His audience, like an audience at a movie theater when the house lights come on after a gripping film, sat motionless and unseeing for several minutes. Then most of them smiled and looked very entertained and satisfied, but a few of them looked perplexed, and one of these, Seth Chism, rose and asked, “Aint there to be no call to the mourner’s bench?”
Brother Stapleton stared for a moment at that front bench, empty, reserved for sinners seeking salvation. He shook his head.
Clyde Dinsmore rose and asked, “Aint there to be no communion? We done brung the grape juice and sody crackers.”
Brother Stapleton replied, “No, Brother Dinsmore, but mightn’t ye lead us in the closin prayer?”
Brother Dinsmore made a short prayer, thanking God for the “show” and apologizing to Him for the absence of the call for sinners and communion, in Jesus’ Name, Amen. Everybody had their heads bowed, except the male Ingledews, who noticed that Brother Stapleton crossed his fingers at the moment Jesus’ name was invoked.
Then the service was over.
Salina Ingledew invited Brother Stapleton and his sister Sirena to Sunday dinner, and everybody went home, marveling to one another about how real that “show” had been, everybody, that is, except the deacons of the “amen corner,” Brothers Chism, Dinsmore, Plowright, Coe and Whitter, who remained behind in the meeting house to discuss their new minister and his unorthodox ways of conducting a service. They granted that he sure spoke a right powerful sermon, they even admitted that they had seen those images plain as day, but some of those images seemed a mite too bold; for instance, in that part toward the end, what was the King and that girlfriend of his doing out there in that orchard as night was coming on? The deacons might be mistaken, but it sure looked to them like that King and his girlfriend were actually fornicating! Right there in full view of everybody, even the women and children. The rest of the show was all right, real pretty in fact, but that part was scandalous! The deacons agreed that they should speak with Brother Stapleton, and find out if the King and his girlfriend were really doing what it looked like they were doing, and, if so, how come Brother Stapleton allowed it to be shown right there in front of the women and children?
Meanwhile, the new minister was enjoying himself at the Ingledew’s table, where he had six helpings of spit-roasted mallard with all the trimmings. Salina and her daughters held Brother Stapleton in absolute awe, not alone for his fabulous sermon but also for his appetite. It was the custom, then and for many years afterward, for the women and girls to wait until the men and boys had finished eating before serving themselves, but Salina and her daughters couldn’t help hanging around the table and watching Brother Stapleton eat. Sirena Stapleton, who usually tried not watching her brother eat, hung around too, because she was falling in love with all four of the Ingledew brothers. At the table, Brother Stapleton tried to engage Isaac in conversation, but quickly discovered that Isaac was taciturn, so he talked instead with the “boys” (even though the boys were as grown as they would ever be, Ingledew brothers would always be known as “the boys,” even in their old age). The boys did not hold Brother Stapleton in such awe as their mother and sisters did, but still they sure had enjoyed watching that show, they said, and hoped he would put on some more shows for them to watch. He replied that he wasn’t in any great hurry to move on. Denton Ingledew, the oldest brother, was brave enough to ask, “How come, durin the prayer, you crossed yore fingers at the end?”
Brother Stapleton choked on a bite of mallard wing, but composed himself and eyed Denton coolly. “How’d ye know I had my fingers crossed?”
“I was watchin,” Denton declared. He looked to his brothers, who nodded in affirmation. “We’uns all saw ye.”
“Why weren’t yore haids bowed durin the prayer?” Brother Stapleton asked.
“We don’t bow our haids,” Denton said. “Aint ary one of us believes in God, ’ceptin Maw and them gals.”
“Too bad,” said Brother Stapleton. “How kin ye believe in Jesus iffen ye don’t believe in God?”
“I reckon we’uns don’t believe in Him neither,” Denton said.
“Me neither,” said Brother Stapleton. “Which is why I crossed my fingers when His name was taken.”
