The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks

by Harington, Donald

  Several months later, strangest of all to relate, only one child was born. According to whoever heard it from Billy Bob, who himself did not understand it, Jelena and Doris with their bellies approaching term had gone down to the creek to bathe, and when they returned, Jelena was carrying the baby swathed in a towel.

  What happened to the other baby? Or had there been another one? Had it been stillborn and they had buried it? Or had it drowned in the creek? But how could two sisters, even if they had conceived within minutes of one another, have managed to give birth at the same instant?

  No, the people thought, only one of the girls had been pregnant, and the other girl had a sympathetic false pregnancy or else just stuffed a pillow of ever-increasing size inside her dress. But Billy Bob himself didn’t know which sister it was, and within a short time, in the last year of the war, his brother Jackson was wounded in France and sent home, and since Billy Bob was no longer the only brother at home he was drafted into the service and flown almost immediately to Germany.

  The baby was a girl, and its name was Jelena. This news threw the men on the store porch, and the whole village, into endless speculation. Before long, all of the Stay Morons were divided almost equally into two factions: (1) The Jelenists, who held that Jelena must have been the mother because she named the infant after herself, as a kind of “Jelena Junior,” and (2) The Dorisites, who held that Doris must have been the mother because she named it for her sister, out of love. These two factions debated endlessly, occasionally quarreled, and caused some disruption of family ties. Men, by and large, were more inclined to join the Jelenists, while more women than men leaned toward the Dorisite persuasion.

  Mrs. Dinsmore, the sisters’ mother, was invited to become a leader of the Dorisites but did not want to show favoritism, so, before joining either faction she determined upon a simple way of deciding which sect to join: she would ask her daughters which one was the mother. She did. Afterwards, fanning herself and mopping her brow in the parlor of the arch-Dorisite, she announced to the other ladies present, “I swear, if them gals didn’t jist both look at me and both say the same words at the same time, word by word: ‘We both of us are.’”

  So the debates raged on, until every Stay Moron had declared as a staunch Jelenist or a devout Dorisite. Everyone, that is, except Jelena and Doris themselves, and nobody ever thought of the idea of asking them to join. One day Jelena told her mother that she would like to join the Dorisites, which the Dorisites took as unquestionable proof of their position. But Jelena said she could not join the Dorisites because Doris wanted to join the Jelenists, which the Jelenists declared was unquestionable proof of their position. Neither sister could join their respective sects because it would involve their separation, and they had never been separated from the moment of Doris’s birth. So neither did, but their respective sects went on claiming that because the sisters had wanted to join, it was unquestionable proof of their position.

  Jelenists, by and large, are individualists, holding that a person is responsible for himself, that if one conducts one’s life with due responsibility, everything will go all right. Jelenism teaches us to be alert, to watch what is occurring in the everyday life, to observe closely sensory input to ourselves. Jelenism gives us a sense of our own uniqueness. No two people are ever alike; if we meet someone like ourself, it is only proof of our uniqueness. A true Jelenist who also happens to believe in God can comfortably believe that God did indeed create man in His own image. But it isn’t necessary for a Jelenist to believe in God. The atheistic Jelenist can believe that man created God in his own image, while the solipsistic Jelenist can believe that he himself has created everything and everyone to his own liking. All Jelenists have a strong sense of personal identity, and, usually, a sense of personal purpose, of having something to do that needs to be done and can best be done by oneself. Jelenists may be chauvinistic, and it is true that they are more proselytizing than Dorisites, but this is because of their belief that a strong sense of identity and purpose also requires a strong sense of conviction. It is very difficult to prove a Jelenist wrong on any question.

