The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  The clock which came from Connecticut was not, it must be said, a very good one. One night at midnight it struck twenty-six times. “Git up, Jake!” Noah hollered. “Shitfire, it’s later than I’ve ever knowed it to be!” Jacob suspected that something in the inner works was amiss, for at the rate the clock was running, by his calculation, he would be a hundred and forty-three years old when the clock peddler returned. Methuselah and the other longevous old men of the Bible must have got their clocks from Connecticut. Still, Jacob dutifully wound up the clock each night before retiring. “If you got it, use it,” must have been his philosophy. He was, however, required to silence the striking mechanism after the novelty of it wore off and it became annoying. After three weeks of careful investigation, Jacob found a way to open the back of the clock, and he stuffed a wadded-up vacated wasp’s nest into the striking mechanism, silencing it. Jacob continued keeping time by the sun and moon and stars, but it was a diversion to watch the minute hand of his clock running around and around in the still cabin.

  Not all of their land was forested; the portion that bordered the creek was flat, rich soil which was “bottom” land. But except for the clearing where the Indian camp had been, it was all covered with a dense growth of cane, bamboo, leatherwood, hazel, grapevines and large saw briars, which had to be grubbed and burned, a job which made clearing the forest seem easy. This good bottom land would be capable of producing fifty bushels of corn to the acre, but getting it cleared was the worst job the brothers had yet done, and after three weeks of clearing bottom land Noah Ingledew was “plumb beat out” and came down with the first attack of the frakes. He didn’t know what it was, and neither did Jacob. Noah took off his buckskins and anointed the frakes with bear’s oil, but that didn’t do any good. He made a salve by boiling mullein leaves in lard, and applied that to his frakes, with negligible results. He resorted then to more drastic remedies, concocting a poultice the essential ingredient of which was panther urine, difficult to obtain. Panthers were easy enough to come by, but persuading one to urinate into a container was entirely a different matter, and since Noah was too weakened by his frakes to do the job, Jacob had to do it for him. Yet even after all the trouble that Jacob went to, the resultant panther-piss poultice had no effect whatever on Noah’s frakes. Jacob offered to hitch the mule to the wagon and drive Noah back east in search of a doctor, but Noah protested that he wasn’t worth it, for already the severe sense of worthlessness that comes after an attack of the frakes was beginning to affect him. He took to his bed and just lay there day after day. In time the frakes erupted and then began to heal over, but more and more did Noah feel that work is senseless, toil vain, life pointless, and he would not get up from his bed. In a way, he was unintentionally evening the score with Jacob, whose work Noah had done back during the time when Jacob didn’t feel like working on account of fooling around with that Indian squaw. Now Jacob had to do all the work, but Noah mocked him.

  “Hit aint no use,” Noah would say. “Shitfire, yo’re jist workin yore butt off fer nuthin. Earworms or worse will git all yore corn, wait and see if they or worse don’t.”

  And yet, for all his sense of futility, Noah felt one redeeming emotion, which can only be called a sense of snugness. Lying there day after day, thinking few thoughts, having no daydreams or aspirations of any kind, he was aware only of the walls and roof of his cabin, and aware of how he was sheltered, of how his ark was a refuge, snug, cozy, restful. It was home. Our illustration cannot depict the site of the Ingledews’ cabin, but the site contributed to the feeling of snugness, because the cabin was in a holler—by local definition, “a little hollered out place at the foot of a mountain.” While the land that the cabin was on was level enough for a garden and one of their cornpatches, the land on both sides of the cabin rose abruptly up the mountainside, while behind the cabin the holler extended some three hundred feet to the Ingledews’ spring, where it began an abrupt ascent of the mountain. So in his snug cabin in this snug hollow Noah aestivated. Winter came and he hibernated. Jacob never scolded him for his inactivity. He knew it could happen to himself at any time…and it would.

  In the autumn Jacob went off to look for a town where he could sell his pelts. He knew nothing of the geography of the region. He knew only a few rough basics: that civilization lay mostly toward the east, that Indian Territory was mostly in the west, that in the north it got colder and in the south it got warmer. He had no idea in which direction he would most likely find a town. His agricultural labors had produced no cash crop this season, but his spare-time trapping, for beaver, ’coon, otter and mink, had produced a few dozen pelts that ought to bring enough to pay off the clock peddler with enough left over to indulge one of Jacob’s dreams: buying a cow. Next to whiskey, milk was Jacob’s favorite beverage, but a year and a half had passed since he’d last had a drop of milk. Also, getting a cow was the first step toward starting a herd of beef.

