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 Mal
ls, 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 toget
her 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?”
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1 Page 72