The line did not form. The men and women looked at one another, waiting to see who would go first, but nobody went. The city women had all brought their savings with them to deposit, but they would not move until the natives did. John Ingledew overheard a Swain woman saying to her husband, “Homer, d’ye reckon that loose stone in the chimley-hearth is the best place to keep it?” “Sshh, hush, old woman,” he replied, but it was too late; the people around them had heard her. In another part of the crowd, a Plowright woman remarked to her husband, “It does kinder make a lump under the mattress,” while a Chism woman said to hers, “The rats might chew it if you keep on leavin it under the barn,” while a Duckworth woman said to hers, “I don’t mind ye stashin it in the peeanner, but it keeps some a the notes from soundin.” Before long, just about everybody had an idea of where everybody else was keeping their money, so they all went home and lifted rocks and mattresses and reached under barns and into pianos, and brought their money to deposit in John Ingledew’s bank, and the city women deposited their savings.
John collected almost five thousand dollars. His hands shook just from touching that much money, but he gathered it all up and carried it to his vault. The steel door on the vault, however, would not open. It had a little dial set into it with numbers from o to 9 running around it. That was the combination lock, he knew, but he did not know the combination. He fiddled with it for a while, turning it this way and that, but realized that it was hopeless. He was very nervous, and decided he had better return the money to the depositors until he could find out what the combination number was. He went from house to house, seeking to return the money, but he was rebuffed at every door; the people had revealed their money hiding places, and entrusted their money to John’s bank; it was up to John to keep his side of the bargain. He took the money home and ate supper with it in his lap; he put it under his pillow before going to bed; he kept his revolver loaded and in his hand while he tried to sleep, but he couldn’t sleep. He remembered that his father never slept, so he took the money down to the mill and asked Isaac if he would mind keeping an eye on the money for him. Isaac nodded. John reflected, and decided that since he had asked his father if he would mind, and his father nodded, that meant that he would mind. “You mean you won’t?” John said. Isaac nodded. John took the money home again and lay sleepless all night with it under his pillow. Early on the following morn, he sought out his brother Willis and asked him to drive his Model T up to St. Louis and find the vault-door manufacturer and find out what the combination was. Willis declined, suggesting that John send a first class special delivery letter; as postmaster, he sold the stamps to John.
John mailed his letter and went sleepless for four nights waiting for the reply, which said: “Before we can give you this information, you must furnish proof that you are indeed the owner of the bank.” How could he furnish proof? He drew up a petition, which said, “We, the undersigned, citizens of Stay More, county of Newton, state of Arkansas, do solemnly swear that John Ingledew is well known to us as John Ingledew, and is the owner of the Swains Creek Bank and Trust Company.” He took this petition around to everybody he could find; most of them signed it, although many of them could not write and had to sign an “X.” The petition was covered with a great variety of X’s. But he mailed it off, and went sleepless four more nights waiting for the reply, which said: “You will find the combination engraved in small figures in the lower left corner on the reverse of the door.” John thought about that for a while, then fired off another letter. “Goddamn it all to hell, how can I see the reverse of the goddamn door if the door is locked?” He waited another four days for the reply: “Please do not use profanity. If you will furnish us the serial number of your door, we can supply the combination from our files.” John couldn’t find any serial number, and wrote to tell them so. They replied: “The serial number is located in the upper right corner on the reverse of the door.” If John had not gone for so many nights without sleep, he would have lost his temper in the worst way, but he had no temper left to lose. He tried to curse, but it came out, “Ghdfm.”
He wrote another letter. “Dearest Sirs. I sure do hate to keep on bothering you good people like this, and I just know all of you fellers have much more important things to do than waste your time on a dumb old hillbilly like me, but I have to call your attention to the fact that there is no possible way I could send you the serial number of my door if the serial number is on the back side of it and the door is locked. On bended knee I beg of you, good gentlemen, to scratch your heads and think of something else.” He posted this, went home and fell asleep and slept for four days and nights with the money under his pillow and his revolver in his hand. The reply came, enclosing the combination number, which had been located by tracing the shipping invoice number to the list of serial numbers. John ran all the way up Main Street to the bank with his money and tried the combination on the vault door; tumblers clicked, but nothing happened. John noticed that there was a handle on the door, and he discovered that the handle would turn, and when it was turned the door opened; he foreverafter wondered if it would have opened in the first place if he had simply turned the handle. He put the money into the vault and locked it. Then he sat down at his desk and hid the combination number in the bottom drawer.
