The Stay More ’mater had of course not retained its full aphrodisiac properties, although the ’mater of that time was surely far more erogenous than the hybridized objects that are marketed as “tomatoes” today.
Whatever might be said against Oren Duckworth’s materialistic motives for operating the canning factory, it must be acknowledged that the operation granted Stay More a reprieve, to live as a town a little longer. Without the canning factory, people would have been forced to leave Stay More and search for work in the larger towns and cities. The canning factory not only created jobs but also, because the big motortruck which came to get the cans and take them to Kansas City had to ford Banty Creek where it crosses the main road and because Banty Creek overflowed its banks six different times during the first summer the canning factory was in operation, making it impossible of passage not only for the big motortruck but also for any wagons hauling snaps and ’maters from the north side of the creek, and because Oren Duckworth’s crews had to construct a raft and laboriously float not only the raw product but also the finished product back and forth across the creek when it was flooded, which caused Oren Duckworth not only to curse but also to moan, and because he was noticed cursing and moaning not only by his employees and family but also by a federal government agent, a “spotter” from the Works Progress Administration, who wore not only a pair of binoculars but also a telescope suspended from leather thongs around his neck, and who spotted not only Banty Creek in flood but also Oren Duckworth cursing and moaning, and who told the Stay Morons that not only could he do something about it but also would he do something about it, and did: he brought in an engineer who not only surveyed Banty Creek and drew up plans for a cement bridge over it but also hired some of the local boys to assist in the labor of constructing the bridge, which took all summer. Oren Duckworth was all in favor of the bridge, and so were the local boys given jobs by the W.P.A., but, nobody else was, because a bridge was the worst form of PROG RESS and was against all tradition.
The W.P.A. bridge is not illustrated here, partly for that reason. No architectural history of the United States is complete without an illustration of the Brooklyn Bridge, and it should follow that our history should not omit the W.P.A. bridge, but it is scarcely comparable, being only three hats long, about three feet above the natural water level of the creek, and consisting of poured cement with the sides formed of a row of crenelated piers, fifteen to the side. Year by year the floods of Banty Creek would wash logs and other debris against those crenelated piers, where it would jam up, and to break the jam the Stay Morons would sledgehammer those crenellations away, until eventually only the roadway of the bridge itself remained, with one pier of the crenellation embossed like a tombstone with the legend “Built by W.P.A.” Bevis Ingledew often remarked that he would just as soon get aholt of some dynamite and obliterate the whole bridge, but for one reason or another he never got around to it, and what is left of it is still there.
Most of John Henry “Hank” Ingledew’s children do not even know what “W.P.A.” stands for, and they have had some fun conjecturing the possibilities: Well Plastered Alcoholics, Washout Prevention Association, Way Past Absurdity, What Possible Accident, Wet Persons Anonymous, etc. The fact that the “P” in W.P.A. actually did stand for PROG RESS was not lost upon the Stay Morons of the time, who helplessly watched the bridge being poured, and wondered what the world was coming to.
