The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  This information was spread from mouth to prong throughout the crowd, until everyone in Stay More understood it.

  “What d’ye reckon They’re fixin to do with Him?” Squire Hank asked Doc.

  “Where are They taking Him?” Tish asked. She was still busy “translating” Doc’s words into signs Sam could understand, and she was slowly spelling out s-t-e-r-e-o-s-c-o-p-e.

  “Wal,” Doc said, “I’ll tell ye. I used to hear it told that far off and away, beyond the mountains, there is a big old kind of house, not a house where Humanfolks live, but a big house where the Humanfolks take keer of Their sick and the lame and the westerin, and this house is called a House Pittle. I reckon They’ve took Man to the House Pittle, to keep ’Im until He gets better.”

  Tish was aware that Archy stood to one side, watching her intently, curiously, and somewhat jealously.

  Sam too was aware of Archy, and he signed to her, “I’m sure you’ve got things to discuss with him too”—he imperceptibly pointed a sniffwhip in the direction of Archy—“so why don’t we get together alone later? We’ve got so much to talk about.”

  “Yes,” Tish agreed. “I’ve got to tell you how Hoimin helped me hide my easteregg.”

  “Hide your easteregg???” Sam duplicated the signs with emphasis but added three question marks with a rhythmic flourish of his sniffwhip tips.

  In sign language, “See you later” is a combination of the conventional “see” with “you” and a flip of one toucher over the other in a forward direction indicating “later.” She gave this to him.

  Then she went to Archy and asked, “Do you want to talk?” The last of day was gone now; night, the element of roosterroaches, had come fully again, and they were in it.

  “I caint wiggle my sniffwhips like he can,” Archy said.

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “Because you’ve got good hearing, I reckon.”

  “But I aint nobody around here lately, in all this excitement,” he observed. “Yore squire has been runnin the whole show.”

  “With your help, Archy,” she corrected, trying to be encouraging. “He couldn’t have done it without your help.”

  “And yours, and the big mouse’s,” Archy pointed out. He smiled. “Did ye know, you’re the famousest gal in the whole town, now? You’re quite a shucks. All the other gals is green-eyed with envy.”

  Tish blushed, and protested, “Aw, Archy, they’re all green-eyed anyway.” Which was true, because all roosterroach eyes are that color. But she had to admit to herself that she enjoyed being the center of attention; she relished having these two males competing with each other for her favor. The other girls of Stay More were whispering among themselves all over the place, and casting covetous looks at Tish. Wouldn’t her parents be proud of her! But where were her parents? “Have you seen my folks?” she asked Archy.

  “No, nor mine neither,” he said, with an insinuation of reproach, because he remembered painfully how she had been the one who had informed him of his mother’s west, and she remembered that the last time she saw him she told him that she was motherless too.

  “I heard they went to Parthenon, lookin for me,” she said.

  “Well, that’s a coincidence,” Archy declared. “My dad has gone to Parthenon, too. Why don’t we jist mosey up yonder and see what’s what?”

  So Tish and Archy began a little journey to Parthenon, and it was along the way that he told Tish he wanted to take her not just to Parthenon, but far, far away.

  “I don’t reckon as how that Man will ever come back,” Archy said. “Even if He aint west, They’ll keep Him in that House Pittle for the rest of His east. Even if They let Him go, He won’t come back here. Holy House is a-gorn to be deserted like the other houses of Stay More, and then where would we be? No, I think it’s gonna be every feller for hisself, and Mockroach take the hindmost, and I don’t aim to hang around and wait to see if Man ever comes back.”

  “Just which way do you plan to go?” Tish asked him.

  “I’ve thought about it.” He gestured with one of his sniffwhips toward the mountain, to the west, that some folks had called Mount Staymore. “I’d like to head thataway. I hear tell there’s People up yonder live in fine houses.”

  “I’ve heard tell,” she said, “that the nearest house, up that way, is a dozen furlongs off, and several creeks to cross.”

  “What of it?” he said. “Nobody never got nothing in this world without a little effort. It might take us a week or more to get there, but it’d be a good trip for us.”

  “Us?” she said.

