Then, Jacob would know, he had them right where he wanted them, and he could proceed to explain to them why, for example, the air of Arkansas, being, as anybody knows, the sweetest and purest air to breathe anywhere, is therefore taxable, and it is perfectly justifiable to put a tax on breathing. In the end, the justices yielded, but were so drunk they had to be carried from Jacob’s office. Government labor being cheap, Jacob retained twelve men for the purpose of carrying drunk justices out of his office.
Jacob’s successive successes in the office of governor meant nothing to Sarah; he did not discuss affairs of state with her; to her he was just the same old Jake, and she did not defer to him any more than she would have “back home.” Obviously she missed “back home,” and it was Sarah Ingledew who is credited with the coinage of the adjective “old-timey” in reference to the lost past. Increasingly, for the rest of that century and down through our own century, mass nostalgia would employ this expression that Sarah invented…although nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. Today we are even speaking of “old-timey” television, and tomorrow we shall be speaking of “old-timey” gasoline and electricity, but it was Sarah Ingledew who first said, “Jake, I shore do miss them old-timey days back home.” And the governor got a bit misty-eyed himself (although it was hard to tell, because the blueness of his eyes made them seem always watering) and replied, “Yeah, Sarey, them were the days.” (This expression, grammatically corrected, also entered our language.)
Nor was this merely a fleeting mood on both their parts. It lingered, and it infected those around them, who in turn infected those around them, until all of the people were in the grips of epidemic nostalgia. Although the French had identified the disease early in that century, nostalgie had not been identified or named in America at this time, and it would be a few more years before a Missourian, Sydney Smith, having discovered its spread from Arkansas to Missouri, would write his seminal article, “What a Dreadful Disease Is Nostalgia on the Banks of the Missouri!” and still more years before the first English dictionary would define it. But it began with Sarah’s casual remark to Jacob, and soon everyone had it, and because it had no name yet and no one could name it, they simply referred to it as it, and noted that there was a lot of it going around in those days. People would stop one another and ask, “Do you have it yet?” and admit “Yes, I caught it last night, I think,” and all of the Little Rock newspapers ran editorials with titles like “It Does Not Acquit Itself Handily.”
The war was not over, bushwhackers and jayhawkers still roamed and pillaged, but people were tired of it all. Everybody yearned for the old-timey prewar days, but everybody knew that the old-timey prewar days would never—no, never—come again, and because they would not come again people could only wish for them, and because wishing for something that can never be had is wishful thinking, and because wishful thinking is erroneous identification of one’s wishes with reality, then reality is warped into a melancholy dream. In this dream that was life, all the people developed sheep’s eyes, which enhanced their looks at the expense of their vision.
There was only one person in Little Rock who did not catch “it,” and that was Jacob’s ladyfriend (whom we cannot name). Probably the reason that she did not catch nostalgia was that there had been little or nothing in the old-timey prewar days that she had enjoyed; she lived for the future, not in languishing longing for the past. All around her people, including her lover, especially her lover, were afflicted with the aches of pining for the past, but she remained oriented to the future. Undoubtedly she would have looked all the more beautiful with sheep’s eyes (I have seen a daguerreotype of her), but she did not get them. We do not know her; not even her name; of all the many persons in our story she will remain the most mysterious; but we know this much about her, that she alone was afflicted with longing for the future, and that she had come to the point where she could not conceive of a future without Jacob, and yet she knew that when his term expired he would leave Little Rock. He could, if he wished, run for another term, but he was stricken deeply with nostalgia, and the people, also stricken, were longing for the governors of the past, men like Izard and Conway and Yell, all aristocrats compared to Jacob Ingledew (and the man they would elect to replace him, Powell Clayton, would be the most aristocratic of them all). So if Jacob’s lady-friend wanted to hang onto him, she would have to scheme.
So she schemed. She told Jacob that she wanted to become Sarah’s social secretary. Jacob pointed out that, government labor being cheap, Sarah already had eight social secretaries. Whom We Cannot Name responded to that by pointing out that that would make it all the easier to “slip her in” among the others. Jacob wondered why she needed the salary, which wasn’t much, one dollar a day. She said she did not need the money, of course; she only wanted to be “closer” to Jacob. Jacob pointed out that as far as being “close” was concerned, it wouldn’t do them any good to be “close” in the governor’s mansion, because every room was so full of people, servants and secretaries and such, that they would never have a moment’s privacy. But Jacob’s ladyfriend persisted, and he hired her as Sarah’s ninth social secretary. The other secretaries, she soon discovered, were not, like herself, products of Little Rock’s finer society, and she quickly learned to dominate them.
