The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  The Ingledews were somewhat relieved, not because they hadn’t enjoyed watching the shows, but because Brother Stapleton and his sister had continued to lodge and dine at Isaac’s and Salina’s house, and the preacher had almost eaten them out of house and home. He had also, unbeknownst to them, been banishing the sourhours of Perlina and Drussie by giving the girls private screenings of some of his short subjects and previews of coming attractions, although these were all “decent,” that is, presentable. Perlina and Drussie both loved him madly, and they had walked out of the Adam and Eve show not because they were offended but because all the other women and girls were walking out and they figured it was expected of them. In truth they had been fascinated, but couldn’t admit it, even to each other. Each of them wanted to ask Brother Stapleton privately to show them the part they had missed after walking out, but neither of them could quite muster the nerve. Ingledew girls were never afflicted with man-shyness in the way that all Ingledews boys were afflicted with woman-shyness, but all the same there were limits to what a girl could ask a preacher to do.

  And yet when they heard that the deacons had decreed there would be no more shows at the meeting house, they feared that Brother Stapleton would leave them for good and go somewhere else, and then the sourhours would come back again and bog them down forevermore. Perlina, at least, the older of the two sisters, would do anything to avoid that. So she washed her hair with sassafras-bark shampoo and drank a quart of tea made from butterfly weed, both of which are good for nerve, then she sought and found Brother Stapleton when he was alone and requested, “Show me the rest of that show.”

  “Where did you leave?” he wanted to know.

  “The part where she’d done birthed Cain and they were fixin to make Abel.”

  “It gits awful free and fast, there,” he warned her.

  “I don’t keer. I want to see it,” she insisted.

  Long Jack Stapleton threaded his projector and allowed Perlina to view a re-run of the end of the Adam and Eve story, when the amatory couple were giving themselves up to their urges with such frequency and force and noise that even their animals watched them with great curiosity. It was almost more than Perlina could bear, but she watched it all, to the end, and realized that unless this man would have her right then and there she would start howling like a heifer in heat. Yet when she embraced him he gently separated himself from her. “Fer the love of God!” she entreated, trying unsuccessfully to attach herself to him, “I’m burnin up!”

  “I caint,” he said ruefully. “I aint able.”

  “You’re a man, aint ye?” she protested.

  He shook his head. “Not exactly.”

  “Huh?” she said. “What does that mean?”

  “I caint tell ye,” he said, and took his leave of her.

  But Perlina could not give up. The next time she saw Long Jack’s sister, Sirena, she asked her why, or how, or where, her brother was not a man. Sirena blushed, and whispered into Perlina’s ear the details of an “accident” that had befallen Long Jack in his young manhood, an accident related to his nickname, in a reverse sort of way. Perlina was saddened by this news, but also felt such a great wave of compassion for Long Jack, as well as a desire to keep him and his shows in Stay More, that she went to him and told him she wanted to marry him despite his “shortcoming.” Her proposal moved him to tears. In the woods, the first bud of springtime opened, as the temperature climbed above freezing for the first time in months.

  Meanwhile, in the kitchen of the Ingledew house, Sirena Stapleton walked boldly up to the table where the four brothers were sitting and boldly asked, “Which one of you is named John?” All four of them avoided her eyes, but the one named John managed to put his index finger on his Adam’s apple.

  “I gotta talk to you,” she said to him.

  “I caint,” he said ruefully. “I aint able.”

  “You’re a man, aint ye?” she protested.

  “That’s why I caint,” he observed.

  She grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet and dragged him out of the kitchen and across the breezeway into the privacy of the other wing of the dogtrot, where she informed him, “I’m in the family way.”

  “Yeah, but you’re leavin, aint ye?”

  “I mean, I’m knocked up.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m with child,” she said, patting her abdomen.

  “Do tell? Wal, I’ll lend my shotgun to yore brother, and he’ll make the feller marry ye, if ye want.”

  “The feller was you.”

