The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  She (Sarah) was in a large room, much larger than any she had ever been in before, where there were many people, the women dressed in fantastic silken dresses with skirts as big as haymows, the men in black woolen coats with tails like a swallow’s, and Sarah was ashamed of her dusty buckskin frock, until she looked down at herself and saw that she too was dressed in a silken gown with skirt big as a haymow, the air circulating freely around her legs and loins. She saw Jacob, who was dressed in the finest of the black woolen swallowtail coats and was smoking a very large cigar, surrounded by other men who were listening to him talk and talk. He caught sight of her and blew her a kiss. Then he motioned for her to come over. She did, and he told her the names of each of the gentlemen around him, and then told them her name, and one by one they took her hand and bent sharply at the waist and placed their mouths on the back of her hand. She did not say anything. She did not know what to say. The other men then ignored her and resumed talking to Jacob. Each of them called him “Your Excellency.” Some of the women came and tried to talk to Sarah, but she did not know what to say, and was not sure that she understood what the women were saying, whether they were asking questions or just making statements. She was very embarrassed.

  But then the women stopped talking, because there was loud music coming from outside. Jacob came and took her hand and led her out onto the porch, and this porch was very high, there must be another house underneath it, and from this porch she could see that the yard and the road were filled with people, some of them in uniforms beating on drums and blowing bugles and fifes and all kinds of strange brass tooters and horns. Jacob waved to all the people, and they cheered “Huzzah!” He nudged her, so she waved too, and again they cheered “Huzzah!” The music-makers played louder, and the crowd cheered louder, and then, loudest of all, somebody fired off a battery of cannon, and the noise made Sarah start shaking.

  When she woke up, in the early morning, she discovered that she had both hands clamped tightly over her ears. She remembered the dream and tried to puzzle it out, but all she could get from it, if it were going to come true, was that someday she and Jacob were going to be of the better sort. Quality folks. She rose and took the bearskin off the window, to let in the morning light. Jacob was still sleeping. The quilt was off him. His buckskins were piled on the floor beside the mattress. Sarah’s cheeks waxed hot, seeing his bare prides, but then she noticed that his prides seemed mighty hot too, and, stooping for a closer look, saw that they, and the skin of his groin all around them, were covered with a red rash, thousands of tiny scarlet blisters, almost like chicken pox, but worse. At first she wondered if what she had done the night before might have caused it. She knew that what she had done was unnatural, not right, maybe a sin in the eyes of God. But then she remembered her brother Murray, and knew that her husband had the same terrible affliction.

  She shook him awake. “Frake, look, you’ve got the jakes!” she exclaimed, but corrected herself, “Jake, look, you’ve got the frakes!” He yawned and raised himself enough to take one look, then fell back to his original position, where he would remain for months on end.

  Jake’s frakes became the concern of the whole community; farfetched remedies were suggested and tried, but with no effect. Lizzie Swain recommended that Sarah try the blood of a black hen, but it worked no better for Jacob than it had for Murray. Noah appeared, clawed and scratched and bloody, with a quantity of panther urine that he made into a poultice, but it worked no better for Jacob than it had for Noah. Perilla Duckworth recommended a purgative from a decoction of white walnut bark peeled downward, and then an emetic from a decoction of white walnut bark peeled upward, but these only aggravated Jacob’s disposition. Destiny Whitter was certain that the frakes was just a form of erypsipelas, or “St. Anthony’s Fire,” which everybody knew could be easily cured with the blood of a black cat. All of the black cats of Stay More were rounded up, a total of nine, and, since it is terrible bad luck to kill a cat, particularly a black one, none were killed, but each had an ear snipped off and an inch removed from its tail, and enough black cat gore was collected to cover Jacob’s frakes in three coats after first washing off all the other stuff that had been applied and caked and dried.

