The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks

by Harington, Donald

  He and his major spent the next year tracking down and killing the two remnants of the Confederate Army, and then they declared the War won and went home. Isaac planted most of the eighty acres his father had given him in wheat and corn, and began the construction of his mill, assisted by his brother Lum and his Swain uncles. He had finished one door of the mill when a girl appeared, on foot, barefoot, holding an infant in her arms. It took him a moment to recognize and remember her, but still he did not even say “Howdy.” She did, however, and then she held out the infant to him and asked, “Do ye wanter take a gander at yore son?” Isaac took a gander at the baby, and even chucked it under the chin; he tried to mumble “Cootchycoo,” but the words would not come. And then he said to Salina the only thing that anybody ever heard him say to her publicly. Gesturing across the valley at the distant knoll where the dogtrot house his father had given him was located, he declared, “That’s my place up yonder.” Salina and her baby moved in. The infant boy was named Denton Ingledew, after his mother’s last name. Turning back to his work, Isaac built another door on the mill, and thus we might think of the mill as being also bigeminal in symbolism of the new union, but in this particular case we know that the bigeminality was strictly functional: one door was for people going into the mill, the other door was for people coming out.

  Isaac worked that day until well past dark, deliberately postponing going home to his woman, to whom he did not know what else to say. But inevitably he had to go home, where Salina was waiting with a pretty fine supper she had fixed. While he ate it, Isaac couldn’t think of a blessed thing to say, but that was all right, because Salina, by contrast with her husband, was just about the most talkative person who ever lived in Stay More. That night she began: “My name’s Sleeny Denton, and I’m seventeen year old, and I’ve got two older brothers and three older sisters that have all done flew the roost, and we lived up Right Prong Holler all our life, my daddy and mom were gone visitin kinfolks in Demijohn that day ye came, that’s how come ye didn’t meet ’em, and I’d jist had the everlastin wits skeered out o’ me by them bushwhackers that lit far to the house, ’till you come and run ’em off, and then done what ye done, which I have to say I didn’t mind a bit, it was the most fun, I’m tellin ye, and I wouldn’t care if ye did it again soon as ye git done eatin, although not in the same room with the baby, because I’m strict about that, you’ll find, but aint he the cutest little spadger ever ye saw, looks jist lak ye, same eyes and all, ’though I think his nose kinder favors my daddy’s, and he’s got Mom’s ears, but you kin jist tell by lookin at him that he’ll grow up to be big and strong lak you, why, my, I never seed ary man in my life as big and strong as you, it’s a sin to Moses how big and strong, and I tole my daddy what yore uniform looked lak, and ast my daddy what did them bars on yore collar mean, and my daddy said them bars meant ye were a colonel! and my sakes alive! if I haven’t always wanted to marry me a colonel! why, when I was jist a little chicky I used to tell my playmates I was a-fixin to marry me a colonel when I got growed up, and now jist look at me! I’ve done went and done it!”

  After Isaac had finished eating, he stood up, belched to signify his satisfaction with the meal, and began stretching. While he was stretching, Salina, first putting the baby into the other house of the dogtrot, climbed him. She was not hysterical now, but she went on talking, a blue streak, the whole time he did her, although her words were interlaced with coos and burbles and were terminated by a squeal. Thus their second-born, Monroe Ingledew, was conceived. In fact, one of the few things of distinction about John Ingledew, their third son, apart from his being the father of the next great wave of Ingledews in our ongoing saga, was that he was the first of Isaac’s and Salina’s children to be conceived when his parents were in a horizontal rather than a vertical position, for it took them that long to discover, albeit accidentally, that it was possible to do it while lying down. It may be noted in passing that Isaac Ingledew was the only Ingledew male who never again got the frakes. He worked hard, but not hard enough to get the frakes, or, if he did work hard enough to get the frakes, Salina’s hearty, refreshing sensuality gave him immunity.

