“How,” says the injun, proving he must be a injun, sure enough, not a Mex or a African. But then he says, “Excuse me, but you’re staring at me, and it’s rude.”
“Well, hell, feller,” says George, “excuse me but it aint ever day I run acrost a car like this’un a-settin smack dab in the middle of Stay More.”
“So this is Stay More, then,” the big feller says.
“What’s left of it,” George admits. And then he asks, “What-all make of car is this, anyhow?”
“It’s a Pierce-Arrow,” the man says.
“How much did a relic like this set you back?” George wants to know.
“It isn’t mine. I only drive it.”
George took a glance at the house. It hit him that whoever this injun was driving the car for might be inside the house, a-visiting with the nice lady who lived there. George wasn’t fixing to think that lady’s name out loud right here, where any fool could see it. He was only going to notice what she herself had already observed in relation to Latha Bourne’s yard full of cats: that you could call it—and her—“a cat arena.” Maybe just Cat for short.
“It aint none of my business, I reckon,” says George to the injun, “but how long do you figure on standing here?”
“Not that it isn’t any of your business,” says the injun, “but I just couldn’t tell you, one way or the other. I’ve already been here more than an hour, and my lady had just stopped to inquire if this is Stay More, which you’ve already told me in far less than an hour. You aren’t by any chance an Ingledew?”
“Naw, but I work for one,” says George.
“Really?” says the injun cordially. “Then you’re just a hired gun, like me.”
“I reckon,” George admits. “Though I don’t tote no gun.”
Both men chuckled over this, and then the injun says, “Are you married?”
“Now what in tarnation has that got to do with anything?” George wants to know.
“I’m just curious about your disposition,” says the Indian. “Family man? Bachelor? Male oriented? Switch hitter?”
George didn’t rightly know what-all this feller was a-talking about, but he sure was nosy. “B, I reckon,” he says.
“B?” says the injun. “Bi? Boondagger? Bindle boy?”
“You gave me a multiple choice, A through D,” George tells him. “So I picked B.”
“Ah, yes. Bachelor!” says the injun, smiling really big. “That’s very interesting.”
Trying to change the subject, George asks, “What-all kind of dog is that you got there?”
“Threasher? He’s what I suppose you would call a turtle dog.”
“Turtle dog?” says George and even though it might be rude he had to stare at the pooch. “I know what a turtle dove is, but I aint never heared tell of no turtle dog. You don’t mean to tell me he trees turtles?”
“He doesn’t tree them. He just points them.”
“Huh? That’s the dumbest thing ever I heared. Why would a dog point a turtle?”
“So we can catch them and eat them.”
Rude or not, George had to stare at the huge injun for a long moment. “They eat turtles where you come from?” he wanted to know. George had never eaten no kind of reptile in his entire life and he wasn’t about to start, nor even to start thinking about it.
Probably this injun was a-fixing to tell George a few box tortoise recipes, but just then the door of the house opened, and out come two women, one was Cat who George had known for years, the other was not just a stranger, but the strangest woman George had ever seen, strange like she was somebody he’d just dreamed up, somebody whose feet didn’t touch the floor but floated above it, a sight, a knockout, looking like a million, which she must’ve been worth at least. She was wearing some kind of long silk summer dress, blue-green, and a broad-brimmed straw hat atop her long dark hair. It hit George that just maybe she was some kind of injun too, though she sure didn’t look like one, not her skin, not her shape, she sure wasn’t no kin to this hefty feller standing here that worked for her.
She was smiling from ear to ear, the prettiest smile George had ever seen on a woman’s mouth. “Waxkadazhi, Ben!” she calls to her hired gun. “This woman speaks better Osage than I do! And this is Stay More! We’re in the right place.” And then she turned to the woman and says, “This is Thomas Bending Bear, my man.”
“Hello,” says Cat. “Ha-way Washazhe. Thots-he pee-chay. Waywenah.” And the big brave answers her in the same lingo, and they just commenced a chit-chattin. George couldn’t rightly tell what they was talking about, but it seemed it was all politeness and compliments, and it lasted too long before Cat took a notion to wave at George and say, “Good evening, George.”
