chess-players around the stove in Willis’ store imagined they knew a way to capture the sheriff and checkmate the county judge.

One morning when Viridis was just a day short of one full week in Newton County, and had just about finished collecting all the signatures she could get for her petition, she was standing on the porch of the old woman’s house, with her sketchbook held in one arm and her drawing-pencil in the other hand, making a picture of the scene of activity on the storeporch across the road: the men of Stay More assembling, each with his best firearm, rifle, or shotgun, and even a flintlock or two, and the storeporch filling up with men, their wagons parked in the road and the yard, or the horses and mules tethered to trees and the porch posts. I was watching Viridis make her drawing, amazed that she could “freeze” that bustling motion of all the men and animals. Dorinda and the old woman were with me, the three of us silently admiring the drawing that Viridis was making. Viridis stopped drawing when she heard the noise; we stopped looking at her drawing and turned our ears toward the north, and the men around the storeporch stopped in their tracks too and listened. The noise grew to a roar, and we could see the cloud of February dust before we could see the vehicles coming into view, down the road from the north, with all the town’s dogs chasing them: the first car was Sheriff Snow’s Oldsmobile with deputies standing shoulder to shoulder on the running-board, followed by Sull Jerram’s Ford so loaded that feet were hanging out the doors, followed by a third car bringing that circuit judge, Lincoln Villines, who had sentenced Nail to the chair. As soon as the first car came to a stop in the middle of the road in front of Willis Ingledew’s store, all of the deputies jumped down and pointed their rifles and shotguns at the men of Stay More, who, we were told later, were kept from firing at the intruders only by the presence of us four females in the line of fire across the road.

The men of Stay More had to lay down their arms. Then the two judges, county and circuit, followed by the sheriff and his men, mounted the storeporch and took a commanding position in its center. Sull’s head was so wrapped up with bandages that his hat would barely stay on. We four females stood on the old woman’s porch and watched and waited. Sull looked around him as if he owned not just the store but the whole town, and then he held up his arms for silence and began to speak.

“Gentlemen,” Judge Jerram said, “lend me yore ears. It’s a right smart of pleasure fer me to come back home to Stay More on sech a fine mornin and see all you’unses once again. Sounds lak I’m a-startin one of my campaign sermons, don’t it? I aint, though. No, friends, the ’lection aint till November, and I spect I’ll be back here again afore then, but I shore do hope I don’t never have to come back before campaign time in the fall.” Judge Jerram paused and looked around to see if everybody got his meaning: that only two things would ever bring him to Stay More: one, campaigning for reelection, and two, restoring law and order. “Do I make myself real clear? You over there, John Ingledew, do you understand me? All you Ingledews! Now, I got jist as much respect for a Ingledew as I got for ary man, and I don’t stand second to none when it comes to reverence and esteem for the Ingledews, but I am a-standin here to remind you that Stay More is still part of Newton County, and I am still in charge of Newton County!” Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Viridis was drawing again, and I stopped watching Sull act big and started watching her sketch him: she was doing him in his most grandiloquent oratorical pose, with one hand pointed heavenward and the other to the turf of Stay More, and his face twisted into an unctuous parody of a country politician. He went on, “Do I make myself real clear? You can vote against me come autumn if you so desire, and I’ll be out in the cold a year from now, but meantimes I have been elected to run this yere county and I aim to run this yere county, and these men…” (his hand indicated the sheriff and his deputies and even the circuit judge) “…these men are my duly sworn confederates and partners, and we have all got to work together and stand shoulder to shoulder and be in cohorts together! I will not brook no insurgence! Hear me? If ary man but raise ary finger to stand in my way, I will leave no stone unturned to flush him out! In the parlous state of affairs that this yere vale of tears has done come to, I stand here proud afore ye and I do solemnly tell ye: walk the strait and narrow path or I will bar the door! Now, does ary of you’unses not know what I’m a-sayin?”

Judge Jerram waited a long minute for anyone to answer his rhetorical question, but no one did. All of the Stay Morons just looked sad and beaten, or sad and sullen, one. Later the men around the stove in Willis’ store remarked that Sull Jerram could have recited the Gettysburg address and it wouldn’t have been any different; it wasn’t what he said that mattered, or even how he said it, but the fact that he had come out here to Stay More with all those men behind him just to say something and let us know that he was still the boss.

When the speech was over, Sull Jerram and Sheriff Snow came walking right down into the crowd, through it, and across the road to where we were standing, and Sheriff Snow said to Rindy, “Now, little lady, you’d better jist come along with us.” He and Sull and a deputy came up onto the porch of Jacob Ingledew’s house.

Poor Rindy got herself behind Viridis and the old woman, as if they could protect her, and Viridis tried to. “Are you arresting her?” she asked. “What’s the charge?”

Sheriff Snow attempted a smile. “No, ma’am, I wouldn’t call it a arrest exactly. We’d jist lak to have us a little talk with her.”

“If she’s not under arrest, she’s not required to go with you if she doesn’t want to,” Viridis said.

The sheriff exchanged looks with Sull, and Sull said, “Ma’am, you are re-quired to answer one question: how long are you stayin in this yere town?”

“I’m not required to answer anything for you, mister,” she said to Sull.

“No?” he said. “I’ll give ye a secont chance. You can answer this or face the consequences: how long are you plannin to stay?” Viridis just coldly looked him in the eye and did not answer. “Okay,” he said to Sheriff Snow, “you kin arrest her.”

“You’re under arrest, ma’am,” the sheriff said to Viridis.

“You can’t do this,” she said. “What are you arresting me for?”

“Obstructin justice,” he said, and took her arm and tried to lead her down from the porch.

The old woman placed herself in front of the sheriff and slapped his face. “You had better arrest me too, Mister Snow,” she said to him when he had recovered.

He held his sore jaw. “Who the heck are you?” he asked.

“If failure to answer questions is obstructing justice, then arrest me too,” the old woman said.

“I jist might,” the sheriff said. “You caint go around hittin on the high sherf of Newton County!”

“I can’t?” the old woman said. She slapped him again, harder, on the other cheek.

For a second it looked as if Duster Snow might haul off and hit her back, but he got his emotions under control, at the expense of a beet-red face, and said, “All right, dammit, you’re under arrest too.” But Judge Lincoln Villines came up on the porch and whispered something into Sheriff Snow’s ear. The sheriff looked at the old woman and then up at the porch ceiling over his head, and spoke as if addressing it: “So you live here in Governor Ingledew’s house?”

Viridis still had her sketchbook open and was doing a trio of quick portraits: Sull, the sheriff, and Judge Villines, grouped together like a pack of rats, each of them rendered unflatteringly, almost in caricature. When I failed to suppress a giggle, Sull stepped around to take a look at what she was doing.

She had done him first, in a few quick lines that perfectly expressed the coarse bluster and bullying of the man, with those bandages around his head making him look like a clown, but perhaps he was too stupid to realize how unflattering the interpretation was, and his first response was cocky: “Hey! That’s me!” But then he changed his tone and demanded, “What are you drawin me fer?” Viridis ignored his question and went on finishing her quick sketches of the sheriff and the judge. Judge Villines seemed addled; he seemed to be aware that his portrait was being done, but he couldn’t decide whether to protest or pose, though he inclined to the latter, trying to get his best profile into position and his nose tilted properly. Sheriff Snow had dropped his mouth open, and Viridis decided that he looked more characteristic that way, and she quickly redrew his face with a slack-jawed expression.

“Hey, yo’re under arrest, ma’am,” the sheriff reminded her. “You caint go makin pitchers of people when yo’re arrested.”

“Indeed, what air ye doing?” Judge Villines timidly inquired. And then he requested, “May I see?” She turned the sketchbook so he could see it. “Wal, I doggies!” he exclaimed. “That’s shore a clever resemblance of ole Duster! Looks jist lak ’im. Don’t it, boys? And I shore wush Mary Jane could see this yere one of me.” He looked beseechingly at Viridis, and said, “I don’t suspose you could be persuaded to part with it?”

“No,” she said. “This is for the front page of the Gazette.”

“The Gazette?!” the men said in unison, and Judge Villines wanted a clarification: “The Arkansas Gazette?”

Viridis nodded and resumed putting the finishing touches on Judge Villines, who was busy whispering in the ear of Judge Jerram.

Sull gave Villines a grudging look, as if the circuit judge had made an unpleasant suggestion, and then Sull glowered at Viridis and pretended politeness: “Did ye take the trouble to record my speech, ma’am, ye prob’ly wrote down that I didn’t say nary a word about the Chism be-ness. I jist came out here peaceable to say hidy to my friends and cool down the ruckus. I don’t have no personal involvement in the Chism be-ness.”

Viridis made a sort of laugh and stopped drawing. She looked Sull in the eye. “Then maybe you’ll explain why you shot Waymon Chism in the back.”

All of the men tried to speak at once, but the sheriff’s voice was loudest: “Goddammit, it was self dee-fense!”

Viridis ignored him and continued looking Sull in the eye. “Waymon Chism was shot in the back,” she repeated herself, “by the same pistol that fired four shots at me in the Buckhorn Hotel.”

“It was pervoked,” the sheriff said lamely. “I mean, naw, you didn’t pervoke him, and thar weren’t no excuse for thet Buckhorn misbehavior, but Waymon Chism shore enough incited and aggervated and brung it on hisself.”

Viridis turned and looked coldly at the sheriff, but she pointed her finger at Sull. “Why isn’t this low-life coward in jail?” she demanded.

“Ma’am!” said the sheriff. “Watch who yo’re talkin about! He’s the county jedge! We aint about to put him in no jail!”

Sull said, “Duster, why don’t we put her in jail like we was fixin to?”

“Now, now, boys,” Judge Villines said. He was saying “boys” the same way everybody does in this part of the country, meaning any male even eighty or ninety, but I couldn’t help feeling these “boys” weren’t any older than me; they certainly weren’t behaving any better than rowdy children. “Let’s us not be rude to a representative of the Arkansas Gazette. Don’t we want to show ourself in the best light and present a favorable front to the rest of the world? We caint go around arrestin gentlemen and ladies of the public press.”

Sheriff Snow said, “We jist come over yere to git Rindy Whitter fer a little talk, Jedge. That’s all we come over fer, but then this yere lady started makin trouble.”

Judge Villines asked Viridis, “Couldn’t these men simply have a few words with little Miss Whitter here, ma’am?”

“Not him.” Viridis pointed at Sull again.

“Why, how come, ma’am? He’s got a personal interest in this matter too.”

“He certainly does!” Viridis said. I had the feeling she was losing her temper, and then, sure enough, she lost it. “He viciously tricked Dorinda Whitter into submitting herself to a sexual assault which he performed upon her himself, and he inflicted unspeakable pain upon her, and then forced her into blaming innocent Nail Chism for what he had done!” Not a word or utterance of reply was made to these words by anybody, not by the accused, not by the accused’s confederates. The only sound to break the silence, finally, was a small, stifled sob from Rindy.

At last Judge Villines spoke up. “That’s a very serious charge, ma’am, and it’s totally unsubstantiated, and it’s pint-blank hearsay, and I would be very careful before I’d go around sayin things like that.”

“It will be said in the pages of the Arkansas Gazette as soon as I get back to Little Rock.”

“Duster, you’d better th’ow her in jail!” Sull said. “It’s too late to shut up Rindy. We better jist th’ow this bitch in jail and keep ’er thar!”

Judge Villines, such a mild man, lost his temper then. “Shut yore fool mouth, Sull! Aint you done made enough trouble already? Jist shut up, afore ye go and make it worse!”

“Yeah,” said Sheriff Duster Snow. “Yeah, Sull, you heared the jedge. Let’s us jist simmer down and shush it up.”

There was a shuffling of feet as the men waited to see which of them would make the first move to leave. The old woman got the last word: “It will be so pleasant when all of you bastards have removed yourselves from my porch.”

All the bastards got off the porch.

Viridis and Rindy left Stay More early the next morning. I was there to see them off. I hated it. My best friend, off and on, terribly off for the longest time but now back on again, going away to the big city, where I’d love to go someday, any day. We cried. “On’t ye come wif me?” Rindy said. “Caint,” I said. “Ess ast Miss Monday kin ye,” she suggested. “No, there’s not no room no way,” I said. And there wasn’t, atop that poor mare, Rosabone, who’d be loaded down a-carrying the two of them. Much, much later, when I learned all about the trip, I knew they had dismounted from Rosabone on the hills and ridden her only downhill and on the level places, and still she was a brave old mare to take them both plumb to Clarksville. Rindy had on a pair of one of her brothers’ pants so she could ride astraddle behind Viridis, and Viridis had put back on those jodhpurs that she’d never had a chance to let anyone see her wearing except us.

Viridis and the old woman had a talk while Rindy and I were saying our good-byes. After I had said all I could to tell Rindy I hoped she would have a good time in Little Rock and how much I admired her and all, there was nothing more to say, so I listened to Viridis and the old woman. The old woman said she was sorry that Viridis had not received a more favorable impression of Stay More. Viridis assured her that the people of Stay More were just fine. The old woman said she hoped Viridis would want to come back. Viridis said there was no doubt whatsoever that she would be coming back. She wanted to come back in the spring, and in the summer, when all the shades of green would be in their glory and she could paint them. The old woman said that any time Viridis wanted to come back she would be very welcome to stay here at this house.

Then Viridis turned to say good-bye to me. She shook my hand. I guess tears were running down my face. And I didn’t cry easy. “Latha, I’ll miss you,” she said, and I knew she wasn’t just being polite. “You were a wonderful help to me, and I’ll never forget it. You be good to yourself, and I’ll see you again in the spring.”

“Miss Monday—” I tried to say, choked.

“Oh, please just call me Viridis, or Very,” she said.

“Very…Viridis…” I tried, but it didn’t sound natural or mannerly. “You are the nicest lady I’ve ever known.”

On

One minute he is looking at the best girl on this earth, the next minute he is face to face with the worst one. Nail could not look at her. He looked at the guard for help, or some sign of fellow-feeling, but the guard, a white trusty called Bird, just looked bored and stupid, and had no idea that Nail’s visitor was none other than the selfsame little trollop whose lies had put Nail in this hell.

She wasn’t looking at him either. She had given him just a glance and then was watching the door behind him as if she were still waiting to see the person she was expecting to come in through that door. She didn’t even know it was him. She don’t even recognize what she’s done to me, he realized. She just stood there uncertain and scared-looking, waiting for somebody who looked like what she remembered Nail Chism looked like, but that guy never showed up, so after a while her eyes came to rest on him long and careful, and then she just said one word, in hardly a whisper: “Nail?” He didn’t nod his head or say anything to her. But she finally must have got it through her silly head that it was indeed him, because the next thing she did was to fall down on her knees and clasp her hands together as if she were praying to him. “Oh, Nail!” she wailed, the way some ladies at a revival holler, “Oh, God!”

He didn’t say a word. He just looked down at her there on her knees. Somebody had spent some more money on some more clothes for her. She wasn’t wearing that white thing she’d worn at the trial, that had made her look like her own idea of an angel. Now she had on a real nice wool coat, dark-green, and even a little hat on her head like she would wear to Sunday school, and a little purse in her hand, and fancy shoes that went up her legs. She even looked older than what she had been. Well, maybe she had done turned fourteen since that summer that seemed so many years ago. Nail realized that Viridis had brought her here, and that she had put her name on that petition, which meant that she was ready to admit that she had wrongly accused him.

“Nail, oh Nail, Nail, Nail,” she said. “Please fergive me. Say you’ll fergive me, please please oh please.” The tears were running down her face and messing up the powder and rouge that somebody had put on her face.

He honestly did not know what to say, so he didn’t say anything. Bird threw him a curious look as if he’d done something awful to the poor girl to make her get down on her knees and bawl her eyes out like that. He wanted to say to Bird, This here little old girl is the reason I’m in The Walls—now watch and hear her tell me she’s sorry she done it. But he honestly did not know what to say.

“Oh, what have I done to you?” she squalled. And because he wasn’t making any response to any of her words, she seemed to give up trying to talk to him and started in to talking to herself: “Oh, see what ye’ve done to him, you bad bad girl! Oh, look at his pore haid! You ort to be kilt yoreself, you big eejit! You ort to jist trade places with him!”

She kept on babbling to herself like that until finally Nail said, “Git up, Rindy.” The sound of his voice at last seemed to jolt her back to the real world, and she looked at him as if he’d said something wonderful and nice to her, and she got one of those fancy shoes up under her and began to rise up.

She stood up, although she didn’t stand straight. She was hunched in the back like she didn’t have any right to hold her head up anymore. She stood bent over like that and said, “I done tole Very everthing the way it really was, that it was Sull and not you who done it.”

“What did Sull do?” he asked.

“Ever last thing I tole in court that you had done, jist lak I tole it, on’y hit was him, not you.”

“But you let him,” Nail said.

She shook her head. “Naw. He tuck me. He tole me to play-like you was him, so’s I’d know how it felt.”

Nail slammed his hand against the screen separating them, as if he could knock it down. “The son of a bitch!” he said.

Bird waved his shotgun barrel. “Hey, watch it there, big fella.”

Nail turned his back to Bird and Rindy so they could not see his anger. He walked toward the door leading out of the visit room but, on reaching it, turned and walked back to the screen, and said to her, “Did he hurt you?”

“Uh-huh, a lot,” she said. “A whole lot.”

“Then how come ye to…how could ye…Rindy, for godsakes, why did ye do a favor for him?”

She hung her head. “They paid me,” she said.

“They?” he said. “They who?”

“The sherf and them,” she said.

“How much?”

“They’s sposed to of paid me thirty dollars but they never guv me but ten, and they said they’d give me the rest when you got…when they kilt ye in that burnin-cheer…but I said I didn’t want ’em to do that. Nail, I believed to my soul that the onliest thing they’d ever do to ye was to make ye stop botherin ’em the way ye was, with the federal law and all. I had no idee atall they’d th’ow ye in prison, let alone try to put ye in the burnin-cheer.”

“You sat there in that courtroom,” he reminded her, “and you heared ole Link Villines sentence me to death.”

“When he said that, I got the all-overs,” she said. “I had the all-overs so bad I couldn’t even think straight, let alone say nothin.”

“You could’ve said somethin afore now.”

“Sull would’ve kilt me,” she said. “He tried. He tried to kill Very too.”

“What?”

She used up a good chunk of her fifteen minutes to tell him the story of how Viridis had spent the night in the Buckhorn Hotel at Jasper when she was trying to find all the jurymen to sign her “position,” and how Sull had come in the middle of the night to the Buckhorn and confronted her and fired at her through the door, and then how Viridis had kept Sull and the sheriff and them from getting to Rindy that morning the men of Stay More were about to invade Jasper. Rindy talked so fast Nail couldn’t follow her and get it all straight. Now Rindy was going on about how Sull had tried to catch them as they were leaving Newton County and had followed them in his car up around Loafer’s Glory, and they had had to ride Very’s mare off into the woods to get away from him, and he had abandoned his car and come on foot after them and got close enough at one point to shoot up all the ammunition that his automatic would hold, and Very had fired back at him with a six-shooter she had, and maybe hit him, they couldn’t tell, but they had got away from him, deeper into the woods, and lost, and when they got back on the main road to Clarksville they never saw any more of him.

Then she was silent. “Go on with yore knittin,” he told her.

“That’s all,” she said. “That was day afore yestiddy. Then we come on down yere to Little Rock. Aint it a big place? Aint this town a sight on airth?”

“I don’t rightly know,” he admitted. “I aint seen much of it.”

“You ort to see this yere big house where Very lives at,” she said, and held her hands high over her head. “It’s the beatenest house ever I seed. That’s whar I’m a-stayin. Today we’re gonna go out to the state capitol buildin and see the governor! We’re gonna give that governor Very’s position with all them names on it!” Rindy began to smile for the first time. “I’m gonna stand up thar in front of the governor and swaller my teeth and tell ’im it was all a big mistake. Then you jist wait and see if you aint out of yere in two shakes of a dead lamb’s tail, I bet ye!”

“I hope that governor believes ye,” he said.

“Oh, Very says he’s got to believe me! I’m gonna tell him the truth, jist edzackly lak it was.”

For the first time he was able to soften his tone. “That’s fine spoke. I ’preciate that, Rindy. I shore do.”

“And when you git out and come back up home, I hope ye won’t be mad at me no more. I’ll do anything you want me to do iffen ye’ll fergive me.”

“All I want ye to do is stay away from that Sull. He aint a bit o’ good fer ye.”

“Don’t I know it? I shore learnt my lesson. He’s the meanest feller on this airth. What he done to Waymon—” Rindy put both hands over her mouth.

Nail put both hands on the screen, in defiance of Bird. “Yeah? What was you about to say?”

“I aint sposed to mention Waymon.”

“Rindy. Look at me. What did Sull do to Waymon? Tell me.”

She whispered, “He shot him in the back.”

“Naw! When was this? He aint dead, is he?”

Bird said, “Big boy, take your hands off that screen. Your time is up anyhow. Better get on back to your roost. Here comes Short Leg.”

“Listen,” Nail said to Bird and raised his manacled wrists to gesture toward the anteroom, “could you get that lady to come back in here for just a second? I got to ast her something.”

“Sorry. You caint chaw your tobacco twice. Here’s Short Leg.”

“Rindy! Waymon’s not kilt, is he? Don’t tell me he’s kilt!”

“No, Nail, he’s still alive,” she said.

“Goddammit! Jist let me git out of here!” Short Leg took his arm and led him toward the door. “Rindy, you make that governor let me out of here!” he called to her from the door.

“I will,” she said.

Off

For the longest time he heard nothing from the outside world. He became painfully aware of this fact of prison life: if you expect nothing, you’ll be satisfied, but if you’re waiting for something, even death, time will drag, each day will last a week, and if you take a minute to wonder when you’re going to get what you’re expecting, the minute will become an hour.

Could it be possible, as his calendar told him, that here it was March already and that weeks had gone by since Viridis and Rindy had made their visits to him and to the governor? Or had he just imagined both of those females and their visits? No, he had at least some proof of it, in the form of the sketchbook that Timbo Red was now filling up with drawings: Viridis had brought it for him, not exactly smuggling it in, as he had suggested, but openly giving it to Mr. Burdell and telling him that it was a gift from the employees of the Arkansas Gazette, for Timbo Red, a talented young artist, and Burdell had let the boy have it, and Timbo Red was beside himself with joy. Nail would have been very happy for the kid too, except that it was really hard to be happy about somebody else’s good fortune when your own luck was running so bad. He couldn’t understand it. He spent all his time watching for the appearance of Farrell Cobb and an expected letter from Viridis. After a few weeks he even got up his nerve and asked the warden, “Mr. Burdell, sir, you aint happen to have heard anything about maybe Mr. Cobb is sick or anything like that?” and Mr. Burdell had just looked at him and grinned and shrugged his shoulders.

It was enough to drive a fellow crazy, if he wasn’t already. Nail had two things that kept him from going over the brink: his tree charm, which he would finger in moments of intense anxiety, and the one December letter from Viridis, by now reduced almost to shreds; but no matter if it did eventually disintegrate, he knew it by heart. He almost knew by heart what the next letter would say, if it ever came—or at least what he would want it to say, and exactly how he would want her to say it: that she was setting him free.

In his restlessness he began to get the first exercise he’d had since they threw him in The Walls. He began to pace. Sometimes he couldn’t just lie on his bed or sit on the edge of it talking to Timbo Red and watching him fill up his sketchbook. Often it was hard to watch Timbo Red’s sketches, because the boy began to draw increasingly from his memory of the scenes of his youth that were pleasant: the creeks and forests and pastures of Stone County—woodland scenes and meadow scenes and deer at gloaming, tranquil pools and soaring crags and sunsets on the ridges. The kid sure could draw. You could almost be there, the scenes were so real, but they only made Nail’s eagerness to get home even worse, and after watching Timbo Red draw for a little while, he had to get up and start walking. He walked up and down the rows of the bunks, the whole length of the barracks, several times and back. In the beginning of his hikes he made the mistake of wandering into the rows of the bunks where the blacks lived, and they stopped what they were doing or saying and watched him pass, and one of them reached out and stopped him and said, “Wat baw, you know way you is at?” and he confessed, “I reckon I don’t,” and got himself out of that neighborhood and back among the whites, who paid him no more notice than to the several other compulsive ambulators.

All of this walking increased his appetite, and he began to do what Viridis had advised him: eat whatever they gave him. He ate whatever was on his plate and watched for chances to filch crumbs of cornbread from anybody else’s plate. He even regained a couple of pounds, at the risk of getting caught violating a main rule: don’t ever eat anybody else’s food. He began to sit next to men whose appetites he knew were poor: the old, the sick, the apathetic. He became adept at sliding his hand beneath the edge of the table and up over the edge to snatch any morsel remaining.

He walked and he ate and he regained some of his health. Then Fat Gabe caught him stealing food. Not Fat Gabe himself but one of the black trusties whose job it was to stool to him. But instead of giving Nail a dose of the strap, Fat Gabe did a strange thing: at the next breakfast he brought him an egg, the first egg Nail had seen since he’d been in The Walls, the first protein since Christmas. It was hard-boiled, not pan-fried the way his mother used to fix him a half dozen of each morning, but it was a genuine egg. He knew better than to ask any questions of Fat Gabe, so he didn’t ask him what it was for, or what he had done to deserve it. He just ate it. At dinner Fat Gabe brought him an extra plate of cornbread and beef fat. He ate it. And at supper Fat Gabe did the same, or, rather, he began to have the trusty who waited on the table make sure that Nail got a second helping. This continued daily.

Nail wondered if Fat Gabe was getting soft. Or religious. Or just tired of being mean and evil. But no, if anything, Fat Gabe was growing even more vicious in his treatment of other men: he now had twenty-one notches on his belt, and he seemed to be getting so much exercise and muscular development from his daily floggings that he could administer up to forty lashes before beginning to tire. The two trusties who were required to sit on the victim’s head and feet and hold him down often were exhausted from their efforts before Fat Gabe began to tire. And Fat Gabe was always seeking to refine the severity of his methods: he now had a long leather strap that had brass brads embedded in the tip to impart an extra fillip of pain and laceration. Then Fat Gabe discovered that boring a number of penny-sized round holes in the strap would not only reduce air resistance and make the strap faster and harder but also leave blisters and welts. No, Fat Gabe was becoming anything but soft. As an ultimate infliction of pain, certain to fill the barracks with endless screams, he sponged salt water into the wounds. Eventually Doc Gode was required by Fat Gabe to sit and take the victim’s pulse and keep the torturer informed of the floggee’s heart rate, in order to determine the maximum number of lashes—thirty-five or forty—that could be tolerated in one day. After forty lashes drenched with salt water, most men faced the prospect of three weeks upstairs in the flyspeck room recuperating or dying under Doc Gode’s supervision. Every week Fat Gabe put another notch on his belt.

Nail considered the possibility that Fat Gabe was giving him extra food only because he had received orders from above—perhaps the governor himself had been influenced by Viridis (and Rindy too). But Nail usually ate his extra ration without reflecting on it: you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Most of the other men did not resent Nail for his extra food. As one of them put it, “A double helping of shit is still shit.” But a few, especially those who had been sent out of The Walls all day to do hard work at the lumberyard or the brick kiln or on the railroad and had ravenous appetites when they returned, begrudged Nail his double servings of food because he was never even sent out of The Walls to work. One of these observed, at the table in the hearing of anybody watching Nail start on his second plate, including Fat Gabe’s stoolie, “Nails is just gettin fattened up for the slaughter.” And the men nodded their heads and chuckled or grinned.

Timbo Red too began to suspect that Fat Gabe was giving Nail extra food only because “he’s tryin to git ye back in shape so’s he kin destroy ye.” Nail considered this and remembered the threat that Fat Gabe had made to him before Christmas: “I’m gonna save ya till you’re strong enough to ’preciate what I’m gonna do to you.” It had been noticed that Fat Gabe never administered the strap or any of his other tortures to ailing men, weak men, men too frail to fight back. He seemed to have a fondness for flogging men who were much stronger than he himself could ever aspire to be. Nail noticed that the most recent deaths from the brass-bradded lash and brine-soaked sponge had been men who were notably muscular, hale, and, at least until their punishment, indomitable. Nail decided he had better not give the appearance of becoming too healthy.

More men tried to escape. The coming of springtime always makes prisoners want to get out, to go home and do their plowing and planting, or at least to get out where they can watch the world wake up to the new season. The rising of the sap probably accounted as well for Fat Gabe’s increased energy, and the severity of his scourge was another motive for attempts at escape. In the few years since the old state penitentiary had been torn down to give its hill to the new state capitol, and the high, thick barrier of brick on a hill outside of town had been stacked into the rectangle called The Walls, there had been only two or three successful escapes, and of those, only one was still at large, a murderer named McCabe, whose method of escape was kept a secret from both the public and the prison population. Every man inside wanted to become the second at-large escapee. They schemed and plotted, and conjectured about McCabe’s possible modus operandi, and they tried to acquire lengths of rope, or to fashion rope out of stripped bedclothes, or to make primitive ladders. The few who managed to scale the wall without getting shot by the trusties manning the four towers at the corners of the The Walls made it as far as the swampy thickets to the south, where, within a few hours at most, bloodhounds tracked and caught them. A shed right behind Warden Burdell’s house had six bloodhounds penned up and ready to go. According to rumor, the one man who had eluded the bloodhounds had disguised his scent by smearing mustard oil on his feet. But none of the rumors told how he had acquired the mustard oil in the first place.

Strong men who attempted escape that month of March were the especial targets of Fat Gabe’s flagellations. He did not need to fabricate an excuse to whip them; attempted escape was a felony, and, to discourage others from making the attempt, the flogging was made as visible and audible as possible: everybody had to gather in a thick circle around the inverted wheelbarrow over which the body of the man would be held by three trusties while Doc Gode took the man’s pulse and a fifth trusty sponged salt water into the wounds that Fat Gabe steadily inflicted, to a total of one hundred and sixty, if the victim could bear the maximum of forty per day and live through four days of it. No inmate forced to stand and watch that performance through four days would give a lot of thought to attempting escape himself, but it was still an option preferable to death in the flyspeck room.

Fat Gabe not only kept feeding Nail all he could eat, he also began to let him outside the building. The warm weather made it necessary to open the windows and get as much air as possible into the barracks, and to get as many men as possible out into the Yard. The Yard was only a yard: merely all of the empty space between the brick buildings and the brick walls, a few acres of what had once been grass but was now mostly mud and sand, with just a smear of green here and there. Fifty men at a time, guarded by a shotgun trusty, would be allowed to go out into the Yard for an hour and walk, jump, run, waddle, or crawl—anything except stand and congregate and talk. Nail took advantage of being let out into the Yard to study the walls very carefully, to memorize the length and height and even the brick patterns of every section. He observed that the brick building of the engine room, which also contained Old Sparky and the death cells, was much closer to the wall than the main barracks. He noticed that at one place along the wall a corner of the engine building’s roof obscured the view from the tower. Why, he asked himself, was he making all these observations if Viridis and Rindy were going to make the governor let him go? The answer, he told himself, was that week by week his chance of a pardon appeared slimmer and slimmer.

The month of March was marching on and he hadn’t had his March trip to the visit room. Surely Viridis had at least tried to visit him. Once when Fat Gabe and Short Leg were making their rounds, Nail forgot that he was never supposed to question them. “Short Leg,” he asked, “you don’t reckon anybody came to see me at the visit room that you didn’t tell me about, did they?”

Short Leg exchanged glances with Fat Gabe, the two of them astounded that an experienced convict would violate the cardinal rule against asking them questions. Short Leg didn’t know whether to hit Nail or not, but when he raised his hand, Fat Gabe said, “He aint ready yet,” and then he even smiled almost friendly-like at Nail and said, “We’ll let that one go, Chism. Just watch it.”

After the two sergeant-guards had moved on, Timbo Red exclaimed to Nail, “I tole ye, didn’t I? They’re jist a-waitin till ye git to lookin real peart afore they light into ye.”

But just a day later, as if Nail’s question had produced some result, he was summoned by Short Leg for a trip to the visit room.

It wasn’t Viridis. It was Farrell Cobb. Nail complained, “I thought you generally came into the barracks to see me. Now you’re using up my visit room time.”

Cobb whispered, “They’re shaking down everyone they admit to the compound.” He patted his breast. “I didn’t want them to find what I’m carrying.”

“A gun?” Nail said.

Cobb laughed. Nail had never heard him laugh, nor suspected that he was capable of it. “No. A very thick letter. Pages and pages.”

Nail felt stifling frustration. He swore. He glanced all over the edges of the screen separating him from Cobb, as if there might be some opening the letter could be slipped through. He studied the trusty, Bird, who was just standing there looking bored and blank. He inclined his head toward Bird and whispered to Cobb, “I don’t suppose you could bribe him to let me have it.”

Cobb shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to try.”

“Well, shit,” Nail muttered. Then he asked, “Did you read it? I reckon you could just tell me most of it.”

Cobb cleared his throat. Of course he didn’t want to admit that he had read the letter. “I skimmed most of it,” he said. “There isn’t much news that I couldn’t tell you myself. There’s a very long account of her trip to your hometown and her meetings with the various figures involved in the case, such as Judge Sewell Jerram and the sheriff, et cetera. There’s a long account of her attempts to see the governor. An unfortunate business. A truly lamentable state of affairs. She and the child, Dorinda Whitter, tried for a week to get an audience with Governor Hays. They sat in his waiting-room for three whole days. Yes, three days, and I was there with them part of the third day, when I finally demanded of the governor’s assistant that we get admitted to his private office. Most regrettably, Viridis Monday was very angry by that time and her mood kept her from presenting her case effectively to the governor, toward whom she was openly hostile. In this letter…” (again Cobb patted his breast, where Nail could see a bulge beneath his suit coat) “…she gives reasons for her anger at the governor which are unjustified, I think. She even went so far as to tell the governor that he was responsible for Dorinda Whitter, that he would have to make the child his own ward, a preposterous suggestion, if I may say so, and I did say so.”

“Go on,” Nail said. “So you’re tellin me the governor didn’t buy none of it? No pardon, huh?”

“Not necessarily on account of Miss Monday’s rudeness. The governor feels strongly that the whole business would have to go through strictly legal channels, the case would have to be referred back to a lower court, you would need to be retried if that could even be considered acceptable by the court, you would have to follow established procedures, you couldn’t just impose upon the governor’s charity.”

“Didn’t that governor believe what Rindy told him?”

“I’m afraid the child didn’t get a chance to tell him her story. The governor insisted that she would have to tell it to a court, not to him.”

“But didn’t he even take a gander at that petition with all those names that Viridis had got signed for him?”

“He said he was most curious to know if the petition contained the names of Prosecuting Attorney Thurl B. Bean and Circuit Judge Lincoln Villines. It does not, of course. The governor is of the opinion that Judge Villines must recommend leniency to him, or at least recommend a retrial, and Judge Villines will not. I might add that Judge Villines is, it would appear, an old friend of the governor’s.”

“It would appear,” Nail echoed. He asked, rhetorically and futilely, “What kind of governor is that man anyhow?”

“For now, the only one we have, alas,” Farrell Cobb said, the closest he ever came to expressing any sentiment against the governor.

“So what’s the next step?” Nail asked.

“Next step?”

“Yeah, how long does it take to get another trial, or whatever?”

Farrell Cobb shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “The governor was our last resort.”

“But didn’t ye jist say something about the governor hisself says that the case has to go back to a lower court and git retried?”

“Only if Judge Villines recommends it, and he does not.”

“Well, fuck Link Villines! If a judge does something wrong, he aint likely to ask somebody else to come along and tell him how bad he done. Of course he don’t want a retrial!”

“That’s the way the law works,” Farrell Cobb said.

Nail stared at him in disbelief. “If that’s the way the law works, you ought to be ashamed to call yourself a lawyer.”

Farrell Cobb reddened. Testily he said, “Insults won’t work with me.”

“Then what in hell will work with you? Tell me that! What have I got to do or say to get some help from you?”

“Mr. Chism, I’ve given you quite a lot of help,” the lawyer said coldly. “I’ve gone to some extraordinary lengths to appeal your case. In fact, I think it’s safe to say I’ve worked harder on this case than any in my career.”

“But I’m still going to the chair,” Nail said.

Farrell Cobb did not deny it. But he didn’t exactly concede it. After a while he just gave his head a slow shake and said, “Quite conceivably.”

Nail gestured toward Cobb’s breast, where the precious thick letter was. “Did she give me any hope?” he asked.

Cobb reached for the envelope as if to verify an answer but thought better of it and stuck his hand into his outside coat pocket instead. “As I seem to recall her saying, she said you should not give up. She said something about attempting to attract national publicity to your case.”

“What does that mean?” Nail wanted to know.

“The big newspapers and magazines in the East might take an interest in you, and if there were sufficient national publicity, it could pressure the governor into reconsidering.”

Nail thought about that. Bird announced that the fifteen minutes were up. Nail said, “Jist one more question. The national publicity would have to come before April 20th, right?”

“One would hope,” Farrell Cobb said.

April came. Nail worked on his letter to Viridis. He wrote it and rewrote it, trying to get each sentence perfect in his mind before committing it to paper. Paper was scarce; he had only a few sheets left from the penny pad Warden Burdell had given him at Christmas. As a last favor Farrell Cobb had agreed to come back to the penitentiary when he could safely come into the barracks and take the letter out. Nail hoped that Viridis might come to the visit room even before then, but, as he told her in the letter, he didn’t blame her for not coming: it was too painful, for both of them, to realize they couldn’t say anything in just fifteen minutes. He told Viridis he wanted to remember her as he had last seen her: happy, beaming, exhilarated from her trip to Stay More, optimistic, bearing the secret of having brought his accuser to apologize. He said how profoundly grateful he was to Viridis for whatever she had done to persuade Dorinda not only to admit her wrongdoing but to come to him and tell him to his face. Even if he was executed, he would know that there was no greater proof of his innocence than a confession from Rindy herself. He said he was sorry that the governor had not heard Rindy say it. He said the only times lately when he got really angry, mad enough to fight Fat Gabe himself, was when he thought about the injustice of that governor making Viridis sit in the waiting-room for three days before letting her talk to him. He didn’t blame her for getting rude to the governor. If it had been him, he would have been more than rude: he would have clobbered that governor. He confessed he spent a lot of time thinking about killing the governor.

Then he wrote:

I reckon you know that if they try to electercute me I aim to kill as many as I can beforehand and I reckon you also know how I aim to do it. But I have been thinking (which of course is what we all of us do too much of around this place) and have decided that if I’m going to die in that way, I might as well make one honest attempt at getting out of here before they even put me back in the death hole, which it don’t look like they plan to do until the week before the electercution date. Before they put me back in the death hole, I think I know a pretty good way to break out of here, and I can do it all by myself if you could find some way to do just one thing for me. I need a little bit of mustard oil, just enough of it to smear on my feet to throw the dogs off my scent when I light out for the country. If there was some way you could smuggle me just a tiny bottle of that mustard oil.

But if you can’t, and I have to go sit down in the chair on the 20th, I want you to promise me that you won’t come and watch. I couldn’t stand that. I sure would like to see you again before I close my eyes for the last time, and to tell the honest truth I’d like to still see nothing else except your beautiful face behind my closed eyes for eternity, but I don’t want that to be the last thing I see before I close my eyes, I want to imagine it, I want to create you, I want to be able to take your face with me to eternity because I made it up all by myself.

There is one more request, if you can bear one. Then I won’t bother you with any more of them. When I am gone I hope you will take the trouble that you would ordinarily spend on grief and instead do whatever you can for this boy, Timbo Red. He will make a great artist one of these days. Not nearly as good a one as you, but a great one, still, if he gets the chance and maybe some lessons and enough of those drawing materials. He ought to get out of here on parole before too very long. The only thing he ever done wrong was steal a horse, and they can’t keep him long for that. If you could watch out for him when he gets out, I’m going to tell him a lot of things that I wanted to tell you so that he can go on for a long time telling you those things almost like I was still around to do it myself, and if you want to, you can pretend his voice is mine, just the same way you brought all of those Stay More voices with you so I could hear them.

If you was with me right now, you would be laughing because what I’m thinking about is, wouldn’t it be funny if you was to introduce old Timbo Red to Rindy and they become good friends? Live happy ever after, and all that?

On second thought, maybe it ain’t funny. But you, dear Viridis, please live happy ever after. Get me that mustard oil if you can. If you can’t, don’t let it bother you none. You done your best, you done more than any woman or man either could ever have done, and I and the trees will love you for it for ever more.

Then he could only wait and watch for Cobb, to smuggle this letter out. Every day that passed was a day lost he’d need to work out some way to get that mustard oil; he had the rest of it pretty well planned: getting over the wall at the right time in the right way. He didn’t even tell Timbo Red of his plan, although he considered that the kid himself might need to escape sometime. But he did tell Timbo Red, day after day when they could talk, about Viridis Monday. Timbo Red had to admit he’d never known any female anything like her, and not because Nail was bragging on her or making her out to be better than she was; he was telling Timbo Red exactly everything that Viridis had done that he knew about, and just what she looked like. Of course he didn’t tell Timbo Red to expect that Viridis was going to take care of him when he got out of the pen, but Nail was setting him up for it so he wouldn’t be absolutely flabbergasted when it happened. But he did tell Timbo Red he hoped the boy would meet up with her if anything ever happened to Nail that he wasn’t alive anymore, because then there were a few things he wanted Timbo Red to tell her, if he could remember them.

Timbo Red could remember them all. He could especially remember the directions to a few spots west of Stay More where you could look down into the valley and paint the most wonderful pictures of it. Timbo Red allowed as how he himself would sort of like to go and see some views like that, and even paint them, if he ever got aholt of some paints and learned how to use them.

“You’ll git ye some paints, son,” Nail told him. “Jist take my word fer it.”

One evening at supper Nail was working on his second helping of cowpeas and cornbread when somebody crowded in to sit beside him on the bench, and even before he turned to see the face, he recognized the smell: the barbershop talcum powder of Attorney Farrell Cobb. Nail was both elated and irritated. He didn’t have any more use for Cobb, except as a messenger, but that was essential. Cobb shook hands with him, which he hadn’t done before, and Nail instantly detected something in their pressing palms. “A letter from her,” Cobb whispered. “All folded up into a wad. Hide it. Enjoy it later.”

As their hands came apart, Nail withdrew his with the precious wad in it and tucked it into his waistband, then took from the other side of the band his letter for Viridis. It was not wadded up, but there were only four pages, folded three times. He kept it under the table and placed it on Cobb’s leg. “Kindly get that to her.”

“Wait. No. I can’t,” Cobb protested, feeling the letter.

“Just stick it in your pocket,” Nail insisted.

“No, really, they’d—” Cobb said, darting a glance around the room. “Sshh! They’re watching us!”

Nail looked around. Fat Gabe and Short Leg were over at the end of the mess hall, but they weren’t watching. The only one watching was the mess trusty, a black man. But he was watching the two of them intently, and he could clearly see Nail’s hand on Cobb’s leg.

“Take it, quick!” Nail said.

“No, take it back!” Cobb said. “Move your hand!”

The black trusty yelled, “GIT DE WADDEN!” Fat Gabe and Short Leg came over. The black trusty said to them, “Dem two done passed some paper,” and pointed at Cobb. “Marse Buddell he say to watch dat man. Git de wadden.”

Nail had taken back his letter and thrust it back into his pants band but in doing so had jarred loose the wad of Viridis’ letter so that it fell down into his trouser leg. Fat Gabe said, “On your feet, Chism!” and as Nail stood up he felt the wad of Viridis’ letter slide down his leg to the floor. Without looking down, he covered it with his shoe. Fat Gabe held out his hand, and said, “Whatcha got there? Le’s have it!”

Nail held out his empty hands. “I aint got nothin.”

Fat Gabe looked at Farrell Cobb and demanded, “He hand something to you?”

“Well…no, he…I don’t have anything,” Cobb said.

“Search ’im,” Fat Gabe told Short Leg, who reached inside Farrell Cobb’s suit coat and searched his pockets and then the pockets of his trousers.

“He’s clean,” Short Leg announced.

“Search Chism,” Fat Gabe said. Nail wondered, Am I gonna have to use my knife before it’s time? He hoped Short Leg wouldn’t find his knife. But Short Leg went immediately to his trousers and, knowing that no convict’s trousers ever had pockets, felt inside the waistband and brought out the letter. “Well, well,” Fat Gabe said, snatching the letter out of Short Leg’s hand and holding it up high. “What have we here?” He turned to Farrell Cobb and waved the letter under his nose. “He try to pass this to you? Or did you give it to him?”

“Well, not exactly,” Cobb said.

“What do you mean, Mister Cobb?” Fat Gabe demanded. “Is this yours or his?”

“It isn’t mine, I assure you,” Cobb said. “I’ve never seen it before.”

“Get the fuck out of here, Cobb,” Fat Gabe said. Cobb hastily departed, and Fat Gabe said to Short Leg, “Get the boss.”

Warden Burdell was summoned, and came, and Fat Gabe handed him the letter. The warden took out his spectacles and put them on. He unfolded the sheets, giving Nail a glance to indicate he recognized the writing-paper as the same he had given Nail to write his mother at Christmastime. He read the letter, grinning. Nail stood helpless, the sole of his shoe pressing down on the wad of Viridis’ letter. Would he ever get a chance to read it? Finally the warden looked up and said to Nail, “So this was intended for Miss Monday of the Gazette, huh? As I suspected, she’s sweet on you. Right?” Nail did not answer. The warden flapped the letter. “You say here that you’d like to kill the governor. Is that true?” Nail would not answer. “Answer me, or do you need Gabe to give you some persuasion?” Nail gave a semblance of a nod. “And it says here you’re planning to kill a few of us before we electrocute you. You want to tell me how you’re planning to do that?” Nail could not answer. The warden removed his spectacles and looked at Fat Gabe and Short Leg and said to them, “Maybe he thinks he can do it with his bare hands!” and both of the sergeant-guards laughed. “If you’re so impatient to give it a try, Chism, your date with Old Sparky is right around the corner. I think we’d better put you back in the death hole to wait for it. But first…” (the warden inclined his head in the direction of Fat Gabe) “…first I believe my assistant here, ole Gabe, would like to inflict an appropriate punishment for your stupid attempt to smuggle this letter out of here. Is that right, Gabe?”

“Just let me get my hide,” Fat Gabe said. “We’ll do it right here in the mess hall.”

“Very good. Everybody can watch,” the warden said. “Except me. I wouldn’t have much fun watching you get strapped, Chism. But I expect I’ll have some pleasure watching you fry. Unless you find some mustard oil.” Before walking away, the warden shook his head and said again, “Mustard oil!” and snorted a laugh.

Inmates hate to have to watch a flogging right after supper; several of them are sure to puke. The wheelbarrow was not brought in as a rack for Nail’s body; he was just spread out right there face down on the dining table, with three trusties holding his arms and legs, while Doc Gode got ready to take his pulse.

There were three things Nail saw, in succession, before the blows started: first, the wad of Viridis’ letter, still there on the floor, nobody noticing it or thinking anything of it, or at least not bending down to pick it up and find out what it was; second, the face of Timbo Red, who was looking at him with mingled terror and fierce indignation, whose sixteen-year-old eyes were already beginning to acquire some of the keen look of having seen too much of this world and having tried without success to make sense of it; and third, as Nail shut his eyes, that face with its caressing green eyes and frame of fire-red hair, that face he would always see whenever he shut his eyes until the very last time he shut them. He tried to fix that face in the darkness as the brass-studded lash opened up the skin of his ass. And when they sponged salt water into the wounds, he did not scream. He bit his tongue and gritted his teeth and hoped that maybe he would faint before the pain got too bad. The only sound he could hear at first, other than the loud slapping of the leather against his skin, was the heavy breathing of Fat Gabe exerting himself as he had never done before, almost as if he’d found a woman who was his match in bed and needed every bit of breath and thrust he could give her. And then Nail heard a man retching and heaving up his supper. And then another. Nail’s own double-supper had risen in his craw and was threatening to choke him. Better to drown in his own vomit than be beaten to death. But he held it down, as he held back his screams that were begging him to let them beg.

He was not counting the blows. It was somewhere past thirty, but he wasn’t counting. He was thinking how sad it was that Viridis would never see that last letter he wrote to her. No chance the warden would let her have it.

Fat Gabe seemed to be getting a bit frustrated. “Goddamn you, Chism, if you die, it’s gonna be me who does it, not Ole Sparky.” Nail made no response. There was a longer interval before the next blow, and when it fell Nail knew why: Fat Gabe must have hauled off and reared back as far as he could with that strap before giving it all he had. And all he had was not enough to bring a scream out of Nail, only a groan. And Fat Gabe cursed the trusty: “Nigger, goddamn you, squeeze some of that salt in there!”

Suddenly Nail felt someone tearing at his chest. He opened his eyes to see Timbo Red, who said, “Let me have that knife!” and grabbed the string inside Nail’s shirt and pulled it out, and tore the knife off it, tearing off too the gent’s tree charm, which flew out and landed on the floor not far from the wad of Viridis’ letter.

“No!” Nail hollered at Timbo Red, but before anyone could lay a hand on the kid he had stuck the knife into Fat Gabe’s belly and pulled upward with all his might, tearing right up through the middle of his guts. Fat Gabe screamed and dropped the strap and clutched himself in the middle, and Timbo Red slashed the knife across Fat Gabe’s throat, from ear to ear. Short Leg had his gun out, but before he could fire it, Timbo Red had plunged the knife into Fat Gabe’s chest.

The trusties holding Nail had let go of him, and he too was up and watching as Short Leg, instead of shooting Timbo Red, decided to cock him over the head with the butt of his gun, and knocked the boy unconscious to the floor, right beside the wad and the tree charm. Nail sprang down beside him, and, while making sure the boy was okay, or at least pretending to care for him, he palmed the wad and the tree charm. A moment later, while everyone was watching Fat Gabe roll and toss and buck, Nail concealed his treasures by thrusting his hand down into his pants and tucking the wad up under the space behind his testicles and then hiding the tree charm in his anus.

In the confusion that followed, nobody paid much attention to Nail for several minutes. All of the trusties were there, including the armed ones. All of the half-trusties, or do-pops, came running, and everybody crowded into a circle about Fat Gabe, who was flopping and coughing up blood, his guts spilled onto the floor. Short Leg was waving his pistol as if somebody else might try to do something, and Timbo Red lay sprawled on his back, his eyes closed but almost a trace of a smile on his mouth. Fat Gabe, with his last bit of strength, pulled the knife blade out of his breast and held it as if to plunge it into Timbo Red. At that instant Warden Burdell came running in and yelled, “Christ, Gabe, what in hell is a-gorn on here?”

Fat Gabe’s eyes clouded over, and he echoed one of the words as if he were already on his way there: “Hell.” Then he collapsed and was dead.

Down in the death hole later that night, Nail lay on his side in the old, familiar, mouldy cot that had been his bed so many months in the autumn. It was almost good to be back. He was careful how he lay, because of the wounds in his buttocks, which still bled. It was absolutely dark, and he would have to wait until morning before attempting to read Viridis’ letter, which was still in a wad tucked snugly into his groin behind his testicles. For now, he was watching again and again that scene in the mess hall, particularly those precious seconds when he had failed to prevent Timbo Red from taking his knife and killing Fat Gabe with it. If only he had acted quicker. The boy should have known that Fat Gabe wasn’t killing Nail, that Nail would survive it, that it wasn’t worth risking his own life to kill Fat Gabe. The boy had practically committed suicide. There was no way now they would ever let him go. If they didn’t electrocute him, they’d keep him in The Walls for the rest of his life or, worse, send him off to Tucker Farm, where the hardcases would rape him to death. Nail was tremendously moved and beholden that Timbo Red would have done something like that for him, would have liked him so much that he would act impulsively to protect or save him, but he was sorrowful beyond all imagining that it had actually happened, and there was no taking it back. The sheriff of Pulaski County had come out to The Walls to arrest Timbo Red and take him off to the county jail, because that’s the way the law worked, and the sheriff and some other men had taken Nail into Warden Burdell’s office and questioned him for an hour, trying to find out if Timbo Red was Nail’s “punk” and if the boy might have done it because he was in love with Nail. Finally Nail had lost his temper and demanded to know why that sheriff had never come out and arrested Fat Gabe for all the murders he’d committed on the inmates. That question had shut up the whole room for a long moment, and then Short Leg had taken Nail down here to his old home in the death hole. Before the heavy iron door clanged shut on him, Short Leg had remarked, “I’m just afraid that whoever the boss gets to replace ole Fat Gabe is going to be a meaner feller than he ever was.” Nail had thought about that for a while, trying to determine if it meant that Short Leg had approved or disapproved of Fat Gabe’s ways.

Before bringing him down to the death hole, Short Leg had let him pick up his stuff: his two books, the Bible and Dr. Hood, and his harmonica, which he hadn’t played since that one time around Christmas. Now he raised it to his mouth, cupped his hands around it, and let his breath escape slowly onto the holes and reeds, and then he made one hand tremble to shiver the sound. The hand trembled pretty well all by itself without his willing it. He was still shook up. He drew in his breath slowly, changing the notes of the sound, making them more mournful, and he discovered he was playing a very slow and elegiac version of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Mine. Eyes. Have. Seen. The. Glory. Of. The. Coming. Of. The. Lord! The confines of the dank cell gave a special resonance to the haunting voice of the Hohner, so that the hymn was not one of praise but of loneliness, sadness, yearning. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored! The measured cadence of the poignant notes was molded by his hands, his lungs, and his lips into an expression of nostalgia and regret. He hath loosed the fatal lightning of His terrible swift sword! Nail made love to the instrument the way he’d sometimes had fancies of kissing Viridis. His! Truth! Is! Marching! ON! He stopped and took his lips away from the harmonica and said aloud to himself, “On?” and then he asked also, “Truth?” and he just lay there in dazed thought for a long time before he could again raise the instrument to his mouth. Then he played a few old ballads. He played a couple of his favorite love songs, “On Top of Old Smoky” and “Down in the Valley,” the latter filled with the sound of the wind blowing through the valley, the loneliness of jail, the hope of knowing and seeing love. And then, to test the harmonica’s range of perky and jolly tunes, he played “The Old Chisholm Trail.” That was about an old cattle-driving road running from Kansas to South Texas, which, his daddy had told him, had been named for a kinsman, Jesse Chisholm, who didn’t know how to spell his last name. It runs on through twenty-three verses, with the chorus of Come-a-ti-yi-yippy after each one, but twenty repetitions was all he could tolerate before he grew very sleepy and quit.

“Dat sho am sweet,” a voice said, and Nail realized that the other death cell was occupied. They introduced themselves. His companion was Percy James, called Fleas, or Fleece, Nail would never be sure which. Fleas had carved up his wife with a razor while drunk at Christmas, believing she had been unfaithful to him. He was scheduled to sit on Old Sparky in just a few more days, he wasn’t sure whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday. He wasn’t too scared; an uncle of his had also had an appointment with Old Sparky, and, oddly enough, for the same offense. Nail and Fleas got acquainted until both of them grew sleepy.

Before falling asleep, Nail focused his mind away from the gashes on his buttocks to a spot nearer the front, that fleshy little mound where the skin of his scrotum joined his crotch, wherein the paper wad was nestled, which, both then and moments later in sleep, he imagined was the gentle thumb of Viridis.

The only light the death cells ever got was a wedge of early-morning sun that hit a small basement window and bathed the interior of the cells for an hour or so in a glow that in autumn and winter had seemed cold and menacing but now, in spring, was warm and promising, and lit the floor as well as the wall. Nail sat in that light and ate all of the hunk of rock-hard cornbread they gave him for breakfast. And drank his tin cup of water. He remembered his neighbor and called out, “Good mornin to ye, Mr. James.” There came in reply a chuckle, followed by: “Moanin to you, Nails. Aint no wat man eber call me mistah befo.”

Then Nail reached down to where the thumb still touched, and took out and gently unfolded the wad. He unfolded it once, twice, thrice, a dozen times: it was a sheet of ordinary white writing-paper, now turned grayish by the tiny pencil markings written in a fine hand with a fine point all over it, on both sides. He had to hold the paper very close to tell one line from another, and he had to squint to tell one word from another and he had to reread to tell one letter from another. There were no margins. To save space, she had omitted the date and the greeting and the closing and their names, but these were not necessary.

