Being taciturn he didn’t want to ask anyone for directions, but Little Rock was not a very large town in those days, and he knew that if he just kept looking he would find the governor’s house. He did, too, somehow, but when he found it he realized that he would feel like a goddamn fool if it turned out that the occupant of the mansion was not his father. He couldn’t very well just go up and holler the goddamn house and disappear if the man wasn’t his father. Back home you didn’t need to holler a house because everybody had dogs and the dogs hollered the house for you. But here in the city, the governor, whoever he was, didn’t seem to have any goddamn dogs around the place, and Isaac would have to holler the house, and if the man wasn’t his father he would be embarrassed as hell or maybe even put in the goddamn jail. No, he couldn’t do it. He went away and wandered around through the town, thinking. He couldn’t just stop somebody on the street and ask them who the governor was. If he could read, he could have bought any one of Little Rock’s three daily newspapers and have found some mention of the governor in it, but he couldn’t read.
After much thought, he decided that the best thing would be to wait until dark, and sneak around the governor’s house peeking into windows, and if he saw that the man really was his father then he wouldn’t be reluctant to holler the house. So he did that: he waited until it was full dark and went back to the governor’s house, which had a lot of lights burning inside. But there was a soldier on the porch standing guard by the door. Isaac sneaked around to the back, but there was another soldier back there guarding the rear door. At least the two sides of the house weren’t guarded, and the bushes were fairly thick at the sides. Crawling on his belly, Isaac wormed through the side yard and the bushes and up to the side of the house, where he raised his head up to the windowsill and peered into a room. There wasn’t anybody in it. But Jesus jumping Christ, Isaac said to himself, what fancy furniture and stuff! He couldn’t conceive of his father living in a place like that, and once again, for the thousandth time, he wondered if Eli Willard actually was a goddamn drunken liar. He crept along the side of the house and peered into another window, another room. Nobody in there either, just more fancy furniture.
Wait a minute. Yonder through the door comes a woman. She is dressed in silk to the floor. She is laughing and tossing her head. The governor’s wife, you’d reckon. So Eli Willard is a drunken goddamn liar, after all. Wait a minute. Yonder through the door comes a man. He is dressed in a fancy suit with vest and tie, but that doesn’t fool Isaac. Isaac would know that face anywhere. The governor is laughing too, and holding in each hand a fancy tulip-shaped glass with amber liquid in it. What does he need two of them for? No, he is handing one to the woman. Then he and the woman bang their glasses together, and each takes a drink, and the woman gives the governor a big kiss on his cheek, and they sit down real close together in one of those fancy settees, and the governor puts his arm…
Isaac felt a sting in his shoulder, and swatted at it. His swat touched cold steel and he turned to see that it was the bayonet of one of the soldier-guards.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” the guard demanded.
Even if Isaac hadn’t been the most taciturn of all the Ingledews, he wouldn’t have known what to say.
They took him off and locked him up. The other prisoners were Rebel soldiers from south Arkansas, and Isaac didn’t like the way they talked or the things they said, but there wasn’t much he could do about it because they outnumbered him by dozens. He could have avoided prison if he had tried to persuade the soldiers that he was the governor’s son, but he didn’t want to embarrass the governor, and already he was himself deeply embarrassed if not mortified to have discovered that his father had a sweetheart. So that was the reason nobody in Stay More had been told that he was the governor! Isaac decided just to keep his mouth shut, an easy decision for him since he rarely opened it except to eat and cuss, and when he got out of prison he would just go on back home to Stay More and keep his mouth shut there too and be nice to his mother and never tell her.
But he didn’t get out of prison. Early the following morning he was taken before a military court and tried as a Confederate spy. He gave his name as “John Johnson.” The guard who had captured him went on the stand to testify. Then Isaac went on the stand, and the prosecutor asked him what he was doing looking in the window of the governor’s mansion. Isaac replied, “Nothing.” The prosecutor with much sarcasm speculated about several facetious motives that John Johnson might have had, then declared what the true motive was: that John Johnson was spying upon the governor. “Do you deny it?” the prosecutor demanded. No, Isaac admitted. “Then what was the motive of your spying? Did you intend to assassinate the governor?” Here the prosecutor held up Exhibit A: Isaac’s pistol. “Naw,” Isaac said. The prosecutor tried for several hours, with one brief recess, to find out John Johnson’s motive, and finally made a speech to the officers of the tribunal in which the motive was claimed to be assassination. The officers agreed, and sentenced Isaac to hang at dawn of the following day. Back in his cell, awaiting his end, Isaac tried to feel sorry for himself, but that was an emotion to which he was a stranger.
