The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks

by Harington, Donald

  The two men debated this topic at length. Fanshaw pointed out that while there is a distinct reference to the paraboloid house of the man and woman who were snail and beaver, there is no reference to any sort of house for Adam and Eve, neither before nor after their Fall. What did they live in? Jacob went and fetched his brother Noah’s Bible, and read second and third Genesis, but couldn’t find any mention of a house, so he had to concede that point to Fanshaw. His own chief point was that God created Adam in his own image, whereas snails are pretty slow and slimy, and beavers are fat and bucktoothed. They argued that point back and forth until Fanshaw conceded.

  So went their debate, and both men realized that what they were actually debating was the beginning of their Great Debate: Who has the right to Stay More, the Indian or the white man? although they did not ever say so in other than metaphorical terms. When it came the usual time for Fanshaw to go back to his lady, and Jacob uttered his ritual “Stay more,” Fanshaw replied, “Thank you, I believe I shall,” and he stayed a long time. Jacob gave him a big hunk of stewed venison and took one for himself, and both men washed their meat down with great gulps of the Arkansas sour mash and began for the first time to get drunk together, but kept on with their Great Debate until neither man was sober enough to reason logically, at which point Fanshaw expressed an idea, a peculiar notion the exact motive of which I have never quite been able to determine:

  “It is time, old lad, that you experience the one-on-top-together-fastened-between.”

  “Huh? How? Who?” stammered Jacob, who if sober would not have been able to utter a sound in response to such a suggestion.

  “My lady,” Fanshaw replied.

  Jacob was still sober enough to blush, and say, “Aw, shoot. That’d be adultery.”

  “What is ‘adultery’?”

  “That’s when a feller does the one-on-top business with another feller’s wife.”

  “Your people forbid it?”

  “Wal, the Bible’s agin it. God punishes adulterers.”

  “But you do not believe in God.”

  “Yeah, but I dasn’t ask yore woman.”

  “No need to ask. Often she has mentioned the thought. I have but to tell her you will.”

  Jacob began trembling. “But if she was even to look at me, I dasn’t.”

  “If she looks at you, you will not see her. It will be very dark.”

  Jacob was in a quandary. He realized that to refuse might be taken by the Indian as an insult. But to do for the first time something he had never done before, even with the nerve of much drink, might require talent which he did not possess.

  Fanshaw prompted, “There is much joy in it.”

  “I reckon,” Jacob allowed, but he was afraid that if there was so much joy in it he might develop a hankering for it and want to do it again sometime. He remembered the first time he had taken a drink of whiskey. On the other hand, this might be the only opportunity in his life to have a woman without going through all the long bother of courting her and playing games and being embarrassed and finally working up enough nerve to ask her and then even more nerve to keep pursuing her if she turned you down the first time and then the final uncertainty of whether she would even like it or not. “Okay,” Jacob whispered hoarsely.

  Fanshaw clapped him on the shoulder. “Good. I will go tell her. She will be much pleased. You will enter our domicile by the west door, her door, and she will be there. There is but one consideration. A delicate matter. I apologize in advance. It must be revealed to you that, to our people, especially to the women, the body of white man has an odor which is…not altogether agreeable. Here is what I suggest. You should first wash in three waters. Wash in rainwater, then in creekwater, then in springwater. After, do not replace your buckskins, which carry the same odor. Come unadorned. She will be waiting.” Fanshaw stood up then and left.

  Jacob had one more drink while he built up the fire in his fireplace and hung the kettle there filled with water from his rain-barrel. He found a piece of lye soap. He took off his buckskin jacket and trousers and moccasins, and when the water was hot he finished his drink and wetted the soap and began scrubbing himself with it. While he was doing this Noah returned to the cabin.

  “Shitfire,” Noah said. “I thought you’d never git rid of him. He shore stayed longer than usual, and I was a-gittin powerful cold out yonder in the dark.”

  “You ortent to be so afeared of him. He’s a good injun.”

  “The only good injun is a dead injun,” Noah replied. Then he asked, “What you takin a bath this time of night fer?”