This must be a poor substitute for at least fifty pages I have written you since my last letter. Nice Mr. Cobb says that he will try to get this to you if I am able to abbreviate it to only one page, and I must ask myself which of those thousands of words that I wrote at more leisure I need most to say here. I feel like writing in quick, three-word sentences: “All is well. Please be happy. You will live. Don’t give up. Gardez la foi. We shall prevail. Truth will out. Justice will triumph. I love you.” There, but don’t you see how I can’t say that in only three words? Yet I can’t say it in one page either. Please believe I tried several times to visit you, but each time I was told that you were being punished for stealing food and were not allowed to have visitors. The last time I made an attempt, the guard, Gabriel McChristian, said he would let me see you if I would “step out” with him, which, I gathered, meant meeting him somewhere outside The Walls for some illicit purpose. I considered exposing his despicable bribe to the authorities, but these days I have very little faith in any authorities, as you can imagine, after my experience with the governor, which, I am the first to admit, I bungled by stupidly permitting myself to become irritated and indignant with “His Excellency.” But he is such a mean-spirited, small-minded little politician, probably the worst governor that Arkansas has ever had. Your dear friend and mine, young Latha Bourne, went to great trouble to collect the signatures of nearly 2,000 Newton County women to add to my petition of registered voting males, with a wonderful letter (she sent me a copy) in which she beseeched His Excellency for clemency and reminded him, “None of us females can vote, Governor, but we can sure influence the men who do.” As far as I know, Gov. Hays didn’t read her letter or give her petition any more of his precious attention than he gave mine. But if he and the people of Arkansas are blind and deaf to the hideous injustice of your wrongful conviction and punishment, perhaps Americans in general will not be. I am trying very hard to find a publisher for one or more of several articles I’ve written about the case. So far, I’ve placed one in the Houston Chronicle and one in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which isn’t much of an accomplishment, but at least it means that there are some editors who are interested in you, which is more than can be said, unfortunately, for the editors of Little Rock, including my former boss, Mr. Thomas Fletcher, to whom, I’m both sorry and happy to say, I’ve submitted my resignation. I am very hopeful that Associated Press, a national news service, will accept the best of my articles so that it will appear all over the country. Now, if you are interested in Dorinda, the pitiful origin of this whole mess, she is reasonably happy living here at my father’s house and attempting to attend Fort Steele Elementary School, where, I am told, she is having problems with reading and comprehension as well as “ability to get along with others,” but is making progress. She sends you her best wishes, her continuing (that is, lifelong) regrets, and her “bedtime prayers.” Sometimes I feel inclined to prayer myself. You are right, I don’t know you and I never asked you where you stand in regard to a Supreme Being, but I learned enough about you on my trip to Stay More to have the impression that you are not exactly a praying man yourself. If there is a God, He (or She) would at least have allowed Governor Hays to listen to Dorinda’s story, but he (and He) would not. I don’t believe in Governor Hays, either. I believe in you, Nail. I believe that men as good and as brave and as strong and as passionate as yourself are the highest manifestation of life on this earth…next to, of course, trees. If we were trees, if we were all rooted, and still, and swaying gently in the spring breeze, would we be happy? Perhaps, but we could still be cut down. Nobody is going to cut you down, my dearest. Not as long as I am still standing.

“Nails, mah fren, does I heah yo weepin? Do de sadnesses got you too? It aint no hep to cry. We got to be brabe, man. We got to face de music. You dry yo eyes now, heah me?”

Nail was not aware that he had made a sound, but he saw that a drop of water had fallen on Viridis’ letter, and it wasn’t sweat. He was almost glad that the letter he’d written for Cobb to smuggle out to her, that was probably right now on the warden’s desk, would never reach her, because it was such paltry, numb, ignorant nonsense compared with her letter. The only thing he’d said that came anywhere near equaling the beauty of her letter was when he almost came as close as she had to coming right out and saying “I love you.” How had he put it, or sneaked around not coming right out and putting it? Yes: he had written, “And I and the trees will love you for it for ever more,” which wasn’t the same as saying “I love you” or even saying “Me and the trees too love you” but just saying “We will” as if it hadn’t happened already but was likely to happen if we just all got a chance to last forevermore. Thinking of trees, he remembered the tree charm and remembered where he had hidden it, and he fished it out and cleaned it off and hid it inside Dr. Hood. To take advantage of the morning light, he read for a while in Dr. Hood, which was written as if a real medical doctor were having a series of informal but educational chats with one of his patients. Nail received advice on what to do while his wife was delivering the baby. He happened to read, “In the event of prolonged labor, the ingestion of a small quantity of mustard oil will increase peristaltic movements of the stomach and possibly advance the contractions of the womb.” Nail wondered who was supposed to drink the mustard oil, himself or his wife? Probably her. He flipped over to the section on Pharmacopoeia and read: “Oil of mustard—an ester of isothio-cyanic acid useful as a rubefacient, counterirritant, emetic, and to disguise one’s scent from bloodhounds while escaping from the penitentiary.” Nail gave his head a brisk shake and reread the definition and found the last part of it missing on the second reading, and told himself that he was beginning to go stir crazy…if he had not already been for quite some time now. It scarcely mattered that Viridis would never read his request for mustard oil; he couldn’t use it now if he had a gallon of it. He would stay in this hole until…but, goddammit, it did matter that she would never read his request not to attend his execution. Somehow he had to get word to her that he did not want her to do that.

“How you doin there, Fleece Boy? Have you prepared yourself to meet your Maker?” Nail heard a familiar voice he hadn’t had to listen to for quite some time.

“Yassuh, Reberen McPhee, I sho has. De Lawd say He gwine take me in His ahms and He aint gwine let dat ole sizzle chair hut me one bit.”

“Well, that’s good, Fleece, I’m real proud to hear that. How ’bout I read you some scripture this mornin?”

“I sholy ’preciate iffin you did, Reberen.”

Nail listened to Jimmie Mac visit with Fleas for most of an hour, thinking that his turn would have to come next and he would have to give up the last of the morning sunlight to McPhee, when he’d rather use it to read to himself a couple of those nice love songs that Solomon wrote, especially that one about how beautiful the lady’s feet were with shoes on them.

“Good to see you back again, Brother Chism. I mean, now, I don’t mean it’s good that you’re back in the death hole, I just mean it’s almost like a kind of homecoming. Right? In my experience I’ve known a number of men to actually prefer being down here to being up there. Up there they’ve got problems you don’t have down here. Down here too it’s kind of quiet and peaceful, don’t you think? Up there it can get anything but. Now, I don’t suppose you’ve had any revelations or second thoughts that might make it easier for me to get you ready to meet the Lord?”

It took Nail a little while to determine that this was a question, not a simple observation of reality, and at length he said, “Well, Preacher, I’ll tell ye. I’ve done some thinkin, and I believe I can see God. Yessir, I can see the face of God as plain as I can see you a-standin there, and the wonderful thing is, Reverend, that God is a her, I mean She’s a Woman. Did you know that?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Yessir, you are, because what I’m tellin you is, and you’d better believe it, is that here all along folks have been under the mistook impression that God is a man, and a father. But She’s not. No, I’m tellin you, She’s a female, and a mother. She’s the best mother ever there was.”

Jimmie Mac did not say anything. He seemed to be searching his memory to see if he had ever encountered anybody who had ever said anything like this and, if so, what he had said in reply. But after searching corners of his memory he had forgotten he had, he couldn’t find anything. Finally he said, “Well, Brother Chism, that’s very interesting. But you’re wrong. The Good Book tells us through and through that He’s a him, and a man, and He took the form of a man when He became the Son of Man and died on the cross for our sins. They never hung no female up on a cross.”

“Yeah, poor Jesus was a man all right, just like me, but God was his mother, not his father.”

“That’s blasphemy, Brother Chism. It hurts me to hear a man talk sacrilegious.”

“You don’t have to listen,” Nail pointed out to him.

“Are you saying I’m not welcome here in your time of torment and travail?”

“You’re welcome to hear me help you get straight about the sex of God.”

Jimmie Mac did not come again, or, rather, he did not stop by Nail’s cell when he came to visit Fleas, and that didn’t last much longer, because Fleas was taken up to see Old Sparky on April 14th. It seemed as if all they were waiting for was somebody strong enough to take him up there. Sure enough, as Short Leg had feared, Fat Gabe’s replacement wasn’t a bit of improvement on him. For one thing, he was just as fat. His name was Gillespie Gorham, and from the beginning Nail thought of him as Fat Gill, but the first time he called him that, Fat Gill smashed him in the face and broke one of his teeth. Fat Gill did not slap, forehanded or backhanded, the way that Fat Gabe had done. He simply made a fist right alongside his cheek, then rammed it straight into the victim’s face. “Call me fat once more,” he invited. Nail did not.

Apart from his own execution, Nail had two things to expect: one, he would probably be required to witness Fleas’ electrocution, and two, Viridis might be there too and he could sit next to her. And sure enough, when Fat Gill and Short Leg came to get Fleas before sundown on April 14th, the guards first handcuffed Nail and took him upstairs, then came back for Fleas, who had to be practically carried, he was fighting and screaming so much. Nail took his usual seat in the witness area and waited for Viridis as the other witnesses came. The guards managed to strap Fleas into the chair, but they wouldn’t gag him, which was what he needed most; he was drowning out both Jimmie Mac’s attempt to say “Our Father Who art in Heaven” and Nail’s attempt to correct him: “Our Mother Who art in Heaven…” Viridis never came. Was Fleas’ picture not worth putting in the paper? But then Nail remembered that Viridis had resigned from the paper. Maybe she’d tried to come and they wouldn’t let her in.

Right before the end, Fleas, who was a very dark colored man of about thirty, seemed to recognize Nail. He stopped begging for life and looked Nail right in the eye and said, “Aint you Nails? I never seed you befo. You Nails, aint you?” Nail nodded. “Nails, could you play on yo mouf foggan fo me? Could you play ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’?”

“Shut up, nigger,” Warden Burdell said. “You got any last words?”

“I’se sayin ’em,” Fleas said. “I’se askin Nails to play on his mouf foggan fo me.”

“He aint got his mouth organ, nigger. Sorry.” Warden Burdell raised his hand and dropped it, and Bobo shoved down the switch, and the light dimmed and the dynamo hummed and Nail watched very carefully every twitch and jerk of Fleas’ body so he would know exactly what to expect of his own body in six more days. When Bobo brought the switch back up a while later, Warden Burdell motioned Doc Gode to see if the victim was still alive. Doc Gode took a stethoscope and put it up against the black man’s hot chest, but before he could listen, all of them heard these words crooning from the black man’s mouth: “…Comin fo to cah me home! Swe hing low, swe heet chah ott!” Warden Burdell shot his finger at Bobo, and Bobo turned the juice on again and left it on.

As the witnesses were leaving, the warden said matter-of-factly to Nail, “You’re next.”

“Yeah,” Nail said. He raised his voice so Bobo could hear. “And when you turn that thing on, don’t turn it off until I’m black as Fleas.”

“Still think you can take a few of us with you?” the warden asked.

Nail knew he could not, and back in the death hole he thought about that. They never brought him any knife, fork, or spoon to eat with. All he got was cornbread, and the fat meat he had to eat with his fingers, and if there were any cowpeas, they came in a cup he had to hand back. It was doubly unfortunate that Timbo Red’s impulsive gesture had not only doomed the boy but also deprived Nail of the weapon he had intended to take to the chair with him. All the thought that Nail had put into preparing for his last minutes would have to be revised. At least, if it was any consolation, he knew now that Viridis would not be there, not because he’d asked her to stay home but because they wouldn’t let her in. So it would just be him and his eight or nine male witnesses, Fat Gill and Short Leg, the warden, and Bobo. And Jimmie Mac. Nail realized that in order to have any hope at all, he had better try to get on the good side of Jimmie Mac and change God’s sex back to male.

But Jimmie Mac never came again until his presence was required for the execution. And God remained a woman, an unseen one but a kind one, Who sent to Nail a small blessing in the form of the companionship of Timbo Red for Nail’s last days. Sure, it was a mixed blessing: it meant that Timbo Red had been convicted of the first-degree murder of Fat Gabe and was going to be executed for it (in those days the killing of a police officer or “correctional” officer was considered the worst of all crimes). Almost as soon as Fleas was moved out of his death cell, Timbo Red was moved into it. But the man and the boy were neighbors for two nights before either discovered the other’s presence. One morning Nail listened to the familiar sound for a long time before he finally recognized it for what it was: the skritch-skritch of a charcoal pencil on a piece of paper. Nail’s voice was first: “So they let you keep your pitcher pad?”

“Nails? That you in thar, Nails?”

“Yep.”

“Nails, I shore am sorry I tuck yore knife lak that. Reckon now ye caint use it fer what ye aimed to, kin ye?”

“Reckon not, Tim. But that’s okay. I’m jist sorry I had the damn thing in the first place. If I hadn’t of had it, you wouldn’t be in the death hole.”

“Shit. That thar Fat Gabe would of kilt ye.”

“Noo, son, he weren’t quite ready to do that, jist yet. You shouldn’t of done what ye done, Tim. I shore ’preciate it, but they weren’t no call fer ye to butt in lak thet.”

Timbo Red was silent, thinking about that, and then he said, “Do ye know what? Tim aint my name. But it aint Timbo Red neither. That’s jist what they call me.”

“Shore,” Nail said. “My name aint Nails neither. It’s jist plain ole Nail. No Nails. It’s a ole fambly name.”

“What I figgered. They was some folks name of Nail up whar I come from.”

“What is yore name, son? I don’t recollect.”

“Hit’s Ernest. Ernest Bodenhammer. But with a name lak thet, you mize well jist call me Tim.”

“Naw, I’ll call ye Ernest, if ye want.”

“And I’ll call ye Nail.”

In the death hole Nail Chism and Ernest Bodenhammer became more closely acquainted than they had during the months together upstairs in the barracks. Down here they had privacy. There was no one to hear them. A trusty came three times a day to bring the cornbread and cowpeas, and about once a day Short Leg or Fat Gill would come down and look in to see if they were both still alive and hadn’t chewed through their bars.

They talked all the time except during the morning sunlight, which Ernest took advantage of to draw, and Nail to read; during all of the darker hours they talked, and before the 20th rolled around they knew almost everything about each other that was worth knowing. It wasn’t until late the first night of their discovery of each other that their stream of conversation temporarily ran dry, and Nail volunteered to play a few tunes on his harmonica. He asked if Ernest had any favorites, and at Ernest’s request he played “Fire on the Mountain,” “Hell Tore Loose in Georgia,” and “Big-Eared Mule.”

It was while he was playing the last tune that Ernest interrupted him: “Hey, Nail! What’s that there mouth organ made out of?”

Nail stopped playing. “Made out of?”

“Yeah. Aint it got some metal in her?”

Nail studied the Hohner. “Why, yes, matter of fact, she’s nearly all metal, except for the board.”

“Any plates of metal in her?”

“Yeah, she’s got a couple plates.”

“I got a idee,” Ernest said. “Couldn’t ye tear her apart and make ye a knife out of one of them plates?”

Nail reflected. “Hell, I could make two knifes with her, but I aint about to. Wouldn’t be no use as a mouth organ anymore.”

“Which’d ye ruther, yore life or yore music?”

“Ernest, you’ve mistook the idee. If I had me a knife, I couldn’t save myself, I’d jist kill a good few of the others before they threw the switch on me.”

“That’s better’n nothin, aint it?”

“I used to think so. I aint so sure anymore.”

But before he could fall asleep that night, Nail spent a good bit of time holding the Hohner in one hand, fingering it and thinking. He’d sure hate to tear it up, but it wasn’t going to be any use to him anyway in three more days. Was that enough time to take one of the metal plates and sharpen it along the cement floor? Even if it was, the resulting weapon wouldn’t be as firm or as dangerous as the knife he’d had before.

The next morning after breakfast, while Ernest was doing his drawing, Nail asked, “What are ye makin a pitcher of this mornin?”

“Ole Sparky,” Ernest said.

“I didn’t know you’d ever seen it,” Nail said.

“I aint. I’m jist imaginin what it looks lak. But I may need yore help. Remember how you told me afore, when I tried to draw it with chalk on the floor? What are ye readin this mornin?”

“I aint readin,” Nail declared. “I’m a-takin my harmonica apart.”

All day and all night while they talked, Nail sharpened one of the metal plates against the cement floor. He was impatient and did not do it quietly, but their voices covered the sound of the scraping. “Tell me what’s it lak raisin sheep,” Ernest requested, and Nail instructed the boy on the art and science of sheep-raising. He began with the land itself: it was necessary to have well-drained pastures, because sheep cannot bear damp. Old, permanent meadows were better than artificial meadows because if Nature is left alone, She’ll give you a greater variety of grasses. The best pastures face south but have a border of trees to shade the sheep during the hottest part of the day. The shade should be green, or purple-green, dark and dry and cool.

The next day, which by his reckoning was April 18th (he didn’t have a calendar now, just a good sense of time), he had the dagger-like shape pretty well defined, and began honing the edge of it on the sole of his shoe as he told the boy about breeding sheep: the proper selection of the ram, picking him out not because he’s biggest or heaviest but because he has good fleece and a good shape; the bringing together of the ram and the ewe; the proper time and place for the mating.

Ernest asked questions. “How big a peter does a ram have on him?”

Nail laughed. “Didn’t you never see any sheep up around Timbo?”

“They don’t raise ’em up thataway, that I ever heared tell. Is a ram’s peter much bigger than a man’s?”

“Not bigger’n yours,” Nail assured him.

“Do tell?” Ernest became thoughtful and silent, but at length he lowered his voice and asked, “Did ye ever hanker to mount a yo?”

It was Nail’s turn to be silent before he said, “Wal, shore. I reckon any feller would.”

“But didje ever do it?” Ernest asked, and waited. He waited a good while before changing the subject. “Nail, you aint never been married, have ye?”

Nail cleared his throat. “No, I guess not.”

“Didje ever have a womarn?”

Nail pondered. He said, “Yeah. I did.”

“Tell me what it’s lak.”

“You never did?”

“I got real close one time, but she changed her mind. Was the one ye had willin?”

“She was willin.” Nail remembered, and smiled. “Matter of fact, it was her idee.”

“Tell me all about it so’s I can draw a pitcher.”

“You want a pitcher of ’em doin it?”

“Yeah, tell me how she set or laid down or whar she put her knees and her hands, and all lak thet. Tell me how you got down or knelt, and all. Did ye have yore clothes on?”

So Nail talked and described and narrated, and he heard Ernest’s charcoal pencil going skritch-skritch. Ernest occasionally interrupted with questions. Was it dark? How far off was that coal oil lamp? What kind of covers was under them? Did they pull any covers over them? What color was her hair? Could you tell if the hair down there was the same color, or lighter? Ernest had a hundred questions before they were both finished.

“I wish I could see yore pitcher,” Nail remarked.

“It aint my best one,” Ernest reflected. “But it’ll do. Looks jist lak ye. Or jist lak I remember ye. Have you changed any since I seen you last?”

“A mite older, is all.”

And sometime in the night, Nail, insomnia filling his head with thoughts of the day after tomorrow, listened to Ernest making love to his imagination and to himself. It went on awhile. Nail reflected that there was at least a ghost of a chance that the boy might get his execution stayed. He was only sixteen, and maybe that governor would take pity and commute Ernest in a way he couldn’t for a grown-up convicted rapist like Nail. Ernest was real smart, and if he got commuted to life and got sent to Tucker, he might be smart enough to escape someday and maybe become a sheep farmer in some faraway place where he and Rindy could live happy ever after. Nail told himself to go ahead and finish telling Ernest all the things he wanted him to tell Viridis, just in case he ever got the chance.

On the 19th, the day before his scheduled execution, he did. Ernest listened carefully, remembering it all, for a long time before he interrupted: “What makes ye think I’ll ever git the chance to tell her any of this? Ole Sparky’s gonna cup my butt on the first day of May.”

Nail was putting the last honing on his blade. He tested it with his thumb. “You jist never know,” he said. He began cutting the cuff of his trousers to unravel thread for a string to hang the blade around his neck. He heard a noise and quickly hid the blade under his bedcover. Fat Gill and Short Leg came to his cell, along with a white trusty whom Nail recognized as the convict barber, carrying a pair of shears, a shaving mug, and a strop. Fat Gill handed the razor to the barber after first handcuffing Nail and warning him to sit absolutely still. With the shears the barber clipped off as much of Nail’s regrown hair as he could; Nail reflected that this was the time of year he ought to be shearing his own sheep, if he still had any; he watched the hair fall into his lap and onto the floor, short shocks of white mixed with blond. Then the barber soaped Nail’s head and shaved his skull. He worked rapidly and not very carefully; Nail felt himself get nicked twice and felt the blood trickling behind his ears.

“Want a mirror?” Fat Gill asked when the barber was finished.

Nail raised the middle finger of his manacled hand and held it stiffly upright for Fat Gill to sneer at.

When they were gone, Ernest’s voice came: “What did they do to ye?”

“Shaved my head,” Nail said.

“What’d they do thet fer?”

Nail realized the boy didn’t have much of a conception of how the electrocution process worked, and he debated with himself whether to explain it. Would it help Ernest get ready? Or would it just make him more scared than he was already, although he tried so hard to seem not to be? A thought suddenly occurred to Nail: tomorrow when they took Nail upstairs, they would take Ernest too, as a witness, and Nail’s would be the first execution that the boy would see. He also realized that if Fat Gill and Short Leg were able to restrain Nail so that he couldn’t reach his knife, Ernest would reach it and do to Fat Gill and the other men exactly what he had done to Fat Gabe. Nail didn’t want that. Since they were going to kill the kid in Old Sparky anyway, Ernest would probably figure it made no difference if he died trying to help Nail take as many with them as they could. Nail could not allow that.

“Son,” Nail said to Ernest, “I’m gonna tell ye exactly what they’re gonna make you watch at sundown tomorrow. I want ye to know jist what you’ll see, includin how I’m gonna kill a few of ’em first, specially Warden Burdell and that executioner, a son of a bitch named Bobo. But before I tell ye, I want ye to promise me one thing: you’ll jist sit there and not lift a finger to help or git in the way or git yoreself in any more trouble than you already got. Will ye promise?”

On

But Ernest Bodenhammer was not allowed to witness the execution of Nail Chism. Tom Fletcher told her later that the warden had wanted to include Ernest because it was customary to have a condemned man watch all of the electrocutions in order to give him a clear foretaste of his own, but that the warden had made an exception this time because in view of the way Ernest had killed Gabriel McChristian over Nail, the young man might very well create a disturbance during the execution. And besides, the warden pointed out to Tom, there wasn’t really any room: the witness area was filled. All twelve of the chairs were taken up by reporters. Warden Harris Burdell had even had to turn away a few latecomers, including Viridis herself, who was late not because it had taken her that long to persuade Tom Fletcher to give her a press card, nor because she had needed more time to steel herself, but because she’d attempted unsuccessfully to convince Warden Burdell that she wanted to attend as a bonafide journalist, not as the condemned man’s “sweetheart,” as the warden insisted on referring to her. He had refused to admit her, but he had used as his excuse the crowded presence of reporters from, in addition to the Arkansas Gazette and its rival the Arkansas Democrat, the Houston Chronicle, the Post-Dispatch and the Globe-Democrat (both of St. Louis), the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Kansas City Star, Associated Press, and, the farthest that any reporter had journeyed, the Atlanta Constitution. She had hoped to get at least one representative from the East, but the Washington Star’s man had missed his train connection, and the Philadelphia Inquirer had decided at the last moment that there were bigger stories in Pennsylvania.

Tom Fletcher himself had represented the Arkansas Gazette, and afterward came to his car, where Viridis had been required to wait, and told her about it. The deathroom “crew,” he said, had been caught completely by surprise. Warden Burdell had no inkling until the first reporter, from the Times-Picayune, arrived at his office just an hour before the execution was to take place, and requested an interview with the condemned man. Warden Burdell had to explain to him, and to the next eight reporters who knocked at his door, that condemned men were not allowed to speak to anyone other than the minister and the warden himself on the day of execution. It was tradition, if not ironclad rule. So some of the reporters had to content themselves with interviewing Warden Burdell, asking him such challenging questions that he replied to each with “I’m only the warden, doing my duty. I didn’t sentence Chism to death, and it aint my business to pardon him.”

Other reporters cornered the executioner, Mr. Irvin Bobo, age forty-two, who closely resembled the movie actor Charles Chaplin and whose breath reeked of liquor, and attempted to ask him questions. He was not able to invent a stock reply as the warden had, but he was quoted as saying, “I aint gonna kill no more white men after this one. I’m only good at killing niggers. If they want to kill any more white men, they’ll have to get somebody else.”

Reporters managed to locate two of the guards, James Fancher and Gillespie Gorham, and asked them several questions. Their boss had been able to give them only a few moments’ warning, telling them to put on their neckties and comb their hair and not say anything stupid. Gillespie Gorham, thirty-one, a rather corpulent man, formerly a patrolman with the Little Rock police, solved the problem by repeatedly answering questions with “I don’t know nothin.” James Fancher, thirty-seven, who appeared crippled, one leg shorter than the other, was willing to talk and even to describe the condemned man’s last hours, which had been spent in conversation with another condemned man (or youth) in an adjoining cell.

The reporters had then converged upon the minister, the Reverend James S. McPhee, fifty-two, who explained that he was not affiliated with any particular church and considered himself nondenominational although he was partial to the Baptists. He was a full-time employee of the St. Louis & Iron Mountain Railway, working as a conductor on the Texarkana run, but some years earlier he had received “the call” to make sure that all condemned men, black and white alike, had the final peace of knowing that God loved them and was willing to forgive them their crimes if they confessed and acknowledged Jesus Christ as their Saviour. No, this Nail Chism fellow had not confessed anything. He was an atheist. Well, not exactly an atheist, because he did finally profess some sort of belief in God, but he held the heretical notion that God was a woman. Reverend McPhee had accompanied Nail Chism on his previous “last mile” to the electric chair, and he had accompanied a total of thirteen men, all but two of them of the colored race, on their last mile to the electric chair since its invention, and he had never seen any condemned man approach the chair as coldly as Nail Chism did, which, Reverend McPhee believed, was probably a sign of guilt: Chism knew he deserved what he was getting. And yes, this time the minister hoped the execution would be carried out.

When Tom Fletcher arrived to take his seat in the witnesses’ area, he noticed that all the other men had their press cards stuck in the hatbands of their felt fedoras, and he had to search for a while through his wallet to find his press card, which he hadn’t flashed, let alone worn, for some years. He put it in his hat and took his seat in the back row of the folding chairs.

Eventually an iron door creaked open, and guards Gorham and Fancher entered with the prisoner, followed by Reverend McPhee. There was an audible collective gasp among the hardened journalists at the sight of the condemned man, although Tom Fletcher’s first thought, he confessed to Viridis, was this: what could possibly have attracted Very to this fellow? Chism’s wrists were held together very low, over his groin, as if protecting his private parts. A very tall man, his shoulders were somewhat stooped, probably the result, Tom decided, of long confinement in a bent position, although it appeared that the weight of the handcuffs on his wrists was pulling down his arms and his shoulders.

Chism looked at the witnesses and moved his eyes from one face to the next, as if he were looking for somebody. “You, probably,” Tom said. His blue eyes, Tom noted, were his only handsome feature, contradicting the gangling frame, the bald, bony skull, the battered face, and the missing teeth…although this last did not become apparent until, after searching the reporters’ faces, he smiled. “Why he smiled, I don’t know. Was he glad you weren’t there?”

The warden spoke to the prisoner. “Well, Chism, you’ve sure got twelve of ’em this time. Count ’em. They’re all big-time, big-city newspapermen. Look at ’em. You’re a celebrity, Chism!”

It was clear to Tom Fletcher that the warden was enjoying the scene and would probably milk it for all it was worth. The warden even faced the reporters and “presented” Chism to them, holding his hand out, palm up, beneath Chism’s waist and making a little bow toward the reporters, like a circus ringmaster presenting his star performer. Tom said he wouldn’t have been surprised if Chism had begun doing some tricks at that moment…but the trick came later.

The strange thing then, Tom said, was that the Atlanta Constitution’s man began clapping his hands. Tom knew him, and had tossed down a drink with him earlier that afternoon, but the man wasn’t intoxicated. Maybe his applause was prompted by the warden’s ridiculous bow. In any case, one by one the other reporters dropped their notebooks into their laps and began clapping too. Tom joined in, telling himself that he was clapping for probably the same reason the rest of them were: that they admired him as a man, knowing he was innocent and was coming to this end bravely, without fear or cowardice or hysterics. The warden seemed stunned at this continuing outburst of applause until finally he himself began clapping. So did one of the guards. The only people in the room who did not were the minister and the executioner, who looked embarrassed, as if they knew they ought to clap but didn’t know how.

Chism did not bow. Tom wouldn’t have been surprised if he had. Tom was surprised at what Chism did do: he spoke to them. “I thank ye,” he said. “I thank ye kindly. I hope you fellers will git a good story for yore papers. I hope—”

“Shut up, Chism,” Warden Burdell said. “You aint supposed to talk to them.”

“Let ’im talk!” yelled the man from the Chronicle, and the others said, “Yeah, Warden, let him talk.”

“Well, okay,” said Burdell. “He’s allowed some last words anyhow. Say your last words to them if you want, Chism.”

And Nail Chism continued. “I hope that while you’re here you’ll trouble yoreselves to find out a few things about a boy name of Ernest Bodenhammer, who’s not but sixteen years old and is downstairs waitin to die in that chair hisself. He’s just a ole Ozarks country boy, like me, but he’s got a talent I couldn’t never hope to have: he can draw like a angel, although there’s only one angel I ever saw do a drawing, and she aint here today, I’m glad to see.”

The warden spoke. “Well now, that’s enough now, Chism now.”

“Let him talk!” everybody else said, and the warden shrugged his shoulders and fished out his timepiece.

“The other convicts call him Timbo Red,” Nail Chism went on, “because we’ve all got nicknames, like it would be bad for a feller to go by his real name. I reckon we figger a man’s real name was what got him into trouble, and as long as he’s got a play-like name he can pretend he’s innocent. Now, you boys know that I don’t have to pretend I’m innocent. But it’s Timbo Red, or Ernest Bodenhammer, that I want to tell ye about, and I hope you’ll write up his story. He aint innocent of killing a guard, because he really did kill that guard, name of Fat Gabe McChristian, who murdered more men than that electric chair ever done.”

“Now that’s enough, Chism,” Warden Burdell insisted, and said to the witnesses, “I’m very sorry, gentlemen, but if you gave him a chance he’d talk to you from now until midnight.”

The Commercial Appeal’s man stood up from his chair and declared, “We’ve got until midnight, then. Let him talk.”

The warden held up his pocket watch and turned the face toward them. “He has to be executed at sundown, and it’s nearly time.”

The man from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch stood up and pretended to read from his notes: “‘Warden Harris Burdell refused a legitimate request from the press to allow the condemned man a minute to finish a thought-provoking statement.’”

“All right, dammit,” Burdell said. “But watch your tongue, Chism. Watch what you say and don’t go spreadin a pack of lies.”

“It aint no lie that Ernest Bodenhammer does not deserve to die for puttin an end to the life of that murderin son of a bitch Fat Gabe McChristian!” Nail said, with the only flare-up of emotion they were to witness. Then, more calmly, he resumed, “Now, maybe you fellers think that this don’t make no difference, but I just hope you can get a chance to see some of his pitchers that he drew, and then tell Miss Viridis Monday that I hope she will do what she can for him, and I shore appreciate what she done for me.”

There was a silence then. The reporters waited for him to continue, but he did not. Warden Burdell asked him, “Was them your last words, Chism?”

“No,” he said. “It’s these: tell her that I and the trees will love her forevermore.”

“Okay, boys, strap him in,” Warden Burdell said to the two guards, and they took him to the electric chair and made him sit down, and the guard named Gorham unlocked his handcuffs while the guard named Fancher secured one of his arms with an old black strap of leather that seemed to have been cut from mule harness. Chism made a brief move as if to struggle, but the warden himself nervously helped them hold him until the strapping of his arms, and then his legs, was completed. The warden whispered to the condemned man something that the reporters could not hear. Then he looked at the executioner and asked, “Ready, Bobo?”

Mr. Irvin Bobo, despite his intoxication, was lucid enough to point out something to the warden: “You aint put the cap on him yet, boss.”

“Oh,” said Burdell. “Right.” He motioned to the guard with the short leg to set the metal cap atop the head of the condemned man and strap it in place beneath his chin. “There, now.” Tom Fletcher experienced a sympathetic shiver as the steel cap touched the man’s shaved head. The warden and the guards stepped away from the chair. Mr. Bobo raised a hand to hold the switch-handle.

The man from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch stood up again and began to read: “‘The State of Arkansas last night put to death in its electric chair an innocent man, Nail Chism, twenty-seven. He had been tried and convicted of assaulting a young white woman who later confessed that he was wrongly convicted on her testimony. Appeals to Governor George W. Hays failed to gain a pardon or even to stay the execution. Last-minute appeals were made by a delegation of newspapermen directly to the warden of the state penitentiary, Harris Burdell, but Mr. Burdell remained unconvinced that the unfavorable publicity resulting would probably cost him his job…’”

“Awright, goddammit!” Burdell yelled, and grew very red in the face and stood in front of the press gallery with his hands on his hips and said, “You guys are makin it very difficult for me to exercise my sworn duties! Time and time again I’ve told you that I don’t have any power whatsoever to stop this execution, and I’m not goin to stop it!” He turned and gestured. “Bobo, put your hand back on that switch!” The warden pointed his trembling finger at the condemned man. “Y’all keep talkin about him bein so innocent! Let me just show you gentlemen how innocent he is! That business he kept yappin about, about his punk pal Timbo Red Bodenhammer killin one of my men, was on account of a letter he tried to smuggle out of my prison, tryin to get it out to that same sweetheart of his he keeps talkin about, Miss Viridis Monday, in which he told her, and I quote!” The warden fished into each of his coat pockets before he found the letter he was looking for, then began to read from it, first fumbling with his spectacles to get them into place. “‘I reckon you know that if they try to electercute’—that’s sic, gentlemen, sic—‘electercute me I aim to kill as many as I can beforehand and I reckon you also know how I aim to do it.’ Now, gentlemen, we managed to intercept this threatening letter, at the sacrifice of the life of my best guard, and I have been careful to keep a close watch on this man Chism and attempt to determine just how he intended to kill as many of us as he could. That means you too, gentlemen. He intended to kill as many of you as he could. And how did he intend to do it?”

The warden let his rhetorical question hang in the air defiantly for a long moment. Several of the reporters were attempting to write down the warden’s words as fast as he spoke, and he was speaking very fast: “I’ll tell you how! We discovered that the past several days he has been sharpenin a piece of metal in his cell, a plate of steel, this long, taken out of a mouth organ, a big harmonica. His young punk Timbo Red killed my good man McChristian with a previous dagger that Chism had been wearin on a string around his neck for quite some time, probably since the last time we tried to electrocute him. So we suspected that Chism might try to make himself another dagger. Unbeknownst to him, and to his punk pal Bodenhammer, we’ve been spyin on ’em this past week. Nail Chism went and sharpened a piece of metal into a dagger, which he then tied to a string around his neck, intending at the last moment to get that dagger out and kill me and you and as many of us as he could! Now, is that man innocent?”

It was so quiet in the room that you could hear the electric dynamo hum. At least, Tom Fletcher thought it was the dynamo, but he wasn’t so sure.

Nobody answered the warden, who looked defiantly around him as if expecting an answer. “We all knew what was coming next,” Tom said. Warden Burdell moved toward Chism, saying, “Fortunately, we got him strapped into the chair before he could get his knife out and use it on us. But let’s have a look at it and see how lethal it is!”

With a flourish the warden reached out and grabbed Nail Chism by the collar of his shirt and literally ripped the shirt completely away, exposing Nail Chism’s bare chest and the string around his neck. But there was no dagger on the string—just some kind of small medallion, or ornament, which looked like a watch fob in the form of a…perhaps of a tree.

And what he had thought was the hum of the dynamo, Tom Fletcher decided, wonderingly, was some peculiar kind of remote, faraway singing, as if a choir were down the hill outside The Walls, or, no, not down the hill but somewhere up in the trees.

The gentleman from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch stood up for a third time and finished reading his story: “‘A display of last-minute theatrics by the overwrought warden failed to convince the members of the press that the innocent man was in fact a desperate cutthroat. The warden seemed completely dumbfounded when the dagger he intended to reveal failed to materialize. He looked unbelievingly at Nail Chism’s bare chest, then even looked behind Mr. Chism, as if the missing dagger might be hanging down his back. Then the warden looked at the reporters in consternation. Most of those present were laughing at him. Apparently, laughter would militate against any order for the execution to be carried out, and it was not. The flustered warden fled from the room, declaring, as his last words, that he wanted to talk to the governor.’”

Off

Off they trooped to the Monday house on Arch Street and had a party. She had planned it well in advance—planned it twice, in two different ways: If the execution took place, they would bring the body here, and she would wash it and dress it in a suit of her father’s clothes and prepare it for burial in a plot she’d bought in Mt. Holly Cemetery, just a few blocks down the street. If the execution did not take place, and it did not, the men responsible for preventing it would come here to this house to celebrate, to see the suit of her father’s clothes draped over the sofa and hear her explanation of it, and to put that into their stories if they wished. Wasn’t that the sort of “local color” they sought?

She had even ordered the champagne, and had a case of it on ice in the kitchen. Call her overconfident. Or at least say that she was so very hopeful and faithful that she had not even paused to consider how to dispose of the champagne if it were not usable. Give it away? Pour it down the sink? Probably after the funeral she would have consumed several bottles of it quickly all by herself, hoping it would kill her, but it is important, gentlemen, to put into your stories that she had not even given a thought to what she would do with the champagne. As it turned out, very happily, she gave it to you, all you could drink.

And they drank past midnight. Only one of them, the Globe-Democrat, was a teetotaler and did not come to the party until it was almost over, when he arrived to report that he had kept watch at the penitentiary until all the lights were out, the warden returned from an unsuccessful attempt to see the governor, and James Fancher informed him, the reporter, for a five-dollar consideration, that the condemned man was safely back in his cell, where he and the young man in the adjoining cell held their own celebration until Mr. Fancher made them shut up.

Cyril Monday, her father, was both proud and uncomfortable to have so many journalists in his parlor and his kitchen and, the night being fair, out on his front porch, where, journalists being what they are, they smoked cigars and swilled champagne and kept the neighbors awake. Her father’s occupation had required him to deal with many kinds of men, but he had little experience with journalists, certainly not a dozen of them at once. They were polite and respectful to him. One of them, the Commercial Appeal, interviewed him at length over a bottle of the Mumm’s, asking him such questions as: What did you notice in the childhood of your daughter that would have turned her into a crusader and heroine?

Some of these men, after several glasses of champagne, became excessively gallant and even romantic toward her, and before the evening was over she would receive, and decline, a proposal of marriage from the Houston Chronicle. Flattery flowed like the champagne. Tom Fletcher told her he’d never seen her more “radiant,” and he called her “ebullient” and told her she was “tingling.” No one had ever used those adjectives on her before.

At the request of the Post-Dispatch she went upstairs to Dorinda, told her to put on her best dress, then led her downstairs and presented her to the newsmen. One of them offered Dorinda a glass of champagne, which the girl sampled but did not finish. Several of the reporters stimulated the girl into conversation, and before long Dorinda was talking and talking.

When the Kansas City Star, who also happened to be the newspaper’s art critic, asked to look at some of Viridis’ paintings, she took him upstairs to her studio for a while, and he was quite impressed, or pretended to be. He asked her for her opinion of Ernest Bodenhammer’s work, and she said that she was still looking forward to seeing the young man’s drawings. The Star suggested that they go together to the penitentiary the next day to interview young Bodenhammer and see his work.

The man from Associated Press wanted to talk with her about Governor Hays. Was it true, he asked, that the governor considered black people a primitive race of subhumans? Yes, she said. Was it also true that the governor’s primary objective in office was to build up a loyal political machine? Quite true, she said. Was Governor Hays using the prohibition issue as a football and playing quarterback simultaneously for both teams? She did not understand football, but yes, the governor had succeeded in making Arkansas almost totally dry while pretending to be sympathetic to the wets.

Her mother and her sister Cyrilla did not join the party, although both she and her father invited them to come downstairs. Cyrilla declined her sister’s invitation with “Tonight belongs to you,” and would not leave her room; later, however, Viridis looked in and saw the Atlanta Constitution sitting with her and offering her some champagne.

Only one of the reporters, the Times-Picayune, actually broached the possibility that Viridis’ great effort to save Nail Chism was motivated by anything other than her humanitarian zeal. “Honey, let me ask you a question,” he said to her in the kitchen while she was refilling the bowl of shelled nuts. “If they let Chism out of there tomorrow, would you run away with him?”

She paused, and gave a laugh to cover up the discomfort the question caused her. “It’s very unlikely they’ll let him out of there tomorrow,” she said.

“But if they did,” the Times-Picayune persisted.

“Oh, sure,” she said with irony. “I’ve always wanted to be a shepherdess.”

“No fooling?”

She looked him in the eye. “There are worse things to do with your life.”

Tom Fletcher was the last to leave. Each of the newsmen, before leaving, thanked her not just for the party but for having invited them to Little Rock. She thanked each of them for having demonstrated the power of the Fourth Estate not simply to report events but to exert an influence on them. Then she was left to deal with Tom. She had drunk too much champagne. And, clearly, so too had he. She was still miffed at him, his earlier abandonment of her project, his refusal to let her or any of the Gazette’s other reporters spend any more time on what he had called “a lost cause,” and now his Johnny-come-lately enthusiasm and interloping after she had gone to such great lengths to attract the out-of-state journalists to Little Rock. Some of his remarks this evening had clearly betrayed his envy of the larger newspapers represented here. And he had also said things to indicate he still considered Nail Chism an ignorant, grubby peasant. She had overheard him asking Dorinda, “But aren’t you glad it wasn’t him?” She had not heard Dorinda’s reply.

Now Tom, tipsy and hanging back until the others were gone and her family had gone to bed, began to hint that he’d like to stay the night. She was too tired and too intoxicated to care, really, and her room was private enough, with its own entrance (or, rather, exit), for Tom to escape in the morning without anyone else in the house knowing about it. But she couldn’t let him. She was still sufficiently sober to be faithful, with the same faithfulness that had saved a man from death tonight. She turned Tom away.

“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?” he said peevishly but unbelievingly, as he retreated.

She stared at him. She knew he would think less of her if she confessed, but perhaps it was time he began to think less of her. She confessed, “Maybe I am.”

She was still nursing a hangover the next afternoon when the Kansas City Star arrived in a taxicab to take her out to the penitentiary, where he intended to demand an interview with Ernest Bodenhammer. She was all excited, riding out there; maybe she’d get to see Nail too. Maybe Burdell would be so intimidated and submissive as a result of last night’s incident that he would permit her to visit Nail without the intervening screen of the visitors’ room.

But Burdell wasn’t there. His office was occupied by the new sergeant, a mere guard, Gillespie Gorham, who impressed Viridis as more repulsive than the guard he had replaced. No, he wasn’t taking Burdell’s office permanently, he was just holding down the fort until the new warden came up from Tucker. Yes, Burdell had been fired. No, the governor couldn’t fire him, but the prison board could, and the governor had appointed the prison board. Until the new warden, Superintendent T.D. Yeager of Tucker Farm, arrived to take over, probably by the end of this week, Sergeant Gorham was not going to let nobody do nothing. So for them to even ask to see Ernest Bodenhammer or his “scribbles” was out of the question. The Kansas City Star had to catch a train for home, and said he hoped Viridis would let him arrange a show of her work in a good K.C. gallery.

The Arkansas Democrat, an evening paper, scooped the Gazette with the front-page story under the headline GOVERNOR ‘FURIOUS’ AT PRESS OVER CHISM INCIDENT; FIRES WARDEN and the subhead CALLS OUTSIDE JOURNALISTS ‘MEDDLERS’; THREATENS TO ‘THROW THE SWITCH MYSELF.’ The Democrat gave a full report of the scene at the aborted execution, including the condemned man’s moving appeal, not for himself but for his fellow convict, “less than of age” Ernest Bodenhammer, and his accusation that Bodenhammer’s victim, the guard McChristian, had murdered numerous inmates. The reporter, to Viridis’ embarrassment, quoted the condemned man’s intended-to-be-last words, “Tell her that I and the trees will love her forevermore,” and identified “her” as “Little Rock reporter-illustrator Viridis Monday, 26, daughter of banker Cyril J. Monday,” but was not able to identify the reference to trees.

Tom Fletcher invited her to the Gazette to watch what was coming in on the wires. Associated Press did not use those quotations or identifications but carried an abbreviated narrative of the drama in the death room, which, to Viridis’ delight, was running nationwide, including the huge newspapers on both coasts. And the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, proud that one of its own reporters had been instrumental in stopping the execution, gave an entire page of detailed coverage, in addition to an editorial commending Viridis for her “dedication and bravery in the face of a politician’s cronyism and malevolence.”

Tom Fletcher shook his head and said, “Don’t be surprised if you hear from the governor.” So she was not surprised when she did, except by her treatment: she was not called to the capitol to wait for hours in His Excellency’s marble-walled, marble-floored, marble-ceilinged anteroom and then to stand on the carpet in front of his huge desk and listen to his rantings. No, he invited her to dinner at the governor’s mansion, which, although the governor belittled it as “just an old-fashioned big old pile of dark-red bricks,” was one of the city’s finer homes. The governor himself met her at the door and shook her hand with both of his, and introduced her to his wife Ida and his sons Grady and Bill, eighteen and ten years respectively. The five of them sat down evenly spaced around a dining-table that could seat thirty, lit by candles, and attended by eight black waiters. Later Viridis could not even remember what the food had been; it had not been outstanding, nor had the wine, a sweet red that would have been all right with the dessert. The governor and his family ate very rapidly, scarcely pausing between bites to make conversation about insignificant things: as near as she could recall, they had talked about the latest improved passenger cars on railroads and the opening of the new movie theater at Eighth and Main, the Crystal, where they were showing a gripping oriental mystery story, Bombay Buddha; everyone had seen it except poor Billy, whose mother wouldn’t let him. They argued about whether or not the movie was dangerous for a ten-year-old boy. When they finally asked Viridis her opinion, she replied that she couldn’t say, since she hadn’t seen it herself.

Trying to be nice, she noted that young Grady was not much older than Ernest Bodenhammer and would perhaps be interested in meeting the boy and seeing his artwork. “Artwork?” Grady asked, with a belligerent frown, and then: “Who’s Ernest Bodenhammer?”

“A convict,” the governor told his son. “Miss Monday, you see, makes a hobby of convicts.”

“Oh,” said Grady. “Why does he do artwork?”

“A hobby,” Viridis said.

As soon as the dinner was finished, the governor dismissed his family and moved from his chair at the head of the table to sit next to Viridis at the side. “Now,” he said, when they were alone, and only one waiter remained, to bring them some peach brandy. “Now, I want us to be friends. I have been thinking a lot about the last time we got together, and I think I owe you more than just an apology for my rudeness. I want you to understand that I was preoccupied with the Hot Springs business. Have you been keeping up with this matter of legalized gambling?”

She shook her head. “I’ve been preoccupied myself.”

The governor laughed. “You certainly have! Trying to save that moonshiner must have been a full-time occupation for you! But anyway, some of my best friends want to legalize pari-mutuel betting at the racetrack over at Hot Springs. Would you want me to let them do a thing like that?”

“They’ve been doing that at Longchamp for centuries,” she said.

“Where is Lone John?”

“Longchamp,” she pronounced it more carefully. “In Paris. A racetrack in the Bois de Boulogne.”

“You’ve been to Paris?”

“I lived there for four years.”

“My, my,” the governor said. “Well now, I’ll be.” He didn’t say what he would be. “And your father gave you his blessing?”

“He didn’t stop me.”

“Well, that’s amazing. But you know, I’m all in favor of taking the reins and bridle off of womenfolk and letting them run free. During my administration the lot of the fair sex has improved one hundred percent. I’ve reduced the women’s working hours to a nine-hour maximum for a maximum of six days of week; that’s only fifty-four hours a week. And my legislature has given you the right to enter into contracts and to own property in your own names.”

“We’re grateful, I’m sure.”

“And one of these days soon we’re going to submit to the voters a women’s-suffrage amendment and see if we can’t get you ladies a bigger voice, at least in the local polls.”

“The fair sex will be your slaves.”

“I’m only acting on my sense of what I think the people want. I very strongly believe, Miss Monday, that the State is the sum total of the will of the people. And now, that is why I must give my full support to capital punishment, however barbarous it may seem. Personally, I do not condone capital punishment. No, I do not. At best, it is a relic of mankind’s slow, painful rise out of the Dark Ages. But if the State did not take upon itself the awesome responsibility for executing murderers and rapists, the people themselves would resort to mob violence and lynching.”

“Did you know, Governor, that Arkansas is one of the very few states that still punish rape with the death penalty?”

“Of course I know it! You mean, still punishes white men with death. Every state still executes nigras for rape. Young lady, don’t try to tell me about Arkansas in relation to the other states. That’s the main reason I wanted to see you. This past week the state of Arkansas has become the butt of national derision and even contempt because of this Chism business. Just at a time in our history when we’re making some progress toward correcting the country’s notion that Arkansas is nothing but a barnyard full of rustic buffoons, along comes this moonshining rapist out of the Ozarks and sets us all back into ridicule!”

“Pardon me, sir, but I don’t believe it’s Nail Chism they’re ridiculing. They have focused their scorn on a chief executive who refuses to listen to overwhelming evidence that Nail Chism is innocent.”

The governor slammed his palm down on the table so forcefully that both their glasses of brandy toppled over. A black waiter hastened to handle the problem, which the governor ignored. “WHAT EVIDENCE?” he thundered, “The babble of the victim? The poor, frightened, illiterate backwoods child, driven out of her senses by a vicious assault and the most despicable rape and sexual perversion I’ve ever heard about in my long legal career, trying pathetically to undo this hideous act simply by recanting her testimony? Please, Miss Monday! It’s perfectly obvious that that pathetic waif you went to such pains to recruit to your cause is not of sound mind and not capable of testifying for or against anybody.”

“Governor, if you would let her talk to you for five minutes, you wouldn’t say that.”

The governor softened his voice. “Let me tell you a little story, Miss Monday. Not so very long ago my wife Ida and I received here at our house late one afternoon a Mrs. Ramsey, who had her little boy with her. It was not long until sundown, when the woman’s husband was scheduled to die in the electric chair at the state penitentiary. The woman wanted me to listen to her little boy, and wanted my wife to listen too. The boy gave the most touching speech about how he loved his daddy and what a good man his daddy was. Ida, who gave him a piece of bread and butter and a glass of milk, had tears running down her face, and she looked at me with such reproach as I had never seen from her before, and she asked, ‘George, doesn’t this little boy move you at all?’ and I said, ‘Yes, Ida, but his father moves me much more, because the man committed such a cold-blooded, brutal murder, with no extenuating circumstances whatsoever, that I still seethe to think of it.’ And at sundown they electrocuted Ramsey, the first white man I have refused to save from the electric chair. Nail Chism is the second. Let me finish. You think that I am deaf to the entreaties of good people, as my wife thought I was deaf to the little boy. But I tell you what I told her: that it devolves upon me as governor to investigate meticulously every last one of these crimes. I do not take death lightly. I will not allow a citizen of the state of Arkansas to die for any reason, unless and until I have satisfied myself that that man—and notice, dear girl, that I say ‘man,’ because I have never allowed the fair sex to be executed, and I will never permit it as long as I live—that that man is guilty beyond any shadow of doubt!”

“But the shadows of doubt are all around Nail Chism,” she said.

The governor sighed and passed his hand across his eyes. “Are you aware,” he asked, “that for seven years before becoming governor, I was a circuit judge myself? I know the burdens that Lincoln Villines faced, and I know how carefully he had to proceed in that lower court. But before I became a circuit judge, I was a farmer. I grew up on an impoverished farm in the scrub of Ouachita County, and until I was the age of Nail Chism, I was, like him, a simple farmer. Although I did not resort to the illegal manufacture of liquor to supplement my modest income, I saved my money to finance a legal education at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. No, I have not been to Paris, but I have been to Virginia, a civilized place, the home of such men as George Mason and Thomas Jefferson, men who, despite their ownership of slaves, opposed slavery and favored abolition, but who believed, as I believe, that abolition can only be accomplished very slowly and gradually, not all at once, as we learned to our regret. It is the same with capital punishment.”

The governor pointed out the lone black waiter who was still blotting up the brandy, and George W. Hays began to talk about him as if the man could not hear. “Do you think this man is ready for complete freedom? Do you think he is capable of making the wise decisions that are required by the responsibilities of citizenship? This particular individual, I happen to know, is not the low-grade type of nigra who crowds our penitentiary and our charitable institutions, but he is still quite primitive and in a childish stage of progress, not yet intelligent enough to hold public office or aspire to one of the professions, or…”

Viridis discovered that she was not paying close attention; her mind was wandering, and her gaze was straying from the governor’s face—he looked so much like an older version of Tom Fletcher, with his protruding eyeballs and thick lips—to the wallpaper, and to her own hands in her lap. The governor seemed to have arrived at the notion that there was some connection between the plight of Nail Chism and what the governor called “the most serious problem of the nigra question.” At least he did not say “nigger,” as so many did. If Viridis tried very hard, and did not drink any more peach brandy, she could focus on his words and detect that he was now discussing the achievement of his administration in separating the white and colored convicts. One of his first acts as governor was the purchase of the Tucker plantation to serve as a “white-convict farm,” wherein the exclusively white inmates could pursue their agricultural labors free from any contact with “culluds.” This, the governor attempted to explain to her, was in keeping with his “concept of the age, and well-advanced civilization.”

She interrupted. “And how would the execution of Nail Chism fit into a well-advanced civilization?”

“It would manifest the sentiment of the community that the community will not tolerate the violation of the sexual sanctity of the fair sex!”

“But the community,” Viridis pointed out, “that is, Nail Chism’s community, has given you petitions signed by four thousand people, more than half the population of Newton County, who do not believe that he violated the sexual sanctity of anyone.”

The governor was fiddling with the silverware. He picked up a dinner knife and held it as if to stab her with it and said, “Miss Monday, if I were to murder you right now, and later fifty thousand residents of Pulaski County signed a petition that I had not done it, would that make me innocent of the crime?” The governor did not wait for her answer. “No: petitions never exonerate, they only beg, and I will not lend an ear to beggary.”

“Nor will you lend an ear to anyone’s protestation that Nail Chism is innocent.”

The governor sighed again and leaned back in his chair and regarded her for a few moments before saying, “Let me ask you. You seem so convinced of the man’s absolute guiltlessness. Would you want to find yourself alone with him in that child’s playhouse, or wherever it was he raped her?”

“I would feel perfectly safe with Nail Chism.”

The governor snorted in disbelief. “You would? I’m going to call your bluff, young lady. What if I threatened to throw you into his cage?”

“Do you mean put me alone into his cell?” she asked.

“Not just that,” he said. “The man is occupying the so-called death hole down in the dungeon of the powerhouse out at the pen. It’s like solitary confinement. And it’s very dark most of the time, Miss Monday. Very dark and scary. Would you want to be locked in there with him?”

“For how long?”

“Long enough for you to beg to be let out. Long enough for you to realize just how ‘innocent’ he is. Long enough for you to cease and desist this humiliating campaign to save him from the chair.”

“Are you saying that if I shouted, somebody would come and rescue me?”

The governor chuckled. “Not quickly. Not too quickly,” he said, and let the implication sink in. “When Nail Chism tries to harm you, it will take a while for you to summon the guards. We hope. Yes, I am going to call your bluff, Miss Monday, and I am going to have you locked up with that man.”

“When?”

“I’ll talk to Warden Yeager in the morning, and—I think it probably begins to get very dark in the death hole about the middle of the afternoon. Can you go to Warden Yeager’s office at three P.M.?”

“Yes.”

