The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2

by Donald Harington

  They were rhetorical questions but Jelena answered them. “Maybe just her infallible hunches.” And she added, “It’s touching but I hope it doesn’t sway you.” When he didn’t comment on that, she persisted, “You aren’t going to let it—or anything—make you change your mind?”

  “I’m not running for governor,” he said. “Was it Coolidge who said ‘If nominated I will not run; if elected I will not serve’?”

  “That was Sherman,” she corrected him. “But why are we going to such trouble to have this meeting? Do you realize we’ve never had so many people coming to our house before?”

  “Has it really been all that much trouble? And aren’t you eager to serve your pies to those folks?”

  “But you didn’t have to buy all that beer and booze as if you expect everybody to get drunk.”

  He laughed. “Maybe if everybody gets drunk they’ll have a good time and forget about politics.”

  “Maybe if you get drunk you’ll change your mind and decide to run for governor.”

  “When was the last time you saw me drunk?”

  “It’s been a good long while,” she admitted. She tried to recall. Maybe back in the early Eighties. And she hadn’t been able to tell if he was really drunk or just stoned on marijuana. She herself had been too high to discern.

  “What are you serving for supper?” he asked. “Just in case we don’t get rid of them before suppertime. Are you prepared to feed fourteen people?”

  “Sure,” she said. She had given it some thought and preparation, and she was all ready. “During the meeting, they’ll smell the aroma of baking ham coming from the kitchen.”

  “Ham? That’s rather self-serving, if you’ll pardon the expression. Or unimaginative, as if Ingledew Ham were all we had.”

  “I’m not serving Ingledew Ham,” she said. “I bought a nice big smoked spiral-cut Petit Jean Ham.”

  “You’re kidding me!” he exclaimed. But she wasn’t. Petit Jean was Ingledew’s primary competition in the state and region, but comparing the former with the latter was like comparing a bicycle with a limousine. She had devised this plan not as a flaunting of Vernon’s product but as a kind of test: if the guests thought they were eating Ingledew Ham and made extravagant compliments about it she would know they were insincere or, like political people, too politic. But if they evaluated the ham honestly and said something like “This isn’t your own ham, is it?” she would confess that it was the product of their competitor and she simply wanted them to know how inferior it was.

  “I haven’t had my own lunch yet,” she said, and gave him a kiss and took leave of him. Then she was confronted with the decision of what to have for her lunch. She hated having too many choices, and she spent a long time staring at the interior of the huge fridge, trying to decide. Finally she closed the door and went into the roomy pantry and got her jar of Skippy peanut butter and opened it and spooned it directly into her mouth. Seven or eight spoonsfull made a perfectly adequate lunch. For dessert she was also faced with too many choices but opted to get the big box of Godiva chocolates from their hiding place. She selected five but then had to take two more. She didn’t have many weaknesses, but chocolate was definitely one of them.

  Aware of this indulgence she stepped into the bathroom to yield to another preoccupation: her appearance. Company was coming, after all. She knew she did not look anything at all like a politician’s wife. Not even Hillary had possessed her comeliness, but she seemed to be losing it faster than she had expected, and not just because chocolate had taken the pinch out of her figure. Would these political consultants think that she looked more like some aging Hollywood star or worn-out fashion model than like a homespun Arkansas girl worthy of being First Lady? Well, let them! She had to keep reminding herself that it was a series of subtle negative impressions that she wished to make. Her black hair was still too black; she ought to have allowed the gray to show more. As if in compensation, she selected a pair of earrings that were just a little too unlike her. Her third hobby, in addition to gardening and photography, was making earrings. She had made all of Diana’s and Sharon’s wardrobe of earrings; dozens for each. Even Aunt Latha had permitted Jelena to make some earrings for her. And for herself she had made hundreds. Now she deliberately picked a pair that she had once almost thrown away because they were too gaudy.

