Enduring

by Donald Harington

  Latha answered her daughter’s letters, with what little news there was to report: Junior Duckworth, who had once been Hank’s rival for Sonora’s affections, had moved to California, but she didn’t know where. So had Merle Kimber and the others who had built the W.P.A. bridge and fought for Sonora’s attention in the yard. There wasn’t much else to write about to Sonora except the changing of the seasons, but eventually Sonora wrote back to say that since California had no seasons it made her terribly homesick to hear about autumn and spring in the Ozarks. So Latha tried to tell her about the summer droughts and the spring floods, which were just as awful as ever. Sonora wrote to say that maybe out of boredom she had stopped wearing her diaphragm, and as a result was pregnant once more. As the pregnancy progressed, Sonora wrote to complain that she was losing her looks, getting fat, and her stomach was almost as extended as John Henry’s potbelly when in the fifth month he finally noticed it and wanted to know why she hadn’t been wearing her diaphragm and warning her that this baby had pretty damn well be a boy. Toward the end of her pregnancy Sonora told her mother that she was not only fat but gross and ugly and she suspected that John Henry was not being faithful to her. Anything that Latha could think to say to Sonora in response would have been meaningless. “Men are that way.” “Don’t blame yourself.” “Let’s hope that everything will be back to normal after the baby is born.” Sonora wrote to say that when she went into labor, Hank wasn’t even around but out somewhere fooling around with his girlfriend. When he finally showed up and found out that the baby was one more girl, he observed philosophically that it didn’t appear there were ever going to be any more Ingledews. She assured him that this one was the prettiest of them all. Latha felt such sympathy for Sonora that for the first time since she had bought the store from Bob Cluley she wasn’t able to open it. There wasn’t much business anyway, and the post office had been closed permanently since the war, so Latha simply left a large hand-lettered sign on the door saying WE ARE NOT OPEN. IF YOU BADLY NEED SOMETHING, AND DONNY ISN’T HERE TO OPEN UP FOR YOU, COME TO THE DILL HOUSE. Dawny made a point of being available in case anybody came to the store, but he later reported to her that no one had, except a couple of drummers. Latha stayed home until she was able to write some sort of letter to Sonora, with no advice or consolation but with reassurance that Latha loved her very much and was willing to do anything for her, short of coming to California. In the weed patch on the north side of the store there were a whole bunch of mulleins, and she went out and began to bend them down one by one, naming them Sonora, John Henry, Latha, Eva, June, Patricia, and, the new baby, Sharon [who was me]. Each morning she would go look at the bent-down mulleins, and each evening before closing the store (which had done no business) she would also have a word or two with the lame stalks of mullein. None of them responded. But one morning she saw that the stalk she had named John Henry was standing proud and tall and she could not believe it. Why would that one alone have risen? All day long she was in a quandary, and told Every about it at dinnertime, but he never had given much credence to her superstitions. But late in the afternoon, when she was sitting in her rocker on the porch, here came John Henry walking up the road!

  “John Henry as I live and breath!” she yelled at him, and stood to give him a hug, but they only shook hands.

  “Hank’s what everbody hereabouts calls me,” he said.

  “Where’s the rest of you?” she asked, as if he had left an arm down the road.

  “Aw, they’re still out to Californy, but I hope they’ll come back soon.”

  “Did you just walk all the way home?”

  He laughed. “Naw. My van’s parked over at my folks’ place. I’ve just been out for a stretch and to say howdy to old friends.”

