Vernon thinks it over and grants that it does. “But our sexuality also leads us into ‘civilization,’” Jelena points out, “and civilization imposes restrictions on our sexuality. Civilization creates the institution of marriage, and standards of ‘morality.’ Marriage is a trap. But I needn’t warn you of that, because you are never going to marry, are you?”
Vernon reaffirms the intention that he first declared to her on her wedding day. “Are you,” she asks, “like so many of your uncles and great-uncles and great-great-uncles, going to remain celibate all your life?” Vernon does not answer. “We’re alone, you know,” she points out. “Mark won’t be home until suppertime.” Vernon makes no response. “Don’t you want me, Vernon?” she asks, a trifle desperately. “Am I too old for you?” Vernon can bring himself neither to nod nor shake his head. Jelena stands up. “I’m going into the bedroom,” she announces, “and I’m going to take off all my clothes and lie down on the bed.” She leaves the room. Vernon just sits there. I wish he had on that wristwatch so that we could shout at him. But perhaps he does not need it; we see him finally rise, and walk slowly to Jelena’s bedroom, where he finds her reclining on the bed, smiling at him. It is the most beautiful sight he has ever seen, and he understands it. He understands that he must quickly get out of his clothes, and does. He understands that he must climb upon the bed and suspend himself above her, and does. She takes hold of him and guides him into her; the entrance entrances him; Vernon will remember that first entrance for the rest of his life: he cannot understand how anything could be so far beyond understanding as the feeling of her warm moist interior. He sighs aloud at the wonder of it, and so does she. And as soon as he has absorbed the wonder of it, they both begin moving their hips, urgently, as if, having discovered the wonder, they are eager to find how much of it can be found. Vernon does not last long; his quaking burst paralyzes him, but she holds him to her and will not let him go, whispering a question in his ear, “How did that feel?”
Vernon studies the heuristic inquiry, and replies, “It felt…it felt like I was being turned inside out.” She laughs, and says, “That’s beautiful,” and her laughter causes her body to shake, and the shaking of her body rearouses Vernon and he begins to move again, they both again, for a longer time this time, alternately fast and slow as if searching for the right tempo, and finding it, which causes Jelena to begin to tremble, slowly at first, then uncontrollably, violently, amazing Vernon, who is more amazed by the sound that comes deep from her throat, but he seeks to understand it, and understands it, and in the understanding of it reaches his own second crisis and explosion and release.
Then they lie side by side holding one another and breathing deeply, and Jelena teases, “See what you’ve been missing all these years.” He does, but has a worry: “What if you get pregnant?” “I can’t,” she replies. “When Monty was born, I requested that the doctor tie my tubes.” “Oh,” says Vernon, “then you can do it all the time?” “All the time,” she says, hugging him tighter.
The “affair” between Vernon and Jelena, for that is what it is, continues; it is a rare day that her husband Mark is gone from home all day long, but Jelena finds excuses to get out of the house, and she and Vernon begin meeting in the woods, where they remove their clothes and cavort like animals. One day she tells him that she wants to get a divorce from Mark and marry Vernon. Divorces are unheard of in Stay More; at least we have not heard of one yet. Vernon tells her again that he loves her but he reminds her of his declaration that he will never marry. She does not understand it, but she wishes that she could live with him all the time, and not have to go on meeting him clandestinely. If they keep that up long enough they will be discovered.
And sure enough, they are discovered: Luke Duckworth, Mark’s brother, hunting squirrel in the woods, happens to spot the couple, and reports it to Mark, who does not believe it, but confronts Jelena and says, “Somebody tole me they seen you and Vernon out in the woods together without your clothes on. Tell me it aint true.” She knows she can’t go on covering it up. “It’s true,” she says. He slaps her, knocking her to the floor, kicks her, then takes his rifle and goes to Vernon’s swine processing plant and points the rifle at Vernon and says, “If you even look at Jelena again, I’ll kill you.”
