This was the first Stay More shivaree, or charivari as the French would call it, from a Latin word meaning “headache.” How did this custom ever get started? What psychological motives do people have for harassing the poor couple on their first night together? If we were to interrupt young Virgil Swain while he was pulling the cat’s tail to make it howl and contribute that part of noise to the racket, and interview him on this subject, he would reply, “Wal, I reckon everbody knows what folkses air really gittin married fer, and so we’re a-teasin ’em on account of that. Hoo lordy!” Perhaps he would be right, that even the youngest among them (and maybe some of the animals too) sensed the real reason that a man and a woman would become “one flesh,” and out of envy as well as out of a sense of that reason being lewd, they lewdly heckle and pester the wedded pair. I cannot help but remark upon the contrast between this behavior and that of Fanshaw’s people on the wedding day: the Osage’s “grunts and whoops of joy” become the white man’s grunts and whoops of lewd mirth. The shivaree ends when the groom “treats”: Jacob invited all of them (except the animals) into his cabin, where he gave them refreshments, sarsparilla for the younger ones, stronger stuff for the older, and Sarah’s cake of cornbread smeared with wild honey and divided all around. The party ran deep into the night, and when it was over Jacob was too inebriated to find his bed. He aimed for it but missed, and spent the night sleeping on the floor (or rather the dirt, since there was no floor). The next day all of the guests came back again, for the infare (or “infair” or “enfare,” as most writers misspell it). Lizzie Swain and her girls brought the food, and again it was a big blow-out with fried chicken and everything.
Only Murray Swain wasn’t there, for the shivaree or the infare either. As has been mentioned, being the oldest of the Swain boys, he had worked the hardest in the construction of their house, hewing the logs with his broadaxe and lifting them into place with Jacob lifting the other end of the log, and after three weeks of this hard work he came down with the frakes. His mother tried several of her best home remedies to no avail. Jacob wanted to suggest the poultice made with panther urine, but couldn’t bring himself to broach such a delicate topic to her. Lizzie resorted to a drastic cure of her own, using the warm blood of a black hen. She had Murray lie down on the ground (out back of the house so the other children wouldn’t watch), then she chopped off the hen’s head with an axe and let the blood dribble onto his eruptions and remain on after it had dried. This treatment seemed to be a trifle more effective than Noah’s remedy, but not much, so that now, even though the shivaree and infare were weeks and weeks past and his sores had healed, he still lay abed with great feelings of futility and worthlessness. It was perhaps appropriate that he alone was absent from his sister’s bridal festivities, because it was he, more than anyone else, who was responsible for the fact that Sarah Swain was unencumbered with a maidenhead at her marriage.
But Jacob did not know this, and he never would know it. Ignorant as he was of women and their ways, and having had experience only with an Indian squaw who was no maiden by a long shot, Jacob approached the debut of his bride’s charms with no expectation of difficulty and therefore no disappointment or anger in having encountered none. When the infare was over and all the guests had departed and Jacob was tipsy enough for the nerve, he ran Noah out of the cabin and closed the door, darkening the interior, then he laid Sarah on the bed. That was it, he just laid her, with no more howdy-do or ceremony than the wedding itself. He was surprised, however, that her reactions during the process were not at all comparable to those of the Indian squaw; namely, she did not utter the ghost of a sigh, she did not move, she did not enfold him with arms and legs alike, and, above all, she did not make, at the end, the long taut but smooth arc: ark: bow. She was foursquare, flat; not even her gables peaked. So for him it wasn’t lightning and thunder but maybe just cloudy and windy, chance of showers. Afterward he wanted to ask her if she’d had any joy in it, but he couldn’t ask her things like that. They never would talk about sex…until the very last day of Jacob’s life.
And these were the children of Jacob and Sarah: Benjamin, the firstborn; Isaac, born two years later; Rachel, born two years later; Christopher Columbus, born two years later; and Lucinda, the last, born two years later.