At dawn he was taken out to a public gallows, riding to it atop his own coffin, staring coolly at the spectators who were jeering him. The gallows was surrounded by troops; he couldn’t run away if he wanted to. He was hustled up the steps to the gallows, and the noose was thrown like a lariat over his head, then tightened. The provost-marshal prepared a blindfold, but waited. He waited a long time, holding the blindfold.
Bored, Isaac demanded, “What’re ye waitin fer?”
“The governor,” the man replied. “He aint et his breakfast yet.”
“Tie on the #@%*&#@* blindfold!” Isaac insisted.
“Not till the governor gets a look at your traitorous mug.”
Another half-hour passed before a carriage finally arrived with the governor. The governor was ill-humored and complaining about having to leave his coffee and watch spies git hung. Then he looked up at the spy. The spy had his eyes closed. Scared shitless, no doubt, the governor reflected. But then the governor decided he didn’t actually look scared, apart from the closed eyes. He was standing tall and proud, awaiting his dread fate manfully. A big and handsome man. Why did he have his eyes closed? “Tell him to pop open them peepers,” the governor ordered an aide. This command was conveyed to the spy, who obeyed. His eyes were blue. Just like mine, the governor thought, and then he recognized the spy.
“Isaac??” he croaked.
“Howdy, Paw,” Isaac returned mildly.
“What in tarnation air ye a-standin up there for, boy?”
“They’re a-fixin for to hang me, Paw,” Isaac said.
Jacob grabbed the nearest general by the collar and demanded, “What’s the charge, buster?”
“Attempted assassination, sir,” the general replied.
“Who was he ’temptin to ’assinate?” Jacob asked.
“You, sir,” the general replied.
Jacob looked up at Isaac. “That true, son?”
“Aw, naw, Paw,” Isaac said.
“He was caught peering into a window of your house, sir,” the general said, “with a pistol in his possession. He was duly tried by a military tribunal, and convicted.”
“That’s terrible,” Jacob declared. “My own boy. General, that there is my own flesh and blood. I’ve knowed him since the day he was born. He’s a chip off the old block. Isaac Ingledew is my son, sir.”
“That’s terrible,” the general agreed.
“I don’t aim to jist stand here and watch him git hung,” Jacob declared.
“I don’t think you’re required by law to watch, sir,” the general offered, somewhat lamely.
“But don’t the law give me the right to grant him a pardon?” Jacob asked.
“I believe it does, sir.”
“Okay. Isaac boy, you are done hereby pardoned, per executive order. Come go home with me and eat you so
me victuals.” Jacob led his son down from the scaffold and took him to the governor’s mansion and fed him a large breakfast, during which he questioned Isaac about his motives for peering in the window with a pistol in his possession. Isaac was just as taciturn with his father as he was with anybody else, but he was able to nod or shake his head in response to simple yes-or-no questions, and in this manner Jacob was able to determine that his son had not meant to assassinate him, and also that his son had seen Jacob in the company of his ladyfriend, who, Jacob tried unconvincingly to persuade Isaac, was the secretary of state. Jacob learned that the messengers he had sent to Stay More had never arrived. Bushwhackers were thicker than flies, Isaac told him, not mentioning that he himself had been ambushed seventeen times. After breakfast, Jacob took Isaac over to a Main Street tailor and had him fitted out with a good suit, which was sewn on the spot and altered to fit Isaac’s six-seven frame, then Jacob gave Isaac a tour of the state capitol building and showed him his own large and lavish office, where he gave Isaac a cigar, his first, and a drink of honest-to-God pure whiskey, likewise his first, and asked him if he wouldn’t like to live here in Little Rock. Isaac shook his head, and Jacob understood. In that case, Jacob said, he would make Isaac a present of the Ingledew dogtrot in Stay More, and eighty acres of land. Isaac was choked with gratitude, and didn’t know what to say even if he hadn’t been unable to say anything anyway. Jacob told him that he was going to dispatch a cavalry platoon to escort Isaac back up to Stay More and escort Sarah and the other children back down to Little Rock. Then he questioned Isaac at some length about the progress of the fighting in Newton County, promoted him to colonel, shook hands, and sent him on his way.
