The men on the store porch speculated endlessly about alternative outcomes to Boden’s experience, and had a lot of fun.
A year or so went by, both Mont and Boden got married to other girls, and Jelena and Doris were getting to the far end of marriageable age, and then the war came and took away nearly all the young bachelors of Stay More. When news came of the first of several deaths of Stay Morons in the war, the people threw a pie supper at the canning factory for the purpose of raising funds for some kind of War Memorial. Ostensibly a pie supper is for the purpose of raising funds, but it is also a means of promoting conviviality and courtship between males and females. All the women and girls bake a pie, and these are wrapped and sealed and auctioned off one by one to the highest bidders among the men and boys. The males aren’t supposed to know who baked which pie, and are thus obliged to sit with, and eat with, and talk with, the female who baked the pie that they bid on. The organizers of the pie supper paid a visit to Mrs. Dinsmore and said she ought to make sure that both Doris and Jelena each baked a separate pie, no foolishness of both doing the same pie, and Mrs. Dinsmore said she would see to it that each girl did her separate pie, and sure enough, Jelena and Doris showed up at the pie supper with two different pies.
To the men on the store porch who had missed the pie supper, it was afterward Uncle Tearle Ingledew who told the tale, told it on his own nephew, William Robert Ingledew. “Billy Bob,” as we have seen, was Hank’s youngest brother, and was not drafted into the service because all three of his brothers were already serving. Although just as tall and strong and handsome as his oldest brother, he was, if anything, even shyer toward females, the shyest of his generation of shy Ingledews, but he somehow persuaded himself that there was no connection between bidding on a pie, of which he was uncommonly fond, and courting a girl. “So he made him a good bid,” related Uncle Tearle to the men on the store porch, “and he got this here pie that Jelena had fixed, and he took the wrappers off, and saw it was sweet pertater, which he don’t keer fer too mighty well, so he figgered he’d take him another chance, and bid on the next pie that come up, and damn if he didn’t git the one Doris fixed! It was coconut cream. The folks thar got pervoked and says you wasn’t supposed to bid on but one pie, but ole Billy Bob, he says by God he likes coconut cream and for that matter he aint too unpartial to sweet pertater neither, and he reckons he’ll jist eat ’em both. And he did. Jelena and Doris set on each side of him while he et their pies, but he never minded. They never bothered him much, and he give ’em a slice or two of their pies. After they done eatin, he was right well full and satisfied, and didn’t even mind when both them gals set in to talkin his ear off.” Strangely, the men on the store porch did not make any jokes over this news. They nodded their heads gravely, spat their tobacco juice, whittled their sticks, stretched in their chairs. At length one of them remarked, “Wal, if they is a-gorn to be jist one, then maybe ole Billy Bob is the one, atter all.”
He was. The next summer, Billy Bob, who was a carpenter by trade, more or less, built himself a modest frame house on the south bench of Ingledew Mountain. It too resembled the plain, modest dwelling which is the headpiece of this chapter and which represents the further architectural decline of the Ozarks. The only difference between Billy Bob’s house and the one illustrated here is that while the latter is bigeminal the former is trigeminal. When Hank Ingledew came home on another shore leave, he paid a visit to his kid brother’s house, and reported back to the village the news that Billy Bob had two housekeepers who were sisters, Dinsmore girls, and everybody knew who he meant, but one of them said to Hank, “Yeah, but they aint exactly housekeepers.”
The next time the revivalist who had revived the Dinsmore sisters happened to be passing through Stay More again, he learned of the situation and paid a call on the sisters and pointed out to them that their “man” wasn’t even a member of the church; in fact, like all Ingledews, he was an atheist; but even if he was a member of the church they would still be living in sin and they had better agree to one of them getting legally married to Billy Bob. When this had no effect, the minister went to their mother and reasoned with her, but Selena told him, “Why, Reverend, them gals is happier than I ever seed ’em in their whole life, and I aint aimin to git in the way of their happiness.” The preacher gave up. But the men on the store porch did not. Whenever Billy Bob came to the store, which was seldom, they would pester him with questions which made him blush all the redder and at last manage to stammer out, “Aw, you fellers is all wet.”