  Dorisites, on the other hand, are altruistic, cooperative, lenient, and so respectful of the opinions of others that they tolerate the Jelenists much more than the reverse. A Jelenist cannot understand why anyone would want to be a Dorisite, while a Dorisite not only understands why Jelenists are as they are, but also appreciates it or at least sympathizes with it. Dorisites are very good at empathy and sympathy. To a Dorisite, the most wonderful fact of existence is that there is somebody else besides oneself. A true Dorisite who also happens to believe in God usually believes that God really does love him or her and everybody else. The atheistic Dorisite believes that although there is no God, if there were a God He would be an easy person to talk to, while the solipsistic Dorisite, which is almost a contradiction in terms, believes that he has created everybody else because he needs somebody to play with. Dorisites make excellent mothers, and also but less often, excellent fathers. Above all, Dorisites make excellent lovers. Even in the physical act itself, a Dorisite is always aware of mutuality. Outside such intimate dealings, Dorisites are sociable to the point of gregariousness. Every Dorisite has many friends and is always on the lookout for more. It would be easily possible to imagine a hermit Jelenist; an anchorite Dorisite is inconceivable.

  Human nature is not perfect, and both Jelenists and Dorisites have their shortcomings. Jelenists are inclined to be secretive, while Dorisites are so incapable of keeping a secret that they are not trustworthy. Dorisites can be overprotective, while Jelenists may be inclined to be unconcerned. Some Jelenists are acknowledged swell-heads, while just as many Dorisites are shrinking violets. In the area of perversion, Jelenists are sadists and Dorisites are masochists. There are Jelenists known for their compulsive lying or compulsive stealing, while Dorisitism has produced its share of prostitutes and bad politicians. There have been six U.S. Presidents since the time of Jelena and Doris; of those six, three have been Dorisites, while the other three were Jelenists.

  But it is of the Stay More factions that we must speak. The Jelenists were no longer on speaking terms with the Dorisites, and the latter, although perfectly willing to speak to the former, understood the former’s feelings, respected them, and made no move. In families containing members of both factions, difficulties arose. Bevis Ingledew, for example, was one of the leaders of the Jelenists, while his wife Emelda was an upstanding Dorisite. Being no longer on speaking terms with her was no problem, since he never spoke to her anyway, but there was the problem of shutting her out of his thoughts. Every now and then he would “hear” her say something like, Dorisitism teaches us to be charitable. Why don’t ye take that leftover ham to them pore Coes? and he would be inclined to retort that Jelenism teaches us to be self-sufficient, but he would remember that Jelenists were not on speaking terms with Dorisites, and then realize that just by thinking these thoughts he had communicated them to her. The “argument” would begin, their thoughts furiously debating charity vs. self-sufficiency. She couldn’t prove him wrong, because a Jelenist can never be proved wrong, but in the end he would wind up taking the leftover ham to the poor Coes, where he would find that while Ed Herb Coe was a Dorisite and grateful for the ham, Viola Coe was a Jelenist and wouldn’t let him accept it. “Shame on ye, Bevis! A good Jelenist like you! I got a mine to tell the other members on ye!”

  The schoolhouse, which had been the church once upon a time, was expropriated by the Jelenists for their sanctuary, which is what Jelenists call their meeting place. Being accommodating, the Dorisites did not object: instead, they held their meetin place, which is what Dorisites call their meeting place, in the unused canning factory. The Jelenists also expropriated the Second Tuesday of the Month for their meetings; the Dorisites instituted the Third Tuesday of the Month. Dorisite meetings were little more than sociables, where everybody greeted one another and exchanged secrets and sang convivial songs and hatched charitable plots a
nd declared their love for Doris Ingledew and her daughter Jelena and everybody else, including the Jelenists. The Jelenist meetings were more somber, or more staid; without singing, they solemnly repeated their list of 101 reasons why Jelena Ingledew could not possibly be the daughter of Doris, and then their more complicated list of 1001 shortcomings of Dorisites, then each member of the congregation rose in turn to proclaim that he or she was an individual, unlike anybody else present, and could be depended upon to do his or her share of keeping the world going, and didn’t need no help from nobody.

  This factionalism continued strong until the War Department sent news that Pfc. William Robert Ingledew had been killed in combat in the siege of Berlin.

  The Jelenists and the Dorisites united for a memorial service in Billy Bob’s honor, and all together sang:

  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 Dorisites praised the Jelenists, and the latter grudgingly admitted that while they couldn’t understand why anybody would want to be a Dorisite it was pretty obvious that Dorisites weren’t all bad, in fact Dorisites had a lot to recommend them, and they suggested that the Jelenists and Dorisites bury the hatchet and become united. The Dorisites squealed their approval of this suggestion, and everyone embraced.