The governor was startled by the quickness of her reply. “Are you absolutely sure you want to go through with this?”

“Are you sure you would let me?”

“You bet I am. I just want you to promise me that as soon as we let you out of there, you’ll leave us alone. I would even be willing to wager that you’ll be so changed in your opinion of that hillbilly pervert that you’ll gladly attend his execution, which I intend to carry out at the earliest opportunity, if I have to pull the switch myself.”

Viridis stood up. “Three P.M. Warden Yeager’s office,” she said, taking her leave.

At the door he said, “You won’t need your nightgown or your toothbrush. Good night, Miss Monday.”

She did not sleep that night. Her insomnia made her confront the question: what if she had been deluded about Nail? What if he actually was a rapist? She even imagined a scene in which he confessed that he had raped Dorinda and that he couldn’t help himself. She anticipated that he was only an apparition of the man she had loved: he smelled abominable and the cell was the filthiest place she’d ever been. Such sleeplessness forced her eventually to picture (or did she actually sleep, and dream?) the act of love they tried to make, and it was not good at all.

In the morning, as she dressed and got herself ready for the day, and then as she baked three dozen cookies (oatmeal, chocolate, and pecan) to take with her, she told herself that the dream, or the conscious fantasy if that’s what it had been, was just an attempt to consider, and dismiss, the worst contingencies. It would not be like that, at all. She and Nail would not even consider sex. It would defeat their purpose. They would talk, and talk, and talk, and possibly hold hands, maybe even, yes! they would kiss, although Nail himself would be very self-conscious and ill at ease because of his appearance (but it will be dark, remember?) and the fact that they hadn’t let him take a bath in ages. She would do a good job of ignoring the unsavory atmosphere.

She told no one where she was going. She told her mother that she wouldn’t be home for supper and might be gone overnight. At 2:30 P.M. she telephoned for a taxicab and rode it to the penitentiary. She was met at the visitors’ room by the sergeant with the short leg, Mr. Fancher, who escorted her out of the room across the outside length of the wall to another door, the one she had used several times before. It was a heavy, arched wooden door upon which Mr. Fancher rapped the familiar trite code, the beats of “Shave and a haircut, two bits.” A trusty opened it and admitted them to the fenced corridor leading across the Yard to the powerhouse and the main building. In the upper windows of the main building, open to the late-April air, men whistled and howled, “Hey, babe!” and, “Up here, sweetie!” and, “Sugar, come and git it!”

Mr. Fancher escorted her to the warden’s office. The new warden, Travis Don Yeager, met her at his door and invited her in. He was about fifty, and her first impression of him was slightly more favorable than that of Harris Burdell: he seemed cut from the same mold, and she guessed that he, like Burdell, must have spent countless hours in front of a mirror practicing a look of fierce determination and strength. But he tried to be polite, at first. “Welcome to the Arkansas State Penitentiary, Miss Monday!”

“I’ve been here before,” she said.

“Yeah. Right. I didn’t think.” He made a mouth that might have been intended as a smile but came out as a smirk. “We oughta send you up to Jacksonville hee hee, our state farm for women hee hee, but we understand you prefer the company of males hee hee. I see you didn’t bring your suitcase hee hee.”

“I don’t expect to stay long,” she said.

“You gonna sleep in that dress hee hee?”

“If I sleep.”

“Hee hee! Baby, you got the right idea. If you sleep, that’s right, if you sleep hee hee. Well, are you all ready to go down and meet your roommate hee hee?”

“I’ve met him.”

“You have? Well, that’s nice. Did he tell you what he’s gonna do to you? Aint you just a little bit scared hee hee?”

“No.”

“Man’s a convicted rapist. Did a job so awful on a little girl they gave him the chair, only the second white man ever to get the chair in history hee hee.”

“I’m familiar with all the facts of the case,” she said. “I’m ready to go.”

“Are you now? Real eager and rarin to go? Hot to trot hee hee. You got it bad, sister.”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Don’t mind what?”

“I didn’t come here to listen to your jokes. I came to see Nail Chism.”

He dropped his light tone. “Sit down, lady,” the warden ordered her, gesturing to a chair.

“Why? Do I have to submit to an interview or make out an application?”

“SIT DOWN, Miss Monday,” he commanded, and put a hand on her shoulder and made her sit. Then he went around behind his desk and sat down. He studied her for a moment, and when he spoke again there was a remnant of the original politeness. “You honestly amaze me. You really came in here expectin us to let you move in with that rapist. You really truly meant to go through with it.”

“What are you telling me?” she demanded. “Aren’t you going to let me do it?”

“Do you think I’m crazy, girl?”

“I don’t care whether you are crazy or not. The governor told me I could do it. In fact, it was his suggestion.”

“Yeah, but he never thought you would. He told me to see if you showed up, he said he’d bet me that you wouldn’t show up, but if you did, to find out if you really wanted to do it. You honestly want to do it, don’t you?” The warden began shaking his head slowly back and forth as if he still couldn’t believe it. “Maybe you’re the crazy one hee hee. Don’t you know you’d never get out of there alive? That man’s got a dagger hidden somewhere down in his cell, and he’d slash your throat as soon as he got finished rapin you hee hee.”

“I’ll take the chance,” she said. “Isn’t that what this is supposed to be about? Taking the chance? Proving to all of you that he won’t rape me, he won’t kill me?”

The warden shook his head. “Too much of a risk. Maybe you’re right. But if you was wrong, and anything happened to you, the newspapers would really haul us over the coals, and your family would sue the state of Arkansas.”

She could only repeat, feebly, “The governor told me I could do it.” “You still don’t get it, do you? He was just testin you, ma’am. The governor told me not to let you under no circumstances get nowhere near that rapist.”

“Couldn’t I just visit with him awhile, under supervision? Couldn’t I just give him these cookies?” She held up the paper sack containing three dozen oatmeal, chocolate, and pecan cookies.

The warden glanced at the sack. He said, “You’re just another one of them women that latch on to convicts and make boyfriends out of them, like they’re toys or cuddly bears or something. All of you ladies are crazy. You think you can turn them into nice little boys, and you’re mistaken. You think you can save their souls or mend their manners or something, and you’re wrong, and it’s gonna kill you to find out how wrong you are. I been workin in prisons since I was a kid, and you wouldn’t believe the number of broken hearts I’ve seen you ladies get.” Again he slipped into his politeness and softly said, “I’m not gonna let nobody break your heart, darlin hee hee.”

“Could I please see him for a while in the visitors’ room?”

As if reading from a book, he said, “Condemned inmates of the death cells may not be transmitted to the visiting quarters.”

“Then couldn’t you, as a consolation for disappointing me, take me down to the death hole and let me talk to him through his bars?”

“It’s awful down there, ma’am. I wouldn’t want to go down there myself.”

“I can stand it.”

“Sorry. It’s against the rules. We do everything by the rules here.”

“May I use your telephone?”

“Help yourself. What for?”

“I’m going to tell the governor that you won’t even let me see Nail Chism after tricking me into thinking I could get into his cell.”

“Well, durn, I never tricked you. How long did you want to stay down in the death hole?”

“As long as you’ll let me.”

“Well, the visit rules say fifteen minutes in the visit room. Would fifteen minutes down there suit you?”

“Not as much as staying all night, but it’ll do.”

“You can’t take them cookies. The prisoners have a strict diet hee hee. Leave them and your handbag here in my office.” The warden summoned the guard, James Fancher, and asked him, “Hey, Jim, is that electric light bulb wired up down in the death hole yet?” The guard shook his head. “Well, you go get Gill, and you boys take a lantern and show this lady down there, for fifteen minutes, and let her talk to Chism. Watch ’em, and don’t you let her touch him nor give him nothing nor do anything ’cept talk.”

So Viridis got to see Nail. Indeed, as the warden had said, it was an awful place. Couldn’t they at least keep it reasonably clean? Did there have to be earth clinging to the walls? Weren’t there any windows or holes that could be opened for a little ventilation? The oppressive darkness and dankness and cramping were accentuated by the feeble glow from the one smoking kerosene lantern that Fancher carried, holding it down at his side, not raising it, so that the light came up from below and gave Nail’s face a ghostly and sinister cast. Guards Fancher and Gorham flanked her closely, standing a little behind her as if they were holding her back, and they would not go away.

“Strike me blind,” Nail said softly. “Don’t this beat all? How did ye do it?”

“I’ve got a little influence with the governor.”

“You sure must. You must almost have as much influence with him as you had with all them newspaper fellers. It was you, wasn’t it, who got them to come to my fryin party?”

“I suggested it,” she said. “And it worked. It saved you, for the time being, but I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of influence with our governor.” She told him of her invitation to the governor’s mansion the night before, what they had talked about, and the governor’s “calling her bluff” by pretending to arrange for her to be locked in with Nail.

Nail was speechless. “Gosh” was all he could finally say.

“But they’ll only let me see you for a little while.”

“Fifteen minutes,” said Gillespie Gorham. “Nope. There’s only about ten minutes left.”

“That was a mean thing for them to do, to rue back on ye like that,” Nail said severely. “Did you really want to come and stay with me?”

“Of course! I was dying to!”

“Gosh,” he said again. He reflected, “I would’ve sure enjoyed that. Yes, that would’ve been the best time of my life. But it’s terrible messy and stinky down here. No place you could even sit down without ruinin your dress.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “If I could just be with you…”

Nail slammed himself on the brow. “I aint introduced ye to my pal.” He pointed at the wall. “Timbo Red…Ernest Bodenhammer is right in there.” He called out, “Ernest! Here is Viridis!”

“Howdy, ma’am,” said a voice from the darkness.

Viridis turned and tried to move toward the adjoining cell, but Gillespie Gorham blocked her way. “You’re just supposed to visit Chism. The other one aint none of your business.”

“Couldn’t I say hello?” she asked.

“Say hello,” Gillespie Gorham told her, but would not move to let her nearer the boy’s cell.

She called out, “I’m pleased to meet you, Ernest. Nail has told me so much about you.”

The young man called back, in a voice so much like those she had heard in Newton County, “He’s shore told me a lot about you too.”

“I want to see your drawings,” she said.

“Aw, they aint much,” Ernest protested.

Nail said, “Ernest, give her your drawings.” And to her: “I reckon you couldn’t see ’em too good in the dark, though. He’s done filled up that pad you gave him, front and back every page. It’s time he got him another pad, if you could manage it.”

“Certainly, I’ll get him one,” Viridis said.

“Heck,” Ernest said, “I’m due to sit on Ole Sparky myself in just a few more days. I wouldn’t have time to use up a whole new pad.”

“Could I borrow the one you’ve finished?” she asked him. “To look at in good light?” She wished she could see at least the outline of his form in the dark, but she saw nothing of him.

His voice said, “Wal, yeah, I reckon, but they shore aint nothin to brag about.”

At the edge of the sphere of feeble light from the lantern she saw the sudden protrusion of a square thickness that she recognized as the corner of the drawing pad being offered to her. She reached for it, but Sergeant Gorham stayed her hand. “You aint supposed to touch nothing,” he told her.

“It’s only a sketchbook, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “Search it if you want. There aren’t any secret messages in it.”

“Jim, hold up that light,” Sergeant Gorham said, and he took the sketch-book, flipped through it, gave it a shake, and then presented it to her. “Looks harmless,” he said.

“Thank you, Ernest,” she said. “I’ll get it back to you, along with a new-pad. Do you need some more pencils? Erasers?”

“I thank ye kindly, ma’am,” Ernest said.

Another square intruded into the lantern’s light, and Nail said, “Mr. Gorham, sir, I’d like her to have this too. It’s just as harmless as that drawing-pad.”

It was a book. A thick, heavy book. Sergeant Gorham took it and submitted it to the same treatment he’d given the sketchbook. Nothing fell out. It contained no letters or words other than the printed words. The guard gave it to her. He asked Nail, “What’s it for?”

“It’s just a ole book I’d like her to have. I won’t be needin it no more.”

“Nail,” she said intently. “I’m going to save you. Ernest too.”

“Well,” he said, “there’s just a part of that book I thought you might find interestin.”

“Time’s up, now,” Gorham said, and put his hand on her shoulder. She shivered at the man’s touch.

“Did you get my letter?” she asked Nail.

“Yeah, I sure did, and it was wonderful. I reckon you didn’t get mine, but it wasn’t much compared with yours.”

“You know what I tried hardest to say in that letter?”

“It’s hard to say,” he acknowledged.

“I mean it,” she said. “I can’t say it again right here and now, but I mean it. Three words.”

“Three words,” he returned.

They took her back upstairs, and she picked up her purse at the warden’s office. She gave T.D. Yeager the sack of cookies and said, “Share these with your wife.”

“I don’t have a wife, ma’am hee hee, but say, thanks a lot.”

“I’ll be seeing you again,” she said, and offered him her hand. “And possibly again. Thank you for your kindness.”

She went home and closed herself in her studio with Ernest’s sketchbook and the book Nail had given her. It had a funny title, Dr. Hood’s Plain Talks and Common Sense Medical Advisor. The book was grimy and smelled mouldy, reminding her of the smells of the death hole, which she would like to forget. It was well worn, as if Nail had read it again and again. Why he wanted her to have this book she wasn’t sure, but she understood one thing: it was probably the only reading matter he’d had, and his giving it to her was as if he were saying he had nothing more to give. She was touched. She flipped idly through it, and did to it what Sergeant Gorham had done: held it with the spine up and the pages flopping down, and flipped it and shook it to see if anything might fall out; nothing did. She leafed slowly through it, looking for a penciled message; there was none. The chapters covered such things as “Sexual Isolation” and “Prevention of Conception” and other matters dealing with love and marriage and childbirth and parenthood. Was he perhaps trying to tell her that this book dealt with a kind of life they could never have together? The pages were dirty and smudged; one even seemed to have a smear of blood on it, beside a definition of “Oil of Mustard,” the significance of which she could not determine. She closed the book, a bit disappointed apart from being moved by his gesture of giving her his last possession.

Then she held Ernest’s sketchbook beneath the studio’s north light. The afternoon still had an hour to go before the light faded. The first drawing took her breath away. It was a landscape. Surely, it had been drawn from memory, in the poor light and confinement of a prison, but it had the authority and detail of a sketch rendered on the spot, the spot being the middle of a rushing mountain stream, looking upstream toward a tranquil pool overhung with great summer trees, themselves overhung by the crags of bluffs and the ridge of a mountain over which dramatic clouds gathered themselves. His clouds, particularly, were beyond her achievement. Her admiration for the draughtsman’s skill was almost overwhelmed by her envy of it. All in black and white, the drawing yet evoked distinct colors, shade upon shade of green. There were effects here that she simply could not duplicate, try as she might. A native genius she did not possess. She was good, certainly she had skill and long practice, but she did not have…what was it?…she recalled Nail’s words as quoted in the newspapers: “He’s got a talent I could never hope to have: he can draw like an angel, although there’s only one angel I ever saw do a drawing, and she’s not here today, I’m glad to see.”

As Viridis looked at Ernest’s drawings, she suddenly understood how an angel would draw. But she was not one herself.

There was one drawing that she did not immediately recognize. After all the landscapes, the interior came as a different place, a confusing scene.

It took her a moment to shift focus from the outdoors to a room. A room containing a monster. But the monster, she recognized after deliberation, was the machine that was called—what had Ernest called it?—Old Sparky, the electric chair, but not the electric chair as she remembered it. Had Ernest Bodenhammer drawn the picture from memory? Or had he actually seen the chair? No, it seemed to be drawn from imagination, not just the imagination of a highly creative and fertile artist but that of a person inspired by the foreknowledge of his murderous sacrifice to that monster. The chair had a distinct personality, a menace and a malevolence that exceeded the sum of its various straps, panels, wires, and braces. It seemed to be alive and waiting. It carried a threat not just for the artist but for all humanity.

Almost with relief she turned the page. But the drawing she saw next stunned her. The sketchbook fell from her lap and lay shut on the floor for a long moment before she picked it up and forced herself to open it again. Viridis felt her face growing very hot, and she felt embarrassment as if she were a voyeur standing right beside the bed where the naked couple clenched in a tangle of arms, legs, elbows, knees, at the center of which their genitals seemed to be trying to devour each other. The man was Nail. There was no mistake, although his face was in profile. Nail, with a full head of handsome blond hair disheveled and matted by the sweat from his exertions. The woman…she certainly wasn’t Dorinda Whitter, or anyone else Viridis could recognize, just a typical country girl, an earth goddess, very pretty and very shapely and very passionate. Had Ernest simply “borrowed” Nail for an imagined scene? Or had he re-created an actual event that Nail had described and narrated to him? Viridis was surprised at how grudging she felt; she turned three shades of green, jealous of whoever the lucky girl had been. And this answered, perhaps, her longstanding question, which she had vaguely worded to Nail’s mother: “Did Nail ever have a girlfriend?” But as she stared in awe at Ernest’s drawing, trying to forget the subject long enough to fully appreciate the draughtsmanship, she realized that it had the unexpected power to arouse her sexually. She was burning.

Not the Arkansas Gazette but its rival, the Arkansas Democrat, on pages 8 and 9 of the issue of Monday, April 26, 1915, carried Viridis’ story about Ernest Bodenhammer, with two illustrations: a fuzzy photograph of the boy taken about two years before, and a fair reproduction of his masterpiece, “Old Sparky.” This was the first picture of the electric chair that had ever appeared in the pages of the Democrat, whose readership has always been more plebeian and democratic than that of the Gazette. A younger newspaper with an inferiority complex (it was founded at the time of the Mexican War in 1846, whereas the Gazette has been “the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi” since 1819), the Democrat has occasionally resorted to sensationalism, if not outright yellow journalism, in its circulation rivalry, and Tom Fletcher himself suggested that Viridis try the piece on the Democrat, because he and his paper felt that the “Chism case” had already been given maximum exposure and readers were not interested in yet another story of “wrongful electrocution.” In Europe, Germany was making war on Holland and invading Baltic Russia and preparing its submarines to torpedo the Lusitania (the ship Viridis had taken abroad), and the Gazette’s readers were beginning to turn their attention away from small local events to the international crisis and the growing issue of America’s nonintervention, which most Gazette readers supported. Letters to the editor were preponderantly concerned with the war in Europe, and a total of only three letters had been received about the Chism case, two of them demanding to know why the governor didn’t go ahead and pull the switch himself, “like he said he would.”

Tom Fletcher said to her, “Very, this Bodenhammer piece is a serious mistake. It will only divert the public’s attention from the Chism case.”

Viridis’ story in the Democrat, which an editor titled GIFTED YOUNG ARTIST MUST GO TO MEET HIS NIGHTMARE, was the only publicity that Ernest Bodenhammer ever received. She was disappointed that the Democrat showed only one of Ernest’s drawings, but, as an editor candidly admitted to her, the typical Democrat reader “didn’t know Rembrandt from Rumpelstiltskin.” Viridis paid to have matted and framed behind glass a dozen of Ernest’s best drawings (omitting of course that one), and tried to find a good place to show them concurrently with the appearance of her Democrat article, but the only place she could hang them was the Little Rock Public Library. She had photoengravings printed of those twelve drawings and mailed them out to her friends at Associated Press, as well as to the men who had come to Nail’s thwarted execution and her party. She sent a special note along with the mailing to the Houston Chronicle man who had proposed to her. But if his newspaper, or any other newspaper in America, used her Bodenhammer story, she never received clippings or heard about it.

Art, she told herself, is dispensable.

The same issue of the Democrat that had her Bodenhammer story had a front-page item under the headline GOV. HAYS INCREASES DEATH CHAIR’S PRIVACY, to the effect that the governor and his legal advisors were taking steps to reduce the number of witnesses required for an execution from twelve to six, and to limit strictly the attendance of newspapers. “An execution is not a circus,” the governor was quoted as saying. “An execution must not be a public spectacle. Capital punishment is a remnant of barbarity, but as long as we practice it we must insure that it be done mercifully and with dignity, and this requires that we make it as private as possible, as silent as possible, as inconspicuous as possible.”

When the Gazette also featured this story, Viridis asked Tom Fletcher, “What do you think he’s up to? You don’t suppose he’ll start having secret executions, do you?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Tom said. “That word ‘inconspicuous’ bothers me. The message to us is that we have to pool a man…” (he lifted his eyebrows) “…or a woman, and let that one reporter cover the scene for all newspapers and wire services. No more parties.” At her expression of dismay he pointed out, “That’s really not so different from what we had been doing, is it? Weren’t you the only reporter at the execution of that nigra, Skipper Thomas?” When she nodded, he assured her, “We’re supposed to receive notice of all intended executions so that we can arrange with the Democrat and the AP to pool a man. Or a woman. I’ll keep you posted.”

But Tom’s promise wasn’t enough to make her comfortable. She went to the state capitol and asked to see the governor. This time he did not make her wait all day, but didn’t she understand that, without an appointment, she couldn’t just barge in on him? He apologized for keeping her waiting and offered her coffee, which she declined.

“And how was your tryst with the moonshiner?” he asked.

“I don’t appreciate your failure to keep your part of the bargain,” she said.

“I saved your life probably,” the governor said, and then from the pile of papers atop his desk he lifted the issue of the Democrat that had her story. “And I see you didn’t keep your part of the bargain either.” He slammed the newspaper down on his desk. “That’s a dreadful story, Miss Monday! My telephone hasn’t stopped ringing! The telegrams are piling up! The letters are burying me!”

“Really?” she asked.

He laughed, then changed his tone from mock-indignant to coldly informative. “Do you want to know the sum total of public response to your story? Do you want to know how many people I’ve heard from as a result of that piece?” The governor made a show of propping his elbow on his desk top and then rounding his thumb and forefinger into a big 0. “Zero. None. Not a blessed soul.”

“So you’re going to go ahead and pull the switch on him Saturday night?”

“That was dramatic oratory on my part. I could never pull the switch on a man myself. Mr. Irvin Bobo is a licensed electrician. I am not.”

“But this Saturday night?” she said. “Three days from now?”

He did not respond. Instead he said, “I read your story. I was touched. I was impressed. The boy really is some sort of wizard with a pencil. Not that I know anything about art, but I recognize talent when I see it. I’ve never seen that chair myself, but he sure made it look petrifying, didn’t he? I don’t understand why nobody cares about him. Isn’t that a shame, Miss Monday, that nobody cares?” She glowered at him, not knowing just how sarcastic he was trying to be. “Except you, of course,” he amended. “You care an awful lot. In Ernest Bodenhammer you’ve found the perfect answer to the prayers of a lonely spinster. He’s much better for your purposes than the moonshining rapist. Bodenhammer never raped anybody, except probably his sister and his mother. He’s young and fairly innocent—all he did was kill a fat guard nobody liked anyway—and he’s savable and malleable. You can make him into anything you want him to be, and everybody will live happily ever after…except the wife and children of Gabriel McChristian, the man he murdered.”

She waited to see if the governor was going to say anything else. She told herself to try very hard to be polite, that the least show of anger would defeat her purpose. She took a calm, deep breath and said, as if it were the only thing she had left to say, “He’s only sixteen.”

“So? The state of Arkansas has executed murderers of fifteen and even fourteen. Once several years ago we hanged a thirteen-year-old nigra.” The governor began to wave his forefinger back and forth. “But if you’re asking me to show mercy for someone on account of youth, remember that Nail Chism’s victim was only thirteen.”

Calmly Viridis protested, “She recanted. She’s willing to testify that she lied.”

The governor picked up his telephone. “Martha, bring me that folder on Dorinda Whitter.” Hanging up, he said, “Double perjury doesn’t equal truth. Which is a fancy way of saying two wrongs never make a right.” The governor’s secretary brought to him a file, which he ostentatiously opened and displayed. “As I told you, I like to do a good bit of investigating of my own, in the interests of justice. I’ve attempted to find out all that I can learn about the victim, her background, her family, et cetera.” The governor held up a small item. “I’ve even got her current report card at Fort Steele Elementary. Not doing so well, is she? Lies a lot to her teachers, doesn’t she? And do you yourself have any suspicion that she may have struck the match that burned the school on April 5th? We know it was arson. But what concerns me more is her riffraff family. The girl’s older brother, one Ike Whitter, was a murderer and ruffian who was executed by lynching, a manifestation of that community spirit and mob violence I keep trying to tell you about, Miss Monday, that has to accept capital punishment as a harsh but civilized answer to problems of justice. But the lynching of Ike Whitter isn’t our topic. Our topic is that this girl, victim though she was, and an especially pitiful victim in view of the perverse, grotesque nature of the sexual crimes against her, is yet a girl of very low intelligence, with backward and inbred lines in a pedigree of coarse animals that even nigras would not consider of the human race. The girl has no sense of truth. She may or may not have lied when she told what Nail Chism did to her, but she is lying her head off when she tries to take it back!”

Viridis wanted to tell the governor of her trip to Stay More, she wanted to describe her meetings with Simon and Precilla Whitter, Dorinda’s parents, whose poverty was the result not of inbreeding or lack of intelligence but of a series of misfortunes that had plagued Simon Whitter from his birth. But the governor did not have time to listen to her. She was not even here to rehash the “Chism case,” as such. She knew there was nothing else that could be said to George W. Hays to alter his opinion of Nail Chism as a “moonshining rapist.” She asked, “Would you consider postponing Ernest Bodenhammer’s execution for a week or ten days?”

“Why?”

“I’d like to get an expert from a New York art museum to testify that Ernest’s drawings are the work of a creative genius whose life must be spared.”

“Testify to whom? To the state Supreme Court? They have already considered and rejected the automatic appeal that all capital cases must have. Testify to me? I’ve already told you, I consider Bodenhammer a creative genius. Testify to the people of Arkansas? Your New York expert would have to do more than testify. And you don’t believe he could turn the people of Arkansas into connoisseurs of art in a week or ten days, do you?”

She clutched at a straw: “Governor, if you consider him a genius yourself, why couldn’t you commute his sentence to life imprisonment so that he could go on making his drawings, even in prison? That would surely be preferable to breaking his pencil forever.”

The governor shook his head. “If I did that, we would never again be able to hire a prison guard. This state must have a hidebound law that the killing of a law enforcement officer is automatically punishable by death. Otherwise, we wouldn’t even be able to keep the policemen we’ve got.”

Viridis felt her eyes beginning to get wet. While she could still see clearly through them, she looked at the paintings hanging on the walls of the governor’s office, portraits of his predecessors, some of the state’s more enlightened governors, such as Donaghey and Robinson and even the demagogue Jeff Davis. Her glance fell upon one portrait she recognized because of the clear family resemblance: Jacob Ingledew of Stay More. None of the portraits was a skillful painting. Each of them, by a different artist, was sloppy in brushstroke, muddy in color, unperceptive in interpretation of character. Her hand idly swept them. “Just to think,” she said, “someday Ernest Bodenhammer might have been the very artist to do your portrait to hang on that wall, and he would have made you look much better than all of them.”

His eyes, following her hand, gazed upon the clumsy likenesses of his precursors and seemed to reflect a mingling of veneration for their subjects’ high position in history and a distaste for their second-rate execution by the semiskilled portraitists. He studied the portraits for a while, even swiveling his chair around so he could contemplate them. Was he trying to imagine his own image up there someday? At length he swiveled his chair back to face her, leaned across his desk with his arms upon it, and said to her, “You really love Ernest Bodenhammer, don’t you?”

She would not deny it. “I really love Ernest Bodenhammer.”

“And you really love Nail Chism, don’t you?”

As if intoning a litany, she said, “I really love Nail Chism.”

The governor stood up. Respectfully or politely she stood too, wondering if he was not going to say anything further. But he did: “Miss Monday, I’d like for you to put yourself in my place. No, I’m going to do it for you: I’m going to put you in my place. As of this moment, I hereby authorize you, by executive order, to determine which one of the two men shall live, Nail Chism or Ernest Bodenhammer. Decide.”

It was almost as if he had struck her, and it took her a moment to recover from the blow. Her first reaction was to say, “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, but I am. I am dead serious. Aren’t you already beginning to feel the awesome responsibility that bears down on me? I am shifting that burden to you. You make that choice. The State decrees that both of them must die. There is no way on this earth that you, or I, or anybody, can save both of them. The State—call it public opinion if you will—would not allow it. But you may save one of them; just decide which one.”

“You are simply trying to make a point,” she declared. “You wouldn’t let me do that, any more than you would let me enter Nail’s cell and stay with him.”

“I give you my solemn word of honor, Miss Monday. The choice is yours.”

“It isn’t fair!” she cried out.

“No, it certainly isn’t!” he cried back at her. “But people ask me to make that kind of decision every day of my life! It’s grossly unfair!”

For a moment she did understand, and she did feel some sympathy for the governor. It was a terrifying dilemma. But now, if he was playing a game with her to prove his point, could she meet the challenge? She thought of Solomon sitting in judgment on the two prostitutes arguing over a baby, and Solomon’s determining the true mother by proposing to slice the baby in two. Could she find a Solomonic solution to this problem?

“Well?” the governor said at length, after waiting for her response. “Give me your decision, and I’ll have Martha come in here and draw up the executive order commuting the death sentence to life imprisonment for the man of your choice.”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t do it. Not right now. I would have to think about it.”

“They don’t give me time to think,” the governor protested. “Oftentimes I have to make a judgment right on the spot.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Don’t you realize I would have to live with the decision all the rest of my life?”

“And don’t you, my dear, realize that all of my many decisions will haunt me the rest of mine?”

She turned as if to flee. She turned back. She turned again. “Could I have a couple of days? The execution is Saturday night?”

He nodded, to both questions. His last words to her were: “Unless you decide, both executions are Saturday night. We’ll have a doubleheader.”

His allusion to a sporting event did not escape her. There actually was a doubleheader baseball game on the afternoon of Saturday, May 1st, between the Little Rock Travelers and the Memphis Chicks, and that is where she found Mr. Irvin Bobo. The landlady of the rooming house where Bobo lived, on Asher Avenue within walking distance of the Arkansas State Penitentiary, told her that she would find him at the ballgame. And that was where he was.

Saturday morning, May 1st, she got up before five, when the first light of dawn came into her room. She had slept no better than the previous three nights and felt weary to the bone. She drank a pot of coffee and went outside and soaked her face in the morning dew, then went for a long walk up Arch Street past the Mt. Holly Cemetery, all the way to the beginning of Arch Street Pike, a road that ran to Malvern, her grandparents’ home, forty miles away. If she had had Rosabone beneath her, she would have fled into the countryside and never come back. But she was on foot and had to make a very simple decision governing her simple walk: she could have turned west on to the Hot Springs road that led to the penitentiary, but she turned east and walked seven or eight blocks to Cumberland Street, then turned back north, toward town. Throughout her hike many dogs barked at her. A milkman stopped his wagon alongside her and asked if she was all right. The sun was well up in the sky when her feet began to fail her, and she stopped at a small café on Third and Cumberland that had just opened for the day. She ordered breakfast and read the Gazette: there was a page 3 item, LITTLE HOPE FOR TWO MEN FACING SUNDOWN DEATH, and a subhead, EXECUTIVE SAYS HE WILL NOT INTERVENE WITHOUT ‘DIVINE INTERCESSION.’ Viridis asked herself, Am I “little hope,” or am I “divine intercession”? but the answer remained stubbornly absent.

She read the entire issue of the Gazette, every one of its features: the significance of May, the fact that Robin Hood had died on May 1st, for whatever that was worth, the fact that in medieval and Tudor England everybody got up with the dawn and went “a-maying.” Am I going a-maying? she wondered. Yes, in a way she was.

At Kavanaugh Park, the same park containing the baseball diamond where she would later find Irvin Bobo, one thousand girls of the Little Rock schools, Dorinda Whitter among them, staged an elaborate maypole winding for an audience of two thousand, Viridis among them. While the girls of the grammar schools continuously wound and unwound twelve poles with long ribbons, the older girls from the high school performed dances: the girls of the Thalian Literary Society gave the weavers’ dance, the Red Domino girls did the Dance of the Roses, the Ossolean Literary Society did a Dutch dance, the junior-class girls did Spanish and Indian dances, and the girls of the “As You Like It” Society performed the Dance of the Foresters. When it was all over, Viridis managed to find Dorinda in the crowd and congratulate her on her pole-winding, and tell her that she was going to a baseball game and wouldn’t be home until after dark.

“I never knew you keered fer baseball,” Dorinda said. “Kin I come too?”

But Viridis explained that she had to meet some people there to discuss business. Dorinda rode home with the friends who had brought her.

The Little Rock Travelers, cellar-dwellers in the Southern Association, were losing to the Memphis Chicks at Travelers Field in Kavanaugh Park, and there were only about three hundred in the bleachers, so she spotted Irvin Bobo without much difficulty, sitting by himself behind first base. There weren’t many women there at all, a few wives, and thus Irvin Bobo was surprised when she sat down beside him. He had swapped the familiar, grimy felt bowler he’d worn at all the executions for a more seasonal straw hat, but this one also had the band and crown stained with much sweat, and beneath it he wore the same green celluloid eyeshade he apparently slept in. Up close, in the sunlight, she saw that his dark, Chaplinesque mustache was stained yellow-brown by cigarette smoke. She had never seen his eyes before. Had anyone? They were tiny and dull and empty.

“My goodness,” she exclaimed. “Aren’t you Irvin Bobo?”

He looked her up and down. “Do I know you?”

“Why, yes!” she cooed. “I’m the star reporter of the Gazette, and I’ve been to almost every one of your jobs.” She laughed gaily. “‘Jobs’ isn’t the right word, is it?”

He was looking at her closely, and his tiny old eyes in their green shadow showed a spark of recognition. “Yeah, I ’member you! You was that lady jumped up and give me trouble when I was doing my duty on that white man.”

She resisted the impulse to explain to him that he hadn’t exactly been doing his duty when she had given him trouble. “Yes, you scared me,” she confessed. “I thought you were supposed to wait until the warden got back, and you went ahead and pulled the switch. I didn’t realize you were just kidding. Looking back now, I have to laugh.” She did have to laugh, and she laughed, and then she opened her large handbag and took out the quart bottle of James E. Pepper bourbon, wrapped in brown paper. “Remember you offered me a drink?” she asked him. “Well, now I’m going to return the favor.”

“Here’s the pitch,” Bobo told her and directed her eyes toward the field, where a man was winding up his body into a leg-lifted dance. The man threw the ball, and Bobo stood up, yelling, “That was a clean strike, goddammit! ’scuse me.”

She stood alongside him. He was actually shorter than her. “A clean strike, goddammit,” she agreed.

They sat down, and she began unscrewing the cap on the bottle. Irvin Bobo was looking around to see if any neighbors were watching. “We aint supposed to drink in the ballpark,” he informed her. “And I don’t drink anyhow except before I have to do a job.”

“You’ve got two jobs to do tonight,” she reminded him. She brought out of her handbag two small metal jiggers and demonstrated how it was possible to hold and drink one inconspicuously.

In the course of the afternoon Viridis measured out nearly the whole quart of bourbon to Irvin Bobo, retaining only enough in her own jigger to give the semblance of conviviality. She even learned a few things about baseball: the manager has to decide whether to leave a pitcher in even if the pitcher is getting killed.

In the second game of the doubleheader Irvin Bobo began to lose interest, although the Travelers were winning. He tried to watch the field with one eye closed and then the other, but he could not see the field clearly. All he could see was the jigger in his hand, which she kept full. “You called me a monster,” he mumbled.

She asked him what he had said, and he mumbled it again, and she recalled having said that. She patted his knee and left her hand there while she apologized. “I didn’t mean you. I meant that awful boss of yours, Warden Burdell.”

“Yeah, now he was a monster,” Bobo agreed.

“He shouldn’t have tried to make you kill a white man,” she sympathized. “That wasn’t fair.”

“No, it sure wudn’t. Burdell was a bastud.”

“He’s gone,” she reminded him. “Yeager won’t make you kill a white man.”

Irvin Bobo made a sound that, she guessed, was the best approximation of a laugh he could manage. “I gotta choose who they tell me to choose,” he said, or she thought he said, not hearing him clearly. Thinking about his words, she realized that he had not said “choose” but “juice.” I gotta choose who they tell me to choose, she told herself.

The Travelers won the second game of the doubleheader, but Irvin Bobo was past cheering. He was even, she discovered, past standing. She had to hold him up. She hoped he had not driven to the ballpark; he had not, and intended to walk home. It wasn’t far. Less than a mile. She offered to get a taxicab. He insisted on walking, but he fell down twice before he could get out of the park. She helped him up, dusted him off, called a taxicab, and took him home.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you look just like Charlie Chaplin?” she asked him.

“Who?” he asked, but she did not repeat herself. She realized he had never been to the movies.

In his room she offered to prepare some supper for him, but he said he wasn’t hungry, he’d just like another little drink if she had any left, and if she didn’t he had a pint somewhere around here. She told him that if he drank any more, he wouldn’t be able to walk to the penitentiary, even though it was only a short distance down the road. He would have to eat something. In his cupboard she found a loaf of bread and a bologna sausage, which she sliced, and made three sandwiches, two for him, one for herself. She considered making coffee but then decided she didn’t want him any more sober than he was now.

Making conversation to keep him paying attention, she asked, “How much do they pay you for a job?”

“Fiff dahs,” he said.

“Only five?” she said.

“Fiffy,” he said. “Fiffy dahs.”

“Oh,” she said. “That’s a lot. Tonight you’ll make a hundred dollars.”

“Doanwannit,” he insisted. “Doanwannit.”

She had to use the bathroom. When she returned, he was sitting on the edge of his bed, tilting up a pint bottle of his own whiskey and letting it run down his throat. “Hey!” she said, and moved to stop him. “You’ve had enough of that, now. You won’t be able to walk to work.”

“Doanwanna. Doanwanna.” He groaned these sounds, then he fell over on the bed and passed out. She shook him, and shook him harder, but could not rouse him. She glanced at the clock on the table. It was almost five. Two hours to sundown. Probably, the executioner was expected to be on the job half an hour before. She made a pot of coffee but couldn’t get him to wake up and drink it. She drank some herself.

She sat on the edge of the bed beside his flopped-out body, thinking. In all truth, in all veritas, Viridis Monday was no closer to a decision than when she had walked out of the governor’s office. She sat on the bed of Irvin Bobo until she had determined he probably would sleep a long time. Then she knew what she had to do.

On

He protested when they tried to shave him again. Hell, it had only been ten days since they’d shaved him last, and he’d hardly had time to regrow anything but peach fuzz. He didn’t mind so much being made bald as a doorknob for the third time, but he hated the goddamn trusty-barber, who couldn’t hold his hand steady enough to keep from slashing his scalp. The barber had done a bad job on Ernest, Nail could tell just by listening. Ernest hadn’t liked it at all. The kid wasn’t the least bit vain about his mop of red hair, and he had surprised Nail with his ideas about facing death calmly because we all have to go sooner or later, but he yelled at Fat Gill, “I been a-cuttin my own hair since I was five year old, and aint nobody else never touched it! Give me that there razor, and I’ll do it myself!” Fat Gill had guffawed at the thought that they’d be dumb enough to let the boy get hold of the razor. Nail, listening, had determined that Fat Gill and Short Leg were both required to hold Ernest down while the barber shaved him. They wouldn’t have to hold Ernest when they put him in Old Sparky…not unless they did Nail first and made Ernest watch, and if they did that, Ernest might easily get mad or scared and start fighting. Nobody would tell them which one was going first. Maybe they’d flip a coin at the last minute. Nail hoped that he could go last, simply because he had enough experience to bear watching Ernest get it, in a way that wouldn’t be so the other way around. But try explaining this to anybody. Of course there was always a chance that Viridis had got all of those newspapermen to come back again, but Nail doubted it. He had spent a good bit of time trying to imagine how Viridis might save him this time, but he hadn’t been able to come up with a single blessèd notion, although he wouldn’t put any thing past her: she might even set fire to the whole penitentiary to stop them. He was a little surprised at himself for being so inwardly calm, so resigned; it wasn’t because he had any hope of once again being saved at the last minute but because he knew he would not be, and the only way to take it, this time, was to accept what Ernest had been preaching at him for several days now: “We ort not to fear nothin, not even that black thing they call death. Me and you will jist not be no more, but the whole world won’t be neither. It will go with us, Nail. The whole world will die when we die, don’t ye see? But it has to die sooner or later, I reckon, just as we’uns all do, so one time is about as good as another. That’s all time is. One time is as good as another.” The twelve witnesses, whoever they were this time, were sure going to be surprised to see both of them going to the chair so calmly. If the twelve witnesses were expecting any excitement from either one of them, they were going to be in for a letdown.

But there weren’t going to be twelve witnesses, or even nine. When the head-shaving was finished, the new warden himself came down into the death hole. Yeager had impressed Nail as just maybe a little bit nicer than Burdell, although Nail knew that any man who had been the boss at Tucker Farm had to be plenty tough, or else numbskulled, and Nail hadn’t seen enough of him to know which. Now Yeager was saying, “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” and Nail couldn’t tell whether he was saying “gentlemen” politely and friendly-like or just being sarcastic.

Nail heard Ernest say, “Howdy, Warden.” Nail just nodded his head at the warden politely, and the warden could see him, because they now had electricity down in the hole; or at least they had wired up one bulb that gave some illumination to the basement. It was one of the new warden’s “improvements.” Now they learned of another: the warden was offering them a “last meal.” “Just anything you want to eat hee hee,” the warden said, the end of his sentence sounding like some kind of half-cough, half-laugh.

At neither one of Nail’s previously scheduled executions had they offered him anything special to eat, or any special treatment, not even a final cigarette. He hadn’t had a smoke now for six months, and no longer craved one. He wondered where the warden got this idea of a special “last meal.” Probably he’d heard it was what they did in Tennessee or some civilized place. “Wal, I reckon I could set my teeth into a platter of chicken’n dumplins,” Nail said.

“Me, I’d like a real honest beefsteak,” Ernest said. “I aint never et me one of them afore.”

“We’ll see what we can do about them dumplins hee hee,” said Yeager. “Now, you boys ought to know somethin about tonight’s little entertainment hee hee. So I’m gonna tell y’all. First off, there won’t be no pack of reporters like last time. Just one, from the Gazette. Second off, there won’t be no twelve witnesses. New law says not but six, so that’s all y’all will get, okay?” The warden waited to see if either of them would comment on the new law, but neither of them did. “And third off hee hee,” the warden resumed, “there is a real good chance that the governor hisself will show up. I can’t promise nothin, but yes, I do believe he might appear, so I want you boys to behave yourselfs and be gentlemen, okay?” Nail nodded, and, since he heard nothing from the other cell, he assumed that Ernest was nodding also. “Now, if the governor does show up, I don’t want y’all to start in to yappin at him about clemency or nothin like that. He’s done made up his mind, and if y’all start beggin him and beggin him, it’ll just embarrass all of us hee hee. So I want y’all to just keep quiet, okay?” Again Nail assented by nodding. “Of course hee hee, if y’all want to holler when the power comes on, y’all just go ahead and holler, won’t nobody care. That’s expected of y’all anyhow hee hee, aint it?” Nail took the question to be rhetorical and did not even nod. The new warden went on, “I aint never watched a execution before, myself. You have, aint you, Chism?” Nail nodded. “Don’t you men that get executed generally start in to carryin on and screamin and all, hee hee?”

“Sometimes,” Nail said, and then asked, “Which one of us are ye aimin to do first?”

“Good question, Chism hee hee,” Yeager said. “I really aint given it no thought. Got any preference hee hee?”

“I’d ’preciate it if you’d do him first,” Nail said.

Nail heard Ernest agree. “Yeah, do me first. I don’t want to watch you’uns do Nail.”

The warden looked back and forth between the two of them in their separate cells, trying to stand midway between them. He leaned toward Nail and asked, “You scared to go first? Or you still think somebody’s gonna save you a third time hee hee?”

“Nossir, I jist don’t want Ernest to have to watch me.”

“Let me think about it,” the warden said. “I caint promise nothin hee hee.” He went back upstairs.

Later in the afternoon Jimmie Mac came, but he was still pretending that Nail didn’t exist. He only wanted to see if Ernest was ready to be baptized. He had been working on Ernest all week, trying to baptize him. Jimmie Mac had even got to the point where he was willing to go ahead and baptize Ernest even if Ernest would not confess and repent. He wanted to make one last effort. “Son, just a few more hours and you’ll stand there at those pearl-studded gates and they won’t let you in,” he said. Nail couldn’t hear what-all Ernest was replying, but it took him a while. They went on talking in the next cell. Ernest had told Nail that up around Timbo where he came from everybody thought you had to be totally immersed in water to be saved, and there wasn’t noplace around this pen where they could totally immerse you, and he didn’t care to be sprinkled, although he didn’t exactly mind it neither, it probably wasn’t any worse than getting your head shaved. Finally Nail heard Jimmie Mac saying, “Son, you’ll never regret this,” and then some more talking, and then Jimmie Mac said real loud, “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, amen,” and then it was silent for a while before Jimmie Mac asked, “Don’t you feel like shouting?” Nail didn’t hear what Ernest answered, but it wasn’t a shout.

At suppertime, sure enough, they brought Nail a platter of chicken and dumplings, and Ernest an honest-to-God porterhouse with all the trimmings. Those prison folks in Tennessee, or wherever it was, sure had the right idea. As Ernest put it, “By gonnies, I’d let ’em ’lectercute me ever night if they’d feed me like this aforehand.”

They weren’t given any time after supper to sit around on the porch and shoot the breeze or watch the hound dog chew his tail. Warden Yeager returned, accompanied by Fat Gill, Short Leg, and a couple of armed black trusties. Was it time already to go upstairs? Warden Yeager said, “Well now, gentlemen hee hee, not that I don’t take your word for it that you’ll be orderly during these proceedings, but just to be safe hee hee we are going to have to search you. Take off your hee hee clothes.”

They opened the cell doors and made Nail and Ernest strip down naked. Of course Nail had anticipated this and had nothing around his neck except the tree charm. Warden Yeager fingered the tree charm, turning it over and even squinting at the inscription on the back of it. He decided to let Nail wear it but nothing else. They took away his clothes and turned the cell upside down looking for his blade. They tore up his Bible and ripped up the bed. It was Warden Yeager, maybe not so numbskulled after all, who realized it was inside the harmonica, where it had originated; he took the harmonica apart and removed the dagger and held it up in front of Nail’s face and said, “Mister, does this belong to you, any chance hee hee?” Nail did not answer. The warden began to shake—out of checked anger, Nail thought at first, but then decided the warden was shaking the way you do when you’ve had a narrow escape. “Maybe we’ll make you go first hee hee,” the warden said, and Nail realized something else: whenever the warden made that sound “hee hee” it wasn’t because he didn’t know whether to laugh or to cough but because he was just real nervous. Yeah, T.D. Yeager was sure one nervous feller.

Jimmie Mac returned and said it was time for them to leave their cells. “Why, howdy, Nail,” Ernest said at the sight of naked Nail standing handcuffed outside his door. “I aint seen you in a coon’s age. Do I look as bad as you do?” Yes, it had been all of a month since they’d last laid eyes on each other, although they had talked so much they hardly had anything left to say, and yes, Ernest looked pretty awful with his red hair all gone except around his pecker. Now it was Ernest who began to protest to the guards, “Hey! Aint you gonna give us our clothes back? We caint go up thar nekkid as the day we was born! What if they’s a lady present?”

“They aint no lady present,” Fat Gill assured them. Nail sighed with relief, and soon saw what he meant: among the few witnesses there was no woman, no Viridis, not yet anyhow, and he hoped she would never come. Even if she did, they wouldn’t let her into the room as long as he and Ernest had their peckers a-hanging down. There wasn’t no governor neither. Just five strangers…well, one of them he had seen before, a newspaperman who’d been here the last time. He was the only one of the five who looked like he cared, and he was raising his eyebrows at the sight of these two convicts stark-naked. The death room was still illuminated only by the light from that one green-shaded bulb up near the ceiling, so it wasn’t as if their genitals were exposed to harsh spotlight. In such darkness Nail didn’t even feel naked.

Warden Yeager explained to the newspaperman, “We aint takin any chances this time hee hee. Were you here when the last warden had a little problem?”

“Yes, I was,” the newspaperman said. “Well, ‘Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither.’”

“What’s that from?” the warden asked.

Jimmie Mac butted in. “The Bible. Book of Job, one and twenty-one. ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessèd be the name of the Lord.’ And the Good Book goes on, next chapter, ‘Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.’”

The warden looked at Jimmie Mac uncertainly and asked, “Are you supposed to say a lot?”

“Just the final prayer,” Jimmie Mac informed him, clearly liking the position of telling the new warden what was what.

“I aint been through this before,” the warden declared, as if anybody needed to be told. “Do you say the final prayer now, or do we wait till Bobo gets here?”

The newspaperman spoke up. “We ought to wait till the governor gets here.” He’d hardly said those words when the turnkey opened the guests’ door, and in walked a man who surely was the governor, with another man who looked like he must be the local sheriff, and a third man who must be the governor’s bodyguard.

“Good heavens!” said the man who must be governor, and accosted the warden, demanding, “Why are these men naked?”

“We found that blade, Your Honor hee hee,” Yeager said. “I thought we would, and we stripped ’em and searched ’em to be sure, and Chism had a blade. I found it hee hee.”

“Well, why are they just standing around like that?” the governor asked. He was more nervous than the warden, and looked like he was hunting for a place to relieve himself. “Why don’t you do something?”

“We will, Your Honor,” Yeager said. “We were just waitin for you to get here.”

The governor looked around at the others in the room, squinting in the semidarkness to see how many were there. “If I’m saying there shall be only six witnesses,” the governor said, “then there can be only six witnesses. Some of you men will have to go. Like you, Fletcher. Why don’t you take off?”

The newspaperman laughed. “There has to be at least one of us poor ink-stained devils here, and it’s me,” he said.

The governor and his party evicted three of the other witnesses and took their seats, the governor sitting on the front row. The governor glanced at Nail’s pecker and then at Ernest’s, as if he were comparing them. “Do these men have to keep standing like that?” he asked the warden.

“Which one do you want us to do first hee hee, Your Honor?”

“Yeager, I’m not a courtroom judge anymore, you know. I’m not ‘Your Honor’ now.”

The newspaperman, behind his hand but audible to everyone, said to Yeager, “He’s ‘Your Excellency.’”

“Yeah!” Yeager said. “Hee hee. Your Excellency, which one of these men should we fry—should we electrocute first?”

The governor turned around in his chair to speak to the newspaperman. “Fletcher, where is Miss Monday?”

“I have no idea, Your Excellency,” the newspaperman said. “I haven’t seen her for several days.”

“Hmm,” said the governor in a tone of disappointment. “I was hoping she…” The governor did not finish what he was about to say. Was he hoping she’d show up? From what Viridis had told Nail, the governor couldn’t even stand the sight of her.

Jimmie Mac spoke up: “Warden, and Your Excellency sir, it’s almost sundown. The law says a man has to be dead before sundown, and there’s two of them to do this time.”

The governor stared at Jimmie Mac. “Who are you?” he asked. “Are you Mr. Bobo?”

“No, he’s the chaplain, Your Excellency,” the warden said.

“Oh,” the governor said. “You’re supposed to comfort the men, right? Well, go ahead and comfort them, don’t let me bother you.” He seemed to expect Jimmie Mac to pat Nail on the back or offer him a handkerchief. After a long silence the governor said, “Well, make them sit down,” and the warden motioned for his guards to get Nail and Ernest seated in a pair of the witness chairs.

A longer silence followed. Out of modesty and for the governor’s sake, Nail and Ernest kept their handcuffed wrists over their genitals and sat with as much dignity as they could. It was so quiet that Nail began to hear it. He had wondered at what point, this time, he would begin to hear it again: the choiring of the trees. Now it was very faint: the trees were still up there on that mountain top in Stay More, and their voices had a long way to go before they could be heard. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Ernest, to see if Ernest was hearing it too. He had told Ernest all about the trees, to get him ready. Ernest was smiling, and was the calmest person in the room. The faint singing of the trees was interrupted by a spoken observation from the governor: “Well, it appears that…that nobody else is going to come.” He began to look back and forth between the two condemned men again, comparing not their peckers this time but their faces, as if trying to make a decision between them. Finally his forefinger came up and pointed at Nail. The governor said, “Let’s do him first.”

Ernest spoke up: “Your Excellency, if it don’t make a whole lot of difference one way or the other, I would sure appreciate it if you would do me first.”

The governor gave Ernest a look that had a touch of compassion to it. Certainly, Ernest’s words had been well chosen and fine spoken, but his voice had been that of what he was: a boy just sixteen years old. The voice was out of place, out of keeping with the other voices in this dark, still room. But the governor did not understand why Ernest wanted to go first; nobody, not even Nail, wanted to try to explain to the governor just how it was. The governor misunderstood. “That’s commendable and brave,” he said to Ernest, “but Mr. Chism was here first, and he’s older, and he’s going first.” The governor gave an impatient flap of his hand, and the two guards lifted Nail out of his seat and walked him to the electric chair, and this time he was careful not even to show any sign of struggle as they strapped him in. This time they remembered to put the metal cap on top of his head, and this time, given the warmth of the merry month of May, the metal cap wasn’t so cold as it touched the raw skin of his scalp.

Jimmie Mac prompted the warden: “Now you’re supposed to ask him if he has any last words.”

“Right hee hee,” the warden said. “Mr. Chism, before we solemnly carry out the sentence of this state which has been imposed on you hee hee, would you care to address the gathering with any concluding remarks hee hee?”

Nail tried to smile. “Yeah. Where’s Bobo?”

They had forgotten him. The warden was a bundle of nerves, the governor didn’t know whether he was coming or going, Jimmie Mac was intoxicated with his sense of being in charge, and nobody but Ernest was still breathing normally. Now the warden really got flustered, and he said to Fat Gill, “Well, just where in hell is Bobo?”

Fat Gill shrugged; it was all new to him. Short Leg, the only experienced man here except for Jimmie Mac, spoke up: “He’s probably out in the engine room fiddlin with the dynamo. Want me to go look?” The warden nodded, and Short Leg went out through the door that Bobo always came in through, that led to the power plant. Short Leg returned almost immediately, saying, “Here he is.”

Drunk as usual—no, drunker than usual—Bobo shuffled in carefully as if trying to make sure he was putting his feet in the right place. The governor, for one, was shocked. “Is that man drunk? Has Mr. Bobo been drinking?”

Jimmie Mac, all-knowing, explained to His Excellency, “Yessir, he’s always like that. It’s a pardonable sin, wouldn’t you say? Considering what he has to do…”

Bobo could barely lift a hand to the switch, but did, and stood there in a hurry to get it over with.

Jimmie Mac prompted the warden again: “Last words.”

“Okay, here we go,” the warden said, rubbing his hands together. “Last words, Chism?”

The trees were singing Nail’s last words for him. They were in full voice now, rising and soaring in song. Anything he might say would be so feeble and earthly by comparison. He shook his head.

“No last words?” The warden looked to Jimmie Mac for guidance.

Jimmie Mac was mumbling the end of the Lord’s Prayer, but he interrupted himself to say, “You’re supposed to ask Bobo, ‘Ready, Bobo?’”

The warden turned. “Ready, Bobo?”

Bobo nodded.

Jimmie Mac said, “You’re supposed to raise your hand like this, and then drop it, like this.”

Bobo did not wait for the warden to copy Jimmie Mac. Drunk and blind, Bobo took Jimmie Mac’s gesture as his authority and threw the switch and closed the circuit.

But nothing happened. The governor, the newspaperman, all of the men in the room jumped an inch in their chairs and cringed and shivered, but nothing happened. The green-shaded ceiling light did not dim, the dynamo did not whine. In the silence—only it wasn’t complete silence, because of the trees—the governor asked, “Who’s singing?” and looked around trying to locate the choir. Everyone stared at Bobo. Nail turned his head and stared at Bobo, who still had the switch turned on but was looking down at his feet as if ashamed of his failure to make any current come to the chair. Then he staggered toward the chair itself and began fiddling with the wires one by one.

As Bobo began to examine the metal cap on Nail’s head, Nail thought he heard him whisper into his ear, “I love you.”

Nail was startled to hear this, and perplexed to find himself suddenly remembering that time in the visit room when Viridis had quoted his father’s words ‘Boy, don’t ye never fergit, yo’re a Chism, and Chisms don’t never quit,’ and almost exactly in the sound of his father’s voice. Now it was as if Irvin Bobo had spoken those three words in the voice of Viridis! He turned to stare at Bobo, but Bobo was disappearing through the door into the engine room.