Salina Ingledew was unable to restrain herself from rushing this news to the other ladies of Stay More, and her daughters passed it on to their friends, and soon the talk of the town was about the heterodox beliefs of Brother Stapleton. The deacons of the meeting house decided that he must be a Jew and ought to be hanged or better yet burned. Meanwhile, Sirena Stapleton was trying unsuccessfully to draw the attention of the four Ingledew brothers; not one of them would even look at her. Their sister Perlina took her aside and explained, “It aint no use. Ingledews is always shy toward gals.”
Salina Ingledew felt a little uncomfortable having in her house a minister who did not believe in Jesus, but since it was always customary to urge the parting guest to remain, when Salina said to Brother Stapleton, “Stay more. Stay and eat you some supper with us,” he replied, “Why, thank you,” and stayed to eat six helpings of scrambled eggs. Again, after supper, Salina was obliged to say, “Stay more. Better jist spend the night with us,” and Brother Stapleton replied, “Why, thank you.” There weren’t any spare beds, but Salina prepared a pallet on the floor of the boys’ sleeping loft for him, and one on the floor of the girls’ sleeping loft for his sister Sirena. In the middle of the night, Sirena, sleepless on the thin pallet, and very cold despite the heap of quilts covering her, and doubtless feeling frustrated over her failure to get any of the Ingledew boys to notice her, climbed down from the girls’ loft and climbed up to the boys’ loft, where the four boys were all sleeping in one bed. She managed to crowd in beside them without waking them, and was warmed, and slept, rising before dawn to return to her own pallet.
Brother Stapleton and his sister remained with the Ingledews thereafter, because it was unheard of for anybody not to say “Stay more,” and Salina went on saying it. Each night Sirena crept into bed with the Ingledew boys without waking them; each day they went on ignoring her existence. Although the deacons were talking about burning Brother Stapleton, everybody else was impatient to view another of his movies, and their impatience made their sourhours ever sourer, so that in the end they prevailed, and prevailed upon Brother Stapleton the following Sabbath to give them another picture show. This time he told them the passionate and touching story of the prophet Hosea and his marriage to the prostitute Gomer, whom he continued to love despite her infidelities, and whom he sold into bondage and then redeemed from bondage and carried away to the desert to remove her from temptation and have her for his own. The deacons were convinced that there was one scene toward the end, where Hosea and Gomer were lying together behind a sand dune in the desert, when the intercourse was so explicit you could even see their genitals, but the deacons were so enthralled that they did not protest, until the sermon was over and the rest of the congregation had departed, when they accosted Brother Stapleton, and one of the deacons, Seth Chism, said to him, “Pastor, was I jist imaginin things, or didn’t that there Hosea actually commence to shaggin his wife in that part toward the end in the desert?”
“A man sees what he wants to see,” Brother Stapleton replied.
“A man, yeah,” Brother Chism said, “but what about all the womenfolk and childreng? It aint fitten to show things like that to their innocent eyes.”
“No eyes is innocent,” the minister replied.
Through the rest of that bitterly cold winter, the people of Stay More lived from one Sunday to the next, suffering intolerable sourhours in between, just to go to Brother Stapleton’s cinema. He showed the romantic stories of Abraham and Sarah, of David and Bathsheba, of Jacob and Rachel, of Ruth and Boaz, even the incestuous story of Amnon and his half-sister Tamar. Each of the Ingledew brothers was aroused by these shows, and each of them had private daydreams of being able to do that with that pretty redhead Sirena, but each of them knew that
it was impossible because they couldn’t even get up the nerve to look at her. Sirena continued, unbeknownst, sleeping with them. One morning she awakened before daylight to discover that the brother next to her had a risen root, although he was still asleep and mildly snoring. She thought that was amazing: getting a serviceable dinger while sleeping. She also thought it was exciting. She lifted his nightshirt and her nightdress, and climbed aboard. He never woke. She wondered which one of the four brothers he was; she couldn’t see a thing. She wondered what he would think if he woke. She wondered how vigorous she could be without waking him. She was very vigorous, and at the end she stuffed her fist into her mouth to stifle her sound. Before leaving the room she gave his shoulder a gentle shake and whispered into his ear, “Which one are you? What’s your name?” “Nmpth,” he responded. “What’s your name?” she said again. “John,” he said without ever fully waking.