Sarah had very little to do with her social secretaries; she went where they told her to when they told her to, but Sarah did not give them orders, nor spend any time in idle conversation with them, nor seek their advice. Nor did they curry her favor. But her new ninth social secretary, Sarah discovered, was somehow different from the others. A very friendly person. A refined lady, too, and yet the woman did not look down upon Sarah nor make her feel uncomfortable. And on top of that, the woman was a very attractive person, who made a handsome decoration for the governor’s mansion. Soon Sarah found that she and her ninth social secretary had become good friends. When Sarah was invited to give a speech to the Little Rock Beaux Arts Club, the woman offered to write it for her. Sarah was so close to the woman by this time that she was able to confide in her the well-kept secret that she could not read. The woman did not look down upon her for it. Instead the woman offered to help her rehearse the speech over a period of several days, and the woman also spoke many words of encouragement, so that when Sarah finally delivered the speech to the Beaux Arts Club, the Arkansas Advocate commented, “For a lady of somewhat limited elocution and enunciation, the governor’s wife acquitted herself handily.”
One day Sarah remarked to her ninth social secretary, “Honey, I just don’t know what I’d do without you.” Sarah bragged to Jacob about what a great fine beautiful person her ninth social secretary was, but Jacob pretended lack of interest. Sarah tried to persuade Jacob to meet her, but Jacob said he was too busy. But Sarah kept after him about it, dogging his heels, until finally she caught him in the hallway of the mansion and presented her ninth social secretary to him. “This is her, Jake,” Sarah said. “That I’ve been tellin ye about. This is the lady that keeps the world together fer me.” Jacob said, “Howdy do, ma’am,” and offered his hand. The woman took it, and, smiling, said, “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Your Excellency.” Jacob excused himself, and went on. Sarah apologized to the woman, saying, “If you got to know him, you’d see he’s a real fine man.” “I’m sure he is,” said the ninth social secretary.
When Jacob came to her house and her bed that night, she and Jacob had a gentle little laugh over that. But Jacob felt guilty, and often he had a temptation to confess to Sarah. Sometimes he would think about saying something to Sarah, forming the words in his mind, but would stop just short of speaking, whereupon Sarah, disconcertingly, would say “What?” This would continue for the rest of their lives, at times unnerving him. He would know that he had not actually spoken, that he had only been thinking about speaking, but still Sarah would say “What?” Was she reading his mind? Whatever the case, he never actually spoke to her, but for the rest of their lives he went on thinking about s
peaking to her, and each time he thought about it, she would say “What?” We have seen, much earlier on, how at one time the young Sarah revered Jacob as if he were God, and did not want to marry him for that reason, and it seems to me that we stand for the rest of our lives in the same relation to God, always asking that “What?” which has no answer. Perhaps we should feel no greater pity for Sarah than we should feel for ourselves.
One thing-of-the-past that the people of Arkansas in their excruciating nostalgia yearned for most was a return to statehood. For although Arkansas had been the first state to leave the Confederacy, she had not yet been reaccepted into the Union. The Congress of the United States would not let her come home. Nostalgia in its deepest sense is a yearning for home. But the Congress, dominated by Thaddeus Stevens and his radical Republicans, had not only refused to allow any of the seceded states back into the Union but also passed the dread Reconstruction Act, which would throw the South into seven long and lean years of carpetbaggery. Jacob disliked the carpetbaggers even more than he disliked the Confederates, but he was caught between them and could do nothing. Both sides began to blame him for the failure of Arkansas to reenter the Union. They began to call him “Old Imbecility,” and to openly mock his country ways. He lost control of his legislature to them. He could no longer handle the supreme court justices, who ceased coming to his office to drink his mountain dew and listen to his tall tales. The supreme court declared unconstitutional his law that Arkansawyers who had borne arms against the United States were not eligible to vote, and this allowed the ex-Confederates to sweep back into government. But the carpetbaggers, or Republicans as they called themselves, gained control, and nominated one of their own, Powell Clayton, an ex-Pennsylvanian, to run for governor. Jacob could not have beaten him even if he were not infected with hopeless nostalgia and longing for Stay More. Shortly after the election in which Clayton took the governorship, Congress restored Arkansas to the Union.
One of the few utterances of Jacob Ingledew that found its way into recorded history was by virtue of Powell Clayton’s memoirs, written in his eighties after a distinguished career as governor and later U.S. Senator from Arkansas. Clayton reminisced about the day of his inauguration in midsummer, waiting in his carriage, seated beside the outgoing governor. He described the outgoing governor: mild blue eyes, tangled beard, long wavy locks of the mountaineer, wearing a suit of plain homespun. Clayton was wearing, by contrast, a suit of full broadcloth, with frock coat and wide wing collar; and he was wearing fine kid gloves. As the outgoing governor got into the carriage, he took a long look at the gloves, and then, Clayton recalled, Jacob Ingledew remarked, “Well, I reckon I never saw anyone but you wearing gloves in July! Only dudes do that!” To which Clayton, by his account, retorted, “Governor, it’s not the garb that makes the man; but in deference to you and especially in view of the character of the work I am about to enter upon today, which will require handling without gloves, I will now remove mine.” Clayton also wrote of being invited to Jacob’s office after the inauguration, where the ex-governor fished a gallon stone jug out of a barrel of straw and offered Clayton a drink of mountain dew. Clayton had good cause to recall the incident, because it was the only expression of goodwill the mountaineers ever gave him.
