The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

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The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1 Page 109

by Donald Harington


  But John reserved his true meanness for the city women, who, one by one, because of inflation, were using up all their savings. One by one they sat or stood, sunbonnets in hand, in front of his desk, twisting their sunbonnets and pleading for a small loan. One by one John turned them down, on the grounds that they had no employment and no prospects for income. One by one they told their pathetic plans: one intended to raise laying hens and sell eggs, one intended to weave baskets, one intended to be trained as a nurse in Doc Plowright’s office, one intended to be trained as a dental assistant in E.H. Ingledew’s office, one was expecting an inheritance from a wealthy aunt in Kansas City who was dying. One even asked for a job as a teller in John’s bank, claiming previous experience in a Chicago bank. But John set his gloomy eyes and his doomy jaw and turned them all down. One by one they starved for a while, then packed up and went back to their cities, abandoning their humble rustic cabins to the weeds and snakes. They were not missed by the women of Stay More.

  The only man that John feared was a black-suited agent from the newly created Federal Bureau of Internal Revenue. Recently those politicians up in Washington, probably the same bunch of bastards who ran the Masonic headquarters, had got together and decided that the easiest way to raise money for the government was to put a tax on every man’s earnings. It was unconstitutional, a violation of free enterprise, but the black-suited agent told John that he would go to jail unless he obeyed. John called in his attorney, Jim Tom Duckworth, and asked him if it was true he would go to jail if he didn’t cough up. Jim Tom, who was having his own problems trying to fill out his annual income tax return, admitted that it was true. John asked his help in filling out the forms, and Jim Tom agreed to help as soon as he finished his own forms, in another couple of months or so. When John finally got his forms filled out and sent them in, the black-suited agent came back again and told John to prepare to be audited. John didn’t know what “audited” meant, although it sounded like “indicted” or “outlawed.” He asked if he should pack a suitcase.

  “We aren’t going anywhere. I’ll do it right here,” the agent replied.

  John went for his revolver, but the agent didn’t seem to be armed. “What do ye aim to do it with?” John asked.

  “Why, with my ears, of course,” the agent said, and sat down at John’s desk and began asking him a whole bunch of questions. Beads of sweat began to break out all over John’s doomy face; soon his collar was drenched, but the agent went on asking questions, and John went on sweating, and then he began squirming in his seat. “Auditing,” he reflected, was not quite as bad as the frakes, but it was worse than ticks and chiggers. Finally the agent stopped asking questions and began writing some figures on his pad. At length the agent informed John that he had underpaid his taxes by $756.00 plus 8? interest and penalty. John opened the vault and got the money and gave it to the agent, who didn’t even thank him for it. Every year after that, John grew to dread the appearance of the agent, who always came, always without warning except the general warning that he always came. Year by year, the people up in Washington collected so much money that they didn’t know what to do with it. Like Willis Ingledew, who had collected so much money he didn’t know what to do with it, and thus had bought an automobile that nobody noticed, the government, on a larger scale, began to buy battleships and tanks and submarines, which nobody noticed.

  John Ingledew was not the only Stay More victim of the Federal Bureau of Internal Revenue. The black-suited agent also “got” Willis, and “got” Jim Tom Duckworth and Doc Plowright and even William Dill the wagonmaker, who wasn’t making much profit now that anyone who could afford it was buying an automobile.

  The black-suited agent had a younger brother, who wore a brown shirt and brown pants, and worked for a different branch of the Revenue Service, a branch that claimed a right to put a tax on the distillation of corn. That was going too far. If they would allow the government to put a tax on their right to convert corn into beverage, the government might as well put a tax on their right to have their cows convert grass into milk. The next thing you know, the government would be putting a tax on a cow’s right to convert bullseed into calves. John Ingledew called an emergency meeting of T.G.A.O.T.U. to assess the situation. Stay More’s best distiller, Waymon Chism, was a member, and he stood to lose most if the man in the brown shirt located his still, which wasn’t hidden, but in plain view on the Right Prong Road, with a sign over the doorway, “Chism’s Dew, 35¢ a gourd, W. Chism Prop.”

