Nothing ever happened to Tearle, not even death, although he might be dying as you read this; one would hope not, unless he has laughed at the futility of life for so long that he has at last realized that that very humorousness of life’s futility is precisely the reason that life is precious, and, valuing it, loses it. Tearle, like all of his brothers save Bevis, never married, and has no descendants, and when he dies he will not be the last of the Ingledews to pass away, but he will be the last of the Ingledews born in that Century, and his death will seal the last vestige of that Century, so we have much reason for hoping that he is not on his last legs and that his liver is holding out.
Others continued to die, though. One day the loafers on the store porch got to reminiscing again about various people they hadn’t seen for a long time, and the name of Eli Willard was mentioned, and they wondered if he were dead or if he would ever come back. The subject was good for a few minutes of speculation and then they tried to think of anybody else they hadn’t seen for a long time, and somebody suddenly realized that the woman Whom We Cannot Name had not been seen since the day of the Unforgettable Picnic. The loafers got up off their nail kegs and crossed the road to her house and politely knocked on the door for several minutes before opening it. They went into her room but she wasn’t there. They crossed the interior door into Jacob’s room and found her upon Jacob’s bed, dressed in her best dress with her hands folded upon her waist. They wondered why she had chosen Jacob’s bed to die on, and they decided that in her old age she must have become somewhat confused. Anyway, she was dead, and they took her up to the cemetery and buried her beside Sarah. Brother Stapleton apologized that he couldn’t show a eulogy because he claimed he didn’t know a blessed thing about the woman but he offered a five-minute short subject showing the scene where Jacob’s carriage is leaving Little Rock for his return to Stay More and he discovers that his wife Sarah is taking her social secretary home with her. Then the few people attending the funeral sang one chorus of:
Farther along we’ll know all about it,
Farther along we’ll understand why;
Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,
We’ll understand it, all by and by.
The woman had not left a will. Attorney Jim Tom Duckworth was consulted, and he advised that the house and contents should go to Isaac’s heir, who was his wife Salina. Salina did not want the house; she refused to leave the dogtrot, where she remained in seclusion. Next in line was the oldest son, Denton, but he didn’t want the house either. John wanted the house badly, but he had to wait his turn, because Monroe was next in line; Monroe thought about it and thought about it, deliberately taking his time because he knew how much John craved to have the house; it was, after all, the biggest house in town, one of the oldest and most impressive buildings in Stay More. The house that John was living in, and had reared his large family in, isn’t even illustrated in this study, not necessarily because of my personal bias against John but because the house is unnoteworthy in all respects, at least in my opinion. John would have made a large leap up in the world if he could have inherited his grandfather’s house. And for that very reason, Monroe kept it…or, rather, he accepted his inheritance of it, although he didn’t care to live there any more than Denton did; he and Denton had shared the same bed all their lives, and saw no reason to discontinue the habit in their fifties, although this is not in any way to suggest that anything funny was going on; it was common practice for bachelor or spinster siblings to share a bed all their lives: so while Monroe did not abandon his accustomed bed, he deeded the house to his and John’s younger brother Willis, making it convenient to Willis’s store, and Willis moved into it with his younger sister Drussie, who, noting the trigeminality of the house and counting upon her fingers, realized that she and Willis made two, whereas the house was three, so she converted the house into a hotel, and hung a small sign over the porch that said simply “hotel.” She gave the place a good cleaning, and ordered new linen and china and flatware from Sears, Roebuck and dressed up the three-hole privy out back with lace and chromolithographs of children rolling hoops, and ordered a case of expensive Nippon crepe toilet paper; then she sat in a rocker on the front porch day after day eagerly waiting her first guest, but the only people who came to her hotel were various neighbors, friends and relatives who did not intend to spend the night but only wanted to try out the novelty of using Nippon crepe toilet paper and discovering how superior it was to corncobs, sticks, leaves, mail order catalogs and old songbooks. Drussie had to order another case of rolls.