  But Jacob didn’t know where any towns were. The last one they had passed, coming from Tennessee, must have been a hundred miles back on the White River. Still, if he could just find a small settlement where he could unload his pelts and buy a cow, he would be satisfied. He took an egg-sized rock and threw it as hard as he could, straight up into the air. Whichever direction it fell, that way Jacob would go. The rock stayed up in the air a long time, but by and by Jacob heard it coming down. He couldn’t see it for all the woods, but he could hear it crashing through the trees, and the noise was coming from the south. There wasn’t any road or trail at all that went south, so Jacob couldn’t take the mule. He strapped as many pelts as he could carry on his back, and with his long rifle he set out on foot.

  He walked for five days and four nights up mountains and down without finding a settlement, and finally was stopped by a large river too wide to swim across. This, he guessed, must be the Arkansas. He followed it downstream for just half a day, and came to a good-sized town. This, he learned, was called Spadra (it no longer exists today, or is practically a ghost town, south of Clarksville). Along the riverfront were shops, and one of these was a fur trader’s. The fur trader was happy to buy Jacob Ingledew’s pelts, and complimented him on the quality of them. The beaver skins fetched two dollars apiece, while the mink and otter skins brought a dollar each, and the coonskins two bits. Jacob received a total of almost a hundred dollars. He’d never had that much money in his life. But Spadra was full of establishments designed to part a man from his money: saloons, whorehouses, gambling parlors. Jacob resisted these as best he could, although his best was not good enough: he lost half his hundred dollars before getting out.

  Still, he had more than enough to pay off the clock peddler and buy a cow. The latter became his next immediate objective. Looking around, he saw a large building with a sign out front: Spadra Stock Exchange. He went inside. There were a lot of men standing around tables, holding slips of paper and talking rapidly all at once. Jacob didn’t see any cows, or any other stock. A man came up to him and asked if he could be of any help. Jacob told him he was in the market for cows. “Good,” the man said, “swine are up, beef are down. How many?” Just one, Jacob said. The man looked at him, then said, “Wait here,” and went off to confer with a group of other men standing around one of the tables. The other men cast glances at Jacob, and Jacob began to get the impression that they might be laughing at him. But at length, his man returned, and said, “All right. One cow it is. What do you bid?” Jacob said he didn’t have ary idea how much to bid. How much was usual? “Six and three-eights might do it,” the man said. “Can I go to seven?” Sure, Jacob told him, and the man went away again. He returned shortly, beaming. “Got it at six and five-eights,” he declared. Jacob paid him six dollars and sixty-three cents, plus ten percent brokerage fee and commission, and the man started to walk away, but Jacob said Hey! Where is my cow? “In Kansas City,” the man said. Jacob didn’t want to show his ignorance of geography by asking how to get there, so he left the stock exchange, and stopped the first man h
e met on the street and asked, Which way is Kansas City? The man pointed, toward the northwest.

  Jacob left Spadra, and walked for the rest of the day northwest, but he didn’t come to Kansas City. He met another man and asked again, Which way is Kansas City? and the man pointed northwest. He walked on for two more days without finding any city, and met an old man and asked once more, Which way is Kansas City? and when the old man pointed northwest Jacob asked him how far it was. “What difference do it make?” the old man said. “You’re a-gorn there anyhow, aint ye?” So Jacob walked on.

  After several more days, he finally came out of the mountains down into a valley where there was a city, or a large-sized town. There were some loafers sitting in front of the courthouse, and he asked them if this was Kansas City. “Shore thang,” one of them replied, so Jacob said he had bought a cow and wanted to find the stockyards. The loafers offered to accompany him to the stockyards; he was much obliged at their courtesy. They walked him a good distance to the other end of town, and there was the stockyards, full of cows and bulls and calves. “Jist take yore pick,” one of the loafers said, so Jacob selected a good-sized Jersey heifer. One of the loafers fetched a length of rope and tied it around the heifer’s neck, and then they opened the gate, and Jacob led her out. He walked her back through the town.

  Looking back at one point, he saw that not just the loafers but a crowd of people were following him. When he got as far as the courthouse, he saw that a man wearing a silver star on his chest was tying a rope to a big maple tree in the courthouse yard, and on the end of the rope was a hangman’s noose. Then the man wearing the star came up to Jacob and said, “Do you know what we do to cattle rustlers in this town?” No, Jacob said, he didn’t know. The man pointed at the rope and said, “We hang ’em.” By this time, the town square was full of people. The man wearing the star took Jacob’s arm and started leading him toward the gallows. I aint rustled no cattle! Jacob protested. “Where’d you get that heifer?” the man demanded. Jacob explained that he had bought it for six dollars and sixty-three cents plus commission at the Spadra Stock Exchange and the feller there told him to come here to Kansas City to get it. “This here aint Kansas City,” the man said. “It’s Fayetteville, state of Arkansas. Come on,” and the man led him on over to the noose.