  The members suggested that the first thing he had better do is scratch out “dew” and write in something else. To fit the space, it had to be a three-letter word, and there weren’t many of those. “Sip,” “sup,” “lap” and “nip” were suggested, but considered risky. Better to disguise it entirely with “pot,” “lap,” “oil,” or “rot.” Better still to call it “tea.” Waymon Chism scratched out “dew” and painted in “tea,” but the man in the brown shirt came anyway and stared at his sign and sniffed the air and asked Waymon what kind of tea was worth 35¢ a gourd. Waymon offered to sell him a gourdful, but the man claimed he was a United States government agent and was not required to pay for it. They argued awhile, and finally Waymon gave him a gourd, which contained a genuine tea that Waymon’s old woman had brewed out of sassafras roots, goldenseal, wild cherry, May apple, spicebush bark, dogbane, red-clover blossoms, bloodroot, purple coneflower, peach leaves, wild cherry bitters, saffron, sheep manure, and a generous dollop of Chism dew, the excellent taste of which was camouflaged by the other ingredients. The man in the brown shirt had to allow that it was the beatin’est tea ever he tasted, and he quaffed off the gourd in a few lusty swallows. All of the ingredients, including the last, were known to thin and purify the blood, and the brown-shirted man’s blood became so thin and pure that he was absolutely lighthearted and euphoric. “Hotcha!” he exclaimed, and paid 35¢ to Waymon, and then went on his way, exclaiming from time to time, “Zippy-umph!” and “Diggety-gee!” and “Mmmm Mamma!”

  He had no heart for searching further for moonshiners, not for several days at least, so he checked into a hotel at Jasper, where, several days later, the Jasper Disaster noted the fact under a headline reading MANIAC AT LARGE IN TOWN. People barred their doors and the sheriff got up a posse. The man in the brown shirt was run to earth on the courthouse lawn. He flashed his I.R.S. badge. The sheriff asked him what he had been drinking, and he replied, “Chism’s Tea.” “Wal, did ye cut down his still?” the sheriff wanted to know. “What for?” the revenuer said. “That tea is the best stuff I ever drunk.” The sheriff and his posse looked at one another and grinned, and winked. “I’ll let ye go,” said the sheriff, “but next time don’t drink a whole gourdful,” The revenuer went on his way, busting up stills all over the Ozarks, but after a few weeks of such hard work, he developed an overpowering thirst for some more tea, so he returned to Stay More again and hiked up the Ring Prong road to Waymon Chism’s. He asked if he could buy just half a gourdful, explaining that the county sheriff had ordered him not to drink a whole gourd. Waymon said he was sorry but a gourd was the least amount he could see his way to sell. The revenuer asked if Waymon would loan him a Mason jar to pour half of it in; Waymon didn’t have any Mason jars but he poured half of the gourd into a stone jug stoppered with a corncob and gave it to the revenuer, who drank the other half and went off swinging the jug in his hand. He found that taking a small nip from the jug just before raiding a still gave him energy, and he went on busting up stills all over the Ozarks and returning periodically to Stay More to refill his jug with Chism’s tea, and he would have lived happily ever after, but he was a bachelor with no dependents and because of that fact he was drafted into the army and shipped overseas, where he died at Verdun.

  Bachelors with no dependents made up the entire United States Army, and almost all the Ingledews were bachelors without dependents, but none of them were drafted, and if they had been they would not have served, because they couldn’t see any sens
e in going across the sea to fight some other countries’ battles for them. When the Jasper Disaster ran a banner headline, AMERICA ENTERS WAR, the people of Stay More assembled at Isaac’s mill and discussed the situation for three-and-a-half minutes, then put it out of their minds. They had nothing personal against the Germans. Stay Morons were not isolationists because of their isolation but because of their patriotism, which they thought of as loving and protecting their country, and they couldn’t see any way that fighting in France had to do with their country. There were only two Stay Morons who fought in France during that war, and they were not drafted but volunteered. One was Raymond Ingledew, whom we met in the previous chapter, he of the libidinous urges, which were not gratified at the age of fifteen, nor at any time by the city women. At the age of sixteen, however, following a square dance at which much of Chism’s Dew was consumed, he successfully enticed a somewhat homely Dinsmore girl off into the bushes, and removed both their virginities. At seventeen, he attended a pie supper, and was the highest bidder on a pie that had been baked by one of the Whitter girls, not as homely as the Dinsmore girl but still not a “looker”; she yielded easily to his debauchment. At eighteen, he graduated to a Duckworth girl who was almost pretty. At twenty, he succeeded in seducing a Coe girl who actually had certain attractions. At twenty-one, he achieved his majority and sowed his wild oats between a couple of Swain and Chism girls who were quite pretty. He felt ready to take on a beautiful girl.