  “Me ’n you,” he said mildly. He stopped. He entwined her sniffwhips almost playfully with his own. “Tish, honey, I wouldn’t even start in to think about going by myself, without you. I’d lief as stay here in Stay More if you wouldn’t go with me.” He studied both her eyes up close, and added, “You will go with me, won’t you?”

  “Why, Archibald Tichborne, you haven’t even proposed to me, yet,” she said.

  “What do you think I’m doing, right now?” he asked.

  “I don’t hear you saying it,” she said.

  “Don’t make me put it in words,” he protested. “I caint jist come right out and speak of marriage.”

  “Why not?”

  “Wal…it’s not…it’s not manly.”

  “Manly?” She wondered if he meant manly in the manner of Lawrence Brace.

  “Aw, heck, shoot,” he complained, and kicked at pebbles with one fore gitalong. “You know what I mean,” he protested. “It aint proper I should git down on my knees and perpose to ye, like folks used to do in the old-timey days.”

  “How do folks do it nowadays?” she wondered aloud.

  “They jist git hitched,” he said.

  “And how do they do that?” she asked innocently.

  “Wal, they find ’em a preacher, and he preforms the ceremony.”

  “The only preacher’s your dad,” she pointed out.

  “That’s right,” he said. “And yonder he is!”

  Their stroll had taken them to the yard of Parthenon, right back to the point where the procession of the arrow had originated, but now, instead of the Woman sitting in Her rocker on the porch, the porch was dominated by Brother Tichborne, who crouched on its edge as if he owned it, and crouching beside him was Tish’s own mother! Keeping to the shadows behind them were three deacons of the church, Brothers Sizemore, Ledbetter, and Stapleton.

  “Momma!” Tish squealed, and ran up the steps to greet her.

  “Poppa!” Archy called, and ran right behind Tish, overtook her, and was the first to embrace his parent. “I didn’t know if you had drownded, or what!” Archy said to his father.

  “I didn’t know if you had drowned, or what,” Tish said to her mother.

  “I shore didn’t know where-at you might’ve drownded yoreself,” Josie said to her daughter. Then she asked, “Where’s all yore brothers and sisters?”

  Tish hung her head. “Jubal and them are down at Holy House,” she reported. “Some of them. There aint but thirty-one left now, Momma. Our house got washed away in the flood, and we lost Julie, Japhet, Jenny, Jick, June, Jay, Jill, Jock, Jarvis, Jewel, Jayne, Junior…”

  “Never mind,” Josie interrupted her, and announced solemnly, “There is worse news. We have all lost your father.”

  “No!” Tish cried, and searched her mother’s face for the truth of this, but her mother lowered her eyes. Tish looked to the preacher, who was solemnly nodding.

  “The Woman destroyed him,” Brother Tichborne announced. “She westered him, and threw him out with the garbage. I saw Her do it with my own eyes. Let us pray,” he automatically added and lowered his head in prayer but instantly raised it again. “Wait a minute. There aint nobody to pray to. Man is west, aint He?” He glanced at his son.

  “They don’t know,” Archy said, and related to his father the recent events at Holy House. “Didn’t you’uns see the arrow? Didn’t you’uns see the Great White Mouse?” he
asked his father, the deacons, and Josie.

  “Arrow?” they said. “Mouse?” they said. Archy explained. Archy’s father appeared to be distressed at the news that Squire Hank was still east.

  Archy concluded, “Dad, didn’t ye hear the bell ring? When the bell rung, it brought Human-people from all over the mountains down into Holy House, to get the Man and take Him to a House Pittle. It’s jist like I been tellin ye, Dad, there aint one Man but many of ’em. The world’s full of ’em!”

  “I know, I know,” Brother Tichborne said solemnly. “And Women too. And Woman is the worst. Before He drunk Hisself silly and shot Hisself in His own gitalong, Man was great, Man was good, Man was our King. But Woman…” The preacher’s eyes shone with malice and there was a murderous rumble in his throat. “Woman is vile, and evil, and unmanly; She is not a Queen, but a Witch. I won’t never worship Her.”

  “Then you aint a preacher no more?” Archy inquired of his father.