“Now what’s the problem?” the governor asked in a quivering voice.

“Bobo’s gone to check the dynamo, I guess,” Yeager said.

They waited and waited, but Bobo did not return. Short Leg was sent to look for him. After a long while Short Leg returned alone. “It sure looks to me like he’s done gone home,” Short Leg said. “He aint anywhere around the powerhouse.” He was shaking his head back and forth. “But he sure did fuck up that dynamo before he left.”

“Fire him!” the governor said. He turned on the warden. “Goddammit, Yeager, there are going to be some changes made in this institution, and I am going to make them!”

“I’ve already made a few hee hee,” Yeager protested.

Off

One of the first things they did was fire Jimmie Mac. Or, rather, since Jimmie Mac had been just a volunteer to begin with, they replaced him with a paid, nearly full-time chaplain, an honest-to-God man of the cloth, the real Reverend Mr. Lee Tomme, formerly of the Colorado State Correctional System, who started in from his first day on the job correcting everything in the Arkansas system. Whether or not they fired Irvin Bobo, Nail couldn’t find out right away. But one of the first “improvements” that the Reverend Tomme accomplished was getting the prisoners the privilege of reading magazines and newspapers, and just a few days after his third execution was aborted, Nail read an item in the Gazette, NEW ELECTRICIAN HIRED AT PENITENTIARY, which explained that G.H. Dempsey, of Arkadelphia, electrician for the past seven years at the Arkadelphia Milling Company, who had done the wiring at the Little Rock City Hall eight years ago, had been hired to replace Irvin P. Bobo, who was resigning for personal reasons. Near the bottom of the article Mr. Bobo was quoted as saying, “My memory isn’t what it used to be. Sometimes lately people say I did things which I don’t even recall ever having done.” The new electrician, Dempsey, said he would have no objection to electrocuting any man whether that man was black or white. “A switch is a switch,” he said. “It’s all the same to me.”

A day after that, the next issue of the Gazette was personally delivered to Nail’s cell by the Reverend Tomme, who also offered Nail a cigarette. Nail almost accepted, but he said, “Preacher, I’ve gone this long without smokes, I can go awhile longer. Thank ye just the same. You go ahead and have one if ye want.”

The Reverend Tomme (it was pronounced “Tommy”) laughed. “I don’t smoke, Brother Chism, but I want you men to be able to have a few pleasures in this life if you are able to obtain them. Look,” and he handed the newspaper to Nail, pointing to an item. “Do you need me to read it for you?”

“I can read just fine,” Nail said. The headline, a big black one, read: GOV. HAYS DEMANDS SWEEPING CHANGES IN PRISON SYSTEM. There was a smaller headline underneath: APPOINTS PRISON EXPERT AS NEW CHAPLAIN, and below that: WILL APPOINT COMMISSION TO INVESTIGATE CONDITIONS.

“The best place to start improving this prison is right here,” the Reverend Tomme said, pointing at the dirt floor of Nail’s cell. “The best person’s condition to change is yours. I’m going to see if we can’t find you a job upstairs.”

“My God!” Nail exclaimed. He knew there was a law against requiring—or even permitting—condemned men to work.

“Yes, your God,” the Reverend Tomme said, and smiled. “I’d like to think it’s my God too, but I’ll settle for your God.”

Nail studied the minister. He had a pleasant face, not that of a man who couldn’t take a joke. He wasn’t much older than Nail, maybe thirty at most. Nail said, “My God is a Lady.” He waited to see if this man would be different from Jimmie Mac.

The man didn’t blink. “A beautiful One, I’ll bet,” the Reverend Tomme said. “And She must really love you. That God in Her goodness saved you three times from the electric chair. Would you tell me your thoughts about that?”

“Thoughts?” said Nail. “I think it’s jist wonderful.”

“Can you tell me what it’s like,” the minister requested, “to sit there one minute and think your life is over, and in the next minute to know that you’ll live? I really can’t imagine being in that chair. Nobody who has never been through that terrible experience could possibly imagine it. And nobody but you, Brother Chism, has ever cheated death three times.”

“Well, sir,” Nail began, and found himself becoming more talkative than he’d ever been in his life. He’d waited a long time to have somebody to tell it to. He would have liked to tell it to Viridis, but he never got a chance. He hadn’t wanted to tell it to Ernest. Now Nail talked for a solid hour to the preacher. The preacher had a very lively face: he would smile or frown or scowl or laugh or just look like he understood completely what Nail was saying.

The preacher would sometimes say, “I see,” as if he really did, or “Go on,” as if he really enjoyed listening, or “Is that right?” or “No!” or “Yes yes,” or whatever was required by what Nail was saying, but he didn’t interrupt with any real comment until Nail was finished, and then observed, “It looks to me as if God in His wisdom—Her wisdom, I’m sorry—has got something for you to do in this life that She wants to preserve you for, keep you for, let you do.”

Nail smiled. “All I want to do, Reverend, is raise my sheep and watch after ’em as best I know how.”

“That’s just what our friend Jesus once said,” Lee Tomme observed. “‘I am the good shepherd,’ he said; ‘the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.’ You’ve come close three times to giving your life, but Jesus, or God the Mother if you think that way, has saved you from death because He or She, or both of them as One, has been put to death and knows what it’s like and doesn’t want you to have it, not just yet.”

“That’s fine spoke, Reverend,” Nail said.

“Will you call me Lee?” he asked. “Just Lee. And I’ll call you Nail? Good. We have much work to do.”

“I aint had any work to do,” Nail observed. “That’s been my main problem. The whole time I’ve been in this prison, they’ve never given me a chance to do a lick of work.”

Lee shook his head in sympathy. “It’s an idiotic law that says a man condemned to die cannot be made to work, or even allowed to work. But that’s their law, and I can only try to change it. Nail, would you tell me anything else you don’t like about this place?”

Nail laughed. “Have you got all day?”

“I’ve got all day,” Lee said, “and all night too, if need be.”

The Reverend Mr. Lee Tomme did not spend the entire day and night with Nail Chism, but he stayed past suppertime and insisted on eating supper with Nail, the same cornbread and cowpeas. A couple of days later there was a front-page article in the Gazette, NEW PRISON CHAPLAIN BLASTS CONDITIONS.

“The food is not fit to eat, the living conditions are unhealthy beyond belief, and the unprovoked punishment is a hideous infliction of unspeakable pain,” the Reverend Mr. Tomme was quoted as saying. “It is the same story at Tucker, the white men’s prison farm, and at Cummins, the farm for black men and women. The whole prison system in the state of Arkansas is begging for change, and we are going to change it, even if we have to abolish the machine politician!

“Our prison system is at least fifty years behind the national standard, which is bad enough. The penitentiary and the farms are not self-sustaining, when they easily could be. The only mode of punishment known to the keepers, for any violation, real or imagined, of the rules, real or imagined, is the strap. And a terrible strap it is, which beggars description, although I intend to describe it if it is not immediately abolished.

“There is no self-respecting poor dirt farmer in the state of Arkansas who would permit his animals to dwell in the filth and the horror that surround these human beings, or who would flay them as these men are flayed. There are fewer deaths from natural causes than from preventable disease and from this corporal punishment which is in fact an illegal form of capital punishment.

“Where does the blame lie? The guards are only doing what they think is expected of them. The new superintendent, Warden Yeager, is an experienced penal administrator who is open to change, experiment, and improvement. The governor…ladies and gentlemen, I would not have the freedom to make these criticisms if the governor had not appointed me pastor to the poor oppressed captives.

“Who, then, is to blame? You are. And I am. Any one of us who learns of the brutal injustices of this system and does not act to stop them is in collusion with them! Let us put a stop to them now.”

The very next day, Fat Gill escorted Nail upstairs into the engine room of the powerhouse and interrupted a big fellow almost as tall as Nail but thicker-muscled, who looked as if he could eat Fat Gill for breakfast and want a second helping. “Here he is,” said Fat Gill.

“Take the cuffs off,” the man said.

“But he’s dangerous,” Fat Gill said.

“Shit. He won’t hurt me. Take the cuffs off and get out of here.” Fat Gill obeyed. As soon as the guard was gone, the big fellow offered Nail a cigarette, and when Nail declined, he offered him a swig from a pint bottle, which Nail knew he could not successfully decline, so he made no attempt. While he was wiping his mouth with one hand, the big man grabbed his other hand and shook it, and said, “I’m Guy Dempsey, and one of these days I’m gonna burn your ass, but meanwhile you’re gonna be my helper. You know anything about electricity?”

Nail shook his head. “The closest I come to learnin anything was when the feller who had your job let his hand slip and gave me a little charge before I was supposed to get the full dose.”

“Okay, here’s where we start,” Dempsey said. “Pay close attention, and they might even name something after you. They named the volt after a guy named Count Volta, they named the watt after James Watt, they named the ohm after a German physicist, and they named the ampere after André Ampère. They might decide to call the dose it takes to electrocute a man a chism. Unless you invent something better. Pay attention.”

Beginning that day, and continuing every day afterward, G.H. Dempsey taught Nail Chism everything he knew about electrostatics, electrodynamics, and electromagnetics. At the end of that first day, Dempsey gave him a copy of Rowland’s Applied Electricity for Practical Men and told him to memorize it. It wasn’t nearly as thick as Dr. Hood, but it was twice as difficult. Thinking of Dr. Hood, Nail wondered if Viridis had ever noticed the “message,” such as it was, that he had tried to smuggle out to her in Dr. Hood, wherein, on the page defining mustard oil, he had used his own blood to underline the definition. It wasn’t fair of him, he realized, to have expected her to figure out what that meant. Even if she saw the smear of blood and read the definition, she wouldn’t know that he was asking her to smuggle some mustard oil in to him.

He didn’t have to wait for the morning light to read the Rowland book. Now he could read anytime because Dempsey had wired and illuminated the dungeon of the death hole, thanks to Warden Yeager, who had also put Ernest to work painting the walls of it. The job took him only a week, but he was allowed outside his cell all day in order to do it. That freedom and employment were a rare novelty to him, so Ernest happily painted while Nail did odd jobs upstairs in the engine room and took in Dempsey’s lectures and demonstrations on electricity. Sometimes Dempsey had Nail come with him to the main building to do a job, or up to the guard towers to work on the new searchlights. Once Dempsey even took him into the warden’s house outside The Walls to repair some wiring, and Nail reflected that he could have gained his freedom if he had overpowered Dempsey, something he didn’t want to try. In the evenings Nail read Rowland while Ernest drew pictures with his new art kit. The ladies of the Arkansas Federation of Women’s Clubs had put together for Ernest a box containing every conceivable type of artist’s pencil, crayon, chalk, and a set of forty-eight colored pastels, including six shades of green: emerald, moss, olive, viridian, terre verte, and Paris; and he had enough paper, he told Nail, to wallpaper his cell, which he just might do if they didn’t electrocute him soon.

Afer a week of this decent treatment, Warden Yeager himself came down into the death hole one Saturday morning and passed inspection on the new paint job, and then said, “Well, gentlemen, can I do anything else for you?”

“I want another one of them steaks,” Ernest said.

“Yeah, and some more chicken’n dumplins,” Nail said.

“Hee hee, hee hee,” Yeager said. “Aint we been feeding y’all a little bit better lately?”

It was true. There wasn’t any steak or dumplings, but the monotonous cornbread and cowpeas had been replaced by an occasional egg at breakfast, a sandwich at dinner, and a square meal at supper: hash or stew sometimes. They really couldn’t complain about that. “We’re happy, I reckon,” Nail declared. “I only wish you’d change that rule about not lettin us ever go to the visit room.”

“My goodness!” Yeager exclaimed. “I forgot about that. You haven’t seen the visit room lately, have you, Chism? Come up and take a look.” The warden himself, but with some help from Short Leg, escorted Nail upstairs, out across the Yard and into the visitors’ room, where a few changes had been made: the dense screen had been torn out and replaced with a long table divided by a vertical board down the center of it, with chairs placed along both sides so that the inmates could sit on one side, the visitors on the other. And the table could accommodate up to six inmates and six visitors at a time, not just one of each. Two couples were using it at the moment: a black woman with her child was talking to a black convict, and a white woman was talking to a man Nail recognized as his old bunkmate Toy, who had such bad breath. The warden explained that they weren’t allowed to pass anything across the board or touch or hold hands or anything like that, although one kiss at the beginning and one at the end were permitted. “If it’s somebody you care to kiss hee hee,” Yeager said. Nail wondered how the woman could stand to kiss Toy. And there were several other good improvements in the room: a visitor could bring you something, a present or some food or anything, so long as it got inspected first for anything illegal, and you could have a visitor not just once a month but once a week if you wanted.

“Well, I’ll declare,” Nail said. “Now all I need is a visitor.”

The warden gestured toward the opposite door, which Bird was guarding in a new uniform that made him look like a hotel doorman. “She’s in there hee hee,” Yeager said.

“Huh?” Nail said. Then he said, “Oh. Warden Yeager, sir, you sure are a nice man.”

“Don’t thank me hee hee,” the warden said. “It was the Reverend Tomme who made these improvements. Now, enjoy your visit hee hee. Bird, you let ’em talk all they want, just don’t let her give him nothin except what’s already been inspected.”

“Yessir,” Bird said, and saluted like some goddamn soldier, then opened the door. She stood there, in the doorway, in a green summertime outfit that was thin and silky, a shade of green that matched her eyes and made Nail notice how her hair caught the light in soft red sparks. She came in. Nail stood on his side of the table waiting for her. She came up to the table, studied the barrier-board between them, and raised her hands as if to make sure the screen was gone. She looked uncertainly at Bird. “Y’all can kiss, that’s all,” Bird informed her.

They both had to put their hands on the tabletop to steady themselves as they leaned toward each other across the divider. His hands were still cuffed together. It took what seemed to him like an awful long time to reach her, to get there. Seeing Toy out of the corner of his eye, he began to wonder if his own breath was bad and tried to keep his mouth clamped tight shut, but he had to make at least a little pucker of his lips. Nail had never kissed a girl before. Not once. As her face began the long journey across the tabletop, she was smiling, but as she came closer the smile vanished, and she seemed as if she were about to faint and closed her eyes. He kept his eyes open for fear he’d miss her completely. He realized their noses were going to get in the way, and he tilted his nose to his left, but at that instant she tilted her nose in that direction too, then opened her eyes to see why he hadn’t made contact yet; seeing their noses in the way, she tilted her head back in the other direction at the same instant he was heading that way himself, and they had to stop and start all over again until they could somehow silently agree to tilt their noses in opposite directions and get them out of the way. They made a short, simultaneous laugh of self-consciousness. And then her lips were touching his. It was almost like that time Bobo had given him a quick little charge of current, not that it was painful but it jolted him like something he had never expected to feel and wasn’t ready for. He heard those trees, the same singing he’d sometimes heard in the death room. It was real nice. Sometimes, playing his harmonica, he had tried to imagine what it would be like kissing Viridis, but he’d never realized it would be as nice as this, or that it would make him tingle to the tips of his toes. He closed his eyes. The singing of the trees continued until finally it was hushed by Bird’s harsh voice: “That’s enough now.” They disengaged and backed away from the middle of the table.

“Hi, Nail,” she said, smiling.

“Howdy, Viridis,” he said.

“Y’all sit down, now,” Bird said, and they sat in their chairs on opposite sides of the table and looked at each other across the wooden board. The couples on either side of them went on talking. Toy’s woman was saying something about a store burning in De Vall’s Bluff, and the black man was asking his woman if the white folks she worked for were treating her proper. They paid no attention to Nail and Viridis.

“How are you?” Viridis asked, rather formally.

“I am real fine, I reckon,” he answered, somewhat formally himself. “And how are you?”

“I am very hopeful,” she said. “Everything is looking up. They’re treating you decently, aren’t they?”

“Compared with the way it was before,” he said, “it is sure decent.”

“You look good,” she said. “You’re putting on some weight.”

He ran his hand over his bare skull. “My head don’t look too good, I guess.”

“Your hair’s starting to grow back,” she observed. “And they’ll never shave it again.” She repeated: “Never.”

“I don’t know how to thank you for what you done to stop that last execution, because I don’t know for sure just what you done, but me and Ernest both are awful glad you did.”

She smiled. She just smiled that real pretty smile of hers, like she wasn’t going to tell him a thing about what she done. “I hear the…thingamajig in the power plant—the dynamo or whatever you call it, that powers the electric chair—was incapacitated,” she said.

“Yeah. Incapacitated.” He liked the sound of that word. “Dempsey, the new guy, that I’m workin for, he says he can’t figure it out. Something’s busted bad in that dynamo, but I might be able to fix it myself.” He laughed. “Wouldn’t that be something? For me to learn enough about electricity to fix the dynamo so they can go ahead and finish fryin me with it?”

She did not laugh. She leaned close toward the barrier and lowered her voice almost to a whisper. “Nail, the dynamo has a Number 12 cartridge fuse that has been removed and is hidden on the top shelf of the broom closet in the engine room. Leave it there.”

Nail nodded his head. And then he nodded it again, and just left it nodding. At length he asked, “How did you know that’s what it was?”

“It’s written on the side of the fuse,” she said.

“I didn’t think Bobo was smart enough to read,” he said.

“Nail,” she said. She just said his name, but the way she said it seemed to mean, Let’s quit pretending we don’t both know what happened.

He kept his voice down. “Where’d you git the fake mustache?”

She giggled. “It wasn’t fake. It was his. I cut it off.”

“How did he like that?”

“He was dead drunk, and he was still dead drunk when I put his clothes back on him and left him. I doubt he ever woke up until the next morning.”

Nail felt his face getting red, and he knew Viridis could notice the blush. He observed, “You must’ve seen me and Ernest without a stitch.”

“A stitch is a stitch,” she said. “It’s all the same to me.” They both laughed so hard that Bird snapped to attention from his half-bored stance. “You do have a nice body,” she went on. Did she enjoy keeping the blush on his face? “How did that Post-Dispatch reporter say it? ‘Chism is a blue-eyed, light-haired, fair-complexioned man of splendid physique despite what harsh incarceration has done to it.’”

The blush stayed. “I never read no story of that kind,” he said.

“I’m keeping a scrapbook for you,” she said.

Trying to change the subject, he said, “There’s something I can’t figure out. How did you get inside The Walls if you didn’t have Bobo with you?”

Very quietly she rapped out on the tabletop, Shave and a haircut, two bits. “That’s the code for the door at the main gate,” she said. “But to get into the powerhouse, I also had Bobo’s key-ring on my belt…his belt, which I was wearing. That key-ring is the only thing of his I’ve kept.”

Nail whistled, then whispered, “You still have Bobo’s keys?”

She nodded. “He doesn’t need them anymore. For instance,” she lowered her voice even more, “did you notice there’s a long ladder lying against one wall of the engine room?”

“Yeah, and it’s padlocked on both ends to the wall,” he said.

“The key to the padlocks,” she whispered, “is in my hand. Before I have to go, I’ll slip it into my mouth. Then, when I kiss you goodbye, I’ll put it into your mouth. Okay?”

“Viridis,” he said, “you are as good as they make ’em. I mean, you are really truly good as all gitout. But there’s just one other thing I’d have to git…”

She didn’t give him a chance to finish. “On the same shelf of the broom closet where the dynamo fuse is hidden,” she said, “is Irvin Bobo’s empty whiskey pint in a paper sack. Only it isn’t empty. I filled it with mustard oil.”

He shook his head. And then he shook it again and just left it shaking. “You didn’t leave a railroad ticket up there too, didje?” he asked, laughing.

“Shh,” she hushed him. “No, but I could tie Rosabone to a tree out by the swamp,” she said, meaning it.

“I’ll go on foot,” he said.

“Where?” she asked.

“Where? Why, home, of course.”

She shook her head. “That’s the first place they’ll look for you.”

“Where else would I go?” he asked. “Mexico?”

She whispered again. “I could hide you up in the attic of my house.” When he frowned and shook his head, she said, “I could really make a nice room up there, and you could have anything you want.”

“Anything except mountains and meadows and creeks and country,” he said. He shook his head again. “No, I thank ye kindly, but I’ll light out for the back of beyond. I don’t mean I aim to git my old bed back, in the homeplace. But there’s some hollers I know up on the mountain where aint nobody ever been, except Indians. Places where nobody could find me.”

“Could I find you?”

“Not if I didn’t draw ye a map.”

“Draw me a map.”

“When the time comes. I aint leavin tonight. First I’ve got to figger some way to git upstairs from the death hole in the middle of the night.”

“Whatch’all talkin about?” Bird said, and they looked up to see him leaning over them. Had he been listening? Had he heard anything they said? Would he snitch? Nail grew very anxious. But Bird was simply intent on announcing, “Y’all just got about five minutes left.”

“All right,” Viridis said. Bird backed away to his guard spot, and they went on talking. Viridis said, “I hope you don’t mind if I visit with Ernest after you leave.”

“Mind?” he said. “Course I don’t mind. You know he don’t have no folks to visit him from up home, where he comes from, up around Timbo. You gonna kiss him too?”

“I just want to talk about his drawings,” she said. “Has he started using his pastels yet?”

“Those colored chalks? Yeah, he’s covered a new pad with ’em. Did you bring back his old pad?”

She shook her head. “Does he need it? I had most of those framed to show to people to help save him from the chair.”

Nail said, “There’s one of them I hope you didn’t have framed. Ernest forgot it was in the pad, and he sure was mortified at the thought you seen it.”

It was her turn to blush. He was glad to see that she could. She’d caused him so many blushes. “No,” she said. “I’m not showing that to anyone. Who is the girl?”

“What girl?”

“That he drew you in bed with.”

“What makes you think it was me?”

“Nail. It looks just like you.”

“He’s shore a good artist, aint he?”

“Who’s the girl?”

“Aw, she’s jist some story I tole him. There wasn’t never nobody like that. He jist made her up. I mean, I jist made her up, and he jist drew her.”

“You’ve never been to bed with a girl?”

“Sorry, y’all’s time is up,” Bird said, and handed her a basket. “Lady, you can give ’im this now.”

Viridis had brought him a basket of goodies, which had gone through an inspection by another trusty-guard in the anteroom. It contained fruit, cookies, men’s hosiery, underclothes, handkerchiefs, books, packages of chewing-gum. Bird said to her, “You hid two things in there that’s not allowed, and you can pick ’em up outside. He can’t have that harmonica, and he can’t have that letter.”

“Oh, dear,” Viridis said. “Well, that’s too bad.”

“You can just mail him the letter,” Bird suggested. “But I don’t know about that harmonica. They prolly wouldn’t let him keep it, on account of before.”

“I guess I’ll have to say good-bye,” Viridis said. “I can’t say anything else.” Nail saw why she couldn’t say anything else: she had put something into her mouth. Pretending to wipe her lips in preparation for a parting kiss, she put the padlock key into her mouth. Bird wasn’t paying much attention anyway; kissing seemed to make him squirm. They leaned across the table, and again Nail felt the spark of their lips meeting, and wondered if the Rowland book had any explanation for that. Her lips parted, and the key came through them, between his, into his mouth. Suddenly he was aware of a tightening in his pants. He took the key into his mouth and, unable to talk, nodded his head good-bye to her. Later he wished he had thought to tell her he loved her before he got the key in his mouth. He had planned to say so during the meeting but never did.

Ernest came back to the death hole from his fifteen minutes with Viridis more cheerful than Nail had ever seen him. He had got permission from the trusties to pass the new sketchbook across to her, and they had talked about his pastel drawings, which were considerably more complicated than the black-and-whites he had been doing. Viridis had made a few suggestions but mostly had just complimented him, and had said “Ooh” or “Ahh” as she turned the pages, and just made him feel real good watching her eyes and her face as she looked at his work. She had also brought him a basket, with pretty much the same things she’d brought Nail—“enough cookies to choke a horse”—as well as a couple of art books, Advanced Pastel Techniques and Great Drawings of the Masters.

That night Nail went through the basket Viridis had brought him. It was better than Christmas. He ate an apple and wanted to eat a banana too, but he saved it. He chewed some of the chewing-gum. He opened the books; there were three of them: a clean, revised edition of Dr. Hood, big and thick and fancy-bound, with new chapters he hadn’t read before, on things like unhappy marriages and how to avoid them, how to raise children, and so on; there was a new book called Tender Buttons by a lady named Gertrude Stein; and there was a slender little book of poems, called Irradiations: Sand and Spray, by John Gould Fletcher. Nail opened it to the flyleaf and read:

To Nail Chism, a brave Arkansawyer,

whose story will take more pages

than this book.

With ineffable admiration,

John Gould Fletcher

Beneath the fancy ink of that inscription there was written in pencil in Viridis’ hand: “He is the cousin of my ex-boss, and grew up in Little Rock, lives now in London, but has read all the newspaper stories about you, and thinks the world of you.” Beneath that in blacker pencil someone had block-printed: WRITING STUFF IN BOOKS IS AGAINST RULES OF THIS PRISON.

Nail had been required by his teacher at the Stay More school to read poetry, but he hadn’t particularly cared for it or had time for it. Now that he had a lot of time, he read Mr. Fletcher’s verse cover to back, and then back to cover. There weren’t any rhymes in it, and Mr. Fletcher seemed to get overexcited at times, but he had a good way of putting things, and Nail understood what he was saying. There was one long poem, called “Green Symphony,” that was mostly about trees, and Nail appreciated such lines as:

The trees splash the sky with their fingers,

A restless green rout of stars.

and:

The trees lash the sky with their leaves,

Uneasily shaking their dark green manes.

A good poem, Nail reflected, ought to make you want to see it yourself, and he wanted to see those trees…or any trees. That time Dempsey had taken him to fix the wiring in the warden’s house, Nail had glimpsed the trees on the warden’s lawn, the first he had seen for eight months.

He wanted to watch some trees somewhere splashing the sky with their fingers and shaking their dark-green manes.

Since the painting of the death hole was all finished, they had Ernest build four more cells. They gave him the cement and the concrete blocks and the tools and finally brought him four ready-made barred doors, and all by himself Ernest built four more death cells, each of them only four feet wide by seven feet deep, and he painted those too, making a total of six cells for the death hole, and pretty soon three of the new cells were filled: there was Sam Bell, who had been convicted of killing four members of his divorced wife’s family; and, briefly, two black men who had been convicted of killing their bosses, but they hardly stayed long enough for Nail to learn their names before the governor commuted them to life imprisonment and sent them to Cummins in order to make room for Clarence Dewein and Joe Short, two young white men not much older than Ernest, who had killed a storekeeper together, or one of them had done the shooting while the other robbed the man. The population of the death hole was five. There would have been even more than that, according to the Gazette, except for all the publicity about Nail, which had made juries all over the state reluctant to send men to the electric chair, exercising instead their new option for sentences of life imprisonment.

Warden Yeager summoned Nail to his office, had Short Leg unlock the handcuffs, and offered Nail a cigarette, which he declined. “Gettin kind of crowded down there, aint it hee hee?” the warden observed or asked.

“Yessir,” Nail agreed. “I don’t think that hole was meant to hold that many.”

“But we don’t keep you down there. You doin a good job upstairs with Dempsey, I hear hee hee. A good job, he tells me. Learnin a lot.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Are you happy, Chism?” the warden asked. “Is there anything we could do for you?”

Nail thought. “Well, sir,” he said, “you know that empty piece of the Yard on the east side of the powerhouse? Could I put me a mater patch in it?”

“A mater patch?” the warden asked.

“Yeah, and grow…to-maters? It’s a shame to let a piece of land jist go to waste out there in the Yard, that the men don’t walk on or nothin.

“I could grow enough maters on that piece to feed the prison, come August and September, if you could git me the plants.”

“Well, why not?” the warden said. “I’ll get some niggers out there to spade it up for you. You need some fertilizer too. That’s a good idea. How many plants you need?”

“I reckon fifty or so ought to be all it could hold.”

“We’ll sure do it, then, Chism. Would that make you happy?”

“It would help.”

They gave Nail his tomato patch. It was really late in the year to be planting tomatoes, but the plants the warden got were kind of old and leggy anyhow, and Nail planted them deep. While Nail was cultivating them one afternoon, the warden came out there with three other fellows, all of them dressed in suits with straw hats. Nail was wearing a straw hat too, but it wasn’t fancy, and he took it off. One of the men was a black man, and he was dressed the best. The only one Nail recognized was that local sheriff who had arrested Ernest and had come with the governor to his last execution.

“Chism,” the warden said, “these here are some gentlemen would like to talk to you. This is Mr. George Donaghey, who used to be our governor, and this is the Reverend Dr. Alonzo Monk of the AME church, and I believe you’ve met Sheriff Bill Hutton. Now these men are gonna ask you some questions. Governor Hays has appointed them a commission to inspect and investigate the prison, and I want you to tell ’em just what you think, okay?”

The three men of the governor’s commission stood around in Nail’s tomato patch and asked him all kinds of questions about life in the prison. Warden Yeager stood there smiling, and his smile got bigger whenever Nail told how much things had changed lately, and how much better the food was, and all.

“Mr. Chism,” said Governor Donaghey, “you have been, and still are, under sentence of death. Don’t you think it’s remarkable that you’re allowed out here on the grounds to work in this garden?”

“Yessir, I reckon it is,” Nail replied.

“Do you know the Reverend Lee Tomme?”

“I’ve met ’im.”

“Do you think there is any substance to the charges he has made against this prison?”

“Well, sir, there was. Things was pretty bad around here before he spoke up. Of course, Warden Yeager was already doin his best to make ’em better, before the Reverend come along.”

Later that afternoon, after supper (everybody got chicken and dumplings), the warden provided a little entertainment for the visiting inspectors: he turned Ernest loose. Nail didn’t see it happen, but later Ernest told him about it. First thing, of course, they told Ernest that he would be pursued…and caught. They gave him a couple of extra pairs of pants (as protection, they said, but possibly also to impede his running) and opened the gate of The Walls and told him to take off, not toward the city but southward toward the swamp out behind the pen. They gave him a half-hour head start, and then, for the benefit of Governor Donaghey, the Reverend Monk, and Sheriff Hutton, they pursued him with the warden’s pack of bloodhounds: Driver, Slim, Gloom, Dopey, Fetch, Nosey, and Lady. They had suggested the location of some telephone poles that Ernest could climb to get out of reach of the dogs’ teeth, but he chose instead a sycamore tree beyond the swamp, a mile out, which was the farthest he could get before the hounds caught up with him, and he was returned, unharmed and unbitten, to the inspectors. The whole business was designed to prove how difficult it was to escape, and every inmate was told about it.

After dark, Nail was called out to help Guy Dempsey give the inspectors the “lighting ceremony,” as Dempsey called it: a new searchlight had been mounted on a motorized swivel atop each of the four guard towers so that the guards could focus them on any spot inside the grounds or within a half-mile radius outside the grounds, and nothing within the reach of those lights remained in darkness. A half-dozen black trusties, dressed in prison stripes, were turned loose on the understanding that they would voluntarily come back after this demonstration. Apparently, the inspectors were greatly impressed and told the warden they would report that it was impossible, between the dogs and the lights, to escape from The Walls.

After the inspectors were gone, Warden Yeager invited Nail up to his office again and thanked him for the nice things he had said to the inspectors. “Is there anything else we could do for you to make you happy?” the warden asked.

“Yessir, there is,” Nail said. “You know there’s a awful lot of grass out there on the west side of the powerhouse. Could I maybe get a couple of sheep and put them out there?”

Warden Yeager laughed. “You used to be a sheep rancher, didn’t you, Chism hee hee?” The warden shook his head in wonder at the idea, but also in refusal of it. “No, it wouldn’t work. We can’t even keep a flock of chickens here in The Walls. Now, if you were down at Tucker…” The warden snapped his fingers. “I got an idea. How about I get the governor to commute you to life and send you down to Tucker to start a sheep farm? I don’t mean no two or even three sheep hee hee but a whole big flock of ’em. How about that?”

“I hear it’s pretty bad down at Tucker,” Nail observed.

“Not since that goddamn preacher, Reverend Tomme, started stirring things up. Hell, ole Tucker Farm is a country club now hee hee.”

“Could you let me think about it?” Nail requested.

“Hee hee? Think about it? What’s to think about? I’m offering you a chance at life instead of a fourth chance at the chair.”

“Right now, Warden,” Nail said, “I would have to tell you no, because I’d rather be dead than spend my whole life in prison.”

“Aw, it don’t mean your whole life. You’d be up for parole in fifteen, twenty years, maybe sooner if you did a real good job raisin them sheep hee hee.”

“Let me think about it?”

“Better not think too long. I need to send the governor a list of names early next month.”

That night Nail tried to tell Ernest about the warden’s offer, but the other three condemned men in the hole overheard him. Nail and Ernest had no privacy anymore. The others jumped in on any topic that came up for discussion, even if it was the number of cockroaches keeping them company. The guy Sam Bell, who had murdered his in-laws, said he’d a lot rather die than go to Tucker for even fifteen months, let alone fifteen years. The two kids, Clarence Dewein (whom they called Dewey) and Joe Strong, were both of the opinion that a whole life of even eighty years in Tucker would be preferable to the chair, the thought of which gave them nightmares every night—apparently the same ones, because they screamed at the same time in their sleep.

Nail hated the thought of Tucker Farm, but it would have to be an improvement on this crowded death hole. Would Viridis come down to Tucker to see him? It was fifty dusty miles from Little Rock. Would she keep coming for twenty years? No, she had provided him with the means for escape, and he ought to try to escape, even if there was a severe risk of getting caught, as the warden had demonstrated for the inspectors. But maybe Nail would even lose his chance at a life-commute if he was caught trying to escape.

The next time the Reverend Mr. Tomme came to see him, Nail informed him of the choice the warden had offered him and declared he was having some trouble making up his mind.

Lee Tomme nodded. “I know. Yeager told me he wants to send you to Tucker. It would be a feather in his cap if you did a good job on a sheep farm down there.”

“He says you’ve improved Tucker the same way you’ve improved The Walls,” Nail said. “Is it really better’n it used to be?”

“For a while,” Lee said, but sighed. “I’m not optimistic that the improvements will last. That governor’s committee you talked to—Donaghey, Monk, and Hutton—they’ll probably submit a report that things aren’t nearly as bad as I said they were, and then everything will go right back to hell.”

Nail frowned and considered that. “I sure hope I didn’t say nothing to ’em that would make ’em do that.”

Lee waved the thought away. “I’m not blaming you. I’ve got a suspicion these improvements are largely cosmetic: they pretty up the place for the benefit of inspection by the governor’s committee, and as soon as the committee reports on how nice everything is, they’ll take away the improvements.”

“You think Tucker will fall back to what it was?”

“They’ll have to fire me first,” Lee said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did that too.”

“‘They’ or ‘he’?”

“Okay. ‘He.’ Hays.”

“And one of the first improvements they’ll take away from The Walls,” Nail conjectured, “is me and Ernest having jobs and a little bit of freedom. They’ll try to put us in the chair again.”

Lee looked sorrowfully at Nail. “I hope not. But I’d be a mealymouth to deny it could happen.”

Nail debated with himself whether to tell the preacher he wanted to attempt an escape. He knew that Lee Tomme, who detested snitches would not snitch. And maybe he could help. Or at least give him some spiritual advice. So Nail lowered his voice and said, “Lee, I don’t think I’ll take the warden’s offer. I don’t aim to spend any time at Tucker. I reckon I’ll just go over the wall.”

Lee smiled. “I wish you could.”

“I can,” Nail said.

Lee studied him awhile before asking, “Didn’t you hear about that show they put on for the inspectors? This place is escape-proof.”

“Not to me,” Nail said. “I’m fixin to—”

“Don’t tell me how.” Lee held up his hand. “I don’t want to know. I’ll take your word for it. I don’t want anybody accusing me of conspiring with you.” The preacher smiled. “But you could tell me when you plan to go.”

“Soon as I figger out a way to get upstairs in the middle of the night,” Nail said. “That’s the tricky part, as they say.”

“Do you want me to let you know if I can figure out something?” Lee asked in a whisper. “Or would that be conspiracy?”

“Yeah, I reckon it would, I reckon you better let me figger it out by myself.”

“Okay. Shall we change the subject, and speak louder? Do you know, when I worked in the Colorado prisons, instead of beating a man they would punish him by taking away his privilege of seeing the weekly motion picture.”

Nail smiled. “That’s nice. I aint never seen a motion picture.”

“I thought as much. My next improvement to this facility—possibly my last improvement—will be to have movies shown, each Saturday night, and to suggest that violators of prison rules be punished not by the strap but by being forbidden to attend the picture show.”

“The picture shows will be done at night?” Nail asked.

“Of course. The barracks will have to be dark.”

“And somebody who knows something about electricity will have to help ’em run the projector?”

“You catch on very quickly, Brother Chism, but shall we change the subject?”

“Yeah. Tell me what it’s like in Colorado. Do they raise a lot of sheep out there?”

A general prison announcement was made that the following Saturday at sundown there would be a performance of The Absentee, a great allegorical photoplay. The movie was projected onto four bedsheets sewn together on a wall of the barracks, from three reels on an old Edison donated by The Crystal, a Little Rock theater that was updating its equipment. It was the greatest event since Christmas. Nobody from the death hole was allowed to attend, but midway through the motion picture all of the power went out, and the old Edison began to smoke, and Fat Gill was sent down to get Nail and see if he could find out what was wrong. Nail was taken up to the engine room, without handcuffs, and guarded as he checked the generator and the fuses and the circuits. After replacing one of the fuses that had blown, he was taken into the barracks to check the projector. Nail found a wire loose in the Edison and twisted it back onto its contact, but not so tight that it wouldn’t come off and short again before long. Then, because of the service he had performed, he was permitted to watch the rest of the picture show, in handcuffs. The show was difficult. As near as he could figure, it was about some character named Might, who took over a factory and lowered the wages of the workers, pocketing the difference for the betterment of his daughters, named Extravagance and Vanity. It was real strange, watching the people actually run around and do things, and move their mouths like they were talking, only their words would appear in letters when the screen went dark, and their words didn’t mean very much. The workers went on strike, led by a man named Evil, but Evil got a heart attack and the strike fizzled out, and in the end the owner of the factory, Power, came home and discovered what a mess Might had made, and had him arrested.

Although the plot was confusing and the names of people ridiculous, the movie held the audience spellbound, and at the end the men applauded and stomped their feet and hollered and demanded another showing. Warden Yeager himself, who had enjoyed the movie along with his prisoners, got up and made a little speech and told them that if they all behaved themselves there would be another movie the following Saturday night. Almost immediately Nail could detect the men beginning to behave themselves.

Back in his cell, Nail reported to his fellow death-holers on the movie. None of them had seen a picture show before either, and Dewey and Joe said it sounded like one of their nightmares, while Ernest was somewhat apprehensive that motion pictures could make art obsolete, while Sam Bell said it sounded very interesting and tempting but he would probably see heaven or hell, one, before he saw a motion picture. But all of them, Nail knew, wished they had seen the movie and could be allowed to behave themselves too.

Nail spent a lot of time thinking about the way he had fixed the Edison projector and wondering if he had given the wire on its contact enough twist to hold it in place until the next movie started shaking the projector. He also spent a lot of time thinking about what Lee Tomme had told him of Colorado: a truly beautiful country with big mountains and lots of space, and thousands of sheep of all kinds.

He had pretty much made up his mind to go to Colorado when he broke out. Then he got a letter from me. Much, much later I learned that it was one of the few letters they had let him read, uncensored, in the original envelope. I have promised not to put myself into this story any more than is absolutely necessary, but I have the feeling my letter may have changed Nail’s mind about going to Colorado.

Dear Nail,

Viridis told me I should write to you. She writes to me all the time and tells me everything that is happening, or not happening, to you. And then I tell everybody else in Stay More. It makes me feel important to stand around on the porch of Ingledew’s store and tell everybody the news about you. You know, the Jasper newspaper doesn’t say much, and that’s because I guess Judge Jerram and them still run everything in Jasper. But that is changing. Which is what I’m writing to you about now.

Judge Jerram likes to sit on his brother Tilbert’s storeporch as if he was still somebody important around here, but there is not one of us does not despise him and sneer at him and even his brother Tilbert does not like him because he’s bad for business, Tilbert says to anybody who will listen. There’s room on Tilbert’s storeporch for Sull and Sheriff Snow and a deputy or two, and that’s all, because nobody else will bother with them.

Your brother Waymon is not the least bit afraid of those fellows.

He will go right up to the edge of the porch, and turn his back to Sull and say over his shoulder, “You want to shoot me in the back again?” and Sheriff Snow will tell him to go away or he will arrest him for loitering, and Waymon will say, “It sure looks to me like you fellows are the ones who are loitering.”

And they know they wouldn’t dare try and arrest Waymon or they wouldn’t be able to take him out of Stay More and put him in the Jasper jail. Your brother is fine and strong. I am sorry about your father, but I guess you know his health has not been good for some time. Your mother and Irene and Luther and all are just fine.

They all miss you, as does every one of us. I think your land misses you too. Yesterday I took me a long hike up through your sheep pastures. The weeds have taken over pretty bad. There’s brambles too. From a distance those pastures are all pretty and green, and rolling, you know, and it’s all so nice and peaceful up there, but when you try to walk through it, it’s overgrown and lonely. The trees sort of sigh.

There’s this one place, way up against the corner of your upper forty, where the two tree lines sort of converge at the edges of the pasture on what looks like a dead corner up against the mountainside, and is a real dark shade of green, like the mouth of a cave, and you feel sucked into it, or drawn up thataway, and when you get into it you see there’s an old road there, just a trail, if you know the spot I mean, and if you follow that trail up through the woods for quite a ways, a mile or more, with the woods growing deeper and darker, you come to this glade where a waterfall comes down off the very top of the mountain, as if it was gushing up out of some powerful spring up there. The glade is sunny, with the sun shining right on the waterfall, but it’s dark all around, and dark in these several sort of half-caves where it looks like Indians must have lived. It was kind of scary, and I didn’t stay up there very long, but while I was there I thought of you, a lot, and I had a strange vision as if I could see you just living and dwelling in that hidden glade.

Of course I’ve had to look up some of these words in my dictionary to spell them right, and some of them to find out just what they mean or how they came to mean what they did, and I have to tell you that “glade” and “glad” are sister-words.

I’m glad that they haven’t killed you, and I don’t think they ever will. The glade and all of us are waiting for you.

Your friend, Latha

It was almost, Nail reflected, as good as getting a letter from Viridis. He considered that the letters Viridis was writing to me must have taught me how to write a good letter, or even infected me with some of Viridis’ way with words. But his main reaction to the letter was one of shock: that I should mention the very spot, the waterfall, where he had considered hiding, where indeed he thought about “living and dwelling.” If I had discovered the spot, wouldn’t other people discover his hiding-place? Not necessarily, because I had accidentally stumbled upon that trail whose beginning was almost concealed in the remotest corner of his highest pasture. The glen (and now I have to admit I was wrong: it was not so much a glade as a glen) is hard to get to, and it was the most secluded spot I’d ever been in, myself, and Nail knew it didn’t lack anything he’d find in Colorado.

But what had I meant, he wondered, about his father? I realize I didn’t word that part too well. I shouldn’t have left it open like that, as if his father was already dead, not just on his way to the hereafter. Nail wanted to ask Viridis what she knew. Had she heard anything about his father dying?

And he got a chance soon: Viridis came for another visit. Once again they leaned across the table, meeting their lips above the dividing-board, and greeting, and sitting, and then Nail said, “I had a letter from Latha. Bless her heart. But why do they let me have her letter and won’t let me have yours?”

Viridis smiled. “I suspect her letter wasn’t nearly as bawdy as mine.”

“Bawdy? You mean you used blackguardy words?”

“Blaggarty?” She laughed. “What kind of blaggarty word is ‘blaggarty’?”

“Black-guardy,” he pronounced it more carefully. “Aw, it just means smutty, you know. Dirty.”

“My letters to you are very white and clean, but also very lurid.”

“I wish I could read them.”

“I’m saving them for you,” she said. “I’m saving everything for you.”

“It won’t be long,” he said.

Her eyebrows went up. “How long?”

Nail glanced at their tablemates, a couple sitting a few chairs away and engrossed in each other. Bird wasn’t paying any more than his usual bored attention. Nail whispered, “Probably next Saturday night.”

“Really?”

In a normal voice he asked, “Viridis, what did Latha mean in her letter when she said she was sorry about my dad? He’s not left this world yet, has he?”

“No. Did Latha say that? He’s very ill and ought to be in the hospital, but he won’t go. I think the only thing keeping him alive is he wants to see you again.”

“He’ll see me soon,” Nail whispered.

She whispered too: “No, Nail, his house is the first place the lawmen will watch for you.”

“I’ll find some way to see Paw,” Nail reaffirmed.

“And me?” she said. “Will you find some way to see me?”

“I’ll see you,” he said, and realized it sounded as if it were just a polite leave-taking, and he didn’t mean it that way. He said it again as if he really meant it: “I will see you.”

“You were going to draw me a map, remember?”

He smiled. “No need of that. Just ask Latha.”

“She knows?”

“Tell her she knows.”

Viridis laughed. “I love the way you put that: ‘Tell her she knows.’ We would all like to be told that we know.”

“Be told, then, that you know.”

“Thank you. Now, here is something you should know.” She lowered her voice to the point he had to watch her lips and try to keep one eye on Bird. “One mile southwest of The Walls, beyond the swamp, is a great big old sycamore tree. The newspaper mentioned it in connection with that awful story about how they demonstrated the bloodhounds on poor Ernest. That’s the tree Ernest climbed to avoid being bitten by the dogs, but it’s where they treed him and caught him. That’s how I know about it, and that’s how I found it. It’s the only sycamore tree in the neighborhood, and it’s so tall you’ll see it silhouetted against the night sky, so you can’t miss it, even if you don’t hear the beautiful song it sings. At the base of that tree there is a flat rock, not too heavy for me to lift. Next Saturday afternoon I’m going to place beneath that rock a canvas bag containing a Smith & Wesson revolver, a box of bullets, a hunting knife, a harmonica, a pocketknife with a can opener attachment, and a few cans of food, corned beef and beans and such. I thought of including some sandwiches with fresh meat, but the scent would attract animals who might take the bag away before you got to it. I will also put in a hundred dollars in cash. Is there anything I’ve forgotten?”

“My God, Viridis!” he exclaimed. Bird looked up at them. Nail lowered his voice and asked, “What do I need all that money for?”

“You never know,” she said. “You’ll run out of food and need to stop and buy some more.”

Nail thought of something. “Yeah, I might have another mouth to feed. For a while. You don’t think I would go off and leave Ernest, do ye?”

“I didn’t think you would,” she said. “That’s one reason I’m going to ask him, when we visit this afternoon, to give me all of his finished drawings, to take with me, since he can’t take them with him, or leave them behind.”

“But he don’t know, yet, that I’m plannin to go,” Nail pointed out to her. “I aint even asked him if he wants to go with me. I caint talk to him about it because of them other fellers down in the death hole. I don’t want them hearin us, ’cause then they’d want to go too, and I shore don’t aim to take everbody.”

“You wouldn’t want to take Sam Bell,” she said. “He’s a psychopath.”

“A what? No, I don’t want to take nobody. Just me and Ernest, and I wouldn’t even take him except I cain’t leave him here to die or rot, whichever came first.”

“I’m so glad you’re taking him,” she said. “Maybe I should put some extra clothing into the bag. At least some caps to cover your bare heads.”

“But I caint tell him what I aim to do, not without them hearin us. So you’ll have to tell him this for me. Tell him this Saturday night. Tell him Fat Gill will come down to git me to fix the fuse or whatever, and for Ernest to start countin, and when it’s five minutes after Fat Gill takes me upstairs, for him to be ready to go without nobody else in the death hole seein us. It will be dark. I’m gonna kill all the power. He’ll have to jist follow me upstairs in the dark without any word when I come down to git him.”

“How will you unlock his cell?”

“Let me worry about that. Like I say, I aint even sure he would want to go. He’d be a fool not to, but maybe he’d rather take his chances with life at Tucker. If he does go over the wall with me, he caint go home with me. When we git out of Pulaski County, we split up: he can go home to Timbo or wherever, or go to Paris to study art like you did, or whatever he wants to do. But you better say your good-byes to him this afternoon, because you might not never see him again. So you jist tell him this: tell him that if he wants to go with me, for him to say, when we’re back in our cells together, for him to say, ‘Yes, it might be clear Sunday,’ and I’ll know he wants to go. Okay?”

“I’m so excited,” she said.

“I’m so bored,” said Bird, and they looked up at the trusty-guard looming over them. He added, “Y’all’s time is about up.”

“I wanted to thank you for the basket you brought last time,” Nail said to her. “I ’preciate ever bit of it.”

“Did you read the books?”

“Ever word,” he said. “Except in Dr. Hood, I couldn’t read all them words, and Dempsey give me this here electrical book to memorize that’s givin me eyestrain. I’ll need spectacles before long.”

“Did you—did you have any trouble with Gertrude Stein, or the Fletcher poems?”

“Not a bit. That lady can really use words. I read some of it two or three times, just to make sure it was as good as I thought the first time. And you tell your ole boss, when you see him, to thank Mr. Fletcher for what he wrote to me in his poetry book, and to tell him that I think he ought to be back home in Arkansas where he belongs instead of over there in London.”

Viridis laughed. “I agree. I’ll tell Tom to tell him that.” She glanced to make sure that Bird had moved back to his post, out of earshot, and she said, “I brought you another basket this time, and I didn’t know you would be leaving so soon, or I wouldn’t have put so many cookies in it. Don’t try to take all the cookies with you over the wall. Nor the books.”

“I’m takin Fletcher,” he declared. He smiled. “And Ernest too, of course.”

Before their lips met again in parting, he said, in a very gentle voice, as if he were still conspiring in his escape, “I love you, Viridis, and I’ll see you soon in the great free world of trees.”

“I love you, Nail, and I can hardly wait,” she said.

Later, back in their cells after Ernest had been up and delivered his whole output of artwork to Viridis, Nail heard Ernest remark as if to the walls, “Yes, it might be clear Sunday.”

“Who cares?” said Sam Bell.

“Going to a ballgame maybe?” asked Joe Strong.

“Naw, he’s goin on a picnic,” said Clarence Dewein.

“Don’t save none of them cookies for it,” Nail suggested. “Share a few with the other boys.”

“You’uns want chonklit, pecan, or oatmeal?” Ernest offered.

On the Tuesday ahead of that special Saturday, it was announced that the movie this week would be a lively comedy photoplay on loan from a major downtown theater, The Gem, and would have six whole reels. It was called Tillie’s Punctured Romance, and Tillie would be played by Marie Dressler, while the male lead was acted by the celebrated Charlie Chaplin, who everybody was dying to see. Nail himself was sorry that he couldn’t watch the movie, because he wanted to see if it was true, as Viridis had told him, that Charlie Chaplin looked just like ole Bobo…or like Viridis herself that one time she had changed herself. Nail did a little bit of calculating and decided he couldn’t just leave the circuits shorted while he went over the wall. It wouldn’t be fair to the inmates, who by that time would be spellbound by the movie. He would have to figure out some way to turn the projector back on as his last act before taking off.

The next morning he asked Dempsey, “Does this here circuit draw from the same box the arc lamps are on?”

“No, that’s on the free line down to the transformer,” Dempsey pointed out, and chided him: “You ought to know that.”

“Jist makin sure,” Nail said.

Warden Yeager called him in once more, and once more the warden asked, friendly-like, “Is there anything more we can do for you to make you happy?”

“Nossir,” Nail said, “I reckon I’m pretty happy.”

The warden changed his tone, dropping the friendliness. “You aint gonna be much longer. I got bad news hee hee. Matter of fact, I got lots of real bad news. One, we got to take you out of that powerhouse and out of your tomato patch. It’s against the rules for a condemned man to do any work, you know that, and we been letting you do it just on account of Reverend Tomme. They fired him. He was a nice fellow, and I’m kind of sorry to see him go, but he was really meddling a lot, and he don’t know very much about how to run a pen. If you want to say good-bye to him, we gave him permission to make one last visit to the pen tomorrow. He said he wanted to see you especially, because he knows you’re gonna die. That’s the real bad news. There’s three more men coming in this week to wait for the chair, and that’s just too many. The governor has been getting a lot of trouble from everybody because of all the pardons and delays and commutations he’s been throwing around like Santa Claus. So the word is out: we got to make room in the death hole. You and Bodenhammer and Sam Bell are getting transferred hee hee, to hell hee hee, in the chair this Saturday at sundown.”

Nail was not too certain he had heard the warden correctly. What with all of those hee-hee’s mixed up in there, it was kind of difficult to be absolutely certain that Travis Don Yeager had just announced that there would be a triple execution this Saturday, approximately two hours before Nail intended to go over the wall. “Sir?” Nail said, feeling bewildered. “What did you say?”

“You heard me,” Yeager said in a voice so cold that Nail felt Yeager was probably having to force himself to sound mean. He really does like me a little bit, Nail told himself, but now he’s got to try hard not to show it.

“This is awful sudden,” Nail observed. “One day you’re treatin us like human beings, and bein decent and kind to us, and then the next day you’re puttin us right back where we were.”

The warden lifted a folder from his desk. “You ought to read the report of the governor’s commission of inspectors for the prison system.”

Nail held out his hand. “Could I read it?”

“It don’t mention you hee hee. Not by name, anyhow. It just says we’ve been coddling our prisoners and treating them like citizens, which they aint, not after conviction, and it says the governor—let me find it…” The warden opened the folder and ran his finger down several pages until he came to the words: “‘Governor Hays has been required to yield to extraordinary outside pressures in order to stay executions, and this interference with justice works to the detriment of the whole system.’ That’s what it says, Chism hee hee. You can probably read most of it yourself in tomorrow’s Gazette, along with the announcement of this Saturday evening’s executions.” The warden waited a full minute for Nail to comment, and when Nail did not, the warden said, “If you got nothing to say, you can get out,” and waved him to the door.

Back in his cell, Nail still surprised himself by feeling no emotion. He was neither frightened nor disappointed, frustrated nor angry. He had been sent to the chair so many times, and nothing had happened. Maybe it was dangerous, he thought, to get to the point where you don’t feel anything.

Ernest and Sam Bell apparently hadn’t been told, not yet. But the next morning’s Gazette was delivered not by a trusty but by the chaplain himself, or rather the ex-chaplain making his farewell appearance. Lee Tomme first visited the cell of Sam Bell and gave him the newspaper, and Nail listened to Sam Bell reading the item aloud for the benefit of the others. Then Lee visited awhile with Ernest, and Nail could not hear what they were saying. Finally Lee gave Nail his own copy of the newspaper. The report of the governor’s commission was on the front page. The announcement of the executions was back on page 4, in a small item all out of proportion to the newsworthiness of the event: Arkansas’s first triple execution since the days of Hanging Judge Parker of Fort Smith. It was almost as if there wasn’t room for it on the front page, which was taken up with the commission’s report.

“I’m sorry they sacked you,” Nail told Lee.

“Who told you that?” Lee asked. Indeed, it wasn’t mentioned in this issue of the Gazette.

“Yeager,” Nail said, wondering if there was any chance that Lee himself hadn’t been told. “Yesterday,” he added.

“Then he had already told you about Saturday night?”

Nail nodded. “Yeah, he told me.”

“The bastard,” Lee said. “He promised to wait and let me tell you. How did you take it?”

Nail shrugged. “I’m an old hand at this now, ye know. It didn’t trouble me.”

Lee looked at him oddly, then moved closer and lowered his voice to say, “But the Saturday night movie is scheduled for after the executions.”

“You think they’d go ahead and show a movie with the same juice they jist used to cook three fellers?” Nail asked.

“The men want that movie,” Lee said. “They haven’t been talking about anything else this week. All they’re waiting for is that movie, and they’re on their best behavior in order to see it.”

“But the warden is cuttin back on all the privileges and improvements that you brought in,” Nail pointed out. “Don’t you reckon it’s likely he’ll do away with the picture shows too?”

Lee shook his head. “Not right away. If he tried to do it for this movie this Saturday, the men would go on strike or stage a riot. Sure, he’ll abolish movies soon, but not this week. I went to a lot of trouble to persuade the theater people in Little Rock to loan us that first-run film.”

