The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  It was peaceful everywhere after that. Willis Ingledew came home from the St. Louis World’s Fair and resumed managing his general store. To anyone who would listen, Willis could loquaciously boast for hours on end of the wonders he had seen at the fair: the buildings themselves, great palaces of white marble, any one of which was larger than all the buildings of Stay More put together. No one believed this. Willis insisted that there were a thousand white marble statues of people and animals ten times life-size. The Stay Morons shook their heads and looked at Willis out of the corners of their eyes. Willis claimed that on one day of the fair, there were over a million people on the grounds. Everybody knew that there weren’t that many people in the whole world, and they wondered if Willis had taken to strong drink, or perhaps even had become a dope fiend. Willis tried to convince them that there had been an enormous bird cage, covering over an acre, which contained exotic birds of all sizes and colors, but the people told one another that that one was for the birds, and they wondered why Willis was sawing off such whoppers. Willis’s business began to fall off; most people preferred patronizing one of the other general stores rather than listen to Willis tell tall tales about the St. Louis World’s Fair. Even after he shut up about the subject, weeks later, his business was still bad, and he had to lay off his clerk and brother, John.

  Laid off, John had nothing better to do than take his children and go off to see for himself what the St. Louis World’s Fair looked like. He loaded his wife and eight kids into the wagon and drove off up to Springfield, and they took the train from there. They had never seen a train before. Newton County is the only one of Arkansas’ seventy-five counties in which not one mile of railroad track has ever been laid, which perhaps more than any other statistic gives a good idea of how isolated it has always been. At the sight of the train, the children’s jaws dropped open and remained that way for the rest of the trip, which became increasingly awe-inspiring.

  The World’s Fair, sure enough, was everything and more that Willis had said it was. “Uncle Willis didn’t tell the half of it,” remarked one of the boys. But John Ingledew, whatever his shortcomings, was smart. “Now listen to me, younguns,” he told his children on the return trip home. “Don’t breathe a word about that place to nobody, or I’ll whop the whey outen ye.” They had to wait at Jasper for a few days, until the children could close their jaws, before they went on home to Stay More. Whenever anyone asked John about St. Louis, he would reply that it was just like Stay More, except there was more of it. Folks lived in the same kind of houses, he said, but they had a couple of extry general stores, and a bridge across their creek. John won the respect of the town for his truthfulness, whereas Willis was practically disgraced.

  This did not exactly change the expression of doom that was a permanent fixture of John’s face, but it made him feel superior to his younger brother for the first time, and, feeling superior, he established Stay More’s first fraternal organization, Ingledewville Lodge, No. 642, of the Free and Accepted Masonic Order. He could not persuade his father to join, but he signed up all his brothers, plus several Plowrights, Swains, Goes, Dinsmores, Chisms, Duckworths and Whitters, twenty-eight of them in all. None of them protested that the lodge was called Ingledewville Lodge, because that was customary. Everything about Masonry was customary, and some of the customs went all the way back to the knights of the Dark Ages.

  The main custom of Masonry is secrecy, and that was what they liked best about it. The trappings of Masonry might not have been worth much to them, but they were secret, and the secret knowledge of them placed a man above his neighbors. Only the best men of Stay More belonged to the Masons; that was why there were only twenty-eight of them. At first John didn’t even want to invite Willis to join, because Willis was so inferior to him, but they needed a large private room for their Lodge, and the only one available was the back room of Willis’s store, and also they needed a “tiler,” who is the officer standing outside the door during meetings to guard the secrecy of the meetings, so John appointed Willis as tiler. He appointed himself Worshipful Master. The other offices were by election: Denton Ingledew was Senior Warden, Monroe Ingledew was Junior Warden, Long Jack Stapleton was Chaplain, Jim Tom Duckworth was Senior Steward, and so on. There was an office for every man—for example, Deputy Junior Deacon and Adjunct Associate Deputy Junior Steward—and each man had a badge of office which he proudly wore suspended from a ribbon around his neck. They were not so proud of their little lambskin aprons, but that was an essential and sacred garment of Masonry, and besides, they only wore their little aprons during meetings, and the meetings were strictly secret, so none of the womenfolk or the children could see them in their little aprons and laugh at them or point at them. Willis stood outside the door of the back room of his store when the meetings were held, and brandished his ceremonial mace. Nobody ever tried to break in to any of the meetings, but if they had, Willis was supposed to brain them with his ceremonial mace.

