“Seems as ’ough we caint fasten our thangs together no more.”
Benjamin was moved to suggest, audibly, “Try a rope.”
Whereupon his father trundled the trundle bed out of the door, across the breezeway into the other wing, where Benjamin slept thereafter until he was fifteen, when he left home.
Noah has been accused, unjustly I think, of being partly responsible for Benjamin’s leaving home. Benjamin, like any resident of Stay More, male or female, had been obliged, from the age of seven onward, to work as hard as he possibly could, starting at sunrise and keeping on until sunset, the year around, Sundays not excepted. Since Benjamin was Jacob’s oldest son, and since at the age of fifteen he was full-grown, he was obliged to do a man’s work somewhat prematurely, with the predictable result that he came down with the frakes, which kept him in bed for most of his fifteenth year, and left him with, not so much a sense of futility or the vainness of labor, but rather with a conviction that if a man (or boy) had to work, there ought to be some kind of work somewhere that wasn’t so goshdarned hard. But when he asked his father about this, when he asked his father if there weren’t places in the world somewhere where people didn’t have to toil from sunup to sundown, his father merely gave him a lecture on how Stay More was the center of the universe, as it were, and of the necessity for a man (or boy) to do the most labor of which he was capable, to “do his damnedest,” as Jacob put it. So Benjamin went to Noah. “Uncle Noah,” he inquired, “I been wonderin: aint there anyplace out yonder in the world where a body’d not have to slave the livelong day jist to do what was ’spected of him?”
Noah could not tell him of cities, having never seen one himself, unless you count Memphis, which at the time Noah had briefly passed through it on his way to the Ozarks was scarcely more than a large town. Noah could tell him of certain shiftless persons who managed to eke out a subsistence with a modicum of effort, but Noah chose wisely not to tell him of these types. All Noah could tell him was what little he himself had heard rumored about a distant Promised Land way off in the west, which was called in the Spanish “Hot Oven,” or Californy, where gold had recently been discovered, and where, it was said, a man could spend a few hours searching for gold and then take the rest of the week off. Benjamin asked Noah to explain what “gold” was, and why it was so valuable, and Noah did the best he could.
“How come you never wanted to go there?” Benjamin asked him. Noah explained that it was a long ways off and besides you had to pass through a lot of Indian country to get there and Noah would be just as happy if he never saw another Indian in his life. But Benjamin, having never seen an Indian and having none of his uncle’s irrational fear of them, began to consider, increasingly and seriously, the idea of going to California to, if not make his fortune, avoid a life of hard labor. He kept his intention a secret from no one, but no one took him seriously. A person never left Stay More except to go to the county seat or to go to rest in the Stay More cemetery.
One summer Saturday afternoon, when all the Ingledews were enjoying one of their annual shopping or swapping trips into Jasper, Benjamin saw a little crowd assembled on a corner of the courthouse square, and, joining them, saw them clustered around a man whom we might refer to as Newton County’s first and only itinerant “travel agent.” This man, Charlie Fancher, was offering, for the rather lavish sum of $50, to “book passage” on a wagon train that was departing soon for Californy. He painted a more glowing picture of Californy than Uncle Noah had, extolling its excellent climate and its picturesque mountains and its view of the ocean. No one in Newton County had ever seen an ocean or could even imagine seeing that much water in one place. They listened in awe to the travel agent, but when he got around to mentioning the price, $50, they began, one by one, to drift away, until only Benjamin was left standing with the travel agent.
“Shitepoke town,” the agent grumbled, not necessarily to Benjamin. “I shoulda knowed better than git lost way back up here in these hills.” Then he noticed Benjamin and said, “Kid, you aint happenin to have fifty dollars layin around loose, have ye?”
“Nossir,” Benjamin declared. “Fifteen, twenty, is the most I could ever hope to lay hands on. But I’d be right glad to work it off. I could drive a wagon and help tend the teams.”