“Well,” Nail said. He didn’t know much else to say. Out of genuine concern as well as politeness, he asked, “What are you fixin to do after you leave this job? Have you got another one?”

“Next week I’m interviewing for the position of chaplain in the Tennessee prisons,” Lee said. He smiled wryly. “I seem to keep moving eastward, in the direction of civilization.”

“I imagine you’ll stir things up over there, too,” Nail observed.

“I hope they won’t need it as much as Arkansas does,” Lee said. “This place really begs for help.”

“It’s too bad Hays wouldn’t keep you,” Nail said. “That governor can’t seem to make up his mind about anything.”

Lee laughed so uproariously that Nail wondered if he had unintentionally made a joke. “You’ve put him in a nutshell. Governor Hays is weak and indecisive. He changes his mind constantly. If only he could reverse himself just once more about executing you this Saturday, but he’s changed his mind so often that now he lets other people change it for him, and the other people, this time, are the judges and the politicians who are raising a fuss about his clemency.”

“I reckon I’m gone, this time,” Nail allowed, and then he asked, “Lee, you believe in heaven, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, certainly,” Lee said. “But not with clouds and pearly gates and golden streets and all that.”

“But with trees?” Nail said. “Are there trees in heaven?”

“A tree,” Lee declared, “has just as much right to go to heaven as a man does.”

Nail decided that Lee Tomme was even a better man than he had already figured him to be. “I don’t have no reason to go to hell,” he declared, “so I imagine come Saturday night I’ll be amongst them trees, and all of us singing.”

“A cappella,” Lee said.

“Pardon me?”

“No harps, no lutes, no mandolins, none of that,” Lee said. “Just the trees singing as the voice of God.”

Nail smiled and narrowed his eyes. “Will God be singin shaller or deep?”

Lee laughed. “Soprano or baritone? Now, that, Brother Chism, is a very knotty theological problem. But let’s observe that in the very best of choirs, when all voices are loud and together, you don’t notice the pitch of any one.”

“I like that, Brother Tomme,” Nail declared. “And maybe what you’re sayin is that God aint a woman after all, nor a man neither, but God is all sexes, of all kinds and pitches.”

“That’s it,” Lee said. “A pitch is a pitch. It’s all the same to us.”

They both broke up with laughter.

“Brother Tomme,” Nail requested, “will you be around Saturday at the goin down of the sun to lead us to the chair? I’d ’preciate it if you could. I might even let you pray for me.”

Lee Tomme abandoned his jovial face for a very sad one, and shook his head. “I promised the warden I’d be out of The Walls by sundown today. I think that for the executions they’re planning to restore my predecessor, what’s-his-name?”

“Jimmie Mac.”

“Yes, I believe Reverend McPhee is returning Saturday.”

“I hate to hear that,” Nail said. He offered his hand, and when Lee took it, he said, “Well, Reverend, I want to wish you good luck and happiness wherever you go. When I see God under those trees, I’ll tell Them to be sure and love you and keep you on this earth for a long, long time.”

For once Lee was at a loss for words, and his eyes got moist. He did not let go of Nail’s hand. Finally he looked down at their hands, which were just holding, not being shaken, and he placed his other hand on top on the two joined hands and said, “Look, this is my last day here at The Walls. But I think there is one thing more I could do. Yes, before I’m gone for good, I think I could persuade the Little Rock theater people to tell Warden Yeager that due to previous commitments they will have to move up the loan of Tillie’s Punctured Romance from Saturday night to Friday night. How would that do?”

On

And behold, that old Edison shorted out right in the middle of the picture show. From his cell Nail could hear the three hundred men over in the barracks hollering, whistling, clapping, and stomping for several minutes before the lights came on in the death hole, and Fat Gill came down and said, “Okay, Chism, there’s one more little job for you upstairs.” He opened the cell door, then put the handcuffs on Nail.

Nail protested. “I aint fixin no electrical equipment with these here cuffs on me.”

“Warden’s orders,” Fat Gill announced. “He says if you can’t fix whatever’s wrong with the cuffs on, we’ll just have to forget it.”

“Well, shit, let’s go,” Nail grumbled, and let Fat Gill lead him upstairs into the engine room. Nail had to get Fat Gill to do things for him because his hands were cuffed. “Reach up there and open the lid on that box…Now jiggle that little knob there and let’s see what happens. Nope. Must be the other box.” Purposely he led Fat Gill on a false trail of increasing difficulty until he was in a position to suggest, “If you’d jist take these cuffs off of me, we could git finished a lot faster.”

“Sorry,” Fat Gill said. “I’m just doin what the warden told me.”

“Well, give that there knob—no, the next one—give it a sort of one-quarter turn anticlockwise.” Fat Gill did as he was instructed and loosened the fuse to the projector’s circuit, and of course nothing happened, not then. “I reckon we’d better go look at the projector,” Nail suggested, and Fat Gill escorted him out of the powerhouse and up into the barracks, where the men were fidgeting until the show resumed. Warden Yeager himself was there, with Short Leg and some of his best black trusties surrounding his seat.

“What’s the problem, Chism?” Warden Yeager demanded. “What’s takin so long?”

“He put these here cuffs on me,” Nail protested. “How the hell can I fix anything when I have to explain to somebody else what to do?”

“Take ’em off,” the warden told Fat Gill. “He aint gonna try nothin with all of us around.”

Fat Gill removed the handcuffs, and Nail went to work on the old Edison, opening it and fanning away the remaining fumes of the scorched short. Sure enough, it had shorted exactly in the spot where he had twisted that wire before, and the wire’s end had dissolved. He turned to the warden and guards. “Any of you fellers got a pocketknife I could borrow for jist a secont?”

The guards looked uncertainly at the warden, and Yeager said to them, “Well if y’all have one hee hee then give it to him hee hee.” Short Leg produced a pocketknife. “Just take it easy with that thing hee hee,” the warden said to Nail.

Nail scraped the ends of the wire and twisted it tight and firm around its contact. He stepped back dramatically as if expecting something to happen, but nothing did. He jiggled the projector’s switch. He pulled out the plug, turned it around, reinserted it. Nothing happened. “Must be still a fuse or something down in the engine room,” he declared.

By now the prisoners were whistling, clapping, and shouting, “Put a nickel in it!” and “Crank it up!” and “Turn on the steam!” and “Spit on it!” and they were stomping their feet and jumping up and down.

“Well, go fix the fuse hee hee,” the warden said, and Fat Gill escorted Nail back downstairs.

Back in the engine room, Fat Gill wanted to put the cuffs on him again, but Nail protested, “The warden didn’t tell you to.”

“Aint takin no chances,” Fat Gill said, and was holding the manacles open with one hand while he summoned with the other. “Come on, hold out your hands.”

“Well, shit, here,” Nail said, and brought his wrists together and thrust his hands right at Fat Gill, then suddenly raised them under his chin, snapping the guard’s head back and stunning him long enough to throw a punch that caught him on the side of the head and slammed him against the wall. Nail didn’t want to get into a boxing match. Before Fat Gill could recover from the blow, Nail picked up a length of lead conduit and brought it down on the guard’s head, knocking him out. Then Nail took away his key-ring and opened the door leading down into the death hole. There were so many keys on the ring, and he didn’t know which one would fit.

He turned out the lights in the death hole, groped his way down the stairs, and counted past the cells of Dewein and Strong and his own empty cell to Ernest’s. He found the keyhole with his fingers and began inserting one key after another. A long moment passed, and Ernest knew he was there, and he knew Ernest was there, and apparently the other men in the death hole began to guess that something was happening.

“Nails?” said Sam Bell. “Is that you, Nails? What’s up?”

It seemed it was the very last key on the ring that finally opened the bars of Ernest’s cell. He felt Ernest’s arm and gave it a tug. Only after he passed his own empty cell did he remember he’d intended to pick up the copy of Fletcher’s poems, but he did not turn back for it.

“Nails!” hollered Sam Bell. “Is this a bust? Are you coppin a lam? What’s goin on? Take us too! Dewey! You still there? Joe? Timbo Red? Who’s bustin out? Who’s stayin?” Dewey’s and Joe’s voices joined in and followed them all the way up the stairs. Nail shut the door on them.

Ernest looked at Fat Gill lying on the floor. “You kill him?” he asked Nail.

“Naw, I jist give ’im a knot on his head.”

“We got a secont?” Ernest requested. “I want to say good-bye to Old Sparky.”

“That door.” Nail pointed, and Ernest went through it. Nail followed and turned on the one green-shaded overhead light that illuminated the death chamber. The familiar stage seemed strange, empty of all its actors…and its actress. The chair needed dusting. Ernest stood and stared down at it. Old Sparky looked far less menacing than Ernest had depicted it—as harmless, in fact, as some derelict piece of obsolete machinery. Ernest gave its leg a little kick with his shoe and said, “Mr. Spark, I hope you don’t never git another customer. You won’t git me.”

“Come on,” Nail urged, leading him out. “Let’s git that ladder.” Nail reached up into the top shelf of the broom closet and found the key Viridis had smuggled in to him, and the whiskey pint bottle filled with mustard oil. He gave the bottle to Ernest and said, “Carry this. Don’t lose it.”

“Can I have a drink of it first?” Ernest asked.

“It aint to drink,” Nail said. “It’s mustard oil.”

“What’s it for?”

Nail didn’t want to take the time to explain. “Now look, Ernest,” he said, more severely than he intended, “you let me do the talkin on this little trip. You jist do what I tell you and keep your mouth shut.”

Nail unlocked the padlocks holding the ladder to the wall. He decided to return Fat Gill’s key-ring to his belt. Then he tightened the fuse that ran to the circuit of the projector. They could hear the men in the barracks cheering as the motion picture resumed. It would be a few minutes before the warden or anybody else would begin to wonder why Fat Gill had not returned. And maybe a lot longer, if the movie was really interesting.

“Let’s go,” he said. The last thing he did before leaving the powerhouse was to open all of the circuits except the one to the main building, running the projector. The big lights in the guard towers went out. The guards up there would sound an alarm, but now the circuit powering the alarm was open too. By the time the guards could get down from the towers and into the barracks to notify the warden that the searchlights were dead, the searchlights would no longer be needed.

As Nail carried his end of the ladder through his tomato patch, he realized he and Ernest were trampling the young plants, but that couldn’t be helped. He didn’t mind that he would not be here for the harvest in July and August. When he had planted the tomatoes, he hadn’t expected to share in the harvest himself.

The sun was down, but the sky still held some of its light. Nail could hear the guards up in the towers hollering at one another: “What happened to the lights?” and “You got a lantern?” and “Not me. You got one?” Slowly he raised the ladder against the high brick wall. As he had suspected, it did not reach all the way up. That was why he had attached a rope about eight feet long to the top rung: they would have to stand on that rung and reach up and pull themselves up onto the top of the wall and then pull the ladder up after them.

Which they did. Nail went up first and balanced himself carefully on the wall, discovering it wasn’t as broad and thick at the top as he had expected. He straddled it and reached down as Ernest handed up to him the end of the rope.

Then came the really tricky part, as they say. Ernest and Nail had to move apart, straddling the wall, so that there would be enough space between them to pull up the ladder and turn it and lower it to the outside of the wall. Without exchanging a word, they gingerly performed this maneuver, Ernest lifting the bottom of the ladder over his head and pointing it toward the outside, while Nail held the top rung and the rope.

In his months of thinking about the escape, Nail had often wondered if the ground outside the wall, on the east side, would be lower than inside. He had no way of knowing. It stood to reason that the levels would be the same, that the wall stood on firm, flat ground. But from his one trip with Dempsey to the warden’s house, Nail had observed how sharply the land on that side, the north side, sloped downward away from the wall, and he was prepared to find that the slope was similar on the east side. But in this darkness they could not see the ground down there beyond the wall.

With Ernest steadying the ladder and letting go of it rung by rung, Nail lowered it until he was holding the end of the rope. The ladder still twisted and swayed. Nail’s forehead broke out in sweat. “Goddamn,” he said, just loud enough for Ernest to hear him. “I caint touch ground. The ladder won’t reach.”

“Must be a long way down there,” Ernest said in awe.

Could there be, Nail wondered, some kind of dry moat running around that end of the wall? The eight-foot rope was attached to a ladder of about thirty feet. So was it over forty feet down to the ground? He kicked out behind him with his legs until he lay on his stomach flat across the ridge of the wall. “Hold me down,” he told Ernest, and he leaned and stretched as far down the outside of the wall as he could, with the rope in his fist…until finally it seemed he could feel, through the rope, that the shoes of the ladder had touched ground. He tugged the rope end against the wall, but the contact he’d made with the shoes seemed to vanish. He could only hope the shoes would hit ground and the side rails would lean the right way against the wall when he let go of the rope. He let go and waited.

Then, after a time, they heard the ladder crash to the ground.

“YOU HEAR THAT?!?” a voice in the tower called, and another voice answered, “THERE’S SOMEBODY OUT THERE!” and from a third tower another voice tried to substitute for the dead alarm bell by yelling at top volume, “JAILBREAK! JAILBREAK! JAILBREAK! JAILBREAK! JAILBREAK! JAILBREAK! JAILBREAK! JAILBREAK!” The lights in the barracks, on the same circuit as the projector, came on, and Nail knew the movie was aborted.

“Lord God!” said Ernest. “What do we do now?”

“We shore caint jump fer it!” Nail said. “We’d break our fool necks.”

“We gonna jist sit here till they come and git us down?”

Nail pointed. “See that?” Down toward one of the guard towers, about five feet out from the wall, there was the silhouette of a smooth cypress pole of the electrical system, carrying power to and from the engine room. It occurred to Nail that this pole, intended to help bring in the current that would have extinguished his life and Ernest’s, now offered the only hope of saving them. “Jist watch me,” Nail told Ernest, “and see if you caint do what I do.” Nail raised himself and stood up on the wall, balancing carefully, trying to feel the slightest warning in the delicate balance mechanisms within his ears as he placed one foot in front of the other until he was as close to the power pole as he could reach; he bent at his knees as if about to squat, then sprang up and out toward the cypress pole, slamming his body against it painfully but throwing his arms around it, and then his legs. Slowly he slid down the pole until his feet touched ground.

He wanted to kneel and kiss the ground, the free earth of the outside world, but he stood and watched Ernest teetering along the top of the wall toward the same leaping-spot. Ernest swayed and nearly toppled but caught himself, fighting the air with his arms for balance. “Come on,” Nail called. “You can do it, son.” Ernest reached the spot of springing but hesitated, as if trying to measure the distance, to determine consciously what had been instinctive for Nail moments before: the exact amount of effort necessary to reach the power pole without slamming into it and knocking yourself out.

Still unsteady, Ernest hesitated as he stared at the power pole and then pantomimed the first tentative flexing of his knees in order to leap. Nail realized that it might have been like this if he had gone first to the chair: watching Nail get electrocuted might have made it all that much harder for Ernest. Here Nail only wanted to show him how it was done. But was he leading the boy to attempt an act beyond his strength and ability?

Nail wanted to pray. But he did not. He heard the trees praying for him. Out there, beyond The Walls, they were all over: real trees, saplings and old ones, hickories, oaks, scrub pine and white pine, blackjack, all kinds of trees crooning to Ernest the song to get him out to that pole and down to the ground.

The singing stopped. Light shone on Ernest. The tower guards had obtained lanterns. “THERE HE IS!” a guard yelled, and another guard yelled, “HOLD THAT LIGHT STEADY AND LET ME GIT A SHOT AT HIM!”

“Jump!” Nail yelled up at the boy. “For godsakes, jump and grab the pole!”

Ernest flexed his knees once again and sprang out for all he was worth.

For more than he was worth: he jumped much too hard and almost caused the pole to bend with the force of his body slamming into it, stunning himself so brutally that he could only make the most clumsy grabs at the pole with his hands before he fell the forty feet to the ground, flat out.

Nail knelt quickly beside him. Ernest moaned. He was alive and conscious. Nail smelled something and realized it was the mustard oil: Ernest’s fall had broken the bottle. “Can you move?” Nail asked, and tried to get him to sit up or roll over.

Ernest shook his head and groaned weakly, “I reckon I’ve done busted ever bone in my body.” Nail tugged at his arm. “Ouch! Naw, I caint move. I’ve had it, Nail. You git on. Git on out of here.”

Nail fished the bottle of mustard oil out of the waistband at the side of Ernest’s trousers. The bottle was only cracked, and there was a good bit of oil left. He began smearing it on Ernest. “I’ll rub this stuff on ye so the dogs caint smell ye, and I’ll drag ye off in the woods and—”

“You aint got time!” Ernest protested. “Please, Nail, git yoreself out of yere while ye still got a chanst!”

“I caint jist leave ye!” Nail told him.

“The hell ye caint! You’d be a damn fool not to. You’d regret it all the rest of the days they’d keep ye back in those walls before they fried ye! Go, goddamn ye, git and go!”

Nail heard the warden’s bloodhounds, who already knew Ernest’s scent, being taken out of their pens. Nail said, “I shore hate this.”

“Don’t make me baig again,” Ernest begged. “Jist go.”

Nail began to smear the mustard oil on his shoes and legs and arms and hands. Then it was all gone. “Ernest…” He tried to say some last words.

Then the lanterns of the tower guards found them, and he heard a guard yell, “THERE HE IS! THERE’S TWO OF THEM!”

“Go,” Ernest said, weakly. “Go, go, go on and go.”

“Good-bye, son,” Nail said. “Somebody will take care of you.” Then he sprang up and began running.

He heard the rifles firing. Were they shooting at Ernest? Would they kill a fallen boy?

In the dark, Nail could not keep running. It had been a long time since he had taken a good walk, and much longer since he had run. The dogs would be able to outrun him because they could see much better in the dark. But finding Ernest would slow them down. He hoped the guards handling the dogs would stop them before they started into gnawing on Ernest…if they hadn’t already shot him.

Nail paused at the edge of the swamp to catch his breath and listen. He heard the dogs behind him, in the distance, trying to find his trail. He had so much mustard oil on him they couldn’t possibly sniff him out unless the scent of him in the night vapors was enough to give them a lead. He turned and skirted the edge of the swamp and began looking for the sycamore tree. He hoped he was pointed in the right direction, to the southwest of The Walls. He could still see the penitentiary looming high on its knoll in the distance, and he saw how the ground dropped off sharply on every side. That was why the goddamn ladder hadn’t reached.

If he could find the sycamore and get that revolver loaded (or maybe she had already loaded it for him), he could shoot those dogs if any of them traced him, and shoot any man who tried to come after them. He plunged onward, and in the dark he could not keep the edge of the swamp clearly in view. He made a misstep and suddenly found himself up to his waist in water. For a moment the shock of the water took his breath away, but then he laughed, because it was the first time he’d been in water since his arrest nearly a year ago. This was his first bath in ages, and he loved deep water. He splashed briefly and then swam hard and fast until he reached the opposite bank of the swamp, and climbed up, and found himself within view of the tall sycamore tree splashing the sky with its fingers, shaking its dark-green mane.

He shook the water from himself; he was wet all over but would soon be in dry clothes. He was concerned that the water might have washed away the mustard oil, but a deep breath told him he still stank of it. He wanted to run up and hug that tree. So he did.

Viridis had told him there was only one tree in the vicinity; this one certainly dominated all the others around it, and at its foot he found the flat rock she had described to him: an ideal place for hiding something. But nothing was underneath it, and his groping did not discover any other flat rock nearby. Nail heard the dogs—running closer, he thought—and the distant voices of men.

Abruptly he remembered that this was Friday night, and Viridis had not planned to hide the cache until Saturday afternoon. If this had been Saturday night, he might not be alive. He was alive, but there was no cache: no canvas bag, no gun, no food, no money. He thought how hard it was going to be without those things that Viridis had meant for him to have. Would all of his planning, and all of hers, come to nothing?

Nail ran on. Or stumbled on; his wet trousers and debilitated condition kept him from running. He had a sense of direction. The sycamore tree was southwest of the penitentiary, but his destination was to the northwest. He veered. As he struggled onward, around the edges of other swamps, through some of them, getting wet again, he kept pressing to his right, turning slightly without, he hoped, starting a great circle that would take him right back where he came from. Eventually he came out on the cement of the Hot Springs highway, one of the first paved roads in that part of the county, and far up it he could see the headlights of automobiles approaching from the penitentiary road.

Quickly he crossed over the road and found himself in a lumberyard, among stack after stack of sawed and kilned boards. He remembered that many of the men in the barracks were sent out to work in this lumberyard and came back to the barracks smelling of the same fresh-cut wood that now surrounded him. He realized that all these boards had recently been trees in the forests, and those trees had died and stopped singing to make these piles of wood. Or maybe they had not stopped singing: maybe these piney, pitchy, turpentiney fragrances were the continuing song of the trees, who never died as long as they could still broadcast their odors. He moved among the stacks, finding himself in a labyrinth of lumber. The butchered trees imprisoned him. He hadn’t helped fell them or cut them, but now they menaced him and would not let him out. He thought of turning back to the highway, but the sound of the automobiles kept him from even turning that way in his frantic threading of the maze. It seemed to take forever to reach the back side of the lumberyard, where he broke free from the stacks of boards and found a high wire fence. He couldn’t get a toehold in the links of the fence to climb it. If he followed the fence, he would probably come back to the highway, where the cars patrolled. He gathered up some boards of different lengths and leaned them lengthwise against the fence, their butt-ends forming steps for his feet to get him to the top, where he threw a leg over and hauled himself up, and then fell blindly into the darkness beyond. The top of the fence was not barbed, but the sharp ends of the meshed wire snagged and ripped his clothes, and cut a gash the length of his trouser leg, which left him lightly bleeding.

From the fashioned timber of the lumberyard he plunged into a wild, virginal forest on hills that dipped and rose for several miles northward to the Arkansas River. Along the south shore of that river ran the tracks of the Rock Island Railroad, almost parallel to the Iron Mountain tracks on the north shore that Viridis had taken. The Rock Island tracks were his immediate destination: if he could reach them and get aboard a freight train and ride westward as far as Ola or Danville, he’d then be in a position to head north toward a crossing of the river that would get him to the vicinity of either Russellville or Clarksville, jumping-off places for Newton County.

For now, he had this forest to get through. He was already tired enough to drop, and growing hungry, and thirsty almost enough to risk drinking stream water, but although he found and crossed several rivulets and a creek, he would not risk drinking any water he could not see. Unless it was a spring and he could tell just from its feel or sound that it gushed or oozed directly from underground, he would not drink running water, let alone the still water of the swampy places.

Toward the first light of morning, when he figured he must have covered at least eight miles from the penitentiary, and no longer heard any automobiles or dogs or other sounds save the nocturnal soughing of the forest itself, his thirst drove him to dig an Indian well. It would slow him down, but he needed it badly. Near a still pond of water, downhill from it, using a piece of jagged sandstone for a shovel, he excavated a hole about two feet across, until the water began to seep in slowly from the pond. With the scoops of his hands he bailed it out. He let it fill again. He bailed it out again. The third time it filled, and had settled for a few minutes, it was full of filtered water, safe for drinking and for washing his bloody leg. His pants and shirt were still soaked, but he couldn’t tell, and didn’t care, if they were still wet from his plunge in the swamp or from his sweat or from both. He took them off, along with his underwear and his socks, the white cotton ones Viridis had given him. Naked, he dunked his clothes into the hole of water and stirred them around and squeezed them and dunked them again and took them out and wrung them, then hung them over a limb where the morning sun would hit them.

The sun rose about 4:30. A little over eight hours before, he had been a prisoner. Now he was free, and with his thirst slaked and his clothes washed, he began to appreciate his freedom for the first time. Naked, he did a little jig. He laughed. The morning birds watched him oddly. “Howdy, Mr. Sun!” he yelled, and heard his echo off in the woods. He was in a glade, and remembered my letter, and yelled aloud, “I’m glad!” but then he told himself to shut up, even if there was nobody to hear him or see him cavorting naked in the sunshine. He jumped into the pond and scrubbed himself, although without soap there was no way he could get all the mustard oil off his skin.

He gave his clothes a couple of hours to dry in the sunshine while he wandered around looking for something to eat. He was hungry enough to eat dandelions, and he did. But he also found a small stream, and from beneath its rocks he picked crawfish, then cracked open their tails and peeled them and ate them raw. It was the first fish he’d had in over a year and the first crawfish he’d ever eaten, cooked or raw; between that and the dandelion salad, he decided, he’d had an elegant little breakfast. And that filtered pond water was as good a beverage as any he could remember.

His clothes weren’t quite dry, but he put them back on and resumed his journey. Coming down out of the forest, he saw a house in the clearing and skirted it, but came to another house in a clearing beside a road and had to stay out of scent-range of whatever dogs were there. As near as I can figure by studying maps, he was approaching the Twelfth Street Pike, which today they call Kanis Road, due west of Little Rock. That part of it even today isn’t yet developed, and back then you’d scarcely believe that this rural scene was just about seven miles, as the crow flies, from the bed where Governor George W. Hays was sleeping. When Nail crossed the road, he neither saw nor heard anything coming. People were having breakfast; the odors of coffee and cooking bacon drifted to him and renewed his hunger. But the odor of him drifted to their watchdogs and started them barking. On the other side of the pike he entered another woodland and saw no more houses for another two hours of hiking.

The sun was well up in the sky before he came to another road. There was a small village that still bears on maps the name it had then, Ivesville, and he emerged from the woods to the west of it, saw it in the distance, and kept away from it as he approached that last highway he would have to cross before reaching the railroad tracks. Beyond the road on the horizon he could see the bulk of the volcano-like hill that is called Pinnacle Mountain. This road was traveled. He crouched in a ditch behind tall weeds to watch a wagon and team of horses going by, a farmer taking his family to Saturday market. An auto came along, and he stayed crouched down. The car was an open Ford, filled with city folks heading for the country. He waited until it was completely out of sight before he rose up. But then, from the direction the car had disappeared, a horse and rider approached at full gallop. He ducked down into the ditch again and hid and waited. The horse, a great roan mare, came into view; the horseman was wearing riding-breeches and whipping the mare’s hind end with a riding-crop…but as they came abreast of Nail, he saw that it wasn’t a horseman but a horsewoman, her red hair blowing out behind. Nail stood up abruptly and wondered if he was dreaming: it was Viridis! Horse and rider flew on past, toward the city.

He leaped out of the ditch. “VIRIDIS!” he hollered after her. He stood in the road and waved his arms. Horse and rider disappeared into the distance. He wanted to run after them but knew he couldn’t run. “VIRIDIS!” he called once more, but the noise of the horse’s hooves had deafened her.

What was she doing out here? Looking for him? If so, why hadn’t she been looking? She had been staring straight ahead, as if in a big hurry to get somewhere…or as if being pursued. Nail looked in the direction from which she had come, the west, to see if anybody was coming after her, but the road remained empty for a long time, and finally he crossed it.

He was almost certain it had been her. If she knew, as she ought to, that he was on the loose, and she was searching for him, why hadn’t she looked? No, he decided: just as she hadn’t known he was escaping Friday instead of Saturday, and thus had left nothing under the sycamore tree, she still did not know he was free. He knew that she took that mare of hers—what was her name? yes, Rosabone—she took Rosabone for rides out to Pinnacle Mountain. If only he had recognized her an instant sooner.

Soon enough he reached the tracks of the Rock Island, and followed them westward to a place where they began a curve and upward grade. There was a trestle across a small creek (my map calls it Isom Creek, flowing into the Little Maumelle River), and Nail sat beneath the trestle and waited patiently. Large fish lost their fear of him and swam within his view. He could have grabbed one with his hand, or flung it onto the bank, but he had no way to cook it and wasn’t about to eat raw bass. Noon came. He broke off several cattail spikes and ate them; he’d had them before and knew they were as good as wild asparagus, or better, raw. At a place along the creek bank where a spring flowed into the creek and he could easily separate the pure water from the creek water, he scooped up enough to wash down the cattails. While drinking, he heard the train coming.

Slowed by the curve and the upgrade, it was a long freight consisting almost entirely of empty gravel hoppers open to the sky. The first dozen hoppers went by before he decided that no open boxcars were coming. In a burst of energy he ran alongside the train, trying to match its speed, then grabbed on to a hopper’s ladder and climbed up. The empty gravel hopper had high metal sides and a bottom that sloped toward the center, where Nail saw a chute for unloading the gravel and a metal beam broad enough to sit on. He hopped down and gripped the beam tight with both hands, as if he were riding a bucking horse; his knuckles stayed white and his hands grew tired.

The rough ride lasted less than a hour before the train stopped. Nail stood up on the beam and could just see over the side. A water tank loomed ahead down the tracks, but the train had not stopped for water. A sign beside the tracks read simply houston, and Nail remembered that the famous man had been an Arkansawyer before he went to Texas. Three men were walking down the track from one direction, and the brakeman was coming to meet them.

Nail ducked back down and heard a conversation:

“Seen any riders?”

“Aint looked for none.”

“What’s in these cars?”

“They’re empty. Caint you tell?”

“Wouldn’t be somebody ridin one of those empties?”

“Take a look if you want. You huntin hoboes?”

“Fuck hoboes. We’re huntin for a man escaped the pen last night.”

“Any reward on him?”

“A hunderd dollars.”

“Jesus! I’ll help you look myself, but there’s sixty-three empties on this train. Take you all day to climb up and look into each one of ’em.”

“Tell you what. See that water tower up yonder? We’ll just climb up on that, and y’all drive under real slow, and we’ll look into each of the cars that way, and if we see anybody, we’ll wave you down.”

The voices stopped. Nail cautiously raised his eyes above the side of the car. The brakeman was heading for the caboose, and the three men were going the other way, toward the water tank. Soon the engine puffed steam and the train lurched and began to move. Nail climbed over the opposite side of the car, hung from the ladder for a moment, watching the tracks in both directions, then jumped down to the roadbed and tumbled into a ditch. He clambered into a stand of weeds and crawled low a good distance from the tracks before he stood up and got as far away from them as he could.

But he continued in the direction of the tracks, because it was a generally northwestward course and that was his inclination. He hiked up through Copperas Gap, keeping the tracks in view, but when he reached the point where they veered sharply westward, he began to think that he ought to abandon his plan to take the train part of the way home. And his sense of direction, which kept wanting to turn north toward home, disliked the train’s westerly course. He wanted to get across the Arkansas River and up into the Ozarks. Once in the Ozarks, even the foothills, he would feel as if he were back in his own country, and that would give him strength to walk another week, if need be, to reach Stay More.

Just to the north of Copperas Gap is a place where the Arkansas River, plunging southward and running into a mountain, narrows dramatically and bends eastward. It is one of the river’s narrowest passages in Arkansas, and it was there, probably, that Nail decided to cross.

In trying to find that spot on my map, I was astonished to discover something very strange: that the hamlet, or settlement, or maybe just a riverbank landing, on the north shore of the Arkansas River, where the current would take him or his body after his attempted crossing at Copperas Gap, was named Nail. Yes, that’s what the map said. Now, from my years as postmistress of Stay More and my many dealings with the Post Office Department, I know that two towns of the same name in the same state can’t both keep their name very long, and that we already had a town named Nail in Newton County, although in that year, 1915, it wasn’t a post office yet and wasn’t shown on that same map that showed Nail as a town in the southern part of Conway County, due south of Plumerville, on the Arkansas River. I doubt very much there’s anything left of that Nail now, but it was there then. And that’s more or less where Nail was headed. Maybe it had been founded by distant kinsmen of his. And maybe it had already passed into oblivion, being one of those river towns, like storied Cadron downstream and legendary Spadra upstream, which had once been busy but were now dead. Or maybe, I sometimes think, it existed only as a locale on a map, a name just to show me that this was where Nail would have landed.

He stood on the south bank and measured the river’s breadth with his eye, its narrowness at this point compared with its broadening expanse downstream. Just recently, in late May, the river had flooded severely, and now, in June, although the water level had dropped and the banks were more or less back in their original locations, the river was still wide and swift and roiling brown, cluttered with debris.

But Nail was an excellent swimmer. He had swum the Buffalo several times when that wilderness river was at its worst. On calmer pools he had raced his brothers and the friends of his youth, and had never lost. He could swim better and faster on his back than most people could on their bellies. He could swim in the pitch dark…although it was still before sundown when he entered the river. In fact, it was just about the time of day that Saturday they would have been coming to take him to another appointment with Old Sparky.

He was aware of this, and he knew that if that had happened, with just him against all of them, his chances would have been slight. Now it was just him against the river, and he was free and proud. Oh, he was foolhardy too, and hungry and tired and weak. And he did not know that no man, however good a swimmer, had ever swum the Arkansas at Copperas Gap when it was as swift as this.

But he was almost sure he could swim that river.

Off

When she decided to take Rosabone for that run out to Pinnacle, it was to prepare the both of them for a return to Stay More. And her insomnia had been worse than any night since that night before the governor was going to let her (or make her, he thought) get into Nail’s cell. She needlessly rose from bed more than once and climbed up to her studio to recheck the contents of the canvas bag she had prepared for Nail and Ernest, to make sure she had remembered it all and to try to determine if anything else might come in handy.

What if they needed a compass? How about a few yards of mosquito netting? Maybe a bar of soap? Could they use some salt and pepper casters? A pocket watch? At one point in the wee hours she suddenly realized that she had forgotten an important item: matches! They would need to build a fire, if not to keep warm, to cook. She tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen and wrapped a handful of sulphur matches in oilcloth and added them to the other items in the canvas bag, which once again she inspected and checked off her list. Maybe she ought to include a box of raisins. Did Nail and Ernest like raisins?

At sunrise she gave up brooding about the contents of the canvas bag and realized that it would be useless to try to sleep any longer. She got up and dressed, almost automatically donning her riding habit without realizing that was what she intended to do: take Rosabone out to Pinnacle and back. She did not bother with breakfast. She took a few of her own cookies from the cookie jar and an apple for Rosabone.

She rode hard out and harder coming back. “We’ve got to get in shape, Rose girl,” she explained to the horse. “We’re going back to Stay More. You liked it there, didn’t you? Well, we’re going back again in just a few more days.”

Usually when she rode out to Pinnacle, she would rest the mare and herself at the foot of the mountain for a while before returning to town. She told herself this time to take it easy, that she wouldn’t need to start for the sycamore southwest of the penitentiary until midafternoon at the earliest, but she was too impatient and eager. If nothing else, she could spend the rest of the day finishing her letter to Nail, which she would enclose in the canvas bag, even if it was already too long and, she feared, too candid.

She scarcely gave Rosabone time to dry her sweat before heading back for town. More than once she met or passed an auto painted with the insignia of the Pulaski County Sheriff or the Little Rock Police, and more than once an officer waved at her; one time a deputy honked his horn at her before waving. They all grinned as if they would like to give chase but had more important things to do. She did not think there was anything unusual about so many lawmen being on the roads on Saturday morning, but later she would remember them.

When she returned to her house, her father was sitting on the porch in his favorite wicker chair, reading the Gazette, as he always did Saturdays and Sundays. He motioned her to sit in the wicker chair next to his, but she said, “No, thank you, Daddy. I’ve got an awful lot to do today.”

“Meeting someone?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I’m not meeting anyone.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, and then he turned the paper so that she could see the front page. There was her original drawing of Nail, with his head shaved for his first appointment with the chair, with a caption: NOTED CONVICT WHO MADE ESCAPE. Her eyes shifted to the headline to the left of it: NAIL CHISM SCALES WALLS AT ‘PEN’ AND ESCAPES. Viridis snatched the paper out of her father’s hands and sat down with it in the other wicker chair.

There were no fewer than four subheadlines, one right under the other: NOTED NEWTON COUNTY MAN, CONVICTED RAPIST PREPARED THREE TIMES FOR ELECTRIC CHAIR, TAKES FRENCH LEAVE, and the second one: ACCOMPLICE IN ESCAPE, YOUNG BODENHAMMER, THWARTED AND CAUGHT, and the third one: $100 REWARD OFFERED FOR CHISM’S RECAPTURE, and the fourth one: NEWTON COUNTY ALERTED; FULL MANHUNT PROMISED.

The accompanying story pointed out that Nail Chism was only the second man ever to escape from The Walls since it was erected; but the first one, J.F. McCabe, had made his escape long before the recent “improvements” that had supposedly rendered the prison escape-proof.

The article even carried a reference to her, not by name, in its fifth paragraph: “A Little Rock woman who had conducted a long campaign to liberate Chism, whom she felt had been unjustly accused of the crime, will be sought for questioning later today by the sheriff’s office.”

“Well, thanks for warning me!” Viridis said aloud.

“I wasn’t warning you,” her father protested. “That story has already done it.”

“I was talking to the story,” Viridis said. She resumed listening to it; it told her that Ernest Bodenhammer was in St. Vincent’s Infirmary, where doctors had been required to place most of his body in a plaster cast. It was feared that he might be permanently paralyzed, although his neck was not broken. Apparently, he had sustained his injuries in an attempt to imitate Chism’s successful leap from the top of the prison wall to a power pole. While Chism had evidently slid down the pole to freedom, the youth, only sixteen, had missed the jump and fallen to the ground.

“Oh, damn!” Viridis said.

“Where are you meeting him?” her father asked.

“St. Vincent’s Infirmary,” Viridis answered.

“Not him,” her father said. “Not the boy. Aren’t you meeting the man somewhere today? Or is it the boy you’re really interested in?”

“Daddy, listen, I’ve got to—” she started to tell her father, but they were interrupted. Two autos pulled to a stop in front of the Monday house. The first one contained two men she recognized, Sheriff Bill Hutton and Warden T.D. Yeager, and the second one carried one man she recognized, a reporter from the Gazette.

These men, followed by several others, climbed the high front yard and the high porch of the Monday mansion. The sheriff spoke first: “Good morning, ma’am, and Mr. Monday. I see y’all have done already read the paper.” Neither of them responded, although her father nodded when the sheriff said to him, “We’ve got to ask the young lady a few questions, if it’s okay with you.”

They asked her more than a few questions. But she maintained, truthfully, that she had not expected Nail Chism’s escape. Of course she felt that his conviction and incarceration were wrongful, and he certainly deserved to be out of prison, but she knew nothing about his escape other than what she had just this moment read in the newspaper. She was aware that he had been imprisoned and tormented by the threat of death as long as he could stand it, so she could certainly understand how he might be desperate for freedom on the eve of an unprecedented fourth attempt at executing him; but still, his escape came as a total surprise to her.

“You have no idea where he might of could gone?” the sheriff asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” she said.

“Ma’am, my guess,” the sheriff said, “is that you just might be hiding him up in your house somewheres. Mind if we look?” He addressed this question to her father, not to her.

And her father, bless his heart, said, “No, but you will have to get yourselves a search warrant to go into my house.”

“We done already thought of that, sir,” the sheriff said, pulling the search warrant out of his hip pocket and showing it to her father and then to her. She felt some panic. Would they find the canvas bag? Or, for all she knew, maybe they would find Nail: maybe he had reconsidered her offer to hide him in her attic and had already hidden himself up there. She did not want these men to go into her house. The sheriff looked at her again and said, “If you’ll just lead the way, ma’am.”

Her mother and Cyrilla and Dorinda were having breakfast in the kitchen, and the servants, Ruby and Sam, were also there, and the lawmen just said, “Excuse us,” and went in and out of the kitchen quickly, and spent little time on the first floor of the house before heading for the stairs. They gave only a perfunctory search to the bedrooms and closets of the second floor before the sheriff asked her father, “Where do those doors go?” Her father explained that one door led to the attic storeroom, and the other two led to the south turret playroom and the north turret, where Viridis had her studio. The sheriff instructed his deputies to split up and try all three doors. He himself would accompany her up the north turret stairs, to her studio.

There were no closets or cubbies or hiding-places in her studio. Just her easels and her supplies and the cabinet in which she kept her drawings, its flat drawers much too narrow to conceal anybody, but the sheriff pulled them out anyway, one by one, and asked, “What’s all this stuff?”

“Do you mind?” she said, not answering him. “You won’t find Nail Chism in there.”

The sheriff moved around the room, looking at its contents; he studied her most recent painting on its easel, a winter landscape of Stay More done from her sketches. She expected him to ask her if that was the village of Stay More, but apparently he did not recognize it as a village or as a landscape. His glance moved onward and came to rest upon the canvas bag, loosely closed atop her table. He picked it up, hefted it, asked, “Mind if I look in this?” and started to open it.

She did not have to lose her temper; it lost itself. “Sheriff Hutton! You have a warrant to search for a man, not to pry into my personal effects!” She lowered her voice: “Especially not items of…of feminine hygiene.”

“Of which? Oh.” The sheriff blushed and gingerly replaced the bag. “Sorry,” he said. He moved on around the room. “Never can tell,” he said. He headed for the stairs and went back down.

As the men were leaving the house, having satisfied themselves that she was not hiding Nail Chism, Warden Yeager said to her, “You’ll let us know hee hee if you run acrost his pawmarks hee hee, won’t you?”

“Don’t count on it hee hee,” she said.

The warden gave her a wounded look as if she had failed to return a favor. Come to think of it, she realized after the men were gone, she had.

They would not let her see Ernest at St. Vincent’s. She had to wait at the hospital and speak with the mother superior to request permission and explain that, while not related to Ernest Bodenhammer, she was the only person who had visited him regularly in the penitentiary. The mother superior was kind and considerate but had to inform Viridis that Ernest was under guard and also under heavy sedation. Possibly, Viridis could see him tomorrow, but she would need written permission from Warden T.D. Yeager.

All the rest of that day she stayed in the newsrooms of the Gazette. If any word came in of Nail’s having been spotted or recaptured, or anything at all, she could learn it faster in the newspaper office. Tom Fletcher did not mind her being there, but he advised her that several days might pass before any news developed.

And he was right. Many days would pass before she heard the first rumor that any trace of Nail had been seen, and even that would turn out to be a false lead. She was impatient to get on to Newton County and wait for him there. She had anticipated, when she planned to leave the canvas bag for him, departing Little Rock herself within a few days to go back to Stay More. She had been in correspondence with both me and the old woman in the Jacob Ingledew house who had been her friend and hostess during her previous visit to Stay More.

I had kept her informed of the swelling local sentiment against Judge Sewell Jerram and his gang. Strangely, his crony Judge Lincoln Villines remained popular enough to be touted as a possible candidate for governor (only in the event his friend George Hays chose not to seek reelection), but Sull himself was so unwelcome that a joke went the rounds about his having to pay Duster Snow time-and-a-half overtime wages to serve as his personal bodyguard. The good sheriff we’d had before Snow, W.J. Pruitt, had let everybody know that he intended to oppose Snow in the November election, and almost everybody planned to vote for him.

Viridis had written me to ask if I thought it was safe for Dorinda to return home. The school term in Little Rock had already come to a close when Nail escaped, and Dorinda was honestly homesick, or that’s what Viridis said; I had sort of been hoping that Rindy herself might write and tell me how much she missed us, but I suppose her penmanship lessons hadn’t got that far. I had told Viridis, after asking the advice of my parents, Rindy’s parents, and even John Ingledew, that Sull would have killed Rindy by now to silence her if he was ever going to do it; besides, the man was smart enough to realize that the point had long since passed beyond which her silence meant anything at all. He probably wished she did not exist and wished even more that she had never existed, but there wasn’t much likelihood he would be any further threat to her. Bring her home, I said.

Now Viridis was ready to do just that. She had taken Rindy out and bought her a fancy suitcase to take all of her nice new clothes and belongings back home with her. She did not intend to return Rindy to Stay More by the same means she had taken her out: riding double on Rosabone. No, she was going to arrange for a wagon in Pettigrew to meet their train and take them and their luggage (she was bringing more than one trunk herself, and hatboxes), with Rosabone tied behind, the miles across the mountains to Stay More.

I knew she was coming. But I did not know that Nail had escaped. That news didn’t reach us at all until the following Thursday, when we read it in the local newspaper. On the second page of the Jasper Disaster, under a small headline, NAIL CHISM MAKES HIS ESCAPE, was a brief condensation of the same story that had appeared in the Gazette five days before, now stale and unstirring. Remember, we had no telephones in Newton County, no electricity; all we had was the U.S. Mail, which wasn’t even the Pony Express. Later Viridis would apologize for not having written us a letter, which would have arrived several days before the newspaper. She had been too busy to think of it.

She was busy trying to get in to see Ernest without written permission from T.D. Yeager, who at that point wouldn’t have given her permission to breathe. On the third day after Nail’s escape, Tom Fletcher “smuggled” her into Ernest’s room as a Gazette reporter, and she was permitted to “interview” the boy for half an hour. He was awake and fairly cheerful, all things considered: all things such as having nearly every bone in his body broken: compound fractures of both arms and one leg, eight broken ribs, six broken fingers, a cracked pelvis, and a dislocated hip. Miraculously, his whole spinal column from neck to tailbone remained undamaged, and he would not be permanently paralyzed, as had been feared at first, although at the moment, and for the next six weeks, he wouldn’t be going anywhere, not even back to the penitentiary.

He enjoyed pretending it was a real interview. “Yeah, quote me as sayin these yere nuns feed me real good; I aint et like this in my whole life.”

“Mr. Bodenhammer,” asked the lady reporter, Viridis, “did Mr. Chism say anything to you about your intended destination?”

“Nome, he never. Tell ye the truth, I never even give it no thought whereabouts I was goin myself. I didn’t aim to light out for Newton County, whar he was a-fixin to go, but I never thought none about goin back home to Stone County neither. I aint got no friends up in them parts.”

“Did he say anything at all to you about his intended route to Newton County? Where and how did he plan to cross the Arkansas River?”

“Ma’am, he never hardly said a thing to me about nothin. I didn’t even know we was breakin out until you—until that there other lady who is his ladyfriend, she told me to be ready. But from the time he come down to git me out of my cell, until we said our good-byes, we never said nothin much atall.”

“I can’t imagine Nail Chism abandoning you like that,” she said.

“Aw, hell, Viridis, I mean, Miss Ma’am, he never abandoned me! I made him do it. I tole him to. It was hopeless, the way I’d done botched up my chance and fell forty feet, a-hittin that pole, and there wasn’t nothin he could do for me. Hell, I had to baig him to save his own skin and leave me alone.”

She put her hand on his cheek, which reporters don’t do. She left it there as she said, “I’m so sorry you didn’t get to go with him.”

“Look at the good side of it,” he said. “I was sposed to die Sat-tidy night, and I’m still alive. People are takin real good keer of me, and I don’t hurt too bad.”

“You won’t be able to draw again for a while,” she observed.

He wiggled the four fingers of his left hand that were not bound in splints or casts. “Didn’t you know I was left-handed?” he said. “I still got some fingers I can draw with.”

“I’ll see to it you get some materials,” she said. “I’ll arrange for you to get all you need to keep on drawing.” She paused. “I’d bring them to you myself, but I…”

He finished it for her, nodding his head to say yes, he knew. “You’re takin off for Newton County,” he said quietly.

She raised her chin into a modest nod. And then she did something that reporters don’t even think of doing: she bent down and kissed him lightly on the mouth.

“You’uns live happy ever after,” he said.

“You too” was all she could say.

Taking leave of her father was not quite as easy: he insisted on going with them to the train station. When she protested, he observed that from the looks of all the luggage she was taking with her, she intended to stay for quite some time.

“I’ll be back,” she said.

“But I doubt she will,” he said, indicating Dorinda. “I’d just appreciate the honor of seeing you two ladies off.”

So he went with them to the station. Viridis had made arrangements to have Rosabone transported on the same train, which would involve two transfers: one at Van Buren, from the Iron Mountain to the Frisco, and another, at Fayetteville, to the Frisco’s spur toward Pettigrew. Cyril Monday took the morning off from his job at the bank to see them catch their train.

At the station he drew her apart from Dorinda for a moment to ask, “You got all the money you need?”

What kind of question was that? For several years now, since her return from Europe, she had not been required to depend upon her father for any assistance beyond a place to live. “Enough,” she said.

“Never can tell what emergencies might come up,” he said. “My daddy always told me, you never know when you might meet some fellow selling two elephants for a nickel.”

She remembered Tom Fletcher’s old jokes about elephants in the Ozarks. This time Tom Fletcher hadn’t made any jokes, except one, of sorts: if she ever wanted to write a column called “An Arkansawyer in Stay More,” he had told her, he would pay their usual rate for it. When she had only smiled, not laughed, he had prompted, “It’s nearly as remote as Yokohama to me.” She had told him he ought to visit her there sometime.

She told her father, “Thank you, Daddy, I’ve got all I need.”

“Just never can tell,” he said. “Here,” and he thrust a roll of bills into her hand. “Put this in your purse and forget about it until you need it.” She tried to protest, but he touched his finger to her lips. “Better take it now instead of having to ask me for it later, when I might be in a bad mood.”

He had a point there. She put the thick roll of bills into her purse. “You’re sweet,” she said.

“I hope you’ll remember me that way,” he requested. And he had one other request: “Cyrilla wanted me to ask you, she said she couldn’t ask you herself, but if it’s okay with you and you don’t think you’ll need it anymore, can she have that studio of yours up in the north tower?”

Viridis raised her eyebrows. “Does she want to take up art?”

“Sewing. She wants me to buy her a sewing machine.”

Viridis smiled. “None of y’all expect me to come back, do you?”

“From the looks of it, no,” her father said, and then he moved back to where Dorinda stood, to tell the girl that he had enjoyed having her stay at his house and was sorry they hadn’t got better acquainted. He wished her a pleasant trip and good luck and a long and happy life.

“BOART!” hollered the conductor, and the three said their good-byes and exchanged hugs.

Viridis Monday left Little Rock.

Take any day in June in Stay More. School’s been out awhile, Mr. Perry the schoolteacher has left town to find a summer job in Harrison, the crops have been planted and are growing, nothing is ready to harvest yet except the snap beans and first spinach, nobody is really busy except the men cutting the hay and the timberjacks who keep on logging into ever more remote stands of the white oak forests.

My father never lost a chance to tell us girls that when school let out he expected us to help more on the farm, but every year school let out and he couldn’t seem to find enough to keep us busy. He complained to Ma and anybody else who would listen that if he’d only had him just one boy to help around the place, instead of all three of us worthless girls, he might be able to turn the farm into a cash proposition. As it was, he could only raise enough to feed us. We weren’t starving, not by any means, but we never had any cash money.

As the youngest of the three unwanted girls, I felt least wanted, so I tried hardest to help out around the place. While Barb and Mandy wouldn’t have been caught dead doing a lick of work outside the walls of the house itself, I got myself the job of tending the garden patch. I wouldn’t let a weed grow loose in that garden patch, and I spent a good bit of my summer out there in the broiling sun, underneath my sunbonnet but my dress all soaked through with sweat. I was pretty young when I discovered something important about the way the brain works: your thoughts are always better, more interesting, more lively, while you’re working than while you’re just sitting. I knew that the worst part of Nail Chism’s experience in the penitentiary was all the hours he had to do his thinking just sitting or lying around: the thoughts he had in those times must have been drab shades of gray.

Take any day in late June in Stay More and it’s apt to be real hot. Generally, I’d try to get my garden work done right after sunup, without even waiting for breakfast. There would still be dew glistening on the vines and sogging the greens. The dog Rouser would trot behind me out to the garden, which wasn’t but as far as from here to there the other side of what passed for Paw’s barn, and Rouser would just sit and watch me, or the morning birds, while I chopped weeds out of the garden. Then he would go with me afterward up in the holler behind our house, just a quarter-mile or so, to the falls. It wasn’t really a waterfall; it didn’t fall more than maybe five feet from the ledge to the pool; it was more of a cascade than a waterfall, but I called it the falls, and I was the only one in the family who used it. Barb and Mandy drew just enough water from the well to fill an oaken sitz tub about once a week, Saturday evening usually before they stepped out, and they’d share that water, Barb first because she was oldest and because she’d drawn the water, and stand, not sitz, in the tub and splash enough to get off the worst dirt and smells. But me, take an early morning in June in Stay More and you’d find me getting wet all over beneath my little waterfall up the holler. No, you’d not; because neither you nor anybody knew where I was, and I was stark naked and only a little bit uncomfortable that Rouser, who was watching me, was a male.

If anybody or anything had come along and spied on me, Rouser would’ve barked. He never did. And also, I took my .22 rifle with me, just in case. Not that I was afraid, being back up in that dark, mossy, woodsy holler. It was real cool after a couple hours of chopping weeds out of the garden patch, and the water that trickled over that ledge was almost cold.

Of course I never stood under that waterfall when I was having my monthlies. Everybody knew that would be a terrible thing to do, almost suicide. Anybody could tell you of a fool girl or two who had got tuberculosis or a stroke of paralysis from taking a bath at the wrong time of her month.

I have been called superstitious, but I know some things which have never been known to fail. This is not boasting but observation. There are plants that work wonders and always have for thousands of years. I never got chiggerbit, because I knew where the penny-royal grew, and I rubbed it on my legs, and when the chiggers were chewing my sisters alive, they didn’t bother me at all. Now, is that superstition?

Take the common mullein, which some folks call the velvet plant because of its velvety leaves, a shade of green so pale you’d think the plant was worthless. And it is, for most things; cows won’t eat it, and although I’ve heard of some outlandish remedies concocted from the seeds, I’ve never known one that honestly works. The mullein stalk grows straight up, sometimes as tall as eight or nine feet. The yellow flowers are small and moderately ornamental, and I’ve known a few folks’ yards where they let the mullein grow just for decoration.

In late June the mullein hasn’t even started to flower, and at most it’s just a few feet high, and inconspicuous, and totally worthless…except for this: if somebody, or something, is lost, you can name a mullein plant after him, her, or it, and then bend the stalk down to the ground. Likely, it will stay bent down. It will surely stay bent down and keep on growing that way if the lost person or the lost thing remains lost. But if that mullein stalk straightens back up, the lost will be found.

This never fails. At least, I have never known it to fail, and I have lost a lot of things: recovered some and never found the others.

Because somebody who has left Stay More is, in a way, “lost,” the mullein is also good for letting you know if they are ever coming back. When I saw the first mullein of June that was tall enough to bend down, on my hike back up into the holler to my bathing-place, I named it Viridis and bent it down. Not too long after that, another mullein started growing tall right near it. I bent that one down too, after naming it Nail.

Each morning, after two or three sweaty hours in the garden, I would hike up to the waterfall to clean up, and I would pause to notice that both mullein stalks were still bent down. I would greet them and tell them I hoped they would straighten up.

When I had bathed and put on a fresh dress, I would mosey on down into the village and hang around Ingledew’s store at the time of morning when everybody was there to get their mail. I never got any mail, except from Viridis. But she never wrote to tell me exactly when she was coming.

The men would sit on the furniture of Ingledew’s storeporch like it belonged to them. The women and girls would have to stand around, not on the porch but off to one side, or out in the road, or sometimes inside the store around the dry goods, which was an exciting place to be, especially after Willis Ingledew received a new shipment of bolts of cloth, clean and bright and smooth. Nothing smells better than fresh cloth. But while I enjoyed hanging around the dry-goods department, more often I stood outside off the edge of the porch near enough to the men to listen to their stories or their talk about current events. The main current event now was Nail’s escape. How long would it take him to get home? There was no doubt in any man’s mind that he was coming home; there were only two questions: how long did it take a feller to walk from Little Rock to Stay More if he was careful not to let himself get seen? and how soon after coming back to Stay More would Nail do something to Sull Jerram?

Every man was of the opinion that Nail would do something to Sull Jerram. If he didn’t kill him, he’d mutilate him beyond recognition or something equally terrible, and Sull knew it, and the men who’d been to Jasper lately reported that Sull was…I thought they said “scared spitless” and figured they meant he was so frightened he couldn’t work up enough saliva inside his mouth to take a decent spit, because a man in that predicament was practically unmanned. From my observation, every male human being above the age of twelve or thirteen had to be able to spit at least once every fifteen minutes or he risked being mistaken for a female.

I had to watch where I was standing when I eavesdropped on the porch loungers; I had to be ready to jump to one side quickly.

I told nobody about my mullein stalks. You don’t ever tell, which would break the magic. Nobody in Stay More except me, and I suppose the old woman who lived at Jacob Ingledew’s (although her house was directly across the road from Willis’ store, she hardly ever crossed the road; I never saw her), knew that Viridis might return to Stay More any day now.

