Gradually he regained his interest in eating, if in nothing else, and one evening at supper when Sonora served some heated-up beans out of a can he actually grumbled. “It’s all we can afford,” Sonora retorted. “We’ve used up all our savings building this house and moving our things here and living for weeks and weeks without any income. Do you want me to look for a job? Will you stay home and take care of the baby while I’m working? I intend to start a garden patch next spring, and get some chickens, but what will we do until then?”
“Aw, heck,” Hank replied, and the next day he painted out the letters “Anaheim, Calif.” on the side of his van, and painted in the letters “Jasper, Ark.” and drove into Jasper and rented one of the vacant buildings on the square, the little brick-painted-white store whose illustration heads this chapter. It is the only building illustrated in this book which is not in Stay More, but there would be no more buildings in Stay More, except one, and that is our last chapter.
Although Jasper had been wired for electricity it had no television sets, and it dawned on Hank that before he could service television sets there would first have to be television sets, and not only that but they would also have to be around long enough, a week at least, for something to go wrong with them. So he got out his paintbrush again and added “and Sales” after “Service” on the sides of his van and the front of his shop. General Electric generously shipped him a dozen sets on credit, and he put these in his show windows, and waited for customers. Everybody who came into Jasper, especially on Saturdays, would wander around the square to Hank’s shop and look in the windows at his television sets, but no body came into the store.
It occurred to Hank that if he turned the sets on, the people could see how an actual picture appears. So he plugged the sets in and turned them on, but the reception was terrible. He realized he would need not only a high antenna atop his shop, but also a “booster.” He sent off to Little Rock for these items. When they arrived, Hank was finally in business. Crowds gathered at his windows, and stayed for hours to watch whole games of Base Ball coming from St. Louis and Chicago and Kansas City and everywhere else. The sheriff complained that the crowds were blocking traffic on the street, and requested that Hank bring some of the sets out into the square, but Hank explained that television requires dim light for the picture to be seen clearly. He suggested to the sheriff that the sheriff could help matters by ordering the crowd to go inside and buy one of the damn things so they could watch it in the comfort of their own living room.
The sheriff went up in front of the crowd and hollered, “OKAY, FOLKS! YOU’RE BLOCKING TRAFFIC! WHY DON’T YOU GO INSIDE AND BUY ONE OF THE DAMN THINGS SO YOU CAN WATCH ’EM IN THE COMFORT OF YOUR OWN LIVING ROOM?” The crowd surged through the door, and Hank was sold out within five minutes, and booked up for a month to install the antennas and boosters at their homes. When he arrived at some of their homes to install the antennas and boosters, he discovered that these homes were so far out in the wilds that they didn’t have electricity; he was instrumental in getting power lines erected in the remotest recesses of Newton County. The desire for television brought with it the means for operating washing machines, dryers, deep freezes, ranges, phonographs, blenders, electric clocks, vacuum cleaners, radial arm saws, toothbrushes, shoe polishers, shavers, typewriters, not to mention lamps and chandeliers and porch lights and every manner of ceiling fixture. Labor was so saved that there never again was a single case of the frakes in Newton County—no, there was one case, but he is our last chapter.
We may rightly question whether or not Hank Ingledew’s contribution to the way of life was a gross violation of the time-worn strictures against PROG RESS, and there is no denying that the company which manufactured the television sets he sold, as well as all the other aforementioned electrical appliances, had (and still has) as its motto, “PROG RESS is our most important product,” but I seriously doubt that Hank Ingledew ever gave the matter any thought. Selling television was a good way of earning a living, and he grew prosperous. Then too, innumerable sourhours were banished by the tube. There is one school of opinion which would argue that if literacy spoiled the Ozarks by diminishing the oral tradition, television restored something by requiring no literacy—but just what that something is would be hard to pin down.
When the money began rolling in, Hank decided that the time had come to try, once more, one last time, to have a son. He never forgot the superstition that his mother-in-law had told him about, and although he was totally without belief in superstition he could not deny the evidence of the efficacy of this particular superstition, that so many males born in Stay More had been males because their fathers had sat on the roofs of their houses for seven hours, and when Hank built the house that he now lived in, he had given it a low-pitched roof not only because low-pitched roofs are fashionable for ranch-style houses but also in order to facilitate his eventual ascent to the roof’s ridge. One evening when Hank and Sonora were talking in bed before going to sleep, he asked her,
“Snory, do you want to have another kid?”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she replied. “I went to a gynecologist up at Harrison and had myself fitted out for a new diaphragm.”
