Enduring

by Donald Harington

  “Not since I was about your age. I was born and grew up on the east side of Ledbetter Mountain, out Left Prong yonder, at the old Bourne place, where Brax Madewell’s trail comes down off the mountain. That was the way your Ad used to get to school. Did you know that?”

  “Yes, the trail goes up through a glen with a high waterfall.”

  “That’s right. Have you been in that holler?”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “Well, Brax Madewell, who was Adam’s grandpappy, built his house up there about the time I was born. Him and my daddy were friends, and Daddy took me with him once to visit up there. It sure is shut off and out of the way, isn’t it?”

  “It sure is,” the girl agrees. “But I’ve got many friends, including my dog Hreapha, who’s sitting there with your dog Yowrfrowr.”

  Latha is sure where she saw the white dog before. It belonged to Sog Alan. “Yowfrowr,” she repeats after the girl. “Is that what you call Funny? His name is Xenophon, or Fun for short. Yowrfrowr!” Latha laughs, and old Fun jumps up at the sound of his real name and comes to her. She scratches him behind his ears. “Yowrfrowr, huh? Is that your real name, boy? It’s certainly what you say all the time.”

  “Yowrfrowr,” says Fun, wagging his tail like mad.

  “And ‘Hreapha’ is what my dog says,’ the girl says.

  As if to confirm it, Hreapha says “HREAPHA!” and Fun says “YOWRFROWR!” again, and not to be outdone all the other dogs announce their names resoundingly. Latha goes on laughing. She is enjoying herself, but the thought begins to nag her that perhaps evil Sog is out looking for the girl.

  Without coming right out and calling him by name, she asks the girl, “What are the names of your other friends?”

  “Oh, there are so many of them, but their names aren’t always the sounds they make. There’s Robert the bobcat, and another one of Hreapha’s pups named Hroberta, who is Robert’s girlfriend, believe it or not.” Latha can’t help laughing again, and the girl joins in, both of them as if they haven’t laughed much in a long time. “Then there’s Hroberta’s brother, Hrolf,” the girl says, “who thinks he’s the lord of the place, and Ralgrub the raccoon and her three children, and Sheba the king snake, and Dewey the buck deer, and Paddington the bear, and Bess the cow, and Sparkle the pet rock, and a pair of mourning doves named Sigh and Sue, and most recently we were honored with the presence of a clever opossum named Pogo.”

  Latha is really carried away with laughter now, and can barely stop to say, “I remember Pogo in the funny papers.”

  “He’s not still in the funny papers?” the girl asks.

  “No, the artist who drew him, Walt Kelly, died seven or eight years ago.”

  “That’s too bad. Well, my Pogo is just like the Pogo that used to be in the funny papers.”

  Latha laughs some more, then says, “My stars alive, that’s quite a crowd of friends you have. But isn’t one of them named Sog?”

  The girl starts, then begins shivering. “Do you mean Sugrue Alan?” she asks. “Did you know him?”

  “I knew him quite well,” Latha says. “Too well. Until he disappeared, he was one of my few remaining neighbors. Not a near neighbor. He lived on the other side of Stay More. But I knew him all his misbegotten life. How’s he doing these days?”

  “He’s dead,” the girl says.

  “Oh. I wish I could say that’s too bad, but I can’t. Did you kill him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good for you. Good for you, Robin Kerr. Did this happen recently?”

  The girl looks at her wonderingly but gratefully that her name has been spoken, as the dogs do when their names are spoken. It is probably the first time her name has been spoken in some time. “No, I shot him when I was eight. But he asked me to. He was pretty bad sick.”

  “Sick in the head primarily,” Latha says. “You must stay all night with me and tell me the whole story. But the first thing I want to know is: how badly did he hurt you?”

  Robin thinks for a moment. “Physically he never hurt me. Not much. He slapped me once, that’s all.”

  Latha doesn’t know how to ask it. “How often did he…did he molest you?”

  Robin takes her time wording her reply. “I know that’s what he probably wanted me for, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. Something was wrong with his, his, his dick is all I know to call it. It wouldn’t get hard.”