  “Huh? Why, I never!”

  She explained. John was blushing furiously, and as she described what had transpired, he nearly burst with embarrassment. How could she say such things to him? Worse, how could a girl have done such a thing to him? It sure was a good thing he had been asleep, or else he would have been powerfully mortified. He daydreamed all the time about laying with this pretty redhead Sirena, but the thought that he had actually done it, or that she had done it to him without his knowing it, made him want to go and dig a deep hole and jump in it and cover himself up. He wished she would hush up. He wished she would let him alone and not even look at him again, but he knew that a feller has to live up to his responsibilities, and if he was the baby’s father then he would just have to be the baby’s father.

  It was a double wedding. Brother Stapleton granted his sister’s hand in marriage to John Ingledew, then he asked Isaac Ingledew for Perlina’s hand. Isaac, being taciturn, managed to nod. There being no ministers in Stay More other than himself, he officiated at his own nuptials and those of his sister and brother-in-law. The day of the wedding was full springtime; it would not be cold for another year. The weddings were duly attended by all the other Ingledews but no one else, because the deacons forbade it. The deacons were going to be in for a surprise.

  Perlina never did tell a soul about her husband’s shortcoming, which wasn’t so short that she didn’t conceive and bear a large family over the years. Since Long Jack Stapleton was now living his own love story, he didn’t feel any need whatever to preach the love stories of the Bible, although he still had the power to speak word pictures more graphic than movies, and when he promised the deacons never to show any “undecent” pictures anymore they reluctantly let him use the meeting house again, and he began showing stories of the great battles in the Bible, scenes of bloodshed and gore, flashing swords and decapitation, torture and pillage and scourging and mutilation. He packed the people in, and even the deacons themselves returned to his services, where they sat at their select bench with their eyes glued to the images, and one or the other of them would urge on the action with “Praise the Lord!” and “Amen!” and “Gawd git ’em!” As summertime wiped out the last trace of the long bitter winter, people came from all over Newton County to see Brother Stapleton’s shows; the meeting house wouldn’t hold them all, so he had to give matinées in the afternoon and candlelit productions at night. He even began the practice of passing a plate for free will offering, and gleaned enough coins to support Perlina and himself in fairly good style.

  They lived happily ever after.

  Chapter ten

  The first general merchandise store in Stay More was the work and the business of Isaac’s younger brother, Christopher Columbus “Lum” Ingledew. We have caught only glimpses of him—his refusing to go with his mother to Little Rock, his helping Isaac build the mill and then handling the concession during the ceremony of the engine-firing, his serving as postmaster during the Decade of Light—he has not been conspicuous, perhaps because he was not marked with any specific characteristic comparable to Isaac’s taciturnity; Lum was not very talkative, but neither was he reticent: he said what had to be said, and did what had to be done, and one thing that had to be done was to build and operate a general merchandise store, because the population of Stay More was exploding. During the Second Spell of Darkness, fondness for ’maters and the concealing dark were a potent combination of factors fostering conception.
Old Jacob Ingledew decreed that no more settlers would be allowed to immigrate into Stay More because it was so crowded already, and his decree remained the law, but even without further immigration the population went on exploding. A high incidence of inbreeding naturally resulted in the birth of a more than common number of defectives, usually idiots. The people of Stay More did not know that the origin of the word idiot, pronounced “idjit” or “eejit,” is the Greek idios, meaning private. The idiots of Stay More were not private; they were very public; they were allowed to come and go as they pleased.