“I don’t mean that,” he said. “I mean, would you? Could you stand to have one more?”
She was silent, thinking. Then she said, “It probably wouldn’t be a boy, either. You still want a boy. You won’t ever give up.”
“Your mother told me something, once,” he said. “I know it sounds silly, but there’s an old, old superstition that if a man sits on his roof for seven hours near the chimney his next child will be a boy.”
Sonora laughed uproariously. “My mother never told me that.”
“But it works, she said. Lots of men were born male because their fathers sat on their roofs. Her own father. Your dad’s father. Your dad. And she said me too, although not on purpose: my father was nailing on the shingles of his roof one day, and he was up there seven hours. At least that’s what your mother said.”
“When did you get so chummy with my mother?”
“It was the day I came home from California.”
“Oh? As soon as you got back, you went running to my mother to complain because I won’t give you a son?”
“Not like that. I was just talking to her and the subject came up.”
“Are you going to sit on the roof for seven hours?”
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
“Really, Hank! What if somebody comes along and sees you?”
“Well, I could just tell ’em I’m adjusting the TV antenna or something.”
“Oh sure. Just when are you supposed to sit on the roof? Right before knocking me up, or right before the baby is born?”
“I hadn’t thought of that. Your mother didn’t say.”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“Heck, I couldn’t ask her that.”
Sonora didn’t say anything more. But just before going to sleep, she drowsily mumbled, “Maybe I will ask her.” And she did. The next time she saw her mother, she casually mentioned the subject, never having had any difficulty discussing sex with her mother, and told her, “Hank wants to sit on the roof for seven hours. When’s he supposed to do it? Before conception or before birth?” Her mother told her that it was supposed to happen just prior to conception. Sonora relayed this information to Hank, who declared,
“Well, I’m ready anytime you are.”
Sonora calculated the best time of her month and answered, “Any time this weekend,” so the following Sunday, after the noon dinner, when there weren’t any television sets that needed urgent repairs, Hank filled a quart Mason jar with ice and water (it was a hot day), propped a ladder against the eaves of his house, kissed Sonora for good luck, and climbed to the roof, stepped onto it, then climbed the roof to its ridge. He put his ice water on the top of the chimney, the only flat surface up there. He sat down on the ridge, lighted a cigarette, smoked it, and dropped the
butt down the chimney. His daughters came out of the house and stared up at him, pointing at him and giggling among themselves fit to burst. After an hour of it, they grew tired of giggling and went back into the house.
It was one hell of a hot day, and the sun reflecting off the roof made it even hotter. Hank was soaked with sweat; he uncapped the Mason jar and took a lusty drink of ice water. The ice was rapidly melting. The pressure of the ridge against his buttocks was uncomfortable. He hollered down the chimney, “Hey, Snory!” His wife came out of the house, and he called to her, “Could you throw me up a sofa cushion or a pillow or something?” She laughed and went back into the house and brought out a sofa cushion; she threw it; it didn’t reach him; he had to fetch it halfway down the roof. He put it on the roof ridge and sat on it. That was much more comfortable. A pickup truck pulled into his driveway, and in it was his father and all four of his uncles. “Hey, Hank!” Uncle Tearle called up to him. “Ball game down at Deer. Let’s go.” “I got to fix this damn antenna,” Hank replied, taking hold of the antenna and pretending to turn it. “We can wait,” Bevis said, and got out of the truck and began climbing the ladder. At the top of the ladder he asked, “Need a hand?” “That’s okay, Dad,” Hank said. “I can do it, but it takes a while to get it right. You boys go on to the ball game.” Bevis protested that they could wait, and it took several minutes of argument for Hank to persuade them to leave. They were scarcely out of sight when another pickup truck pulled into his driveway, and Bill Chism jumped out and called to him, “Hey, Hank. My Tee Vee just won’t go on. I don’t know what’s the matter with it.” “Well, Bill, I’m sorry,” Hank replied. “I’m messin with this here antenna, and I’ll probably be up here all afternoon.” “Aw, durn,” Bill said, “I was gonna watch the Cardinals.”