Jacob hired a carriage to take him home to Stay More. When he entered it, he found Sarah and his daughters already there. He also found his ladyfriend there, dressed for travel and holding her hat-box in her lap.
“Where do ye think you’re a-headin?” he asked her.
“She’s goin with us, Jake!” Sarah exclaimed. “I ast her to, and she said she would! I jist couldn’t never git along without her!”
Jacob took his seat. It was crowded, five of them in a carriage meant for four, and it was a long way to Stay More. “Hhmmph,” he was moved to comment. But as the carriage pulled away from the governor’s mansion and moved north out of the city of Little Rock, he began to chuckle, and then to laugh.
“What’s so funny, Jake?” Sarah asked.
He gained control of himself and replied, “Nothin. I’m jist right glad to git out of that town.”
“Me too,” said Sarah.
“Me too,” chorused their daughters.
And, “Me too,” said the ladyfriend. It is one of the few things we have heard her say; it is all we will.
Our illustration for this chapter is of a house which is, therefore, trigeminal rather than bigeminal, a treble rather than a duple, although I doubt if anybody ever consciously thought of the symbolism of it: that the left door, as we face the house, is Sarah’s, the center door, Jacob’s, the right door, Whom We Cannot Name’s. There were interior connecting doors between the center and both sides. A later occupant, in our century, removed the partition between the left and center chambers, making one large living room, and that is the way it may be seen today. Jacob, in concession to the amenities of his ladyfriend’s former environment, constructed the first “outhouse” or privy in Stay More. Heretofore, everybody in Stay More had simply “gone out” and used the woods or bushes, or the open, and children were taught not to foul a path lest they get a “sty” on their bottoms or cause the death of their sisters. The expression “go out” was so clearly understood that one might even remark of an incontinent child or drunken man, “He went out in his britches.” But now, on a little knoll behind his house, Jacob built Stay More’s first privy, which was also trigeminal, in a way: it had three holes, the possible significance of which I must leave to the speculation of my students. The people of Stay More thought that Jacob was “puttin on airs” by constructing a privy, but they did not think anything unseemly about his ladyfriend. To all of them, forever, she was only “Sarey’s friend,” or “Aunt Sarey’s friend,” or “Grammaw Sarey’s friend,” or “Great-Grammaw Sarey’s friend.” Indeed, the only words on her tombstone are “Sarah’s Friend.” But she was not to die until well into our own century. Jacob himself lived until the first year of our century, and Sarah survived him by one day. The words on Jacob’s tombstone are: “He done his damndest.” Harry Truman, the only Ozarker ever to make it all the way to the Presidency, liked to quote those words, and requested that they be put on his own tombstone, although for some reason they were not.
The buildings in our study thus far have been medieval, with gable roofs; Jacob’s trigeminal house is a hip-roofed Victorian example of “steamboat gothic.” Facing the main road in the exact center of downtown Stay More, it is…
But we have had enough, for now, of the generation of Jacob; if generations generate, we must move on.
Chapter eight
Being taciturn, Isaac Ingledew (called—never to his face—“Colonel Coon” for the rest of his life), became a miller, and here we see his mill. A miller didn’t have to talk if he didn’t feel like it, although most millers did. Isaac’s customers chatted and gossiped freely with one another, while he ground their grain and meal in silence. Whenever something went wrong with the machinery in his mill, he would cuss profusely and obscenely, but otherwise he kept his mouth shut. People came from miles in every direction to Isaac’s mill, but everyone knew that Colonel Coon did not enjoy speech, and no one tried to draw him out. Still they could not help wondering whether he ever spoke at least to his wife. It is something of a miracle that Isaac Ingledew had a wife. But he did. Her name was Salina Denton, naturally pronounced “Sleeny,” and she was a real “looker,” as they said of her. Isaac Ingledew came across her, or chanced upon her, or stumbled into her life, toward the end of the War, when he and his men (or rather man, a lone major who remained the last infantryman in Colonel Coon’s command at that late juncture) were pursuing the remnants of the Confederate army in Newton County, a band of three bushwhackers.
Although small in numbers, this band was still wreaking havoc from one end of the county to the other, terrorizing helpless women and children and old men, and Isaac and his one-man army were determined, although outnumbered, to wipe them out. They caught and killed one of th
e three after the band had raided the Denton cabin, thereby equalizing the two armies, and while his major went off in pursuit of the other two, Isaac inspected the damage to the Denton cabin, and found Salina Denton cowering there, alone, in ranting hysterics. He wanted to calm her down, but, being taciturn, he didn’t know what to say. He tried to pat her on the back, but when he did so, she began to climb him. He set her down gently but she climbed him again. Again he set her down, but again she climbed him, and by this time he became aroused, to put it mildly. So the third time she climbed him, he did not set her down, although she went on raving. He was, we should remember, a giant of a man, and while there was nothing exactly small about Salina Denton, he supported her easily. Apparently the act or deed brought her to her senses, for afterward she said calmly, “Whar am I?” and then she looked at him and said, “Who are you? And what’s thet out fer?” Hastily he buttoned himself and fled.
The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks Page 19