Jacob worried about what “arrangement” to make with his ladyfriend once Sarah arrived in Little Rock. He and his ladyfriend had already discussed the inevitable. It had never been a secret to the ladyfriend that Jacob was married. The ladyfriend herself had been married at one time to one of the most prominent citizens of Little Rock. Jacob tried to understand his own feelings. Without using the word “love,” which is a deeply embarrassing term to all Ozarks men, or simply denotes sex for its own sake, Jacob realized that Sarah still occupied the prime position in his affections, and indeed, since absence makes the heart grow fonder and he hadn’t seen her for almost a year, he was very eager to have her with him again, and knew that when she came to Little Rock she would be “First Lady” in more than one respect.
Arriving back in Stay More, Isaac began the arduous task of persuading his mother that she was First Lady of Arkansas and that the First Gentleman of Arkansas desired to have her join him in Little Rock. Being taciturn, Isaac was not able to talk her into believing it. She wanted to dose him with slippery-elm bark, but he told her that if she did, she would also have to dose the entire cavalry platoon that had escorted him from Little Rock and was waiting to escort her to Little Rock, and while she was at it she might as well dose their horses too, and then maybe the sight of all those horses with the trots and canters and gallops would convince her that she was the First Lady of Arkansas, but that would delay the trip to Little Rock. It was the longest speech he had ever made in his life, and it exhausted him, but it convinced his mother, whose first response, however, was, “But I don’t have a blessit thing to wear.” Isaac, who was wearing the new suit his father had had tailored for him, indicated it, and told her that his father would most likely “fix her up” too when she got there. So she put on her best black dress, and dressed the girls Rachel and Lucinda in the only dresses they had, and told Lum to put on his best britches and wash good behind the ears, but Lum wasn’t going, he declared. He said he didn’t care if his father was elected king of England, he didn’t want nothing to do with no cities. Isaac told him that his father had given Isaac the house and eighty acres, and Lum could stay and keep the farm while Isaac rejoined his Federal infantry in pursuit of Cecil’s Rebels. Sarah stuffed a few belongings into a gunnysack and she and her daughters waved goodbye to Isaac and Lum, and rode off with the cavalry platoon to Little Rock.
Sarah’s dream, which she had dreamt years earlier on the occasion of their first night in the dogtrot, came exactly true. The dream had been about the perhaps excessively highfalutin reception that Jacob now hosted in her honor, after he had taken her and their daughters out to the town’s best dressmaker and had them fitted out with hoops. Most of the younger girls of that day did not wear hoops, but Jacob was determined to have all three of his “gals,” including Sarah, in hoops. Rachel was almost twenty, and looked quite ladylike in hers, but Lucinda was only fifteen, and looked uncomfortable, and felt uncomfortable, and was not able to move about in her hoops, nor sit, so during the reception she remained parked inside her hoops in one corner, where no one spoke to her, although I doubt that this experience was sufficiently traumatic to account for the fact that many years later she went insane.
The part of the reception that Sarah did not like at all was when the other ladies tried to talk to her and she couldn’t understand them, couldn’t tell whether they were asking questions or just making statements. “It is so festive?” a woman would say to her, and she didn’t know if this was a question or not. “The price of crinoline is outrageous?” another woman would say. “I am Senator Fishback’s wife?” another would say. “The militia makes one feel more secure?” “The price of coffee is ridiculous?” “The band will be playing soon?” “Your daughters are exquisite?” Some of these words, like “exquisite,” Sarah did not even understand, and to the lady who asked this particular question, if it was a question, she mumbled in reply, “Not as fur as I know, yet.”
She was very glad when Jacob came and took her hand and led her away from the ladies and out onto the balcony to watch the band playing, and to see the crowd waving and cheering, and to hear the cannon firing their salutes. The Arkansas Gazette’s society editor commented the following day: “For a woman so little familiarized with the amenities of the drawing room, the governor’s lady acquitted herself handily.” Jacob read this item to her, but was required to explain, as best he could, “amenities,” “drawing room,” and “acquitted.” Still Sarah wondered if they weren’t poking fun at her, and her next words to Jacob were: “Jake, how long do you have to be governor?” When he told her four years, she sighed.