“Did you check to see if it was plugged in?” Hank asked. “Hadn’t thought of that,” Bill said and got back into his pickup and drove off. Half an hour later he was back. “Yeah, it’s plugged in, all right, and I can get some sound, but there jist aint ary picture.” Hank replied, “Try the brightness and contrast knobs. Could be you’ve dimmed the tube out.” Bill left again, and returned in another half hour. “I reckon I’ve missed that there Cardinal game by now. But my old woman is givin me hell on account of she has to watch ‘I Love Lucy.’ You sure are takin a long time with that antenna. What’s wrong with it anyhow?” “Caint git it adjusted just right,” Hank said, but he was at a loss for any way to get rid of Bill Chism. He could keep sending him back to fool around with various knobs and screws on his television set, but ole Bill would just keep on coming back until Hank had fixed it. Now Bill showed no inclination to leave, but was just hanging around watching Hank pretending to twist the TV antenna. Hank kept up the pretense until he realized that he wasn’t fooling Bill, and then he asked, “Bill, can you keep a secret? I’ll tell you the truth. I know it’s plumb ridiculous, but what I’m doing up here on the roof, see, is an old superstition. Learned it from Snory’s mother. I’ve got to sit here on the roof for seven hours, and I’ve just been here about three.”
“No foolin?” Bill said, with an ill-suppressed grin. “What’s it supposed to cure?” “It don’t cure anything, exactly,” Hank replied, “it just sorta brings a certain kind of good luck.” “Is that a fact?” Bill said. “Well, I declare. I hope it works fer ye. But will you come and fix my Tee Vee as soon as you git down?” Bill consulted his wristwatch and added, “That’d be about eight o’clock. If you hurry, maybe my old woman can watch her program.” “I’m sure sorry, Bill,” Hank said. “But as soon as I git down, I’ve got to do something else.”
“What’s that?”
“I caint tell ye, Bill, but it’s part of the superstition too.”
Bill hung around a while longer, dejected, and then complained, “What if you was a doctor, and my old woman was a-dying? You’d come down then, I bet.”
“Yeah, Bill, I sure would, but I aint a doctor and your old woman aint a-dying, and I’ve done put my mind to this here superstition, and you’d have to burn my house down to get me off of here.” Bill went away.
Hank’s jar of water was empty; he hollered down the chimney for more, and Sonora climbed the ladder and got his jar and refilled it, and brought it back up with a ham sandwich. He ate his sandwich and drank his ice water, then he realized that he needed to urinate. He went down the back slope of the roof and stood at the edge of the roof and urinated. Inside the house one of his daughters observed, “Mommy, it’s raining, although the sun is out. I bet there’ll be a rainbow.” All of the girls ran out of the house looking for a rainbow. Then they went back in. Late in the afternoon, a carload of Stay Morons drove into the driveway and stared at him and then drove away. “Damn that Bill Chism,” Hank said aloud. Another carload of Stay Morons arrived. Then another. The population of Stay More at that time had shrunk to only about sixty, but before the afternoon was over every last one of them had had a chance to see Hank Ingledew sitting on his roof. Most of them shouted, “Good luck, Hank” as they were driving away, but many of them made joking remarks. The last visitor was a reporter from the Jasper Disaster, carrying a Graphlex camera. “You point that thing at me,” Hank warned, “and I’ll smash it to flinders.”
“Could I ask a few questions?” the reporter asked.
“I jist as soon ye didn’t,” Hank said.
“It isn’t every day that I get a chance like this,” the reporter persisted. “Imagine the headline: ‘STAY MORE MAN SITS ON ROOF SEVEN HOURS.’”
Hank grimaced, and said, “There better not be a word in your paper. A man has got the right to do whatever he wants so long as he aint harmin anyone. I’m on my own property, and you’re trespassing. I’ll take ye to court if you print this.” The reporter retreated, and nobody else came. He had just a couple of hours to go. He was tired. His bones ached. He felt silly. But he believed it would work. Faith fortifies.
When his seven hours were up, Sonora climbed to the top of the ladder and smiled at him and asked, “Shall I climb on up there, and we’ll do it on the roof?” Hank didn’t know if she was serious or not, but he observed, “It’s still light. I’ll come down.” He went down off the roof. She pointed out that the girls wouldn’t be going to bed for another hour. “Are we supposed to do it right away?” Hank wondered. “I guess,” she said. “Well, let’s go for a little walk,” he suggested. Sonora went inside to tell the oldest girl that they were going for a walk and would be back soon. Then Sonora and Hank went into the woods behind their house; within a few hats they were lost from sight. On a thick blanket of old leaves Sonora sat and removed her slacks and panties; Hank removed his pants and shorts. They embraced and kissed for a while, but Hank discovered that his part was not only not standing but also it wasn’t even rising. Hank could not explain it. He tried: “I guess maybe I’m just all wore out from sitting on the roof so long.”
