During the pastoral age symbolized by our barn, there was an influx of new homesteaders, not farmers but people from the cities, mostly single women. A smart land lawyer in Jasper got rich by challenging in court Jacob Ingledew’s decree against further immigration, on the grounds that it violated the Homestead Act, and winning the case, and selling his services to people suffering from “city fever” who wanted to get back to the land. These people had spent all their lives in the cities, laboring in business and industry, saving their pennies, and dreaming of a better life. There appeared on the newsstands of the cities a rash of new magazines: Country Life in America, America Outdoors, Rural Digest, Arcadian Times, Hill and Dale, Silvan Weekly, Ladies’ Bucolic Companion, Back-country Journal, Pastoral Pictures, extolling the healthful benefits of a return to the soil.
The only possible real return to the soil is to the grave, but the magazines did not believe it. They sent their reporters out across the land. One of them, a young woman from Arcadian Times, published in Chicago, got lost in the backcountry and stumbled upon Stay More. She walked down the Main Street, slowly, with her notebook in hand, pausing now and then to write “impressions.” The Stay Morons watched her. She was wearing a skirt that came down to a pair of high button shoes, and a ruffled blouse that revealed most of her shoulders; beneath these garments she wore a corset which constricted her waistline to, as one observer put it, “not no more thick than my thigh.” She entered Willis Ingledew’s General Store and browsed around, mumbling from time to time, “How quaint,” and pausing to write impressions in her notebook.
“Could I be of some hep to ye, ma’am?” Willis asked her.
She stared at him, then smiled with delight, and requested, “Say that again, please.”
“Could I be of some hep to ye, ma’am?” he repeated patiently.
She wrote these words down in her notebook, then asked, “What is the name of this place?” Willis pointed at the post office in one corner of the store, where a sign clearly said, “U.S. Post Office, Stay More, Ark.” She wrote this down, then said, “Oh! Is that your post office?”
“Nome,” said Willis, “it’s the undertaker’s.”
The young woman was moved to remark, “Ha, ha.” Then she wrote this down in her notebook.
“Was you wantin to buy anything, lady?” Willis asked.
After writing this down, the woman said, “No, thank you. I’m simply gathering gleanings. What is your name?”
“Willis Ingledew, ma’am,” he replied.
“How quaint,” she said, and wrote this down, then wandered on out of the store. She strolled along to the gristmill, and walked all the way around it to the creek. It was in busy operation, but over the noise of the machinery she approached Isaac Ingledew and asked him, “Does it really run?” Isaac slowly shook his head. “How tall are you, by the way?” she asked. Isaac held out his hand at the level of his headtop, to indicate how tall he was. This tactic provoked her to comment, “Hee, hee.” Then she scribbled in her notebook. She asked him, “And what is your name, sir?”
One of the other men at the mill said to her, “Hit’s Isaac Ingledew, lady, and he don’t like to talk none, so you’d best not be askin him no questions.”
“How quaint. Are you related to Willis Ingledew?” she asked Isaac. He shook his head. “You look as if you might be his father,” she observed. “Why is it that you don’t like to talk?” He did not answer. “Perhaps you have a congenital speech impediment that medical science could cure? Or possibly it’s psychological. Do you understand psychology?” He made no response. “It could be that when you were a child something frightened you speechless and you’ve never been able to talk since.”
“Lady,” said one of the other men, “he aint never been frightened by man nor beast in his whole life long, so you’re jist a-wastin yore time. He don’t like to talk because—”
“Not so fast,” said the young woman, taking notes as rapidly as she could. “I can’t keep up with you.”
“He don’t like to talk because he don’t like to talk. Now why don’t you ask me somethin, and leave him alone?”
“Very well. What is your name, sir?”
“Puddin Tame,” he replied.
“How do you spell that last name?”
“I caint spell, ma’am.”
“How quaint. Have you lived here all your life?”
He felt his pulse. “No. Not yet.”