  By two o’clock nobody had arrived. She stepped outside a couple of times to see if she could hear any vehicles coming up the mountain. The second time she distinctly heard a vehicle, but it was a familiar one, Day and Diana’s Jeep Cherokee. As passengers they were bringing Vernon’s sister Sharon and her husband, Larry, the former college professor. Jelena liked Larry, especially since he had gone off the hard stuff, under Sharon’s influence. As was customary, Jelena hugged Diana and Day. She’d done so hundreds of times, but she never embraced Day without feeling a little sexual arousal. In contrast to Vernon, who was the same age but far more intellectual, Day was strictly an outdoor type, roaming the forests of southern Newton County, and although Jelena had done nothing more with him than use him in her daydreams (and a few spectacular nightdreams) whenever he hugged her in greeting her body seemed to levitate a few inches. She also hugged Sharon but did not hug Larry, who somehow didn’t seem the type for such an intimate greeting.

  Jelena made them comfortable, and Vernon came down from his nest and offered them drinks, and they sat around and made conversation. And wondered when the guests would come.

  “How were they supposed to find you?” Day asked. “Did you draw them a map?”

  “I’d never do that,” Vernon said. “George is waiting for them down below, and he’ll lead them up here. Assuming they can find Stay More.” Vernon had forwarded by fax to Arch Schaffer a detailed map giving the complicated directions for reaching Stay More from Jasper and Parthenon, a map Vernon sent to people who wished to do business with his company.

  It was Diana, finally around three o’clock, who seemed possessed of better hearing than anyone else, who picked up the sound of Uncle George’s Ford Explorer and said, “They’re coming,” and the rest of them perked up their ears and opened the front door and listened to the sound of strange 4-by-4s negotiating the hairpins of the trail. They all went outside and stood in the yard staring up at the clearing on the mountaintop.

  In time, the three 4-by-4 vehicles appeared, with George’s Explorer in the lead: a forest green Chevy Silverado extended cab pickup and a silver Nissan. They parked where the road came to an end, where the others had left their vehicles, alongside Jelena’s Isuzu and Vernon’s Land-Rover. Seven people got out, each of their silhouettes distinct in the blue air. Lined up like that in silhouette, all seven of them, five men of various sizes and two women, one large, one small, they seemed like a tableau from a Hollywood western, the heroes coming to rescue the downtrodden. Some of them were carrying briefcases. One of the women was carrying a houseplant. And one of the men was carrying two bottles of wine. They began walking toward the house, still arranged in a broad line. They seemed like vigilantes. Or…what was the word Monica Breedlove had used? Paladins.

  But there was still another word struggling into Jelena’s consciousness. Although she and Vernon did not allow television in their house, they had an enormous TV screen in the den connected to their VCR and they watched a lot of films. It was this great Japanese movie she’d seen one time and could never forget. Yes, these people coming down to her house to spend the remains of the day were samurai. Seven Samurai. The problem was, the samurai were supposed to be the benevolent defenders of the good people against the evil warlords. These people, Jelena couldn’t help feeling, were the evil warlords. She hoped that the seven on her side could defend against them, and she glanced over her own Samurai to appraise their strength. Surprisingly, her glance lingered not on Vernon but on Day, as if he were the one who could do or say the right thing to repulse these invaders. Day was indeed sizing up the invaders as if he were David taking the first glimpse of Goliath.
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br />   One of the men was getting his single-lens reflex camera ready to take a shot of the house. Uncle George moved quickly to stop him. “No pitchers, okay?” Uncle George informed the man.

  The man recased his camera and offered George his hand. “Mr. Ingledew, I’m Carleton Drew, your media man.”

  “I’m not him,” Uncle George said. “That’un’s him.” He pointed and Vernon stepped forward to shake the man’s hand.

  Introductions were made all around, but as usual Vernon could not bring himself to look at, let alone speak to, the women. The larger of the two women Jelena recognized, having frequently seen her picture in the paper beside her political column, which Jelena had read regularly with much admiration for her intelligence and keen grasp of the state of the world: Lydia Caple, here in person. The smaller of the two women was a pretty curly-haired natural blonde, Monica Breedlove, and Jelena was pleased with the good manners of our team: none of our team snickered or giggled or ogled at the mention of her name when she was introduced.

