Thinking of the nuisance of having to hide his garden from view, he realized that he wasn’t entirely happy with his residence or its location. One reason he’d taken it was a nearly unconscious wish to reconcile with Patricia, and he had persuaded her to come and visit at least once, but she had pronounced the manor too damn big and ostentatious. Bo had tried to sell her on the zoning: only single-family houses were allowed, and about 60 percent of those were on five-acre-minimum lots. There were no traffic lights, no supermarkets, no gas stations, no convenience stores, no barbershops, no four-lane roads, no apartment buildings, and almost no crime. Bo belonged to The Camargo Club, a private country club whose restaurant was the only “business” in Indian Hill. Although nobody but Bo had a vegetable garden, within the city limits of Indian Hill were at least three working farms, raising cows and sheep, and there were horses all over the place. Sometimes when Bo was rounding a hilly curve in the road, he could almost pretend he was back in the Ozarks. But there was nothing anywhere around to remind him of the courthouse square in Harrison, which had been his favorite hang-out as a kid. What he had liked to do most, even more than playing football, was to sit on the south side of the courthouse, where the old men whittled and swapped yarns. Bo had had a darn good Barlow pocketknife himself, and he could whittle too while he listened to the old men talk, spinning their fabulous myths. There was nothing at all like that in Hamilton County, Ohio.
The people who lived in Indian Hill and appreciated all that quiet and serenity and seclusion were mostly family people, sometimes with both parents working in order to support such a lifestyle but with lots of kids taking advantage of the best school district in the nation. Bo was one of the few single people living in Indian Hill. After Patricia had failed to respond to his not fully articulated invitation to forget their differences and move in with him, he had tried to persuade his widowed mother to move to Cincinnati, but she wouldn’t leave Arkansas. His daughter Sarah worked in Chicago as a promotion underling for a department store; he had tried for years to convince her that a much better job was waiting for her in Cincinnati. His best hope was that his son Bolin IV, due to graduate this spring from Rice University, might want to take a job with Bo’s company.
And of course more than one of Bo’s girlfriends had wanted too earnestly to move in with him, but he hadn’t yet dated one that he’d truly care to live with, never mind their dislike for radishes. So he was given to wondering if he was destined to spend the rest of his working career as an aging man living alone in a house much, much too big for him.
“But what has that got to do with lacking a soul?” he asked, rhetorically this time, of that empty house, and then he got into his Jag and drove to work.
One of his deputies, Castor Sherrill, had already left him a memo to the effect that he was on top of the latest problem involving the recurrent false rumor that the company had Satanic ties, a calumny that had derived from an old misinterpretation of the company’s logo of moon and stars (abandoned fifteen years ago). During his time with the company, Bo and his large staff had been required to respond to thousands of calls and letters regarding the false rumor. Now bright young Cast Sherrill was devising a plan to squelch it, once and for all.
Bo really didn’t have much to do. Cast and the other deputy, Jim Tompkins, worked zealously running the show. Despite Bo’s pretense, to Vernon and George, of not wanting to use the company’s time for personal matters, Bo had no compunction about using the company’s time for whatever he wished. At least two or three mornings a week he sneaked away to his athletic club for a good workout and a good swim. But this morning, instead, he began making some more calls to old friends in Arkansas, trying to scare up a good campaign manager for a worthy but callow gentleman named Vernon Ingledew. His first call went to Jerry Russell, but he learned the man was already committed to another candidate in the Democratic primary. “Ingledew?” Jerry said, and after a long pause “No, Bo, I can’t say I’ve ever heard of him. Is he in the state senate, maybe?”
Two other prospective managers he called were also already committed to candidates. Bo learned that there was going to be a pretty broad slate in the primary. So eager were the Democrats to find someone to run against and defeat Shoat Bradfield that there had already been eight filings for the primary, including a former governor, the present secretary of state and attorney general, a powerful county sheriff, a state senator, a rich and powerful automobile dealer, a popular minister, and a former congressman. “Good heavens,” Bo remarked to his informant, “My man Ingledew is going to be caught in a horse race.”
“With a name like ‘Ingledew,’” the man remarked in return, “who would bet on the nag, let alone jockey him?”
“Hey, names don’t mean anything,” Bo said. “What about ‘Eisenhower’?”
“Ike was a famous general,” the man replied. “Does your Ingledew have any war record?”