But were they? To their sharp eyes it began to appear increasingly plain that Billy Bob, who had never been noted for great energy, was becoming almost indolent. He moved with slow, unstudied aimlessness, not exactly abstracted but with the corners of his mouth ever so slightly uptilted in what was not a grin nor a smirk so much as an expression of felicity. If the store-porchers’ conjectures were true, they could not help but feel, to a man, a profound envy which they never dared express to one another. Yet the only question which Billy Bob ever deigned answer was a question that one of the men on the store porch posed in the most general terms and as a kind of observation, twelve months after the sisters had gone to live with him: “Hit’s been all of a year now, Billy Bob. How you like it?”
And Billy Bob scratched under his hat reflectingly and, with that expression on the corners of his mouth, allowed, “Wal, they tend to kind of talk a little more than I keer to listen.”
Not long after, Tilbert Dinsmore circulated the report that not one but both of his sisters, he had observed on a recent visit to Billy Bob’s place, seemed to be swelling out around the middle. Now he didn’t know what others thought, he said, but as for himself he didn’t take kindly to the idea of having a damn pair of woodscolts for nephews or nieces or one of each. The next time the preacher happened to be passing through Stay More, Billy Bob’s many uncles, led by Tearle, ganged up on him and “persuaded” him to join William Robert Ingledew in holy matrimony with Jelena Cloris Dinsmore and Helena Doris Dinsmore. They were no longer referred to as “the Siamese twins” but rather as “the Mizzes Ingledew.”
Several months later, strangest of all to relate, only one child was born. According to whoever heard it from Billy Bob, who himself did not understand it, Jelena and Doris with their bellies approaching term had gone down to the creek to bathe, and when they returned, Jelena was carrying the baby swathed in a towel.
What happened to the other baby? Or had there been another one? Had it been stillborn and they had buried it? Or had it drowned in the creek? But how could two sisters, even if they had conceived within minutes of one another, have managed to give birth at the same instant?
No, the people thought, only one of the girls had been pregnant, and the other girl had a sympathetic false pregnancy or else just stuffed a pillow of ever-increasing size inside her dress. But Billy Bob himself didn’t know which sister it was, and within a short time, in the last year of the war, his brother Jackson was wounded in France and sent home, and since Billy Bob was no longer the only brother at home he was drafted into the service and flown almost immediately to Germany.
The baby was a girl, and its name was Jelena. This news threw the men on the store porch, and the whole village, into endless speculation. Before long, all of the Stay Morons were divided almost equally into two factions: (1) The Jelenists, who held that Jelena must have been the mother because she named the infant after herself, as a kind of “Jelena Junior,” and (2) The Dorisites, who held that Doris must have been the mother because she named it for her sister, out of love. These two factions debated endlessly, occasionally quarreled, and caused some disruption of family ties. Men, by and large, were more inclined to join the Jelenists, while more women than men leaned toward the Dorisite persuasion.
Mrs. Dinsmore, the sisters’ mother, was invited to become a leader of the Dorisites but did not want to show favoritism, so, before joining either faction she determined upon a simple way of deciding which sect to join:
she would ask her daughters which one was the mother. She did. Afterwards, fanning herself and mopping her brow in the parlor of the arch-Dorisite, she announced to the other ladies present, “I swear, if them gals didn’t jist both look at me and both say the same words at the same time, word by word: ‘We both of us are.’”