  “Well well well,” remarked Mr. Bolin Pharis, who was dressed casually in a woolen plaid shirt, as if he were going hunting. “This is quite a layout you have up here!” He said this to Vernon, but then he said to Jelena, “You’ve got a real nice garden patch up there just waiting for the plow.” Jelena was pleased that he had recognized her garden patch, even if nothing at all was growing in it except her overwintered radishes and spinach.

  “Let’s all go inside,” Vernon suggested, and led them in.

  When they got into the living room, the guests were even more open-mouthed in wonder at the interior. Jelena took pride in the interior’s accessories. She was very good at selecting and arranging, without excess, all of the objects that adorned the walls and tables and floor: the houseplants, the pictures in their frames, the knickknacks, the small sculptures, the candlesticks, all the odds and ends that make a house a home. Bolin Pharis moved at once to inspect some of Jelena’s barnscape photographs in their frames on the walls. “Who’s the artist?” he asked.

  “Jelena did those,” Vernon said and she detected a note of pride in his voice.

  “Fabulous landscapes,” Bolin Pharis said, and beckoned to the man named Archie Schaffer. “Look at these.”

  “Hey, great landscapes,” said Archie Schaffer. He and Pharis could have passed for brothers: they had identical beards, neatly trimmed, Schaffer’s just a bit grayer.

  “I call them barnscapes,” Jelena said modestly. For years she had tried to document the falling, crumbling barns of Newton County, and these were her best ones, in color.

  Rather than try to serve people individually, Vernon just led them to the buffet, which served as a well-stocked bar, and urged them to help themselves. Bolin Pharis and Archie Schaffer had Scotch with water. Carleton Drew had a Heineken. The man named Harry Wolfe, who was supposed to be an expert in uncovering scandalous information about opponents, poured himself more than a double from the bottle of Jack Daniels. Lydia Caple poured herself a jigger of Stolichnaya on ice. Monica chose a Coke.

  Then they all sat down in the assorted chairs. Harry Wolfe plopped his corpulence down into the Hitchcock that Jelena had intended for Bolin Pharis. “Excuse me, sir,” Jelena whispered to him. “That’s Mr. Pharis’ chair.”

  Harry Wolfe gave her an annoyed look and lifted himself up and into a lesser chair. Jelena realized, rather late, that the arrangement of the chairs was such that Vernon and Bolin Pharis would be a good twelve feet apart. Or was that one of her subtle negatives?

  Fourteen people were more or less comfortably settled in a motley of seats. But there was a very long and uncomfortable silence before anybody said anything. Jelena wondered if her position as hostess required her to be the first one to say something. But she wasn’t thinking about possible opening remarks. She was silently praying. Vernon did not know that she prayed sometimes. She wasn’t religious in the sense of any system of belief or worship; she hadn’t been in a church since her wedding. But occasionally she tried to communicate with her idea of God. And she was doing that now, asking God please to not let these people talk Vernon into running for governor.

  Chapter five

  Who would speak first? And, assuming it was not a remark about the weather, would it carry any consequence? I will wait fifteen more seconds, and then I will speak, Day promised himself. He didn’t really want to speak despite having given considerable thought to what he might say in defense of Vernon’s well-considered decision to stay out of politics, although Day had spent hours with him recently playing devil’s advocate at his request, a sparring partner in preparation for the fight Vernon was now facing. Day had thrown at him every possible good reason why he should seek the governor’s chair and really laid on thick all the good things he could do for the state of Arkansas and in honor and memory of his ancestor Governor Jacob Ingledew, and Vernon had successfully countered every argument Day hit him with.

  The irony of the role-reversal hadn’t escaped Day: back in December and January, when Vernon was making up his mind to run for governor, Day had played the devil’s advocate against the idea, and had made a powerful case not only for the reasons Vernon should shun politics but also for all the encumbrances he would face if he left himself vulnerable as a candidate. Day had even pretended to be his opponents in debate; they had made-believe that Vernon had survived the grueling primary and was now going head-to-head with Governor Bradfield, and Day had done a fairly accurate job of impersonating that bastard, even to the point of imitating his swagger. Day let Vernon have it. He threw at him all the damaging charges about Vernon’s lack of experience in elective office, his lack of a law degree or any kind of degree beyond a high school diploma, his scandalous living arrangement with his own first cousin, his refusal to accept the existence of a God or even to subscribe to the basic tenets of the Democratic Party. But Vernon had demolished Day. In time Day had told me what he believed now: If Vernon wanted to run for governor, fine. If he didn’t want to run for governor, equally fine.