  This bold treatment, needless to say, had absolutely no effect, and in time Jacob’s frakes erupted and healed over, but he remained abed with feelings of utter worthlessness, so melancholy that not even the birth of his firstborn, Benjamin, which happened then, could rouse him from his Slough of Despond. Nor did he receive any comfort from the confines of his new house, which lacked the certain snugness of the first Ingledew cabin and the Swain house, and was a constant reminder to him of the futility of human endeavor. He could no longer understand nor remember what had motivated him to build the house. Gradually it filled up with furniture, made by Noah; and Sarah, who in the last months of her pregnancy had taken up flax-spinning and weaving, made linen curtains for the windows and other cloth decorations, so that it was indeed the most elegant home in Stay More or all of Newton County, but this brought no cheer whatever to despairing Jacob.

  Almost as if Nature herself agreed with his forlorn mood, Stay More began to suffer its first severe drought. In early July, before any of the crops had been harvested except peas and spinach, the sixtieth day without rainfall occurred, and from then on it did not rain a drop for the rest of the summer. The creeks began to dry up, first Banty Creek and then Swains Creek itself, the deep holes of water remaining until last as diminishing puddles engorged with fish. If Jacob had cared, if he had not lost all sense of any purpose to life, he would have urged the people to harvest these fish and dry them as insurance against the famine ahead, but he did not, and the puddles dried until they were only mounds of dead fish. The springs from the mountainsides kept on trickling enough water for man and livestock, a few weeks after the creeks were bone dry, but then the springs began to fail, until there was no water, no trace of water of any kind, at all. By this time, the cornstalks were twisted freaks, and none of the other crops, not even the heat-loving Tah May Toh, were bearing any fruit. Great swarms of grasshoppers and locusts, apparently needing no water to survive, flew in on the hot wind and devoured all the remaining vegetation. The livestock began to die. The cows managed to find a few small tufts of brown grass and convert it into a liquid that vaguely resembled milk, which was rationed: one-half saucer of this per person per day. But soon that ration was reduced to one-quarter saucer, and then one-eighth, and then measured in drops: ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, none, none.

  The cows knelt and died. The people who felt like it (and by this time Jacob was not the only person feeling useless and helpless) loaded their oak-stave barrels and tubs and buckets and pails into their wagons, and drove off down the dry creek in search of water. Days later they returned with some murky river water. They reported that the people of Mount Parthenon were dry and suffering too; the Little Buffalo River was dry all along its length; they had followed it into the Big Buffalo, which was also dry, and followed that into the White River, which still had puddles remaining here and there, but each of these puddles was guarded day and night by fierce men with shotguns; they followed the White for miles before finding a puddle that was not guarded, and there they filled their oak-stave containers with this murky swill. They hauled it back to Stay More, strained it, and discovered that after removing all of the fish, minnows, tadpoles, crawdads, turtles, water moccasins, and a few beaver, they had only half as much water as they had started with, and then this water had to be boiled for so long to purify it that half again evaporated, so they were left with only a quarter of what they had found, and this had to be strictly rationed: a half-saucer per day per person. And then a quarter-saucer, an eighth, and so on, down, down.

  These people of Stay More had come originally from eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, and northern Georgia, an area of the country which has more consistent annual rainfall than any other, and not one of these persons, even the
oldest, had ever known a drought before. Since the drought had coincided so closely with the onslaught of Jacob’s frakes, the people began to wonder, naturally, if there was any connection. If Jacob Ingledew, who was their much-respected steward, shepherd, chieftain, or at least official mayor, had no hope, and couldn’t care less whether it rained or not, then that might well be the reason it didn’t. Many of the Stay Morons who had been performing superstitious acts to make it rain, with no luck, or praying to God for rain, with less luck, began to wonder if they had not better and more profitably direct their attentions to Jacob Ingledew instead of to God. A delegation of the menfolk was appointed, and they appeared, hats in hands, beside Jacob’s bed.

  Elijah Duckworth, their spokesman, spoke: “Squire Ingledew, sir, we’uns is powerful pervoked by the lack of rain, and seein as how yore affliction come smack dab at the same time, we’uns has got to wonderin if they might be tied up some way, one with th’other.”

  Jacob stared at Elijah Duckworth for a while and studied the notion. “I hadn’t thought of that, Lige,” he declared. “I don’t do much thinkin, one way or the other, lately.”

  “Do ye want it to rain, or not?” Elijah asked.