  “I’m afraid not,” Chid said. “I’m fixin to stay right here in Parthenon, but I won’t never bend one knee in worship to Woman! I won’t never go back to Holy House! I am now the Boss Squire of Parthenon, and I don’t aim to let the Ingledews git it back! I will—”

  The preacher ranted onward, but Tish could not listen. All she could think about was her westered father. She discovered that she was weeping.

  When the ex-preacher paused to catch his breath, Archy interrupted, “Dad, if you aint a preacher no more, I don’t guess you can marry me and Tish. If you aint a preacher, who is? How are we gonna git married?”

  Chapter thirty-three

  Chid was stumped. Not by the question of his no longer being of the cloth, as it were, nor by the question of who else might still be a minister—Chid assumed that elsewhere in the world there were other ministers, albeit of different religions, Hindoo and such, none of them Crustian. In Stay More, Chid had been the only minister, the only direct spiritual descendant of Joshua Crust Himself. If he denied Man, wasn’t he denying Crust also? This was a tricky question, but it wasn’t the question that stumped Chid. The question that had Chid stumped was how his son could get married to Tish Dingletoon, who was, all unbeknownst to him, his sister, or at least his half-sister, offspring of that long-ago congress between Chid and Josie.

  But what was wrong with that? Somehow, incest didn’t bother Chid the way it had when he was still a parson and servant of Man. Now that he didn’t have any evangelical responsibilities, it seemed to Chid that incest was just fine. Sisters and brothers, fathers and daughters, sex was sex, and a heap of fun. Thinking of it, he became impatient to enjoy his rights and privileges as Boss Squire of Parthenon, including his right to move into Josie’s boudoir and act out that sexual paradise he kept conjuring up in his itching fantasies. He sure would like to give Josie a marble. For that matter, since he was going to enjoy le droit du seigneur, or Jus primae noctis, among his other rights as lord of the manor, he wouldn’t mind giving a marble to Tish too, who was a whole lot younger and fresher and prettier than Josie. Chid licked his chops, appraising her.

  And then he said to his son, “Well, Archy, I don’t reckon I’ve forgot how to do a weddin. After all, I’ve married everbody in Stay More that ever got married, for the past year or so. If you and her aim to jine in wedlock, I can give ye the bonds of matrimony right here and now. Only it won’t be holy matrimony. Might even be unholy matrimony, ye might say.”

  “Whatever’s legal,” Archy said.

  “Son, anything I do, from here on out, is legal,” Chid declared solemnly. “Okay. Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here tonight, not in the sight of Man, who is west or leastways gone off some’ers, nor in the sight of Woman, who—”

  “Wait!” Tish said. “I haven’t even said I will.”

  “That comes later,” Chid pointed out patiently. “First, I have to ask him. Do you, Archibald, take this gal, Tish, to be yore lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and health, till west do ye part?”

  “I do,” Archy said.

  “Okay. Now then, Tish, do you, Letitia, take this fine feller, Archy, to be yore lawful wedded husband, to love, honor, cherish and obey, in sickness and in health, till west do ye part?”

  “No, I do not,” Tish said.

  Chid wondered if his tailprongs needed cleaning. In all the weddings he had officiated—four hundred or more, he had lost count—not once had the bride ever said anything other than a modest “Ah do” at this point in the ceremony. He regarded Tish with curiosity. Possibly, he realized, she was feeling bereaved for her father, and was in mourning, and not really herself. “You don’t?” he said.

  She nodded her head. But then she shook her head. She was confused, obviously, and he tried coaching her, “When I ask that question, you’re supposed to lower yore head and smile real sweet and say, ‘I do.’ Okay? Let’s try it again. Do you, Letitia, take this feller, Archibald, to—”

  “No,” Tish said. “No. Stop. This aint a weddin!”

  Chid looked to Josie for help, as if Josie might be able to put some sense into the poor girl’s head.

  “Hon,” Josie said to her daughter, “watch yore manners. You’re embarrassin me.”

  “Mother, I don’t want to get married tonight,” Tish protested. “How could we even have a weddin when we ought to be having Daddy’s funeral?”

  “Yore father done had his funeralization a week ago,” Josie pointed out.

  “But he wasn’t west then,” Tish said.