“Hmmm,” the agent said, and sized him up. “You any good with a rifle?”
“I kin knock a squirrel off a tree limb from ten hats off.”
“Hats?” the agent said.
Benjamin explained that unit of measure to the agent, who calculated it and then said, “Well, okay, kid. You’re on. Let’s go. Let’s git out of this shitepoke town.”
“Let me say goodbye to my folks,” Benjamin requested.
“Cut it short,” the agent said.
Benjamin’s folks were scattered around the village. He had to hunt them up individually, and explain to each of them what he was going to do, and deafen himself to their protests and tears. His younger brother Isaac begged to go with him, but Benjamin told him he would send for him in a couple of years when Isaac was older. His little sisters Rachel and Lucinda grabbed his arms and said they wouldn’t let him go, and he had to tear his shirt getting loose from them. His mother reminded him that his sixteenth birthday was coming up soon, and she had wanted to make it special for him. He said he was powerful sorry. His father Jacob said, “What if I was to say you caint go?” “You’d have to tie me up,” Benjamin averred. Jacob drew back his fist as if to smite Benjamin, but Benjamin did not cower nor flinch. Jacob dropped his arm. “Paw,” Benjamin protested, “I’ll come home soon as I git rich.” Jacob snorted and said, “There aint no place for a rich man in this country.” But when Jacob saw that he could not dissuade Benjamin, he gave Benjamin his horse and then shook hands with him and wished him luck.
Noah was the last of his folks that Benjamin could find, and when Benjamin told him what he was doing, Noah moaned and faulted himself for having mentioned Californy to him in the first place. Benjamin pointed out that even if Noah hadn’t mentioned it, he would still have heard about it from this man Charlie Fancher that he was going with. “Shitfire, let Fancher show hisself,” Noah declared. “I’ll shred him up with my bare hands.” But Benjamin clapped his uncle on the shoulder and said, “Goodbye, Uncle Noey. And thanks fer all them candy apples,” and then he mounted the horse his father had given him and went to rejoin Charlie Fancher. They rode north to the town of Harrison, and from there west to the town of Berryville, where the wagon train was assembled, and the people that Fancher had “recruited” from all over the Ozarks, over 140 of them, got into the wagons. Charlie Fancher started the wagon train moving west, Benjamin driving one of the lead wagons with eight people in it, westward out of Arkansas and across the national boundary line into Indian territory, where occasionally they saw parties or even camps of Indians, but had no conflicts with any of them, until, weeks later, in a valley called Mountain Meadows, in a place called Utah, they were suddenly surrounded by a large band of mounted Indians in war paint who began shooting at them, not with bows and arrows but with rifles.
Charlie Fancher ordered the wagons to form into a circle and everybody got behind the wagons and Benjamin and all the other men who could handle a rifle returned the fire of the Indians, killing many of them, and keeping them at bay for hours into the night, then all of the following day, and the one after that, three days in all, until a white flag appeared among the enemy, a flag of truce under which approached a group of men. These were not Indians but white men, whose leader introduced himself as John D. Lee and told Charlie Fancher that his wagon train must turn back and that he and his fellow white men would protect their retreat from the Indians as far back as Cedar City. But the man insisted that Fancher and all his party must go on foot and unarmed in order to allay the suspicions of the Indians, a condition which Fancher was reluctant to accept, yet a condition which had no alternative except to stay and fight, which few of the Fancher party wanted to do, among those few Benj
amin, who smelled something suspicious in the whole business, but had no liberty to disobey his leader, Fancher. At length Fancher ordered his party to yield to the retreat order, to leave their wagons and weapons and begin the march toward Cedar City. They never reached it, because as soon as they were out of sight of their wagons the Indians came again, along with those treacherous white men, and slaughtered every last single one of them, sparing only the youngest children.
Benjamin, as he felt the searing bullet tearing life out of his breast, was sorry that he had ever left home.
