She was thrilled, and responded with a letter pouring out her heart to him, telling him how she liked Stay More so much better than Little Rock and how she wished she could live there all year around instead of just in the summertime. She even told him who her favorite film actors and actresses were.
These names meant nothing to Hank because he had never seen a film, and yet, as if by magic, the same week Hank received this letter, a man drove a truck into Stay More and hung dark curtains over the windows of the school house and set up a screen and a projector and allowed everybody to come and pay ten cents to see real shows that were almost as good as the shows that Brother Long Jack Stapleton used to show before he lost the power, and there on the screen were the actual persons that Sonora had mentioned to Hank in her letter, so that after he had seen ten of the shows, he was able to write Sonora and say, “Dear Sonora: I saw some of them shows too, and my favorites is also Barbara Stanwyck and James Stewart. Your friend, Hank.”
This was the most that he had ever said to any female except his mother, and Sonora realized it, and was greatly flattered. She replied at great length, saying she hoped that when she came back to Stay More the following summer to stay with her aunt, she hoped that she and Hank could go together to watch a picture show. If the show were romantic, she speculated, they might find themselves holding hands. Hank read this letter several times, and thought about it carefully. Movies, he had discovered, were shown in the dark, and in the dark it wouldn’t be so difficult for him to hold hands with a girl, especially Sonora, since they had already broken the ice by mail. In his next letter he told her so, and she was so excited that she replied by suggesting that if the movie were romantic enough, and they held hands, it might develop that when he took her home afterwards they would want to sit in the porch swing together for a little while, and if they did that they might kiss. Hank memorized this letter but was uncertain as to whether or not he could ever get up the nerve to kiss Sonora, certainly not in broad daylight, and he conveyed these doubts to her in his next letter. She replied, “Silly. It would be night.” All of the movies that Hank had seen had been shown in broad daylight with dark curtains over the schoolhouse windows, but after thinking about it, he decided that maybe he could persuade the movie man, if he ever came back to Stay More the next summer, to show some of the shows at night. When he mentioned this in his next letter to Sonora, she was so aroused that she wrote back to him saying that if they saw a lot of movies and did a lot of hand-holding, and sat in the porch swing afterwards kissing for a long enough time, they might want to sneak out to the corncrib where they could lie down together. John Henry “Hank” Ingledew lost his virginity by mail.
When Sonora returned to Stay More the following June to spend the summer with her aunt/mother, she and Hank were such old friends that they didn’t even bother with the preliminaries of movie-going and hand-holding and kissing. As soon as it got dark on the first night Sonora was back in Stay More, they met in a thicket alongside Swains Creek, embraced, and made a love that eclipsed anything in the U.S. mails. Hank was amazed at how superior reality is to words. To experience such a thing, he realized, was proof that he existed, even if his parents had never done it. And he knew that now that he had done it, he had created a son to wear Eli Willard’s chronometer.
But he was mistaken. He did not realize that every act of love does not result in offspring; he did not know that there are many days in each month when a girl is infertile. He offered to marry Sonora, and was confused when she laughed and said she was too young, although she would be happy to marry him after she finished high school in another year. The high school that Hank had finished at Jasper had not permitted pregnant girls to attend, but possibly, he realized, the big-city high school at Little Rock was more broadminded. He was further confused when, the very following night, she wanted to do it again. He wondered if that would produce twins, but he did it. By the end of the week, he was worrying about supporting quintuplets, but he thoroughly enjoyed doing it and went on doing it, until Sonora said they had to stop for a while because it was the “wrong” time. He didn’t know what was wrong with it, but he obligingly stopped. “We can pet, though,” she told him. He didn’t know that word, but she showed him what it meant.
It was a great summer. I was there. Even though I was only a child I knew what Hank and Sonora were up to. Several times I spied on them and envied their pleasure. But the only other person who knew, rather than simply guessed, what they were up to, was the Beautiful Girl, to whom Sonora confessed. As postmistress of Stay More, the Beautiful Girl knew that her daughter, whom everybody else thought was her niece, had been carrying on a lengthy correspondence with Hank Ingledew, and she was glad for Sonora, because Hank was one of the best in a long line of fine Ingledews. He was tall, and strong, and good-looking. So the Beautiful Girl, who once upon a time had been courted and bedded by Hank’s Uncle Raymond, was not at all surprised when Sonora confessed that she had lost her virginity to Hank and that they indulged themselves in their bodies almost daily. Sonora assured her that they were “careful.” The Beautiful Girl thought that was a beautiful thing, and she lived vicariously through Sonora, enjoying Sonora’s descriptions of the myriad ways that she and Hank took advantage of the fact that they had miraculously been created female and male.
It was also miraculous that Sonora did not get pregnant that summer. Hank was puzzled. He knew that certain women are sterile. He asked Sonora if she had ever had a bad case of the mumps, but she hadn’t. Then he began to wonder if he himself might be sterile. Perhaps, after all, he was only imagining that he existed. Or maybe, he speculated, he only existed in Sonora’s imagination; she had created him for the purpose of giving her pleasure. He did not much like the thought, but there it was.
