The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks

by Harington, Donald

  John Henry thought these men seemed a little bit runny around the edges. He had grown up with some of the men, and they seemed to have changed. Maybe, he realized, he was runny around the edges himself, and didn’t know it. He touched his potbelly and noticed that the other men had potbellies too. He ought to walk more, he decided, but there weren’t many sidewalks in Anaheim outside of downtown, and pedestrians on the roads were stared at by drivers as if they were in trouble. John Henry had taken a long walk, once, and seventeen cars had stopped and offered him a ride. Dogs had barked and howled at him. Children had stared and pointed. A housewife had come out of her house and offered him the use of her telephone, and when he had said he was just walking for exercise, she had invited him into her house for a beer, and after he had finished it she had opened her housecoat revealing nothing underneath and had thrown herself upon him, and he had marveled at the novelty of fucking an absolute stranger, but he hadn’t gone for any more walks since then.

  He told himself that he would make up for it whenever they went back to Stay More for a visit. He promised himself that if they went back to Stay More for a visit he would walk up and down every road in Newton County. But every year, when his two-week vacation came, they went to Yosemite or Grand Canyon or San Francisco or down into Mexico. There were a few Stay Morons in Anaheim who went back for a visit, and returned to report that Stay More was dying and just about gone, and this saddened John Henry and Sonora, who told themselves and each other that this was the reason they didn’t want to go back, but they both knew, without telling each other, that the real reason was that if they ever did go back to Stay More they would not be able to leave it. Few if any of the Stay Morons in Anaheim remembered the curse that Jacob Ingledew had placed on any Stay Moron who would leave it to go west, but one by one the Stay Morons in Anaheim began to experience calamities and misfortunes: one was killed in a freeway crash, one died of lung cancer, one was wiped out at a Las Vegas crap table, one was mangled in the machinery of a factory, one drowned in the surf of the Pacific, one was murdered by a jealous husband, one choked to death on an orange, and so on. Nothing ever happened to John Henry, but he kept wondering if something would.

  During her fifth pregnancy, Sonora put on an exceptional amount of extra weight, so that toward the end of the pregnancy she felt that she was fat and gross and ugly and could not understand why John Henry would want to keep making love to her, so she stopped him from it. It was a bad time to do such a thing, because there was a girl, one of the secretaries at the factory where John Henry worked, who had been flirting with John Henry for a long time although she too was married. They sometimes had a cocktail together after work at a lounge near the factory, and during one of these meetings he revealed to the secretary that his wife was no longer permitting him to have relations with her. “Call her and tell her you have to work late,” the secretary suggested. He did, and the secretary likewise called her husband and told him the boss was keeping her overtime, and then they got into the secretary’s convertible and drove up into the hills, and walked into a dense grove of orange trees and lay down on the ground and spent an hour doing it and redoing it with variations, and that was the beginning of their affair.

  The secretary told John Henry that he had shown her what sex could really be like. She was always flattering him. Sometimes they would lie around tired after doing it and she would take his part in her hands and admire it, making original complimentary remarks about it. On weekends, the secretary’s husband, who was an ardent sports fan, often went off to a ball game, leaving his wife alone, or, now, alone with John Henry, so that they did not have to lie upon the hard ground but on a soft bed, soft rug, soft sofa, or standing up together in the shower.

