The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [113]
“But doesn’t it instantly make your scalp feel better?” Eli Willard asked. The boy continued whimpering; the others began edging away from him; they all scuttled hurriedly into the store. Lum Ingledew looked up from his account book and was puzzled to see all of the idiots rushing into his store. He went out to investigate.
“What’s a-gorn on?” he demanded of Eli Willard, but then recognized him and exclaimed, “Why, if it aint ole Eli Willard!” He noticed the items of merchandise and said, “Preachin didn’t make ye no money, did it?”
“I’m afraid it didn’t,” Eli Willard admitted.
“Reckon me and you is sorta rivals, then,” Lum observed. “I’m the propriorater of this here store. What-all you got thar?” Eli Willard showed him the various grooming aids. “I don’t carry none a them,” Lum observed, “so maybe we aint rivals atter all.”
“My luck hasn’t turned,” Eli Willard observed. “Even though all of these are cheaply priced, I failed to sell a single one of them to those young people.”
Lum Ingledew laughed. “Them young people is idjits. Put all their brains in one pile, you’d have maybe a cupful.”
Eli Willard meditated upon that curious circumstance. “In all of the rest of the world,” he declared, “idiots are placed in institutions.”
“Is that a fack? Wal, I reckon folks hereabouts couldn’t afford it.”
“The government pays for it. I’m sure the good state of Arkansas has an asylum somewhere that would take them in, free of charge.”
“Wal, heck, they aint done no harm,” Lum said in their defense. “We jist let ’em alone and they keep to theirself and don’t bother a soul. If you want to hug one, it’ll hug ye right back.”
Eli Willard shuddered at the thought. The idiots were crowded into the doorway of the store, peering out at him.
We may note that although the Ingledew General Store was not bigeminal in the strictest sense of having two separate parts or doors, it had three double doors, which almost amounts to the same thing, except that there was no distinction as to which side of the double door was used by which sex: male and female alike used either side. Huddled close together, all of the idiots of Stay More could crowd into the center doorway and peer out at Eli Willard. Since he was no longer rubbing dirt on his hands or sticking things in his ear or threatening to pour liquid on their heads, they lost their fear of him and gradually returned to the porch, where they resumed sitting or squatting or kneeling or reclining, and continued staring at him. He was disconcerted, and drove his wagon on over to the mill, where people with minds were, and sold them toothbrushes, liquid and powder dentifrices, ear cleaners, trusses, and other grooming aids, including many, many bottles of his Miracle All-purpose Hand Cleaner. A year later, Sirena Ingledew, happening to light her cob pipe right after using the hand cleaner, discovered that the liquid was inflammable, and, after chanting a secret saying to draw the fire out of her burns, she poured some of the hand cleaner into an old lamp and made the further discovery that it could serve as a fuel. The Second Spell of Darkness was over.
But while the Spell of Darkness came to an end, and the school and post office were restored, the population explosion went on. The forests on the steepest hillsides were girdled and turned into pasture, and large quantities of Willard’s Miracle All-purpose Hand Cleaner were deliberately poured onto the forest floor to ignite it and burn the forest and create more pastures and fields. Any piece of ground that could be cultivated was plowed up. The farmed plots became progressively steeper, up the sheer mountainsides, until the farmers began falling out of their fields, but that did not stop them; their sons carried on. Isaac’s mill ran twenty-four hours a day; since he never slept, he worked always, stopping only to eat. Lum Ingledew hired both John and Willis to clerk full time in his store, but still business was so brisk that another general merchandise store was opened at the other end of what had now become Main Street, and in between