  There was only one girl in Stay More who, without any reservation, met that standard, and I cannot utter her name here, because the utterance of her name fills me with longing and sadness, but I have uttered it elsewhere. The town fathers of Jasper erected a high school, and this Beautiful Girl, although from a very humble family, was the first graduate of Stay More grade school to qualify for admission to the high school, and just to be near her Raymond Ingledew volunteered to serve as school bus driver, or rather school wagon driver, hitching a one-horse chaise five mornings a week and driving her into Jasper, where, since he had nothing better to do while waiting to drive her home, he enrolled at the high school himself, a twenty-one-year-old freshman among fifteen-year-old freshmen. Raymond, commendably, made no attempt to seduce the Beautiful Girl when she was a fifteen-year-old freshman. He waited until she was a sixteen-year-old sophomore.

  But she repulsed him, claiming she already had a boyfriend. She did; his name was…but I have a habit of uttering his name only as a magic incantation to ward off mindlessness; I can use here only his initials, which were E.D. E.D. had been the Beautiful Girl’s boyfriend since she was eleven years old, but this stood as an extra challenge to Raymond, who knew that he was much more handsome than E.D. and was certainly from a much better family. He continued, during their junior and senior years, trying to seduce her, and, because her own mother continually reminded her that Raymond was a banker’s son while E.D. was only a wagonmaker’s son who couldn’t go to high school, Raymond at last, with a promise of marriage, seduced her, discovering that her ardor in the act was a match for her beauty. But the conquest did not satisfy him. Although they were officially engaged, he continued to dissipate his oats among all his previous conquests, and he could not for long keep this a secret from the Beautiful Girl, who, when she found out that he had been keeping company with Wanda Dinsmore, gave herself again to E.D. and later boasted of it to Raymond, whose strict double standard tore at his heart and compelled him to the rash act of picking a fight with E.D., whose fists drubbed him senseless.

  When Raymond recovered, he committed the rasher act of running off to Jasper and enlisting in the army. Raymond’s older brothers, all five of them, ganged up on E.D. and threatened to kill him unless he went and joined the army too. So those were the only two men of Stay More to fight in France, where they wound up in the same platoon, and even became friends, or at least friendly rivals, or at least comrades-in-arms. E.D. was promoted to sergeant, and won the Croix de Guerre; Raymond was promoted to corporal, and was captured by the Germans in the Argonne forest, tied to a tree and left there as a decoy to lure other Yanks into the line of machine gun fire, but the squadron’s lieutenant sensed the trap and forbade his men to rescue Raymond. E.D. disobeyed the command; the lieutenant tried to stop him; he knocked the lieutenant cold, and crawled on his belly fifty feet to the tree where Raymond was tied and began untying him; Raymond urged him to get away because it was a trap, but E.D. continued untying him, until the machine guns opened fire: both of E.D.’s legs were hit and he crumpled to the ground and would have perished had not his men opened massive fire on the machine gun nest and managed to drag E.D. out of there. Raymond wasn’t hit, but he must have died in a German prison camp, or else, when liberated, he must have met some voluptuous French girl and married her and stayed over there, because he never came back to Stay More. E.D. was court-martialed for disobeying orders and striking the lieutenant, and was sent to Fort Leavenworth prison.

  John Ingledew gave the Beautiful Girl a job as a teller in the Swains Creek Bank and Trust Co. and kept reassuring her that Raymond would be coming home any day now, but he never did. Raymond’s older brother Bevis, he of the sanguine humor, managed to stumble into marriage and perpetuate the Ingledew name, as we shall see; he was the only one of the six brothers to marry.