“Hi, hi,” she commented. “What work do you do?”
“I keep the ’skeeters out of the mill.”
“Mosquitoes? How do you keep them out?”
“With my shotgun.”
“My. Are they that big?”
“You aint seen any Stay More ’skeeters yet? Wal, iffen ye do, don’t swat at one. Jist makes it mad. Fling rocks at it as fast as ye kin.”
“I believe you are having me on, sir,” she said, closing her notebook and leaving the mill. But as she strolled further about the village she kept her eyes open, and at one point she bent down and picked up a rock which she carried in her hand. She caught sight of the unusual Ingledew barn and walked all around it, noting that it had no windows and was dramatically cantilevered. She walked into the passageway that ran through it, where she heard voices coming from the loft above. She listened, hearing an off-color joke. Then she climbed to the top of the ladder, with difficulty on account of her ankle-length dress. The young Ingledews were surprised to see this elegant young lady holding a notebook in one hand and a rock in the other. Hastily they buttoned themselves. “How quaint,” the elegant young lady was moved to comment. “What is this?” None of them answered. “Is this your house?” They looked at one another and then nodded in unison. “What is all the dried grass for?” she asked. “Oh, is it to sleep on?” They nodded. She looked at Lola. “Are you the lady of the house?” Lola nodded. “Which of them is your husband?” “All of ’em,” declared Lola solemnly. “How quaint. Even him?” she said, indicating thirteen-year-old Raymond. Lola nodded. “What are your names?” “Ingledew.” “All of you?” They nodded. The elegant young lady climbed down the ladder.
She noticed the two cribs, which were empty; the horses and cows were out to pasture. One of the horses, she noticed, was mounted upon one of the cows. To herself she remarked, “How quaint.” Then somehow she found the road to Jasper. As she walked along it, a turkey buzzard flew out of a tree in her direction. She screamed and threw the rock she was carrying at it. The rock missed, but the turkey buzzard did not come and sting her. At Jasper she caught a coach which took her to Harrison, where she caught a train back to Chicago. Not long afterwards, an issue of Arcadian Times carried her article, “A Most Quaint Village Deep in the Ozarks,” with wood engravings by the staff artist illustrating a typical home filled with dried grass, a giant mosquito, and a seven-foot inhabitant who never spoke. All of the inhabitants, said the article, were named Hinkledew, with the exception of a Mr. Tame, who had told her how to deal with the giant mosquitoes. The region was an utterly enchanting and enchanted one. The people ground their own flour and meal in an enormous mill powered by a steam engine. The post office was in the general store. The only painted buildings in town were the small offices of two doctors and two dentists. The people were polyandrous, one woman having as many as six husbands; there was probably a shortage of women. Their pastimes were sensual. The pastimes of the horses and cows were sensual. Everything, except for the giant mosquitoes, was utterly enchanting.
As a direct or indirect result of this article, people from the cities, particularly women, who had slaved as clerks and secretaries and millworkers, saving their money and dreaming of a better life, withdrew their deposits, packed their bags, and took the train to Harrison, where a coach took them to Jasper, where they hired the land lawyer to drive them to Stay More, and homesteaded every tract of land that had not been claimed. The men of Stay More were hired to build their houses for them; at first, the women insisted on a house that resembled the Ingledew barn, bu
t, being assured that the barn was a barn, they accepted log cabins. For fifty dollars cash, a Stay Moron would build them a simple and quite habitable log cabin. These cabins are not illustrated here because they were anachronisms. They looked like Jacob Ingledew’s first cabin, but the door was in the gable end and the windows on the sides. Today the ruins and skeletons of these cabins are mistaken for early settlers’ houses.