“Howdy, ma’am,” says George.
The gorgeous injun girl’s smile vanished. “Not an Ingledew?” she says to Cat.
And Cat says, “No, this is George Dinsmore. He’s the general manager of operations for Ingledew Ham, and you might say he’s Vernon’s right-hand man.”
The lovely gal gave George a stern look, as if his connection with Boss didn’t sit too awful well with her. Then she says to him, “How do you do?”
“I was better, but I got over it,” George says to her, but winks to let her know he’s just trying to be clever.
“Where is your employer?” she asks him.
“Boss? Aw, I reckon he’s up to home,” George allows.
“Where is home?” she asks. And then she says, “Pardon my manners. I’m Juliana Heartstays.”
“Right pleased to meetcha,” George says, and he meant it, he sure was tickled to pieces to make the acquaintance of such a sightly gal. He gestured toward the west, toward Daniels Mountain. “Boss lives up yonder a good little ways.”
“Ben,” the gal says to her hired gun, “this wonderful woman, who lives in this wonderful house which had been built long ago by Jacob Ingledew himself, just happens to know everything about the history of the Ingledews. And as you can see, she just happens to speak perfect Osage, and has even written a book about us!”
“Marvelous!” says Ben.
Cat says, “And I’ve invited you to spend the night, because there’s nowhere else. This used to be Stay More’s only hotel, years after Jacob Ingledew died.”
Ben says, “I am prepared to pitch a tent on the creek bank at the location of the ancient Osage camp. In fact, I’m prepared to erect an authentic wigwam.”
“George, would you like to join us for supper?” Cat says.
“Why, thank ye kindly, ma’am,” George says. He knew he smelled too bad to sit down at the table with anybody. “But I reckon I’d best be gittin on over home. Sure am mighty proud to make you’uns’ acquaintance.” He offered his hand to Ben to shake. Ben’s handshake was soft, for such a big powerful-built feller. George couldn’t offer his hand to the gal. Her touch might melt him.
“Could I have a minute?” Cat asks George, and walked him back to his Explorer, out of earshot of the injuns but not of the turtle dog Threasher. “Tell Vernon that I’ll try to phone him later tonight. But for right now I’d better tell you this much: these people, that exquisite girl and that formidable Osage warrior, are here for the purpose of extirpating all Ingledews from their ancestral homeland, meaning Stay More.”
George’s mouth dropped open. “You don’t mean to tell me,” says he. “How come?”
“It’s a long story. Ask Vernon to explain it to you. But tell him that there is a ravishingly beautiful Osage girl who would be pure-blood except for one thing: Jacob Ingledew was her progenitor.”
Maybe it’s rude to stare, but George couldn’t take his eyes off Juliana Heartstays, standing over there on the porch of the old house, and it wasn’t just on account of she was such a sight for sore eyes. “Lord have mercy,” says he, “I reckon you’re fixing to talk ’em out of it.”
“If I can,” says she, and pats him on the arm and goes back to join the others.
George didn’t know whether to
go on home and call the county sheriff, his good buddy Mark Rupp, or just to call up the posse of Ingledew workers, the same fellers who had worked so hard to keep them nosy newsmen and cameramen from finding or getting to Vernon’s place. He could call up that posse and they could run these injuns out of town so fast they wouldn’t know what hit ’em.
But George decided he’d better go tell the bad news to Boss. So he turned his Explorer around and headed across the Swains Creek low-water bridge and on up the road that led to the mountain trail that climbed up to Vernon’s and Jelena’s. He was hungry, but he could count on Jelena to offer him a bite, if he didn’t have to sit at the table with them, stinking of hogballs as he did, if maybe they was just some way she could feed him out back with Vernon the cat.
The three of ’em was just a-setting out in the yard, drinking gin and tonic, all three of ’em. George didn’t much care for gin and tonic, and Boss knew it, even though he’d tried to explain to George that hot weather demanded gin and tonic with a wedge of lime in it.
