The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [127]
“Yore Honor,” the attorney began his summation, “jist let me say this. My client is innocent. As you well know, all my clients is innocent, but this here client, I’m a-tellin ye, is straight-up-and-down innocent, which means that he caint possibly be guilty noway. Why, he’s the tore-downdest innocentest feller they ever was. To look at it another way, he is blameless. The fault, if thar ever was one, aint his’n. May hit please the Court, I do hereby pronounce this pore ole senile Yankee peddler feller, whose hands is clean as a hound-dog’s tooth, pure of crime and in the clear! Defense rests.”
“Yore Honor,” countered Jim Tom Duckworth, “I shore wouldn’t swaller that line, iffen I was you. The defendant’s hands aint clean; they’re red! Look at ’em! Why, that feller is guilty. He is the guiltiest defendant ever I saw; in fact, he is the most guiltiest defendant ever I saw. It’s all his fault, ever bit of it, right down the line. He has transgressed! He has trespassed! He has offended! He has damaged! Judge, listen to me, if he aint guilty, I’m a monkey’s uncle. If he aint guilty, black is white and up is down and hot is cold and dry is wet and God knows what all! I swear up and down and all over the place that he is guilty. He don’t know what innocent is. He has done wrong and must pay for it. I stand here with proud haid bared afore the bar of justice and I p’int my finger at that rascal and I declare that he is, without the slightest doubt in the least, to blame. He is GEE EYE DOUBLE-ELL TEE WHY!”
The judge listened thoughtfully to both of these summations, and decided that Jim Tom’s was the more eloquent of the two, and thus he found against the defendant. Eli Willard paid up, and left town.
The Jasper Disaster gave the case brief mention under the headline motorist convicted of spooking livestock. The years went by, one by one, and Eli Willard did not come back to Stay More again. The people wondered if he was just sulking, or if he had died. Either way, they were very sorry to see him go, or, rather, very sorry to see him not come back. Denton Ingledew himself wanted to write a letter to Eli Willard and apologize and invite him to come back, but he did not know where to address it. At any rate, no more hossless kerridges were seen in Stay More for several years, and the Ingledew barn remained pastoral.
These were the Ingledew children, John’s sons, conceived at night while he slept, and his assumed daughter: Elhannon Harvey, who never could speak his own name, and was called “E.H.”; he had an excess of yellow bile, and was generally irascible. Odell Hueston, called variously “Ode,” “Dell” and “Odd,” had an excess of black bile, and was thus the son who most resembled his father: gloomy and doomy. Bevis Handy, called “Beef” or sometimes “Bevis,” destined to become the father of the next (and penultimate) wave of Ingledews, had an excess of blood, and was, depending on how you interpreted it, excitable, passionate or maniacal. Tearle Harley, called always “Tearle,” which is pronounced “Tull,” had an excess of sweat and was industrious, too much so, which made him frakes-prone, so that in his thirties he acquired an excess of alcohol, which rendered him good natured and witty, because alcohol is the most humorous of the humors. Lola Hannah, called “Lola,” pronounced “Lowly,” the only daughter, who was not really John’s daughter but Willis’s, although none of them knew that, not even her mother, who was sleepwalking when she entered Willis’s room, and not Willis, who slept through it all; Lola had an excess of menses, and was untouchable. Stanfield Henry, called, for some reason, “Stay,” as in Stay More, or sometimes “Flem” because he had an excess of phlegm and was sluggish, or self-possessed. And the last-born, Raymond Hugh, called “Ray,” who had an excess of semen, and was lustful. Raymond was just reaching puberty when his older brothers and his half-sister turned the hayloft of the barn into a clubhouse, but he could tell a joke just as ribald as anyone’s.
The boys tried to exclude Lola from these hayloft