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 liv
ed 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.”
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“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.
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1 Page 87