  Toward the end of the service, all were surprised by the appearance of Jelena and Doris themselves, carrying between them, or taking turns carrying, the infant Jelena. There was absolute silence as they came down the aisle and took seats, Jelena sitting on the Dorisite side, Doris sitting on the Jelenist side, with the baby being permitted to crawl around in the aisle between them. It was the first time that Doris and Jelena had been separated, in a sense, but no one thought of them as being separated. Spontaneously the girls began singing “Farther Along,” and the rest of the congregation quickly picked it up, and were alert enough to notice and follow the slight alteration that the girls made in the line, “Cheer up, my sister, live in the sunshine…”

  Then it was time for the eulogy, but nobody could think of anything to say about Billy Bob. Oren Duckworth remarked that he had died in the service of his country, but that was about all. Doc Swain, who was acting as master of ceremonies even though he was a Jelenist, invited Jelena and Doris to make concluding remarks if they wished to do so. They rose together, faced the gathering, and, as one, declared: “He was both of ours.”

  Doc Swain adjourned the meeting. He would have one more duty to perform, sadly, a few days later, standing with his pen in one hand and the certificates in the other, looking down upon the reddened earth where the sisters lay, hundreds of feet beneath Leapin Rock, tightly holding hands though lifeless. On each certificate, where the blank said “Cause of death,” Doc Swain wrote: “Broken heart.”

  And at the funeral, when they tried to sing “Farther Along,” Doc Swain interrupted them, saying, “Farther along, hell! We done already understood it.”

  Even afterward there were people who still thought of themselves as being Jelenists or Dorisites, or who at least remembered that they once were. But the factions never met as separate groups again.

  The baby Jelena was taken to live with Sonora Ingledew and her four daughters, but when Hank came home from the war, and decided to go to California, he and Sonora discussed it and agreed that they had too many girls already, so they asked Hank’s brother Jackson, who was a bachelor, if he wouldn’t mind rearing the child, and Jackson said it was the least he could do. When the little girl was old enough to go to kindergarten, Jackson moved with her to Harrison, where she grew up, and became a beautiful woman, and is going to reappear significantly in the end of this saga. Like so many of the Ingledews, Jackson didn’t talk much, and unless he ever told it to her, which I doubt, she’s never heard this story.

  Chapter seventeen

  Southeast of Los Angeles, in neighboring Orange County, California, is the city of Anaheim; founded by Germans in the middle of the last Century, it was discovered early in this Century by a wandering Stay Moron, who was struck by the novelty of having an orange tree in one’s own front yard, from which one could help oneself when the oranges are ripe. He settled there, and from time to time wrote his various cousins back home in Stay More to tell them about the excellent winterless climate, high pay, and the fact of being able to pick an orange in one’s own front yard, in some cases the backyard too, and by the end of the war, the Second one, there were a dozen Stay Morons living in Anaheim, as well as several hundred persons from other places in the Ozarks, so that the atmosphere of Anaheim was distinctly Ozarkian although there was no topographic, climatic or architectural resemblance. (The illustration to the left is of a house not in Anaheim but in Stay More, and was not built until the end of this dreadful chapter.)

  People from the Ozarks transplanted to Anaheim still greeted one another with “Howdy” and dropped their “g’s” and periodically they observed “Old-timey Days,” particularly the Second Tuesday of the Month, and some of the men whittled, and some of the women held quilting bees, although all of the old-timey superstitions and remedies were forgotten, and there was no condemnation of PROG RESS, because PROG RESS was going on all around them: Anaheim was growing at a phenomenal rate, everybody was prospering. When John Henry Ingledew arrived with Sonora and his four daughters, the other Stay Morons gave them a big welcome party, because they were delighted to have at last a genuine Ingledew among them, since they already had a Dinsmore, a Whitter, a Duckworth, a Coe, a Chism, a Plowright, a Swain and a Stapleton.

