The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3

by Donald Harington

  The girl asks, “Is this Stay More?”

  Latha, amused, laughs. “Not this,” she says, sweeping her hand over her house. “The village is on down the road a piece. You must’ve just passed it and not noticed it, there’s so little left of it.”

  “I didn’t come that way,” the girl says, nodding her head west toward Stay More. She points east. “I came from that way.”

  “On foot?” Latha asks, looking down at her bare feet. “You must’ve got lost at Parthenon and took the wrong turn. I can’t imagine anybody coming to Stay More from that way, which used to be called Right Prong.” Latha realizes her lack of hospitality. “But here now, I’m being chatty and rude. Pull you up a chair and rest your feet and I’ll get you a tall glass of lemonade.” Latha goes to her kitchen to fetch it from the fridge and put ice cubes in it, and takes one for herself. She ponders just who this girl might be or where she might come from. She returns to the breezeway and gives one of the glasses to the girl. “To your health,” she toasts. “You sure look pretty healthy, I’d say. How old are you?”

  “Sixteen,” the girl says. “And I feel very healthy.”

  “And tan,” the woman says. “Do you spend all your time out hiking the back roads?”

  “No ma’am, today’s the first time I’ve ever been on a back road on foot.”

  “Really?” Latha says and comes right out and asks, “Where are you from?”

  The girl hesitates, as if she can’t remember, and then she says, “Madewell Mountain.”

  Bells start tinkling in the back of Latha’s mind. She stares at the girl, and the bells go on tinkling. “Why, that’s just up yonder a ways, not too awfully far at all. But here I’m being so talky I haven’t even told you my name. I’m Latha Dill.”

  She hopes the girl will tell her name in return but the girl says, “Oh. You used to be the postmaster of Stay More.”

  “Long ago, before you were born, when there was still a post office.”

  “And you used to run the general store, where Adam got his flour and stuff.”

  “Adam?”

  “Adam Madewell.”

  The bells had stopped tinkling in Latha’s head and had been replaced by music she hadn’t heard since she and Jessica Tolliver used to hum it together: the largo from the New World Symphony. She declares, “The Madewells lit out for California, oh, maybe thirty year or more ago. It’s still called Madewell Mountain, and you say that’s where you’re from, but how did you happen to know Ad Madewell? Are you some kin to the Madewells?”

  “No, I’m just a good friend of Adam’s.”

  How could that be? She says, “Oh, so you’re really from California, then?”

  The girl has some trouble coming up with an answer. “No,” she says. “Actually I’ve never really met Adam. Could you tell me what he looked like?”

  Latha sighs. “I think you’ve been out in the sun too long, young lady, and you need more ice than what’s in that lemonade.” She returns to the kitchen, fetches a dishtowel, spreads it out, and fills it with ice cubes, wraps it up and returns with the bundle, saying, “Here. Hold this to your forehead.”

  The girl holds the bundle of ice cubes to her brow, closing her eyes at the pleasure of it, or as if she’s never felt ice before.

  The girl asks, “Where do you get ice cubes?”

  “From the fridge, of course,” Latha says.

  “Oh. You have electricity?”

  “Sure. Don’t you?”

  “No. I haven’t seen an ice cube for about nine years.”

  Latha smiles. It is all beginning to fall into place now, and she realizes where she has seen the white dog before. It has been over nine years, but she remembers taking Eliza Cunningham to a yard sale at the house of Sog Alan, who supposedly was moving to California. Latha remembers other things about Sog, how he had once had a wife named Serafina who looked like a child herself, who from a previous marriage had a young daughter named Brigit. Latha had suspected that Sog, the same villain who as a youth had broken Dawny’s arm with a baseball bat and as a young state police corporal had shot and killed Dan Montross, was evil enough to have a predilection for young girls. So when the news had broken, nine years before, of the disappearance of that young girl in Harrison named Robin Kerr, who had never been found, Latha had been tempted to cast suspicion on Sog and even perhaps to report him, but he had supposedly gone to California.

  “Whereabouts on Madewell Mountain do you live?” she asks the girl.

  “The top.”

  “Oh, then you live at the Madewell place, I reckon.”

  “That’s right. Have you been there?”

  “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 would’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 Mount
ain, 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.