  But Jacob just grinned and finished his bath, splashing all the soap off with hot rainwater. Then he opened the door and went naked across his fields to the creek. He tested the creekwater with his toe. It was icy cold, in this time of late winter, but he took a deep breath and plunged in. He rubbed himself all over with the creekwater, then his teeth began chattering, and he climbed out and ran up the hill toward his spring. Even the exertion of running did not keep him from being covered with gooseflesh big as small-pox. But the springwater, he discovered, was of a much higher temperature than the creekwater, and seemed almost warm by comparison. Again he washed himself all over, top to toes. The effect of all the cold and cool water was sobering him up, so after his last bath he had to return to the cabin for one more drink. Noah was asleep. Jacob drank straight from the jug, several lusty swallows, said “Ah!” and smacked his lips, then started out for the Indian’s house.

  It was pitch dark, there was no moon, and he couldn’t find out which of the dwellings in the camp was Fanshaw’s. He tried the west doors of several, groping around on his hands and knees inside without finding any woman. He began to think that Fanshaw was just playing a joke on him. But he tried one more west door, and there she was. His hand touched her fur coverlet and then her bare leg. She was lying on her back. She didn’t say anything and of course he didn’t either. He just climbed on top of her. She embraced him, with her arms and legs alike. Soon, soon they became fastened between. Fanshaw was right: there was much joy. The woman made murmurs and sighs of joy, and Jacob realized he was being pretty noisy himself. He wished this joy could go on all night, but there is an end to everything, and finally the woman’s legs unclasped their embrace of his back and straightened out, and then the woman’s whole body arched itself into a long quivering arc: an ark: a bow: a soft but taut arch that held him suspended up from the earth for a long moment until he fired: burst: was a lightningbolt and its thunderclap and the afterclaps rattling slowly away.

  When he woke up it was daylight and he was still there, but the woman was gone.

  “Shitfire, whar in tarnation have you been, and mothernaked to boot?” his brother Noah demanded, when, at long last, Jacob returned to his own bed.

  Jacob decided not to hide it. “I laid with that injun’s squaw last night.”

  “What je do thet fer?” Noah asked innocently.

  “Huh? I mean, I done went and entered her.”

  “Entered her?”

  “You eejit. We fucked.”

  “Oh,” Noah said. “What’d it feel like?”

  “Lightnin and thunder.”

  “Gee,” Noah said.

  “You orter try it sometime,” Jacob suggested.

  “Me? Shitfire, I wouldn’t go near a injun even to fuck it.”

  All that day, Jacob noticed an irregularity in himself, perhaps an afterclap of his afterclaps: he didn’t feel like doing anything. This was the first white man’s “energy shortage” in the Ozarks. Jacob spent the whole day sitting by his fire. This is the origin of the quite erroneous concept of the “shiftless hillbilly.” Usually Jacob was industrious, for the hard life of the frontiersman admits of no indolence. He couldn’t quite understand why he didn’t feel like doing any work today, unless it had something to do with last night, although it really wasn’t all that much effort to do the one-on-top-together-fastened-between, and he’d had a good night’s sleep in the meantime. But sudd
enly Jacob realized that Fanshaw was terribly lazy, even for an Indian. He never seemed to do much: back in the summer he had puttered in his garden for maybe half an hour each day, and that was it. Even on hunts, he always took his time, and never worked up a sweat, and was ready to quit as soon as one animal had been bagged. It dawned on Jacob that there must be some direct correlation between Fanshaw’s laziness and the amount of time he spent doing the one-on-top-together-fastened-between. Up until this moment, Jacob had never really felt superior to the Indian, but now he did. And it also dawned on Jacob that herein lay the real difference between their dwellings. Fanshaw’s house, for all its complexity, looked like something that a bunch of people had thrown together in one afternoon, whereas Jacob’s house looked like something that two men had worked from sunup to sundown for a fortnight to build.

  When Fanshaw came at his usual hour that afternoon, Jacob after pouring the drinks suggested this difference as a topic of debate, probably to divert their attention from the event of the night previous. So they harangued one another for an hour on the subject: Which looks more industrious, the red man’s or the white man’s domicile? “Compare a bird’s nest to an anthill,” Fanshaw suggested. They both avoided mentioning the event of the night previous until they had had several drinks and finished (or at least grew tired of) debating whose house looked more industrious, and the importance or unimportance of industry, but finally Fanshaw broached the event of the night previous by asking, “Well. How was it?”