So the debates raged on, until every Stay Moron had declared as a staunch Jelenist or a devout Dorisite. Everyone, that is, except Jelena and Doris themselves, and nobody ever thought of the idea of asking them to join. One day Jelena told her mother that she would like to join the Dorisites, which the Dorisites took as unquestionable proof of their position. But Jelena said she could not join the Dorisites because Doris wanted to join the Jelenists, which the Jelenists declared was unquestionable proof of their position. Neither sister could join their respective sects because it would involve their separation, and they had never been separated from the moment of Doris’s birth. So neither did, but their respective sects went on claiming that because the sisters had wanted to join, it was unquestionable proof of their position.
Jelenists, by and large, are individualists, holding that a person is responsible for himself, that if one conducts one’s life with due responsibility, everything will go all right. Jelenism teaches us to be alert, to watch what is occurring in the everyday life, to observe closely sensory input to ourselves. Jelenism gives us a sense of our own uniqueness. No two people are ever alike; if we meet someone like ourself, it is only proof of our uniqueness. A true Jelenist who also happens to believe in God can comfortably believe that God did indeed create man in His own image. But it isn’t necessary for a Jelenist to believe in God. The atheistic Jelenist can believe that man created God in his own image, while the solipsistic Jelenist can believe that he himself has created everything and everyone to his own liking. All Jelenists have a strong sense of personal identity, and, usually, a sense of personal purpose, of having something to do that needs to be done and can best be done by oneself. Jelenists may be chauvinistic, and it is true that they are more proselytizing than Dorisites, but this is because of their belief that a strong sense of identity and purpose also requires a strong sense of conviction. It is very difficult to prove a Jelenist wrong on any question.
Dorisites, on the other hand, are altruistic, cooperative, lenient, and so respectful of the opinions of others that they tolerate the Jelenists much more than the reverse. A Jelenist cannot understand why anyone would want to be a Dorisite, while a Dorisite not only understands why Jelenists are as they are, but also appreciates it or at least sympathizes with it. Dorisites are very good at empathy and sympathy. To a Dorisite, the most wonderful fact of existence is that there is somebody else besides oneself. A true Dorisite who also happens to believe in God usually believes that God really does love him or her and everybody else. The atheistic Dorisite believes that although there is no God, if there were a God He would be an easy person to talk to, while the solipsistic Dorisite, which is almost a contradiction in terms, believes that he has created everybody else because he needs somebody to play with. Dorisites make excellent mothers, and also but less often, excellent fathers. Above all, Dorisites make excellent lovers. Even in the physical act itself, a Dorisite is always aware of mutuality. Outside such intimate dealings, Dorisites are sociable to the point of gregariousness. Every Dorisite has many friends and is always on the lookout for more. It would be easily possible to imagine a hermit Jelenist; an anchorite Dorisite is inconceivable.
Human nature is not perfect, and both Jelenists and Dorisites have their shortcomings. Jelenists are inclined to be secretive, while Dorisites are so incapable of keeping a secret that they are not trustworthy. Dorisites can be overprotective, while Jelenists may be inclined to be unconcerned. Some Jelenists are acknowledged swell-heads, while just as many Dorisites are shrinking violets. In the area of perversion, Jelenists are sadists and Dorisites are masochists. There are Jelenists known for their compulsive lying or compulsive stealing, while Dorisitism has produced its share of prostitutes and bad politicians. There have been six U.S. Presidents since the time of Jelena and Doris; of those six, three have been Dorisites, while the other three were Jelenists.
But it is of the Stay More factions that we must speak. The Jelenists were no longer on speaking terms with the Dorisites, and the latter, although perfectly willing to speak to the former, understood the former’s feelings, respected them, and made no move. In families containing members of both factions, difficulties arose. Bevis Ingledew, for example, was one of the leaders of the Jelenists, while his wife Emelda was an upstanding Dorisite. Being no longer on speaking terms with her was no problem, since he never spoke to her anyway, but there was the problem of shutting her out of his thoughts. Every now and then he would “hear” her say something like, Dorisitism teaches us to be charitable. Why don’t ye take that leftover ham to them pore Coes? and he would be inclined to retort that Jelenism teaches us to be self-sufficient, but he would remember that Jelenists were not on speaking terms with Dorisites, and then realize that just by thinking these thoughts he had communicated them to her. The “argument” would begin, their thoughts furiously debating charity vs. self-sufficiency. She couldn’t prove him wrong, because a Jelenist can never be proved wrong, but in the end he would wind up taking the leftover ham to the poor Coes, where he would find that while Ed Herb Coe was a Dorisite and grateful for the ham, Viola Coe was a Jelenist and wouldn’t let him accept it. “Shame on ye, Bevis! A good Jelenist like you! I got a mine to tell the other members on ye!”