But still no paying guests arrived to spend the night at her hotel.
The economy was in bad shape, at least locally. The Jasper Disaster ran side-by-side stories about how Newton County was going to the dogs while nationally the city folks were all getting rich and lavishing their money on bootlegged booze and fancy autos and a strange music called jazz. Letters-to-the-editor poured in to the Disaster asking him to please stop rubbing it in. Drussie wrote pointing out that such stories of local poverty might frighten off potential guests for her hotel. The people of Stay More might not even have known they were poor if that dadblasted newspaper hadn’t told them so.
John Ingledew asked Jim Tom Duckworth to bring suit against the newspaper, but it was too late: one by one the customers of John’s bank withdrew their savings in order to make the down payment on crank-up phonographs and records, player pianos, cream separators, fancy cast-iron cooking stoves, inner-spring mattresses, wristwatches, and new radiators for their Fords. After all their savings were spent, they tried to float loans from John, but he had nothing to loan them, and the bank failed. There was no need for a bank; every penny that was earned was spent to meet the installments on credit purchases. And not many pennies were earned, because the land itself had been used up over the years, worn out from one-crop farming: year by year the average size of an ear of corn became smaller and smaller, until the nubbins were too tiny to husk and shell, and there was no grain for Denton and Monroe to grind in the mill, and the mill closed down. Denton and Monroe had no choice but return to farming full time, but the earth was too poor to farm, and they talked of going off to a city and finding work, although they hated the idea, and did not want to leave Stay More, or at least Newton County, or at least the Ozarks, but since there were not yet any cities in the Ozarks, at least not in Arkansas, and since the only city in Arkansas was Little Rock, Denton and Monroe went there and found work and lived in a boarding house and were not seen again in Stay More for several years.
Bevis Ingledew, who had a wife and four sons to support, was no more lucky at farming than Denton and Monroe, but he wouldn’t move to Little Rock, and he kept on farming, refusing to accept the fact that there was no profit in it. As soon as his four sons were old enough, he got them out of bed before daylight and put them to work until past sunset, and Emelda cried because she couldn’t scare up enough grub to feed them sufficiently for all that work. Nightly her dreams were shared with Bevis, but more often than not their dreams were nightmares, until the only dream that Emelda had remaining consisted of a doll fashioned from cornhusks. When they were awake, Emelda silently “discussed” with Bevis the possible significance of this cornhusk doll, but he, who had had his share of that image in their remaining common dream, did not know its meaning any better than she. Emelda treasured the humble cornhusk doll because it was the only pleasant dream that still came to her at night, and it appeared faithfully every night. In time, during a spare moment, Emelda fashioned a real cornhusk doll and clothed it with mother-hubbard and sunbonnet made of calico from a flour sack. Her sons admired it and wished their father would speak up and admire it too, not knowing he already had. Having created the female cornhusk doll, Emelda next created a male one dressed in dungarees. Having created thus a pair female and male, she couldn’t stop, and went on making cornhusk dolls until the house was filled with them, the females in her room, the males in Bevis’s.
Bevis was embarrassed
by this useless activity and was afraid that somebody might come and see it and spread the word around the village that Emelda Ingledew had slipped a cog. He realized, however, because he could read her mind, that she couldn’t stop. He knew also that she had given an individual name to each and every one of the dolls, from Abella to Zona for the females and from Aaron to Zuriel for the males. Furthermore, each of the dolls had a distinct personality, and in the dreams they shared at night these dolls began interpersonal relationships, usually of a happy manner that managed to crowd out many of their unpleasant nightmares. There were so many dolls that Bevis and Emelda might not have had any nightmares at all but for the fact that it was a drought year and the crops were failing and John Ingledew had no money to lend them even if he were willing to, which he was not, and Uncle Willis could not extend their credit at the store, and Aunt Drussie was unable to furnish them a free dinner at her hotel, and the only way they could eat at all was for their sons to go down to the bank of Swains Creek each night with a lantern and fish for a mess of catfish, which were always easy to catch after dark, until the Ingledews had caught and eaten them all. They went hungry for four days and then the boys asked permission from their mother to eat a couple of her cornhusk dolls, but Emelda was shocked at the thought of what would amount to cannibalism to her, and could not permit it. Since all of them had given up work, they sat most of the day on the store porch, slightly consoled by listening to Uncle Tearle make jokes about the futility of life. Out of compassion Uncle Willis gave them a can of Vienna sausages; they each had one and saved the rest for breakfast. Surely, otherwise, they would have starved.