  “It?” said Jacob, although he knew what Fanshaw meant. “Yeah. It was hunky-dory.”

  “Hunky-dory?” Fanshaw said.

  “Scrumdoodle,” Jacob elaborated. “Galuptious. Splendiferous. Humdinger. Slopergobtious. Bardacious. Yum-yum. Swelleroo. Gumptious. Danderoo. Superbangnamious.”

  “But did you like it?” Fanshaw persisted.

  “Betcha boots,” Jacob said. “Shore thang. What I mean. I aint kiddin. ’Pon my word. Take it from me. I hope to tell ye. Indeedy. You’re darn tootin.”

  Fanshaw frowned. “Say yes or no, please.”

  “Yeah,” Jacob said.

  “Good,” Fanshaw said. “I said you would. Now we can debate topics which previously excluded you. I propose our first: Which would you choose, if forced to abandon the other: whiskey or woman?”

  This was an interesting topic which kept them busy for another hour. Curiously enough, Jacob took the side of woman and Fanshaw took the side of whiskey. The former argued that woman was a more effective panacea, somnifacient, emollient, palliative, embrocative, demulcent and diaphoretic. The latter argued that it is better to feel importance than joy. At the end of their debate, which, again, lacking a referee, neither man won, Fanshaw intimated that Jacob was welcome to repeat this night his experience of the night previous, and Jacob was much obliged and beholden. He took another bath-in-three-waters and went again to feel the lightningbolts and thunderclaps atop the long soft but taut arc.

  In the spring, early spring, Noah did all of the plowing because Jacob was just too blamed enervated to help. One day Jacob and Fanshaw were watching Noah plow, when Fanshaw asked, “What manner of animal is that which pulls the plow?”

  “That’s a mule,” Jacob explained.

  “What is a mule?”

  “If a jackass serves a mare, the foal is a mule and is sterile.”

  “Tell me,” requested Fanshaw. “What is the purpose of the mule?”

  “Wal,” Jacob pointed out, “a mule works harder than a horse and he don’t tire out as easy.”

  “Because he is sterile?”

  “Maybe. I never thought of it that way, but maybe you’re right.”

  Not long afterward, still in the spring, Jacob noticed an oddity: Fanshaw’s language was beginning to deteriorate. Right in the middle of one of their debates (Which is better, a round-topped door or a flat-topped door?) and apropos of nothing that Jacob could figure out, Fanshaw said, “Ho! Toward what shall my people direct their footsteps? it has been said in the house. It is toward a little valley they shall direct their footsteps. Verily, it is not a little valley that is spoken of. It is toward the bend of a river they shall direct their footsteps. Verily, it is not the bend of a river that is spoken of. It is toward a little house that they shall direct their footsteps.” Jacob wondered if it was some kind of riddle or conundrum but decided it was just jibberish and maybe the Indian was losing his marbles. Yet from that day on, Fanshaw never talked good clear English anymore. “White man garden plenty big,” is the way he began to talk. “Indian garden little lazy.” Jacob never asked him what was happening to his speech; perhaps Jacob was afraid to.

  One day in early summer Fanshaw came and simply said “Come” and led Jacob back to Fanshaw’s paraboloid house. His woman was standing in front of it. It was the first time that Jacob had ever got a good look at her in the daylight, and he was embarrassed. He found it hard to keep looking at her, but he did, and saw that she was very pretty. Also he saw that her belly was bulging. Fanshaw pointed at the bulge, and then at himself. “Me mule,” he declared. “Sterile. You, jackass. She mare. Jackass serve mare, make more mule.”

  Jacob didn’t know what to say. “Wal, I’m sorry. You tole me to.”

  “Yo. Good? Not good?”

  “It ’pends on how ye look at it,” Jacob suggested.

  “Yo. Good? Not good?”

  Jacob meditated, and at length replied, “Good. Ever womarn orter have the right to have a baby.”