  He was, as I say, a miller. He was not the first; we may have glimpsed, chapters back, the rude gristmill of Zachariah Dinsmore, which was a primitive “tub wheel” mill, on Swains Creek. Isaac’s mill was on Banty Creek, near its mouth where it empties into Swains Creek, where it was swiftest, swift enough to power the large undershot wheel that powered the grindstone. But soon after he had built the mill, Banty Creek went dry. Rather than turn the whole mill structure around so that its wheel would be in Swains Creek (which wouldn’t have worked anyway—or, rather, it would have turned the wheel in the opposite direction, and, Isaac realized, unground the meal), he decided to convert to steam power. A boiler and an engine and the necessary machinery would cost him a thousand dollars, which he did not have. Reticently he asked his father, recently retired from the governorship, for a loan, but Jacob claimed that he had spent all his money building his trigeminal house, a lame excuse, but Isaac, being taciturn, did not argue.

  Learning that the cities suffered a scarcity of bacon, Isaac took his gun into the woods and slaughtered five hundred razorback hogs, dressed them with the help of his wife and brother, and carted them off to Springfield, Missouri, where he easily sold them for more than enough to purchase the boiler and engine and machinery, which he purchased there and carted back to Stay More and installed in the smaller building which may be seen in the rear of our illustration. It was the first engine in Newton County, one of the first engines in all of the Arkansas Ozarks. He brought with him from Springfield a fireman, named Toliver Cole, or Cole Toliver (it is not certain which), to operate the engine. There was still enough water in Banty Creek to fuel the boiler.

  Everyone in Stay More, and half the populaces of Parthenon and Jasper, gathered at The Ingledew Grist Co. to watch the first firing of the engine. Toliver Cole (or Cole Toliver) was impressed with the size of his audience, and for the occasion he wore a top hat, cutaway, and spats, although in place of a tie he wore his usual red bandana. Fifteen girls fell in love with him, so he could take his pick, and afterwards picked Rachel Ingledew, Isaac’s young sister, who became Mrs. Cole, or Mrs. Toliver. But the ceremony of the firing was awesome, horrifying, well worth the trip to those who had come from a distance. Lum Ingledew, Isaac’s brother, was given the concession, and did a brisk business in sassafrasade, jujubes, and folding fans. As the engine started up, women fanned themselves, and prayed, or fainted. Grown men trembled and wiped their sweating palms on their shirtfronts. Children screamed, dogs howled, birds flew away. It was the Second Tuesday of the Month, and up the hill at the Ingledew dogtrot, the old Eli Willard clock said PRONG, unnoticed, unheard.

  Strange to relate, Isaac’s business fell off. People reverted to laboriously pounding their grain in stone mortars, Indian-fashion. Being taciturn, Isaac could not go around asking people why they would not patronize his mill. Were they actually afraid of his engine? At any rate, he had to lay off his new brother-in-law, who went back to Springfield, taking Rachel with him. For days, weeks, Isaac sat in his captain’s chair on the porch of his mill, waiting for customers. He would go home late in the evening, and Salina would climb him and make him feel better, momentarily, but she never asked him, “How’s business?” and even if she had, he could not have told her. He kept a fire lighted under his boiler, and checked the pressure gauge now and then, but never threw the switch to start the engine.

  Gradually, the people, although they did not want to patronize his mill, began to miss the chatting and gossip that they had indulged in while waiting for Colonel Coon to grind their grain, and one by one, sackless or with their gunnysacks empty, they began coming back to his mill and sitting on his porch and chatting and gossiping with one another. Isaac sat among them, listening, yearning to open his mouth and ask them why they did not patronize his mill any longer. Were they afraid of his engine? Would they bring
their grain to him if he threw out the engine and moved the mill around so that its wheel was in Swains Creek? What about earplugs? Or what if he offered to pick up and deliver their grain so that they did not have to see, let alone hear, the engine? But he could not ask these things. And because he never spoke, the people began to take his presence for granted, they began to feel that he was only an inanimate fixture, and they began to talk about him as if he were not there.

  It is amazing how much a man can learn about himself in this fashion. Isaac learned that he was well-belovèd to them all. He learned how much the men envied him because of his beautiful wife Salina, and how much the women envied Salina because she had “caught” a big, strong, handsome man like Isaac. He learned that there was not a man in Newton County who was willing to fight him, on a dare, or for any amount of money. He learned that all of the men had dreams, nearly every night, involving amatory sport with Salina, and that the women had dreams involving the same with Isaac. But he did not learn why neither the men nor the women, nor the children, would bring their grain to be ground in his mill.