  John Henry “Hank” Ingledew quickly found employment, at high pay, as an electronics technician for a huge canning factory, an operation that made Oren Duckworth’s snap and ’mater canning factory look like nothing to write home about. (The Duckworth factory did reopen for a few summers after the war, but the competition, most of it coming from California, killed it, and Duckworth too moved to Anaheim.) The factory Hank Ingledew worked for was automated, and his job was to service the electronic apparatus which automated it. Also he “moonlighted,” after hours, as a repairman of television sets, and made so much money that he and his family could afford to live in an opulent twelve-room “Spanish colonial” house (which will never be illustrated in any history of architecture). Sonora joined a women’s club, and the daughters went to good kindergartens and schools. Every weekend, if somebody’s TV set wasn’t in urgent need of repair, they all went to the beach, where Hank could stare at his ocean, or rather John Henry could, because as soon as he arrived in California he let it be known that he would prefer not to be addressed by the nickname of his Stay More boyhood, although it took Sonora a full two years to get out of the habit of calling him Hank, and even after two years she would sometimes forget herself, especially when she was being endearing, as she often was, unhampered by worry since a California gynecologist fitted her out with a diaphragm.

  But when her youngest daughter, Patricia, was old enough to leave home and go to kindergarten, Sonora found that her days were empty. She thought of getting a job, but John Henry pointed out to her that they already had more money than they knew what to do with. Sonora became addicted to daytime soap operas and quiz shows on television, and her days were long and lonely and repetitious. When she simply could not stand to watch the tube, she began to write long letters, to her mother and a few other chums back home in Stay More. She told them of all the things she did, and all the things she possessed, and how happy her daughters were, and how busy John Henry was. They replied with what little news Stay More yielded: deaths mostly, the changing of the seasons (which Sonora missed), drought, flood, a rare wedding, and Decoration Day at the cemetery.

  Without discussing it with John Henry, out of fear that he would say no, Sonora took to leaving her diaphragm in its case. She was, after all, only twenty-seven, and they could, after all, quite easily afford a large family, and there was alw
ays a chance, after all, that they might have a son. For three months Sonora went without her diaphragm, and took her husband into her at least every bedtime and often on waking, so that John Henry no longer had any enthusiasm for moonlighting, and gave up his sideline repair of television sets, with some loss of income, offset by an automatic generous raise at the automated canning factory.

  In the middle of the fourth month, it worked: Sonora knew the night she had conceived, and her days thereafter were still dull with television and an occasional women’s club meeting, but she no longer felt purposeless. She was five months pregnant before John Henry even noticed, and that was because she said “Ow” when his paunch was bearing down too hard upon her middle, whereupon he looked down between them and observed, “Hey, you’re gettin a potbelly too.” She just smiled, and he went on, “Unless…” He finished what they were doing, and then lay beside her and asked, “Have you not been wearin that thing?” She shook her head. He asked, “Wal, what was the sense in gettin it, then?” She shrugged her shoulders. John Henry did not get angry. He concluded, “Well, it durn well better be a boy, this time.” Not only was he well aware of the heavy responsibility he carried to perpetuate the Ingledew name, but also his daughters were spoiled and they were all over the place. He was constantly tripping on their toys, and constantly bringing home more toys for them to leave for him to trip on. And when all four of the girls were gathered around their mother, gossiping away like some gabby hen party, John Henry felt excluded from his family.

  He missed males. He missed his uncles and his father and his brother. Twice a year, on the average, the Stay Morons of Anaheim would get together with the other Ozarkers of Anaheim for an Old-timey Day, where the women would load tables with platters of fried chicken and ’mater dishes and every manner of pie and cake, and the men would congregate to themselves to swap remembered hunting and fishing yarns, or to attempt to remember and relate the old jokes, although nobody was very good at it. These bull sessions always wound up with each of the men declaring fervently that, while, yes, he shore missed them ole Ozarks and shore aimed to git back fer a visit one of these days, it was frankly obvious that after all has been said and done, in this day and age California is the place to be endowed with this world’s goods and to feel well repaid for our efforts and to entertain high hopes of enjoying the finer side of life or even be cradled in luxury or at least live the even tenor of one’s ways to the heart’s content.