Why was it, Jacob often wondered, that when he really, truly, honest-to-God, sure-enough, straight-up-and-down wanted his woman, she wasn’t much feeling like it, whereas the only times he ever got her was when he wasn’t much feeling like it? That was a hell of a trick for Nature to play on a man…and a woman. Once, when he was upon her, she whispered in his ear, “Jake, if I go to sleep afore you git done, will ye pull down my nightgown?” It must be noted, however, that it was an excess of sexual frustration, no doubt, which caused Jacob single-handedly in a couple of weeks to build the imposing structure which we shall examine in the following chapter, leaving his cabin to Noah. He must have been aware of Noah, up there in the loft, listening, but hearing nothing except a random small grunt of Jacob’s, no sounds whatever from the woman.
If that is cause for pitying Noah, there was a worse one. Sarah’s next-youngest sister, Aurora, encouraged by the success of her older sister’s presentation of the cornbread to Jacob, began to give thought to baking some cornbread for Noah, and her mother approved of this scheme. Noah certainly wasn’t as desirable as Jacob, but Aurora was accustomed to being second to her older sister, getting her hand-me-downs and being next in line for everything. So eventually she baked the cornbread and took it to the Ingledew cabin, but Noah wasn’t there; Jacob said he was out milking the cow. Aurora took the cornbread out to the cowlot and offered it to Noah. By this time Noah understood the significance of the offering and he eagerly reached to take the cornbread, but dropped it, and bending over to pick it up, he tripped and fell to the ground. Aurora couldn’t help giggling. While rising up from the ground, much flustered, he snatched at the cornbread, and it broke in two. Still eager to signify his acceptance of it, he grabbed both pieces and clutched them to his bosom, whereupon they disintegrated into many fragments that showered around his feet. He was so discomposed that he turned and ran off into the woods to hide himself for a long time. Aurora decided she didn’t want a husband who was so clumsy anyway, and would rather wait until the population of Stay More included some other eligible bachelor. Poor Noah was destined to remain unmarried until his death.
Early in their marriage, Jacob’s wife Sarah developed a disconcerting habit which Jacob at first attributed to absent-mindedness: whenever she was outside of the cabin, working in the garden or feeding the chickens or whatever, she would not afterwards return to the cabin but instead wander down the road to her mother’s house and enter it, and stay there, until Jacob came to fetch her home. Undoubtedly a psychiatrist would interpret this as a sign of her dissatisfaction with her marriage, but actually, it seems to me (as in time it dawned on Jacob), that it was a sign of her dissatisfaction with Jacob’s cabin, her perhaps unconscious recognition that her mother’s house was superior to it, more comfortable, less primitive. When Jacob realized this, he began to build his next house, which was as superior to the Swain house as the latter was to his first cabin.
An outsider visiting Jacob’s cabin would have received the impression that Sarah was a slatternly housekeeper, but the fact was that a house with a dirt floor was very difficult to keep clean, and this discouraged Sarah from making the effort. As soon as she became pregnant for the first time, Sarah discontinued further relations with Jacob, until such time as he had completed construction of their new home, which, as we shall see, did not have a dirt floor but a puncheon floor that Jacob took the trouble to shave smooth with a drawing knife, so that Sarah would never get a splinter in her foot.
Lizzie Swain and her brood always joined the Ingledews at noon on the second Tuesday of each month to hear Jacob’s clock say prong, and they began combining the event with the feast of fried chicken; this was the chief social occasion in Stay More for many
years. Still, Jacob had never told Lizzie where he got the clock, so one day when Eli Willard showed up at the Swain house, Lizzie did not know who he was. He was just a “furriner” on horseback with bulging saddlebags.
“Ah hah,” observed Mr. Willard. “Another house, and a fair one too. May the lares and penates bless you and your happy home, madam.”
He talked mighty funny, Lizzie thought. “Whar ye from, stranger?” she asked him.
“Connecticut,” he replied. “Willard is the name. Eli Willard. Formerly trafficker in timepieces. Now a purveyor of sundry hard goods.” He patted his saddlebags. “Madam, have I got some nice things for you!”