Soon everybody in Stay More (there are only twenty-one people this year) knows about the affair between Vernon and Jelena, and several of Vernon’s sisters remark to him that he ought to be ashamed of himself, and his father says to him, “You’re too old for me to cut off your tallywhacker, but I got a good mind to do it anyhow.” Vernon goes to Harrison to see if his watch has been repaired; it hasn’t, so he buys paperbacks on law, psychology, archaeology and an assortment of pornography, and secludes himself with his books, until he discovers one day that there is a boy his own age in Stay More, for the first time since he was born. The boy’s name is Day Whittacker and he is accompanied by a girl who does not give her name, but who may or may not be the wife of the boy, because she is several months pregnant. The boy, who like Vernon is nineteen years old, says that they have been wandering around exploring various ghost towns, and they like Stay More, even if it isn’t completely a ghost town, and they would like to use the old yellow house if nobody else wants it, but one of the upstairs bedrooms contains a glass showcase with the dead body of a very old man in it, and they can’t very well live in the same house with a dead body. Vernon explains to them the historical significance of the dead body, and tells them that if they really want to live in the yellow house he will ask his father if they can move the body to some other place. Then Vernon remembers that his father is angry with him because of his affair with Jelena, so he says to Day Whittacker, “On second thought, let’s you and me jist move it ourself. I’ll git my truck.” He gets his truck and with Day’s help they transport the showcase back to its original location, appropriately, in the abandoned Ingledew general store.
Day Whittacker and Vernon Ingledew become good friends; they have in common not only their age but also a boundless curiosity about nature. Day Whittacker is an expert in forestry, and knows everything about wood. I have partially examined the story of his visit to Stay More in another volume; his significance in the present volume is merely that he provides Vernon Ingledew with many hours of companionship, and for that matter will continue to be Vernon’s best buddy for the rest of their lives.
Now in particular he and his wife or girlfriend or whoever she is help to divert Vernon’s attention from Jelena. Vernon tells them all that he knows of the history of Stay More, and they tell him of their adventures and exploits exploring ghost towns in Connecticut, Vermont and North Carolina. They are “tracking” the old near-hermit Dan, who had lived in all those places, and who has died, or been killed, here in Stay More. Vernon takes an interest in the story of Dan, particularly Dan’s place in the history of Stay More.
Vernon is shown something that he had not noticed before, thinking it only wallpaper: the plaster walls of Dan’s bedroom are covered with writings, in pencil: aphorisms, epigrams, mottoes, observations on nature and on human nature, including references to various Ingledews. Vernon learns, for instance, something that neither he nor his father ever knew: that the reason his grandfather Bevis Ingledew never spoke to his grandmother Emelda was not that they were not on speaking terms but that they could communicate telepathically. Bevis and Emelda are both now dead. Vernon learns also that his great-uncle Tearle, who is not dead, knows several secrets about his great-grandfather John “Doomy” Ingledew. Vernon copies all of the writings on the walls into a leather-bound journal. He becomes obsessed with the history of Stay More, and even forgets about Jelena. He searches attics. In the attic of the double-doored house of Bevis and Emelda, now abandoned, he finds a box of dozens of photographs, taken early in this Century by Eli Willard, and showing just about everybody who lived in Stay More when its population was over four hundred. In the attic of the old hotel that had been built originally as Jacob Ingledew’s t
rigeminal house, Vernon finds the unfinished but nearly complete manuscript of The Memoirs of Former Arkansas Governor Jacob Ingledew. He also finds there, in a trunk containing women’s old clothing, concealed beneath the clothing, eighty-nine small journals, diaries, a daily record of the existence of the Woman Whom We Cannot Name from her fourteenth year until the day of her death. He breaks open a rusted safe in the back room of the abandoned general store and finds record books which reveal all of the activities of: (1) the store, (2) the post office and (3) the fraternal organization that was at first the Free and Accepted Masons and later The Grinning and Ogling Tipplers’ Union. It is all there; the chronicle of the birth and growth and decline of Stay More is complete. Our story is, to all intents and purposes, over.