  It was on one of these Saturdays that Sonora went into labor. She didn’t know how to find John Henry; he had told her he was going to some ball game. She phoned for a taxicab to take her to the hospital, and decided that her oldest girl, Latha, who was nearly ten, could baby-sit. John Henry came home from his tryst to find Latha trying to break up a fight among her younger sisters, who were wrecking the house. He found a teenaged baby-sitter for the four of them, and went off to the hospital, where Sonora was in her room napping after the delivery. He did not wake her, but went to the glass wall to view the baby. There were many of them. He asked a passing nurse, “Which’un’s mine? Ingledew’s the name.” The nurse pointed, to the second row. John Henry couldn’t see the baby very clearly, but he noticed that each bassinet had a card affixed to it, some of the cards were trimmed in blue and some in pink, and the bassinet the nurse was pointing at had a pink-edged card on it. “Shit,” said John Henry. “Oh, shit.” The nurse gave him a distasteful look and walked away. He found another nurse and told her that when his wife woke up to tell her that he had come and seen the baby and would come back tomorrow. Then he telephoned the secretary’s house, but her husband answered, so he hung up, and went out to a cocktail lounge and got drunk, and came home in the wee hours of the morning to find the baby-sitter’s irate parents taking her place and asking him if he didn’t have any idea of what time it was, and if he didn’t have the common sense to let the sitter know where he could be reached. When he got rid of them he fell into bed, and had no dreams until well after daylight, when he had dreams of Stay More alternating with dreams of running off to Mexico with the secretary.

  It was almost noon when he woke, and found that his daughters had tried to prepare a breakfast for him, but had burned the coffee and overcooked the eggs. “Girls! Girls! Girls! Girls! Girls! Girls!” he said, and the smaller ones began to cry. “Aw, cut it out, and let’s all go out to Howard Johnson’s for breakfast,” he suggested. They told him that they had had their breakfast at breakfasttime and it was almost lunchtime. So he took them out to eat their lunch while he had his breakfast, and then, because children aren’t allowed in maternity wards, he had them stay in the car reading comic books while he went into the hospital. He kissed Sonora on her forehead, and she took his hand and held it and said “Poor Hank,” then looked at him apologetically.

  “Wal,” he observed philosophically, “it don’t look like there’s going to be any more Ingledews.”

  “This one’s the prettiest of them all,” Sonora declared. “Wait till you see her.”

  They named the fifth daughter Sharon and she did indeed grow up to be the prettiest of them all, although they were all pretty. John Henry decided that he had better go back to repairing television sets on the side, and save his money in order to be able to pay for five fancy weddings eventually. When he met the secretary at the cocktail lounge after work on Monday, he remarked, not facetiously, “Maybe if I was married to you, I’d have a boy.” The secretary shook her head, telling him that she didn’t want to have any children. That struck John Henry as peculiar; he had never heard of a woman who didn’t want to have children. “How come?” he asked. She explained that she liked sex so much that she didn’t want to spoil it by having children. That struck John Henry as ironic: to refrain from procreation for the sake of enjoying the procreative process. The secretary asked, “Do you want to marry me?” He said he had given it a thought or two. She laughed and held his hand and told him to hurry and finish his drink so they could drive up into the hills, but he said not this evening, because he had decided to return to the nocturnal repairing of television sets as an extra source of income, to finance his many daughters’ eventual weddings. “I didn’t know you could fix TV’s,” she said. “Come and fix ours. You can meet my husband.” So that night, on his rounds, he stopped by the secretary’s house in the guise of repairman, and met her husband. He was a tall fellow, but not as tall as John Henry. Sure enough, the television set needed a new tube.

  The husband didn’t pay much attention while John Henry replaced the tube, and when it was finished the husband just took out his wallet and said “How much?” The secretary said, “I think that other one up in the bedroom has something wrong with the channel selector. Come on, I’ll show
you.” She took him up to the bedroom and closed the door and giggled and unzipped his pants and knelt before him. Soon they were doing a sixty-nine on the bed, with John Henry on the bottom, when the door opened and the husband came in and said, “Well, well, this is interesting. But don’t let me interrupt you.” John Henry tried to get up, but he was on the bottom, and the secretary whispered to him “I think he means it,” and she went on doing him until she had finished him off. John Henry wasn’t worrying about getting beaten up afterwards, not by that guy, but maybe the fellow had a pistol somewhere. When the secretary had finished him, the husband remarked, “Lovely. Doesn’t she give wonderful head?” and then went out and back downstairs.