  Latha can’t prevent another laugh, but a mild and wry one. “My,” she says, “you’ll really have a story to tell me. But let’s go start supper. Is there anything in particular you’d like to eat?”

  Robin needs just a moment. “Could you make spaghetti?”

  “Sure. With meat sauce?”

  It turns out the girl hasn’t had spaghetti, one of her most-favorite foods, since she was eight years old, because Sog didn’t care for “Wop” food. Eating, Latha tries to imagine what it would be like to love spaghetti but have to endure eight years without it. Robin names all the foods that she hasn’t had for eight years, so for dessert they have ice cream, with second helpings. They talk and they talk and they talk, late into the night, Robin telling the whole story of how Sog had abducted her from a Harrison skating rink and kept her in captivity until the moment came when his illness (Latha guesses correctly that it was multiple sclerosis) made him yearn for death and he had instructed Robin in the use of his several firearms, handy information because it helped her bag game when the larder of canned food ran out and had to be replaced with fresh food.

  Since Latha has just recently accepted the story of how the cockroaches had formed themselves into an arrow to lead Sharon to Larry’s comatose body, and since all her life she has learned to accept as real things which are almost beyond belief, it isn’t too hard for Latha to believe Robin’s explanation of the invisible presence of Adam Madewell’s “in-habit”—not a ghost because Adam is still alive somewhere out in California, but the part of himself he has left behind when he was required to leave—a presence that has been a great source of comfort and country wisdom to Robin and has not only kept her alive but kept her loving life…to the point that, like Adam, she has never wanted to leave the Madewell Place.

  Robin is fascinated with Latha’s kitchen, particularly the microwave. Robin has spent eight years cooking on an old woodstove. The girl can hardly believe the dishwasher, nor the large refrigerator with an entire section to keep foods frozen and to make ice cubes. In the morning, Robin takes a bath in the first shower she has ever known, and then Latha gives her a pair of her own blue jeans that fit and a knit cotton top, and a pair of sneakers. For breakfast, Latha serves a crunchy cereal Robin has never eaten, topped with a sliced banana and fresh blueberries from the garden. After her first cup of coffee, Robin remarks that she could become addicted to the beverage, but she has a second cup. And then a third, while she continues answering all of Latha’s questions about life on Madewell Mountain. At length Robin asks, “How did you know it was Sugrue who did it?”

  Latha explains, “I read a daily newspaper and watch television. I saw your mother on TV twice. I just had a hunch it was Sugrue because he disappeared at the same time, and because I knew him well. But I had no idea he’d taken you to that old abandoned house on Madewell Mountain.”

  The girl has told Latha about one of the many ways she used to play: she cut out dozens of paper dolls and named them after the citizens of Stay More, as Sog told her their names. She created out of pasteboard the whole village of Stay More. She has been obsessed with Stay More for eight years. And now she wants to see it. So Latha takes her. The white dog follows. “We probably won’t encounter a soul,” Latha tells the girl, “but if we do I’ll just say your name is Sally Smith and you’re a high school student from Jasper doing some research on Stay More. Okay?”

  Their first stop, after a detour over the low-water bridge across Swains Creek, is the schoolhouse. Latha says that she herself attended the school once upon a time, and so did Adam, and she points out the desk where Adam wo
uld’ve last sat. “But he suffered a bad accident in the fourth grade and had to drop out of school.”

  “I know,” Robin says.

  Later, taking Robin down the main street of the town, Latha points out and explains the Jacob Ingledew house, built by the governor of Arkansas after the Civil War and most recently occupied by a college professor named Larry Brace who had shot himself in the foot trying to kill cockroaches. She shows Robin Doc Swain’s house. “Did Sog tell you about Doc Swain?”

  “Yes,” Robin says. “He was my favorite paper doll.”

  At the end of the main street Latha points to Sharon’s place, and says, “Now that was my store and post office, where my granddaughter Sharon lives.” They walk only as far as the Alan place, empty and falling, with the faded sign still on the door “Gone to California.” The white dog sniffs around at the long-forgotten scents. Robin says to the dog, “So this is where you grew up?”

  “Hreapha,” the dog says.

  “You’re much better off now,” Robin tells the dog.