But that gold chronometer wristwatch still has to be repaired. Once again Vernon returns to Harrison, and, after buying paperbacks on genealogy, cosmology, oriental philosophy, folklore, and my three previous novels, he timidly ventures into the watch repairman’s shop, and finds the watch repairman bent over the gold chronometer, delicately making adjustments. The watch repairman looks up and says, “Just a few more minutes, and I’m done with it. But I can’t let you have it. I’ll give you a thousand dollars for it.” Sorry, Vernon says. “Two thousand,” the watch repairman offers. It’s not for sale, Vernon tells him. “Three thousand, for God’s sake,” the watch repairman offers. It’s kind of a heirloom, Vernon points out, and has no price. “Four thousand? Five? Six? You name it,” says the watch repairman. Could I have my watch, please? Vernon requests. “Well, heck, just a minute,” the watch repairman says, and finishes his adjustments and closes the case.
The watch repairman will wind up the watch, and as he does so, time will change to the future tense. The watch repairman will say, “I will have to charge you three hundred and forty-seven dollars and fifty cents for parts and repairs.” Vernon will write him a check, then he will take the watch and go home. One day, he will show the watch to his friends, Day Whittacker and his wife or girlfriend or whoever she is. He will explain to them that if he puts on the watch he will become aware of us. Then he will put on the watch. “Howdy,” he will say to us. He will indicate the couple beside him and will ask us, “Is there anything you would like to say to them?”
“Just give them our regards,” I will reply. And Vernon will give them our regards, and his own, and go on home, where he will find Jelena waiting for him. At the sight of her, he will instantly close his eyes. She will ask, “Why are your eyes closed, Vernon?” He will reply, “Mark said he’d kill me if I ever laid eyes on ye again.” “Are you afraid of him?” she will ask. “I don’t care to git shot,” he will declare, “but man to man without a gun I’m not afraid of him.” “Open your eyes, Vernon,” she will request, “I want to tell you something.” He will point out, “I don’t hear with my eyes.” “Open your eyes, Vernon, or I will go away,” she tells him. That will be what he will want her to do, and he will keep his eyes closed, and she will go away. “You numbskull,” I will tell him, after she is gone, “she wanted to inform you that her husband Mark has taken their two sons and moved to California.” “Oh,” he will say, and will run after her, but will not be able to find her. She will not be at her house, which has a “For Sale” sign on the front of it (but nobody will ever buy it). “Where is she?” he will ask us, and we could, if we would, tell him, but we must let him find her by himself. He will look all over Stay More, he will look all over this book, examining it page by page, picture by picture; he will call our attention, as if we would not know, to the architecture of the book itself: it will be architectural, and he will analyze the architecture of it, showing how the base is heavier, the upper part lighter, and how the roof is pitched, and we will be over the ridge, on the downslope of the roof. He will call our attention to something else that we will not have noticed: that there is a typographical error on page 393, a spelling error on page 144, a grammatical error on page 84 and a historical error on page 84. He will also demonstrate something else that we will not have been aware of: that the initials of the title of the book, The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks, form the acronym TAOTAO, which, he will explain, means “double Tao,” or bigeminal Tao, and for those of us who will not have known, he will point out that “Tao” means “the Way” or “the Path” and refers to a philosophy of life which may be cryptic or paradoxical but seeks to understand the basic order and creativity underlying all architecture and personality and life.
We will find this all very illuminating, but we will be more interested in whether or not he will find Jelena, and we will urge him on. He will return to the moment of her conception, on page 354 and will determine that it was Doris who was in fact her mother, so the Dorisites were right all along, and Vernon, who is a Jelenist, will cease being one and become a Dorisite, and being a Dorisite he will search all the harder for Jelena, tracing her page by page through this book; he will shed a tear over her lonely childhood and he will curse himself for having ignored her when they were growing up, and he will ask for permission to change page 400 so that when on her wedding day she asks him if he will marry her when she grows up he will be able to answer that he will, but we will not be able to grant him that permission, for what will have been done will have been done, so he will go on, turning the page, and when he turns to page 401 he will find her standing at the edge of Leapin Rock, and then he will begin running, running as hard as he has ever run, until he reaches page 419, and reaches Leapin Rock again. She will see him and say, “Don’t come near me, Vernon. I’m going to jump and you can’t stop me. If you come near me, I’m going to jump.”
“If you jump,” he will tell her, “I will jump too.”