Boss jumped up to fetch George some bourbon, the drink of his choice, hot weather or cold as a well-digger’s balls, and George pulled him up another chair, not too close to the others, and they sat and drank and talked. “Aint this the by-goddest weather ye ever seen?” George remarks, although in fact he’d seen much worse. But Bo allowed as how it was probably a lot hotter downstate, so it was a good thing they weren’t down there stump speaking already in places like Pine Bluff and El Dorado. Boss says he likes hot weather hisself. Jelena says she wonders why we’re all a-settin out here in the yard instead of inside the house where it’s nice and air-conditioned. George says he’d been cutting shoats all day and ought to stay out in the open air. Bo says settin in the yard is good for the constitution, and besides it puts us in touch with our Ozark ancestors.
George jumped on that remark for a excuse. “Speakin of Ozark ancestors,” he says, “they’s a coupla injuns just turned up down to Stay More town, in this here fancy old auto called a Pierce-Arrer, and that Woman Whom You Cannot Name is a-fixin to put ’em up for the night, and feed ’em and all.”
“Really?” says Boss.
“What tribe?” says Bo.
“Osage,” says George.
Nobody says nothing for a little while, then Boss says, “That ought to make her very happy. Do they speak Osage?”
“It appears so, I reckon,” George says. “There’s a feller and a gal, and the feller is just her car-driver but he’s this big old redskin brave looks like he ort to be on a horse with his bow’n arrer and his war paint and all. Nobody never told me that they made injuns that big. The gal is something else. I mean, let me tell you’uns, she’s something else. Nobody never told me that they made injun women that pretty.”
“Well well,” Bo says, “Maybe we ought to go meet her.”
“Not me,” says Boss.
“Ha!” says Bo. “I keep forgetting your legendary Ingledew woman-shyness.” He turned to Jelena like he was just a-making talk and says, “Tell me, Jelena, if it’s true that all Ingledews from time immemorial have been paralyzed in the presence of the opposite sex, how could Vernon be so chummy with you?”
Jelena smiled and says, “Because I’m an Ingledew myself.”
George figured that was as good a answer as any. But it also set him to figuring, if them injuns was out to exterminate all Ingledews, just how many Ingledews hereabouts was there? Boss and Jelena made two, Boss’s sister Sharon made three, and Boss’s dad, Hank Ingledew, made four. The injuns wouldn’t have no trouble finding Sharon, who lived just up the road a little piece from Cat’s house, but they’d probably have to search around a good bit to find Hank, who lived away off up high on the yon side of Ingledew Mountain.
And what was they fixing to do the exterminating with? George recalled Ben’s remark about “hired gun” and wondered if the redskin brave was packing a pistol or two. “Boss,” he says, “is there some reason why them injuns might be out to get you? The Ingledews didn’t drive them injuns’ ancestors out of town, did they?”
“I can answer that one,” Bo says, “based on my reading of Jacob Ingledew’s memoirs. There were only two Native Americans remaining in Stay More, an Osage brave named Wah Ti An Kah, called ‘Fanshaw,’ and his wife. Jacob and his brother Noah, who was shy not just toward women but toward anyone, especially Native Americans, lived in peaceful coexistence with the Native Americans through a whole winter and into the spring, when Fanshaw decided to leave and go westward in search of his kinsmen.
“Fanshaw had freely shared on many occasions the sexual favors of his wife with Jacob. Like all Ingledews, Jacob couldn’t tolerate the thought of seeing or being seen by a female, but apparently it had always been pitch dark when he’d succumbed to her allure and her passion. Fanshaw knew that he himself was sterile because his constant efforts to impregnate his wife had failed. So the baby that his wife was bearing when they departed Stay More was Jacob’s, but that was not by any means their reason for leaving. They left because…well, I suppose because they were lonely for their tribesmen, and, like people everywhere at all times who have to choose between love of place and love of family, decided they would sacrifice their ancestral homeland in favor of their kinfolks…if they could find them.”
Bo finished his little lesson and then he nudged Boss with his elbow and says, “Is that the way it was, Vernon?”
“In a nutshell,” Boss says, “although I suspect it’s a bit more complicated than that. I think Fanshaw didn’t harbor any jealously toward Jacob’s being the father of the baby, but on the other hand he didn’t want to raise the baby with two fathers, as it were. So he had to leave.”