Thought can be a shattering experience. Sonora, for her part, did not think thoughts, except to remember when it was the wrong time of month; she simply enjoyed herself. Hank couldn’t tell her what was gnawing away at his brain, and yet, compulsively, he went ahead. He was quite fond of ’maters, but that had nothing to do with it. There was simply something about Sonora: the way she looked, the shape of her, her red hair that had a wonderful smell in all its locations, her eyes even, her voice too, the movements of her hands and feet, the shape and capacity of her arms, and above all the shape and capacity of her principal openings, that never failed to animate him and his responsive part. Thinking about this, as he often did, he came to the conclusion that her openings were, after all, sockets, hollows, voids, and therefore if it were possible that somebody did not exist, it was more likely she rather than he, and he arrived at the momentous truth that woman is but the creation of man, his fancy and his delight. He could live with this, and he did: having settled the problem, he endured it.
After the true maternity and paternity of Sonora became known, she did not have to return to Little Rock to her adoptive mother, who was in fact her aunt, but remained in Stay More, finishing her education at Jasper High School. Her father, E.D., had acquired religion, and when he learned from her mother of Sonora’s affair with Hank Ingledew, he attempted to put a stop to it. He was only partly successful. Sonora would not accommodate Hank on school nights, limiting him to weekends. Because weekends often occurred at the wrong time, she also acquired, from a high school girlfriend who clerked in the Jasper drugstore, a package of prophylactics, which she insisted that Hank use. “What’s that fool thang for?” he wanted to know. “Heck, that won’t be no fun,” he protested. “Let’s try it and see,” she suggested, and they did.
But after graduation, in June, she threw away the prophylactics, and she and Hank ran off into the woods, in broad daylight, mornings, afternoons, evenings, and corresponded themselves silly, even in the wrong time, until Sonora was unquestionably pregnant, whereupon they were dutifully married, and on the wedding night, after the shivaree party had been served refreshments and departed, Hank told Sonora of the gold chronometer wristwatch which Eli Willard had given him and which h
e had buried to await the appropriate time when Hank could give it to his son. Sonora thought that was the marvelousest thing she had ever heard, and she said they ought to name their son Eli Willard Ingledew, and Hank agreed that would be very appropriate. For nine months, they talked every day about Eli Willard Ingledew; they could even picture him grown up, wearing the magic watch that kept perfect time and never lost even a second. They knew he would be somebody very important in the world, maybe even President of the United States, or at the very least Vice President. When Sonora could feel the baby stirring in her womb, she began to picture him, and she and Hank knew that Eli Willard would be the most handsome of all the Ingledews.
Sonora took up sewing, and made all of Eli Willard Ingledew’s clothing up to the age at which he would receive the wristwatch, which would be sixteen. They not only talked about Eli Willard Ingledew to one another, but also to all their family and friends, so that the whole village began to look forward to his birth, almost as if the baby would be an actual reincarnation of the Connecticut peddler. When Sonora went into labor, instead of fetching Doc Swain and having her baby at home like everybody else had always done, she was taken all the way to Harrison, where the nearest hospital was, and the car in which she traveled was followed by every available conveyance in Stay More, with the entire population, in that year just about a hundred, being transported. The waiting room at the hospital wouldn’t hold a fraction of them, but they milled about in the corridors and outside on the lawn. Sonora’s labor was a long one, yet nobody seemed to mind. News of the advent or nativity or simply parturition spread through the town of Harrison, and the members of the Harrison High School precision marching band donned their new uniforms and assembled in formation on the hospital lawn, where they played “A Babe in Mother’s Arms,” “A Child at Mother’s Knee,” “A Boy Grows Up,” “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and the Harrison High School alma mater.
At last the obstetrician lifted the baby by its ankles, slapped its bottom to induce crying, and Sonora discovered that Eli Willard Ingledew had no penis. “A mighty fine gal,” said the obstetrician, and Sonora told him to break the news gently to her husband. Hank Ingledew hung around for a while, but everybody else went home, and the following week’s issue of the Jasper Disaster carried the event in seventeen words at the bottom of the last page: “Last Friday a daughter, unnamed, was born to Mr. and Mrs. J.H. Ingledew of Stay More.” Hank and Sonora got their heads together and considered naming the baby Ela Willa or Elise Wilma or Eleanor Willardine, but finally Sonora named her simply Latha, after her mother. Then, as soon as Sonora was able, they got busy again, in the morning, afternoon and evening, and tried to create Eli Willard on the second chance.