After work, the W.P.A. gang got into fights with local boys, but they were fighting not out of ideological controversy so much as for recreation and for the purpose of showing off in front of a very pretty teenage redhead girl named Sonora Twichell who was presumed to be the niece of the Beautiful Girl and was spending the summer with her, as she had been doing for several summers, going back home each August to her presumed mother in Little Rock. John Henry “Hank” Ingledew was one of the local boys who fought with the W.P.A. gang for the purpose of showing off in front of Sonora, although he didn’t need to, because she had eyes only for him, although he didn’t know it; because he was just as shy of females as any Ingledew had ever been, although he never forgot about Eli Willard’s chronometer wristwatch which he had buried; because he knew that some day he would have a son to give the watch to, although he couldn’t conceive of how he would ever approach a girl and get up his nerve to ask her to marry him so that they could have a son; because that was something well beyond the powers of an Ingledew, although he knew that in order for him to exist his own father somehow had to have approached his mother. The very pretty redhead Sonora thought that Hank Ingledew was the best-looking boy she had ever seen, and from the age of thirteen onward, when she first started spending summers with the woman she thought was her aunt but guessed was her mother, she decided that she would marry Hank someday. But every time she even looked at him, let alone spoke to him, he would get red in the face and turn away. Her mother, whom she presumed to be her aunt, told her about the legendary woman-shyness of all the Ingledews extending back into history. The Beautiful Girl knew the whole history of Stay More and told Sonora about the cornbread that Sarah had baked for Jacob Ingledew, so Sonora baked some corn-bread for Hank the summer she turned sixteen, and she took it to him and gave it to him, but nobody (except Eli Willard) had ever bothered to tell Hank anything about his great-great-grandfather (and Eli Willard hadn’t mentioned the cornbread) so Hank didn’t know the significance of the cornbread, except as something to eat, and he did eat it, but didn’t think it was as good as the cornbread his mother made, although he didn’t say this to Sonora, because he wasn’t capable of saying anything to her.
When Sonora went back home to Little Rock that year after the summer was over, she was emboldened to write a letter to Hank, saying things that she dared not say to his face, things that he dared not listen to, to his face. She told him that although she was only sixteen years old she already felt grown up and that she didn’t like any of the boys in Little Rock as much as she liked him and she was very sorry that he wasn’t able to talk to her and she hoped that even though he couldn’t talk to her he might be able to write to her, and she signed it “Your friend, Sonora.”
Just holding this letter in his hands made Hank get very red in the face, especially because Sonora was the prettiest girl he had ever seen, which made it all the harder for him to conceive of ever being able to say anything to her. But he suddenly realized that saying something to her in a letter wouldn’t be the same as saying something to her face. She wouldn’t be looking at him when he said it; she couldn’t even see him. So he sat down and got out a sheet of writing paper and took his pencil and licked on it and chewed it for a while, and managed to write, “Dear Sonora:” That was as far as he got. He waited for a better day, but the day never came, so he took the sheet of paper saying only “Dear Sonora:” and put it in an envelope and mailed it to her.
She was thrilled, and responded with a letter pouring out her heart to him, telling him how she liked Stay More so much better than Little Rock and how she wished she could live there all year around instead of just in the summertime. She even told him who her favorite film actors and actresses were.
These names meant nothing to Hank because he had never seen a film, and yet, as if by magic, the same week Hank received this letter, a man drove a truck into Stay More and hung dark curtains over the windows of the school house and set up a screen and a projector and allowed everybody to come and pay ten cents to see real shows that were almost as good as the shows that Brother Long Jack Stapleton used to show before he lost the power, and there on the screen were the actual persons that Sonora had mentioned to Hank in her letter, so that after he had seen ten of the shows, he was able to write Sonora and say, “Dear Sonora: I saw some of them shows too, and my favorites is also Barbara Stanwyck and James Stewart. Your friend, Hank.”
This was the most that he had ever said to any female except his mother, and Sonora realized it, and was greatly flattered. She replied at great length, saying she hoped that when she c
ame back to Stay More the following summer to stay with her aunt, she hoped that she and Hank could go together to watch a picture show. If the show were romantic, she speculated, they might find themselves holding hands. Hank read this letter several times, and thought about it carefully. Movies, he had discovered, were shown in the dark, and in the dark it wouldn’t be so difficult for him to hold hands with a girl, especially Sonora, since they had already broken the ice by mail. In his next letter he told her so, and she was so excited that she replied by suggesting that if the movie were romantic enough, and they held hands, it might develop that when he took her home afterwards they would want to sit in the porch swing together for a little while, and if they did that they might kiss. Hank memorized this letter but was uncertain as to whether or not he could ever get up the nerve to kiss Sonora, certainly not in broad daylight, and he conveyed these doubts to her in his next letter. She replied, “Silly. It would be night.” All of the movies that Hank had seen had been shown in broad daylight with dark curtains over the schoolhouse windows, but after thinking about it, he decided that maybe he could persuade the movie man, if he ever came back to Stay More the next summer, to show some of the shows at night. When he mentioned this in his next letter to Sonora, she was so aroused that she wrote back to him saying that if they saw a lot of movies and did a lot of hand-holding, and sat in the porch swing afterwards kissing for a long enough time, they might want to sneak out to the corncrib where they could lie down together. John Henry “Hank” Ingledew lost his virginity by mail.