  “Tell ye the truth, I don’t honestly keer,” Jacob replied.

  “But you’re shore to starve of thirst along with the rest of us.”

  “I reckon so,” Jacob acknowledged.

  “Do ye want yore womarn and that fine young’un to die too?” Elijah demanded. (Sarah at this time was one of the few living creatures in Stay More still producing liquid, nursing the baby Benjamin, by dint of the efforts of her mother and her many brothers and sisters, who pooled a portion of their daily ration of water for her.)

  “What kin I do?” Jacob lamented morosely and rhetorically. “What kin ary man do? What’s the use, nohow?”

  “Mind if we set down?” Elijah Duckworth asked. Jacob gestured feebly toward the new mule-eared chairs that Noah had made, and the men drew them up beside Jacob’s bed and sat in them.

  Then, one by one, each man told the funniest joke he could remember. Elijah told of an old man trying to trade mules and offering to another feller a strong, lively horse mule, who, however, while being examined, ran head-on into a big tree. “‘Why, that critter must be blind,’ says the feller the old man was trying to trade with. ‘Naw,’ says the old man, ‘he aint blind. He jist don’t give a damn.’”

  All of the men laughed and slapped their thighs and elbowed each other, but Jacob did not stir. They eyed him carefully for any sign of perhaps a twitching at the corner of his mouth or even a slight sparkle in his eye, but there was none. Maybe he had taken it too personal, they decided. So Levi Whitter told one about his oldest boy, Tim, who everybody knew was not over-bright, how Levi was rolling a load of cow manure out to his field when Tim asked him what he was going to do with it, and Levi answered “I’m going to put it on my strawberries,” and Tim give a snort and says, “I put honey and cream on mine, and everybody says I’m a damn fool!”

  Jacob didn’t seem to care much for that one either, so Zachariah Dinsmore thought to play upon Jacob’s disdain for religion by telling one about a preacher who stopped by to look over a farmer’s spread and says, “Well, you and the Lord have sure raised some fine corn.” Then when he seen the hogs, he says, “With God’s help, you have got a lot of good pork.” Finally they was looking at the garden next to the barn, and the preacher says, “You and God have sure growed some fine vegetables.” The farmer was losing his patience, and says, “Listen, Preacher, you ought to have seen this here farm when God was a-runnin it all by Hisself!”

  But this too failed to provoke any glimmer of mirth in Jacob Ingledew. The men started over, and told a round of the second-funniest jokes they could remember, and then a round of the third-funniest, and so on, and by the time they got to their ninth-funniest jokes they weren’t even laughing themselves, so they gave up and went home.

  The drought dragged on, the hot winds parched the flesh, the woods caught fire, and acres of virgin timber burned unchecked, leaving vast black scabs of burnt-out woodland on what had once been the beautiful countryside. Perhaps mercifully, the fires exterminated all of the woods-creatures who were dying of thirst. There would be no game to hunt during the coming famine.

  A delegation of womenfolk came next to Jacob, and they stood around his bed, singing happy and pleasant inspirational songs in soprano-contralto harmony. They sang “Keep on the Sunny Side of Life” and “Home, Sweet Home” and “Burdens Are Blessings” and “Smile All the While” and “Bright Cheer Year by Year” and “Oh Happy Day” and “Juberous Times” and “Ah, Happy Heart, Light the Long Hours Ever So Gaily and Anon.” Yet, even though this last was a brilliant coloratura number, Jacob’s mood remained essentially unaltered. In fact, so steadfast did his mood remain that it infected the women, who began singing sad songs until Sarah shooed them off.

  Then Sarah’s breasts began to dry, and baby Benjamin spent long hours wailing for milk that he could not get. Was Jacob at least stricken by his small son’s cries? If he was, it was hard to tell.

