The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  “Naw, he’s jist off some’ers a-fightin that infernal War,” she informed Eli Willard.

  Eli Willard wondered if there might be some other Jacob Ingledew, but it was not a common name, and the newspaper item had clearly implied that the new governor was from an isolated settlement in the Ozarks.

  “You aren’t divor—” he started to ask her, but changed this to: “You are still married?”

  “Why, shore,” she replied.

  Suddenly Eli Willard understood, and was moved. If Jacob Ingledew despite his humble origins had attained the governorship of the state, he would not want to display his ragtag family in the marble halls of the capitol, so he had deliberately refrained from sending for them.

  “I feel for you,” Eli Willard said to Sarah.

  She drew back. “You’d jist better not, Eli Willard.”

  “I mean—” he said, “that I understand how you must feel, and I am touched.”

  He sure was talking as if he was touched, Sarah decided. How must she feel? she wondered.

  “But looking at the more positive side of it,” Eli Willard remarked, “I suppose it is more comfortable to abide in the tranquillity of these sylvan mountains than cope with the myriad concerns and distractions of the urban hurly-burly.”

  Sarah decided that he must be building up some new sales pitch, and she said, “Whatever yo’re sellin this time, Mister Willard, I’m sorry to tell ye, but we’uns couldn’t find a red cent around this place if it was ransom fer our life.”

  “You know your credit is always good with me,” he reminded her. “But doesn’t he even send you any of his salary?”

  “Who?”

  “The governor.”

  Sarah was convinced now that Eli Willard didn’t have all his buttons. Probably it was the result of being out in the hot broiling sun all day long. The poor feller was sunstruck. She invited him into the shade of the breezeway while she fetched him a dipper of cold water. If that didn’t help, she would have to make him a tea of jimsonweed leaves.

  Eli Willard, while he drank the water, began to wonder if Jacob Ingledew had chosen not only to keep his family at home but also to withhold from them the news of his gubernatoriality. If that were true, then Jacob Ingledew was a heartless man, and Eli Willard had never thought of him as being heartless.

  He asked her directly, “You don’t know where your husband is?”

  “Last I heared tell,” she replied, “he was headin fer the Missippi River for to fight fer Gen’l Steele.”

  “Ah hah,” Eli Willard was moved to murmur, marveling at the difficulty of communications in Arkansas. “Madam, I have the honor to be the first informant to report to you the wonderful news that your estimable husband has been elected to the governorship of the State of Arkansas.”

  Sarah went into her kitchen and began decocting an infusion of jimsonweed leaves. If that didn’t help, she might have to try a purgative of slippery-elm bark.

  The narcotic in jimsonweed is similar to that of belladonna, or deadly nightshade, but the dose in Eli Willard’s drink was only enough to make him slightly intoxicated. After selling Sarah a few of his balms and unguents on credit, and failing further in his attempts to convince her that her husband was governor, he went on his way, visiting the other dwellings of Stay More, each in its turn, and the news was widely norated around the village that Eli Willard, whom everyone had always assumed to be a teetotaler, had turned up drunk, and in his drunkenness was telling everybody that Jacob Ingledew was governor of Arkansas. Sarah was boiling her slippery-elm bark as fast as she could, but still it would take several hours before it would be ready to use, and by that time Eli Willard’s case of sunstroke might have reached final coma.

  Captain Isaac Ingledew of the Federal Infantry, pausing in Stay More to rest from his constant pursuit of John Cecil, learned of Eli Willard’s latest visit. He was a great admirer of Eli Willard, having spent his “growing-up” years looking forward to each reappearance of the peddler, who had usually given him a piece of candy. He knew that Eli Willard never drank. Now he did not want to believe that a nice man like Eli Willard was drunk and saying crazy things about his father, so he sought out Eli Willard himself. Being, as we have observed, the most taciturn of all the Ingledews (whence came his nickname “Coon”) as well as the most profane, Isaac said to him simply, “Shit. Governor?”

  “Yes indeed,” Eli Willard replied. “And congratulations to you too, for being captain. No doubt your father will promote you to major, or even colonel.”

  “Where’d ye git that?” Isaac wanted to know.

  “Which?”

  “That Paw is governor.”

  “I read it in a newspaper,” Eli Willard declared.

  “Lak hell.”

  “I did, believe me. I considered that it might have been a mistake, but how many men in small Ozark villages would be named Jacob Ingledew?”