The women homesteaders were flirtatious with their builders, and the building went slow, interrupted by many a roll in the bushes. Even though these women enjoyed and were undoubtedly grateful for these rendezvous, they were condescending toward the Stay Morons, openly referring to them as “blue-eyed monkeys.” Once the cabins were built, these women enlisted the Stay More menfolk to the cause of their rural education: how to plant a garden, how to tell the difference between a large mosquito and a turkey buzzard. During “nature study” hikes in the woods, they would pause frequently for further gratification of the flesh. A Stay More woman, suspicious because her husband was no longer making any demands on her, followed him into the woods one day and caught him at it, and spread the word to the other women of Stay More, who also suddenly realized that their husbands were no longer making demands on them, and were outraged at the boldness of these city women; the women of Stay More determined that they would not allow their husbands into their beds again until their husbands gave up philandering the city women; this stratagem had the reverse of the intended effect. For a long time the women of Stay More were unhappy and jealous. But everyone else was happy. The newcomers were good for the economy. The money they spent to have their cabins built went into the pockets of the natives. They bought their groceries from Willis Ingledew or the other general store, and bought their flour from the mill. They were not good at gardening, not the first year anyway, and were required to buy their produce from the local people. The first year too they had not acquired immunity to the twenty-three Stay More viruses, and they often patronized the two local doctors. Everybody, except the wives of Stay More, agreed that the city women were the best thing that ever happened to Stay More.
One day one of the city women suggested to her paramour, “Why don’t you leave your wife to her other husbands and come and be mine?” Her paramour laughed and said, “Where’d ye git the idee my old womarn had another man?” And then the awful truth was out. One by one, the city women learned that Stay Morons were not polyandrous after all, that, in fact, there was a slight surplus of females in the population, which the city women had increased. But it was too late. They had invested their life savings to have the cabins built and to establish roots in the enchanted backcountry. They loved the fresh air and the sunshine, and the smell of wildflowers and weeds and the creekwater. They loved their blue-eyed monkey lovers, even if they could never marry them. They could not go back to the cities. So they tried as best as they could to adapt themselves to Stay More life. The many snakes and reptiles of Stay More frightened them, and their general nervousness caused all of them to smoke a lot of cigarettes, in the privacy of their cabins. Their Stay More lovers discovered that cigarettes aren’t as much bother as a pipe, and can also be inhaled, and the Stay More men took up the smoking of cigarettes, in public as well as in private, and were nagged by the womenfolk, who warned them that the cigarettes, no less than the city women, would be their undoing.
One night the whole sky seemed to explode with gigantic sparks, in what was one of the rare reappearances of the comet known as Halley’s but unknown to the Stay Morons, who interpreted it as a cosmic caution to give up their sinful ways. Although they did not give up the smoking of cigarettes, they gave up philandering with the city women. The city women were required to turn their attention to unmarried men. But all of the unmarried men were Ingledews, who, the city women were dismayed to discover, were too shy even to notice them, except Willis Ingledew, who waited on them in his general merchandise store but who, if he talked at all, talked endlessly about his experiences at the St. Louis World’s Fair some years before, which bored the city women, since they had all been to the fair.
Searching for men, the city women began to attend the games of Base Ball and the shooting matches where the men and boys of Stay More, having taken down their grandfathers’ muzzle-loaders from over the doors of their houses, competed for a beef calf by firing, from four hats away, at a slip of paper tacked to a tree. The women were amazed at the marksmanship, particularly of the Ingledews, who always won, but the women failed utterly to attract the notice of any of the Ingledews…except the youngest, Raymond, who was only fourteen years old. Raymond, having an excess of the humor of semen in his system, couldn’t wait until he was old enough to philander one of the city women, not realizing that when he was old enough to court one of them, they would be too old for him. Whenever they were watching the games of Base Ball or the shooting matches, Raymond always did things to call attention to himself, making diving catches of the ball, shooting from the hip with Jacob’s muzzle-loader. “What a cute boy,” the city women would exclaim, but they wouldn’t flirt with him. At the meetings of the hayloft clubhouse, Raymond would boast to his older brothers of what he intended to do to the city women, but his older brothers, although they themselves constantly talked of precisely what they would like to do to the city women if only they weren’t too shy to approach them, laughed at Raymond and told him he was too young, and double-dog-dared him to find a hole for his pole.