  The same year the war began and ended, the same year that Bevis married, the same year that Raymond did not come home, old Isaac Ingledew gave up working in his mill. He did not tell anyone why he was quitting, but it was assumed that he was retiring on the grounds of old age, being seventy-five years old. He turned the management of the mill over to Denton and Monroe, but he continued to sit in his captain’s chair on the porch of the mill, listening to the people chatting and gossiping while their meal and flour were ground. He continued as he had for many years going without sleep. A bright young reporter on the Jasper Disaster, freshly graduated from what was called a “journalism school,” heard that there was an old man living in Stay More who never slept, and he came down to Stay More and tried to interview Isaac, without success, because among all the other things that Isaac was continuing was his taciturnity. Isaac never revealed the secret, if there was one, of why and how he never slept, but the reporter secluded himself in the bushes for at least three nights in a row to spy on Isaac and make sure he never slept; unfortunately it was too dark for the reporter to be able to see whether Isaac’s eyes were open or shut, but everyone else whom the reporter interviewed said that nobody had found Isaac asleep since the beginning of the Second Spell of Darkness, which was a fairly long time ago.

  The reporter finally interviewed Isaac’s wife Salina, who was more than willing to talk; the reporter’s major problem was to get away from her; she kept him for fourteen hours and told him the story of her own life, the story of Isaac’s whole life, the stories of her children’s lives, and she admitted that she had never known her husband to go to bed since the beginning of the Second Spell of Darkness, but she didn’t know why, or how, or what. The reporter wanted to ask her what effect that circumstance had had on their sex lives, but he didn’t know how to phrase the question, and let it go. Even if he had asked, he could not very well have printed the information that Salina still climbed Isaac with regularity in their seventies. Even if he had printed it, people wouldn’t have wanted to know that such old people even had a sex life anymore. Even if people had wanted to know that, they wouldn’t have wanted to picture Isaac and Salina in that particular position or posture. The reporter’s article in the Disaster was a long one, but it didn’t tell anybody anything that wasn’t already commonly known.

  Because Isaac sat on the mill porch, never speaking, listening to the people gossip and chatter, the people gradually began to forget that he was among them. Just as their parents and grandparents had done once upon a time, they began to talk about Isaac as if he were not there, nay, they began to talk about him as if he were no longer living, as if he had passed already into legend, and they began to reminisce about his deeds
and exploits, blowing them up out of all proportion: it was almost as if they were trying to outdo one another in making a mythical hero out of him.

  He sat there unnoticed, listening with what amazement we can only imagine, as The Incredible Epic of Colonel Coon Ingledew was embellished and heightened and embroidered. Perhaps he realized that there could never again be a life like that, and perhaps this saddened him, and perhaps out of sadness he quietly died. Or perhaps, as some suggested later, he had waited only long enough to be sure that at least one of his many grandsons would marry and continue the Ingledew name, and now that Bevis had married he could pass on. Whatever the case, he yielded his breath. Because no one noticed him, no one noticed this, and they went on talking, telling of his fabulous feats and heroic adventures. Although they did not notice him, they could not help but notice, in time, the smell. Denton was the first to sniff the necrosis, and he glanced at his father and declared, “I think Paw has done guv out.” “How can you tell?” asked Monroe. “Shake him and see,” said Denton. “Heck, you shake him,” said Monroe. “You’re closer to him,” Denton pointed out. “You’re older’n me,” Monroe countered. After further argument, the brothers agreed to shake him simultaneously, which they did, warily. Their father did not respond. Rigor mortis was so advanced that they had to bury him still sitting in his captain’s chair with his hands gripping the arms of it, and even though they used silver dollars to try to close his eyelids, they could not get them closed, and had to leave them open. The entire population of Newton County, over ten thousand people, attended the funeral and stood in the rain at the Stay More cemetery to watch entranced as Brother Stapleton delivered the eulogy, a four-hour show, “The Incredible Epic of Colonel Coon Ingledew,” and then the ten thousand voices were lifted in funereal song:

 

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