  Lum Ingledew’s general merchandise store was erected on the main road, near the mill, in front of the mill (shown in the rear of our illustration), but even after he finished it the people continued to use the mill as their communal gathering place, out of habit and out of respect for Isaac, although the porch and yard of the mill were now so crowded that a person couldn’t sit down. So, because idiots usually prefer to sit, or squat, or kneel, or recline in various postures, and because there was no room for them at the mill, they began to use the porch of Lum’s store. Our illustration does not show them there, but that is where they were. Lum didn’t mind, so long as they did not wander into the store and tamper with the merchandise. They were speechless and made no talk to distract him while he was waiting on customers. Although they were speechless and lacked full control of their faces and limbs, they nevertheless possessed curiosity, and liked to loll on the store porch watching the world go by. Lum had a barrel of black walnuts, and when he wasn’t busy waiting on customers, he would crack the walnuts, pick their meats, and distribute them among the idiots, because it was popularly believed that the black walnut, whose shell resembles the human skull and whose meat resembles the human brain, is a good cure for mental deficiency. For years Lum fed black walnuts to the idiots who frequented his store porch, but it never seemed to do any good.

  Sportsmen from the cities, St. Louis and Kansas City and even Chicago, began coming to Stay More to hunt and fish (nobody knows who betrayed to the cities the secret that the waters of Stay More were teeming with easy-to-catch fish, and that the air was full of fine game birds, but at any rate the sportsmen came) and they patronized Lum Ingledew’s store, buying their tackle and ammunition from him, and buying tins of sardines and Vienna sausages to eat on crackers for their lunch; he also sold them whiskey. The sportsmen could not help noticing the idiots on the porch, and, unaware that the normal population was congregating at the mill behind the store, they mistakenly assumed that the idiots were typical, and they carried back to their cities a gross misrepresentation of the Ozark people, which is undoubtedly the origin of all of the spurious humor, not to mention the ridicule, that has been perpetuated ever since. In fact the idiots represented only a very small percentage of the populace. The sportsmen also depleted the reserves of fish and game, but nobody protested, either because they didn’t know what was happening or because, like Lum, they needed the money that the sportsmen brought with them and spent. An occasional sportsman would invite one or two of the idiots to accompany him fishing or hunting, although he would soon discover that idiots are useless for practically anything.

  The idiots of Stay More never got the sourhours; they sometimes attended, but could not understand, Brother Stapleton’s Magic Bible Shows; but they were never afflicted with the sourhours, nor, indeed, any emotion or feeling: they neither grieved over deaths nor exulted over pleasures. If they especially enjoyed eating, it was not possible to tell. They slept because it came natural to them. The only thing that they apparently wanted to do, and which they did all the time, was to loll and squat on the porch of Lum’s store. They were loitering there thus one afternoon when Eli Willard next returned to Stay More.

  Eli Willard was distressed, on two accounts: 1, he was sorry to see that Stay More now had a full-fledged general store, to compete with his peddling; and 2, he was sorry to see that the younger generation of Stay Morons were such sorry specimens; some of them looked like the Mongolians he had seen on his trip around the world. Maybe, he thought, these were the same uncouth youngsters who had thrown rocks at him when he had brought his rejected message of Unitarianism. He was not now carrying that message; he had returned to traffic in material goods, particularly, this time around, grooming aids, which these youths on the store porch could obviously put to good use. In addition to a line of toothbrushes, ear cleaners, hair tonics, body braces and trusses and other grooming aids, he had rebottled (and perfumed) his unsold kerosine and was now marketing it as “Willard’s Miracle All-Purpose Hand Cleaner and Lubricant.”

  He began with a demonstration of this latter. He dipped his hands into the dust of the road and covered his hands thoroughly with dirt, rubbing and smearing the dirt all over his hands. The idiots watched him closely. Then from a container in his wagon, he took out handfuls of soot and blacked his hands. “Now, watch,” he said, needlessly, since all eyes hung on his every move. He uncapped a bottle of his miracle all-purpose hand cleaner, poured some into one palm, and rubbed his hands together. Presto! All the dirt and soot were loosened and he wiped it off on a towel. “Two bits a bottle,” he said, and held three bottles in each hand, offering them, but there were no takers. Perhaps, he reflected, there was no future whatever in kerosine, as far as Stay More was concerned.