By this time all of her children (except Murray, abed with the frakes) had gathered ’round, and they watched as Eli Willard dismounted and opened his saddlebags. To each of the boys Eli Willard gave a stick of rosewood studded with small bolts, which, he demonstrated, enclosed a knife that folded out! So that it could be carried in one’s pocket without sticking one, Eli Willard explained. The boys were awed. To each of the girls he gave a pair of knives that were crossed and bolted at the cross and had rings in one end whereby, he demonstrated by inserting his thumb and forefinger through the rings, the knives could be made to move against one another, snipping, so that a straight even cut could be made through cloth, he using the hem of his own coat for a subject. The girls were lost in amazement, and their mother exclaimed, “I declare! If them aint the beatin’est things ever I saw!” Before their mother could stop them, the girls gathered up all the fabric that was in their house, namely, two muslin dishrags and a bit of linsey-woolsey, and quickly reduced this material to shreds. To Lizzie Swain Eli Willard gave an even larger pair of these scissoring knives which would cut through buckskin, the material in which all of the Swains, as well as the Ingledews, were clothed.
“Bless yore heart,” said Lizzie Swain. “We’uns jist don’t know how to thank you.” Eli Willard explained that there was, in fact, a way that they could thank him. His suggestion puzzled Lizzie but after muddling it over for a while, she understood it, and protested that none of them had any of that monetary stuff, to which he assured her that her credit was good, and he would collect when he came again in a year or so. Then he inquired if the Ingledew cabin was still occupied, and, being told that it was, he remounted his horse and prepared to ride off in that direction, but Lizzie laid her hand on the horse’s bridle and said, “Stranger, afore ye go, could ye tell us if they’s any news out yonder.” With her other hand she gestured to the north, the east, the vaguely oriental points where the world was.
“News?” said Eli Willard.
“Yeah, Connecticut must be whar lives all the gentle-peoples what made these things ye give us. Aint there any news out thar in the Nation?”
“It is all bad,” Eli Willard informed her. “What do you want to hear it for?”
“Wal, we’uns is all hidden out here in the woods, y’know. It do git kinder lonesome, times. A body’d like to hear what’s happenin far off and away.”
Eli Willard just looked at her for a long moment, and then he announced, “Lady of the Lake strikes iceberg in mid-Atlantic; 215 drown. New York City fire destroys 700 buildings. Japanese earthquake kills 12,000. Worldwide cholera epidemic kills millions. Wages rise, but prices rise faster. Financial crash occurs on Van Buren’s 36th day in office. Nation begins first great depression. Bank failures and closings spread like plague. 200,000 are unemployed. Business bankrupt; only pawnbrokers prosper. Van Buren declares ten-hour day on all federal jobs. There. Does that make you feel any better?”
Lizzie Swain smiled and all her children smiled, and Lizzie said, “Hit shore do. We thank ye kindly.”
Shaking his head and muttering to himself, Eli Willard rode on his way. He came to the Ingledew cabin, was hailed by the bitch Tige and her now-fully-grown litter of eight, who surrounded his horse and continued barking until Jacob appeared and said, “Oh. It’s you. Back already?” Then he observed, “You shore didn’t stay away long, this time. Accordin to my clock, you’ve only been gone one day, three hours and forty-five minutes.”
Eli Willard drew an envelope from his pocket, unfolded it, and read it to Jacob Ingledew. “The management deeply regrets being apprised of the alleged malfunctioning of the instrument merchandised in good faith to the customer, and under ordinary circumstances would redeem the allegedly defective instrument with one of acceptable performance, but the management must with compunction inform the customer that, since the management is at the present time no longer actively engaged in merchandising instruments of this nature, we are perforce not able to make available to the customer an alternative replacement, therefore—”
“Yeah,” Jacob said. Then, “How’s the weather out yore way?”
“Cold enough to freeze the tail off a brass monkey,” Eli Willard reported. “Blizzards up to here—” he indicated his chin, and he was still sitting on his horse. “How about you?”
“Had one good snap long about Christmas,” Jacob told him.
The two men discussed the weather for a while, one-eighth of a second by Jacob’s clock, then Eli Willard opened his saddlebag and brought out a stick of ivory which enclosed a blade much sharper than those he had given the Swain boys. He unfolded it and handed it to Jacob.
“What’s it fer?” Jacob asked, holding it gingerly.
“For shaving,” Eli Willard explained. “Perhaps if you cut off those whiskers of yours, you might more easily find a wife.”
“I’ve done found a wife,” Jacob informed him, then he called into the cabin, “OH, SAREY! COME OUT SO’S THIS HERE PEDDLAR FELLER KIN SEE YE!”