One day a fancy automobile, in fact a Cadillac Four-Passenger Sport Phaeton with its top down, came into Stay More and drove around. The passengers were tourists, two ladies and two gentlemen, all wearing baggy knickers, golf hose and bow ties. They did not stop nor get out. They looked at the buildings and pointed at the people, and drove on. When they passed Bevis Ingledew’s house, one of the women shouted “Stop!” to the man driving, and he applied his brakes. “Look at that,” said the woman to her companions, pointing at Emelda Ingledew, who was sitting on the porch in her rocker, making a corn-husk doll named Romola. She was applying the finishing touch: a gingham sunbonnet. “I want one of those, Harry,” the woman said to her companion, and Harry dutifully opened the door of the Sport Phaeton and stepped out, extracting his wallet.
“How much?” he said to Emelda, gesturing at the cornhusk doll.
“Huh?” she replied, never having suspected that anyone would attach a cash value to a cornhusk doll, any more than to a human life.
“That,” he said, clearly aiming his index finger at the doll. “It. Whatever. You sell? Me pay.”
“I never sold one afore,” she informed him.
“Fifty cents? A dollar?” he bargained.
“My lands,” Emelda said, “it aint but some cornshucks and scraps of flour sacks.”
“Harry!” called the woman from the car. “Louise says that she wants one too!”
“You got any more of them?” Harry asked Emelda.
“Aw, shore,” Emelda admitted. “House is full of ’em. You want a he-doll or a she-doll?”
“Louise,” Harry called to the car, “do you want a boy dolly or a girlie?”
“Oh, get one of each, Harry!” Louise said, and the other woman said, “For me too!”
Harry held up four fingers to Emelda; she went into Bevis’s room and got two male dolls, then into her room for another female.
“How much?” he asked her again.
“Whate’er ye think they’re worth,” she said modestly.
“Four bits apiece?” he offered, and laid two one-dollar bills in her hand.
“Thank ye kindly,” she said, and Harry took the dolls to the Sports Phaeton and gave a pair to each of the ladies.
The ladies examined their dolls and one said, “Aren’t they the cat’s meow?” and the other said, “Aren’t they the bee’s knees?” Then both told Harry that nothing would do but that they must also get a pair each as gifts for their friends Maxie, Lila, Isadora, Nikki, Maisie, Lydia and Stacia, and maybe they shouldn’t forget Winnie and Daisie.
Harry returned to the porch and said to Emelda, “Make me a wholesale offer. Whaddayasay three for a buck? Gimme eighteen.” She fetched the dolls for him, loaded his arms with them. He packed them into the trunk of the Sports Phaeton, then gave Emelda six more dollars, and the tourists drove away. As they passed back through the town, the women were seen to point together at the hotel sign on Drussie’s hotel. Drussie watched the car slow down. The women seemed to be pleading with the men to stop at the hotel, and Drussie hoped the men would agree to stop, but apparently they did not, for the Sports Phaeton went on out of town and was not seen again.