When Sonora returned to Stay More the following June to spend the summer with her aunt/mother, she and Hank were such old friends that they didn’t even bother with the preliminaries of movie-going and hand-holding and kissing. As soon as it got dark on the first night Sonora was back in Stay More, they met in a thicket alongside Swains Creek, embraced, and made a love that eclipsed anything in the U.S. mails. Hank was amazed at how superior reality is to words. To experience such a thing, he realized, was proof that he existed, even if his parents had never done it. And he knew that now that he had done it, he had created a son to wear Eli Willard’s chronometer.
But he was mistaken. He did not realize that every act of love does not result in offspring; he did not know that there are many days in each month when a girl is infertile. He offered to marry Sonora, and was confused when she laughed and said she was too young, although she would be happy to marry him after she finished high school in another year. The high school that Hank had finished at Jasper had not permitted pregnant girls to attend, but possibly, he realized, the big-city high school at Little Rock was more broadminded. He was further confused when, the very following night, she wanted to do it again. He wondered if that would produce twins, but he did it. By the end of the week, he was worrying about supporting quintuplets, but he thoroughly enjoyed doing it and went on doing it, until Sonora said they had to stop for a while because it was the “wrong” time. He didn’t know what was wrong with it, but he obligingly stopped. “We can pet, though,” she told him. He didn’t know that word, but she showed him what it meant.
It was a great summer. I was there. Even though I was only a child I knew what Hank and Sonora were up to. Several times I spied on them and envied their pleasure. But the only other person who knew, rather than simply guessed, what they were up to, was the Beautiful Girl, to whom Sonora confessed. As postmistress of Stay More, the Beautiful Girl knew that her daughter, whom everybody else thought was her niece, had been carrying on a lengthy correspondence with Hank Ingledew, and she was glad for Sonora, because Hank was one of the best in a long line of fine Ingledews. He was tall, and strong, and good-looking. So the Beautiful Girl, who once upon a time had been courted and bedded by Hank’s Uncle Raymond, was not at all surprised when Sonora confessed that she had lost her virginity to Hank and that they indulged themselves in their bodies almost daily. Sonora assured her that they were “careful.” The Beautiful Girl thought that was a beautiful thing, and she lived vicariously through Sonora, enjoying Sonora’s descriptions of the myriad ways that she and Hank took advantage of the fact that they had miraculously been created female and male.
It was also miraculous that Sonora did not get pregnant that summer. Hank was puzzled. He knew that certain women are sterile. He asked Sonora if she had ever had a bad case of the mumps, but she hadn’t. Then he began to wonder if he himself might be sterile. Perhaps, after all, he was only imagining that he existed. Or maybe, he speculated, he only existed in Sonora’s imagination; she had created him for the purpose of giving her pleasure. He did not much like the thought, but there it was.
Thought can be a shattering experience. Sonora, for her part, did not think thoughts, except to remember when it was the wrong time of month; she simply enjoyed herself. Hank couldn’t tell her what was gnawing away at his brain, and yet, compulsively, he went ahead. He was quite fond of ’maters, but that had nothing to do with it. There was simply something about Sonora: the way she looked, the shape of her, her red hair that had a wonderful smell in all its locations, her eyes even, her voice too, the movements of her hands and feet, the shape and capacity of her arms, and above all the shape and capacity of her principal openings, that never failed to animate him and his responsive part. Thinking about this, as he often did, he came to the conclusion that her openings were, after all, sockets, hollows, voids, and therefore if it were possible that somebody did not exist, it was more likely she rather than he, and he arrived at the momentous truth that woman is but the creation of man, his fancy and his delight. He could live with this, and he did: having settled the problem, he endured it.