  Jacob felt just terrible. Didn’t they at least give a feller a decent trial before hangin him? Take the heifer back! Jacob pled. But the man went on, and slipped the noose over Jacob’s head. Just then a man in the crowd, a distinguished looking old gentleman with white hair and dressed in a suit, stepped up and said, “All right, Bradshaw. This has gone far enough.” Then he said to Jacob, “I’m Judge Walker, and it just so happens I’m also the owner of the stockyard. These men have played their joke on you. Those men in Spadra also played their joke on you. But enough is enough. Take the heifer. You, Bradshaw, kindly escort this gentleman out of town and see to it that he meets no more fools along the way.” So Jacob and his heifer were allowed to leave.

  He didn’t know how to get home, but he had a general notion that it was somewhere to the east, so he led the heifer in that direction. Although Jacob had no knowledge of geography, he had a sixth sense of direction which brought him, after a week of walking and leading the heifer, right back to Stay More. The effort and humiliation that he had been subjected to in order to obtain his cow would leave him sour on city people for the rest of his life, and for many years after this incident he preferred to remain in Stay More rather than venturing out into the world. In fact, thirty years later when he would be offered the governorship of the whole state practically on a platter, he would at first decline, out of his reluctance to have any further dealings with city people. We may thus consider one more quality of his cabin: it is insulation not alone against weather and wilderness but also against any intrusion from the more sophisticated city world, a fortress against cosmopolitans. If Jacob’s cabin would look ridiculous on a city street corner, no less ridiculous would a city man look, standing here in front of his cabin.

  Jacob found his brother Noah practically dead from cold and starvation during his long absence. Apparently Noah had lacked the simple will or motivation to get up and keep the fire going and eat the food that Jacob had left for him. Now Jacob had to force him to eat something. Even after eating, Noah was too weak to talk. Jacob yearned to hear him say shitfire, but Noah couldn’t. So Jacob did all of the talking, telling him of his recent adventures in Spadra and Fayetteville and along the way. By the time he was finished telling it, Noah had recovered enough strength to say shitfire. And then he added, “All that bother and trouble fer nuthin. You should of stood in bed, like me.”

  “But allow as how we got us a cow now,” Jacob replied.

  “Wow,” Noah said. “So let’s have some milk.”

  But Jacob realized that the heifer would have to be serviced and have a calf before she would start giving milk. Where would they find a bull? Occasionally a small herd of buffalo wandered through the valley; Jacob wondered if a buffalo bull could service a Jersey heifer. If a jackass could service a mare and produce offspring, why not? Jacob had hoped that maybe his bitch hound Tige would get serviced by a wolf or coyote and produce dogs well-suited for wilderness living. Tige was now all swollen out around the middle but as far as Jacob knew she hadn’t met up with any eligible wolves or coyotes; probably the father had been that short-tailed cur of Fanshaw’s. Yes, a few weeks later, when Tige had her litter, Jacob noted that the pups seemed to resemble Fanshaw’s dog. Well, we’re even, in a way, now, Jacob reflected: I serviced his squaw, his dog serviced my bitch.

  But where, or how, to find a bull? Winter came on, yet no more herds of buffalo wandered into the valley. Probably the Indians had wiped out all the buffalo. Jacob’s Jersey heifer, who with want of imagination he named “Jerse,” went into heat and bawled and bawled, but there was no relief.

  Then Eli Willard the clock peddler returned after being away six months (or 143 years by his clock’s reckoning). Again he had only a single clock strapped to his saddlebag. He observed, “This is still the end of the road. But you have survived. Many don’t, you know.” Then he asked, “How’s the clock?”

  “Blankety-blank,” Jacob replied. “Goshawful. Cuss-fired. No-account. Tinhorn. Punk. Torrible. Infernal. One-gallused. Muckeldydun. Not worth the powder to blow it up.”

  “But does it run?” Eli Willard asked.

  “It’s runnin fer its life,” Jacob said. “It’s runnin like hell was only a mile away and all the fences down.”

  “Well, well,” said Eli Willard and coughed. “I always insist upon my customer’s satisfaction. I will replace your defective clock with this superior model. The works are not made of wood but of brass. Recently in Connecticut all the clockmakers have converted from wood to brass.”

  “I aint so sartin that we’uns need ary kind of clock, even if it was made of gold.”

  “Everyone needs a clock,” Eli Willard declared. “All the other people hereabouts have clocks.”

  “What other people? There’s jist me and Noah.”

  “The Ozarks are filling up with people.”

  “I aint seed any of ’em. Did ye happen to notice if any of them people had a bull?”

  “A bull?”

  “Yeah, I got a heifer near ’bout two year old and she needs sarvice somethin turrible.”

  “I don’t examine my customers’ livestock,” Eli Willard said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Wal, whar is all them folks you’re talkin about?”

  “That way,” Eli Willard said, and pointed, the way he had come, toward the north. Jacob realized that he and Noah had come in from the east and that he had gone south and come back from the west, but they had never been north. The bulls would be to the north.