Sonora’s conception was quick; the new infant would be born less than ten months after the first one. That summer Sonora went to work in the canning factory, to earn money for a second layette. Sonora parked her baby in the “baby-trough” at the canning factory, which was one of the former cow cribs reserved for the babies of the women who sat around the cleaning-trough snapping snaps and peeling ’maters. The several babies did not socialize much; mainly they lay or sat watching their mothers snapping snaps or peeling ’maters and wondering what in the name of heaven was going on, all day long. At night Sonora protested to Hank that she was simply too tired to make love, much as she wanted to, and her refraining from it overloaded Hank with new reserves of life, so that he was compelled to work harder, and even began clearing some new land, the first time that that had been done in Stay More for ages and ages. As a result of this labor, he was waylaid with a severe case of the frakes. His mother, Emelda, attempted to administer the old but unproven remedies, but he would not let her, because, although he had no interest in superstitions, folklore nor old-timey ways in general, he had at least heard that there was really no earthly cure for the frakes. Sonora’s old high school chum who clerked in the Jasper drugstore furnished an ointment containing acth, and this, although it didn’t cure Hank’s frakes, was at least as effective as the panther urine ointment had been a century before, which is to say, it was worthless. Hank took to his bed and waited in agony for the itching to stop, and then gave himself up to the deep feeling of utter futility that came afterward. When news of the birth of his second child reached his bed, he remarked, “I don’t give a shit what it is.”
It was another girl. Sonora solicited his help in naming it, but he said she could name it Eulalee Wilhelmina for all he cared. Sonora named it simply Eva. She pointed out to Hank that while all of his siblings were male and all of his many uncles were male, this was no guarantee that his children would be male, because, after all, her mother’s siblings had been female, and there had been a lot of females in her father’s lineage. Hank said he didn’t care. He really didn’t. He would just as soon have girls as boys, or neither. He would just as soon have nothing. He didn’t give a damn. It was all the same to him, one way or the other. He could straddle the fence and leave well enough alone. In fact, he could leave everything alone and didn’t feel like making the effort to straddle the fence, even. Nothing mattered. It made him no difference whatever.
Hank’s case of the frakes was one of the worst. In the winter, beneath their heavy quilts, Sonora would cuddle up to him and try to warm him, but he would not be warmed. She was scared, because she had grown up in the city and had never seen anyone get the frakes before. She told him that she loved him, and that therefore she loved his frakes too, but he did not even bother to reply. He couldn’t care less. Sonora’s mother counseled her that she would just have to wait and be patient. “How long? Oh, Mother, how long?” Sonora wailed. But her mother could only say that nobody ever knew.
Then the world went to war again. This time, the Stay More town meeting lasted for a little longer than the three-and-a-half-minute discussion of the previous war, but not much: the general consensus was that if this feller Hitler wanted Europe, why shouldn’t he have it? But he was also trying to get England, and that was where our foreparents came from, and we oughtn’t to let him have that, so we ought to at least help the British hang on to their lands. Several Stay More boys went off and joined the service. Sonora hoped that maybe the war would rouse Hank from his lethargy and despondency. It did not.
But then some yellow people who lived halfway around the world sent their ships and planes to a place called Pearl that was part of America even though it was out in the middle of the ocean, and bombed hell out of it. That was going too far. Hank got out of bed, dressed, kissed his wife and babies goodbye, and said so long to his parents and brothers and uncles, and went off to join the service. He didn’t know which branch of the service to join. The Army offered to teach him a trade, and the Marines offered to make a real man out of him, but he kept thinking of Pearl, which was way out in the ocean, and he decided the best way to get to it would be the Navy. So he joined it, and after basic training they let him come home for a little while to show off his uniform and get his picture in the Disaster and impregnate Sonora again. Then they sent him to a school where they taught him how to take apart and repair and put together radio equipment. There was hardly any trace of his frakes remaining, so he studied hard, and by the time he was shipped to sea he could write to Sonora and tell her that he was “Semen First Class,” to which she replied, “You sure are, honey.”
He was the first Stay Moron ever to see the sea. His ship went all over the ocean, but it didn’t go to Pearl. Because the enemy commenced shooting at and trying to bomb his ship, they raised his pay, and he didn’t have anything to spend it on, so he sent most all of it home, and Sonora and her babies were able to live a good life. Hank was so good at patching up and operating radios that he was transferred to a bigger ship, and promoted to petty officer. He survived the sinkings of two destroyers, a battleship, and an aircraft carrier, and by then he was a master chief petty officer (and also the father of a third daughter, Janice). Eventually they shipped him back stateside for shore leave, and once again he came home t
o show off his uniform and to attempt once again to create Eli Willard Ingledew.
The Jasper Disaster took his portrait and printed it on their front page, and noted that he was eligible for commission as ensign. Hank was saddened to learn that some of his childhood friends had been killed in France and on the beaches of the Pacific. His brothers Jackson and Tracy had been drafted and were fighting in Europe, and his youngest brother William Robert (“Billy Bob”) would have been drafted, except that he was the last son in the family, and there was a law against it.
There were very few young men in Stay More; in the previous war there had been very few young men out of Stay More. The canning factory was no longer operating, on account of a shortage of tin, but the women and boys and old men went on harvesting the snap crop and ’mater crop and canning it in re-used Mason jars. The war was good for Stay More in the sense that all its young men fighting overseas sent most of their paychecks home, and there was so much mail from them and to them that the post office was permitted to reopen for the duration of the war, and of course both general stores did a fair business. Odell Ingledew even thought of reopening his father’s bank, but Tearle talked him out of it, saying that the war was only a temporary thing and would probably be over before Odell could install a new floor and replace the busted-out winder lights, not to mention the vault door that had been ripped off and gone God knows where.
The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks Page 37