“But what about all of those other men that it worked for, who sat on their roofs and then had sons?” Sonora said. “Were they worn out too? How did they get it in?”
“I don’t know,” Hank said, and he climbed on top of her and put it between her legs and went through all the motions of intercourse, but his part refused to stiffen. Sonora thrust her hips vigorously against his, but it wouldn’t help. He did, however, after prolonged movement, spill his seed, which Sonora collected on her fingertips and inserted into herself. It was this which impregnated her.
Nine months later she gave birth to, sure enough, a son. She was ecstatic, and there is no word to apply to Hank, who made a fool of himself out of pride and happiness. But after the celebrating was over, he frowned and asked Sonora, “What was the name of that guy we were going to name him after? You know, the World’s Oldest Man, that peddler from Connecticut?” “Yeah, I know who you mean,” Sonora said, frowning; “His name is right on the tip of my tongue…Eh…Eh…Elmer? No. What was it?” She couldn’t remember. Hank asked his father. Bevis said, “It was one of them funny Yankee names, Esau or so
mething.” Hank’s Uncle Tearle thought the first name was “Ezra” but none of his uncles could help him.
Wasn’t the name written down anywhere? Maybe it was written on the glass showcase which served as the man’s coffin. Hank went into the old mill; its timbers were thoroughly rotten; he worried that the mill would collapse upon his head, but he found the glass showcase and dusted it off. The old man hadn’t changed a bit, but the sight of him didn’t refresh Hank’s memory as to what his name had been. “What was your name, old-timer?” Hank said aloud, and wouldn’t have been surprised if he got a reply, but he didn’t. He inspected the glass showcase closely, but there was nothing written on it except the name of the manufacturer, “Acme Display Fixtures, Inc.” He told Sonora that they might as well name their son Acme Display Fixture Ingledew, but Sonora rejected that because of the resemblance between “Acme” and “Acne.” Sonora suggested finding the oldest person in Stay More and asking him or her if he or she could remember the name of the Connecticut peddler. That turned out to be Drussie Ingledew, Grandpa Doomy’s kid sister, in her early eighties, still living in the Stay More Hotel, still operating it in fact, although the last customer to spend the night there was back during the Second War.
“Aunt Drussie,” Hank said, “what was the name of that old peddler who used to come back to Stay More again and again and finally died here when I was a kid?” “Aw, shore,” Drussie replied, “everybody knows his name. I’m ashamed of ye, thet you’ve forgot it. Why, when I was just a little girl, I remember the year he brought the whale oil when the bar oil guv out, and then again when the whale oil guv out he brought coal oil. Then there was the time—” “Aunt Drussie,” Hank interrupted, “what was his name?” “He used to give me candy,” Drussie recalled, “and ask me if I had been a good girl, and if I was being as good a girl as I knew how. I’ll never forget him, to the day I die.” “But you don’t remember his name?” Hank asked. “Ellis Wilkins?” Drussie said. “Ellery Wilkes? Ephriam Wilson? Elton Wallace? Ennis Willoughby? Any of them sound right to you?” Hank shook his head. “Wal, I’ll tell ye,” Drussie offered, “there was a time he druv up to Stay More in the first hossless kerridge, and my oldest brother Denton took ’im to court fer spookin his livestock’ in the building whar the cannin fact’ry used to be, that one time was Denton and Monroe’s barn, and the Jasper newspaper printed a give-out on the court trial. Maybe if you was to find that old newspaper, it would have his name in it.” “What year was it?” Hank asked. “Year?” said Drussie. “Why, I reckon that was the same year, or the year after, that Doomy organized the Masons.” “What year was that? Do you know the number of the year?” “Number of the year? Law, boy, years don’t have numbers!” “Don’t you know the number of this year?” “No. Do you?” Hank said goodbye to his great-aunt and drove into Jasper to search the files of old Disasters, but the fellow on duty in the Disaster office was the same person that Hank had refused permission to photograph him on his rooftop or even to interview him, and the fellow was peevish and wouldn’t give Hank permission to look at old issues. It didn’t matter; Hank didn’t even know what year it was. Even if he knew the exact year, he probably wouldn’t have been able to find the item. He went home to Sonora and said, “Let’s just name him Hank Junior and you can call me Big Hank and call him Little Hank.”
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