  “Hreapha,” the dog agrees.

  “And so are you,” Latha says to Robin, then she takes her back home. Latha wishes the girl could stay a week, but Robin agrees to stay another night. For their steak supper Latha opens a bottle of good wine, the first Robin has ever had. Latha spends a good long while discussing with Robin her reasons for not wanting to telephone her mother, even to let her know that she’s okay. Latha comes to accept that like herself, the girl has learned to relish solitude with the companionship only of some animals.

  Latha gives her to take home (meaning the Madewell place) some clothes, some paperback books, two packages of spaghetti noodles, and a young calico kitten, who will ride to its new home atop Robin’s laden backpack.

  The two women hug, and Latha explains to her the litany of “stay more,” the drawn-out ritual of polite leave-taking, invitations and counter-invitations, and the two women perform these warmly. Robin has written a nice note for her mother, which Latha will mail, but must promise never to reveal to anyone where Robin is. Then she is gone, and for the first time in memory Latha feels lonely.

  Two years later—or is it three? her memory is not failing but her sense of the irrelevance of time is strengthening—Latha hears a commotion among her cats and her dogs, who are barking like mad, and she looks out the window to see an expensive foreign-made “Sports Utility Vehicle,” with a lone man sitting in it. She goes out to find what he’s there for, and he steps out of the SUV to greet her. “Howdy, Miz Latha,” he says bashfully, and she instantly recognizes him, although he’d only been twelve the last time she saw him and he must be in his mid-forties now.

  “Lord have mercy,” she says. “Is that you, Ad Madewell?”

  “Yes’m,” he says. “You’re sure looking pretty good.”

  She holds out her arms and embraces him, although she had never done that to the twelve-year-old boy. She invites him to dinner, and he tells her how he had never got used to people calling the noon meal “lunch.” He provides from his SUV a splendid bottle of a wine called Stag’s Leap Cabernet, and tells her the long story of how he has made his fortune in the wine cooperage business. But he has taken an early retirement and would like to revisit the old haunts of his childhood. He has had enough of California. “There’s probably nothing left of the old home place up on Madewell Mountain, but it’s still home to me,” he says.

  She has decided, from the moment she first saw him, that she will tell him nothing about Robin. She observes, “You must’ve really left a part of yourself up there.”

  “I sure did, ma’am,” he says.

  Nor will she tell him anything about the idea of “in-habits.” All she says is, “You’uns be sure to come and visit me whenever you can.” She will just leave him to wonder why she uses the plural rather than the singular.

  Chapter forty-nine

  It seems the only times she gets out of the house, other than going to her vegetable garden or fishing in Banty Creek (she is convinced that the commercial fish has yet to be frozen which tastes as good as fresh-caught “wild” fish), are when she attends somebody’s funeral. One by one all the old-timers of Stay More die off. One by one the others have said to her, at someone else’s funeral, “Well, Latha, I reckon you’ll be the next to go,” but one by one they have been the next, and the next, and the next, until she is the only old-timer still living in Swains Creek Township. Does she envy the departed? Not at all. Does she miss them? A little, sometimes, when she puts her mind to it, but she doesn’t usually put her mind to it.

  She has to leave town to attend Rindy’s funeral. Dorinda Whitter Tuttle, the bosom pal of her childhood, living for years in the village called Pettigrew, some fifty-odd miles southwest of Stay More, has battled cancer for years until she has succumbed to it. Latha can’t think of a good excuse for not attending the funeral. Her grandson Vernon is driving to Fayetteville on business, so she hitches a ride with him, asks him if he wouldn’t mind stopping in a Fayetteville card shop and buying her a supply of condolence cards, enough to last for years, and then when he drops her off in Pettigrew she discovers that Rindy’s daughter, named Latha after her best friend, will be happy to give her a ride home to Stay More, which she has never seen but always wanted to take a look at. Latha Tuttle Simpson at the age of seventy bears no resemblance to what Latha looked like at the age of seventy, and even seems older than Latha does now at an age approaching one hundred, and is not much better than Latha at driving a car, which is to say she can scarcely drive at all. But she gets Latha safely home. They don’t talk much en route, but Latha has one question: “Did your mother ever say anything about Nail Chism to you?” Latha Tuttle Simpson’s hearing is impaired, and Latha has to repeat the question.