  John Henry asked the secretary if her husband had a gun, and she said not that she knew of. He checked the bedroom’s television set; there was nothing wrong with it. He went downstairs, where he found the husband mixing drinks, and offering him a glass. John Henry’s drink was Scotch, whereas he preferred bourbon, but he didn’t quibble. They sipped their drinks, and the secretary introduced them, saying, “This is John Henry Ingledew. He’s in charge of electronics at the plant, but he repairs televisions on his own.” “Glad to meet you, Jack,” said the husband. “How’s your wife?” “She’s fine,” John Henry replied. “Just had a baby.” “I mean,” said the husband, “how is she at giving head?” “Oh, pretty good, I guess,” John Henry said uncomfortably, feeling that his privacy was being twice invaded. “Would she give it to me?” the husband asked. “Now, look here…” John Henry said, getting angry. He didn’t have to listen to this. He would just as soon bash in the guy’s face for him. “Turn about is fair play,” the husband insisted, “don’t you think?” “You don’t even know my wife,” John Henry pointed out. “No, but wouldn’t it be easy to get to know her? Let’s have a party.” “No, thanks. I’m too busy,” John Henry said, and he set down his unfinished drink and went out the door and got into his van and went on to the next house that needed its television set repaired. The lone occupant of this house was a woman who said her husband was out playing cards and told him the bedroom television set also needed repairs. “No thanks, lady,” he said, and got away from there.

  He avoided the secretary thereafter, but after he had been avoiding her for several weeks she came into the electronics shop at the factory at the end of the day and said, “Couldn’t we have a drink and a little talk, like old times?” He gave in, and took her to the cocktail lounge again. When their drinks were before them, the secretary began, “After all, these are modern times we are living in,” and she proceeded to elaborate an argument in favor of free love. She loved having sex with him, she said, and she had been missing it terribly these past few weeks, and she was awfully glad to know that her husband actually didn’t mind, one teensy bit. “But he wants me to return him the favor,” John Henry said. “And you honestly can’t?” the secretary wanted to know. “I don’t think so,” he said. “At least, I sure as hell wouldn’t care to watch.”

  He had tried to imagine what it would be like, watching Sonora going down on the secretary’s husband, and he couldn’t even get the picture in focus. “He wouldn’t insist on that,” the secretary assured him. “I just don’t like the whole idea!” John Henry said so loudly that several other customers in the bar turned to stare at him. “Well,” the secretary concluded, “we’re giving a party Saturday night. Would you consider coming to that? It wouldn’t be just the four of us. There will be a lot of other couples there.” “I’ll think about it,” John Henry told her, and for the rest of the week he thought about it. He didn’t want to go, and he wondered what kind of party it would be, whether they would play games or even start fooling around. But Sonora was depressed lately, as she always was several weeks after the birth of a baby, and he thought it might do her good to get out of the house and meet people and have some good clean fun or even some good unclean fun if that was what it was all about. These are modern times we are living in, he kept remembering, over and over. So he said to Sonora, How would you like to go to a party? and when she said whose? he said some people at the factory were giving it. She didn’t have anything to wear, because she was still overweight and didn’t have her figure back, but he offered to buy her a new dress and she was dying to get out of the house for an evening, so she gave in, and they went to the party at the secretary’s and her husband’s house.

  It was not a wild party. There was plenty of drinking, but no fooling around. The secretary’s husband complimented John Henry on his wife’s beauty, but he made no passes at her. Sonora seemed to be enjoying herself. Several men made decorous small talk with her, and one man flirted with her, but nobody laid a hand on her. Occasionally a couple would disappear upstairs for a while, but all in all it was a warm and sociable occasion, and John Henry thanked the secretary’s husband for inviting them. On the way home, Sonora, who was tipsy, babbled on about what a good time she had had, and in bed that night she was exceptionally passionate and adventurous. Just two days later, one of the men they had met at the party phoned and invited them to another party the very next weekend. The secretary and her husband were also at the second party, but there were a lot of people who had not been at the first, and the Ingledews broadened their circle of acquaintances. Toward the end of the party, Sonora was deep in conversation with two men on the sofa, and did not notice when the secretary came and took John Henry’s hand and led him off to a bedroom.