Before the start of each of Brother Stapleton’s shows, one of the deacons would request, “Show us a pitcher of heaven, Preacher!” or one of the other deacons would request, “Show us pitchers of hell!” but Brother Stapleton could not show them heaven or hell because he did not believe in them. He could, however, show them paradise, and he told them the exquisitely connubial story of Adam and Eve, depicting Eden as the setting for their dramatic romance and temptation and fall. The congregation viewed the enchanting scenery of Eden with delight, until one of them observed and exclaimed: “Why, it aint no different than Stay More in the middle of summer in a good year!”
All the others nodded their heads and chimed in with: “It’s a fact!” “That’s the Gospel truth!” “Sure thing!”
Brother Stapleton smiled and went on with the show. Adam came on the screen, naked as a jaybird, and all the women blushed and covered their eyes. Then Eve appeared, and she wasn’t wearing a stitch either; some of the men whistled, panted or clapped. The deacons rose as one from the amen corner and stalked out of the meeting house, but most of them could later be seen peeking in the windows. When Adam and Eve looked at each other, they didn’t seem to mind that they didn’t have any clothes; in fact, they didn’t seem to notice, and pretty soon the congregation took it for granted too, because although Adam and Eve were naked they weren’t fooling around with each other or anything, they were just talking about the fruit that Eve wanted to eat, and then they were eating it, when all of a sudden they got embarrassed about not having clothes, so they made some skirts out of fig leaves, with which they made do, until God gave them some buckskins to wear. Adam and Eve never did sleep with one another as long as they were in the Garden, but as soon as they were driven out of Eden they began doing it all the time, usually behind bushes and large rocks, but eventually they were so desperate to couple that they didn’t care whether they were seen or not, and they were doing it so often that all the women and children had to leave the meeting house, and even the men were finally forced to follow the women because of their excitation. One of the deacons took a lump of charcoal and scrawled a large “X” on the front of the meeting house, and the deacons decreed that the people could watch no more of those shows.
The Ingledews were somewhat relieved, not because they hadn’t enjoyed watching the shows, but because Brother Stapleton and his sister had continued to lodge and dine at Isaac’s and Salina’s house, and the preacher had almost eaten them out of house and home. He had also, unbeknownst to them, been banishing the sourhours of Perlina and Drussie by giving the girls private screenings of some of his short subjects and previews of coming attractions, although these were all “decent,” that is, presentable. Perlina and Drussie both loved him madly, and they had walked out of the Adam and Eve show not because they were offended but because all the other women and girls were walking out and they figured it was expected of them. In truth they had been fascinated, but couldn’t admit it, even to each other. Each of them wanted to ask Brother Stapleton privately to show them the part they had missed after walking out, but neither of them could quite muster the nerve. Ingledew girls were never afflicted with man-shyness in the way that all Ingledews boys were afflicted with woman-shyness, but all the same there were limits to what a girl could ask a preacher to do.
And yet when they heard that the deacons had decreed there would be no more shows at the meeting house, they feared that Brother Stapleton would leave them for good and go somewhere else, and then the sourhours would come back again and bog them down forevermore. Perlina, at least, the older of the two sisters, would do anything to avoid that. So she washed her hair with sassafras-bark shampoo and drank a quart of tea made from butterfly weed, both of which are good for nerve, then she sought and found Brother Stapleton when he was alone and requested, “Show me the rest of that show.”
“Where did you leave?” he wanted to know.
“The part where she’d done birthed Cain and they were fixin to make Abel.”
“It gits awful free and fast, there,” he warned her.
“I don’t keer. I want to see it,” she insisted.
Long Jack Stapleton threaded his projector and allowed Perlina to view a re-run of the end of the Adam and Eve story, when the amatory couple were giving themselves up to their urges with such frequency and force and noise that even their animals watched them with great curiosity. It was almost more than Perlina could bear, but she watched it all, to the end, and realized that unless this man would have her right then and there she would start howling like a heifer in heat. Yet when she embraced him he gently separated himself from her. “Fer the love of God!” she entreated, trying unsuccessfully to attach herself to him, “I’m burnin up!”