  “Nary a goddamn one.”

  “Then your father is governor, no doubt about it, and again my congratulations to you. Now, may I interest you in this bottle of new, sure-fire, all-purpose…”

  After much thought, Isaac decided that Eli Willard might conceivably be right, even if he were obviously drunk for the first time. Isaac wanted to believe him. Still, he did not protest when his mother and a group of Stay Morons grabbed Eli Willard and held him down and made him take a large dose of slippery-elm bark. This powerful purgative gave the poor peddler such a bad case of the canters (more severe than the trots but less severe than the gallops) that he was unable to leave Stay More for three days. Sarah gave him a bed, from which, however, he frequently had to canter. On the third day, after the canter had slowed to a trot, and the trot had slowed to a walk, Sarah said to him, “Now then, what did ye say the name of the governor is?”

  “John Johnson,” Eli Willard replied, and Sarah let him go on his way.

  Isaac Ingledew realized that the only way to find out if his father were actually governor would be to go and find his father and make him deny it or admit it. Isaac—or any man—should have been reluctant to go off alone through bushwhacker country, but he wasn’t afraid. He decided, however, to change from his uniform into civvies, and not to carry a rifle but only a pistol concealed under his belt. This showed his wisdom, for during the two weeks that it took him to walk to Little Rock (all of the riding animals had been taken by Jacob’s cavalry), he was ambushed by bushwhackers on seventeen separate occasions.

  Isaac, we may have noticed, was a big man, one might almost say a giant of a man, six feet seven inches in height, 230 pounds in weight, shoes size fourteen. Dressed as a farmer, he should have been able to talk his way out of several of the ambushes, but, being taciturn, he was unable to talk his way out of any of them. He fought his way bare-handed out of nine and was required to use his pistol in the remaining eight ambushes, in which he killed thirteen bushwhackers and wounded the same number. At the onset of each ambush, he uttered a single obscene expletive, employing a different one each time, making a total of seventeen distinct obscene expletives. He was somewhat fatigued by the time he reached Little Rock late one afternoon, but he began at once to search for the governor’s mansion.

  Being taciturn he didn’t want to ask anyone for directions, but Little Rock was not a very large town in those days, and he knew that if he just kept looking he would find the governor’s house. He did, too, somehow, but when he found it he realized that he would feel like a goddamn fool if it turned out that the occupant of the mansion was not his father. He couldn’t very well just go up and holler the goddamn house and disappear if the man wasn’t his father. Back home you didn’t need to holler a house because everybody had dogs and the dogs hollered the house for you. But here in the city, the governor, whoever he was, didn’t seem to have any goddamn dogs around the place, and Isaac would have to holler the house, and if the man wasn’t his father he would be embarrassed as hell or maybe even put in the goddamn jail. No, he couldn’t do it. He went away and wandered around t
hrough the town, thinking. He couldn’t just stop somebody on the street and ask them who the governor was. If he could read, he could have bought any one of Little Rock’s three daily newspapers and have found some mention of the governor in it, but he couldn’t read.

  After much thought, he decided that the best thing would be to wait until dark, and sneak around the governor’s house peeking into windows, and if he saw that the man really was his father then he wouldn’t be reluctant to holler the house. So he did that: he waited until it was full dark and went back to the governor’s house, which had a lot of lights burning inside. But there was a soldier on the porch standing guard by the door. Isaac sneaked around to the back, but there was another soldier back there guarding the rear door. At least the two sides of the house weren’t guarded, and the bushes were fairly thick at the sides. Crawling on his belly, Isaac wormed through the side yard and the bushes and up to the side of the house, where he raised his head up to the windowsill and peered into a room. There wasn’t anybody in it. But Jesus jumping Christ, Isaac said to himself, what fancy furniture and stuff! He couldn’t conceive of his father living in a place like that, and once again, for the thousandth time, he wondered if Eli Willard actually was a goddamn drunken liar. He crept along the side of the house and peered into another window, another room. Nobody in there either, just more fancy furniture.