“Congratulations,” Eli Willard said to Jacob, and when Sarah appeared he amended that to, “Compliments and congratulations. A beauty. My pleasure to meet you, madam, and to present you with this.” He gave her a pair of the scissoring knives like those he had given to Lizzie Swain, and explained to her how to use them. She had no cloth to cut, but took one of Jacob’s beaver skins and snipped it to flinders, expressing her wonder and delight, then she offered to give him a bucket of wild raspberry preserves that she had made, but Jacob explained that this feller was blind to any barter except that issued by the federal government, of which Jacob still had a little hidden behind a loose stone in his fireplace. So he fetched his cash and paid for Sarah’s scissors.
“Don’t you think, madam,” Eli Willard asked, “that your husband would strike a more dashing figure without his beard and mustachios?”
Sarah clipped her scissors and stared at them. “Is these good for that too?”
“Up to a point,” Eli Willard replied. “But to complete the operation he would need this.” He held up the straight-razor again.
“Pay him, Jake,” Sarah told her husband. While Jacob had his bankroll out, Eli Willard gauged the thickness of the wad, and proceeded to sell Jacob a pocketknife, another for Noah, a hand saw, an adjustable plane, a brace and bit, and a hammer. Before he was done, Eli Willard also sold him a scythe blade and a hay fork, observing that, now that Jacob had livestock, he would need good tools for harvesting fodder. Meanwhile Sarah did not return to her cabin but, as had become her peculiar disposition, wandered off to her mother’s house. Jacob took advantage of her absence to draw Eli Willard aside and ask in a low voice, “You reckon you could lay hold of some glass to bring me, yore next trip?”
“Glass?” said Eli Willard in a hushed tone.
“Yeah,” Jacob whispered. “I’m a-fixin to build me a new house, and I aim to put a couple winders in her, so I’ll be needin some winder lights.”
“Glass,” Eli Willard susurrated hoarsely, “is frightfully hard to come by, and of course difficult to transport, and therefore frightfully expensive.”
“I ’spect so,” Jacob sighed, and softly inquired, “How much?”
Eli Willard whispered into his ear a preposterously exorbitant figure. “I’ll be dumbed!” Jacob croaked quietly, but then he drew himself up and declared, “Wal, you git it
, and we’uns will find the money some way.”
The window of the Swain house, as we have seen, being covered with boiled and scraped wildcat hide, was translucent but not transparent. It admitted light but permitted no vision, either in or out, unless at night a figure were standing between the window and the light (nocturnal illumination in the Swain house came either from the fireplace or from “lamps” which consisted of sycamore balls floating in saucers of bear’s grease with the stem serving as a wick). The silhouette of a figure was standing between the light and window that night; the figure is Sarah’s. Jacob has not bothered to come for her. He has discovered a wonderful use for the pocketknife he bought from Eli Willard. He can whittle a stick with it.
He is whittling the stick into shavings. Neither the stick nor the shavings have any value, but the act of pushing the knife down along the stick has a certain therapeutic value, is soothing, gives him something to do with his hands, keeps him from seeming entirely idle when in fact he is entirely idle. Henceforward generations of the men and boys of Stay More will whittle to shavings millions of cords of sticks; some of them will actually carve the sticks into totemic figures or useful objects, hatchet handles and such, but the majority of the men and boys will just keep on whittling the stick into shavings and then start on another one, as if, their houses all built and finished, they have to keep on working with wood.
Tonight Jacob sits beside his fire endlessly whittling, and Noah soon catches the contagious habit and joins him. It is Sarah whose silhouette we see passing between the light and the window of her mother’s house. All the others have gone to sleep, the boys in the loft, the girls and their mother below. But Sarah’s silhouette moves across our line of vision and out of it, in the direction of the ladder leading up through the scuttle-hole into the loft. We can no longer see her through the window now, but we can imagine her climbing the ladder to her brothers’ quarters. We cannot easily imagine her motive, until we remember that Murray is still suffering from the after-effects of the frakes. He has no will to live. Sleeps sometimes, more often not. Lies abed, thinking no visions, hatching no plans. Feels only, if feels at all, the same feeling Noah had: of snugness, of being wrapped in the confines of this small house, of having no desire ever again to leave it. What is Sarah climbing to him for? We are not going to know.
The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks Page 7