  Hank sat in a chair beside her rocker and they talked for quite a spell. Hanging his head, he told her that Sonora had evicted him from their house because he had foolishly “been with” another woman, but he hoped that since time wounds all heels it would also heal all wounds and maybe Sonora would bring all the girls and come back to Stay More to live, because as far as he was concerned he wasn’t ever going to leave Stay More again. His ancestor Jacob Ingledew had placed a curse on California, and now Hank placed so many curses on it that he had to keep asking Latha to excuse his French. Latha told him that she understood and she hoped that Sonora would forgive him and come home too. When the subject came up of Hank’s regret over his fifth daughter, Latha laughed and told Hank of an old tried-and-true superstition that had never been known to fail; if a husband sits on the roof of his house near the chimney for seven hours his next child will be a boy. Hank scoffed, so Latha named for him all of the men of Stay More who had been born males as a result of their fathers sitting on the roofs of their houses for seven hours. Hank was impressed, but he observed, “Heck, I aint even got a roof to set on.” That set him to thinking, and the following day he began construction of a ranch-style house up on an elevated bench of Ingledew Mountain that afforded a fine view of what was left of Stay More and all the mountains beyond. He even went to Harrison and persuaded the power company to run an electric line into Stay More to run his power tools and thus he could be credited with the coming of electricity to Stay More, which led to his eventual credit for bringing television to Newton County because, as soon as he had finished the house with the help of his several uncles and his brother Jackson, he bought a vacant store building on the Jasper square and turned it into Ingledew Television Service & Sales. Since people needed electricity to run their TVs, this led to the establishment of power lines all over the county.

  Meanwhile, Latha wrote regularly to Sonora, telling of her meeting with Hank and of his determination to have Sonora come back, but Sonora answered she could never forgive Hank for what he had done. It had been so terrible that Sonora had deliberately started an affair with the husband of Hank’s lover, to get even with both of them. Latha kept her informed of the progress on the house, which was going to have five bedrooms, three for the daughters to share, and one for the son that Hank never gave up hoping to have. Latha tried to assure her son-in-law that Sonora would eventually forgive him. “If California is as bad as you say it is, she can’t stand it much longer,” Latha said. Other people kept on going to California, though. Frank and Rosie Murrison decided to pack up and go there, but when it was time for them to leave, they couldn’t find Dawny, who hid out somewhere in the woods until they were gone, and then was permitted to stay in his room at Latha’s store when he reappeared. Latha wanted him to move in with them, but he didn’t want to be their child. He was grateful, however, that Latha fed him, and packed his school lunch, and he kept on working at the store as her stockboy and even minding the store whenever she was away or didn’t feel like showing up. Every’s business was slow, but it was fast enough to keep enough cars and pickups running smoothly so that folks could drive into Jasper to do their shopping at the new supermarket there. The day came when Latha had to close her store for good. She didn’t evict Dawny, but she told Dan to help himself to whatever he wanted that remained of her merchandise.

  As predicted, Sonora finally came home. Every drove to Fort Smith to pick her and her daughters up at the airport. Latha wanted to go along but there wouldn’t be room for all of them in his car. So Latha waited patiently for hours until they got home and she could embrace her daughter and all her granddaughters. Sonora looked so aged, but the baby Sharon was truly beautiful. [Thanks, Gran.] Then they all went up to the new house to surprise Hank, who had worn himself out building the new house and was practically bedridden. There was no furniture in the house yet except his bed, so Latha had the privilege of putting up her granddaughters in the dogtrot’s other wing. The girls were struck with wonder at an actual house made out of logs, and they were crazy about all the cats all over the place, and tried to hold or pet as many of them as possible before bedtime. Maybe Hank was disappointed in having so many daughters, but Every certainly loved having so many granddaughters, and he doted o
n them, making the older ones laugh at his jokes and letting the young ones ride the little horsy down to town on his knee. Every closed his garage for lack of business, leaving one engine block hanging from an oak tree because nobody had come to claim the car it was supposed to run, but he left the gasoline pump operative in case anybody ever needed gas, but nobody did. He got himself a job as a mechanic for the Ford dealer in Jasper, which enabled him to take his older granddaughters to school at Jasper, slightly better than the Parthenon school that Dawny was attending. Every didn’t really need a job, because he and Latha had made so much money during the Army maneuvers that they could retire any time they wanted to, but Every needed an excuse for driving his granddaughters to school, and he always made a point of asking them to tell him all about their school day. When Dawny finished the eighth grade at the Parthenon school, Every began taking him along to attend the Jasper High School.