  Wait a minute. Yonder through the door comes a woman. She is dressed in silk to the floor. She is laughing and tossing her head. The governor’s wife, you’d reckon. So Eli Willard is a drunken goddamn liar, after all. Wait a minute. Yonder through the door comes a man. He is dressed in a fancy suit with vest and tie, but that doesn’t fool Isaac. Isaac would know that face anywhere. The governor is laughing too, and holding in each hand a fancy tulip-shaped glass with amber liquid in it. What does he need two of them for? No, he is handing one to the woman. Then he and the woman bang their glasses together, and each takes a drink, and the woman gives the governor a big kiss on his cheek, and they sit down real close together in one of those fancy settees, and the governor puts his arm…

  Isaac felt a sting in his shoulder, and swatted at it. His swat touched cold steel and he turned to see that it was the bayonet of one of the soldier-guards.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing?” the guard demanded.

  Even if Isaac hadn’t been the most taciturn of all the Ingledews, he wouldn’t have known what to say.

  They took him off and locked him up. The other prisoners were Rebel soldiers from south Arkansas, and Isaac didn’t like the way they talked or the things they said, but there wasn’t much he could do about it because they outnumbered him by dozens. He could have avoided prison if he had tried to persuade the soldiers that he was the governor’s son, but he didn’t want to embarrass the governor, and already he was himself deeply embarrassed if not mortified to have discovered that his father had a sweetheart. So that was the reason nobody in Stay More had been told that he was the governor! Isaac decided just to keep his mouth shut, an easy decision for him since he rarely opened it except to eat and cuss, and when he got out of prison he would just go on back home to Stay More and keep his mouth shut there too and be nice to his mother and never tell her.

  But he didn’t get out of prison. Early the following morning he was taken before a military court and tried as a Confederate spy. He gave his name as “John Johnson.” The guard who had captured him went on the stand to testify. Then Isaac went on the stand, and the prosecutor asked him what he was doing looking in the window of the governor’s mansion. Isaac replied, “Nothing.” The prosecutor with much sarcasm speculated about several facetious motives that John Johnson might have had, then declared what the true motive was: that John Johnson was spying upon the governor. “Do you deny it?” the prosecutor demanded. No, Isaac admitted. “Then what was the motive of your spying? Did you intend to assassinate the governor?” Here the prosecutor held up Exhibit A: Isaac’s pistol. “Naw,” Isaac said. The prosecutor tried for several hours, with one brief recess, to find out John Johnson’s motive, and finally made a speech to the officers of the tribunal in which the motive was claimed to be assassination. The officers agreed, and sentenced Isaac to hang at dawn of the following day. Back in his cell, awaiting his end, Isaac tried to feel sorry for himself, but that was an emotion to which he was a stranger.

  At dawn he was taken out to a public gallows, riding to it atop his own coffin, staring coolly at the spectators who were jeering him. The gallows was surrounded by troops; he couldn’t run away if he wanted to. He was hustled up the steps to the gallows, and the noose was thrown like a lariat over his head, then tightened. The provost-marshal prepared a blindfold, but waited. He waited a long time, holding the blindfold.

  Bored, Isaac demanded, “What’re ye waitin fer?”

  “The governor,” the man replied. “He aint et his breakfast yet.”

  “Tie on the #@%*&#@* blindfold!” Isaac insisted.

  “Not till the governor gets a look at your traitorous mug.”

  Another half-hour passed before a carriage finally arrived with the governor. The governor was ill-humored and complaining about having to leave his coffee and watch spies git hung. Then he looked up at the spy. The spy had his eyes closed. Scared shitless, no doubt, the governor reflected. But then the governor decided he didn’t actually look scared, apart from the closed eyes. He was standing tall and proud, awaiting his dread fate manfully. A big and handsome man. Why did he have his eyes closed? “Tell him to pop open them peepers,” the governor ordered an aide. This command was conveyed to the spy, who obeyed. His eyes were blue. Just like mine, the governor thought, and then he recognized the spy.

  “Isaac??” he croaked.

  “Howdy, Paw,” Isaac returned mildly.

  “What in tarnation air ye a-standin up there for, boy?”

  “They’re a-fixin for to hang me, Paw,” Isaac said.

  Jacob grabbed the nearest general by the collar and demanded, “What’s the charge, buster?”

  “Attempted assassination, sir,” the general replied.

  “Who was he ’temptin to ’assinate?” Jacob asked.

  “You, sir,” the general replied.

  Jacob looked up at Isaac. “That true, son?”

  “Aw, naw, Paw,” Isaac said.

  “He was caught peering into a window of your house, sir,” the general said, “with a pistol in his possession. He was duly tried by a military tribunal, and convicted.”