Emelda Ingledew, however, had eight dollars, which was more money of her own than she had ever held in her hand before. She ran all the way to Willis’s store, where Bevis and the boys were loafing, and, forgetting herself, spoke aloud publicly to Bevis for the first time, showing him the money and saying, “Lookee what them tourists paid me for a passel of cornshuck dolls!” Bevis was extremely embarrassed on several counts: he was embarrassed because a female was speaking to him, because she was publicly displaying money, because she was admitting that she made corn-husk dolls, and above all because he did not believe that tourists would pay eight dollars for any amount of cornhusk dolls, although, since he could read her mind, he knew that she was not lying to him. Together, and with the help of their four sons, they went into Willis’s store and bought eight dollars’ worth of Corn Flakes, Quaker Oats, Vienna sausages, sardines, sody crackers, coffee, flour, and fistfuls of Hershey bars, O Henrys and Baby Ruths. The latter items were not good for their teeth, and they all developed cavities which the dentist, Bevis’s oldest brother E.H., refused to treat for less than cash money. They resigned themselves to letting their teeth rot until they fell out, but they were saved from this fate by the arrival of a letter at the post office addressed simply to: The Dollmaker, Stay More, Ark. By then, everybody knew that Emelda made cornhusk dolls, and they didn’t dare laugh at her since she had sold eight dollars’ worth of them.
Postmaster Uncle Willis delivered the letter to her. It was signed by a St. Louis woman named Isadora Lubitschi, and it said: “Dear Madame: My good friend Louise Goldstein recently returned from a delightful tour of the woodsy mountains and presented me with a pair of dolls which she had purchased from you, if you are the person in question who manufactures these items, which consist of some sort of dried plant material covered with bits of cloth in the fashion of women’s long dresses and men’s working overhalls. If you are the person in question who manufactures these charming curios, I would be pleased to inform you that I am in the business of middleman, or middlewoman, to the trade in objets d’art, and I am able to quote you an offer of $36.00 (thirty-six dollars) per gross for whatever quantities of such items you can supply. Please ship them parcel post to the above address.” Emelda was dumbfounded. She did not know what “gross” meant, unless the St. Louis woman considered her cornhusk dolls coarse, vulgar or obscene. Emelda asked Bevis telepathically what “gross” meant, but he had only heard the word when Jim Tom Duckworth spoke of “gross injustice” in court. So they asked Uncle Jim Tom what it meant and he said it meant something so mighty awful or misdone that it can’t be pardoned. Emelda showed him one of her dolls and asked him for his opinion, but he opined that as far as his taste was concerned, the doll might look pretty awful but it wasn’t so gross that it couldn’t be pardoned. He, for one, was willing to pardon it. Emelda showed him the letter from the St. Louis woman. He read it, and called her attention to the structure of the phrasing, “per gross.” “That’s a gross,” he said. “It means how many of something, but I disremember the figure. Why’n’t ye ask Uncle Willis. He orter know.”
They were reluctant to ask Uncle Willis, because nobody ever believed anything that Uncle Willis said, but they
had nowhere else to turn, so they asked Uncle Willis and he told them that a gross was a dozen dozen. They thought that was unbelievable, but they sat down on the store porch and counted up on their fingers, trying to figure out what a dozen dozen were. Since they each had only ten fingers, it was difficult to count up to a dozen, and get another dozen on top of that. Uncle Willis watched them for as long as he could stand it, which was pretty long, and then he took from his storeroom a cardboard carton marked “One Gross, White Thread” and gave it to them and told them to count the spools, which they did, finding that there were 144 spools. Emelda and Bevis went home and counted the dolls, and discovered that there were 432 male dolls and 432 female dolls. They divided these into piles of 144 each, and discovered that they had exactly six gross of dolls. Emelda hated to see them go, but she could always make more. They shipped the six gross off to St. Louis and received in return the woman’s check for $216. Although John’s bank had failed and he could not cash the check for them, he decided to reopen the bank and let them deposit their check and draw upon it as they needed. John had never given up hope of reopening his bank; he still subscribed to and faithfully read The Bankers’ and Investors’ Weekly; I doubt if his conscience was troubled at all by the fact that he was enabled to reopen his bank by a deposit from the same son whom he had denied permission to withdraw his savings years before.
The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks Page 33