  When the Ingledews got home that night and went to bed, John Henry wasn’t in the mood, and Sonora accused him of drinking too much. As they were dressing for the third party the following Saturday, she made him promise not to drink so much. At the party, he told the secretary, “Look, let’s do it early so I’ll have time to recuperate before bedtime.” Sonora lost interest in the man she was talking to, and noticed John Henry was missing. When he reappeared, she asked, “Where did you go?” He replied, “I was out in the kitchen, talking to some guys.”

  Later in the evening, Sonora found herself in conversation with the secretary’s husband, who kept refilling her drink until she was too tipsy too early. She had made John Henry promise not to drink so much and now here she herself was drinking too much. She liked the secretary’s husband, and thought he was witty. Every time he finished a joke he would lean down and kiss her underneath her ear. One time when he did that, he whispered in her ear, “Let’s get some fresh air.” The room was stuffy with cigarette smoke, and also hot, and she thought they could continue their conversation out on the porch, so she stepped outside with him. There weren’t any chairs on the porch. “Let’s sit in my car,” the man suggested. They sat in the car. The man put his arm around her, but she brushed it off. He put it around her again, and she was too tipsy to bother brushing it off again. She didn’t care. After a while he took one of her hands and placed it on his groin and she felt him swell; she tried to take her hand away but he held it there. “Let me go,” she protested. He whispered in her ear, “I’ll let you go if you’ll kiss it a while.” She slapped him, hard, and got out of the car and returned to the party, where she found Hank and apologized to him for having drunk so much and asked to go home.

  At the next party, she avoided the secretary’s husband. But late in the evening everybody started taking their clothes off, declaring they were going to have an orgy. John Henry and Sonora argued; she wanted to go, he wanted to stay. She left, saying he could get somebody else to drive him home. After the orgy, which John Henry didn’t particularly enjoy, the secretary and her husband drove him home. “You ought to have a talk with that girl,” the secretary’s husband told him. Sonora was in bed, but she turned on the light when he came in, and they had a talk. It was quite a talk. Sonora began by demanding to know if he had had sex at the orgy, and when he told her that was the point of the whole thing, she was furious. “Do you think I would ever do a thing like that?” she demanded. “You’d have to get used to it, gradually,” he said. “You think I would?” she said. “Would you want me to?” “I
don’t know,” he admitted, but allowed, “I guess if I was doing it I couldn’t object if you were.” “Oh ho!” she said. “Did you know that that man, that…what’s his name…the husband of one of the secretaries at your plant…when we were at the last party he somehow talked me into sitting in his car with him, and then he tried to get me to give him a blow job! Would you have let me give him a blow job?” John Henry did not answer, because he had still not settled the question in his own mind. In order for him to settle the question, he would have to permit himself to visualize the act, and he was unable to get the picture in focus. The tube was blown. “Would you?” she persisted. At length he admitted, “I honestly don’t know. His wife has done it to me. With him watching.”

  Sonora began beating at him with her fists, yelling “Get out! Get out of here! Get out of here and don’t ever come back!” He resisted, but her fists drove him out of the bedroom and down the hall and down the stairs and out the front door and down the steps. He spent the night in a motel, and returned to his house the following day. She wouldn’t let him in. He protested that all his clothes and things were in the house. She began dumping his clothes and things out the window. “Sonora, for crying out loud!” he complained, but she continued throwing his effects out of the house, until there was nothing of his remaining in the house and the front yard was littered and the neighbors were standing on their porches watching and whispering as John Henry loaded all his effects into his van and drove to the motel.