  “That’s terrible,” Jacob declared. “My own boy. General, that there is my own flesh and blood. I’ve knowed him since the day he was born. He’s a chip off the old block. Isaac Ingledew is my son, sir.”

  “That’s terrible,” the general agreed.

  “I don’t aim to jist stand here and watch him git hung,” Jacob declared.

  “I don’t think you’re required by law to watch, sir,” the general offered, somewhat lamely.

  “But don’t the law give me the right to grant him a pardon?” Jacob asked.

  “I believe it does, sir.”

  “Okay. Isaac boy, you are done hereby pardoned, per executive order. Come go home with me and eat you some victuals.” Jacob led his son down from the scaffold and took him to the governor’s mansion and fed him a large breakfast, during which he questioned Isaac about his motives for peering in the window with a pistol in his possession. Isaac was just as taciturn with his father as he was with anybody else, but he was able to nod or shake his head in response to simple yes-or-no questions, and in this manner Jacob was able to determine that his son had not meant to assassinate him, and also that his son had seen Jacob in the company of his ladyfriend, who, Jacob tried unconvincingly to persuade Isaac, was the secretary of state. Jacob learned that the messengers he had sent to Stay More had never arrived. Bushwhackers were thicker than flies, Isaac told him, not mentioning that he himself had been ambushed seventeen times. After breakfast, Jacob took Isaac over to a Main Street tailor and had him fitted out
with a good suit, which was sewn on the spot and altered to fit Isaac’s six-seven frame, then Jacob gave Isaac a tour of the state capitol building and showed him his own large and lavish office, where he gave Isaac a cigar, his first, and a drink of honest-to-God pure whiskey, likewise his first, and asked him if he wouldn’t like to live here in Little Rock. Isaac shook his head, and Jacob understood. In that case, Jacob said, he would make Isaac a present of the Ingledew dogtrot in Stay More, and eighty acres of land. Isaac was choked with gratitude, and didn’t know what to say even if he hadn’t been unable to say anything anyway. Jacob told him that he was going to dispatch a cavalry platoon to escort Isaac back up to Stay More and escort Sarah and the other children back down to Little Rock. Then he questioned Isaac at some length about the progress of the fighting in Newton County, promoted him to colonel, shook hands, and sent him on his way.

  Jacob worried about what “arrangement” to make with his ladyfriend once Sarah arrived in Little Rock. He and his ladyfriend had already discussed the inevitable. It had never been a secret to the ladyfriend that Jacob was married. The ladyfriend herself had been married at one time to one of the most prominent citizens of Little Rock. Jacob tried to understand his own feelings. Without using the word “love,” which is a deeply embarrassing term to all Ozarks men, or simply denotes sex for its own sake, Jacob realized that Sarah still occupied the prime position in his affections, and indeed, since absence makes the heart grow fonder and he hadn’t seen her for almost a year, he was very eager to have her with him again, and knew that when she came to Little Rock she would be “First Lady” in more than one respect.

  Arriving back in Stay More, Isaac began the arduous task of persuading his mother that she was First Lady of Arkansas and that the First Gentleman of Arkansas desired to have her join him in Little Rock. Being taciturn, Isaac was not able to talk her into believing it. She wanted to dose him with slippery-elm bark, but he told her that if she did, she would also have to dose the entire cavalry platoon that had escorted him from Little Rock and was waiting to escort her to Little Rock, and while she was at it she might as well dose their horses too, and then maybe the sight of all those horses with the trots and canters and gallops would convince her that she was the First Lady of Arkansas, but that would delay the trip to Little Rock. It was the longest speech he had ever made in his life, and it exhausted him, but it convinced his mother, whose first response, however, was, “But I don’t have a blessit thing to wear.” Isaac, who was wearing the new suit his father had had tailored for him, indicated it, and told her that his father would most likely “fix her up” too when she got there. So she put on her best black dress, and dressed the girls Rachel and Lucinda in the only dresses they had, and told Lum to put on his best britches and wash good behind the ears, but Lum wasn’t going, he declared. He said he didn’t care if his father was elected king of England, he didn’t want nothing to do with no cities. Isaac told him that his father had given Isaac the house and eighty acres, and Lum could stay and keep the farm while Isaac rejoined his Federal infantry in pursuit of Cecil’s Rebels. Sarah stuffed a few belongings into a gunnysack and she and her daughters waved goodbye to Isaac and Lum, and rode off with the cavalry platoon to Little Rock.