Bo realized that there was one more albatross (he was keeping count, and this was number thirteen) for poor Vernon’s neck: he had no military service at all. Not even ROTC, because he’d never gone to college. Bo felt obliged to mention this to the fourth person he called, the same woman he’d called the day before, Lydia Caple, who had not yet signed up with any candidate and was in fact trying to decide whether to keep shopping for a candidate or to accept an offer to be one of the other manager’s assistants or perhaps a press secretary (she had first entered politics from her career as a political reporter for the state’s top newspaper). Bo told Lydia that yes, she was right, Vernon was a crass amateur, but he was “the most personable, clever, handsome, engaging, outright lovable aspirant” that Lydia could ever hope to meet. He could palpably sense that Lydia might actually be refraining from giving him a second flat refusal. But because she was such a dear old friend (they had in fact enjoyed each other in bed on one wild, memorable occasion) he felt obliged to candidly inform her of the thirteen albatrosses that he had identified as obstacles in Vernon’s path, and he felt obliged to mention one in particular: that Lydia could expect to find Vernon extremely uncomfortable in her presence, not because of her but because Ingledew men going back to ancient Anglo-Saxon times had always been hopelessly bashful around women.
There was a long silence on the other end. “Bo, honey,” Lydia said at length, “are you teasing me? Is this some kind of joke? Or have you just lost touch entirely with the Arkansas electorate?”
“Lyd, sweetheart, think of it as a huge challenge!”
“The challenge is so huge that not even a seasoned pro like Bolin Pharis would want to handle it,” she said, and changed the subject, and that was that.
Bo was thinking that he ought to spend the rest of the morning at his athletic club. But he made one more call. “I am saving my soul,” he told the four spacious walls of his office. He put in a call to Archie Schaffer, an old college classmate at the University of Arkansas who had been the closest thing to a best friend Bo had had during his junior and senior years. Arch had successfully managed the campaigns for Dale Bumpers as governor and later long-term U.S. Senator from Arkansas. In fact, in a place where everybody was kin to everybody else, just as Vernon was Jelena’s own cousin and George was her uncle, Bo was not unmindful that Arch Schaffer was Dale Bumpers’s nephew. When Arch had run his Schaffer & Associates political firm in the Eighties, he had provided some stiff competition for Bo Pharis on occasion. It was Arch’s withdrawal from the political scene into a public relations career which had inspired Bo to do likewise: Arch was vice-president of Media, Public & Governmental Affairs for the huge chicken company Tyson Foods, which was headquartered in the Ozark town of Springdale. Bo realized, while the call was going through, that he couldn’t hope to persuade Arch to go back into politics any more than Vernon had persuaded Bo, but there was no harm in trying.
“Arch, you old bastard,” Bo said.
“Bo, you old rascal,” Arch said. “Hey, congratulations! Now I’ll have to call you Doc Pharis.”
“What�
�s this?” Bo wondered.
“You haven’t heard? Hell, maybe I shouldn’t be the first to tell you. The University’s giving you an honorary degree at May graduation.”
“No shit?” Bo said. “No, I hadn’t heard, yet. That’s swell. I guess I’ll have to accept it in person.”
“You sure as hell will. And Beverly and I are expecting you to stay with us instead of the Hilton.”
“Of course. And maybe we can go the next day to the tailwaters of Beaver Lake Dam, and catch us a few rainbows.”
“You bet.” There was a lull in the conversation, then Arch asked, “What’s up, Bo? What can I do for you or vice versa?”
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of Vernon Ingledew,” Bo said.
After a reflective pause, Arch said, “Which Vernon Ingledew did you have in mind? The fellow who runs Ingledew Ham? Or do you mean the fictional character in The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks?”
“I don’t know about the latter,” Bo said. “I never read that.”
“Well, could be they’re one and the same. He’s the owner and CEO of Ingledew Ham. I’ve met him. We tried to buy them out a few years ago, but they weren’t for sale. Are you thinking of buying them out? I can save you the trouble.”
“No, it’s something else. Have you heard any news about Ingledew entering the Democratic Primary for governor?”
“Give me a minute,” Arch requested, and Bo visualized him running a check on his computer’s high-powered search engines. Less than a minute before Arch came back. “Nope. He hasn’t filed as of this morning, and there’s really nothing at all on him except a bunch of books he got on Interlibrary Loan from the University.”
Bo told Arch about the visit from Vernon and George in Cincinnati. He gave him the rough outline of Vernon’s position. He told him about Vernon’s thirteen albatrosses. “You laughed him out of your office?” Arch asked.