  When Hank and Sonora were all settled in their new house, and Hank’s TV business in Jasper was booming, Sonora came to Latha and said, “Hank wants to sit on the roof for seven hours. When’s he supposed to do it? Before conception or before birth?” Pleased that her superstition had been accepted, Latha replied that it was supposed to happen just prior to conception. So the following Sunday, the first day that was both a holiday for Hank and the middle of Sonora’s fertile cycle, Hank went up on the roof, equipped with a Mason jar of ice and water because it was a hellishly hot day. Latha could stand in the back of her dogtrot and see him up there, far up atop that bench of Ingledew Mountain. After he’d been up there about three hours, and Sonora had taken him a sandwich, Sonora came over to Latha’s to report on the “project” and on the various friends and customers who had stopped by attempting to get Hank to come down, who claimed he was adjusting his TV antenna. Sonora arranged to bring all the girls over at six o’clock, which would be the seventh hour, and Latha offered to feed them while Sonora tried again to get impregnated.

  Sure enough, nine months later they had a son. But neither of them could remember the name of the Yankee peddler that they had intended to name the boy after. If they had thought to ask Latha, she could have told them. Sonora decided to name the boy Vernon because it was springtime.

  Latha was very fond of the boy but she was careful not to overdo it the way Hank did. You’d think Hank considered himself a hero. He handed out cigars to everyone he knew, including Latha, who dutifully smoked at least part of it, the first time she’d ever used tobacco in any form, and the last. Vernon’s five sisters each took a puff, but that was all they could stand, and the only way they could understand the significance of the cigar was that it was shaped like a magnification of the part of Vernon’s anatomy that distinguished him from them. In fact, Vernon had not merely five sisters but six, in a sense: his first cousin Jelena, daughter of the ill-fated Dinsmore twins and ill-fated Billy Bob Ingledew, came from Harrison each summer, where her Uncle Jackson was raising her, to spend the summer with her cousins, especially Patricia, her coeval and favorite. Jelena and Patricia were eight years old when Vernon was born, and that was an age for being particularly interested in watching Sonora change Vernon’s diapers, a job which both girls eagerly volunteered to do. Jelena was to claim, years afterward, that she fell in love with Vernon the first time she laid eyes on him. Latha didn’t believe that little Vernon could distinguish among all those girls who were his sisters and his cousin but she did believe that somehow he was more drawn to Jelena. When Jelena picked him up and held him, he actually cooed.

  Chapter forty-two

  Dawny told Latha that he was spending a lot of his time with ole Dan, learning that it was ole Dan who had found him when he was lost in the dark glen of the waterfall at the age of almost six, and that he had told Dawny about his childhood in a place called Dudleytown, Connecticut, and the fact that he was not much older than Dawny was now when he began teaching school in a place called Five Corners, Vermont. And he reminded him of how, in his search for some other place that would be the right place, he had lived in a dying town called Lost Cove, North Carolina, which was where he had fathered the girl that Dawny had known as Annie, who had eloped with the tank captain Stoving to Little Rock.

  “Are you sad because of that?” Dawny asked ole Dan. But Dan said, “I am not especially sad because Annie left me. She had good reasons for that, and she needed to get out and see some of the world. But I’m sad that she now has a child of her own, a little girl named Diana, and that child is going to have to grow up in the corruption of Little Rock. I was never successful in persuading Annie that there were certain aspects of our country life which must be preserved against the encroachment of ‘civilization.’

  “But I told her that when the child was born, I wanted to ‘borrow’ that child for just a few years during her crucial upbringing to attempt to bring her up as I had brought up Annie herself, protected from all the trammelings and warpings and frustrations of society, showing her the grand world of nature and the ways that she belongs to it.

  “That was my bargain with Annie, but she has reneged. It has been three years now since the baby was born. I am almost seventy years old. I am beginning to lose hope.”

  Dawny possessed a large vocabulary but he told Latha he didn’t know what “reneged” means, and neither did Latha, but they assumed it meant that Annie had changed her mind about letting Dan take the little girl Diana. Latha wished there was something she could do to cheer up her friend Dan. She had already given him the contents of her store, but that was just material goods. She baked a vinegar pie and had Every drive her out the Butterchurn Holler road to Dan’s house, where they both visited for a while with Dan. Latha brought him up to date on her grandchildren, including the new one, who was a boy. But Dan seemed to be in a deep depression, and told them he might go away for a while. Go where? Latha asked. Oh, just off somewhere for a little while, he said.