  “Was he one of her beaux?” the other Latha asks.

  “No, he was a man who was wrongfully sent to the penitentiary because of her.”

  “Law, me,” the other Latha remarks. “You’d think she’d of tole me something about that, wouldn’t you? But no, she never said no word about no Nail Chism.” She will shake her head at the mild wonder of it.

  In time, Vernon visits his grandmother and gives her what he calls “a lifetime supply” of assorted cards of sympathy, which, as it will turn out, do not last her a lifetime. Vernon informs his grandmother that he has decided to run for governor of the state of Arkansas, following in the footsteps of his ancestor, Jacob Ingledew. Why on earth would he want to do that? He has always been so devoted to intellectual pursuits and scientific pursuits and the acquisition of useless knowledge. Because, he says, he has investigated just about every field of human endeavor except politics, and now it is time to take a shot at politics. Latha shakes her head in wonder at the idea, but assures him that she will vote for him.

  Vernon also tells her of a “conspiracy,” of sorts. Does Latha remember Sharon’s friend Ekaterina? Of course. Well, Ekaterina has become fabulously famous and wealthy from the sales of her novels, and has taken over the entire penthouse floor of the old Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs. But her fame has become too much for her. She can’t work any more because of the constant publicity and fan mail. She has decided that the only way to escape from the deluge is to have herself “killed.” With the help of Vernon and Sharon and Dawny and a very few other conspirators, she is going to stage her “assassination,” and then go into permanent hiding as a resident of the Jacob Ingledew house. Would Latha cooperate in the deception? Latha is delighted, because Ekaterina was the most interesting woman she’d ever known.

  Latha is pleased that Ekaterina does nothing to the exterior of the old Jacob Ingledew house. It will always look as it always has, its clapboards bare of paint, dust-colored by the dust of the road. But Ekaterina spends a small fortune to fix up the interior of the house, beginning with the patching of all the holes that Larry had shot into it, and extending to the latest in pushbutton lighting and conveniences and gadgetry. George Dinsmore is in charge of secretly transferring all the co
ntents of Ekaterina’s penthouse apartment in Eureka Springs to her new home in Stay More. For Ekaterina’s house-warming the first person she invites is Latha. And a few others: Day and Diana, Vernon and Jelena, Larry and Sharon, Dawny and Kim, and George Dinsmore. Champagne flows. Everyone gets a little tipsy and then they all solemnly take a vow to tell no one that the inhabitant of the house is the same Ekaterina Dadeshkeliani who under the nom de plume of V. Kelian has written many bestsellers. Ekaterina will never use that name again. She shows Latha a wall of her house that has been decorated with framed magazine and newspaper clippings about the murder of V. Kelian. Latha, smiling, tries to recall the last time she had to keep a secret. It must have been way back when she kept from Sonora the secret that she was her mother.

  Latha visits Ekaterina often, and becomes like a mother to her. It is from Ekaterina, not from Dawny himself, that Latha learns the reason Dawny has not been coming around: he loves Latha so much, and always has, and always will, that it gives him physical pain to be in her presence, which explains why he grimaced when he gave her a mild hug and a kiss on the cheek when he met her at Ekaterina’s house-warming. “Of course I’ve read all the novels he’s written about you,” Ekaterina says to Latha, “so I can easily imagine why he’d feel that way. But you mustn’t let it lead you to believe that he holds any ill will whatsoever against you. Quite the contrary. He worships you, and always will.”

  Not long afterwards, Ekaterina is also the hostess for a lavish party in honor of Latha’s centennial. Again the champagne flows freely, and again all their important friends are there, as well as all the remaining inhabitants of Stay More and its environs. Dawny does not appear, but Latha understands, and she is happy with a birthday present he has sent her, a book called One Hundred Years of Solitude by some Latin American novelist. She will greatly enjoy reading it, and will note that Pilar Ternera, an exciting courtesan of the town of Macondo, Colombia’s Stay More, lived to be over one hundred and forty-two years old. Latha chuckles with the realization that she will easily surpass that.