  Once the Lodge was established, John wrote off to the national headquarters in Washington asking to be supplied with enough secrets to keep them busy for a year or so. In reply he received a request for a tithe of the dues. He did not know what a tithe was, and none of the other members did either. They figured it was one of the secret words. He answered to headquarters by protesting that he couldn’t very well send a tithe if they wouldn’t send him the secrets first so he could find out what a tithe was and send it to them. This brought a rather sarcastic reply intimating that if John and his Lodge brethren did not know the meaning of tithe, they were perhaps not intelligent enough to be Masons. Stung by this, John rode off to Jasper and asked the county judge what a tithe is. The judge referred him to the county clerk, who suggested that he ask the sheriff. One-eyed Barker referred him to the county surveyor, who recommended the coroner. The county coroner didn’t know but was pretty sure that the treasurer would know, and sure enough Curgus Young the county treasurer told him what a tithe is. He returned home and conveyed this information to his Lodge brethren. “Men,” he declared, “we’ve solved half the problem. Now if we can just find out what ‘dues’ are.” He was only kidding, of course, because he already knew what dues are, but he did not know how much he should assess. It seemed reasonable that if the national headquarters got ten percent of their dues, then the dues ought to be ten percent of the members’ income. But no member except Willis Ingledew had ever sat down and figured out what his income was, and even Willis’s figures were based on gross rather than net. So John just took off his hat and passed it around among the members, counted up the proceeds, divided that by ten, and sent ten percent, which was $2.15, to Washington. In return he received a protest against his parsimony, but he also received an official kit full of secret words to play with.

  None of the words, however, was parsimony, so he still didn’t know what that meant. The words were, in alphabetical order: ashlar, brazen pilar, circumambulation, discalceation, esoteric, floor cloth, gauntlet, hele, indented tassel, joined hands, low twelve, northeast corner, omnific, pectoral, quorum, rite, symbol, trowel, unaffiliate, vouching, winding stairs, xenophobe, and zeugma.

  The brethren of the Lodge were summoned, Willis was posted outside the door with his mace and a blank look, they donned their little lambskin aprons, discalceated themselves, spread a floor cloth with indented tassel, vouched for one another, holding a trowel in one hand and placing their other hand on their pectorals, joined hands and began to circumambulate from the northeast corner. It was all very esoteric, and lasted until low twelve.

  They did that on the Second Tuesday of every Month for over a year, until the novelty began to pall, and John Ingledew passed the hat once more. It had been a drought year, so the tithe of the collection came to only $1.68, which he sent off to headquarters, requesting a new supply of secrets. In return he received another kit with a covering letter execrating his niggardliness, but the kit contained neither “execrating” nor “niggardliness”; in fact, this kit did not contai
n secret words but secret abbreviations, and headquarters had neglected to include any definitions or explanations of them. The brethren of the Lodge gathered and entertained themselves until low twelve by trying to figure out the meanings.

  “F. & A. M.” was easy: “Free and Accepted Masons.” So was “A.D.” for year of the Lord, and “W.M.” for Worshipful Master. They solved “S.T.M.,” Second Tuesday of the Month, and they even solved “M.O.V.P.E.R.,” Mystic Order Veiled Prophets of the Enchanted Realm, but they were stumped by “T.G.A.O.T.U.” For hours they considered several possibilities: The Goddamn Alliance of Tear-Uppers, The Gentleman’s Association Opposed to Usury, The Greasy As Oil Tonic Unguent, Timid Geese Always Open Their Umbrellas, Tom’s Goat Ate Oliver’s Turnips Up, The Grinning and Ogling Tipplers’ Union—on into the night the steadfast brethren labored, so obsessed with their object that even when they conversed among themselves their sentences could be abbreviated in the same letters. “They got all our thoughts unstrung,” complained one. “To guess abbreviations often takes understandin,” observed another. “Try givin another one to unravel,” another requested.