  On the way home they were pulled over by a state police cruiser, driven by their neighbor, Corporal Sugrue “Sog” Alan, the same ruffian who in his earlier days had been the school bully and had broken Dawny’s arm.

  “What’s up, Sog?” Every asked.

  “License and registration,” Sog said.

  “Hell’s fire, Sog!” Every said. “What did I do wrong?”

  “Sir, license and registration,” Sog said again.

  “Latha, fetch me that piece of pink paper out of the glove compartment,” Every said to her, and then he said to Sog, “I think I must’ve left my license in my other pants.”

  Sog began writing him a ticket. Latha thought of how Sog had left Stay More to serve in the Korean War, but returned home to live in the family house (his parents and sister had gone to California), a house that was the nearest neighbor to Latha’s store and post office. It made Latha nervous that Dawny was living there in such close proximity to his former assailant, but Dawny was big and tall and strong and told Latha he had no fear of Sog Alan.

  Latha spoke up, “Do you mean the only thing he’s done wrong is driving without his license?”

  Sog stared at her with his mean little eyes. “No’m,” he said. “You folks have been to see the old hermit feller, right?”

  “He’s not a hermit,” Latha said. “He just prefers his own company.”

  “Did he have anyone else’s company while you were there?” Sog looked back and forth between the two of them.

  “Just ours,” Every said.

  Sog sighed. “My wife Fina has turned up missing.”

  Latha knew that Sog had a wife named Serafina, who had a five-year-old daughter named Brigit whose father had been killed in Korea. Latha had seen them a few times; Fina didn’t look much older than five herself.

  “You’uns aint seen her? I reckoned she might even have took the girl and gone to your place just to get away from me.”

  “Sorry, Sog, we haven’t seen them lately,” Every said.

  Sog did not give Every the ticket. “You ought to have your license on you whenever you drive,” h
e said, and got back in his cruiser and took off.

  “That boy makes my flesh crawl,” Latha said.

  “I hate to see folks leaving Stay More,” Every said, “but I’d sure be glad if he didn’t stay any more, and it’s good to learn that his wife and kid have already lit out.”

  They did not see any of them again for several weeks, until one day in late May several state police cruisers and the sheriff’s and deputy’s cars came into town. Sog appeared at the dogtrot, accompanied by an FBI agent, and said he needed to question Latha and Every, because that hermit had done gone and kidnapped the daughter of his daughter.

  “Do you mean Brigit?” Latha asked.

  “Naw! I don’t know what became of them. I’m not talking about Fina’s daughter. I’m talking about Annie’s daughter. Her name is Diana Stoving, and she’s not but three years old, and that fucking hermit went all the way down to Little Rock and stole her.”

  “Well, we haven’t seen hide nor hair of ’em,” Every said. “Have you tried looking at Dan’s house?”

  “I may look stupid,” Sog said, “but I got more sense than that. That’s the first place we thought to look, and the bastard shot at two state troopers and three sheriff’s deputies getting away from there. None of ’em was kilt, luckily, but he shore slowed us down.”

  The search for Diana Stoving became the biggest event in Stay More’s history since the ceremony of Gerald Coe’s posthumous award of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Bloodhounds were brought in, and it seemed the searchers scoured every inch of the countryside. Annie and her husband Burton Stoving came to town in a Cadillac, and Stoving offered a reward of ten thousand dollars for the safe return of their daughter. He later raised that to twenty. It seemed at one time there were more strangers in town than there had been during the Army tank maneuvers during the war, and if Latha’s store had been open she could have done a thriving business. Latha had mixed feelings about the kidnapping. She sympathized with the girl’s parents, but she remembered that she had once determined to kidnap Sonora away from Mandy if she had to. And she remembered Dan’s offer to kidnap Sonora. Personally, asking herself where she would have gone if she were Dan, she hoped he had taken the child somewhere away from Stay More. Dawny and Latha put their heads together and concluded that the glen of the waterfall would be a great place for Dan to hide out. “But would Sog Alan think to look there?” Latha wondered. Dawny winced and said he hoped not. They swore each other to secrecy. They agreed that growing up in the Ozarks would be better for the girl than growing up in Little Rock. They planned, if the law officers were not successful in finding Dan and the little girl, to take some food and blankets up to the glen of the waterfall.