“Whatever reason they left,” George says, “they’ve come back. What I mean is, this scrumptious injun gal I’m telling you about, right down in the town yonder, is a offshoot of Jacob Ingledew.”
They all three stared at George so fixedly he was of a mind to repeat back the immortal words of Thomas Bending Bear, “Excuse me, but you’re staring at me, and it’s rude.” But he didn’t say this.
“How do you know?” Bo says.
“What the Woman Whom We Cannot Name said to me, and tole me to tell ye,” George says. “And something else too. She said she’d try to phone ye, Boss, sometime tonight. But she says to warn ye, them injuns is here to wipe ye out. She said they was here for the purpose of extirpating all Ingledews from their ancestral homeland, meaning Stay More.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake?” says Jelena.
“We had better find out,” Bo says. “Surely they don’t think that the Ingledews drove the Native Americans out of Stay More.”
“Bo,” says Boss. “Do me a favor. You don’t have to say ‘injuns’ like George, but I think it’s hypocritical to say ‘Native Americans’ after they’ve been identified as Indians forever.”
“Political correctness is the first aim of politics,” says Bo.
“Let’s eat supper and talk some more about it,” says Jelena. And to George: “You stay to supper with us, hear?” George says he’d be mighty glad to, excepting he’s so smelly from wrassling them pigs he couldn’t sit at the table with them. Jelena says, “Dear heavens, Uncle George, Bo and I have been working in the garden all day and we smell just as bad as you do.”
So they sat at the dining table and ate. George didn’t much care for the cold gazpacho soup, but the tunafish casserole was edible, and Jelena’s homemade bread was always real good eatin. Right in the middle of supper the phone rang and it was for Vernon and he took it out of earshot and it went on for quite a time. His food got cold and Jelena decided not to wait for him to serve dessert, which was blackberry cobbler, and George had to have seconds on that. Nothing like hot cobbler with cold ice cream on top to make the whole meal just right.
They were still waiting for Boss to get back when Bo says to Jelena but with a glance now and again at George to let him know he’s not left out, “One thing I don’t understand. If these two Native—if these two I
ndians are here for the purpose of extirpating Ingledews, how would the Woman Whom We Cannot Name have found out about it? Did they just come right out and tell her? Assassins have to work in secrecy. Why would they have declared their intention to her?”
George says, “You got me on that one, but I reckon she let it be knowed right off that she wasn’t no Ingledew herself.”
Boss finally returned, smiling, and the first thing he says is maybe he won’t have to go meet that Indian lady after all, which suits him fine. George knows Boss would probably have fainted from shyness if he’d ever had to meet up face to face with that peach of a female.
“Well, I would certainly like to meet her,” Bo says.
“Nothing’s stopping you,” Boss says to him. “But you could wait until tomorrow. The Indian woman is going to be busy for the remainder of the night reading the memoirs of Jacob Ingledew, which the Woman suggested she read, to disabuse her of the notion that her ancestor, Fanshaw’s wife, was raped by Jacob.”
“Raped?” says Bo. “That’s preposterous.”
“Tell her that, when you see her,” Boss says.
Before leaving, George told Boss just to say the word and he’d round up the boys and give them injuns a escort out of the whole country. But Boss said that probably wouldn’t be necessary, even if it weren’t so inhospitable. “The least we can do,” Boss says, “is let them reclaim their ancestral campsite.”
So George just went on home and put it out of his mind for the rest of the night. But the very next morning, bright and early, while George was eating his Lucky Charms cereal, there come a knock at his door, and George snuck a peek out the window to see that there shiny Pierce-Arrow getting chummy with his Explorer. He opened the front door and there was the heap big injun. He was wearing a different Hawaiian shirt than he’d had on yesterday, but he still had that hired driver’s cap on his head.
“Good morning, George!” says Thomas Bending Bear, singing it more than saying it. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Naw, I just eating my breakfast,” George says, and knew it was rude not to invite a guest, even a strange injun, to join you. “Come in and have you a cup of coffee.” George poured him a mug, and even says, “Lucky Charms?”
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2 Page 124