This became a constant obsession for Raymond. He would stop at a city woman’s cabin and say to her, “I was on my way to the store and jist a-wonderin iffen I could bring ye anythang.” “Why, bless your heart,” she would reply. “I need a spool of white thread.” He would bring it to her, and hang around, waiting to see if she would flirt with him, but she would not. He would try another woman, offering to mow the weeds around her cabin, and when he was finished the woman would ask, “What can I give you?” “Aw,” Raymond would say, “…you know…” “Twenty-five cents enough?” she would ask, and fetch him a quarter. There was one very pretty woman who had obtained a cow but did not know how to milk it. Raymond offered to show her. After she had mastered the practice, and was stroking the cow’s teats firmly, Raymond boldly asked her, “What does that make you think of?” After a moment’s reflection, the woman replied, “Butter. I’m going to get me a churn and make my own butter.” There was another woman who was noted for her devotion to nature study, and had been known to tour the woods with several different men before the exploding night sky had frightened them out of the practice. “By golly,” Raymond said to her, “I know jist as much about the woods as e’er a man alive.” “You sweet boy,” the woman replied. “Let’s see if you do.” They went into the woods, and Raymond demonstrated that he could name every tree and every flower. But the woman showed no intention of flirting with him. “Aint we gonna lay down?” he asked her. “I’m not tired,” she replied and thanked him for the tour and went back to her cabin, leaving him less satisfied than ever.
Raymond decided he would have to commit rape. There was one woman whose cabin was way off up on Ledbetter Mountain, too far for the nearest neighbor to hear her if she hollered. Raymond made a disguise out of a pillowcase with two slits for his eyes, and went to the cabin. The woman hollered. “Won’t do ye no good,” he told her. “Nobody kin hear ye. You know what I’m after, and I aim to git it.” She asked, “Aren’t you that cute Raymond Ingledew boy who shows off at Base Ball and shooting matches?” “Nome, I’m one a his older brothers,” he replied. She reproved him, “I never thought an Ingledew would be a robber.” “I aint a robber, ma’am, I’m a rapist.” The woman broke up with laughter; she couldn’t stop. Raymond tried to hold her still so that he could rape her, but he couldn’t hold her; she went on rocking with laughter. Raymond went home and buried his disguise, and decided he would wait until he was fifteen and see what happened.
Chapter twelve
Willis Ingledew made so much money from the operation of his General Merchandise Sto
re, particularly after the city women became his customers, that he didn’t know what to do with it. He had no family to support, and he was nervous about having so much money, which he kept in a locked drawer of the post office, but he knew that this was a misuse of U.S. government property. He decided he would have to buy something. What was the most expensive article that he could use?
After considerable thought, he decided that a hossless kerridge probably cost a right smart of cash, so he ran off to Springfield, Missouri, where the nearest Ford agency was located, and bought himself a Model T Ford and brought it home, but the people of Stay More, having learned long since not to believe Willis Ingledew, did not believe he had a hossless kerridge, and ignored it. He drove up and down every dry road in the village, tooting his horn and waving, but nobody believed it, and nobody returned his waves. He offered rides to his nephews and his niece Lola who was his secret daughter, but all of them said, “Aw, you’re jist a-funnin us” and “Quit yore kiddin, Uncle Will.”
There was one person in the town, however, who did believe that Willis had acquired a Model T Ford, who could not ignore him, and that was his brother John. As we have seen, it was very important to John to be able to feel superior to Willis. Even though Willis owned the General Store, John was the respected leader of the lynch mob and the Worshipful Master of the Masons, or Top Tippler of T.G.A.O.T.U., but he did not own, and could ill afford to own, a hossless kerridge.
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1 Page 107