There was no survivor to return the news to Arkansas, but sometime later Eli Willard from Connecticut, hawking musical instruments this time, happened to bring with him a copy of a New York newspaper, to leave with Lizzie Swain and her family, who had such a hankering for occasional news from the outside world, although they could not read, and nobody could read except Jacob, who didn’t mind reading to Lizzie and her brood the newspaper Eli Willard had dropped off (and his business was pretty good this time around; to the populace of Stay More he sold three banjos, a piano, a parlor organ, and other instruments, including a fiddle that Jacob bought for his son Isaac, and a Jew’s harp that Noah bought for himself). Lizzie and her children assembled in Jacob’s dogtrot and he began reading them the newspaper. He hadn’t read very far, however, before he came to a big headline, “MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE” with a sub-headline “140 Arkansans Slain in Utah Valley” and a sub-headline “Suspect Mormon Plot.” Jacob’s voice quavered as he read the text of the item, and his voice broke when he came to the name of Charles Fancher, because that was the name of the man Benjamin had told him he was going with. Jacob stopped altogether when he came to the words, “…not one single survivor, except a few children under the age of seven who have been discovered to be in the custody of the Mormons in Salt Lake City.” He read the rest of the item silently to himself, as Lizzie and her children stared at him. It had been charged that Mormons had incited and directed the attack, to keep the Fancher party out of Utah, although the wagon train was merely passing through Utah on its way to California. The investigation was continuing (but it would not be, we know, until exactly ten years later that John D. Lee, a fanatical Mormon settler, would be tried, found guilty, excommunicated by his Church, and put to death on the site of the massacre).
“What’s a Mormon?” Jacob said to Lizzie.
But Lizzie could only shake her head, and ask, “Is the news pretty bad?”
Jacob declared, “My boy Benjamin is dead.”
Everyone in Stay More assembled in the yard of Jacob’s dogtrot to offer their condolences to Jacob and Sarah, and to discuss the news of the atrocity. Jacob asked them if any of them knew what a Mormon was, but none of them had ever heard of such a creature. Jacob addressed the gathering briefly, in conclusion, expressing his sorrow at the loss of his eldest son, and more particularly his sorrow that his son had been misguided and deluded into leaving home. Jacob’s voice rose. “But jist let me say this. Fer all of you folks, and fer all of yore generations after ye, from this day forward, ferevermore, I, Jacob Ingledew, do hereby solemnly place a curse upon any person who leaves Stay More to go west. Amen.”
So it was that Isaac took his brother’s place as the oldest son, just as earlier he had taken his brother’s place sleeping at the foot of the parents’ bed, where he remained until manhood, wisely keeping his mouth shut when he heard his father or mother saying unfathomable words in the dark once a month. Isaac Ingledew was never much given to talk anyway, and it is said of him that he earned his nickname, “Coon,” because, like a raccoon, he never opened his mouth except to eat or to cuss.
To appreciate his nickname, we would have to have heard a raccoon cussing, and many of us have not. Isaac, as we shall see (or hear), was the greatest cusser of all the Ingledews. Unlike Benjamin, who allegedly never spoke until he was eight, Isaac said his first word at eleven months, the word being “shitfire,” which he must have learned from one of his relatives, but by the age of six he had broadened his stock of oaths to include all that were known (and some unknown) in Stay More. When his father bought for him a fiddle from Eli Willard, he quickly learned how to play it, and became eventually a champion fiddler who was capable, on occasion, of making the fiddle cuss. We are going to see and hear a lot of Isaac “Coon” Ingledew, for it was he who fought beside his father in the War.
The War. The first anybody (other than Jacob Ingledew, who kept it to himself) heard of war, heard that the whole nation had split itself right in two and was fighting itself, was when coffee, tea, pepper and such, which were always imported, became at first short in supply, and then impossible to obtain, at which point Eli Willard, who had been supplying these items, confessed that he could no longer obtain them. Then he held aloft the particular item that he was selling this year: a Sharps rifle.