  In time, his own fields of wheat and corn were ripe for harvest, and he harvested them, and hauled the grain to his mill, and built up the fire under his boiler, and hooked up his engine, and ground his grain and meal. The people left the porch of the mill and drifted off, and did not come back until he had shut down the engine. Birds, rats and mice infested his mill and ate through the gunny-sacks and devoured his grain and meal and flour, but fled when he started the engine again. It was a choice: no pests but no people, or people and pests. He opted for the latter, and let the birds, rats and mice have his grain. By and by, he became almost content, sitting among the people, listening to them talk about him. The seasons passed, seedtime, grain and harvest. But after another harvest, the people began to complain among themselves about the back breaking job of grinding their grain in stone mortars, Indian-fashion. Isaac listened to their grumblings for as long as he could stand it, and then he reviewed in his mind his stock of choice profanities until he had picked the one that seemed to him choicest and most profane. He stood up and uttered it, loudly. Then he asked,

  “How come y’all don’t bring yore #@%&*# grain to my #@%&*# mill?”

  The people grew silent, staring at one another and at Isaac. All of them suddenly realized that he was there, where they had forgotten that he had been. This embarrassed them greatly, and they remembered all the things they had said about him, and they all began to get very red in the face, and to slink down in their chairs, and one by one they put their tails between their legs and crept away. Soon each of them returned, carrying upon their backs or their mules’ backs gunnysacks filled with grain. Isaac fired his engine and ground their grain, and grew prosperous over the years, running the mill day and night; he had to hire two helpers and train a new fireman. It was not until his old age, in our own century, after Stay More had seen the coming of a newer and commoner kind of self-propelled engine, that Isaac Ingledew finally learned the reason why people had ever been reluctant to come to his mill: not that they were afraid of the sight or sound of his engine, but rather, as his middle-aged daughter Drussie expressed it to him one day, “I reckon folks back in them old-timey days just couldn’t stand fer no kind of PROG RESS.”

  Indeed, she was right, not alone about that instance of resistance to progress, but to the entire history of Stay More, nay, the entire history of the Ozarks. Everything new, everything progressive or forward-looking, was anathema to those people, and who are we to fault them for it? “Stay More” is synonymous with “Status Quo”; in fact, there are people who believe, or who like to believe, that the name of the town was intended as an entreaty, beseeching the past to remain present. Today, Colonel Coon’s newfangled engine is an antique; after his death, it was transferred to Oren Duckworth’s tomato canning factory, where it powered the conveyor belt for a generation, but has been out of use and rusting for half of my lifetime.

  It was in the generation of Isaac, also, that Stay More and the Ozarks experienced the first serious fuel shortage, called the First Spell of Darkness. All of the lamps, as we have seen, were fueled with bear’s oil, but as the human population increased the population of bears decreased. Isaac himself shot the last bear of Stay More, and when that bruin’s lard was all used up, the people experienced their first blackout. It was very dark, and the moon wasn’t scheduled to reappear for two weeks, and it was the hottest part of summer, so that fireplace light was uncomfortable. Most people simply went to bed, but this indirectly caused a population explosion which in turn would lead to a future depletion of fuel. Isaac’s oldest sons, Denton and Monroe, ran around in the dark yard of the dogtrot catching lightning bugs and putting them into a glass jar, but this kind of lamp was feeble and temporary, since the boys didn’t know what the bugs ate and didn’t feed them, and they died. In an emergency, someone could always make a torch from sap-rich pine, but otherwise most people just went to bed…except Isaac Ingledew and his two helpers and his fireman, who had to stay up ’way past dark to finish the grinding of the day’s flour and meal. By leaving the boiler room door open, some light came into the mill, scarcely enough to work by but enough to keep the men from being entirely blind, and they lit a pine torch from time to time for delicate operations.