  Then he demonstrated the toothbrush. The idiots stared at him. He next demonstrated the ear cleaner, which had a tiny scoop at one end and a sponge at the other end of an ornate ivory handle. The idiots not only stared at him but also at one another. He next demonstrated the hair tonic. Since his own hair was mostly gone, he selected a bushy-headed boy from his audience. As he sprinkled the tonic on the boy’s hair the boy began whimpering and kicking.

  “But doesn’t it instantly make your scalp feel better?” Eli Willard asked. The boy continued whimpering; the others began edging away from him; they all scuttled hurriedly into the store. Lum Ingledew looked up from his account book and was puzzled to see all of the idiots rushing into his store. He went out to investigate.

  “What’s a-gorn on?” he demanded of Eli Willard, but then recognized him and exclaimed, “Why, if it aint ole Eli Willard!” He noticed the items of merchandise and said, “Preachin didn’t make ye no money, did it?”

  “I’m afraid it didn’t,” Eli Willard admitted.

  “Reckon me and you is sorta rivals, then,” Lum observed. “I’m the propriorater of this here store. What-all you got thar?” Eli Willard showed him the various grooming aids. “I don’t carry none a them,” Lum observed, “so maybe we aint rivals atter all.”

  “My luck hasn’t turned,” Eli Willard observed. “Even though all of these are cheaply priced, I failed to sell a single one of them to those young people.”

  Lum Ingledew laughed. “Them young people is idjits. Put all their brains in one pile, you’d have maybe a cupful.”

  Eli Willard meditated upon that curious circumstance. “In all of the rest of the world,” he declared, “idiots are placed in institutions.”

  “Is that a fack? Wal, I reckon folks hereabouts couldn’t afford it.”

  “The government pays for it. I’m sure the good state of Arkansas has an asylum somewhere that would take them in, free of charge.”

  “Wal, heck, they aint done no harm,” Lum said in their defense. “We jist let ’em alone and they keep to theirself and don’t bother a soul. If you want to hug one, it’ll hug ye right back.”

  Eli Willard shuddered at the thought. The idiots were crowded into the doorway of the store, peering out at him.

  We may note that although the Ingledew General Store was not bigeminal in the strictest sense of having two separate parts or doors, it had three double doors, which almost amounts to the same thing, except that there was no distinction as to which side of the double door was used by which sex: male and female alike used either side. Huddled close together, all of the idiots of Stay More could crowd into the center doorway and peer out at Eli Willard. Since he was no longer rubbing
dirt on his hands or sticking things in his ear or threatening to pour liquid on their heads, they lost their fear of him and gradually returned to the porch, where they resumed sitting or squatting or kneeling or reclining, and continued staring at him. He was disconcerted, and drove his wagon on over to the mill, where people with minds were, and sold them toothbrushes, liquid and powder dentifrices, ear cleaners, trusses, and other grooming aids, including many, many bottles of his Miracle All-purpose Hand Cleaner. A year later, Sirena Ingledew, happening to light her cob pipe right after using the hand cleaner, discovered that the liquid was inflammable, and, after chanting a secret saying to draw the fire out of her burns, she poured some of the hand cleaner into an old lamp and made the further discovery that it could serve as a fuel. The Second Spell of Darkness was over.

  But while the Spell of Darkness came to an end, and the school and post office were restored, the population explosion went on. The forests on the steepest hillsides were girdled and turned into pasture, and large quantities of Willard’s Miracle All-purpose Hand Cleaner were deliberately poured onto the forest floor to ignite it and burn the forest and create more pastures and fields. Any piece of ground that could be cultivated was plowed up. The farmed plots became progressively steeper, up the sheer mountainsides, until the farmers began falling out of their fields, but that did not stop them; their sons carried on. Isaac’s mill ran twenty-four hours a day; since he never slept, he worked always, stopping only to eat. Lum Ingledew hired both John and Willis to clerk full time in his store, but still business was so brisk that another general merchandise store was opened at the other end of what had now become Main Street, and in between there were established offices of physicians and dentists.