  A delegation of young people came next to Jacob’s bedside, where they performed stunts, antics, headstands, slapsticks and pratfalls, roughhouse and gymnastics, roister and fling and shindig, merrymaking to melt the heart of all but the most hopeless case…which Jacob, unfortunately, was, and remained. The summer passed, and although in September the temperature dropped slightly below 100° for the first time in weeks, there was still no rain. Nobody but the women had anything to do. The women still had to cook, whatever corn and meal remained from the year before, whatever salt pork, whatever reptiles that had not perished. The women tried to find occupation for the men and boys by putting them to work with the carding and spinning of wool shorn from the dead sheep, and scutching and swingling flax to be spun into linen thread, and even with the weaving itself. The making of dry goods, with ironic symbolism, became a busy industry during the drought. Come winter, even if there was no food to eat, everybody would have plenty of clothes and could shed their buckskins. If everybody died, they could at least be buried in fine raiment.

  The next delegation to Jacob’s bedside, the last delegation (for they alone remained to try), were the children. The children came, seventeen of them, and stood around his bed. They had no jokes to tell, nor songs to sing, nor stunts to do. They were indescribably dirty, because nobody had had a bath or a swim in three months and children naturally need washing more often anyway. They were thin too, not starving yet, but close to it. Among these children were the younger sons and daughters of Lizzie Swain, the same children who had worn such big smiles when Jacob first saw them, the same who had been so happy and excited to find a new home in a beautiful, bountiful wilderness. None of them were smiling now. They just stood around with their pinched soiled faces staring at Jacob in his bed. He became, finally, aware of them.

  “What do you little squirts want?” he asked.

  Nine-year-old Octavia Swain, their spokesperson, spoke. “Uncle Jake,” she said, “you aint got nothin to do, and neither has we’uns. So let’s us start us a school, and you be the teacher.”

  “Gosh all hemlock,” Jacob groaned. “What would be the use?”

  “So’s we’uns could git the smarts, like you,” she explained.

  “What’s the use of bein smart?” he demanded. “Class, let me see a hand! Who’s the first to answer? What’s the use of bein smart?”

  And without realizing it, Jacob had already founded the first Stay More elementary school. The pupils sat, two by two, on the floor around Jacob’s bed, and he even sat up in his bed for the first time in months. One little boy timidly raised his hand and Jacob called on him.

  “If yo’re smart, you kin git rich easy,” offered the boy.

  “That aint no answer,” Jacob responded. “What’s the use of bein rich? Come on, let’s see if there’s anybody knows the answer. Let me see another hand.”

  None of the children
raised their hands, until finally Octavia Swain lifted hers.

  “You, Tavy,” Jacob said.

  “Well, sir,” she offered, standing up, “if I was smart, I could use my brain to answer hard questions like, ‘What’s the use of bein smart?’” She sat down.

  Jacob thought about that for a moment, and then he did something he hadn’t done in a coon’s age: he laughed. Well, it wasn’t exactly an all-out gutbusting hawr-de-hawr horselaugh, but at least it was a respectable straight-up-and-down chortle, and when he did, the students laughed too. “Tavy,” he said, admiringly, “I ’low as how that’s as good a answer as any. Okay. Now it’s your turn. Axe me a question.”

  Octavia stood up again. “Sir, how kin we git water?”

  Jacob frowned. “That’s a tough one,” he said. “Let me study on it a minute.” His first impulse was to tell them that the only way they could get water would be to leave, abandon Stay More, go back where they all came from, where there was always a plenty of water even if an overplenty of people. But he did not suggest this. Instead he meditated on the meaning of rainfall, the circulation of waters, and the certainty of recurrence. A man could be sure of only one thing: a drought is always ended by a rainfall. But where does all the water go during the drought? He knew that the waters ran to the rivers and the rivers ran to the sea but the sea didn’t run anywhere. If Swains Creek and the Buffalo River were empty, was the sea flooded? He remembered Fanshaw’s theory of gravity, and the notion that the earth is round. If all the creeks and rivers were empty on this side of the earth, and the seas weren’t flooded, then all the water must be over on the other side of the earth. But if that were so, and the earth really rolled around the sun as Fanshaw said it did, then it would wobble, and you’d feel it wobbling. No, the water must be someplace else. It couldn’t all be evaporated up into the sky because if it were then the sky would be full of clouds that would soon rain. So if the seas had their share and couldn’t hold any more, and the rivers were empty and the sky was clear, the only other place the water possibly could be was right down inside the earth.