One morning in late June on my way to the waterfall after working in the garden, I paused to observe the two mullein stalks and noticed that one of them, the one I’d named Viridis, was behaving like a pecker ready for love. I was so excited I could scarcely take time to go on to the falls and take off all my clothes and get real wet. Later, on my way to the store, and at the store itself, I couldn’t understand why all the rest of the world, except that mullein stalk, remained so normal and unexcited. It was a typical dull, slow morning in Stay More. The mail wagon came out from Jasper, and Willis Ingledew sorted the mail, and folks saw what they got and read it, or read it for those who couldn’t read, and I didn’t get anything, but I didn’t need anything, because I knew she was coming!

And sure enough, she came! Mullein stalks are never wrong. That very morning, while we were all still there, in or on or around the Ingledew store, the twenty-odd porch regulars loafing in their chairs or on their kegs and keeping the dust of the road down with their spitting, ankle-deep in the shavings from their pocketknives, the children playing in the road without fear of traffic, for there was none, the women mostly inside around the dry goods, and myself leaning up against one of the posts that held up the corner of the porch roof, a slow-moving wagon came into view, coming not from Jasper but from the schoolhouse road that goes westward up the mountain toward Sidehill, Eden, and places beyond. There was an additional horse tied behind the wagon, trotting briskly. I think I recognized that horse, or mare, before I recognized the passengers in the wagon. I could tell by her gait. It was Rosabone.

I let out a yell. Everybody turned to stare at me briefly before returning their gazes toward the distantly approaching wagon. To the few who continued staring at me, I explained my outburst: “It’s Viridis. She’s here.” Then I started running toward the wagon. I was barefoot, as I always am when the weather’s warm, and the gravels of the road bit into my pounding feet, but I scarcely noticed. Rouser chased after me and commenced barking. Other dogs picked up his cry.

So there was a great hubbub as Viridis returned to Stay More. As soon as I started running, others followed me, not all of them running but moving as fast as they could to keep up with me. We didn’t give the wagon a chance to arrive and stop at its destination, whatever its destination was: I still don’t know whether Viridis had told the driver she wanted to go to Ingledew’s store, the old woman’s house, my house, or the Chisms’, or the Whitters’, or where. We stopped her right there in the road. Rindy jumped down from the wagon like she expected a big hug from all of us at once, but it was Viridis I hugged first, and then I hugged Rindy, and the way other people were hugging Viridis, she might have been kinfolks and long lost…or at least the heroine that all of us knew her to be.

Women were exclaiming, “Did ye ever!” and “I swan!” and “Lawsy sakes!” and men were saying, “I’ll be a son of a gun!” and “Wal, dog my cats!” and “What d’ye know about that!”

Then all the commotion ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and it was absolutely silent for a time, so quiet you could hear the trees behind Willis’ store whispering. Waymon Chism broke the silence by declaring, “He aint showed up yit.” We all knew who “he” was.

Viridis had been smiling that great smile that made her mouth look so pretty, but now she frowned and bit her lip. Then she said, “Well.” That’s all that was said for a while by anybody, although they were all looking at one another and exchanging expressions. Then Viridis declared, “We’ll just have to wait for him, won’t we?” In response there was a chorus of men’s and women’s declarations: “He’ll turn up” and “Give him time” and “Any day now” and “Shore as shootin” and “You bet ye” and “Shore thang.”

Then came a dozen different offers from a dozen different women, my mother included, for Viridis to stay with them. They were all disappointed that she had already promised to stay, for the time being, at least tonight, with the old woman who lived in the Jacob Ingledew house right yonder. Men fought each other for the privilege of carrying her luggage to that house. Viridis paid the driver, a young man, or just a teenager actually, and thanked him for bringing them all that distance from Pettigrew.

As it turned out, the young driver, whose name was Virgil Tuttle, did not intend to turn around and head back to Pettigrew, not right away. It had taken them a night on the road to cover the distance (they had put up at a sort of hotel in Sidehill), and during the long trip and that night Dorinda had become real friendly with Virgil, or just Virge as she called him, and now he accepted her invitation to stay at least tonight, and maybe longer, at the Whitter cabin, where, before sleeping with two or more of Rindy’s brothers, he might be permitted to “sit up” with her. She was sweet on him, and I could see why: he was sightly and strong, and he could talk the hind foot off a mule.

He drove Rindy and her new suitcase on toward her house, with her mother riding in the back of the wagon to chaperone them, and I hung back to watch Viridis and the old woman at Jacob Ingledew’s house greet each other and then disappear inside. One by one the other citizens of Stay More returned to their accustomed places in, on, or around Willis Ingledew’s store, or they drifted on home for dinner. I was alone except for Rouser at the foot of the steps leading up to the porch of the big fine house where Viridis was staying with the old woman. I looked at it sadly, disappointed I’d scarcely had a chance to say more than hello to Viridis. But I figured she was tired and also wanted to visit with the old woman, who was her friend, after all, and had just as much claim to her as I did, or more.

But while I was standing there looking at the house, the door opened and Viridis reappeared, coming out on the porch and smiling at me. “I didn’t mean to walk off from you like that,” she said. “My hostess wants me to ask you if you would have a bite of dinner with us. Will you?”

“Gosh, sure!” was all I could say, and I joined them for dinner in the kitchen of the Jacob Ingledew house. I had never been inside of that house, and I was thrilled. Oh, in the years since then I’ve seen some finer houses in other places, and looking back I have to think that my world was awfully small that I would consider that house such a palace, when, by comparison with any good city house, it was just a country shack. But to me, then, going inside that house was like stepping into another world.

And both women treated me not as some child eavesdropping on their grown-up conversation but as an equal, almost. I was drawn into their talk as if I really was grown up and had something worth saying and worth listening to. The only times I felt a little left out were when the old woman and Viridis would refer to what had apparently been a lengthy correspondence between them, longer and more continuous than mine with Viridis, One of them would say, “As I mentioned in my last letter…” or “You’ll recall when I wrote to you in early April…” or “But you said to me in your letter of May 15th…” and I couldn’t help feeling a little jealous. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt I ought to consider myself privileged that such an intelligent and beautiful and heroic woman as Viridis would have bothered to write to me at all, let alone as often and as lengthily as she had. And I got a chance, too, to throw in a couple of expressions like “Remember what you said to me in that letter about…?”

We talked for most of the afternoon, and I suppose Rouser got tired of waiting for me to come back out of the house, and he went on home by himself. Finally Viridis looked back and forth between the old woman and me and asked the question that she had been putting off. “You don’t suppose he might actually have come back but is hiding and doesn’t want anybody to know he’s here?”

I thought it was a kind of desperate question, as if she couldn’t quite face the possibility that something had happened to keep him from coming home. After all, terrible as it was to contemplate, he could have drowned in the Arkansas River. Or he could have been recaptured, and we wouldn’t know about it until the next week’s issue of the Jasper newspaper. Or he could have changed his mind about coming home and gone to Colorado.

“Aw,” I said. “If he was home, he’d of told his folks he was here.”

“But what if,” she asked, “what if he’d made them promise not to tell anyone else?”

That was possible, I considered. But I protested, “Waymon wouldn’t have lied to you like that.”

“With all of those people standing around?” Viridis said. “Maybe he couldn’t take any chances that somebody he didn’t want to hear it would hear it? Maybe he’s waiting until he can tell me in private?”

The more she talked in that vein, the more desperate she sounded, so I wasn’t surprised when finally she declared that she wanted to ride Rosabone up to the Chism place for a private talk with the Chisms. She changed from her dress into her jodhpurs and saddled Rosabone and rode off, telling me she’d stop by my house on her way back to the village.

But she didn’t, although I waited up past bedtime. Maybe, I thought, her suspicion might have been right: maybe Nail was hiding out at the Chism place and had made his folks promise not to tell anyone, but once Viridis had gone up there, they couldn’t keep it from her. And now, I thought, as I lay in bed trying to sleep, they are in each other’s arms at last.

The next morning I worked for only an hour in the garden before heading for my waterfall to bathe. The mullein stalk named Viridis was standing proud and tall. But the one named Nail still drooped to the ground. I took a real quick shower bath, returned to the house and had a quick breakfast, and was sitting on the front porch of our cabin when Viridis rode up on Rosabone.

“He wasn’t there,” she said.

“I know,” was all I could say. But I did know, from the mullein stalk, that he had not come back to Stay More.

The Chisms of course had been so delighted with her visit that they hadn’t easily let go of her. She’d had to stay with them through supper, and until it was scarcely light enough to see her way home, and by then she had been too tired to remember her promise to stop by my house. She was sorry. I said that was okay, that I was sorry she hadn’t found Nail.

“You don’t suppose,” she started again with those familiar words that sounded sort of desperate, “that he could be somewhere up in the mountains or lost hollows, hiding out?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t break the magic and tell her about that mullein stalk named Nail, or it would pop right up and pretend he wasn’t lost when he actually was.

“You don’t suppose,” she asked, “that he might not even want his own parents to know that he has come back?”

“Viridis,” I said, with a little exasperation, “I know that Nail’s not anywhere around Stay More.”

“How can you be so certain?” she said, not really asking it so much as accusing me for my cocksure conviction.

“I just know,” I declared. “Believe me.” I nearly added, by way of consolation, I’ll tell you the minute I see the mullein straighten up again. But you can’t tell anyone about the mullein.

She said, “Latha, Nail told me that you could tell me where he would be hiding. Do you know where it is? Would you show me?”

Then I remembered what I’d written to him in that letter about the lost glade, or glen, of the high waterfall, way back up on the mountain beyond his upper sheep pasture. I was flattered that my telling him about it would have made him want to use it as a hiding-place. For a moment, even, I wondered if the range of my mullein’s magic extended that far into the wilderness. Could it be that my mullein didn’t know he was already there? But no: the mullein will tell you if something or someone is lost even if it or they are a thousand miles away. “Sure, I could show you,” I said, “but I don’t think you’ll find him there.”

“Can we go there?” she asked, and that note of desperation still gave an edge to her question. She observed, correctly, that I was just sitting in the rocker on the porch, not doing anything, and she asked, “Are you free to go right now?”

I looked around as if somebody might try to detain me, or as if to see if anybody was spying on us, but Viridis and I seemed to have the morning all to ourselves. “Let’s go,” I said.

And we went. Rouser tried to follow and I told him to stay home but Viridis said he could go with us, so we let him trot along after Rosabone as she carried the two of us up the road toward the Chism place.

But somebody was spying on us. I should have guessed, I should have been able to put myself inside of Sull Jerram’s crooked mind and figure out that if he and his courthouse gang were determined to keep Nail from returning, or to capture him as soon as he showed up and turn him back over to the authorities in Little Rock, they’d likely post a watch on Viridis and trail every move she made. By now everyone knew she was here. By now Sheriff Duster Snow had had plenty of time to tell his deputies to put Viridis under surveillance. Two deputies, we later learned, had taken up residence in Tilbert Jerram’s General Store, from which they could watch any comings or goings from the old woman’s house, and it was one of these deputies who was now following us, on his horse, as we rode Rosabone in the direction of what had once been Nail’s sheep pastures. Rouser caught wind of him and growled a little bit to attract my attention. I looked over my shoulder and saw the man on his horse, a good distance behind us. “Viridis,” I said, “we’re being followed.”

She stopped and turned Rosabone. When she stopped, so did the distant rider. “Do you know who he is?” she asked.

I couldn’t see him well enough to recognize him or even to know for sure that he was one of Snow’s deputies. “No, but I reckon he’s one of the law,” I said.

“We’ll have to lose him,” she declared. “Where can we go to shake him off?”

“That way,” I directed her, not pointing but just nodding my head slightly in the direction of a byroad that diverged from the Chisms’ lane and dropped down toward Butterchurn Holler. We rode Rosabone along the Butterchurn Holler trail for a mile, with the deputy still coming along behind us, hanging back but definitely following us. I knew there was a sharp bend ahead in the trail, and I told Viridis, “When we reach that big hickory up ahead, right past it let’s cut quick into the woods.”

She spoke over her shoulder: “I’m afraid I don’t know a hickory from an elm. You’ll have to say when.”

I told her when. We left the road and plunged into the deep woods that rose up the north side of Butterchurn Holler. The climb was steep, and we both dismounted and led Rosabone up to the top of the ridge, where we paused and waited for fifteen or twenty minutes to see if the deputy had discovered which way we had gone. But there was no further sign of him. He must have followed the Butterchurn Holler trail onward. We remounted Rosabone and rode across the ridge until we could double back and regain the Chism lane and cross it into Nail’s sheep pastures. As we rode across the pasture, I watched carefully in every direction for signs of any other deputy or spy.

The pasture rose, rolling, through the high weeds and brush that had taken over the place since Nail’s sheep had died. The Chisms ought to have bought a few sheep or goats just to graze it and keep it from going back to the wild, or at least they should have mowed it for hay. “What is all this ferny stuff?” Viridis asked, and I explained that it was yarrow, which Nail had planted for his sheep to supplement their diet; but it had grown tall and its leaves, a grayish shade of green, were rank. “Yarrow’s a pretty name for a plant,” she said, and I told her that some women and girls used yarrow as the main ingredient in a love medicine. “Love medicine?” Viridis laughed, and I had to explain to her how you could concoct beverages that had the power to influence the man of your choice.

She didn’t take me very seriously. Then as we went on she asked me to identify other weeds and grasses, and I told her the names of all the pretty ones: chicory and butterfly weed, coreopsis and oldfield toadflax. “Really? Is it really called oldfield toadflax?” she asked, and I said that was what I’d always known it to be called.

Then we were drawn into that uppermost corner of the field, where it nestles against the side of the mountain, lined on two sides by thick, close hardwoods that seem to make a cul-de-sac in the corner but actually open into an old trail. But I didn’t direct Viridis toward that trail opening, just yet. “Let’s wait here a bit,” I suggested, and dismounted from Rosabone. “You just sit there on her for a while, and I’m gonna check to make sure nobody’s watching you.”

Viridis did as I told her, and I crept over behind the tree line at the edge of the field and followed it for a good ways back along the slope of the pasture, with Rouser at my heels. I moved from tree to tree, keeping myself hidden and looking out across the field to catch sight of anyone else. But there was no one. We were alone up there. “Smell anybody?” I asked Rouser, and he planted himself and raised his nose into the air as if he understood my question. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had shaken his head in reply, but he just gave me a blank, dumb, doggy look as if to say no, he didn’t smell anybody. I went back to Viridis and motioned for her to follow me, and we crossed the tree line and entered the deep woods.

There had been some logging activity not too long ago in this part of the woods, which had all second-or third-growth trees, not very tall, and thin. The earth here was still gouged by wheel ruts from the heavy-laden lumber wagons. But after following the main logging-trail for less than a mile, we found ourselves in a holler that had no path except what remained of some ancient passage, perhaps of Indians. The deeper we got into this holler, the taller the trees stood, until we were in rare virginal woodland: towering stands of oak, ash, and hickory, hung with huge grapevines and blackjack vines that had given up trying to climb the trees and made the place look like a jungle. Either these trees were too hard for the loggers to get at or whoever owned the land had not permitted logging. I didn’t know who owned the land. Not the Chisms, whose acres we had left far down below.

If these virgin trees were singing, they sang only with fragrance, not with sound. It was eerily quiet and still in this forest, a silence matching the darkness: although it was well past midmorning and the sun was high in the sky, the canopy of the forest shaded everything except a random patch of sunlight here and there.

A small branch meandered through the holler, and its gentle gurgling was the only sound besides the clop of Rosabone’s hooves on an occasional slab of chert. The branch was the runoff of the falls, which were still out of earshot. Along the banks of the branch grew wildflowers, and Viridis asked me to name them for her: my voice seemed to have an echo, nearly a boom in the silence, as I pronounced, “Bee Balm, Mallow, Lady Slipper, Fireweed…” We were deep into a rich, woodsy fragrance that was only partly flowers; the rest was moss and leaf mold and fern and the silent singing of the trees. I mentioned to Viridis in passing that the lady slipper’s roots are used in concocting one of the most powerful love medicines ever known, a surefire aphrodisiac…although I didn’t know that word, not then. “It makes a body right warm and lusting” was the way I put it, blushing furiously in the effort.

It was almost eleven o’clock when we came to the glade, or glen, which was illuminated by the full sun: the northeast end of the holler terminated in cliffs, and over the lowest ridge of the bluff spilled the waterfall, a white square fifteen feet high, dazzling in the sunlight. On both sides of the waterfall the cliff was deeply undercut into caverns, sunless grottoes in which Indians once had lived and which still contained the shattered relics of their habitation: bits of woven stuff, shards of pottery, bones. Viridis was entranced. Rouser was having a field day, sniffing around.

“Here we are,” I declared.

“Nail?” she softly called, but of course there was no answer. She tested the water of the falls with her hand, and so did I; it was much, much colder than my shower bath falls. “Is it safe to drink?” she asked. We were both very thirsty from our ride and hike. Rosabone had not waited for my answer but was already lowering her head to drink from the deep, blue pool at the base of the falls.

“It’s springwater,” I said. We knelt and cupped our hands to drink. The water was delicious: cold and fresh and pure. There wasn’t even a minnow swimming in it, nor a waterbug. A flitting dragonfly was the only creature besides us around the pool. But in the mud at the edge there were some tracks, of more than one animal. I wasn’t very good at recognizing animal tracks, and some of these I’d never seen before. Rouser was practically rooting his snout in the tracks and holding his tail very still, which he does when he’s trying to think.

Viridis didn’t seem to notice the tracks, and I wasn’t going to scare her with the thought that we might be surrounded by wolves, bears, or panthers, not to mention gowrows, jimplicutes, and snawfusses. The latter three were just as real to me as the former three, but I had never seen any of them, although I’d heard wolves howling at night far across the ridges.

We were sitting now on the log of a fallen tree, while Rosabone with her reins loose wandered around the pool and Rouser went off out of sight to pursue the trail of one of the animals. “It’s so peaceful here,” Viridis observed, smiling and taking a deep breath as if the air were peaceful too.

“This would be a perfect place for Nail to hide if he—” Her voice caught, she choked, then sobbed once, loudly, and I thought sure she was going to cry, but she stopped herself and sniffled, using her wrist to rub away whatever had been ready to run from her eyes or nose. Then sadly she said, “Maybe he’ll never see it.”

“He’s already seen it,” I said. “He knows every inch of this mountain.” I thought of what I’d said to him in my letter: “I didn’t stay up there very long, but while I was there I thought of you, a lot, and I had a strange vision as if I could see you just living and dwelling in that hidden glade.” I told Viridis, “If he’s alive, and if he goes anywhere, he’ll come here. He might even be on his way here right this minute.”

We waited. It was almost as if we’d been told he’d come at high noon and we had just a few minutes to wait for him. Meanwhile Viridis asked me to identify everything that I could see from where I was sitting: she wanted to learn the names of everything visible that could be named. There were some ferns growing around the pool that were so uncommon I didn’t know their name, and there was even a flower, some kind of twayblade, that I couldn’t identify, but I told her everything I knew in that green glen.

And she knew things I didn’t, that every shade of that green had a name, some shades of green I’d never heard of before, that she pointed out to me: cinnabar, Aubusson, smaragd, cobalt, Hooker’s, palmetto, Véronèse, teal, gamboge, shades of green that only an artist would know but that would come in handy if you wanted to remember the difference between a frond of fern and a bough of cedar. Cinnabar is a very reddish green, and I didn’t even know that green could be red, its complement, until Viridis pointed it out to me.

We were learning things from each other. But it was past noon now, and we were both hungry for dinner, and I hadn’t brought my .22 with me to shoot something to eat, and even if Rouser had trotted back with a possum in his mouth I wouldn’t have known how to cook it. It would be way past dinnertime before we got back home, and we’d be starved.

A blue lizard frightened Viridis into leaving the place. It was just a harmless little skink that crawled out from under a rock and flicked its tongue at her, but maybe she had never seen a lizard before: she jumped up with a squeal of terror and ran several feet before stopping. Of course by then she’d scared the daylights out of the poor skink, who’d slunk back to his hidey hole. “It was just a lizard,” I said. “They won’t bite.”

“Up close he looked like a small dragon,” she said, recovering herself, and then, apologetically, “Well, we’d better go, don’t you think?”

I nodded and called for Rouser. He came back from wherever he’d been tracking whatever, and Viridis took Rosabone’s reins and said, “I wish there were some way I could let him know that I was here, in case he comes.”

“Well,” I said. I began picking up small rocks, and I arranged them beside the pool of the falls into a large letter V. “If he sees that, he’ll know it stands for you.”

Viridis studied my handiwork, and then she bent to gather some other stones and make beside the V another letter, a large L.

I was flattered, but I protested, “He won’t know what that stands for.”

“If he doesn’t,” she said, “let him think it stands for love.”

I blushed red.

Each morning thereafter Viridis went to that remote glen of the waterfall, but without me. I understood. Sometimes I guess I overstood: I let my imagination run away with me in picturing the first meeting between Viridis and Nail, the first time they’d ever been allowed to touch without someone watching them. What kind of touch would it be? They sure wouldn’t simply shake hands. And it would probably be more than a hug. It would probably be more than even my imagination could guess, and I understood why Viridis did not invite me to go back with her to that glen. But there was another reason: she could ride Rosabone a lot easier and swifter without me behind. She had to elude those deputies who watched her every move from their lookout at Tilbert Jerram’s store. Both of those deputies had good horses, but they weren’t jumpers like Rosabone, and that mare would really give them chase. Viridis would point her west, or north, or south, or any direction except her northeastward destination, and then lead those poor deputies on a pursuit that would take them all over the Stay More countryside before they quit and realized they had long since lost her. Without me riding behind, Rosabone could jump pretty near anything that stood in her way: fallen trees and fences and creeks and brush piles that would impede or completely stop those men trying to follow her. Not once did those deputies come anywhere near discovering Viridis’ actual destination in the green glen of the waterfall.

Viridis would go on alone into the glen after shaking off her pursuers. It scared her a good bit, going alone through that dark forest to that place where possibly fiercer creatures than blue lizards dwelt. On the forest path once, Rosabone shied and reared up and nearly threw Viridis: there was a copperhead in the path, and those snakes are sure enough a lot less harmless than lizards: a copperhead’s bite can kill you.

When she got to the glen, Viridis would give herself and Rosabone a good long drink from the pool and then just hang around awhile, looking for signs that Nail or any other man had been there. Each time she went there she would take something and leave it, in the largest cavern beside the falls, like a bird building a nest: she would pack in a blanket one day, another blanket the next day, and eventually all of the things she had meant to leave under the sycamore tree behind the penitentiary: the hunting knife, the harmonica, the pocketknife with can opener attachment, and the few cans of corned beef and beans and such, as well as the compass, the pocket watch, soap, salt and pepper, and a few yards of mosquito netting (the mosquitoes were getting bad). On each trip she would check carefully to see if any of these items had been used or even touched. Disappointed, she would just sit for an hour or so listening to the trees, and waiting, before heading home.

Only one item that she had intended to leave for Nail and Ernest she did not place in the cavern but carried with her at all times: the Smith & Wesson revolver. Having the gun with her allayed the terror of encountering a panther, bear, or wolf. Against a pack of wolves the gun wouldn’t be much help, but it was better than nothing. She kept it in a small saddlebag attached to the back of Rosabone’s jumping-saddle, where she also sometimes carried a sandwich, in case she was gone past dinnertime.

Returning from the falls, she would be just as careful as she had been going to them, to make sure that she wasn’t watched or her route discovered. She would take a circuitous path that brought her out north of Nail’s sheep pastures, and then she would come back across those pastures to the Chism house and stop to say hello and perhaps make sure that he hadn’t shown up there.

On one of these visits to the Chism house she discovered that Seth Chism was in pretty bad shape. Nail’s father had been ailing for quite some time, and now it appeared that he might not survive. Doc Plowright had been to see him, but now the Chisms had sent for young Doc Swain, who was there when Viridis arrived and who later talked to her alone back in town.

“They call it heart dropsy,” Doc Swain said to her. “Leastways, that’s what…my colleague across the road yonder calls it.” He gestured toward Doc Plowright’s clinic. “I reckon that’s what he’s always heared it called, and he keeps on callin it that even though he must know it’s actual a pericarditis. Or maybe he don’t know that. Anyhow, ole Seth’s heart is shore to fail. Now, I reckon if Nail was to show up, he could get better. But if he don’t, his heart is bound to fail.”

“Mine is bound to fail too,” she said.

Doc Swain, who wasn’t any older than she was, looked at her with compassion. “It better not,” he said gently. “There aint nothin I could give ye for your heart.”

The old woman had a visitor that night. Or maybe he meant to visit Viridis, but the way he acted, it was the old woman he had driven all the way from Jasper to see. Judge Lincoln Villines drove the car himself, and he came alone. He must have left early in the afternoon, to drive that car over all the ridges and through all the creeks between Jasper and Stay More. He arrived just a bit too late for supper. The old woman and Viridis were taking their coffee out on the porch when he pulled into the yard. Of course they recognized him from the previous time he’d been on that porch: it was almost as if those five or six months had not intervened since he had last stood there in the company of the sheriff and the county judge; it was almost as if they could still hear him snapping at the latter, “Shut yore fool mouth, Sull! Aint you done made enough trouble already? Jist shut up, afore ye go and make it worse!”

But now he spoke mildly, although the subject of his speaking had not changed: “Ladies, good evenin and howdy. I trust ye aint had no trouble lately from…my colleague, Jedge Jerram?”

“He knows better than to show himself in my sight again,” the old woman said.

Lincoln Villines smiled at her and waited to see if she would offer him a chair. She did not. He turned to Viridis. “And you, young lady? Has he given you ary bad time?”

“Not directly,” Viridis said. “I haven’t seen him. But his deputies are trying to stalk every move I make.”

The circuit judge smiled. “Them is Sherf Snow’s deppities, ma’am. They don’t work for Sull.”

“Does it matter?” Viridis said testily. “Aren’t all of you in cahoots together?”

The judge coughed. “That aint a pretty color to put on it,” he said. “I don’t have no sympathy nor friendship with the sherf. And I don’t have no feller-feelin with Sull Jerram neither.”

“You’re both judges,” Viridis pointed out.

“He aint no judicial jedge, ma’am. Don’t ye know that? He’s jist a administrative jedge.” Villines turned to the old woman. “Iffen ye’d be so kind as to offer me a cheer, I’d set and explain the difference to y’uns.”

“We know the difference,” the old woman said. “But pull you up a cheer and set, if you’ve a mind to.”

He sat. He rubbed his hands together as if washing them. He started to spit over the porch rail but decided not to. “Fairly cool for this time of June, aint it?” he observed, but neither of the women commented. Then he said, “No, I’m sorry to say it, but Sull Jerram don’t know beans about law. Iffen he’d of knowed the first thing about the law, none of this mess would have started nohow.” When that brought no comment either, he addressed a conversational question to Viridis: “How’s ever little thing at the Gazette and all, these days?”

“I’m no longer with the Gazette,” Viridis informed him.

“Is that a fack?” he said. “Wal, I do declare. Times change, don’t they. You aint a reporter no more?”

“I never was a reporter,” she said. “Just an illustrator.”

“I see,” he said, uncertainly. “George Hays told me you was a reporter.”

“There are many things that Governor Hays does not understand.”

“Wal, I don’t make no promises, but I do believe that if I was to be elected governor, I couldn’t do no better.”

Both women attempted to figure that one out. They looked at each other. Had Lincoln Villines just intimated that he intended to run for governor, or hadn’t he? Viridis had heard the rumors, that the so-called Jeff Davis faction of the Democratic Party, named after a demagogue who had served as governor early in the century, was touting Lincoln Villines as their likely candidate in the event that George Hays chose not to seek reelection. Villines’ only qualification for the nomination, apparently, was that like Jeff Davis he was an Ozarks mountaineer. “Are you going to run for governor?” Viridis asked him. “Has Hays decided not to seek reelection?”

“I was hopin you could tell me that one,” the judge said. “I was hopin maybe you’d heard if George is made up his mind yit.”

“There are rumors he won’t run,” Viridis said. “Just rumors.”

“Do Little Rock folks expect him to?”

Even if she could answer that, why should she? She owed no favors, of information or anything else, to this man. She shrugged her shoulders. “He probably won’t run,” she declared, and realized that she was encouraging the judge, for some motive she didn’t yet understand herself.

“Is that right? Wal, I suspicioned it myself, although George hasn’t told me. You’d think he’d tell me. We’re real good friends from way back. You’d think that I’d be the first person he’d tell when he makes up his mind, on account of several fellers have told me that I’d be first choice to step in and take his place if he didn’t run.” Judge Villines rambled on, talking aloud to himself more than to the two ladies. The two ladies smiled at each other. Neither of them could guess the real motive of the man’s visit, and they waited patiently for him to reveal it. The sun was on its way down. Judge Villines squinted at it as it sank behind the mountain that walled in Stay More on the west.

Finally he did spit. The old woman knew, as she would later explain to Viridis, that ordinarily a man spits only in the presence of his fellow men; when a man spits in the presence of women, with no other man present, it can mean only one thing: he is nervous about having something important to say. He said it: “No, the governor, ole George, he aint said a word to me about whether he plans to run or not. He did say one thing, though. He said, and I quote him, that I better take care of this Nail Chism business. It could hurt what chance I’ve got to be a candidate for the nomination for governor. It’s real bad news that Nail is runnin around loose. I shore do need to have a little talk with him.”

Viridis interrupted. “If you’re trying to get me to tell you where he’s hiding, I’m afraid I don’t know anything more about that than you do.”

The judge studied her to determine if she was telling the truth. “I jist want to talk to him,” he said. “I don’t mean him ary bit of harm. In fact, if I can jist git myself nominated for governor, one of the first things I aim to do is give him a full pardon.” The women swapped skeptical glances. “All I want to do,” Judge Villines went on, “is talk to him and tell him that I aint been mixed up in no way whatsoever with those men that he thinks framed him.”

Viridis laughed. “You,” she said. “You tried and convicted him and sentenced him to the electric chair. You refused to recommend to Governor Hays a second trial. You refused to sign a petition with six thousand other residents of Newton County, who believe Nail is innocent.”

The judge held up his hands as if she were raining blows down on his head. “Whoa, lady!” he begged. “All I was doin was my duty as the court! The court makes mistakes! Don’t ye know? The court kin only listen to the evidence and listen to the jury, and that there jury of twelve honest men convicted Nail, not me, and I jist had to impose the sentence prescribed by the law and voted by that jury!”

“Did I hear you confess you made a mistake?” Viridis asked.

“I reckon you did! I reckon I did! Everbody makes mistakes, and I’m here to tell ye that if I had to do it all over again, I would’ve found some way the court could’ve let him off! That’s all I want to tell him! If you’ll jist tell me whar’s he’s at, I’ll crawl on my knees to him and tell him I’m sorry!”

The judge sounded as if he were about to break down. Viridis almost felt some sympathy for him. “You really believe that I know where he is?” she asked, and when he nodded, she said, “Well, let me tell you: if I knew where he was, that’s where I would be, right now, instead of here listening to you!”

“You honestly don’t know?” he said.

“He could be dead for all I know!” she said, admitting it to herself now at last, and began to cry.

The judge was uncomfortable, and he stood up and prepared to leave. “Well, if he shows up, I jist want you to know that it would be greatly to his advantage, and yourn, if you’uns would jist let me have a few words with him before he does anything rash.”

Because Viridis could not reply, the old woman spoke for her: “We’ll tell him what you said.”

In the last days of June, Stay More eases into the slow rhythm that will stay with it throughout July and into August: just enough rain, not very often, to settle the dust and keep things green; just enough work to keep everybody from being idle but not enough to keep them from enjoying what summer was mainly meant for: the casual contemplation of the inexorable passage of time. Summer is a season for endurance and abidance. It is too hot to enjoy life but too green not to. And green is cool. The color alone sustained us, and was all around us, in every conceivable tint and hue.

The men sat on the storeporch and tried to make grist for conversation out of Viridis’ occasional comings and goings and whether or not there would ever be another coming of Nail. After a while it seemed that even that grist was depleted, and nobody spoke of Viridis or Nail, either one. Even the two deputies spying from Tilbert Jerram’s store seemed to be bored and at loose ends, and one of them, at least, got up his nerve to come down to Ingledew’s store and sit with the other men and whittle and chew and spit and hem and haw and cough and spit and whittle and kick the dog off the porch and watch what there was of the world go by. The deputy allowed as how he sure would like to get on back home. None of the Stay More men asked him why he didn’t just do that; they knew he had a paid job of work he was required to do, whatever it was, keeping an eye on that lady, and he’d just have to do it until Sheriff Snow or whoever told him he could quit.

The deputies gave up trying to follow Viridis to her destination on her daily rides. They didn’t have to apologize to anybody that their horses weren’t made for jumping the way Rosabone was. They had seen that mare jump clear across Banty Creek at a spot where it must have been all of twenty feet from one side to the other. Now, did you ever know ary horse or mare hereabouts to do a thing like that? No, it was no use trying to find out where that lady went. If Nail actually had come back and was hiding out wherever the lady went, there just wasn’t going to be any way to find him.

But I knew he hadn’t come back, even if Viridis hadn’t kept me informed on her progress, or lack of it. Every day I observed the mullein stalk still bent down when I went to my own little waterfall to take a bath after working in the garden. Rouser always went with me, but, like I say, I carried my .22 rifle as an extra precaution, and also in case I saw a fat squirrel or a partridge that was ripe for the pot. Sometimes I hit one, and we had a little variety on the table to replace the pork that was usually our only relief from a diet of greens: with every meal except breakfast, we had spinach, turnip tops, wild poke, lamb’s quarters, or some other wild green. I’ve always been fond of greens, cooked not too long if I could get Ma to move the pot off the stove before they cooked brown, but even the best mess of greens got tiresome by itself and was greatly improved by the little bit of fresh critter I sometimes shot.

Seth Chism took a turn for the worse. Nowadays, if he were still living, he’d be rushed in an ambulance to the hospital and put in the ICU, but back then nobody’d ever heard of an ambulance, and although there was a kind of hospital up at Harrison, thirty miles off, it was an all-day ride on a road so bad it’d kill you if your disease didn’t, and once you got there the bed wasn’t any different from what you had at home. So Seth Chism lay dying in his own bed, and all Doc Swain could do was send Waymon Chism to Harrison to bring back a prescription for some heart medicine, which Doc didn’t carry and which couldn’t be had in what passed for a drugstore in Jasper.

Waymon hired out one of Willis Ingledew’s best horses to ride to Harrison for the heart medicine. He hoped to leave early enough and ride hard enough to get back in the same day, and he was already gone when I was out in my garden patch before sunrise. I had my bath, and on my way back from my little waterfall I spotted a fat red squirrel sitting on a tree limb and hit it with the first shot from my .22, and Rouser retrieved it for me, and I promised him the bones from the stew pot that night. I noticed the mullein named Nail still bent down to the ground, and I stood and talked to it for a while, but it wouldn’t even twitch. Then as I was returning to the house, not yet close enough to the house to have a good view of the road, I saw Viridis and Rosabone go by; I could tell it was them by the mare’s gait. They were just trotting along, not running.

They were scarcely out of sight when here came another rider. I figured at first it was just one of those deputies. But I’d seen both of them, and their horses, often enough to know, even from a distance, that this wasn’t either one. The trouble was, I was close enough to the house, and running now, trying to get closer, to tell it wasn’t a deputy, but not close enough to recognize the man.

When I reached the house, I threw my squirrel into a pot and covered it, then kept on running after them with Rouser at my heels, and I had to shush him when he commenced barking because he sensed my excitement. It was uphill, and I couldn’t run fast enough to keep up with them. I realized I was still carrying the .22 in one hand, and I was tempted to leave it so I could run faster, but something made me hang on to it.

I didn’t come within sight of Viridis or the horseman until, much later, I reached Nail Chism’s sheep pastures and could just make out the figures of Viridis and Rosabone disappearing into the far corner where the upper pasture dissolved into the woodland trail. I knew that Viridis always waited there, as she had the first time we’d gone there together, to make sure that she wasn’t being followed. But now the man who was following her had disappeared, or was hiding, and I didn’t see him again until a few moments after Viridis disappeared into the woods; then he and his horse came crashing out of the trees at the south end of the sheep pasture and took out across the pasture at a gallop, headed toward that far corner where she had gone.

For a wonderful long moment, I thought it was Nail. I wondered where he had obtained such a big fine horse, but he could have stolen one somewhere along his travels from Little Rock to Stay More. And yet I knew that my mullein stalk wouldn’t have lied to me. It could not be Nail. I was reminded of that time, a June ago, over a year, when I had been at the playhouse with Rindy and had seen the man far down below in the field, the man who, everybody would try to get me to say, was Nail, but was not Nail, was the man who had actually assaulted Rindy: was Sull. Was this Sull too? He was too far away for me to tell, but I was determined to find out, and I paused breathless and heaving for just a minute before resuming my climb up through that weed-infested sheep pasture toward the obscure entrance to the woods where now the man and his horse had disappeared in pursuit of Viridis.

By the time Rouser and I reached the entrance to the woods ourselves, we were far behind them. If the man was following Viridis, he had surely caught up with her by now. If he was only trying to find out the location of the hideaway that she visited daily, he had found it by now. If he intended to do her some harm, to rape her, even to kill her, he was well on his way to doing it. Once I’d reached the woodland trail and it leveled off a bit and I could run faster, I began running again, and as I plunged deeper into the woods I ran until I thought my heart would burst or my lungs explode.

I tripped on a root and flew: I was airborne, and my rifle left my hand and flew farther than I did before I slammed down to the ground and got all the wind knocked out of me and my dress ripped up and dirtied and could only lie there whimpering for a while until the air came back into my lungs and I could bend and kneel and get my feet up under me again and then, painfully, stand. I hadn’t broken anything. I found my rifle off in a pile of old leaves, nearly hidden. I ran on, watching my feet.

I still had a ways to go to reach the glen of the waterfall, when I saw the horse. It was the man’s horse, but he was not in the saddle, and the horse was just standing there, not tied. Suddenly I stopped, thinking the man was bound to be near. My heart was already pounding in my ears from my run; now it was pounding harder from fright. I raised my rifle and held it ready to use. I crooked my finger around the trigger. But I did not squeeze it. That I am sure of.

And I am almost sure that the rifle wasn’t loaded. It was a cheap single-shot .22, and I don’t recall putting another bullet in it after I killed that squirrel. But I would ask myself, in the hours and days following: was it at all possible that in my excitement and distraction I did reload, and then when I tripped on that root and the rifle left my hand, it hit the ground and fired itself? Could that be? I had slammed into the ground so hard that I might not have heard the rifle go off. Could it, by sheer chance, have landed in that pile of leaves pointed so that its bullet, accidentally discharging, would find its way through hundreds of yards of thick woods and hit a man in the back of the head?

Because he had been hit in the back of the head. It was, Doc Swain declared later, a .22 bullet. It had been fired not from the Smith & Wesson revolver that Viridis possessed but from a .22 rifle such as the one I carried.

There have been a few times in my long life when I was not at all certain just what was happening to me, or what I was doing, but unless, as I conjectured, my rifle shot itself off after flying out of my hands, that bullet was not fired from my rifle. I know this!

And yet there he was. I found him near his horse, lying face up, already dead, I knew. I wouldn’t touch him, I just looked at him.

And then I spoke to his dead body the kind of thing a murderess might have said: “Well, Sull Jerram, you won’t never hurt another soul.”

On

“You didn’t do that.”

She had not ridden Rosabone all the way into the glen of the waterfall, and thus she did not know if Nail had finally come nor if the contents of the cavern had been touched. When she heard the rifle fire, she pulled back on Rosabone’s reins and waited, listening, for a long scary moment, then turned back in the direction of the sound without even knowing who had fired the rifle. She had not ridden very far back when she came upon the strange scene: a dead man lying on the ground beside his horse, a girl standing over him with a rifle. “You didn’t do that,” she said to the girl.

“Uh-uh, I sure didn’t,” I said to her.

Viridis jumped down from Rosabone’s back and peered closely at the face of Sull Jerram, the eyes squeezed tightly shut as if in pain, the mouth clenched, an ugly face making its last grimace. She had to turn the face to one side, gingerly, to find the bullet hole: just behind the right ear at the base of the skull. I don’t see how a .22 bullet fired from such a distance could have penetrated the head of such a thick-skulled man. But it did. Except that at that moment I didn’t know it was a .22 bullet. And he was as dead as you are allowed to get in this world. Viridis put her ear against his chest and listened for a heartbeat but shook her head. She felt for his pulse but found none. “He’s dead,” she told me, as if I needed to be told.

“He was following you,” I told her, as if I knew something she didn’t.

“And you were following him?” she asked, and then pointed to my rifle. “Could I see that?”

I handed her my rifle. She examined it, sniffed it, looked into the chamber, where a spent cartridge lay. “I killed a squirrel,” I said.

She gave me a strange look I hadn’t had from her before. “Where’s the squirrel?” she asked.

I attempted to explain. The squirrel, I said, had been killed some time before and was now in a pot on the porch of my house. I hadn’t reloaded the gun but was just carrying it, I guess with that spent cartridge of the bullet that had killed the squirrel still in it. I sure hadn’t shot Sull Jerram with it. Much as I would have liked to. Heck, I didn’t even know it was him until I found him dead. I swear. “Don’t you believe me?” I begged.

“I want to believe you,” she said, and she commenced looking around at the woods on all sides of us. “But who else could it have been? Unless…” She stared so fixedly off into the woods that I thought she must be looking right at him, and I looked in that direction too but didn’t see anyone. “NAIL?” she shouted.

I really hoped he was there. Despite my mullein, which never lies, I hoped he was there, so that he could take the credit, or the blame, for shooting Sull Jerram, and so that we could all live happily ever after. It was time for him to come. But he had not come. The woods were deep-green and silent.

At length she said, “Well, I guess we’ve got to tell somebody about this.”

I offered, “I could run home and fetch Paw’s shovel, and we could just bury him right here and nobody would know about it.”

She gave me that strange look again. “And bury his horse too? No, they’d find him, sooner or later. We’d better report this. Who should I report it to?”

We discussed it and decided that the best person to tell would be Doc Swain. But while we went off to fetch him, we couldn’t just leave the body and the horse to the mercy of wolves or buzzards. One of us would have to stand guard until Doc Swain got here.

“Can you ride Rosabone?” she asked.

“Sure, but she knows you better. You go, and I’ll stay with the body.”

“You won’t be scared?”

“A little, but I can manage.”

“All right, we’ll be back as soon as we can.” She climbed up on Rosabone and turned her to go. “You’ll be here when I get back?” she asked uncertainly.

I nodded, and she was gone. It wouldn’t take her half an hour to run down to the village, and if Doc Swain wasn’t too busy he’d saddle his horse and be back with her within an hour. But it was going to be the longest hour I ever spent. My first thought, when I was alone with the corpse of Sull Jerram, was that whoever had killed him might still be lurking in the woods and take a shot at me. My second thought, as the all-overs began to creep up on me, was that maybe I was the killer and had no one to fear except myself.

Rouser kept me good company and didn’t wander off.

I had never seen a dead body before, much less been all alone with one.

It was worse than being alone in a cemetery at night: at least the bodies there are all covered up so you can’t see them.

I thought of reloading my rifle, for protection, but decided I’d better just leave it the way it was.

I tried what Viridis had tried: I called out, “NAIL?” and heard my voice echoing up in the glen but didn’t get any reply.

If I hadn’t killed Sull, and Nail wasn’t anywhere around, who had done it? Waymon Chism? But Waymon was gone to Harrison, or was supposed to be.

I began to worry about something else, something important: Doc Swain would be discovering these woods, this intended hiding-place, and if he brought the law up here, they might even go farther up the holler and discover the waterfall and the caverns. What good would it be as a hiding-place if everybody knew about it?

Or maybe it wouldn’t ever be needed as a hiding-place. Maybe Nail wasn’t ever going to come.

When that long hour had dragged out to its close, and the morning was long gone, Viridis returned. There were two other men on horses with her, neither of them a sheriff’s deputy. One was Doc Swain. The other was his father, old Alonzo Swain, who, I realized, was still our justice of the peace, as he had been for many years. The older Doc Swain, who had given up his practice to his son Colvin a few years after the son got his medical degree from a St. Louis mail-order college, was also still deputy coroner for Newton County. So he could serve several functions here.

The younger Doc Swain helped the older down from his horse. Both men first said politely to me, “Howdy, Latha,” and then began to examine the corpse. Doc had a notebook with him, and he made some notes and drew a couple of diagrams showing where the body lay in relation to the trees around it, and then he took a sharp stick and traced an outline of Sull’s body in the dirt, and then he and his father lifted the corpse and slung it over the saddle of Sull’s horse like a sack of meal.

We Bournes had never been able to afford Doc Alonzo Swain, and Doc Plowright had always been our doctor, so the older man didn’t know me too well. Now he looked at me, and the first thing he asked was “How old air ye, gal?”

Of course he hadn’t delivered me. A midwife had done it, without even any help from Doc Plowright. “Goin on fourteen,” I said.

“Do ye want me to question ye out yere in these woods, or do ye wanter go have ye a bite of dinner and then come to my office?” He asked this kindly-like, and I appreciated it.

“I don’t keer,” I said. “Might as well do it here.”

“I’ve done et my dinner anyhow,” he announced, “and so’s Colvin. But you ladies mought be hungry.”

I was flattered he called me a lady, without any of the condescension that one hears in “little lady.” “I can hold off eatin till you’re done with your questions,” I declared.

“All righty,” he said, and motioned for us to sit together on a fallen tree trunk. “Well, number one. Would ye have any reason fer killin this man?”

I laughed. “Do you know anybody who wouldn’t?”

“Please jist answer the questions, Miss,” he said.

“Sure,” I said. “I had all kinds of reasons for killin him. He raped my best friend. He sent a good man to prison and nearly to the ’letric chair. He was follerin this lady, Viridis, and Lord knows what he aimed to do to her. Sure, I had all of kinds of reasons for killin him, and I wish I had. I really wish it was me who had done it. But it wasn’t. I didn’t.”

“Who else do you think it might’ve been?” old Doc Swain asked.

“It could’ve been any man…or woman…or child old enough to hold a rifle. Anybody who knew Sull Jerram and knew what he was like and what he done.” I pointed at the old doctor’s chest. “It could’ve just as well been you.”

That didn’t fluster him. He chuckled and glanced at his son and said, “She’s shore right about that. Or you, either one, Colvin.”

“Don’t I know it?” the young Doc Swain admitted. “But ask her whar she got this yere Winchester.” He held up the .22.

“Well?” the older man said to me.

“I bought it from Sears, Roebuck through the mail,” I declared truthfully, and added, “Four dollars and twenty-five cents, plus postage.”

“Whar’d you git the money?” he asked. The question contained an insinuation I didn’t like: the Bournes were too poor to afford Doc Swain, too poor to buy their least daughter a shootin-arn.

“Same place you got yours,” I said. “Honest toil.”

The old doctor grinned, and for a moment I thought he would ask me what kind of honest toil, and I was prepared to answer that one too, but he took up a different line of questioning: “You said that Sull…the deceased…was a-follerin this lady. How do you know he was a-follerin her?”

So I started at the beginning: how I had seen a man on a horse riding after Viridis, and how I had followed them, and everything that had happened, including me tripping and falling and dropping my rifle. “I’ll show you where it was,” I offered, and I led them back through the woods to the place where I had been running, and I pointed out the root that had snagged my foot and sent me flying, and I showed them the pile of old leaves where my gun had landed. The younger Doc Swain measured off the distance from this spot to the spot where Sull Jerram had lain dead.

“Hmm,” said old Doc Swain. “Still and all, you’ve got a empty cartridge in that rifle.”

So I told them about the squirrel too.

“What did ye do with the squirrel?” old Doc Swain asked.

“I put it in a pot on the porch,” I pronounced, unmindful of the alliteration.

“I reckon we better go see if it’s still there,” declared the old doctor/j.p./coroner.

We left those woods. As far as I know, the two doctors Swain never did go any farther back up into the glen where the waterfall was. They never did learn of the hiding-place and trysting-place that was still waiting for Viridis and Nail to use, if he ever showed up. They questioned Viridis about what she had been doing, where she was going when Sull was following her, and they checked to make sure that her Smith & Wesson was a .38, not a .22, and for that matter hadn’t been fired anytime recently. But she never said anything about her destination at the waterfall, which was beyond sight and earshot of the place where Sull Jerram fell dead.

And that old squirrel was still in that old pot, where I had left it. I figured it sure had been lucky that Rouser had gone with me; if I’d left him at home, he’d have worried the lid off that pot and got that squirrel. But it was in the pot. The younger Doc Swain took his pocketknife and dug out the bullet and matched it up with that spent cartridge in my rifle, and he looked his father in the eye and nodded. The old doctor said, “Wal, Latha, it looks like you aint a suspect no more. I don’t reckon we even need to tell the sherf that you ever was a suspect. We’ll jist say you was the one who discovered the body, and the sherf might want to ask you some questions too, but you jist tell the truth, ’cept you don’t have to say nothing about no rifle you was carryin. No need to do that.”

I wasn’t invited to ride any farther with them. Viridis did; she rode Rosabone onward with them and the body of Sull slung across the saddle of his horse into the village, and said she’d see me later. My folks were dying of impatience for me to tell them everything, which I did. Nearly everything.

We had that squirrel stewed with dumplings for supper, with a mess of greens, and some fresh biscuits, and even though one fat squirrel won’t feed five people, it was the best eating I could ever recall.

Before nightfall everybody in Stay More knew that Sull Jerram was dead, dead, dead, so it was decided to have some kind of celebration and party. The Stay Morons threw a big square dance up to the schoolhouse, and it was a Wednesday besides. Nobody could recall when they’d ever had a square dance that wasn’t on Saturday, or leastways Friday. A Wednesday night square dance was really a special event, and although nobody came right out and said it was being held in celebration of the demise of Sull Jerram, everybody knew that was the reason for it, and Luther Chism showed up with a whole keg of private-stock Chism’s Dew, and even some of the ladies sampled it. I had a taste myself. Old Isaac Ingledew, the champion fiddler of the country, got his instrument out and dusted it off and gave one of the last performances that anybody could ever after recall hearing him play.

Among the revelers and dancers were Rindy Whitter and her new beau, the young driver Virge Tuttle, who still hadn’t gone back to Pettigrew but appeared to have moved in with the Whitters. Rindy was so busy seeing him, which she did all the time, near about, that I had never got the chance to renew my friendship with her. But I had been too preoccupied myself to care.

Waymon Chism still hadn’t returned from Harrison with the medicine, but while the square dance was in progress, pretty far along in the night, he came riding up; he’d brought the medicine and Doc Swain the younger was up at the home place right now administering it to Seth, who was already pretty cheered up with the news of Sull’s passing. Now Waymon was ready to join the celebration himself.

But those two sheriff’s deputies, who’d been participating in the square dance along with everybody else, and had their own share of Chism’s Dew, told Waymon that he was under arrest. Despite his alibi of having gone to Harrison, despite the evidence of the medicine he’d obtained there, he was still the number-one suspect in the murder, and the deputies had instructions from Duster Snow to bring him in. Poor Waymon spent the night in the Jasper jail. The square dance celebration fizzled out about the time they took him away.

Usually when there was whiskey at a square dance, the party was over when some of the men got so drunk they started a fight. There wasn’t any fight this time, just a big argument: no less than six different men, all of them intoxicated, each claimed that he had shot Sull Jerram. But nobody awarded the honor and the prize to any one of them.

And that was the end of June. Next morning July was upon us. Hot, and humid, but heavenly because the worst man who ever came from Stay More was no longer among the living. Folks said they weren’t going to let Sull Jerram be buried in the Stay More cemetery. Tilbert Jerram, his next-of-kin in town, said he figured Sull would be just as happy to be buried in Jasper, so that was where they were going to bury him, and Irene, who was still his legal wife, let it be known she didn’t plan to attend whatever funeral they were going to give him.

That same July morning was a scorcher, and my labors in the garden left me lathered with sweat. I was so eager to get washed off at my little waterfall that something along the way scarcely caught my eye, and I had to turn back and look again to make sure: the bent-down mullein stalk, the one I’d named after Nail, was standing proud and tall.

Off

He had reached the point of no longer expecting to get to the opposite shore. The current of the swift Arkansas had been more than he had bargained for or could have struggled against. Within a minute after plunging in from the south bank, with his shoes tied together and wrapped around his neck, he suffered a bad cramp in his left calf and had to stop swimming and try to get the cramp out: several repetitions of pulling up on his foot and bending his toes back and then kicking his leg straight out finally removed the cramp from his left calf, but then a cramp in his right foot stopped him, and while working on that foot, he noticed the log coming swiftly at him, nearly upon him before he saw it, and thrashed wildly to get out of its way, just in the nick of time, or perhaps not soon enough: a jagged limb on the log raked his hip and cut deep into his skin.

He had not even reached the midpoint of the narrow river crossing before beginning to wonder if he would be able to make it. Each time he paused for breath or to turn over and swim on his back for relief, he found himself dodging a log or limb or being spun around and sucked under by a whirlpool. Once when he had resurfaced, disoriented, after fighting a sucking whirlpool, he swam a good distance back toward the closer south bank before realizing his mistake, and he was tempted to continue in that direction.

But he reversed himself and kept going, although aware that the current had forced him far below the narrow crossing, out into the broadened expanse of floodplain. He alternated between breaststrokes, backstrokes, and sidestrokes, the last especially whenever a wave of the current hit him and he needed to keep watching where he was going. He had reached what seemed to be midway of the broadened river, beyond which there was no turning back, before realizing that he simply had no energy remaining, no strength, that his months of incarceration without exercise had left him totally out of condition for such a marathon. By then it was too late. Out in the middle of the broadened channel the current was still so strong that he had ceased to make more than a feeble effort at fighting across it, not really making any progress but continuing to swing his arms overhead, just to keep himself from surrendering to the river.

Finally he had no choice but to grab hold of the next large log that came floating past, and to cling to it for a long time, as it carried him downstream. He wanted to hang on to that log forever, or until it carried him to New Orleans or wherever it was headed. But he knew it would eventually reach Little Rock, a place he never wanted to see again, so he let go of the log and continued swimming toward the impossibly distant north bank. The brief respite of clinging to the log had renewed his strength enough to swim with mighty strokes.

If only he had been able to keep that up. But as the north shore seemed to come closer and he felt all his muscles failing him, he lashed his right arm over his head with such desperate energy that a terrible pain shot through his shoulder. He screamed. He knew it was no mere cramp or muscle spasm; he had thrown something out of joint. From then on, he could not move his right arm at all, and the pain was all he could think of.

With his left hand he paddled several more strokes to keep afloat, until another log came drifting within reach and he caught it with his left hand and hung on. He did not know how long he clung to that log, conscious of nothing but the terrible pain in his shoulder and the darkening of the sky; the sun must have set. Seized with frantic thirst, he was almost tempted to drink the brown water but dared not. Then he roused himself from his pain to observe that the log was not in the midcurrents of the river but was caught in an eddy swirling toward a bend in the river; his log was headed for a great raft of snags. He kicked free from it just before it crashed into the pile of other logs, but the currents of the eddy had been too turbulent and confusing for him to fight with only one hand.

He must have lost consciousness—briefly, blessèdly—because he had stopped screaming from the pain. It was fading twilight when he found the world again and discovered his situation: he had been wedged into the pile of debris, clear of the water except for one leg and his useless right arm. He pulled himself up and got into a sitting position from which he could get his bearings: he had reached the north shore! Or not the shore itself, not dry land with earth beneath his feet, but this vast tangle of logs and limbs shunted into a bend of the shore. He crawled from one log to another, trying to hold his dead arm against his stomach, trying to hold his balance with the other hand, slipping, falling, from log to log, trying to extricate himself from the brush pile. It took a long, long time. When he had at long last reached solid earth, or sand, and thrown himself exhausted upon it, it was full night, full dark, and he slept.

Mosquitoes awakened him. Those biting him on his right side, or anywhere below his waist, he swatted and killed with his good left hand, but he could not swat at any mosquito alighting on his left arm or his left side. He spent most of the rest of the night battling the mosquitoes, too tired to get up and move away from the riverbank.