  It had always been thus, for as long as Day had known him. For almost thirty years, since they were just very young men and Vernon had given Day and Diana a couple of piglets to start their “farm,” and Day and Vernon had discovered they were the same age, the only two males in Stay More born the same year or anywhere near it, and thus if they were going to have coeval friends at all, they had no choice but to accept each other. The thing about their relationship is that either one of them could have done without it; neither Vernon nor he was the type who needed friends. But as long as they were here, they might as well make the most of it. And they had. Day can’t conceive of what his life would have been like without Vernon.

  Vernon was speaking now. “I’m happy you good people could come and visit Stay More. There’s not much left of the town, and you probably didn’t even notice it when you passed through. It’s an easy place to miss. But I mean that in more ways than one. I’d miss the place too easily if I had to leave it. When we were in Cincinnati, Bo, even before you turned me down, I’d begun to get so homesick that I couldn’t wait to get back. And now that I’m here, I plan to stay here.” These last words he uttered with the kind of conviction characteristic of him: Vernon never said anything without meaning it; he always meant what he said.

  When Day had been arguing against Vernon’s decision to run for governor, one of Day’s strongest arguments, prompted partly by his awareness of Jelena’s feelings (and it must be revealed to you that Day knows everything she thought and felt in the previous chapter, even her mention of sexual daydreams she’d had about him), was that Vernon would never be able to live in Little Rock for the duration of his tenure as governor. Day reminded Vernon of the problems that his ancestor Jacob had had trying to live there, Day even reminded him of the “other” woman who had come into Jacob’s life in Little Rock, the mysterious lady referred to as Whom We Cannot Name in The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks, and Day told Vernon that even if he didn’t get into such an invo
lvement himself he would spend too much of his time pining for his homeland in pastoral Stay More. The few times that Diana and Day had ever left Stay More—to visit their son Danny in Rome, to attend Day’s father’s funeral in New Jersey, to visit Diana’s mother in a nursing home in Little Rock—the pain began when they crossed the Newton County line and did not let up until they’d recrossed it going homeward in the opposite direction.

  Bolin Pharis was speaking now. He was an impressive man, both in his appearance and his speech, the latter with just enough of his Harrison, Arkansas, background to keep him from seeming a “furriner” the way that Harry Wolfe and Carleton Drew did. You should know that Day is just as familiar with Bo’s chapter, number 3, as you are. Why should you have the privilege of knowing all those interior tidbits about Bo if Day can’t? But even if Day didn’t know such things as his habit of talking to his empty house, and the business about his soul needing saving, and all those allusions to Don Quixote, Day possessed the talent (if that’s what it was) to read his character in his face and his movements. For example, when Bo and his lieutenant Arch Schaffer were pouring their Scotch, Arch selected the Haig & Haig blended because he was a thoroughly up-front man who thought unblended Scotch was pretentious, but Bo picked the Glenfiddich because he was one of those nifty trendy unblended drinkers.

  “We understand that,” Bo was saying, “and I might with equal justice point out that one of the chief reasons I decided to abandon my scruples and take on your campaign was that I too discovered how homesick for Arkansas I was in Cincinnati. There is something very special about the idea of home, whether it means Stay More in particular or Arkansas in general.”

  Day cast a glance at Monica Breedlove, who for the sake of the present assignment had given up her home in Farmerville, Louisiana, to return to Arkansas, which was her second home but one dear to her heart. Day, who alone of these people had the privilege of knowing the events of Thirteen Albatrosses (or, Falling Off the Mountain) as they unfolded, knew of course the contents of the letter Monica had sent to Vernon, which Vernon had received and read this very day, and Day understood of course the sly and shy looks that Monica occasionally cast at Vernon, which of course Vernon was not able to reciprocate because of his impossible shyness toward women. Monica was not going to speak, but Lydia did.