  The girl had a point, Chid admitted, but it was academic, and besides, he wasn’t in the mood for preaching any more funerals. For that matter, he wasn’t in the mood for preaching the rest of this wedding. He didn’t have to have the girl say “I do.” As Boss Squire and Lord of the Manor, Chid had the right, among all his other droits, simply to decree the marriage, without the consent of either party. “Well, Dearly Beloved,” he announced, “since we aint gittin full cooperation in this matter, looks like I’ll jist have to git it all over with. I now pronounce you’uns husband and wife.” He added, to Archy, “You may kiss the bride.”

  Archy tried to do his duty, but Tish pushed him away. “You can’t do this!” she protested. “I aint married! I don’t want to be ‘Tish Tichborne.’ It sounds like somebody clucking!”

  The girl was probably in need of a good marbling, Chid decided, but it could wait until noctis. Meanwhile, the girl could probably use a good meal. Traditionally in the Ozarks the groom’s family is supposed to sponsor the enfare, or wedding feed, which occurs the night after the wedding night, but the bride’s family is responsible for the refreshments immediately following the wedding. Chid did some mental calculating, and determined that he was both the groom’s family and the bride’s family, since he was the bride’s actual father, so he ought to be the host for all the eats. “Let’s have the wedding feed, folks,” Chid announced, and led the way into the Parthenon, towards the cookroom.

  But the problem was, the Woman, confound Her witchy bones, had skipped supper. Maybe because with all of those gin-and-tonics She was sipping all afternoon, She hadn’t had any appetite. Anyway, She hadn’t had a blessit thing to eat for supper, and the floor of the cookroom contained not the faintest trace of crust or crumb, and the countertops had nothing except the lethal drops of gin and the unfilling tonic water and lime. When would the Woman return? It didn’t appear that She was coming back tonight.

  Chid’s sniffwhips told him that some where in Parthenon was a cache of crusts and crumbs, but whenever he tried to fine-tune the direction of the signal, it only seemed to come from the vicinity of that same mantelshelf he had fallen off of, when the machine had said “ECLAIR!” so rudely to him. Perhaps the machine ate crusts and crumbs, and had a supply of them, but Chid wasn’t about to climb up there again and mess around with it.

  “Brother Sizemore,” he said to one of his deacons, “suppose ye scoot up yonder to the mantelshelf in the Woman’s sleepin room and see if ye caint find out where the smell of all
them goodies is a-comin from?” Chid realized he would have to think of a better name for ole Leroy Sizemore than “Brother,” because, without religion, they weren’t brethering and sistering any more.

  Leroy Sizemore climbed the mantel, with his sniffwhips flicking in every direction, and homed in on the source of the scent of the yum-yums. As he approached the Clock, it greeted him loudly with “NOUGAT!” and he duplicated exactly the plunge that Chid had taken the night before, off the shelf and down to the floor. After picking himself up, he sheepishly claimed, “Lost my balance,” and then he said, “Shore nuff, they’s a power of victuals up yonder inside thet machine.”

  They waited until the machine had chimed its nine bongs, then Chid dispatched Brothers Ledbetter and Stapleton up to investigate, and they returned with their mouths and touchers full of exotic foodstuffs.

  “Stop!” Tish yelled angrily. “That’s Sam’s blancmange!” And she tried to pull Brother Stapleton’s mouthful away from him. “This is Sam’s prize mammon chiffon!” she cried. Any roosterroach who encounters another insect attempting to interfere with his feeding will quickly swallow whatever he’s got in his mouth, and Brother Ledbetter nearly choked getting down his mouthful. “Oh no!” Tish cried. “You’ve eaten Sam’s brazo demercedes!”

  Chid wondered what was bothering the girl, but before he could put his concern into words, his son beat him to it. “Tish!” exclaimed Archy. “How do you know so much about Sam’s stuff?!” The question seemed to stun the girl into realizing she had given away some secret; she hung her head and could not answer. “Have you been up to the Clock before?” Archy demanded of her. She continued silent, but feebly nodded her head. “When?!” he asked, but she would not speak. “Maybe,” he said, “you and me had better have us a little talk.” He took her by one of her gitalongs and said, “Excuse us, folks,” and led her away, into another room.