“You will?” she will say.
He will nod.
“What reason would you have to jump?” she will want to know. “I’ve got all kinds of reasons. Mark has taken the boys and left me, and you won’t ever marry me.”
He will ask our permission to tell her that he will marry her, but we will be constrained to point out that he has firmly declared that he will never marry.
“Aint a feller got a right to change his mind?” he will ask us.
“You mean you will?” she will say.
“I wasn’t exactly talkin to you, Jelena,” he will say.
Her face will fall. But then he will say, “We could live together, couldn’t we? We don’t have to git married.” And her face will light up again, and she will move away from the precipice and embrace him, and they will make desperate love right there on top of Leapin Rock. Leapin Rock is a hard rock, but they will not seem to notice.
Walking down from the mountain, hand in hand, she will ask him, “How did you know I was up there?”
“It’s a long, long story, Jelena,” he will reply, but he will begin to tell it to her, and when he reaches the third line of page 420 she will remark, “Isn’t this wonderful?” and then she will suggest, “Vernon, let’s run away. You’ve got loads of money, haven’t you? Let’s run away, and go clear around the world, so that we can find out how much we want to stay in Stay More.”
The adventures of Vernon and Jelena in their trip around the world will perhaps furnish material for another volume, but we might notice here that Vernon will find, in an old basement bookstore in Rome, an ancient volume, whose Latin title will translate roughly as The Archaic Architecture of Arcadia; it will be expensive, but he will have, as Jelena will have observed, loads of money, and he will purchase it.
When they will have returned to Stay More after their trip around the world, he will study and learn Latin for the purpose of being able to decipher it; then he will read the volume, which will be about the architecture of a mountain village in ancient Arcadia. The author of the volume will have been a Roman writing at the time of the Decline of the Roman Empire, writing out of nostalgia because of the contrast between his life and the life of ancient Arcadia. Vernon will be amazed to discover that the book, although ostensibly architectural, will actuall
y be about the lives of six generations of a peasant family named Anqualdou, the first of whom, Iakobus, despite being a peasant, will become provincial eparch of Arkhadia, and the last of whom, Vernealos, who will be the last of his line because the woman he will love will not be able to bear children, will discover an ancient Persian manuscript which will trace this whole process back further to a Mesopotamian cylinder cycle and thence to a sheaf of Egyptian papyruses, and on back to the beginning of language.
We don’t change much, Vernon will reflect, and will be further amazed to discover that the person of Vernealos will be himself and that the book will predict everything that will happen to him for the rest of his life. When he will realize this, he will stop reading, just at the page describing one of his epic marathon love-makings with Jelena, and he will close the book and wrap it up and mail it off to the Library of Congress with a covering letter saying the book is theirs on condition that they never let him see it. Vernon will never know what is going to happen to him in the end. He will know only that he will be the last of the Ingledews, that there will be no more, until in some distant future century this whole cycle will be repeated once again.
Being the last of the Ingledews, he will want to stay, for as more as he can. He will not want to end. On his trip around the world, he will have discovered, and been appalled at, how very little the sciences really do understand, all by and by. He will have been struck with wonder at the way mankind is using—and misusing—the resources of this earth, sucking it dry and gouging it bare of its fossil fuels while letting the energy of the sun go to waste, the energy of the wind go to waste, the energy of the tides go to waste. In the obscure illustration of this final chapter, we will at least be able to discern what seems to be a windmill, and conjecture that part of the energy for Vernon’s last domicile is furnished by wind, and we will further assume that the roofs or domes of this domicile will be wired or rigged for solar energy. In fact, Vernon will work so hard just in planning this house that the very planning itself will give him a bad case of the frakes, which will be the last case of the frakes in Newton County. No one, ever again, will have to work hard enough to get the frakes. Frakes, like the plague and smallpox and typhoid fever, will become obsolete. But Vernon will have the last case, from his labors in planning his house. Trying to cure it, he will search again all through this book for the many cases of it, and will discover that not a single one of them was ever cured. Fighting against the terrible itching and the despair that he knows will follow it, Vernon will suddenly discover the cure for the frakes.
The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks Page 45