She was to do a lot of sighing during those four years. She would sigh when the Gazette wrote, in reference to a habit of Jacob’s: “For a man who prefers to receive visiting dignitaries with his coonskin cap atop his head, the governor acquitted himself handily.” When the Little Rock National Democrat, commenting on a dinner (“luncheon” they called it) that Sarah held for the legislators’ wives, wrote: “For a woman whose culinary accomplishment is limited to porcine dishes, the governor’s lady acquitted herself handily,” Sarah sighed. Sarah sighed when the Arkansas Advocate, commenting on Jacob’s conciliation of a feud between the legislature and the Little Rock Ministerial Alliance, wrote, “For a professedly unregenerate disbeliever, the governor acquitted himself handily.” Finally the New York Tribune, in a long “profile” on the Arkansas governor and his family, commented about Sarah: “For a lady of such high standing and comforts, Mrs. Ingledew sighs handily.”
Jacob Ingledew was not a great governor, but he was a good one. His administration began without a dollar in the treasury, yet by the end of his term every cent of expenses had been paid, with a surplus of $270,000 in the vaults. His strong suit was a near-genius for raising revenue. He taxed everything that could be taxed, and many things that could not. He was the inventor of highway taxes: for the upkeeping of streets and roadways the provost-marshal was ordered to collect a highway tax of two weeks’ labor or fifty dollars from every citizen between the ages of eighteen and fifty years, actual government employees excepted. Most people preferred working for the government at low wages to gain this exemption, and there was no dearth of cheap government labor. At one time, Jacob had working at the governor’s mansion alone three majordomos, six butlers
, seven coachmen, nine maids, eleven cooks, thirteen valets, and thirty-two yardmen. The grounds were immaculate, but the yardmen began fighting among themselves with their shears and spades, and Sarah sighed.
Jacob also managed, adequately if not adroitly, the orchestration of the three separate branches of government. It has been pointed out (or if it hasn’t, it has been now) that the three branches of government may be compared to the three levels of personality as seen by Freud: the legislative body is the id, the executive body is the ego, and the judicial body is the superego. Jacob got along splendidly with his legislature, who were for the most part simple country men like himself, some of them uncouth, many of them illiterate, all of them loud and hard-drinking and tobacco-chewing. Superciliously the Little Rock Daily Republican observed that Jacob’s legislature was composed of “at least a few worthies who, we may assure our readers, are able to sign their names without running out their tongues or distorting their countenances in the effort, and thus acquit themselves handily.” The judiciary branch, on the other hand, was composed mainly of city men, or citified men, sedate, grave, and disapproving. They disapproved of most of Jacob’s taxes, declaring the taxes unconstitutional.
Jacob did not get along very well at all with his supreme court. He did not like city men to begin with, as we have seen. City men who were also justices were as intolerable to him as our superegos are to our egos. But the superego, I think, is gullible, and Jacob gulled his justices. He would invite them into his office, and take a gallon stone jug from a barrel filled with straw, and offer them “whiskey so good you kin smell the feet of the boys who plowed the corn.” The justices would sniff their noses and at first decline, but he would urge his real mountain dew upon them and, while they became progressively intoxicated, he would tell them tall tales, wild stories, fish stories, which they believed. He would tell them of having caught a four-hundred-pound catfish which he hadn’t been able to drag out of the water. “Yes,” one of the justices would remark, “I suppose it’s difficult to land those big ones.” Jacob would explain how he tickled the catfish’s whiskers, and stroked its head, causing it to leap out of the water and follow him around like a dog. The justices would nod, declaring that they had heard that catfish are easily tamed. Jacob would say, “I jist throwed a bridle on her, and rid her plumb home.” When none of the justices expressed any incredulity at that, he would raise his voice and declare, “I tied her to my strawstack, and bedded her down with the cattle all winter.” The justices would solemnly nod. Finally, Jacob would desperately declare that he bred the catfish to a mule, and foaled two horse colts! At this point, one of the justices would remark, “I do not believe that part of it. Everybody knows that mules are not fertile.”
The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks Page 18