He was in business. The business of a bank is to take folks’ money and keep it safe and pay interest on it by loaning it out at a higher rate of interest to other folks. Whom did John know who would like to borrow some money? Well, there was a feller who wanted very much to take out an automobile loan so he could get him a Model T, or better. Feller named John Ingledew. “John, how much do you need for this loan?” John asked him. John told him. “That’s quite a lot. Are you a upstandin citizen of the community, and a good family man?” John asked him. “Some has been known to say so,” John modestly replied. “What is your occupation?” John wanted to know. “Why, I’m the pressydunt and cheerman of the board of the Swains Creek Bank and Trust Company,” John replied. “Do tell? Sir, it’s an honor to do business with such a tycoon. Your credit with us is always good. But I ought to point out, sir, that a Model T is the common man’s vee hickle, and a gentleman of your position ought to git hisself a better car.” “Is that so? Well, I will certainly have to give thought to that. Thank you for your advice. And thank you for the loan.” “You’re welcome. Come again, sir.” John opened the vault and took out the money for John’s automobile loan, and John put it in his pocket, closed the bank, and went off to Springfield and bought himself an Overland six-cylinder sedan, took an hour of driving lessons, and drove it home.
The people of Stay More believed it when they saw it, and were very much impressed. Willis was not impressed. John hoped that Willis would turn green with envy, since the Overland was such a better automobile than the Ford Model T. But since nobody believed that Willis had a Model T, he felt there wasn’t any point in his being envious of an automobile that was better than one that did not exist. Denton Ingledew said to his brother Monroe, “Wonder whar ole Doomy got the money?” Monroe replied, “Aw, bankers is all rich, don’t ye know that?” John parked his Overland in front of the bank, where it remained a symbol of affluence and an object of admiration. The doctors and dentists of Stay More felt that they too ought to have Overlands, and they applied to the bank for automobile loans, but John would not loan them enough for Overlands, and they had to settle for lesser cars, the financing of which emptied John’s vault, so that when Willis came to the bank and said to John, “How ’bout payin me back the money I lent ye fer the steel door and see-ment?” John had to put him off until another day.
John decided that he had better get out into the hills and go to work on some of the misers. Stay More had a number of these. They did not hide their money in the piano or under the mattress; they buried it. John drove his Overland right up to their dooryards, if they could be reached; if not, he tried to leave the car within distant view, so the misers could be impressed by the sight of it. He intimat
ed that if the misers would deposit their money in his bank and let it accumulate interest, the misers too could afford an automobile some day. But the misers did not like the thought of having their coins and bills all mixed together with everybody else’s; they didn’t like the thought of exchanging their savings for a slip of scribbled paper. Only they knew where their money was buried, not even their wives and children, so it was safe.
“Maybe it’s safe, yeah,” John agreed. “But don’t you know that the cost of everthing is goin up, and when prices rise, the value of the money goes down. So you might think you got a hunerd dollars buried out yonder behind the corncrib, but when you go to dig it up and spend it, you might discover it’s only fifty dollars.” Some of the misers could not resist this logic, and they yielded, grabbing their spades and going off and coming back with earth-caked casks and rusty iron coffers containing silver and gold pieces and a few greenbacks. They gave their money to John in return for a slip of paper; they never questioned his honesty; after all, he was an Ingledew, wasn’t he? and all Ingledews have always been honest.
The other misers, the ones who continued to resist, did so on the claim that it didn’t matter whether prices rose or not because they never intended to spend their money anyway. “Air ye jist goin to let it stay buried after you air?” John would ask, incredulously. “Since you’re the only one knows whar at it’s hid, you’ll carry the secret to your grave.” Well, no, they said; on their deathbeds they would tell their wives or children where the money was buried. “But what if you’re hit by lightnin, or a tree falls on ye, or yore heart gives out all of a suddent?” John persisted, and one by one the misers yielded, until he had them all.
But, curiously enough, John’s exposure to all of those misers turned him into something of a miser himself. His children, fortunately, had all come of age before he turned into a miser, so they could support themselves without any help from him, although his firstborn, E.H., after apprenticing himself to the town dentist, wanted to set up his own practice, but was denied help from his father and had to seek elsewhere. His assumed daughter Lola, who was secretly Willis’s, got a job clerking in Willis’s store. Odell, Bevis and Tearle were successful farmers, but their father constantly badgered them to save every penny and deposit it in his bank. John dreaded the thought that there was a single coin anywhere in Stay More lying around loose; even more he dreaded the thought of a single coin being spent unless it was absolutely necessary. Other men continued to chat about weather and crops and Base Ball, but John never talked about anything but thrift and savings accounts, and he was a terrible bore. He had to lend money to cover the interest on the savings accounts, but he hated to, and he subjected each borrower to a merciless and embarrassing cross-examination, and then, in the rare event the loan was granted, he charged the highest interest that the law allowed. Not a few rugged farmers were known to break down and cry like babies on the other side of his desk.
But John reserved his true meanness for the city women, who, one by one, because of inflation, were using up all their savings. One by one they sat or stood, sunbonnets in hand, in front of his desk, twisting their sunbonnets and pleading for a small loan. One by one John turned them down, on the grounds that they had no employment and no prospects for income. One by one they told their pathetic plans: one intended to raise laying hens and sell eggs, one intended to weave baskets, one intended to be trained as a nurse in Doc Plowright’s office, one intended to be trained as a dental assistant in E.H. Ingledew’s office, one was expecting an inheritance from a wealthy aunt in Kansas City who was dying. One even asked for a job as a teller in John’s bank, claiming previous experience in a Chicago bank. But John set his gloomy eyes and his doomy jaw and turned them all down. One by one they starved for a while, then packed up and went back to their cities, abandoning their humble rustic cabins to the weeds and snakes. They were not missed by the women of Stay More.
