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 ca
r, 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 yours
elf. “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.”]
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1 Page 71