  The following day John Ingledew wrote to headquarters complaining that the abbreviations had come without any explanation, and he, for one, would sure like to know what the hell T.G.A.O.T.U. stood for. The reply was curt and consisted only of the words themselves: The Grand Architect of the Universe. This struck the brethren of the Lodge as an anticlimactic comedown from some of the more fanciful meanings they had imagined; they liked The Grinning and Ogling Tipplers’ Union a lot better. Some of them wished that John had not bothered to find out the meaning, and now that he had, what was the use of it?

  What was the Grand Architect of the Universe? What was an “architect”? For the first time in the history of our study of Ozarks architecture, the Stay Morons began to discuss architects. One of the Masons was certain that an architect is an assemblage of musicians. Another was just as convinced that an architect is a place where weapons and ammunition are stored. A third man scoffed at them and said that to architect means to speak clearly and expressively. A fourth thought that architect is a poison. Another was certain that architect was just a fancy word for mathematics. Another who had done well in geography in school explained that the Architect is the name for the region around the north pole; the region around the south pole is the Antarchitect. Willis Ingledew recalled having seen an architect in the giant bird cage at the World’s Fair in St. Louis; he described its colors and plumage and wingspread, but nobody listened because nobody believed Willis anymore.

  Once again, John Ingledew went off to Jasper to seek an answer, but the county treasurer thought an architect was just a member of the architocracy, or upper class; the county coroner discreetly explained than an architect is a portion of the rectum that has slipped out of place; the county surveyor was certain that Architect was a town over in Madison County, but he couldn’t find it on the map; the sheriff had the honesty to admit that he didn’t know, although it sounded like it probably came off of a hay baling machine; the county clerk declared that the architect is the place where archives are kept, and he showed John the architect in the courthouse basement; the county judge knew that “arch” was an indication of highest rank, as in arch-duke or archbishop, so an architect was the highest ranking itect, and an itect is a kind of itch mite that causes scabies.

  There was only one thing John could do. Reluctant as he was, he returned to Stay More and knocked on the door of his grandfather’s house, where the woman Whom We Cannot Name now lived alone, on Jacob’s legacy, which had easily borne the expense of replacing all the windows shattered by the ruffians and the lynch mob. John knew the woman only as “Grammaw’s friend,” but he had never before spoken to her. It was known that she had been a city woman and was educated, but that alone made her strange and remote to John. Now she came to the door, and opened it. She was in her eighties, yet still pretty. John asked her what an architect is. She told him. He thanked her, and left.

  “Fellers,” John told the next meeting of the Lodge, “it’s just a man who draws up plans for buildings.” They stared at him and at one another. John looked up at the ceiling over their heads. “Who drew up the plans for this building?” He opened the door and spoke to Willis, who was guarding the meeting with his mace. “Willis, did Uncle Lum draw up the plans for this here store?” Willis thought about it, but could not recall having seen any plans. “He was good at figgers,” Willis said, “but he couldn’t draw worth a damn. I reckon he jist built it.” “It aint got no plan to it,” John observed. That is not precisely true, we may protest. But there is a point: who, indeed, planned any of the buildings in this book? Who decided that a door goes here, a window there? How was the pitch of the roof determined? Was the construction totally spontaneous? If not, then perhaps there is a Grand Architect of the Universe. John decided that this was what was meant by the name, or person, or whatever it was. He explained it to his fellow Masons, but they snorted their disapproval and said they liked The Grinning and Ogling Tipplers’ Union a lot better.

  One day a postcard came from Masonic headquarters. It asked simply: “Do you believe in The Grand Architect of the Universe?”

  John replied with a postcard: “Who is it?”

  Back came the answer: “God, or whatever you choose to call Him.”