The first light of morning found him moving again: he walked away at last from the river, heading north across a sandbar, wading an eddy beyond the sandbar to climb a steep bank of clay and reach the first stand of cottonwood trees, who seemed to be singing him a welcome. He slaked his terrible thirst by using a handful of grass to mop up the morning dew from plants and rocks and squeezing the drops into his mouth: the beginning of his practice in doing things with his left hand alone. But the left hand soon began to fail him when he neared the first human habitation and a dog came to meet him, shattering the stillness with vicious barks; with his right hand he reached down to pick up a rock, and the searing pain reminded him that he couldn’t use that arm; he switched to the left hand and attempted to throw the rock at the dog but missed so badly that the dog itself seemed amused and drew even nearer. Finally he picked up a heavy stick and lashed out repeatedly until the dog withdrew. Leaning toward the left, instinctively toward the northwest, he went on, avoiding the dog and its master, and whatever remained of the settlement of Nail, Arkansas, as it once had been called.

The pain in his shoulder did not let up, but he had grown almost accustomed to it. Still, it distracted him entirely from the wound in his hip until he unfastened his pants to relieve himself and looked down to see the mass of coagulated blood along his hip and leg. He realized he needed to clean the wound, and the next thing to find, even before something to eat, was fresh water, water safe enough to clean the wound.

He came to one of the abandoned homesteads northwest of Nail, in a stand of cottonwood trees and briars. Hardly a homestead: just a cabin, a squatter’s shack, clearly long abandoned, although the rope on the well bucket was not fully decayed and the bucket itself, even rusted through with holes, held enough water to be drawn and inspected and found to be pure enough for washing the wound. Once the wound was cleansed, and freshly bleeding, he discovered it was deep enough to need stitches. Beyond the perimeter of cottonwoods he found what he needed: a yarrow plant, like those he’d fed his sheep, but this one wild, whose leaves he crushed to smear on his wound and slow its bleeding; and a common plantain, whose leaves mashed to a pulp made a mild astringent; and a lone loblolly pine, whose pitch he transferred from one of its wounds to his own. “I need this more than you do,” he had said to the tree, realizing these were the first words he’d spoken since greeting the sun the morning before. The pine would have answered him if it could: it would have gladly contributed a bit of its pitch to disinfect and protect his open wound.

Then he returned to the cabin and searched it for something to dress the wound, but there was no cloth, save the fragile, grimy remnants of curtains on one window. The interior was bare of anything but the twisted remains of an iron bedstead, and some discarded kitchen items: a battered blue enamel washpan, a broken fork, a bent tableknife. In one corner of the floor was a small pile of walnuts still in their husks, perhaps gathered by squirrels or chipmunks, but Nail had not noticed a walnut tree in the vicinity. There was a small fireplace in a chimney at one end of the room, and Nail considered making a fire in it. He considered staying awhile, letting his wound close and hoping his shoulder would stop hurting, snaring some small game to cook, taking advantage of the supply of well water. He was impatient to keep moving toward home but felt the need to recover from the river crossing.

He had to dry his soaked shoes. Even untying their laces, which had held them together around his neck during the river crossing, was nearly impossible using only one hand and his teeth. The cottonwood tree, or eastern poplar, has branches easily broken by the wind, and the yard surrounding the cabin was littered with an abundance of firewood. The brown seeds of the cottonwood have clusters of white, cottony hairs, hence the name cottonwood, and these, when dry, make good tinder. He spent the rest of the morning just preparing his fire: in the fireplace he arranged a pyramid of cottonwood sticks and branches over a pyramid of kindling: twigs and bark and some splinters from the wood of the cabin itself. Then on the hearth he carefully assembled the little mound of tinder: first a layer of cottonwood seed fluff, then some woodworm dust on top of that. He had to walk barefoot for an hour around the neighborhood, but avoiding the direction where he’d met the dog, until he found a small piece of flint, not indigenous to the spot but washed down by a flood from some higher elevation. He took the flint back to the cabin and held it down with his right foot beside the mound of tinder while holding the tableknife in his left hand and striking the flint until sparks brought the first wisp of smoke from the tinder, and then he knelt and blew the sparks into flame and shoved the tinder pile beneath the kindling. By noon a fire was going in his fireplace. He stepped outside to examine the smoke rising from the chimney: it was not conspicuous. The nearest neighbor might not see it.

The day was hot; he did not need the fire for warmth, but all afternoon he built up a pile of coals in the fireplace to roast whatever he could find. For lunch he cracked some of the walnuts out of their husks; every other one was dried or rotten, but the edible ones made him a meal. It had been a lot of work, with one hand, to crack the nuts beneath a rock and to pick their meat.

For dessert there were no end of wild raspberries. He was careful not to overindulge and give himself indigestion. Later in the cabin, noticing the shard of mirror still hanging on the wall, he brushed the grime from it and took a look at himself: a fright, but a comical one, with the red all around his mouth. He made no attempt to wash it off.

He fashioned himself, from a limb of Osage orange, or bois d’arc, a digging-stick, an all-purpose pointed tool for turning up roots or for spearing: he spent part of the afternoon digging up a mess of wild onions, slowed by having to use the stick with only one hand: it was more a poking-stick than a digging-stick. But he quickly acquired dexterity in wielding it, so that once, when he stumbled upon a rabbit hole just as the animal was emerging, almost by reflex he stabbed it with the digging-stick, enough to maim it, and then administered the coup de grâce by using the stick as a club. He gutted the rabbit by venting it and squeezing its innards toward its middle and then holding it high overhead with his good left hand and swinging it with great force downward and between his legs, causing its entrails to be expelled. He saved the heart, liver, and kidneys, roasting those too in the fireplace, for a supper of both raw and roasted onions with rabbit meat, washed down with good well water, and another dessert of wild raspberries.

But before roasting the rabbit he had carefully stripped away and saved the tendons of the muscles, planning eventually to dry them and twist the sinews into the cord of the bowstring for his bow and arrow. He was that optimistic: that he would somehow regain the use of his right hand and arm.

Sitting in front of the cabin after supper, watching the sun go down, feeling free and safe and contented, and even burping a few times, he did not even hear the dog sneaking up on him until the dog, the same one he had encountered earlier, was within a few feet. The dog began to bay, as if it had treed a coon. It did not come any closer, within reach of his digging-stick, but continued baying until, moments later, its owner appeared: a man with a long beard, face hidden beneath a floppy fedora, and cradling in one arm a double-barreled shotgun.

The man did not raise the shotgun to point it at Nail but carried it loose in the crook of his arm. He regarded Nail quizzically for a while before saying, “What’s yore name?”

Nail was tempted to answer truthfully but paused. Could this man know that there was a wanted escaped convict by his name? Was this man’s house, hereabouts, within reach of the news of the escape? For that matter, where was he? Nail had no idea, except that it was near the river; the drifting logs might even have carried him beyond Little Rock. “Where am I?” he answered.

The two questions remained there in the air between them, exchanged, unanswered, for a long moment. Did they answer simultaneously, or was the man just a step ahead of him? No, it seemed that both answers, in the form of that one word, were spoken by both men at once.

“Nail.”

Then they just regarded each other with further cautious surprise for a spell until, again simultaneously, they spoke: “What?”

“I ast ye, what’s yore name?” the man said.

“And you jist said it, didn’t ye?” Nail said.

“Why’d ye ast me whar ye are, if you done already knew?” the man asked.

“What?” Nail said again. “You aint said, yit. Where am I?”

“Nail,” the man said. “What’s yore name?”

“I aint about to tell ye my last name till you tell me where I’m at.”

“I done did. You need to know the name of the state too? Whar’d you float down from? This here’s Arkansas.”

“I know it’s Arkansas,” Nail said impatiently. “What part of it?”

“Nail,” the man said again. “I don’t need to know yore last name. What do folks call ye?”

“Just Nail,” Nail said.

“That’s right,” the man said.

And so it went until it dawned upon first Nail and then the man that they were speaking at cross-purposes, each giving the same answer to a different question. It was Nail who finally got it figured out enough to ask, “You mean the name of this here place is Nail?”

“What I been tellin ye the last ten minutes, dangdurn it. Don’t tell me yore name if ye don’t wanter. I don’t keer.”

“My name is Nail,” Nail said.

“Huh? Is that a fack now? I thought ye was funnin me.” The man studied him more closely. “You got any kinfolks hereabouts?”

“Not as I know of, but you never kin tell, if it’s got that name. It’s a ole fambly name.”

“Yo’re the sorriest-lookin feller ever I seed,” the man said. “What happened to yore haid?”

It struck Nail that his shaved head and his face smeared with raspberry juice made him look either injured or comical, or both. His faded and torn chambray shirt and trousers would not have given him away as a convict; and now he was glad that being in the death hole had not required him to wear stripes like the other convicts. “I had the mange,” he said, rubbing his head. And then, running his hand down his cheek: “And this aint nothin but berry stain.”

Gesturing with the gun barrel toward the chimney, the man asked, “You got a far burnin in thar?”

Nail nodded and asked, “This place don’t belong to nobody, does it?”

“Belongs to me,” the man said. “You wanter buy it?”

“Naw, I’m jist a-passin through,” Nail said. “I jist aimed to stay a night or two.”

“Aint no bed in thar, I guess ye noticed,” the man said. “But you jist come over to my place. Aint far from yere.”

“I don’t want to trouble ye,” Nail said.

“No trouble, and I got a spare bed fer comp’ny. Come on.”

So Nail went with the man, first banking the coals in his fireplace and retrieving his shoes, which were pretty much dried by now. As Nail put them on, with difficulty using just one hand, and unable to tie the laces, the man observed, “Swum the river, did ye? What happened to yore good hand?”

“I reckon I must’ve th’owed my shoulder out of joint,” Nail said.

That night, in the man’s cabin, which wasn’t any larger than the abandoned cabin Nail had taken up residence in, but was in reasonably good condition, the man urged a tin cup full of some strong, fiery whiskey upon Nail, who, being the equal of any of his forebears as a connoisseur of corn liquor, coughed and gagged and declined a second helping, but the man said, “You’d best swaller all of that stuff ye kin hold, or it’ll kill ye when I fix yore arm.”

“You’ve fixed arms before?” Nail asked apprehensively.

“A time or two,” the man said. “Drink up.” Nail swallowed as much of the bad booze as he could force down his throat; his stomach was feeling giddier than his head. The man said, “Let’s take off that shirt,” then unbuttoned and removed it from him, as a valet might have done. Then he asked, “You ready? Better take one more big swaller.”

Nail drained his tin cup, with deliberate speed that left both his head and his stomach lightened, while the man probed and poked Nail’s upper arm and shoulder, and then, quicker than Nail could think, threw a strange, complicated two-arm lock around his upper body and lunged and pulled and jerked.

Nail screamed. The pitch and volume of his agonized bellow would have surprised him had he not momentarily blacked out. When he had resumed awareness and could still feel the searing torture in his shoulder joint, he became aware of the man’s words: “Jesus! I reckon they could hear ye all the way back at the stir.”

Nail groaned and sighed at length, and then asked, “The where?”

“The big house,” the man said. “Whar ye came from. The Walls.”

Nail eyed the man, at the same instant discovering that he could again move his right arm, although painfully. “How’d ye know?” he asked.

The man held up Nail’s shirt. “Use to wear one myself.”

“You break out too?”

The man nodded. “But before they even finished buildin her.”

Nail spent that night, and three more nights, with the man, who never told him his name. Nail knew that the only man who had ever successfully escaped The Walls and was still at large was named McCabe, so he assumed this man was McCabe, but he never asked. The coals of the fire that Nail had so carefully built in the other house were allowed to go cold. The man fed him well, catfish one night, duck the second night, more catfish the third, and the swelling went down in Nail’s shoulder until he could use his right hand again. They fished together: the catfish of the third supper was one that Nail had caught, a monster. They did not talk an awful lot; they made some casual conversation about the progress of the war in Europe and casually debated whether or not the United States should join the fight. The man was pro, Nail con.

But on the fourth day the man began to reminisce about The Walls and to ask Nail questions. “Is ole Burdell still runnin the place?” he asked, and Nail told him what had happened to Burdell and how T.D. Yeager had come in and taken over, and what sort of man Yeager was. The man eventually asked, “Is ole Fat Gabe still workin in thar?” and Nail related in detail the death of Fat Gabe at the hands of Ernest Bodenhammer, privately grieving anew over Ernest’s fate. But the man became so elated at the news of the death of Fat Gabe, whom he had loathed more than any man he’d ever known, that he decided to celebrate, and produced from some hiding-place a quart of genuine bottled-in-bond sippin-whiskey, James E. Pepper, which he had been saving for a special occasion or serious illness, whichever came first, and the two men consumed the whole bottle in short order and became loud and boisterous. With his shotgun and the help of his dog the man killed a possum, and they had for the fourth supper a wonderful meal of roast possum and sweet potatoes and hot biscuits, the meat fat and greasy and filling and delicious.

On the fifth day the man offered Nail the gift of the other house. The man pointed out its advantages, which were already obvious to Nail: seclusion, peace, privacy, an abundance of fish and game, and, for whatever it was worth, the man’s companionship and assistance. Almost with sorrow, Nail explained why he had to get on home to Newton County. There was, he said, a lady waiting for him.

The man regretted being unable to furnish Nail with a firearm, since he had only one, his shotgun. But he gave him a hunting-knife with a sheath that could be attached to the belt. And a bota: a water bottle made of goatskin. As well as a small wad of string, some matches, and two fishhooks, and finally a paper sack containing a dozen biscuits and some bits of leftover possum meat. Nail said, “I wush there was somethin I could give ye in return.”

The man pointed. “How ’bout that thar gold thing on yore chest?”

Nail fingered the tree charm almost as if to hide it. “Not this. This here was given me by that lady I spoke of, and it’s all that’s stood between me and goin off the deep end.”

“Wal, say howdy to her for me,” the man suggested, and clapped him on the back and walked him as far as the beginning of the trail that led to Plumerville. He told him how to get around the west side of Plumerville and over the old Indian boundary, toward the flatlands of northern Conway County.

Nail said in parting, “If you ever find yoreself up in Newton County, come to Stay More and visit with us.”

Then he followed the directions the man had given him, skirting the edge of Plumerville without being seen by a soul. When he got to the tracks of the Iron Mountain Railroad, the same tracks over which Viridis and Rindy and Rosabone had traveled en route to Stay More just that morning, he was tempted to wait for a freight he could catch and ride to Clarksville, but his experience on the Rock Island freight had made him leery of trains, and the stretch of track between Plumerville and Morrilton was too open and straight and exposed. He headed northward from the tracks and then crossed some low hills and picked up his stride across the flatlands leading into the village of Overcup.

His shoes were not of the best: soaked by the river crossing, dried too fast by the fireplace, they had shrunk, and were too tight and pinched for him to walk in them as fast as he had hoped, and even so had given him blisters.

He camped that night on a ridge overlooking Overcup, which is the name of an oak tree, so called because the husk, or cup, of its acorn nearly covers the rest of the acorn. The overcup is not a common oak, but there is an abundance of them around the village named after them. From his camp Nail could watch the lights of the village come on, and since he had been too busy hiking to stop and hunt, he considered sneaking up to the edge of the village to grab a chicken. But that would be theft, even if the chicken was running loose, not penned in somebody’s coop. Nail had never stolen anything in his life; he had never committed any crime, unless you consider his bootlegging a crime. And he was not starving; the previous night’s supper with McCabe was still fresh in his mind, if not his stomach, and he had a bit of it left in his paper sack.

He ate another of McCabe’s biscuits and finished off the possum as he watched the village until its lights had one by one gone out, and then he lay down on the soft earth beneath an overcup and gazed awhile at the sky and its vast expanse of starlight. A nearly full moon had begun to rise. The night was warm and clear and entirely silent except for the occasional distant baying of some dog. Nail began to sense for the first time the extent of his freedom: there was that enormous firmament of stars overhead, almost enough light to illuminate this enormous firmament of earth that surrounded him and in which he was free to roam or to lie still, as he chose, and he chose now to lie still. Then he slept.

The next morning, after two more of McCabe’s biscuits for breakfast, he climbed down from the ridge and sought a good place to skirt the village undetected and gain the trail that led to Solgohachia, his next landmark. Of course he did not know the name of Overcup, nor would he come to learn the name of Solgohachia, but those were the two villages I found on topographic survey maps I used to trace his probable route. None of those villages he would skirt or pass through—Round Mountain, Wonderview, Jerusalem, Stumptoe, Lost Corner, Nogo, and Raspberry—would ever become known to him by name, except the last, because he did not encounter anyone after leaving McCabe, and, even if he had, would not have stopped to ask questions.

Solgohachia happened to be the hometown of Sam Bell, who was Nail’s inmate in the death hole, sentenced there for killing four members of his divorced wife’s family (Viridis had called him a psychopath), but Nail would not have known this, for he would not have known it was Solgohachia he was stopping through, nor known the Indian legend surrounding the well where he had paused to draw himself a drink of water: a chief’s daughter had been married to a great warrior at this spot, and according to popular belief anybody who drank from this well would have a long and happy marriage; consequently, thousands of couples had come from miles around to Solgohachia to solemnize their weddings at this very spot, where Nail, unknowing, paused for a drink of water. Coming to and going out of Solgohachia, he found an abundance of usable arrowheads for his future bow and arrow, so he should have known that this had once been an Indian place.

Crossing through a gap of the hills between Solgohachia and Point Remove Creek, he nearly stepped on a large snake, whose checkerboard pattern might have misled a woods novice into thinking it a diamondback or a copperhead, but Nail recognized it for what it was, a nonpoisonous hognose, or spitting adder; and he took some time to observe and study it, hunkering motionless on his heels, so still the snake lost its fear of him. It was the first resumption of his nature study. All those months in the penitentiary, of all the pleasures of freedom he had missed, he had missed most his loving attention to the variety of the natural world. Nail was a naturalist of no small merit, but until now he had been too busy escaping the prison to stop and notice the welcome that nature was giving him on every hand. Almost as if Nature Herself had sensed his return to the watching of Her, She let loose a magnificent falcon, a red-backed male kestrel, what Nail would have called a sparrow hawk if he’d had anyone to call it to, and he dallied on his trek for nearly an hour near the tree in which the kestrel had its nest, watching it, and watching too the eventual appearance of the female.

Not long afterward he began the construction of his bow and his arrows. He fashioned the four-foot bow from a long stave of Osage orange, or bois d’arc (the same words from which “Ozark” derives), and the arrowshafts he made from willow. For three nights, in the lingering light after supper, he slowly trimmed and shaped the bow, careful not to whittle it with his knife but just to scrape it into shape. He had saved all the sinew from each animal he’d eaten, rabbits and squirrels alike, and had carefully dried and twisted it into a long bowstring. Leftover sinew went into wrapping the nock ends of the arrows and into tying the arrowheads to the foreshafts. For fletching, he used the feathers of a wild turkey he had surprised with his digging-stick used as a spear, having given up any attempt to hit a quail or partridge, both abundant but elusive.

When he had finished the construction of his bow and arrow, he spent an entire day practicing with it, slowed down on his hike by the necessity to stop and take aim and experiment with ways of holding his bow and his arrows and crouching in a shooting position.

The number of miles he covered each day diminished as the terrain became rougher and steeper: he had reached the Ozarks, and the uplifts had risen; some folks say everything above the village of Jerusalem is technically in the Ozarks; beyond that point he would certainly encounter no more flat plains. Between practicing with his bow and arrow, actually hunting with it, and struggling with the rugged inclines of Van Buren County, his progress slowed to no more than fifteen miles a day. His shoes had begun to fall apart, and he resewed them with sinew and a needle made from one of the fishhooks straightened; they still gave him blisters.

But with his new weapon he was able to kill anything alive and edible that crossed his path, or whose path he crossed: a raccoon, a pheasant, and even, while fording a stream, a large bass. He did not want for food, and he used the pheasant feathers to fletch more arrows and made himself a cap from the raccoon’s fur: although the heat of summer made a fur cap unnecessary, his still-bare scalp was often chilly, and he feared getting sunstroke while walking in the broiling sunshine at midday without a head-covering. But the pheasant and the coon had been small game; he did not feel that his marksmanship with the bow and arrow were yet sufficient to risk an encounter with a buck deer or a bear. He saw plenty of the tracks of both, and once he even saw a mother bear with her cubs, at some distance, upwind, and avoided them. Crossing over into Pope County from Van Buren County, into the wilderness near New Hope, he encountered an entire family of deer and crept up on them, upwind, and took careful aim at the buck from not more than twenty paces; he missed it with two arrows but hit it with the third, right behind the shoulder, wounding it enough to catch it and finish it off with the hunting-knife. It was a seven-point buck. He butchered it of its haunches and stuffed himself on spit-roasted venison, and then, too full to move for many hours, used the time of digestion to carefully skin the animal and prepare its hide for some future use. He carried the deerskin wrapped around his neck like a big cape thereafter, transferring it to his waist as the heat of each day came on, while he gained the headwaters of Illinois Bayou, a trackless wilderness of forest that left him feeling like a pioneer.

I have not been able to find out how the mountain settlement of Nogo got its name. I’m sure there are legends, or apocryphal attributions to some settler who penetrated as deep into the wilderness as the wilderness would allow, and who gave up in frustration because it was “no go” beyond that point. For Nail, it would become no go as well.

In a wild place called Dave Millsaps Hollow, just to the west of Nogo, Nail was picking blackberries when he discovered that he had some competition for the berry patch: a black bear. Almost simultaneously he and the bear happened to look up from their labor of picking berries and stuffing their mouths and looked directly into each other’s eyes from a distance of not more than thirty paces. Nail’s first instinct was to shift his eyes about quickly to ascertain that there were no cubs around, because a female with cubs would have attacked him instantly. As it was, she…or he…just snorted, as if to challenge Nail’s right to the berry patch. Nail stood his ground. The bear growled and lowered itself from its hind legs to all fours, and from that position commenced swaying to and fro while continuing to growl, its eyes locked upon Nail. He made a sudden shooing gesture with his arms and hollered, “Git!” but the animal did not git. Nail, who had encountered bears in his explorations of the Stay More countryside, guessed that the bear was about two years old and probably male, although he could not understand why the bear was not retreating at the sight of him, unless it was so possessive toward the berry patch that it did not intend to relinquish it. Again by instinct, Nail found himself reaching behind to take his bow and arrows, but even while bringing an arrow up and attaching the bowstring to the arrow’s nock, he attempted once more to frighten the bear. He stomped his feet and yelled, “Git outa huh-yar!” and then lunged toward the bear and waved his arms and his bow and shouted, “Go home!” For one instant the bear turned as if to flee, but then it changed its mind and, growling, charged Nail.

Nail knew that he would not have more than one shot, as he had with the buck, so he aimed carefully for a spot immediately below the bear’s chin, toward his shoulders, toward his heart, and waited the extra fraction of a second for the charging bear to get close enough to feel the full impact of the puncturing arrow. Almost in the same instant as he released the arrow, point-blank, with the bowstring pulled back as far as it would go, Nail fell to one side, lunging really, to dodge the bear’s charge, but he did not escape the bear’s reach. The bear swiped at Nail with claws that would have torn his face away had it not instantly felt the confounding pain of the sharp flint transfixing its vitals, and thus the full force of the bear’s swipe had been arrested. As Nail fell, the bear lunged onward a few steps before crashing to the earth, howling in pain and attempting clumsily to grab with its paws the shaft of the arrow. As the bear completed its death throes, Nail watched for what seemed long minutes, his heartbeat and breathing so rapid that he had not noticed that blood was coursing from his forehead down his cheek. He had not even attended to his own wounds before he assured himself that the bear was, if not entirely dead, immobilized enough to be finished off with the hunting-knife.

But as Nail kicked the bear with his foot and prepared to plunge the knife into it, the bear made one last defense, raking a claw into Nail’s leg.

When the bear had become at last motionless, Nail realized he had blood covering his face and more of it running down his ankle, and he had to stop his own bleeding before he could bleed the bear any further.

Later he dragged the bear’s carcass into the mouth of a cavern, or undercut bluff ledge, in Dave Millsaps Hollow, where he was almost too tired to build a fire and butcher the bear and roast some of its meat. While the bear meat was cooking on a spit over the coals, he settled down to prepare the bear’s hide, although there was so much of it, the thick furry hide, that he couldn’t conceive how he would need it for anything in such hot weather. But the bear’s fur seemed more important to him than the meat; he was not particularly fond of bear meat, and he kept telling himself that he had only shot the bear in self-defense.

But if he wondered what earthly use he might have for a thick bearskin, he would soon discover a desperate need for it: the next morning he awoke before sunrise, feeling severely cold. He jumped up and attempted to warm himself by hopping around and clapping himself, and then built up his fire and held himself close to it, and then added more and more fuel until it was blazing and roaring, and then wrapped the bearskin tight around himself, but still it was awful cold! He could not understand: the sun had risen and the day looked just as bright and hot as any late-June day ought to be, but here he was freezing! There was nothing in the appearance of Nature to indicate that the temperature of the air had actually dropped so drastically. He considered that there might be a cold draft blowing up from some hidden crevice inside the cavern, and he moved out into the sunshine, surrounded by warm air in the morning sun, but still he began to shiver; then, increasingly, to tremble helplessly. He lay down beside his roaring fire wrapped tight in both his deerskin and his bearskin and shook so violently that he felt his chattering teeth would knock themselves out of his mouth, that every bone of his body would splinter.

His terrible chill lasted for almost an hour and then abruptly stopped, and he scarcely had time to catch his breath before he became overheated. He threw off the deerskin and bearskin and crawled away from the blazing fire into the cool recesses of the cavern, but still he felt as if he were burning up. He was tempted to hike down into the holler to search for a stream of cool water to immerse himself in, but he lacked the strength to hike because the awful heat seemed to be afflicting his brain and his energy; he felt of his forehead: it was still caked with blood from the bear’s blow, but the skin was hotter than any fever he had ever had. He considered that possibly he had not cleaned and stanched his wounds well enough to prevent infection, but even the worst infection would not so suddenly give him a high fever. Would it?

His fever continued to immobilize him in agony for several hours, for most of the morning, and then, sometime in the afternoon, he began to drip with sweat. Hot as he had been all morning, he could not understand why he had not sweated during the morning, but it was afternoon before the cooling perspiration began to form in his pores and then gradually to soak him and his clothes. He wondered which of the three conditions was worse: to freeze, to burn, to sog. The same bear fur that had warmed him he now used to blot up some of the flood of lather from his skin until the fur had become as soggy as he was.

Was it beginning to darken so soon? The day was ending, and he had accomplished nothing except the helpless attention to his changes in temperature: first too cold, then too hot, now too wet, but now also too weak to do anything but lie upon the floor of the cave and collect his wits and try to imagine what had happened. This was not, he assured himself, the fever of an infection from the bear’s wounding him. Had he eaten something bad? Had the bear meat contained some poison? Or had he perhaps unknowingly been bitten by a poisonous snake or reptile?

He got himself painfully up from the hard earth to search for his bota, and found it, but the goatskin bottle was empty. Had he drunk it dry during his fever? He stepped outside the cavern to begin a hike in search of water but realized he could not go anywhere; he was not just weak but increasingly dizzy. His head began to spin. Darkness was falling, not just from the setting of the sun but from something inside his head.

He fell to his knees and remained thus for a long time, he did not know how long: too tired to stand but too proud to fall over. His vision clouded. Then he saw the bed. The bed! Right over there in one corner of the cavern. How had he missed it before? Well, it wasn’t any four-poster or even any kind of bedstead as such, but it was a neat stack of quilts and blankets and comforters and pillows, and even had some fresh white sheets on it! Somebody had made a bed inside the cavern. He crawled to it and heaved his body up onto it and felt his body sinking into it, and it was the most comfortable bed he’d ever been in, even if it didn’t have any springs or slats or frame or anything but just this thick pile of stuffings. His hand gripped the white sheet with wonder, and then, gripping it further, he discovered that he was also gripping paper. Not just a white sheet of cloth but a white sheet of paper. He picked it up and had to hold it very close to his eyes to make out that it had letters written on it.

He squinted and managed to make out: Dear you (I cannot write your name for fear somebody else might find this), I have been coming to this cavern every day in hopes of finding you here, and I have prepared this bed for you, bringing each time I came a blanket or two, and these pillows, one for you, one I hope for me, this bed for us, when you come here. You will come here, won’t you? I know you will, it is just a matter of time, but as I write these words two weeks have passed since I came to Stay More and began to wait for you, and you have not come. This is the place that Latha said you would come to. I hope. Please come. If you are reading these words, it means you are here, and it means I will soon be with you. Lie still. Be here. The trees will sing for you until I join you. With all my love, The Lady. And there was a P.S.: Your new harmonica is under this bed.

How could this be? Although Nail had had only the rising and setting sun as his compass, and had known that he was pointed in the right direction, he had a good idea of how far Newton County was from Little Rock, and there was simply no way he could already have reached it; he had to be still somewhere in Pope County, northeastern Pope County by his calculation, with maybe fifty miles, three or four days’ travel, separating him from Stay More.

But now he groped beneath the pile of blankets and quilts until his hand touched metal, and he withdrew the harmonica: an M. Hohner Marine Band Tremolo Echo, identical to the one he’d had for years and had destroyed to make a dagger. He raised it to his mouth and kissed it, and then he began to play it, and he played it through the dark hours of the night until the trees, roused from their slumber, joined their voices to his music.

Then was it morning? Or did she appear with a lantern? Or was it neither morning nor lantern but her own light, the light that emanated from her goodness? He opened his eyes, realizing he had not slept but having no idea how long he had lain with his eyes closed: he opened his eyes and there she was, kneeling beside the bed she had made for him. She was smiling but also frowning: she was shocked at his appearance, at the blood on his face from the bear’s clawing him mixed with the red of the berry juice and his two-week growth of beard.

You made it! she said. But are you all right?

“I reckon not,” he said. “I must be real bad sick, ’cause I don’t have the least idee how I managed to git here.”

She felt his brow. You’re real cold, she said. Cold as death.

“Yeah, I’ve been either too cold or too hot or too wet for quite a spell.” These words came out almost like stuttering, because of the chattering of his teeth and the trembling of his body.

Before he could protest that he looked awful and smelled worse, she climbed beneath the covers with him and held him tight and attempted to warm him. The thick quilts and coverlets piled atop them imprisoned her body heat and divided it with him, but that was not enough for both of them: she became cold herself. Together they trembled for a long time until each of them removed or parted enough of their clothing to make contact and penetration possible, and the pleasure of the contact and the penetration was so great as to make them oblivious to any cold or sickness or loneliness, and they continued it even beyond the point where they ceased being too cold and became too hot, beyond that to the point where they were both drenched with sweat, as well as the bed, and still neither of them reached the endpoint of the exertion.

Finally they had to stop, and they lay panting in a pile of wet bedclothes. She was the first to speak: I guess you can’t get over the mountain.

He observed, “You caint either.”

Let’s rest, she said. Let’s nap and then try again.

He napped. More than napped: he fell into a deep sleep without knowing that he slept, then fell out of a deep sleep without knowing that he had never slept, then discovered that he was neither shaking with cold nor melting with heat nor dripping with wet but had resumed a stable temperature and humidity. Light came from the mouth of the cavern, with full sunshine in it. There was no bed. If he had somehow got through the night without sleep, it had happened upon the bare earthen floor of the cavern: his arms and face were caked with dirt.

He had no energy whatever, not even enough to heed the urge to make water. He rolled over to one side, opened his fly, and urinated upon the dirt beneath him, shifting his body to avoid the dark puddle. He had no hunger but did have a mighty thirst; he recalled that he’d had it the previous evening but had done nothing about it, and now it was worse. He managed to get to his knees and crawl to where the bota lay, but discovered that it was empty and remembered that he had already tried it and found it empty. He attached the bota to his belt on one side and attached his hunting-knife in its sheath to the other side, donned his three furs, the coonskin cap, the deerskin cape, the damp bearskin robe, and then took up his bow and three remaining arrows and left the cavern. Downhill from it he looked back at it, and stared long at it as if he half-expected that she might appear, and then he gave his head a vigorous shake to clear it and staggered on down and out of the hollow and into the middle fork of the Illinois Bayou, where he removed his clothing and his furs and lay in the water for a long, long time.

Just soaking all that dirt from his body lifted his spirits, and afterward, resuming his hike, he felt lighter, light enough even to make a joke about it to himself: “I ought to feel lighter; I’ve washed off ten pounds of dirt.” He even laughed, and his laughter helped him begin to climb the mountain ahead, which, before the morning was over, would be the hardest mountain he’d ever climbed, although it couldn’t have been very high. He spent nearly all the morning on his hands and knees, or rising enough from his knees to lurch upward and grab a sapling trunk to pull himself another foot higher. He reflected that if he had been totally well, he could have stood up and hiked to the summit in less than an hour, but as it was it seemed to take him all day, reaching its summit with the last of his strength, unable to stand, crawling onward. He was too tired to notice, as he attained the plateau at the top of the mountain, that he was crawling through the garden patch of a homestead. By the time the dog bounded up to him and commenced barking, it was too late to find a way around.

“Jist hold it right thar!” a voice yelled at him, a high-pitched, trembling voice trying too hard to sound stern. He looked up into the muzzle of a shotgun held by a woman standing beside the barking dog. He raised his hands, one of them holding the bow and the arrows. “Drap thet bone air!” the woman ordered him; he complied and continued to hold his hands over his head, kneeling. She approached closer. “You kin understand English, huh?” she said. “Yo’re a smart Injun, huh?”

“I aint no Injun,” he said.

“Take off yore hat,” she ordered, and he removed the coonskin cap, revealing his close-cropped scalp. Enough of his hair had grown back in two weeks or so to show that he was blond. The woman moved even closer but kept the shotgun pointed at his chest. “You aint, air ye?” she declared, in wonder. She appeared to be a youngish woman, or…it was hard to tell…she had lived a hard life that made her look thirty when she was hardly into her twenties. He reflected that she looked more like an Indian than he did. “What’re ye doin creepin aroun in my guh-yarden with thet thar bone air?” she asked.

He looked down at his knees, and, sure enough, he had been crawling among squash vines. “I’m right sorry,” he said. “I didn’t notice it was yore guh-yarden.”

“Whar ye from?” she demanded.

“Stay More,” he said, but her blank look told him she had never heard of it, and he added, “Up in Newton County.”

She inclined her head over her shoulder. “That’s a fur piece up yonder,” she said.

“How fur?” he asked.

“You don’t know?” she challenged.

“I aint never been in this part of the country afore,” he said.

“Wal, it’s ever bit of seven mile to the county line,” she said.

He laughed, partly with pleasure. “That’s all?” he said. And then he exulted, “I’m jist about home!” But by then exhaustion, from having climbed the mountain and encountered a stranger, had taken hold of him: he abruptly lost his balance on his knees and fell over and then just lay there on his side, unable to rise.

“Air ye porely?” she asked, with some solicitation, dropping the muzzle of the shotgun. He could have reached up and yanked it out of her hand if he had wanted.

“Jist tard,” he declared, weakly. “Jist real tard.”

“Come sit in the shade of the porch, and I’ll fetch ye a drink,” she offered, and with surprising strength for a woman lifted him up from the ground so that he could stagger onward to her house.

He stayed to supper. More than that: he stayed the night. The woman—her name, she said, was Mary Jane Thomas—had two children, a girl of five named Elizabeth and a boy of three, Edward Junior, who were fascinated with this strange visitor wearing coonskin, deerskin, bearskin, and carrying a bone air. Edward Thomas Senior had been killed in an accident down to the sawmill two years before, and Mary Jane had stayed on at the homeplace, making a decent enough living off the land. This place was called Raspberry; there were two other families down the trail not too far, and that was it: Raspberry, Arkansas, population eighteen.

From Raspberry to Ben Hur, which was in northernmost Pope County, almost on the Newton County line, was indeed only seven miles, and this closeness to home (even though Ben Hur was still a good thirty or thirty-five miles from Stay More) was the reason Nail resisted Mary Jane’s suggestion to stay awhile, or even forever if he had a mind to. She served him a magnificent supper: chicken and dumplings with sweet corn on the cob, a mess of fresh greens, snap beans, sliced tomatoes, and for dessert a blackberry cobbler with real cream. After putting the children to bed, she used the rest of the cookstove’s heat to warm up some water for a good bath for Nail, with real soap, and a shave if he so desired (he did), and a change of clothes: he could help himself to what was left of her late husband’s wardrobe, such as it was; Eddie Thomas had been roughly the same size, not quite as tall, as Nail. But before Nail put on his fresh shirt and trousers, she insisted on inspecting his wounds. She wanted to know how he had got each of them, and without going into detail about his crossing of the Arkansas River he explained that this wound had come from the sharp stob on a log and this wound had come from the claws of a bear, and so had this one, and these were tick bites or chigger bites, of course, and these were just blisters from his shoes, which were too tight. She gave him a pair of her late husband’s boots, which fit too. She concocted a salve or ointment of some herbal or vegetable matter (he could only make out the smells of polecat weed and mullein leaves), which she insisted would help his cuts and bruises and scabs, and put it on the bad places for him. It was soothing. She offered him the makings of a cigarette, some leftover papers and a tobacco pouch of her late husband’s, but he thanked her and declined. She asked if he would mind if she read the Bible aloud, and he didn’t mind. She read some of Leviticus, and some of Job, and this of Matthew: “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me.” From the way she looked at him after reading these last words, he suspected she knew, or guessed, that he had been in prison.

It grew late. She yawned and told him, “I aint got a spare bed. You’d be welcome to mine if this weren’t jist the first night and I hardly know ye. Tomorrow night maybe we could jist sleep together.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “I’m much obliged. I’d be jist fine on a pallet on the floor, and tomorrow I’ve got to be gittin me a soon start on back up home.”

But the next morning, before breakfast, after a whole day of not bothering him at all, the chill hit him again. It shook him, and kept on shaking him violently for nearly an hour, although the woman piled up every quilt she owned on top of him, after getting him up off his pallet and into her deep, warm featherbed. At first she blamed and berated herself, thinking the chill had been caused by his sleeping on the floor, but soon she saw it was something much more severe than any lack of hospitality could have been blamed for.

“I do believe you’ve got the swamp fever,” she told him, and then, after the chill had ceased and the burning fever had started, she was confirmed in her suspicion: “No doubt about it, you’ve got yoreself the bad malaria.” She became almost happy at the prospect of keeping him another day, or longer, tending his fever with towels soaked in cold well water, and later, when he began to sweat profusely, lovingly blotting it all up with rags. She sent the girl, Betsy, down the trail to the neighbors’ to see if she could borrow a little bit of whiskey, and the girl returned carrying the glass jar as if it held frankincense or myrrh.

Mary Jane put something into the whiskey; she refused to tell Nail what, but he, who could judge whiskey well enough to smell the feet of the boys who’d plowed the corn, knew the whiskey was adulterated. “I aint sposed to tell ye,” she insisted, “or it would take the spell off.” Whatever she put in (and I can only guess it probably was three drops of the blood of a black cat; Nail had observed a number of cats around the place) helped, although it tasted so awful he nearly gagged on it. He could not eat the fine dinner, or the leftovers at supper, but she forced him to drink some boneset tea, which is also very good for malaria, and to have another dose of the whiskey-with-cat’s-blood every two hours, or as often as he could stand it. And at bedtime she crawled in beside him. “Do what ye want,” she told him, but he had no strength to do anything, although he appreciated her closeness and softness and willingness.

Early the next morning, while she still slept, he awoke to find that enough of his strength had returned that he could take her if he wanted, but he had made his choice: whatever strength he had, he would use for the hike. He was fully dressed and ready to go before she woke up, blinking at the sight of him in her late husband’s clothes in the pale light of dawn, and he protested that he didn’t need any breakfast, but she begged him to stay and have a big plate of bacon and eggs and biscuits and jam, and the first real coffee he’d had in nearly a year.

And while he was pausing to eat before departure, the two children appeared and watched him eat, and Betsy asked him, “Don’t ye wanter be our daddy?”

He could not finish eating. “I don’t know how,” he said. “I aint got any experience in that line.”

“You’re a fool,” the woman said to him. “You don’t know a good thang when it’s lookin ye right squar in the face.”

“I’m a fool, I reckon,” he admitted.

“Have you got a woman waitin fer ye?” she asked.

“I shorely hope so,” he said, and thanked her for everything and several times protested her insistence that he stay.

When it became apparent that she could not persuade him to stay, she gave him one more thing of her late husband’s: a .22 rifle and a box of bullets for it. Nail had declined, but the woman had displayed her late husband’s entire arsenal: two shotguns, three rifles, even a handgun. She had offered him his pick, and he had decided on the .22 as most convenient. He would not be needing the bone air anymore, would he? she asked. “Could ye leave it for Eddie, when he grows up? I druther he learnt to use it than ary arn.”

Nail presented his bone air to Eddie. Eddie swapped him his dead father’s felt fedora for the coonskin cap.

She walked him as far as the trail and pointed the direction toward Ben Hur.

“I’m shore much obliged,” he said.

“Obliged enough to kiss me?” she asked.

And he took off the hat that had been her husband’s, and he kissed her on the mouth and put the hat back on and did not look back, knowing that she’d not be watching him disappear, because it’s real bad luck and even worse manners to watch somebody go out of sight.

Well, he told himself later on the trail, he wouldn’t never forget where Raspberry was, and if things didn’t work out between him and Viridis, he’d know where to find Mary Jane. Then he smiled and said to himself, But things is bound to work out between me and Viridis.

It was in 1880 that General Lewis (Lew) Wallace published a historical romance called Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ, which became one of the best-selling novels of all time, and popular even in the Ozarks, where somebody discovered it about 1895 and decided to name a community after it, or, rather, after its title character, a Roman-educated Jew who converts to Christianity and does good deeds. There was no post office of that name until about 1930, when the boundary between Pope and Newton counties was redrawn and Ben Hur became a part of Newton County. As late as 1963, Ben Hur was the last community in Arkansas to receive electricity, and even today the eastern approach to the town remains the last stretch of unpaved state highway in the Ozarks.

When Nail Chism passed through Ben Hur, he did it openly and even waved at a few people he encountered. He could have been taken for a foot traveler on his way to Moore or Tarlton, which is exactly what he was, carrying the deerskin and bearskin folded up under one arm, not wearing them in the heat, and the .22 rifle in the crook of his other arm was no more or less than any traveler might have carried.

He was determined to reach the Newton County line before nightfall, and, while there were no signs along the road indicating the county line, he seemed to know when he had reached his home county: his pace slackened, his step faltered, and he stopped, knowing he had reached the end of the day’s journey: just a little less than nine miles, which, in his weakened condition, had utterly exhausted him. For supper, he had only the fond recollection of his last supper at Mary Jane’s, and then he went to sleep on a pile of leaves beneath a rock shelter in a place called Hideout Hollow.

The next day he awakened once again with severe chills and knew then, conclusively, that he had the “two-day ague,” the form of malaria that recurs every other day. This third attack of the sequence of chills, fever, and sweating did not have the help of the medicine Mary Jane had given him; once again he was immobilized all day, and again he had the hallucination, or delirium, that he had reached Stay More and found a rock shelter in the glen of the waterfall prepared for him by Viridis. But this time when she appeared to him, she berated him for having slept with Mary Jane and told him he might as well go on back to Raspberry. On the next “good” day, in between the recurrent sick days, his first waking thought was that he ought to turn back to Raspberry and just stay there, if not forever at least until he was wholly recovered from the malaria.

But he went on. For the duration of his next good day, he made no attempt to keep hidden in the woods but walked on the cleared wagon trails that connected Ben Hur to Moore, and Moore to Tarlton, and Tarlton to Holt. I calculate that he covered another eleven miles or so along those wagon trails, stopping only once to pass the time of day with an inquisitive driver who was hauling a load of hay from his lower meadows to his barn and wanted to know who Nail was and where he was headed and what he thought of this terrible drought. Nail almost relished the chance to chat casually with a countryman, a fellow hillman, and he even told the man the truth: what his name was, where he had been, and where he was heading. “Shore, I’ve heared of ye,” the man acknowledged. “Matter of fact, I signed that thar petition to git ye off. Leastways I put my X on her.”

As Nail politely declined (three or four times) the man’s invitation to stay the night, the man asked, “Wal, air ye fixin to shoot Jedge Jerram?”

Nail laughed. “I’d shore lak to do it, but all I kin think about right now is gittin myself on up home.”

“Don’t take the right fork yonder,” the man suggested. “That’d take ye down Big Creek towards Mount Judy. Cut back over yon mountain and ye’ll come down to Tarlton. Stay More aint but about twelve, thirteen mile past thar. But you’d best jist come go home with me and stay all night.”

“I’m much obliged,” Nail said, and then, remembering his manners, counteroffered, “Why don’t ye jist go to Stay More with me?”

“Better not, I reckon,” the man said, and let him go, but called out from a distance, “I was you, I’d shore slay Jedge Jerram.”

For the next several miles Nail thought about that. He had been bent, all these days, only upon reaching the hills of Stay More, making contact with his folks, and seeing Viridis without a screen or a table separating them. He had not given much thought to revenge upon Sull Jerram. He hoped he would never even have to encounter the man; if he did, he didn’t intend to start anything; if Sull started something, Nail would be obliged to finish it. Certainly, he hated Sull, but he had not spent much time thinking about murdering him.

As that good day ended, somewhere short of Tarlton, Nail wished he had accepted the man’s offer to spend the night. He knew that the next day promised another attack of chills, fever, and sweats, and he’d have been better off at the man’s house; maybe the man had some quinine or something that Nail could have taken. But it was too late, he was miles past the man’s place, and he needed to find something for supper that would tide him over the bad day, and to find a sheltered place to spend it.

His weakness, his fatigue, his sense of being so close to home that he could almost smell the air of Stay More overwhelmed him, made him giddy, staggered him. Late in the afternoon he found himself, he thought, in a sheep pasture! Real sheep, or at least tangible ones: he called to them, a flock of less than a dozen, “Sheep! sheep! sheepsheepsheep!” and they came to him, and he sank his fingers into their regrowing fleece, although they were skittish, smelling the bearskin he still carried. He inspected them carefully; whoever owned them did not know much about the care of sheep and was not feeding them right or keeping them happy. Nail could not see any near farmstead or signs of a trail leading to one, and if the owner of the sheep had a sheepdog, the dog was busy elsewhere. Nail decided to spend the night with the sheep, and he did. For his supper, he shot a squirrel with the .22 and roasted it over coals. The sheep watched him and sniffed the smoke of his campfire and made puzzled sheep’s-faces.

When the chills seized him the next morning, he attempted to snuggle up against a ewe to keep warm, but she did not understand what he was doing and ran away from him. The bellwether, a castrated ram, led her and the other sheep off down the hill, away from Nail, who could not get up from the ground and follow them. He covered himself with his deerskin and his bearskin and shivered violently for what seemed longer than the usual hour. All day he watched for the sheep to return, but they did not, although he called them again when the sweats had cooled him enough to restore his ability to shout, and eventually he decided that the sheep were only part of his delirium.

Did he get up from the ground and move on? Or was that just another part of his delirium? It seemed to him that he was walking, but he could not actually feel his feet touching the ground; it was more like the kind of wayfaring that we do in dreams, moving soundlessly and effortlessly from place to place, maybe even leaving the ground and flying. He must have flown over a few of those mountains. Journey within a journey: fish leaping for him on the still pools of a richly imagined creek that looked so much like the west fork of Shop Creek near the village of Spunkwater, just over the mountain from home. Even the distant chimneys and school-house bell tower of Spunkwater, where he hadn’t been in longer than he could remember, he remembered still as looking like that, or created them to look that way: familiar and comfortable and welcoming. The village had been named by some early drought-stricken settler after the lifesaving rainwater that remains in the cavities of trees or stumps, from the Scottish “sponge-water.” The drinking of spunkwater is supposed to cure you of wanderlust or make you handsome, one or the other or both, just as the waters of Solgohachia give you marital success.

If Nail actually stopped at Spunkwater for a sip of the leftover rainwater, then he was cured of his roaming and would never do it again, and was transformed back into a good-looking man. If he only imagined that he had reached Spunkwater, the last community before you approach Stay More from the east, then he was a beggar riding his wish and spurring it on beyond its endurance.

He would never afterward have any clear memory of the…hours? days?…of the following long passage of time. His last reasonably clear memory had been of the sheep disappearing, and that sheep pasture had been miles and miles from home, and then of his feeble efforts to find a shelter for the duration of his day’s sickness, where he could lie still and pretend he was hiking through Spunkwater, and up the steep eastern slopes of Ledbetter Mountain above Butterchurn Holler, and down, down into the glen of the waterfall. If we are only going to imagine things, we may as well imagine them as we have known them.

The waterfall seemed so very real that he could almost use the help of the last time he had visited it, not the help of my letter but his memory of the last visit, before the trouble had started, in June of the previous year, just a little over a year before, and nothing had changed much since then, except that maybe the volume of the falls, springfed though it was, did not seem quite so full. That time he had explored again the caverns beneath the ledges on both sides of the waterfall and inspected their meager contents, the bits of woven stuff, shards of pottery, bones. This time he staggered into the larger cavern expecting to find exactly what he found: a bed. That bed was the best creation of his fevered brain, the product of his most burning fancy.

He fell into it, that pile of blankets, quilts, comforters, and pillows, topped, as he had known it would be, with fresh white sheets, but he forgot to grope around for the fresh white sheet of paper with her handwriting on it that would tell him there was a harmonica beneath the bedpile; nor did he think to grope for the harmonica and play it all night. Nor did he think to notice even if it was night or day. His eyes closed as soon as he hit the bedpile, and he spread his arms to embrace the bedpile, and his overworked imagination failed him and dropped him into a deep, deep slumber.

I was on my way to my own little waterfall when I spotted the mullein stalk standing upright. Looking back, it is a wonder how I managed to keep on going to my destination. My first impulse was to fetch Viridis immediately with the news that the mullein stalk was up! But two things stopped me: First, I really needed that bath; it was an exceptionally hot morning, and I’d sweated more than a girl should, and I wasn’t about to go off to meet my hero with garden dirt on my face and dried sweat all down my sides. And second, I could just see myself hollering, “Viridis! Viridis! The mullein has risen!” and her saying, “The what?” and me trying to explain and even forgetting an important fact: you can’t tell anyone about the magic of the mullein, or it’s sure to spoil the magic. If I told Viridis, or anyone, that the mullein had announced the safe return of Nail Chism to Stay More, provided they didn’t think I was crazy or just a silly, superstitious girl, I might be embarrassed to discover that my act of telling had wiped out the act of his coming.

So I did two things: I went on up the holler and calmly took my bath…well, maybe not calmly, but deliberately enough to make sure that I got thoroughly washed off from head to toe, and even washed my hair, which would mostly dry in the sunshine before I could get home and brush it. And then I went on up to the glen of the waterfall alone, or alone except for Rouser, whom I couldn’t persuade to sit or stay. I even paused at the house, before trying to persuade him to sit or stay, to change from my faded gingham dress into my better blue calico, and then to brush my hair as best I could to get most of the kinks out. I thought of maybe a little rouge but decided against it. I did powder my nose, although it would become unpowdered again by the time I got to the glen of the waterfall. I wanted to wear my good shoes, but it was a long hike, so I made up my mind to wear my ugly working-shoes and take them off before I got there.

“Where you goin in that dress?” my mother yelled as I was sneaking out the front door. “This aint Sunday, you fool.”

If she’d been more civil, I would have answered her. Instead, I kept on going, and told Rouser to sit, but he wouldn’t. I told him to stay, but he wouldn’t. I nearly took a stick to him.

Finally I just tried to ignore him, and he followed me all the way up the mountain to Nail’s old sheep pastures, and across them to the forest, and through the cool, dark forest to the bright glen of the waterfall. I kept telling myself that all I wanted to do was find out if my mullein had been lying to me. There are, after all, a few known instances when superstitions didn’t do a bit of good, they only made you feel better or they out and out refused to cooperate, for some perverse reason of their own. It was just possible that my mullein stalk had mistaken Nail for somebody else, or else was a botanical freak that couldn’t stop growing straight anyhow. If by some small chance the mullein stalk had lied, I would be the first one to know it, and the last and only one to know it, and then I was going to tromp the heck out of that mullein and start over with a fresh one. If, as I devoutly believed, my mullein stalk was being honest and trustworthy, I intended to summon Viridis immediately and tell her that by accident I’d discovered that Nail was back. Well, of course I’d have to say howdy to him before I ran back to the village. I couldn’t just sneak up and make sure it was him and then run like the dickens.

These were the thoughts that were running through my head while I hiked as fast as my legs would carry me. But there was another thought too, and I’m not ashamed to admit it: I had a kind of proprietary interest in Nail Chism. From the moment the whole trouble had started, a year before, I’d scarcely gone a day without thinking about him. I wanted him to be okay. I wanted him to escape the prison, as he had done, and I wanted him to make it safely back home, and I wanted him to live happily ever after. Sure, I wanted him, period. But that was something else. I knew Viridis deserved him a thousand times more than I did, and I knew she was going to have him, and I knew they were going to live so happily ever after that it would be like a fairy tale, and I knew in my bones that ever after was about ready to begin. But for a little while, just a little while, he was mine.

Yes, I took off my ugly shoes before reaching the glen of the waterfall and walked the last hundred yards barefoot and stopped where the water was still in a pool, away from the plunge of the falls, to look down into it and see my reflection: my face was red, not from any rouge, and both hands could not arrange my black hair the way I wanted it, but at least I had on my best dress, and a strand of artificial amber beads around my neck. I wasn’t beautiful like Viridis, but I wasn’t ordinary either.

In the mouth of the cavern, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the first thing I saw was the rifle. A .22, lying on top of a big wad of black fur: the skin of a bear, I figured out. Neither the rifle nor the bearskin was among the items that Viridis and I had steadily been furnishing the cavern with. Viridis had considered leaving the Smith & Wesson revolver in the cavern but had decided to keep it with her, for her own protection. She had left no firearm here, or at least she hadn’t told me about any firearm, and she told me virtually everything.

And then I saw him. I knew it was him, and yet I was afraid. Who else could it have been? Since that last time in court I’d nearly forgotten what he looked like, except for his body: no man of my acquaintance, then or after, ever had a body as splendidly put together and held together as Nail Chism did, all the parts of it in perfect shape and accord. The body was sprawled out face up on the bed that Viridis and I had prepared for him. His eyes were closed, and I had to study his chest for a long time to determine that it was slightly moving with his breathing. He was not dead. But he was sound asleep at full day, nine o’clock in the morning. I’d expected to see him in prison clothes, something of which I had only a vague idea, zebra stripes and such, nothing like what he was actually wearing: just a man’s light-blue chambray shirt, some gray cotton trousers, a pair of boots that didn’t look like he’d hiked all the way from Little Rock in them, and a felt fedora hat, fallen upside down behind his head as if he’d dropped to the bed without bothering to take it off.

I resisted the impulse to shake him and see if he would awaken. I sat cross-legged on the floor of the cavern near him and studied him and felt a wild mixture of feelings: exultation that he was home, pride in my mullein stalk for being accurate and straight-up-and-down, admiration for his rugged and battered but beautiful features (the blond hair was growing back rapidly), befuddlement at his deep slumber in broad daylight, and, most of all, growing certainty that he was the one who had killed Sull Jerram. I didn’t understand why my mullein stalk had not announced his return on the same day that Sull Jerram was killed, but the ways of mullein are as mysterious as they are magic and infallible, when they’re not just being ornery.

I had to get Viridis, and yet I could not. First I had to see if he would wake, and let him know that everything was all right and that I would fetch Viridis right away. I wanted to somehow thank him for accepting my suggestion that the glen of the waterfall would make a good hiding-place. I wanted him to know that I’d helped put all of these things in the cavern for him, which, I saw by looking around me, he hadn’t yet used: the cans of corned beef and beans and such were unopened, the pocketknife with can opener attachment untouched, the bar of soap still wrapped, the yards of mosquito netting neatly folded up, the hunting-knife still sheathed. He had not disturbed any of these things…except, I noticed, the harmonica, which now lay on top of the pile of bedclothes, near his open hand, as if he had held it and maybe even played on it but let it drop.