“Stop!” Jacob Ingledew exclaimed. “Turn yore wagon and git the hell back whar ye came from!”
The people stared at Jacob, wondering why he was being suddenly hostile to his old friend from Connecticut.
“But you’re going to need these,” Eli Willard protested, still holding the Sharps rifle aloft. “No man should be without one. As a weapon it is vastly superior to your old breechloaders and flint-locks.”
“Fer shootin folks, you mean,” Jacob said. “Git back down the road, I say.”
But the other men of Stay More were curious to examine the new hardware (Eli Willard was also carrying a line of side-arms), and they protested to Jacob, as respectfully as they could, stopping short of telling him outright to shut up, but making it clear that they couldn’t understand why they shouldn’t buy a new shootin iron if they felt like it.
“Yeah,” Noah chimed in, “shitfire, let me see thet thang,” and he took the Sharps rifle from Eli Willard and began examining it appreciatively.
Jacob sighed. It was a small sigh, as sighs go, but we should try to understand it: two years previously, the people of Newton County had been asked to send a delegate to a special state convention at the state capital, Little Rock. The delegate, they were told, need not be a politician, lawyer or county official; there were only two qualifications: one, that he be wise, and two, that he be typical. The people thought of all the wise men of Newton County, but none of them were typical. Then they thought of all the typical men of Newton County, but the only wise one among those was Jacob Ingledew, so the people prevailed upon him to become their delegate. Jacob didn’t want anything to do with any city, or even a big town. But the people pointed out that the convention was only supposed to last a few days. Jacob protested that he didn’t have any idea of what he was supposed to do when he got there, and none of the people did either, but they told him that he was the only one of them who was both typical and wise.
Pride was not one of Jacob’s sins, but he couldn’t help feeling flattered when they told him that, so he accepted, and at the appointed time, mid-March, he saddled his horse, donned a fine nut-brown suit of clothes that Sarah had woven and sewn special for the occasion, and rode off down to Little Rock, a distance of some 150 miles. He reported for duty at the capitol, a large building made entirely out of white marble; it was the biggest building he’d ever seen. He was assigned a seat at a desk in a big room, the biggest room he’d ever been in, with dozens of other desks. The men sitting at the other desks looked well-fixed and most of them were smoking cigars. Jacob decided he would keep his mouth shut and his ears open and not let anybody put anything over on him. So when the well-fixedest-looking man of them all came into the room, and all the men stood up, Jacob stayed in his seat. Somebody announced, “His Excellency, Governor Rector!” and everybody but Jacob clapped their hands, and the well-fixedest-looking man stepped up on a platform in the front of the room and made a long speech. Jacob listened carefully.
The governor began by saying, “Gentlemen, it is assumed by most that this convention was called in response to the election, last month, of Jefferson Davis as provisional president of the Co
nfederacy. President Lincoln, who received not one single Arkansas vote in the recent election, apparently likes to think of us as a safe Border State, along with Missouri. But, gentlemen, Arkansas is south of Missouri!” Jacob realized that, if nothing else, he was going to learn a few things about geography. The governor went on to say, “Many of you gentlemen are pioneers. I am a pioneer. Many of you gentlemen are also slaveowners. I am a slaveowner. The Confederacy is made up of pioneers and slaveowners. Shall we join them, or not? That is the issue of this convention!”
The governor’s speech lasted for over an hour, and Jacob had to admit that the man was the fanciest speaker he’d ever listened to. Then several other less-fancy speakers took turns giving one-hour speeches. They didn’t all sound the same. The ones that talked just like folks back up home were the ones who didn’t want to join the Confederacy. The ones that wanted to join the Confederacy, like the governor, talked real slow and lazy-like. At first Jacob didn’t have any idea what the Confederacy was, but gradually he got a picture of it, yet he still couldn’t understand that the only reason they were confederated was because they didn’t want to give up their slaves.
The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks Page 13