After the true maternity and paternity of Sonora became known, she did not have to return to Little Rock to her adoptive mother, who was in fact her aunt, but remained in Stay More, finishing her education at Jasper High School. Her father, E.D., had acquired religion, and when he learned from her mother of Sonora’s affair with Hank Ingledew, he attempted to put a stop to it. He was only partly successful. Sonora would not accommodate Hank on school nights, limiting him to weekends. Because weekends often occurred at the wrong time, she also acquired, from a high school girlfriend who clerked in the Jasper drugstore, a package of prophylactics, which she insisted that Hank use. “What’s that fool thang for?” he wanted to know. “Heck, that won’t be no fun,” he protested. “Let’s try it and see,” she suggested, and they did.
But after graduation, in June, she threw away the prophylactics, and she and Hank ran off into the woods, in broad daylight, mornings, afternoons, evenings, and corresponded themselves silly, even in the wrong time, until Sonora was unquestionably pregnant, whereupon they were dutifully married, and on the wedding night, after the shivaree party had been served refreshments and departed, Hank told Sonora of the gold chronometer wristwatch which Eli Willard had given him and which he had buried to await the appropriate time when Hank could give it to his son. Sonora thought that was the marvelousest thing she had ever heard, and she said they ought to name their son Eli Willard Ingledew, and Hank agreed that would be very appropriate. For nine months, they talked every day about Eli Willard Ingledew; they could even picture him grown up, wearing the magic watch that kept perfect time and never lost even a second. They knew he would be somebody very important in the world, maybe even President of the United States, or at the very least Vice President. When Sonora could feel the baby stirring in her womb, she began to picture him, and she and Hank knew that Eli Willard would be the most handsome of all the Ingledews.
Sonora took up sewing, and made all of Eli Willard Ingledew’s clothing up to the age at which he would receive the wristwatch, which would be sixteen. They not only talked about Eli Willard Ingledew to one another, but also to all their family and friends, so that the whole village began to look forward to his birth, almost as if the baby would be an actual reincarnation of the Connecticut peddler. When Sonora went into labor, instead of fetching Doc Swain and having her baby at home like everybody else had always done
, she was taken all the way to Harrison, where the nearest hospital was, and the car in which she traveled was followed by every available conveyance in Stay More, with the entire population, in that year just about a hundred, being transported. The waiting room at the hospital wouldn’t hold a fraction of them, but they milled about in the corridors and outside on the lawn. Sonora’s labor was a long one, yet nobody seemed to mind. News of the advent or nativity or simply parturition spread through the town of Harrison, and the members of the Harrison High School precision marching band donned their new uniforms and assembled in formation on the hospital lawn, where they played “A Babe in Mother’s Arms,” “A Child at Mother’s Knee,” “A Boy Grows Up,” “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and the Harrison High School alma mater.
At last the obstetrician lifted the baby by its ankles, slapped its bottom to induce crying, and Sonora discovered that Eli Willard Ingledew had no penis. “A mighty fine gal,” said the obstetrician, and Sonora told him to break the news gently to her husband. Hank Ingledew hung around for a while, but everybody else went home, and the following week’s issue of the Jasper Disaster carried the event in seventeen words at the bottom of the last page: “Last Friday a daughter, unnamed, was born to Mr. and Mrs. J.H. Ingledew of Stay More.” Hank and Sonora got their heads together and considered naming the baby Ela Willa or Elise Wilma or Eleanor Willardine, but finally Sonora named her simply Latha, after her mother. Then, as soon as Sonora was able, they got busy again, in the morning, afternoon and evening, and tried to create Eli Willard on the second chance.
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