For the rest of the morning I stayed with him, waiting for him to wake. It must have been getting on toward noon. Rouser had wandered off after giving a good long sniff to the bearskin and to Nail’s body. Maybe Rouser had gone back home; he wasn’t all that faithful. I was getting hungry, and thought of opening a can of something to eat, but the sound of the can opener might wake him, so I waited. I felt like an intruder, in a way. I was invading Nail’s privacy, or the privacy of his sleep: in sleep the body does things to us that we don’t know about but wouldn’t want to share with anyone else: in sleep Nail’s most private part distended and bulged mightily within his trousers, and fascinated me but reddened me all over with embarrassment or guilt at watching or…yes, reddened me with a kind of lust. I was not, for going on three years now, a virgin, and I knew the meaning of that thickening and extension inside his pants, but I had never actually observed it, even if my observation now was impeded by the covering of his trousers. I knew it could happen in dreams: sometimes I’d seen Rouser asleep, when he wasn’t chasing rabbits in his dreams, chasing some imaginary bitch and letting his pink thing swell and pop out of its furry sheath and drool. I wondered if Nail was dreaming about Viridis, even dreaming about something he’d never done, because, to the best of my knowledge at that time, in twenty-seven years he had never succeeded in doing what I had done nearly three years before, when I was only eleven. While studying him, I amused myself by imagining that I was reaching out and unbuttoning the fly of his trousers and liberating from the prison of its clothes that big convict.

This daydream was so real and diverting that I was shocked to realize his eyes were open and looking at me as if I had actually done it. Or maybe in my lust I really had done it while thinking it was only a daydream. One of his big hands abruptly covered his groin. He stared at me and began to tremble. Was he afraid of me?

I was smiling as big as I could, but also frowning, at his trembling. “Howdy, Nail,” I said. “It’s just me, Latha.”

“Where am I?” he asked.

“You made it!” I said. “But are you all right?”

“I reckon not,” he said. “I must be real bad sick, ’cause I don’t have the least idee how I managed to git here.”

I reached out and put my hand on his forehead. At the real touch of his skin I knew that I had only imagined touching him down below. Reality is always more touchable than imagination. “You’re real cold,” I said. “Cold as death.”

“Yeah, I’ve been either too cold or too hot or too wet for quite a spell.” His words came out almost like stuttering, because of the chattering of his teeth and the trembling of his body.

I drew a blanket up over him. And then another one. And yet another one. And then a quilt. I draped and tucked more covers over him than I’d ever had myself the coldest winter night of my life, and still he shook so mightily that I thought he’d pop right out of the bed. I couldn’t understand how anybody could be so cold on such a hot morning. Well, it was cooler in the cavern than out in the sunshine, but not all that cool. I touched my own brow, and I felt normal; no, I felt a good bit hotter than normal. I considered that his conscience might be giving him a nervous chill: that he had killed a man and now feared the consequences. But nobody ever shook like that simply from guilt or fear. He was, I understood, sick. I wanted to run and fetch not Viridis but Doc Swain, but I was afraid that Nail would shake himself to death and freeze while I was gone.

So, almost without thinking, I did what I did: I climbed beneath the covers with him and held him tight, trying to warm him with the heat, the plenty of it, from my own body. The thick quilts and blankets piled atop us imprisoned my body heat and divided it with him, but that was not enough for both of us: I became cold myself. Together we trembled for a long time. We didn’t have our arms around each other, not all four arms anyhow, but we had our bodies pressed as hard together as they could get, and that big bulge down there in his pants had never gone away, and my mind was filled with wild thoughts and fear and chill and lust and everything.

Then we were not side by side, exactly. In an effort to still his shaking, I had pressed down on him, mashed him to his back, and I lay hard atop him, the whole length of him, mashing down, and then he did have both arms around me, around my back and my waist both, holding me tight to him. We squirmed and shook and squeezed in that position for so long that somehow the bulge in his britches worked itself directly beneath the juncture of my thighs so that our most private places were not just touching but mashing very hard and rubbing harder, and before I knew it I had begun a different kind of shaking, not of nervousness or chill but of fulfillment of the exertion and labor of love. I cried out. Maybe, even, I passed out, because the next thing I was aware of, and it seemed time had gone by, he was no longer trembling at all. He was perfectly still, except for his breathing, and he had thrown the covers off us, and I wondered if the weight of all of me on top of him was mashing him uncomfortably, but he didn’t seem to mind, and I didn’t want to move from that position just yet, because I knew that once I did, I would never find myself like that with him, ever again.

At last I rolled off and lay there beside him, not touching him anymore, giving him up to whoever would claim him that he belonged to. I just looked at him, with love but also with a little wondering: had he maybe just faked his shaking in order to get me to do what I’d done? Because he wasn’t shaking the least bit anymore. He was smiling, and I know it was just a smile of being friendly and maybe a little embarrassed, but it also seemed like a smile of having tricked me into that enjoyment.

Then he said, “You went over the mountain.”

“Yeah,” I said, as if to let him know that I knew what he meant saying that. “I got over the mountain.”

“You’re not Viridis,” he said, as if he’d just noticed.

I had to laugh. “I wish I was,” I said. “I sure truly wish I really was. But don’t you even know me?”

He smiled again. “Some ways, you’re better than Viridis,” he said.

“What ways?” I wanted to know.

“You’re home folks,” he said. “You wrote and told me about this hideaway. And I do honestly misdoubt that she’d have warmed me up the way you jist now did. Or gone over the mountain.”

“Aw, I had to climb that mountain,” I said.

“I know you did,” he said. “I shore appreciate it, what-all you’ve done.”

“You’re not shakin no more,” I observed.

“No, you see, Latha, I’ve got the two-day ague, and the way it works is, I shake like crazy for an hour, and then I’m burnin up, like I am right now, for another little spell, and then I commence to sweat like a stud horse—’scuse me, Latha—I get soppin wet for a time, and then I’m okay for another twenty-four hours, and it hits me again the next day.”

“I’ve never had that,” I declared, “but I’ve heard of it. You’ve done been skeeterbit.”

“Yeah, that’s what causes it,” he said. “Skeeters.”

“You’d best let me run and fetch Doc Swain,” I told him. “And of course Viridis too. She’d be real mad at me if she knew I’d come up here by myself.”

“You don’t have to tell her nothin,” he told me.

“I’ll make up a story,” I said. “I’m pretty good at that, don’t you know?”

“I reckon,” he said.

I stood up and straightened my dress and patted my hair into place. “Can I get you anything ’fore I go? A drink of water? Anything to eat?”

“Just maybe a sip of water is all, right now,” he said, lying there in the pain of his high fever.

“And we’d better hide that .22 before Doc Swain sees it,” I announced, and tried to think of a safe place to hide it.

“How come?” Nail wanted to know.

“How come? Well, his dad is still justice of the peace, don’t you know, and they’ve already been up here checkin when they came to get Sull’s body, so naturally Doc would put two and two together and know it was you.” Nail just stared at me as if he hadn’t the faintest idea what I was talking about, and I began to wonder if maybe he really didn’t. “That is your rifle yonder, aint it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“How long have you been here? What day did you get here?”

He shook his head. “I honestly aint got the foggiest notion.” Then he asked, “What did you say about Sull’s body?”

Somehow, the way he asked that, I knew he really didn’t know anything about it. Maybe he had done it in his delirium, but maybe he hadn’t done it at all. “Nail,” I said, “day before yesterday morning, right down the trail yonder, Sull Jerram was shot off his horse with a .22 bullet.”

The way Nail looked, I knew he was, if not innocent, ignorant of the act. “What was he doin up here?” he asked.

“Followin Viridis to find your hidin-place, I reckon,” I said.

“Who shot him? Did she do it?”

“No, I thought it was you, but maybe it wasn’t, if you weren’t even here day before yesterday.”

“Where was he hit?”

“Right yonder, jist beyond that big white ash tree.”

“No, I mean where in his body did the bullet hit him?”

I touched a spot behind my ear. “Right here,” I said.

Nail shook his head. “Was he hurt bad?”

“He’s dead, Nail.”

“No.”

It got awfully quiet up there in that cavern; all you could hear was the sound of the waterfall. Finally I made some conversation: “They buried him this mornin up at the Jasper cemetery, but your sister wasn’t even plannin to go to the funeral, and I don’t reckon nobody else went neither, ’cept the preacher and maybe the sherf.” Nail didn’t comment on that, so I went on: “You never saw such a happy bunch of folks as everbody in Stay More. We threw a big squar dance up to the schoolhouse to celebrate.” Nail managed a smile but didn’t say anything about that either. “The sherf locked up your brother Waymon at the Jasper jail, but Waymon has got a good alibi because he was gone plumb to Harrison at the time it happened, to get some medicine for your dad.”

“How’s my dad?” Nail asked.

“I reckon Doc Swain can tell ye all about that,” I said. “I better go git him right now.” Then I suggested, “Why don’t I jist take that .22 with me and hide it somewheres off from here?”

“No,” Nail said. “Leave it where it is. I want Doc Swain to see it.”

“You’re crazy,” I said.

He smiled. “So are you, Latha. Comin up here like ye done. Takin keer of me. Warmin me up like ye done. Weren’t ye scared there was a danger I could’ve raped ye like they thought I done to Rindy?”

I smiled. “I wush ye had done somethin to me. And now I won’t never git me another chance. Good-bye, Nail.” I turned and fled.

I wondered who to tell first: Viridis or Doc Swain. As it turned out, I didn’t have to decide, because when I went into the village looking for one or the other, I found them sitting together out on the porch of Doc Swain’s clinic, enjoying the shade and the afternoon breeze. I don’t know what they’d been talking about as I strolled up, but they’d become pretty good friends and could have been talking about anything under the sun.

“Howdy, Latha,” Doc Swain said.

“Howdy, Doc,” I said.

“Hi, Latha. How are you today?” Viridis said.

“Hi, Viridis. I’m pretty good. How are you?”

“Fine.”

“I wish it would come a rain,” Doc Swain said.

“We could use one,” I allowed.

“I wish it would come a man named Nail,” Viridis said.

“We could use one of them too,” I said. I timed a few beats before adding, “And it looks like we’ve done finally got one, sure enough.”

Doc and Viridis both raised their eyebrows at me. “How’s thet?” Doc asked.

“He’s back,” I said.

Doc looked up and down the main road of Stay More. “Shore,” he said. “On a big fine white horse, in a full suit of steel armor and chain mail.”

“No, he’s flat on his back, with alternate-day malaria,” I said.

Doc said, “Huh?” and Viridis said, “Where?”

“At the waterfall,” I said to her. And then I had my story ready for her: “I thought I’d seen you on Rosabone riding by, heading that way, and I figured you’d looked for me and not found me, so I ran off after you, but I couldn’t catch up, and so I went on to the waterfall by myself, and there he was, in the cavern.”

Viridis jumped up. “Really?” she said.

“Yes, and he’s got a bad case of alternate-day malaria, and this is the alternate day, with chills and fevers and sweats.”

Doc Swain jumped up. “Really?” he said. “That’s shore enough the symptoms. Where is this cavern?”

“Just beyond where you went day before yesterday morning.”

Doc and Viridis exchanged looks, and I knew they were thinking what I had thought, and I said, “But I don’t think it could’ve been him who done it. I don’t think he even got here until sometime last night.”

Viridis was leaving the porch. “I’ll saddle Rosabone,” she said.

Doc was leaving the porch. “Let me get my bag, and then I’ll get my horse too.”

I was not leaving the porch. They hadn’t invited me. I waited to see if either of them would think to invite me. I didn’t have a horse, and I’d slow them down if I rode behind Viridis on Rosabone, and I was prepared to refuse the offer if she made it. But she didn’t. She reappeared very shortly, astride the mare. She hadn’t bothered to stop to change into her jodhpurs but was still wearing her dress and had hiked it up immodestly to get her legs over the mare’s back. Doc Swain appeared on his horse, with his gladstone bag strapped behind the saddle. His dog tried to go with them, but Doc said, “Sit, Galen. Stay,” and the dog obeyed.

At least, both Doc and Viridis thought to wave good-bye to me.

I was hungry, I hadn’t had any dinner, but I just sat there on Doc’s porch. The least I could do, I thought, was act as his receptionist; in case any patients came, I could tell them the doctor was out on a call and would be back shortly. How shortly I didn’t know, but I sat there for a long time on Doc’s porch. Galen slept. No patients came. Some of the men who gathered every afternoon over on the porch of Ingledew’s store drifted into the village and took their places, sitting on crates, nail kegs, and odd chairs, whittling with their pocketknives and spitting, and scarcely throwing me a glance. Doc Plowright, who had his clinic practically right across the road from Doc Swain’s, stepped out on his porch and stared at me for a bit, wondering what a patient of his was doing sitting on the porch of his competitor. Then he went back inside. He didn’t have any patients today either.

The afternoon passed. Rouser showed up from wherever he’d been, following my trail and finding me. Rouser and Galen argued for a while but decided it was too hot for a fracas. They lay together on the porch floor and went to sleep. To entertain myself, I had a few pretty good daydreams, with real people in them, Viridis and Nail, the woods, the trees, the moon and the stars, forever.

By and by Doc Swain returned, stopping his tired horse in the yard of his clinic and getting down. He came up and sat with me on the porch. “Latha,” he said, “I do believe you were absolutely right. It shore enough is the two-day ague, or alternate-day malaria, as you call it. But he’s gonna be all right. I gave him some quinine and some advice. He’s gonna be all right. Them two are gonna live happy ever after.”

On

The trees are singing. She notices it as soon as they reach the tall white ash beneath which Sull Jerram fell. She hears the ash itself, who starts the chorus. As she and the doctor ride between or beneath them, those last hundred yards, the trees one by one pick up the song until all of them, white ash, oak, hickory, maple, walnut, beech, chinquapin, elm, locust, and even cedar are harmonizing in their serenade of her.

The smaller dogwood, redbud, persimmon, and sassafras try to join in but are almost drowned out.

“Shore is purty way back up around in here,” Doc observes.

“Listen at that waterfall.”

“That’s not the waterfall, Colvin,” she tells him.

He stops his horse, dismounts, listens. A smile of pleasure comes to his face. “I do believe you’re right,” he says. “It’s something else. Angels, maybe.”

The late-afternoon light from the west breaks into long rays through the boughs of the high trees; the black hole of the mouth of the cavern is illuminated as if by spotlights. The singing swells. Doc’s halloo overrides it, cuts into it.

“HELLO THE CAVE!” he calls. “Nail! It’s us. It’s Colvin Swain and yore ladyfriend.”

The singing of the trees muffles whatever reply comes from within, a feeble acknowledgment or welcome.

She walks behind Doc, partly afraid. If the sight of him is truly awful and causes her to stumble, she can stumble against Doc’s back and he will turn and catch her.

But it is Doc who stumbles, on the scree or talus of the cavern’s lip. She is thoroughly familiar with every step of the way, but he is not, and falls. She helps him up. He is embarrassed. “Kinder pre-carious there,” he remarks. She waits to let him go on ahead of her.

It takes a long moment for their eyes to readjust from the spotlight beams of afternoon light to the cavern’s dim interior. While the two of them are blind, the trees, seeing her disappear, muffle their cantata to a murmur. She is aware of the quiet and the dark and the nearness of Nail. Then she sees him: he is making a great effort to get out of the bed. He has his feet outside the bed, on the ground, but the bed is not much higher than the ground itself, and he cannot rise up. Colvin Swain moves to him quickly and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Here there, boy, jist lay easy! Don’t ye try to git up.” The doctor forces him to lie back down but notices the dampness of the bedclothes and exclaims, “Woo, you shore wet the bed!”

“Sweat,” says Nail. It is his first word, but as he lies down he fixes his eyes upon hers and smiles. “Howdy, Miss Monday,” he says, with mock formality. “Glad ye could make it.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Chism,” she returns, with careful politeness. “I’m proud to be here.”

“Heck,” says Doc Swain. “I thought you two knew each other better’n that. Don’t ye even want to shake hands? I could turn my back, I reckon, if ye want to do more than that.”

“We can wait,” Nail says.

“Wal, let’s take yore temper-ture,” Doc says, and sticks a thermometer into Nail’s mouth. Then he begins his examination, palpating the spleen. After a while he removes the thermometer and studies it and says, “Hmm,” and begins asking Nail several questions. How many days now has he had this trouble? Has he had any diarrhea? Has he lost consciousness?

Viridis only half-listens to the conversation, the questioning. She is still trying to hear what the trees are singing, but it is soft and distant. She takes note of the careful array of supplies she’s left for him, all of them untouched. She opens the bag containing the spare bed linen and takes out fresh sheets, to replace the damp ones, and a fresh pillowcase.

“This is shore some layout ye got here,” Doc observes, to Nail. “You say you think you jist got here last night?”

Viridis explains, “I put all of this here, for him.” And she thinks to add, “With Latha’s help.”

“I see,” Doc says. “Been plannin a hideaway, huh?”

“He couldn’t very well go right straight to his folks’ house, could he?” she says.

“Reckon not,” the doctor admits. “The sherf would shore to haul him off to jail purty quick.”

“You won’t tell where we…you won’t tell anybody about this place, will you?” she asks.

“Wal now, that depends,” Doc says. “You’uns know that my dad is the justice of the peace, and I shore couldn’t tell my own dad a lie.” The doctor opens his gladstone bag, rummages around in it, brings out a pair of bottles. “These yere pills is for yore fever,” he says. “Take a couple of ’em whenever ye git to feelin too hot, but not more’n six or eight a day. Now, this here blue bottle is the quinine, and I want ye to take a spoonful…” (he turns to Viridis) “…is they a spoon here? okay, a spoonful ever four hours or so, till it’s all gone, and then you…” (he turns to Viridis) “…you come and git me and I’ll come and give him some more of it, if he needs it, and he probably will. Now, this quinine will probably make ye start hearin things, funny noises that aint real. It’s called tinnitus, and it aint as serious as it sounds, but I figured I’d better warn ye. You’d better jist rest and stay off yore feet and get good and well afore ye try to do anything.”

“Anything?” Nail says.

Doc Swain coughs. “Anything real strenuous. Anything that you’d have to git out of bed to do. You can do anything ye want as long as it’s in bed.” He coughs again.

“Right,” Nail says. “When can I go see my dad?”

“Not till I tell ye,” the doctor says. “I don’t want ye to go no further’n that white ash down the trail yonder till I give ye permission.”

All three of them glance at the white ash, whose pianissimo murmuring seems audible only to Viridis. She understands the significance of Doc Swain’s reference to it, and her eyes shift, as theirs do, from the white ash to the rifle lying atop the black bearskin.

“I aint never used that on a person,” Nail says of the rifle.

“Who said ye did?” Doc challenges.

“You’re makin hints,” Nail observes. “I jist want ye to know right here and now, I never kilt Sull.”

“How’d ye know he’s been kilt, if ye didn’t do it?” Doc says, almost cocky with the knowledge that he’d tripped him up and caught him.

“Latha tole me,” Nail says.

“Damn that gal!” Doc swears. “Why couldn’t she of waited and let me do it?”

“You couldn’t tell me as nice as she did,” Nail says.

“That’s a .22, aint it?” Doc demands.

“Yeah, but I aint never used it on a person. I swear.”

“How you gonna convince a jury of that?”

“I done already failed to convince one jury,” Nail says. “I hope I don’t never have to try to convince another one.”

“Boy,” Doc says sternly. “If this aint a mess. If this aint the beatenest kettle of fish ever I seed. Damned if I want to be a goldarned accessory, or even accused of one, but I am gonna take that rifle with me, and I am gonna keep it where nobody can find it, and if you’uns have to have you a firearm for keepin off the wolfs and bars at night, I’ll bring ye a different caliber next time I come up here.”

Surely, she thinks, the other two, the two men, can hear what she hears, the rising chorus of the trees. “Colvin Swain,” she says, “you are a very nice man.”

“Heck, shoot,” the doctor grumbles. “I got to git on back to work. I got to drop in on another patient, Nail’s dad, and give him the word. The word is gonna make him well, jist wait and see if it don’t. While I’m at it, do you want me to send yore brother Luther up here with anything you need? No, wait, I aint gonna tell nobody whar yo’re at, not yet anyhow. Not even yore folks. But they’ll be mighty proud to hear the news.” The doctor snaps shut his gladstone bag and lifts it. He stares at Viridis for a moment before finding the words he wants to say to her. “You take good keer of him, now, hear me? See to it he takes his medicine. Keep him off his feet.”

“Yes, sir,” she says.

The doctor steps over and takes the rifle in his other hand. “You’uns be good now, hear?”

“Don’t be rushin off, Doc,” Nail says formally, in the code of backwoods politeness. “Stay more and spend the night with us.”

“I’d shore lak to, but I better be gittin on down home. You’uns come go home with me.”

“Better not, I reckon,” Nail says. “Stay and have supper with us.”

“Caint do it, this time,” Doc says.

Viridis listens in wonder as the two men invite and counter-invite each other until finally Nail says, “Wal, come back when ye kin stay longer,” and the doctor is allowed to leave.

She walks him to his horse and thanks him and repeats Nail’s invitation. Then she asks, “When you told us to be good, just how good did you have in mind?”

He grins, and blushes a bit. “I was jist tryin to be silly,” he says. “I didn’t mean nothin by thet.”

“So it wouldn’t hurt him if we…” she begins, but can’t quite find the words.

“Lak I said, don’t let him do nothin that caint be done in bed,” the doctor says. He climbs up on his horse and turns to go. His parting words are spoken down to her. “But I imagine there’s quite a heap of things a body can do in bed, besides sleep.” He starts to ride away. She waves. He stops the horse, reins it, holds it; he sits there listening, looking not at her but off at the forest. “Do you hear that?” he asks. He glances at her for confirmation, and she smiles and nods her head. “What d’ye reckon is makin that purty sound?”

“The trees,” she says. “They’re singing.”

“Is that what it is?” he asks. “Wal, how ’bout that? Don’t that beat all?”

“It surely does beat all,” she agrees, and the good doctor, shaking his head in wonder, rides away.

And as soon as she gets back to Nail’s bedside, she wants to know: “Don’t you hear them?”

“Yeah, but the doc tole me this medicine would cause that.”

“You haven’t taken the medicine yet,” she points out. “But you’re going to, right this minute.” And she fetches a spoon from the implements she hoarded for him and makes him take his quinine.

Some of it dribbles down his chin, and he raises his hand to wipe his mouth, but she stops his hand and licks up the dribble herself. It is very bitter; both of them make faces. She explains she did that to see what it tastes like.

He is looking all around, as if searching for something. She asks him what he’s looking for. “Bird,” he says.

“What bird?”

“The guard, Bird. I caint believe he’s not watchin us. I caint believe we’re all alone.”

She gives him a long kiss, a very long one, longer than any she’d ever done with Bird watching. He tastes of quinine, but she’s already tasted it, and it doesn’t bother her. When finally she breaks the kiss (realizing it would be up to her to start or break anything), she asks, “Would Bird have let us do that?”

“I reckon he must be off-duty,” Nail observes, grinning.

“There’s not even a table between us,” she remarks.

“Just these soppin bedcovers,” he observes.

She squeezes the fabric of the quilts and blankets, which are wet from his perspiration, although he has not been sweating for some time now. She whips the bedclothes off him. “There’s not much sun left in the afternoon,” she observes, “and I’d better hang these out to catch the last of it.” She starts to carry out the bedcovers but turns. “Are you cold?”

“Not right now,” he tells her.

She takes the wet blankets and quilts outside the cavern and drapes them in sunlight over the boughs of the cedars. She talks to the trees while she does it, and Rosabone thinks she’s talking to her and lifts her head to listen. She talks to Rosabone too. When she returns to the cavern, Nail asks her, “Who were you talkin to?” and she tells him the trees and her horse.

She kneels beside the bed and, with him still in it, begins changing the sheet: this technique she learned years ago when her mother was bedridden: you roll them to one side to remove the old sheet partway, roll them to the other side to get the rest of it, roll them back when the fresh sheet’s in place. But Nail is heavy; rolling him toward her, her hand slips and snags in the string around his neck, and she lifts it till her fingers hold the charm, the tiny golden tree. She’s nearly forgotten her little Christmas present to him, and hasn’t seen it since the day she bought it at Stifft’s Jewelers and took it home and wrapped it in a wad of tissue to enclose in her first letter to him. Thinking of that, she remembers that somewhere in Rosabone’s saddlebags is the bundle of all the letters she wrote him which they never let him have at the penitentiary, or which she has written in her idle hours in Stay More while waiting for him. More than a hundred pages, no, closer to two hundred: the story of her life, or all the parts of it she wants him to know, for now: her childhood in the big house on Arch Street, her brothers, her sister, her mother, and as much of her father as she can mention, for now. The story of her art lessons with Spotiswode Worthen. The story of her travels: an Arkansawyer in Chicago, in New York, in Paris, in London, in Arles, and then around the world with Marguerite Thompson Zorach. The story of her first visit to Stay More. The story of her visits to the governor. The story of the day she went to the ballpark to meet Irvin Bobo, and what happened that evening. All the stories. One of the letters contains a story of what was not actually allowed to happen but was only imagined: the night that the governor permitted her to spend in Nail’s cell. Another one of the letters, written in the future tense and the second person, contains the story of what will not yet have happened: the first night they will actually spend together. But she did not know, when she wrote it, that he would be ill with malaria, so that story is overly romantic, although the setting for it is actually this exact place and time, this cavern, this night, this July.

Should she let him read it? It would tickle him, amuse him, and any good humor would be sure to help him get well. But it was rather immodest and even frank in its details. Wouldn’t he be shocked? Wouldn’t he consider her brazen or indecent?

“Why do you keep on holdin it?” he asks, trying to see her hand wrapped around the golden tree beneath his chin.

“I’m thinking,” she says, and puts the tree charm back against his chest. Nestled there in the golden hair of his chest, the golden tree is like a mighty oak in a thicket of brambles. “I have a letter for you, if you’d like to read it.”

“You bet,” he says.

“But it’s nearly two hundred pages long.”

“What else have we got to do?”

She gives him a sidelong glance, and then she gives him a mock punch in the ribs. “You,” she says. And then she says, “We’ve got lots else to do. For one thing, we’ve got to eat. I’d better start supper. What would you like?”

“Chicken’n dumplins,” he announces.

“Sorry,” she says. “The eggs haven’t hatched yet. And besides, I don’t know how to make dumplings. But tomorrow I’ll go get your mother to teach me.”

Nail laughs: the first she’s heard him laugh in a long time. “You honestly would do that, wouldn’t ye?” he tells her, delighted.

No, not only have the eggs not hatched, but there are no chickens to lay them. She wonders if they could keep a flock of fowl in this glen of the waterfall. Would the varmints of the woods get them? But she has seen no varmints. If there are wolves or bears hereabouts, they haven’t made themselves visible.

For their first meal together, she is obliged to put together a light supper of crackers, cheese, and a tin of sardines. But she discovers she has no appetite at all, not because the offering isn’t appetizing. And he discovers he hasn’t any appetite whatsoever, not because he’s ill.

Love has no stomach.

The supper uneaten, they keep close, she sitting cross-legged beside the pallet of his bed, he lying. After a while he suggests, “You could read it to me.”

“What?”

“The two-hundred-page letter.”

“Oh,” she says, and again: “Oh.” The light in the cavern is just enough to read by, but it won’t remain that way long. She’ll have to get up and light the kerosene lantern after a time. “Well.” She thinks awhile, then says, warningly, “I’ll blush terribly over parts of it.”

“I’ll like to see ye blush,” he says. “I bet it makes your pale skin look healthy.”

She laughs, but also warns, “I don’t think I could even stand to read parts of it. Parts of it I wrote thinking you’d not even be near me when you read them.”

“If you love me,” he tells her, “you could read it all.”

That’s true. She says, “That’s true, but parts of it are going to make me sound most unladylike.”

“Those will probably be my favorite parts,” he says. “Let’s have it.”

“Promise you’ll never laugh.”

“Aint there no funny parts?”

“Not deliberately funny,” she says.

“Well, I won’t laugh unless I hear ye laughin first.”

She could always, she realizes, skip some of the parts. She could always censor part of it, and he’d never know…until the time came that he might want to read it over to himself, and then if he found the parts she’d censored and wondered why, maybe he would understand. Nail Chism, she honestly believes, will always understand.

So she gets up, and from one of the sacks in the cavern she fills her straw hat with oats, and takes it out to Rosabone, and sets it down where the mare can eat the oats. “Don’t eat my hat,” she says. Then she gets the bundle of letters out of the saddlebag. She pats the mare’s neck and speaks some last words to her: “You’ll hear me talking, Rosabone. All night long you’ll hear me talking, but I won’t be talking to you. You get some sleep, and we’ll go back to the village in the morning.”

All night long the mare hears her mistress talking. But surely, sometime in the night, the mare dozes off.

Viridis Monday holds nothing back. She reads it all. Once, after lighting the lantern and resuming, she asks him, “Is this boring you?”

“I thought you’d know me better than to ask a question like that,” he says. “Don’t stop.”

But once again, much later, she interrupts herself to ask, “Does that shock you?”

He is smiling, not with mirth but with pleasure. “I reckon I can stand it,” he allows, offhand.

And again, when she comes, in time, to the story of the night she thought she was going to be allowed to spend in his cell, and is describing in detail what she anticipated, she hears his breathing quicken and what might be a gasp, and she stops to say, “Of course I’m just making up this whole part. It’s just what I had imagined might happen.”

“It happened,” he says. “If you wrote it, it happened.”

His saying that, his way of putting it, eases her, makes her more comfortable and confident with her own telling and her own invention. But it also perhaps leads to, or at least explains, what eventually happens this night, which is of course only written but also happening.

A strange thing: at some point she ceases to distinguish between what has been written and what is happening.

She has reached the present in her narrative: she has discovered that her narrative itself has switched from the past tense to the present tense and she is describing time as it occurs. She is surprised to discover herself reading a letter in which she describes what she is doing right now: sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cavern beside Nail’s bed, reading him a letter in which she describes herself sitting cross-legged…

Tiredness might be a contributing factor; for Nail, it could be the effects of the quinine: a strange tinnitus that makes him hear not what she is saying but what he wants her to be saying. Is that it? Is she actually continuing to read from her actually written letter or simply describing aloud what happens as it happens? This is very strange, and no sound comes from Nail, except once when she stops and asks, “What am I saying? What am I doing?” and he observes, “You’re asking yourself, What am I saying? What am I doing?”

All this night she has held nothing back from him. Her whole life, and every thought she’s considered of any importance, has been laid bare to him. Her most secret and private imaginings have been put so clearly to him that they have become his own. Not just with candor, because candor implies a conscious opening up, and she has not been closed to begin with, but with total truth, she has turned herself inside out to him, and as the night wears on she discovers that she is naked and unashamed.

Never before, since her mother first clothed her, has she been naked to anyone except herself. But the nakedness of her body is as nothing; it is almost anticlimax, almost redundant. Especially because she has already written this in the letter too: I have on no clothes now. Now in the glare of coal oil light I am without a stitch. It does not bother me that he is not following suit, because I have already seen him without a stitch, in the death chamber, and because his time to be as bare as me will come later. Now is mine. His turn is later, after I have nothing left to reveal to him.

His turn comes at dawn. On this morning, the beginning of the alternate day of his two-day ague, the day he will not shake from cold or burn from fever or drip with sweat, he realizes that it is his turn, because she has told him everything she has to tell, given him everything she has to give, done for him everything that can be done.

Far off

“Well, I’ll be!” I’ll say, seeing Every Dill come walking up to my front porch, carrying a big earthenware bowl with a lid on it. It will be the first time I’ll have had a good look at him since that night when I was eleven and I had to stay at his folks’ house while everybody but me and him went to a funeral, and we wound up in the same bed.

“Good mornin, Latha,” he’ll say, and hold the big bowl out to me. “Maw said fer me to give ye this.”

“Jist set it down there with them others,” I’ll tell him, and gesture toward the porch floor, where there will already be twenty-three assorted bowls, pots, tureens, casseroles, and other containers, each of them steaming with what I know is the same thing that’s in his: chicken and dumplings.

“Yore dog will git it,” he will object, nodding his head toward Rouser and continuing to hold the bowl out to me.

“Rouser’s done et one of them, and licked the bowl clean,” I will point out. “Caint you see how his belly’s all pooched out? He won’t eat another’n before suppertime leastways, and maybe by then we’ll figure out what to do with that many bowls of chicken’n dumplins.”

“Huh?” Every will say. “You mean everlast one o’ them bowls has got chicken dumplims in ’um?” When I nod, he will say, “Wal, heck, Nail and that lady could never eat all of them in a month of Sundays, could they?” When I will shake my head, he will say, “Wal, heck, mize well take this’un on back home.”

“Suit yourself,” I will tell him.

“But Maw tole me to leave it, I’d better leave it, don’t ye reckon?”

“Whatever ye think.”

He will set the bowl down on the porch, but in front of the others so that it might get taken first when the time will come. He will study it. “Wal, heck,” he will say, “it aint even dinnertime yet, but I wouldn’t mind havin a bite or two of that myself, if ye’d lend me the borry of a fork.”

“I’ll git ye a plate,” I will tell him and go into the house for a clean plate and a fork and a big spoon for him to serve up a pile with.

“Who’s that out there?” my mother will ask.

“Every,” I’ll tell her. “Now we’ve got twenty-four bowls of chicken’n dumplins. But I think he’s fixin to help eat part of one.”

“Law sakes,” my mother will say. “I never thought them Dills had a chicken around the place. Must’ve been a ole rooster.”

I will take the eating equipment to Every, and I will watch him eat. He will eat as if it has indeed been a long time since he’s had anything as good as chicken and dumplings, and I will reflect that given a chance he might even grow up to look and sound a little bit like Nail Chism. But right now he’ll be just a fourteen-year-old towhead who’s pretty well earned his nickname Pickle. I will scarcely be able to convince myself that I, who came awfully close to making love to Nail himself just yesterday morning, already lost my virginity to this boy a couple of years before.

This boy will pause in his chewing and ask, “What’re ye thinkin about, Latha?”

I will manage a smile. “Us,” I will say, “I aint hardly seen you since.”

He will blush furiously. But he will pretend not to know what I’m talking about. “Since when?” he will ask.

“Since that night you crope into my bed.”

“I never!” he will protest. “It was more lak you crope inter mine.”

“The bed was in your house, and your folks owned it, but it was my bed at the time.”

“But it was the bed I slept in every night of my life,” he will point out.

“But you were sposed to sleep on a pallet in th’other room,” I will remind him. “Don’t you remember?”

“Yeah, but I reckon I was kind of groggy and conflummoxed,” he will observe. “Heck, maybe I was even sleepwalkin.”

“Every Dill,” I will accuse him, “don’t you even remember what you and me did?”

“Was you awake?” he will ask.

“Silly! We talked for an hour before we did it. Don’t you remember?”

“Yeah, it kinder comes back to me,” he will admit.

“I’m sorry to hear it ever left you in the first place.”

A silence will ensue. He will be just standing there in the dirt yard beside my front porch, shuffling his bare feet in the dirt, hanging his head bashfully, poking his hands into the pockets of his overalls, and taking them out again. At length he will ask, without looking at me, “Did you not mind what we done?”

“It hurt some at first,” I will admit. “And you were awful impatient. But it was a heap of fun.”

“It was?” He will lift his eyes and search mine.

“Sure was.”

“You got all limp and still, like I’d kilt ye.”

“I reckon I must’ve just swooned for a bit.”

“Because I was hurtin ye?”

“No, because I’d done went and gone over the mountain.”

His look will tell me that he does not understand and that it would be no use, yet, for me to try to explain it. He will give me that look for a while before changing it to another look with narrowed eyes and a question: “Would ye lak to do it again?”

I will look around me as if we are being observed, and of course we are, because you, dear reader, will be observing us. In a hushed voice I will say, “Not right here. Not right now.”

He will laugh. “I never meant that. I jist meant sometime.”

“Okay,” I will grant. “Some time. But you ought to know, when we did it before, I was still a little too young to get…to have…to make a baby. I aint, anymore. I could make one now. You ought to know that.”

“We’d have to be real keerful, wouldn’t we?” he will allow. I will observe that just the talking about it, just the implication that we might do it again sometime, has given him a noticeable bulging in the fork of his overalls, which I will recognize from having seen on another male just the day before. For a moment I will be possessed of a wild urge to grab his hand and lead him off to the barn, until I recall that I am custodian of twenty-four pots of chicken and dumplings and have not yet decided how I am going to transport even one of them up to the glen of the waterfall. And I will realize that, possessed as I am by this urge, I have not been listening carefully, and that Every has asked me a question.

“What did ye say?” I will ask.

“I ast ye, when?” he will say. “When can we?”

I am about to reply, when we are interrupted by the arrival of the twenty-fifth bowl of chicken and dumplings. It will come by automobile, the first one to enter our yard in quite a spell. The driver of the car will be a man I haven’t seen in quite a longer spell, but I will remember him from his trip to Stay More with the sheriff and Judge Jerram, and I will certainly remember him from his courtroom, where I had to testify. It will be Judge Lincoln Villines, alone again like the time he came to pay a call on Viridis and the old woman.

He will stand in the yard, holding the fancy china serving-dish and looking at me and then at Every. “Howdy,” he will say, and then squint his eyes at me again. “You shore are Latha Bourne, aint ye? I seem to recall you from once I seen you afore.” When I nod my head in acknowledgment, he will say, “I was tole that you was the one could take this yere bowl of victuals up to Nail Chism and his ladyfriend.” When I nod again, taking the bowl from him and setting it among the others, he will glance at Every and say, “But I don’t believe I know you.”

“I was just leavin anyhow,” Every will say, and start shuffling off. “See you later, Latha,” he will say.

I will be a little put out with Every, that he has taken off like that and left me alone to deal with the judge, who will now watch as Every disappears and turn back to me to ask, “Your brother?”

“My beau,” I will say.

The judge will snort a laugh but then cover his mouth with his hand. “Aint you kind of young to carry that bowl way off through the woods to where they’re hidin?”

I will point at the hodgepodge of bowls filling the porch. “No, but I reckon I’m too young to figger out some way to get all them other bowls up to ’em.”

The judge will finally notice the great assortment of other bowls and look at them like a suitor appraising the crowd of fellow suitors for a lady’s hand. “What’s in them?” he will ask.

“Same as what’s in yourn,” I will say.

“Chicken’n dumplins?” he will ask.

“Yep,” I will say.

“My, my,” he will say, and will meditate upon the fact, like a suitor discovering that his competition is just as strong and handsome and rich as he is. “News shore travels fast, don’t it?” Then he will ask, “Wal, how air ye figgerin on gittin even one of them bowls up the mountain to ’em?”

“I got two hands, aint I?”

“Yeah, but it’s a fur ways off,” he will say. “Real fur off.”

I will begin wondering how he happens to know just how far off it is. His reference to “the woods where they are hidin” and “up the mountain” will indicate to me that he has a pretty good idea of where they are. I will wonder if the news traveling fast has told the whole world not only that Nail Chism has a hankering for some chicken and dumplings but also just where he’s hiding. But nobody else will know, except me and Doc Swain, who surely will not have told anybody.

It will suddenly dawn on me why, or rather how, Judge Lincoln Villines knows where Nail and Viridis are. But I will pretend ignorance and innocence and will tell him, “The reason I aint taken any of these bowls up there yet is that I’m not too sure just where it is they’re hiding.”

“You’re not?” he will say. “I was tole that you was the only one that knows.”

I will gesture vaguely northward. “I jist think it’s somewheres up yonder.”

He will correct my gesture, pointing properly eastward. “Naw, it’s over yonderways, up that mountain.”

“Could you show me?” I will ask.

“Well, I don’t want to go right up to the cave with ye, but I could lead ye part of the ways.”

“As far as where Sull Jerram was shot?” I will ask.

“Shore, I could take ye that—” Abruptly he will stop and change what he’s saying to: “Everbody knows whar that is, don’t they?”

“Nossir,” I will tell him. “Jist me and whoever it was kilt him.”

Will it matter, in the end, who killed Sewell Jerram? I think that what will matter, what will be of any interest to anybody, will be not so much the identity of the culprit as, rather, the motive. The reason that Sull Jerram was shot and killed was not because he was about to molest Viridis, not because he had raped and abused Dorinda Whitter, not because he had sent an innocent man to prison, but because he alone knew how much Lincoln Villines had to do with the bootlegging operation that had started the whole thing.

Arkansas has had a number of governors who were less than brilliant, less than capable, less than gubernatorial. George Washington Hays himself, despite his corruption, was not without intelligence, was a man who made many mistakes but was at least smart enough to realize when he had made a mistake. In this story Governor Hays will not last much longer, not as governor. In November he will announce that he will not seek reelection. He is intelligent enough to know that he would probably be defeated if he did seek it. Lincoln Villines was not intelligent enough to realize that he could never have been elected to the office even if he had not been stupid enough to get involved in a bootlegging operation.

A professor of political economy at the University of Arkansas, Charles Hillman Brough (the name rhymes with “tough”), will decide to campaign for the 1916 Democratic nomination for governor, opposing not just Hays, if he chooses to run again, but Hays’s entire machine, especially the Jeff Davis faction of the machine, which will appear so eager to hand the nomination to hillbilly Lincoln Villines…until suddenly Villines will not only be revealed to have a shady past but also be suspected of, and then indicted for, murdering a fellow judge, Sewell Jerram, who had threatened to expose that shady past.

The scandal will shake the Democratic Party but not to the extent of preventing its nominee, Brough, from swamping the Republican and Socialist nominees in the general election, by almost a hundred thousand votes.

As one of his last acts in office, as the very last of a long string of sometimes questionable pardons, Governor Hays will grant a pardon to Lincoln Villines, then under a relatively light sentence of ten years, a Newton County jury having convicted him not of murder, reasoning that it isn’t murder to do away with a bad man, but of “voluntary manslaughter,” as the foreman attempted to classify it.

Governor Hays in retirement will keep a law office in Little Rock and will publish a number of articles in national publications, arguing his continued advocacy of capital punishment as the only alternative to mob violence. During Prohibition and the Jazz Age he will remain a staunch supporter of Alfred Smith as the Democrats’ candidate for president, because, he will point out, “It was the Republican Party that tried to force the social equality of the Negro upon the Aryan people of the South.” But Hays will not live to see Smith win Arkansas while losing most of the South and the election. Hays will die as another advocate of Aryan supremacy, an Austrian named Schicklgruber, is rising to power in Germany.

Governor Brough, an erudite and persuasive man bent upon prison reform and better roads and education, will as one of his first acts of office consider extending a pardon to Nail Chism, unconditional except for one little condition: that Nail Chism come to Little Rock, give himself up directly to the governor, and receive his pardon. That offer will be something for Nail to think about.

But there will be many other things for Nail to think about before then. At one point he will have to decide whether or not he and his lady should relinquish their sylvan sanctuary and move back to society. It will become clear, after a while, that nobody is really trying to find them. Nearly everybody will know that they are up there, somewhere, high on Ledbetter Mountain in a cave or cavern near a spectacular waterfall. They will know that I have made countless trips up there myself, each time carrying a bowl of chicken and dumplings, and I myself will have heard of the men on Ingledew’s storeporch making bets on which will happen first: the remaining chicken and dumplings will spoil, or Nail will grow tired of them. And sure enough, those wagering on the former contingency will be victorious.

What will bring Nail out of hiding, eventually, will not be my continued reassurance that nobody, especially not the law, or what is left of the law in Newton County, is actively searching for him, but Doc Swain’s sorrowful announcement to him that his father has taken a turn for the worse. On one of his visits, a week or so after Nail’s return, Doc Swain will examine Nail and pronounce him almost recovered from his malaria, and then will sadly tell him that his father is dying.

That will bring Nail home.

He will never again return to the cave, except, oh, years later on a kind of nostalgic pilgrimage to it, he and Viridis will take their little boy to see the spot where the boy was conceived, although of course they won’t try to explain to a kid that young what “conception” means. And I will be getting far ahead of my story.

[Although my story, that is, the story of my own life, will tend to fade off, far off from here. I will not immediately, or soon, honor my assent to Every’s request; for one thing, my mother will constantly remind me that he cannot be my beau, for two reasons: he’s a cousin, even if twice removed, and the Dills are the lowest of the low on the Stay More social ladder, such as it is. Raymond Ingledew, youngest son of banker John Ingledew, will begin to take notice of me, or take a letch for me (is there a difference?), and my mother will think Raymond makes a far more eligible beau, but the story of all of that, and what will happen between Every and Raymond, will have to wait until you, dear reader, can tell it.]

Nail will attend his father in his last hours. Nail will move back into his father’s house, and he and Viridis will sleep there, not together of course, because even though everybody will assume that Nail and Viridis have been sleeping together in the cave, it would be improper and unseemly, not to mention immoral, for an unmarried couple to sleep in the same bed in the house of decent folks. And besides all that, it would not be nice for a man to have relations with his girlfriend while his father is dying. Seth Chism will hang on for nearly a week after Nail moves home, and Nail will sleep in his old bed, and his brother Luther will be sent to Waymon’s house so that Viridis can have Luther’s bed. And everything will be proper while Seth is dying.

When Seth dies (happy, Doc Swain assures everybody), Nancy, Seth’s widow, will move in with her oldest son Waymon, who lives down the trail a ways in the old McCoy place with his wife Faye, and young Luther, her least boy, still a teenager, will go with her, leaving the old Chism place entirely to Nail and to Viridis, and even though they will not be married yet, it will be nobody’s business whether they resume sleeping together. It will be their house. Nancy will deed that house and eighty acres to her son Nail, who will add to it the forty acres of his own that had been a pasture for sheep. Now he will have a hundred and twenty acres on which to raise sheep…if he cares to.

Will he care to? One of the biggest things he will have to think about is not whether he wants to raise sheep again, because that is really all he honestly wants to do, but whether he ought to ask Viridis if she’d mind if he resumed shepherding. He will brood about asking her this question much longer than he will later brood about asking her the other question: whether or not she might be interested in getting married to him.

He should not need to brood so; she will understand him. She will know him through and through, what makes him tick, what winds him up and makes his pendulum swing, and whether he is midnight or high noon despite his hands being the same at both times. Viridis will almost want to ask him herself, Aren’t you thinking about getting some more sheep? but she will decide to wait, because she will know he is.

And he will start a new flock. Not right then, because late summer isn’t the best time, but soon. Within a year he’ll have his hundred and twenty acres up to capacity with sheep, more than he’s ever had before, and Viridis will set some tongues to wagging because she’ll do something that most wives hereabouts (although she won’t be a wife yet) never do: she’ll help with the stock. She’ll learn the ways of sheep. She’ll become, for heaven’s sake, a shepherdess.

Won’t that be pastoral? I will come across them once, on my rambles. I’ll ramble a lot. The day that Dorinda Whitter elopes with Virge Tuttle and is taken by him back to Pettigrew to live, I’ll go up on the hill to shut down our playhouse. Not just shut it down but destroy it, I guess. Then I’ll keep on walking until I happen to find myself in Nail’s sheep pastures, and I’ll catch sight of them: Nail and Viridis, sitting on the hillside, under a singing hickory, surrounded by grazing sheep. Nail will be playing his harmonica to the hickory’s singing. Viridis will have her sketchbook in her lap, drawing, I’ll suppose, a pastoral landscape.

They will catch sight of me and wave. That ought to be my last picture in this story, the two of them there on that hillside, waving good-bye together, waving to signal that the story is over, that everything’s fine, that I can go my way and they can go theirs, that the sheep will be happy and grazing, that all’ll be right with the world.

But they will also be waving hello as well as good-bye, and I will go on up and visit with them for a little bit. It will bother me to be that close to Nail, and I guess I’ll blush. I’ll still be in love with him. I’ll still have dreams, waking and sleeping, about what it would’ve been like if I’d, that morning with him in the cave, if only I’d…

“Could I see your picture?” I’ll ask Viridis, and she’ll show it to me, the landscape she’s working on. When the time will come that Governor Brough will invite Nail to come to Little Rock and give himself up and receive the governor’s pardon, and Viridis of course will go with him (and the two of them will conspire to get Ernest Bodenhammer a Brough pardon too), she will have a whole bunch of pictures to take with her, not just the very best landscape sketches ready to be framed but a number of canvases too: oil paintings of the Stay More countryside and of the people. She will not by any means be the first to have depicted the village and its inhabitants on canvas, nor by any means will she be the last, but to me she will always be the one whose pictures never fail to capture my eyes and my heart, both.

Viridis Monday will always be the one, and I’ll get through a lot of the rough places of my life just by thinking of her, and wishing I were like her, and trying to be like her, and only sometimes envying her for having taken Nail. I’ll never find a man to save. Not like she saved him. But I’ll keep my eyes open.

Far off, the day before yesterday, I will attend Dorinda Whitter Tuttle’s funeral. My grandson Vernon will drive me the fifty-three miles to Pettigrew for it. Pettigrew, to my sorrow, will be all run down from its former glory as the terminus of the Frisco Railroad, which will have been gone from it for some fifty years. Pettigrew will be just a wide place in the road, both sides of the road clotted with junked automobiles: a vast junkyard. At least it’s not in Newton County, but over the line in Madison County. Vernon will not stay for the funeral; he will have business in Fayetteville. Rindy’s daughter Latha will have agreed to drive me home afterward; I will be uncomfortable, not so much because Rindy has named her daughter after me and it will be awkward having two Lathas in the same car, as because Latha Tuttle will be seventy years old herself and only a little bit better a driver than me, and I will not be able to drive at all. At least, I will be somewhat relieved to discover that Latha Tuttle at seventy will have no resemblance to myself at seventy. We will not talk an awful lot. She will not be particularly grieving or mournful; she will have been living in Russellville, a widow herself, for many years largely out of touch with her mother, especially in the last years, when Rindy’s body was consumed by cancer. Nor will Latha Tuttle have much interest in the old lady she was named after, and even less interest in the remains of the hometown of that lady. Strangely, it will be her first visit to Stay More and her last. She will be eager to deposit me at my home and get on back to her own. I’ll have time for just one question: “Did your mother ever say anything about Nail Chism to you?” Latha Tuttle will ask me to repeat the name a couple of times; her hearing will be very impaired.

“Was he one of her beaux?” she will ask.

“No, he was a man who was wrongfully sent to the penitentiary because of her.”

“Law, me,” she will say. “You’d think she’d of tole me somethin about that, wouldn’t you? But no, she never said no word about no Nail Chism.”

She’ll shake her head at the mild wonder of it and ask conversationally, “Did he ever git out?”

“He got out,” I’ll tell her.

Now will I even need to say that Doc Swain was right: they will live happy ever after? Do I have to tell the rest of it, let you know whether or not they will actually get married? Or how many children they will have? Or about the times when Viridis will get bored and lonely and restless? Or the bad years that all of us had together? Will I have to mention the droughts and the floods and the fires?

And should I tell how Nail Chism will eventually, with poetic justice, become Newton County’s first electrician? Although by the time poor Newton County finally gets around to being electrified, won’t Nail Chism be too old even to remember the fundamentals of electrical mechanics?

No, I will think back to the picture I began this story with: a red-haired newspaperlady sitting in the death chamber at the state penitentiary and sketching a head-shaved convict waiting to die. The making of that sketch was what started the saving of him, and started this story, and I will let this story end with another sketch by Viridis, which she will show me that afternoon: a dale of green pasture grasses, so many shades of green that even though she has done them all in black and white, I will feel the many greens, the white bodies of the sheep dazzling in their whiteness because of the green that surrounds them, their heads down to eat the green, while a man in a straw hat and blue denim overalls plays his harmonica and watches them, and sitting close beside him a woman draws the whole scene in a sketchbook held in her lap: the man and the sheep and the dale and, out across the dale, far off up on the lilting mountain above the village, a farmplace that is their home, beneath a fat maple and a gangling walnut, both singing. But the woman in the picture will have already finished drawing that: now she adds a final touch, with her kneaded eraser she makes room for the final touch: a girl, not quite yet a woman, walking through the green grass out among the sheep, coming to join the man and the woman, and to be in the picture, forevermore.

About the Author

Donald Harington

Although he was born and raised in Little Rock, Donald Harington spent nearly all of his early summers in the Ozark mountain hamlet of Drakes Creek, his mother’s hometown, where his grandparents operated the general store and post office. There, before he lost his hearing to meningitis at the age of twelve, he listened carefully to the vanishing Ozark folk language and the old tales told by storytellers.

His academic career is in art and art history and he has taught art history at a variety of colleges, including his alma mater, the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where he has been lecturing for fifteen years. He lives in Fayetteville with his wife Kim, although his in-habit resides forever at Stay More.

His first novel, The Cherry Pit, was published by Random House in 1965, and since then he has published eleven other novels, most of them set in the Ozark hamlet of his own creation, Stay More, based loosely upon Drakes Creek. He has also written books about artists.

He won the Robert Penn Warren Award in 2003, the Porter Prize in 1987, the Heasley Prize at Lyon College in 1998, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame in 1999 and that same year won the Arkansas Fiction Award of the Arkansas Library Association. He has been called “an undiscovered continent” (Fred Chappell) and “America’s Greatest Unknown Novelist” (Entertainment Weekly).

Table of Contents

By the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Table of Contents

The Joyful Noise of Donald Harington

Donald Harington’s Grand Jamboree

Lightning Bug

Dedication

Epigraph

Movements

Beginning

MIDDLING

ONE: Morning

SUB ONE: Recently

TWO: Noon

SUB TWO: Twenty and Eighteen Years Ago

THREE: Afternoon

SUB THREE: Seventeen Years Ago

FOUR: Evening

SUB FOUR: Fourteen Years Ago

FIVE: Night

SUB FIVE: Now

Ending

Some Other Place. The Right Place.

Dedication

Epigraph

Movements

Overture

One: Diana Stoving Accidentally Sees Something That Interests Her

Two: Some New Jersey Newspaperwoman Has Written an Article of Interest

Three: Diana Stoving Changes Her Mind

Four: An Interesting Hypnotist Is Visited

Five: Day Whittacker Is Met

Six: Diana Stoving Receives an Opportunity to Query the Subject

Seven: A Conversation Is Had, Which Diana Finds Interesting

Eight: Two Impetuous Young People Take It upon Themselves to Do Something

Nine: Finding Dudleytown Proves to Be Difficult

Ten: At Length Dudleytown Is Located and Partially Explored

Eleven: Under a Rock in the Rain, an Exchange Is Had with Young “Daniel”

Twelve: An Awkward Situation Is Encountered, Also a Disappointing Revelation

Thirteen: A Rapport of Sorts Is Reached

Fourteen: They Become Somewhat Better Acquainted with One Another

Fifteen: Diana Goes Shopping, Suffers Some Bad Moments, but Prevails

Sixteen: A Pleasant Day Is Had in Dudleytown, and a Pleasant Evening

First Movement

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Second Movement (“The Unfinished”)

Begin Reading

Third Movement

Contents

Montross: Selected Poems

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

The Ghost’s Song and Other Poems

One

Two

Three

Four

Fourth Movement

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Finale

The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks

Dedication

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Acknowledgments

The Cockroaches of Stay More

Dedication

Epigraph

Contents

INSTAR THE FIRST: The Maiden

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

INSTAR THE SECOND: Maiden No More

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

Chapter ten

Chapter eleven

Chapter twelve

Chapter thirteen

INSTAR THE THIRD: The Rally

Chapter fourteen

Chapter fifteen

Chapter sixteen

Chapter seventeen

Chapter eighteen

Chapter nineteen

Chapter twenty

Chapter twenty-one

Chapter twenty-two

Chapter twenty-three

Chapter twenty-four

INSTAR THE FOURTH: The Consequence

Chapter twenty-five

Chapter twenty-six

Chapter twenty-seven

Chapter twenty-eight

Chapter twenty-nine

Chapter thirty

INSTAR THE FIFTH: The Woman Pays

Chapter thirty-one

Chapter thirty-two

Chapter thirty-three

Chapter thirty-four

Chapter thirty-five

INSTAR THE SIXTH: The Convert

Chapter thirty-six

Chapter thirty-seven

Chapter thirty-eight

IMAGO: The Mockroach’s Song

The Choiring of the Trees

Dedication

Contents

Epigraph

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About the Author