“I caint,” he said ruefully. “I aint able.”
“You’re a man, aint ye?” she protested.
He shook his head. “Not exactly.”
“Huh?” she said. “What does that mean?”
“I caint tell ye,” he said, and took his leave of her.
But Perlina could not give up. The next time she saw Long Jack’s sister, Sirena, she asked her why, or how, or where, her brother was not a man. Sirena blushed, and whispered into Perlina’s ear the details of an “accident” that had befallen Long Jack in his young manhood, an accident related to his nickname, in a reverse sort of way. Perlina was saddened by this news, but also felt such a great wave of compassion for Long Jack, as well as a desire to keep him and his shows in Stay More, that she went to him and told him she wanted to marry him despite his “shortcoming.” Her proposal moved him to tears. In the woods, the first bud of springtime opened, as the temperature climbed above freezing for the first time in months.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen of the Ingledew house, Sirena Stapleton walked boldly up to the table where the four brothers were sitting and boldly asked, “Which one of you is named John?” All four of them avoided her eyes, but the one named John managed to put his index finger on his Adam’s apple.
“I gotta talk to you,” she said to him.
“I caint,” he said ruefully. “I aint able.”
“You’re a man, aint ye?” she protested.
“That’s why I caint,” he observed.
She grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet and dragged him out of the kitchen and across the breezeway into the privacy of the other wing of the dogtrot, where she informed him, “I’m in the family way.”
“Yeah, but you’re leavin, aint ye?”
“I mean, I’m knocked up.”
“Huh?”
“I’m with child,” she said, patting her abdomen.
“Do tell? Wal, I’ll lend my shotgun to yore brother, and he’ll make the feller marry ye, if ye want.”
“The feller was you.”
“Huh? Why, I never!”
She explained. John was blushing furiously, and as she described what had transpired, he nearly burst with embarrassment. How could she say such things to him? Worse, how could a girl have done such a thing to him? It sure was a good thing he had been asleep, or else he would have been powerfully mortified. He daydre
amed all the time about laying with this pretty redhead Sirena, but the thought that he had actually done it, or that she had done it to him without his knowing it, made him want to go and dig a deep hole and jump in it and cover himself up. He wished she would hush up. He wished she would let him alone and not even look at him again, but he knew that a feller has to live up to his responsibilities, and if he was the baby’s father then he would just have to be the baby’s father.
It was a double wedding. Brother Stapleton granted his sister’s hand in marriage to John Ingledew, then he asked Isaac Ingledew for Perlina’s hand. Isaac, being taciturn, managed to nod. There being no ministers in Stay More other than himself, he officiated at his own nuptials and those of his sister and brother-in-law. The day of the wedding was full springtime; it would not be cold for another year. The weddings were duly attended by all the other Ingledews but no one else, because the deacons forbade it. The deacons were going to be in for a surprise.
Perlina never did tell a soul about her husband’s shortcoming, which wasn’t so short that she didn’t conceive and bear a large family over the years. Since Long Jack Stapleton was now living his own love story, he didn’t feel any need whatever to preach the love stories of the Bible, although he still had the power to speak word pictures more graphic than movies, and when he promised the deacons never to show any “undecent” pictures anymore they reluctantly let him use the meeting house again, and he began showing stories of the great battles in the Bible, scenes of bloodshed and gore, flashing swords and decapitation, torture and pillage and scourging and mutilation. He packed the people in, and even the deacons themselves returned to his services, where they sat at their select bench with their eyes glued to the images, and one or the other of them would urge on the action with “Praise the Lord!” and “Amen!” and “Gawd git ’em!” As summertime wiped out the last trace of the long bitter winter, people came from all over Newton County to see Brother Stapleton’s shows; the meeting house wouldn’t hold them all, so he had to give matinées in the afternoon and candlelit productions at night. He even began the practice of passing a plate for free will offering, and gleaned enough coins to support Perlina and himself in fairly good style.
The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks Page 24