  It was during this first Spell of Darkness that lawlessness first came to Stay More (unless we consider, as we should, the War lawless); and note that I say it came to Stay More; it did not originate there. Isaac’s mill had been running night and day for several weeks, and it was rumored that he kept a large sum of money at the mill. This was not true; he kept only enough to make change; the rest of his small fortune was kept in a location which even I do not know. But after dark the men working inside the mill bolted the doors, as any businesses do when they have closed to the public but are still working.

  One night after the doors had been bolted, Isaac was standing near one of the big oak doors at the main entrance, trying to adjust a faulty elevator by pine-torch light, when there came a knocking at the door. Isaac hesitated for only a moment, deciding that it must be some customer coming in late, perhaps after a breakdown, and then he opened the door. A man slipped inside, breathing hard. Isaac gave him the once over and guessed that the man had been riding long and hard. Because of his own experience riding horses, Isaac could even guess how long the man had been in the saddle, at what speed he was traveling, and therefore how far he had come, and from which direction…Missouri. In the dim light only the man’s eyeballs could be seen clearly: his eyes were taking in everything. The man sized up Isaac, who stood a good foot taller, and asked, “You own this here mill?” Isaac nodded. The man began walking around, inspecting the machinery. Not knowing that Isaac was taciturn, he began asking Isaac a lot of questions about his business. How wide an area of the county did the mill serve? From how far away did customers come? How many employees did Isaac have? Isaac answered, if he answered at all, in monosyllables. Meanwhile, the fireman had come up from the engine room with the iron rod that he used to stir his fire, and got in back of the man without being noticed and held the iron bar above the back of his head. The two helpers had rebolted the doors and the side door leading to the engine room. Isaac felt no fear: even if he had been alone with the man, he would have felt no fear, although the dark shadow of a bulge of a gun was obvious inside the man’s shirt. After a few minutes the man asked the price of cracked corn. Isaac told him. The man said, “I’ll take two bushel. There’s eight more fellers out there with me, and their horses aint been fed.” Isaac gave him two bushels of cracked corn, and the man took out a large roll of bills and peeled one of them off and gave it to Isaac. Then they unbolted a door for him and he vanished into the darkness. They could not see any other men or horses out there, but it was very dark.

  As soon as the door was bolted again, the fireman burst out excitedly, “Don’t ye know who that was?” Isaac shook his head. “Hit was Jesse James hisself!” exclaimed the fireman
. “He’ll be back, no doubt about it, and he’ll rob ye! Or try to.” Isaac grinned. He did have some money that night, but it would have been small pickin for the likes of Jesse James. The fireman and the two helpers were looking at Isaac as if waiting for his instructions or for permission to return to the safety of their homes. Being taciturn, Isaac did not know quite what to say, even to his own employees. There was still work to be done in the mill that night, but Isaac figured it could wait until morning. “Fire out,” he said, which was his traditional nightly terseness signaling that the engine could be shut off and the men could go home (and which to our modern ears would sound like “Far out,” possibly a comment on the situation). They lost no time in closing up shop. But Isaac remained behind, alone, after each of them had said to him, “G’night, Colonel. Take keer.”

  After extinguishing the lone pine torch that had provided illumination inside the mill, Isaac bolted the doors again and then, from beneath the high desk where he kept his accounts, he took out his fiddle-case and opened it, and tucked the fiddle under his chin, and began to play.

  As we have remarked, and will continue to remark, Isaac might have been taciturn with words, but not with notes of music, and there were some people, particularly old-timers, who claimed that they could understand perfectly well what Isaac’s fiddle was saying. No, they couldn’t quite put it into words, but they could still understand it. Children, especially girls, were never allowed to listen while Isaac was fiddling. None of the houses of Stay More were close enough to the mill for the sound of this fiddling to carry to them tonight. If Jacob Ingledew had gone out onto his porch and strained his ears…but no, the ex-governor’s hearing was failing in his later years. So there was nobody to hear Isaac’s fiddle, except himself…and a band of nine men sitting on their horses in the woods behind the mill. We can only imagine what thoughts they might have been having, or what words they were speaking to one another, as they listened to the fiddling.