The only man that John feared was a black-suited agent from the newly created Federal Bureau of Internal Revenue. Recently those politicians up in Washington, probably the same bunch of bastards who ran the Masonic headquarters, had got together and decided that the easiest way to raise money for the government was to put a tax on every man’s earnings. It was unconstitutional, a violation of free enterprise, but the black-suited agent told John that he would go to jail unless he obeyed. John called in his attorney, Jim Tom Duckworth, and asked him if it was true he would go to jail if he didn’t cough up. Jim Tom, who was having his own problems trying to fill out his annual income tax return, admitted that it was true. John asked his help in filling out the forms, and Jim Tom agreed to help as soon as he finished his own forms, in another couple of months or so. When John finally got his forms filled out and sent them in, the black-suited agent came back again and told John to prepare to be audited. John didn’t know what “audited” meant, although it sounded like “indicted” or “outlawed.” He asked if he should pack a suitcase.
“We aren’t going anywhere. I’ll do it right here,” the agent replied.
John went for his revolver, but the agent didn’t seem to be armed. “What do ye aim to do it with?” John asked.
“Why, with my ears, of course,” the agent said, and sat down at John’s desk and began asking him a whole bunch of questions. Beads of sweat began to break out all over John’s doomy face; soon his collar was drenched, but the agent went on asking questions, and John went on sweating, and then he began squirming in his seat. “Auditing,” he reflected, was not quite as bad as the frakes, but it was worse than ticks and chiggers. Finally the agent stopped asking questions and began writing some figures on his pad. At length the agent informed John that he had underpaid his taxes by $756.00 plus 8? interest and penalty. John opened the vault and got the money and gave it to the agent, who didn’t even thank him for it. Every year after that, John grew to dread the appearance of the agent, who always came, always without warning except the general warning that he always came. Year by year, the people up in Washington collected so much money that they didn’t know what to do with it. Like Willis Ingledew, who had collected so much money he didn’t know what to do with it, and thus had bought an automobile that nobody noticed, the government, on a larger scale, began to buy battleships and tanks and submarines, which nobody noticed.
John Ingledew was not the only Stay More victim of the Federal Bureau of Internal Revenue. The black-suited agent also “got” Willis, and “got” Jim Tom Duckworth and Doc Plowright and even William Dill the wagonmaker, who wasn’t making much profit now that anyone who could afford it was buying an automobile.
The black-suited agent had a younger brother, who wore a brown shirt and brown pants, and worked for a different branch of the Revenue Service, a branch that claimed a right to put a tax on the distillation of corn. That was going too far. If they would allow the government to put a tax on their right to convert corn into beverage, the government might as well put a tax on their right to have their cows convert grass into milk. The next thing you know, the government would be putting a tax on a cow’s right to convert bullseed into calves. John Ingledew called an emergency meeting of T.G.A.O.T.U. to assess the situation. Stay More’s best distiller, Waymon Chism, was a member, and he stood to lose most if the man in the brown shirt located his still, which wasn’t hidden, but in plain view on the Right Prong Road, with a sign over the doorway, “Chism’s Dew, 35¢ a gourd, W. Chism Prop.”
The members suggested that the first thing he had better do is scratch out “dew” and write in something else. To fit the space, it had to be a three-letter word, and there weren’t many of those. “Sip,” “sup,” “lap” and “nip” were suggested, but considered risky. Better to disguise it entirely with “pot,” “lap,” “oil,” or “rot.” Better still to call it “tea.” Waymon Chism scratched out “dew” and painted in “tea,” but the man in the brown shirt came anyway and stared at his sign and sniffed the air and asked Waymon what kind of tea was worth 35¢ a gourd. Waymon offere
d to sell him a gourdful, but the man claimed he was a United States government agent and was not required to pay for it. They argued awhile, and finally Waymon gave him a gourd, which contained a genuine tea that Waymon’s old woman had brewed out of sassafras roots, goldenseal, wild cherry, May apple, spicebush bark, dogbane, red-clover blossoms, bloodroot, purple coneflower, peach leaves, wild cherry bitters, saffron, sheep manure, and a generous dollop of Chism dew, the excellent taste of which was camouflaged by the other ingredients. The man in the brown shirt had to allow that it was the beatin’est tea ever he tasted, and he quaffed off the gourd in a few lusty swallows. All of the ingredients, including the last, were known to thin and purify the blood, and the brown-shirted man’s blood became so thin and pure that he was absolutely lighthearted and euphoric. “Hotcha!” he exclaimed, and paid 35¢ to Waymon, and then went on his way, exclaiming from time to time, “Zippy-umph!” and “Diggety-gee!” and “Mmmm Mamma!”
The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks Page 30