“Not exactly,” Bo admitted. “I took them to dinner. After that, I took them up to my house for a few hours. We got to know each other real well. I made it clear to Ingledew that I’m no longer available as a political consultant. But—” Bo paused, took a deep breath, and gave a long moment’s meditation. How to say it? If anybody he knew could understand, probably Arch Schaffer could. “Arch, listen, I’m telling you—or I’m trying to tell you—that Vernon Ingledew is a natural. If I lived in Arkansas, I couldn’t think of anybody I’d rather have as governor. He just sends off this feeling that he could solve any problem on earth. He knows everything. He can do anything.”
“Wow,” said Arch. “Coming from you, that’s high praise. But I think I know what you mean. When Johnny Tyson and Buddy Wray and I and some of the other guys here met with Ingledew, he sort of projected that same feeling, that he not only knew exactly why we should not and could not buy them out, but he knew that we shouldn’t diversify from chicken into pork. Turns out he was right, too. We made a big mistake when we expanded into fish and beef and pork.”
“He could make Shoat Bradfield wish he’d never been born,” Bo declared.
“So, what you’re telling me is that you’re having second thoughts about turning down his overture, and you want me to tell you you’re doing the right thing.”
“Aw, shoot, no!” Bo quickly exclaimed. “I’m out. What I’m telling you is that if you ever had any desire to get back into campaigning, here’s your best chance.”
“I’m like you, Bo. I have no desire to get back into campaigning. You know how cops and firemen can retire real early because of all the stress they’ve had to put up with? I think political consultants ought to have the same consideration.”
“Could you at least think about it?” Bo pled.
“Could you?” Arch returned.
“I have been,” Bo told him. “I haven’t been able to think about anything else.”
“I don’t know about you, Bo, but I’m a real slow thinker. I’ll have to get back to you on this, but don’t get your hopes up. Beverly wouldn’t let me do it, for one thing. But I’ll think. And I’ll think. And I’ll also do some checking around, and see what I can scrape up on Ingledew. Meanwhile, let me strongly recommend that you read The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks.”
Bo Pharis asked his secretary to call some bookstores and find him a copy of the book. Later that day she reported back that Barnes and Noble had told her the paperback was out of print. Bo asked her to try some used bookstores. She finally found a hardback original marked down to just $4.95 at a place called The Dust Jacket, and asked them to hold it, and Bo left work early to pick it up. He took it home with him. In his home mail was a letter from the president of the University of Arkansas notifying him that he would be awarded the honorary doctorate of laws degree and the pleasure of his robing at the May graduation was anticipated. He would not be required to give the commencement address. A senator was doing that. Bo realized that the commencement was being held the weekend that he usually set out his tomato plants, but he supposed they could wait another week. (The plants, not the University.)
He read the book. Not all at once, for he lacked Vernon’s reading speed, but he managed to get through it in two nights and one day at the office. It was a riot in places. He laughed till his ribs hurt, beginning with the first chapter and the story of Jacob Ingledew, Vernon’s ancestor, and how Jacob “evicted” an Osage Indian from the future site of Stay More but impregnated the Indian’s squaw in the process. Bo wondered where the author had got all this stuff. The book reminded him a bit of One Hundred Years of Solitude, but there was nothing outright fantastic in it, that is, nothing that couldn’t actually have happened.
When Jelena Ingledew was born, and Vernon Ingledew was born, and nearly everything that happened to them was related in bold detail, Bo wondered how the author could have got away with that, writing a supposed “novel” about real people whose privacy he was invading. When Bo was in high school, he’d had a crush on the idea of Jelena, whom he had never met, and now he was reading about her actual lonely childhood and it made him practically fall in love with her. Her obsession with the boy cousin who was eight years her junior was made perfectly plausible but no less painful, and Bo found himself identifying with Vernon, and even believing it when Vernon wears a magic wristwatch which enables him to become aware of the reader of the novel! Bo thought that was real tricky: to find himself inside of Vernon at the same time that he found himself being the reader that Vernon is watching and communicating with. There were some spooky things in the ending of that book.
The book left Bo feeling hideously homesick. More than satisfying his curiosity about Vernon and Jelena, the book gave him a sense of the destiny of this whole long lineage of Ingledews who had inhabited this place in the Ozarks called Stay More. The narratives evoked for Bo those old tales he used to listen to the old-time whittlers spin on the courthouse square at Harrison. In fact, Harrison itself appeared in the book in several different places. Bo realized that the people of the Ozarks had had a fabulous history, filled with hardship but also with a rich sense of excitement and a texture that was entirely gone from current life.
“By God,” Bo declared to his empty house, “when I go back in May to get that doctorate they’re giving me I’d better plan on doing my fly fishing on the Little Buffalo, or even Swains Creek, and maybe even see if those old whittlers are still there on the square in Harrison.”
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2 Page 107