  “Yo. She happy.” Fanshaw spoke a word to his squaw and she smiled. “I tell her smile, she smile. Now we go.” Fanshaw elevated his palm above his head in the Indian “how” fashion. Jacob didn’t know what else to do, so he raised his hand in the same way. When he did so, Fanshaw clasped his elevated hand and held it up there in a long tight grip which made Jacob think maybe he was trying to Indian-wrestle. Jacob was ready to break his arm off if he was, but the Indian merely held their hands together above their heads and said to him, “Farewell.”

  “Aw, you don’t have to leave,” Jacob protested. “Stay more, and we’ll have us some real fine deebates.”

  But the Indian merely said, in his own custom, “Fuck off,” and then he and his squaw, with their few possessions rolled in a blanket, began walking west. Jacob never saw them again. Sometime later, as we shall see, he removed their domicile to his backyard, where he converted it into a corncrib. Noah burned the other Indian homes in the clearing, and converted the clearing into a corn patch.

  If this has been a quiet, lonely chapter, I think I must have intended it so: the moon sometimes hanging in the night sky for hour upon hour, the wind timidly on occasion rustling a few leaves, in summer the lightning bugs (even then) going off and on lazily as they had all night, or in winter morning wisps of woodsmoke rising and drifting with the morning mist. Things will pick up, as we go along.

  “Funny,” Jacob remarked one day to his brother Noah. “I never even learned that injun’s name.”

  “Which?” Noah said. “Him or her?”

  “Neither blessit one of ’em.”

  Chapter two

  Let us first consider the points of resemblance between Fanshaw’s domicile and the first Ingledew house, dissimilar though they may seem. Both had no windows. Both had but an earthen floor. And although the Ingledew place is foursquare, it is built of rounded logs. Later houses in Stay More would be built of logs hewed flat, but in their haste to clear a bit of land and put a roof over their heads, the Ingledew brothers did not take the time to hew the logs. (One early authority makes a distinction between the rounded-log dwelling and the hewed-log dwelling by referring to the former as “cabin,” the latter as “house,” and we shall do likewise.) Fanshaw and Jacob Ingledew were both over six feet tall, but Jacob did not have to stoop, even slightly, to go through his door, which cleared his head by several inches.

  There were (the past tense is deliberate; Jacob’s cabin, like Fanshaw’s domicile, is gone now; it was washed away in a flood) no windows for
several reasons. First, the difficulty of cutting openings in the large, heavy hardwood logs; second, the impossibility of obtaining glass for panes; third, the need to provide maximum insulation in winter and summer; and fourth, perhaps most important, what was a kind of psychological insulation against the wilderness, the possibly hostile new world, the Indians if ever they returned, etc. Just as at Deerfield, Massachusetts, and in garrison houses all over colonial New England, the first cabins and houses in the Arkansas Ozarks were a physical manifestation of the settler’s desire to protect himself from unknown dangers. We can think, therefore, of the Ingledew place as a “shy” dwelling. And it is medieval; yet all of the best Ozark architecture remains essentially medieval, in the tradition of the vernacular architecture in England and Presbyterian Ireland, whence the settlers’ forebears came; the classicizing tendencies of the Renaissance, baroque and rococo periods never affected the humbler architecture of those areas, and would never affect, or only slightly affect, the architecture of the Ozark highlands.

  Watch this cabin leave the ground! In three upward stages, first the base: the base is of fieldstone, mostly sandstone, but rocks, of the earth, of the ground, clinging to it. The next part up is of logs, their interstices chinked with mud, not so much of the earth as rocks, but still, particularly because the logs are not hewed but left round, and because the mud was wet dirt, still of the earth. And finally the roof, rived thick boards, not shingles actually, farthest from earth, last in the ascending transition from earth to sky, split from oak logs with a frow, worked: most of the brothers’ labor went into the roof, which they laid in the dark of the moon so the boards would not warp or crack—a superstition, but one that works. Notice how the brothers’ labor increases as the house rises, except in the chimney (“chimbly” is how they say it, all of them) whose inward taper is itself a part of the ascending transition from earth to sky, rock to air.