  John assembled the Lodge. “Fellers, reckon we’ll have to take a vote. I don’t believe in God, and I know Denton and Monroe don’t neither, nor Willis, so that makes four of us. How many of the rest of you’uns do?” The vote was taken and came out 11 For, 17 Against. John conveyed this tabulation to headquarters.

  Headquarters responded: “Then you may no longer call yourselves Masons.”

  The members of Lodge No. 642, F. & A. M., were at first indignant, then saddened, and finally defiant: they would not give up their little lambskin aprons and other ceremonial regalia; they would continue to meet; they would continue their secrecy and their playing with secrets; they would not call themselves Masons.

  In my possession is a group photograph of all twenty-eight of them, in two rows, the front row kneeling, the back row standing. It is almost impossible to tell them apart: each man, except John, has a handlebar mustache; all of them, including John, are wearing identical broad-brimmed, flat-topped hats; each man is also wearing his little lambskin apron. Written on the back of the photograph is the date and the legend, “The Grinning and Ogling Tipplers’ Union,” although not one of the men in the photograph is either grinning or ogling; all of them are absolutely deadpan. Also written on the back of the photograph is the name of the photographer: “Willard Studios.”

  When Eli Willard arrived in Stay More for the umpteenth time, bringing a big camera and a portable lab, everybody noticed something mighty peculiar about his wagon, but it took them a while to figure it out: there weren’t any horses pulling the wagon.

  Chapter eleven

  It suddenly occurs to me, at the sight of Eli Willard driving up in the first horseless carriage to appear in Stay More, that our investigation has been essentially pastoral and yet we have not dwelt upon very many pastures, let alone the architecture for storing pasturage, namely, the barn. Hence, to remedy that oversight, the illustration to the left. There were many barns in Stay More in the last Century, but they were rather flimsy affairs. The barn of Denton and Monroe Ingledew belongs to our Century, although the design of it is possibly ancient. Denton and Monroe were not the architects; they were only the builders. Who gave them the design?

  This barn stood (and still stands) on the sophisticated structural principle known as the cantilever; it is cantilevered all around, front, back, sides. This is as “modern” as Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Falling Water” house, but while the cantilevering of the latter is mostly for appearance’s sake, the cantilevering of this humble barn is purely functional: it provides additional protection from the rain and sun for the livestock. Who taught the principle of the cantilever to Denton and Monro
e? There were not, at this time, any other cantilevered structures in Stay More, or in Newton County.

  From a distance, this barn has some resemblance to the Ingledew dogtrot, which might possibly have inspired it, but that building was not cantilevered. The “dogtrot” here is a horsetrot, or rather a horsewalk, high enough for a wagonload of hay to be pulled into it and transferred to the lofts of the two cribs, yes, two, bigeminal not necessarily as male and female, although it was not merely coincidence that all of the cows kept in the left crib happened to be females while all of the horses stabled in the right crib were males. According to family tradition, quite possibly apocryphal, there was one of the horses, once upon a time, who carried on a sustained affair with one of the cows. Who told Denton and Monroe about bigeminality? Their grandfather, Jacob? I doubt it. Man naturally knows how to build good and true buildings, honest and unselfconscious. Or perhaps there is a Grand Architect of the Universe, after all.

  But what does this barn have to do with Eli Willard’s horseless carriage? Well, on a more practical level, it was the place where he parked the carriage during a sudden heavy rainstorm, because the carriage, an early Oldsmobile, had no top—and thus converting the barn temporarily into Stay More’s first garage. On a heavy-handed symbolic level, the barn is the most pastoral of structures, and the coming of the automobile signaled the decline of the pastoral age. Indeed, when Eli Willard drove into the barn between the two cribs for horses and cows, the horses reared up whinnying and snorting and broke the gates of their stalls, and the cows gave sour milk for a week afterwards. But this reaction was as nothing compared with the first appearance of his automobile in the center of town, where tethered horses broke their reins and ran away, horses and mules hitched to wagons stampeded, all of the dogs of Stay More howled until they were hoarse, children screamed, women fainted, and the brass clock, which Eli Willard had sold sixty-odd years before, said PRONG.