The schoolhouse, which had been the church once upon a time, was expropriated by the Jelenists for their sanctuary, which is what Jelenists call their meeting place. Being accommodating, the Dorisites did not object: instead, they held their meetin place, which is what Dorisites call their meeting place, in the unused canning factory. The Jelenists also expropriated the Second Tuesday of the Month for their meetings; the Dorisites instituted the Third Tuesday of the Month. Dorisite meetings were little more than sociables, where everybody greeted one another and exchanged secrets and sang convivial songs and hatched charitable plots and declared their love for Doris Ingledew and her daughter Jelena and everybody else, including the Jelenists. The Jelenist meetings were more somber, or more staid; without singing, they solemnly repeated their list of 101 reasons why Jelena Ingledew could not possibly be the daughter of Doris, and then their more complicated list of 1001 shortcomings of Dorisites, then each member of the congregation rose in turn to proclaim that he or she was an individual, unlike anybody else present, and could be depended upon to do his or her share of keeping the world going, and didn’t need no help from nobody.
This factionalism continued strong until the War Department sent news that Pfc. William Robert Ingledew had been killed in combat in the siege of Berlin.
The Jelenists and the Dorisites united for a memorial service in Billy Bob’s honor, and all together sang:
Farther along we’ll know all about it,
Farther along we’ll understand why;
Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,
We’ll understand it, all by and by.
The Dorisites praised the Jelenists, and the latter grudgingly admitted that while they couldn’t understand why anybody would want to be a Dorisite it was pretty obvious that Dorisites weren’t all bad, in fact Dorisites had a lot to recommend them, and they suggested that the Jelenists and Dorisites bury the hatchet and become united. The Dorisites squealed their approval of this suggestion, and everyone embraced.
Toward the end of the service, all were surprised by the appearance of Jelena and Doris themselves, carrying between them, or taking turns carrying, the infant Jelena. There was absolute silence as they came down the aisle and took seats, Jelena sitting on the Dorisite side, Doris sitting on the Jelenist side, with the baby being permitted to crawl around in the aisle between them. It was the first time that Doris and Jelena had been separated, in a sense, but no one thought of them as being separated. S
pontaneously the girls began singing “Farther Along,” and the rest of the congregation quickly picked it up, and were alert enough to notice and follow the slight alteration that the girls made in the line, “Cheer up, my sister, live in the sunshine…”
Then it was time for the eulogy, but nobody could think of anything to say about Billy Bob. Oren Duckworth remarked that he had died in the service of his country, but that was about all. Doc Swain, who was acting as master of ceremonies even though he was a Jelenist, invited Jelena and Doris to make concluding remarks if they wished to do so. They rose together, faced the gathering, and, as one, declared: “He was both of ours.”
Doc Swain adjourned the meeting. He would have one more duty to perform, sadly, a few days later, standing with his pen in one hand and the certificates in the other, looking down upon the reddened earth where the sisters lay, hundreds of feet beneath Leapin Rock, tightly holding hands though lifeless. On each certificate, where the blank said “Cause of death,” Doc Swain wrote: “Broken heart.”
And at the funeral, when they tried to sing “Farther Along,” Doc Swain interrupted them, saying, “Farther along, hell! We done already understood it.”
Even afterward there were people who still thought of themselves as being Jelenists or Dorisites, or who at least remembered that they once were. But the factions never met as separate groups again.
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1 Page 117