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By Root 1412 0

Whatever the case, he yielded his breath. Because no one noticed him, no one noticed this, and they went on talking, telling of his fabulous feats and heroic adventures. Although they did not notice him, they could not help but notice, in time, the smell. Denton was the first to sniff the necrosis, and he glanced at his father and declared, “I think Paw has done guv out.” “How can you tell?” asked Monroe. “Shake him and see,” said Denton. “Heck, you shake him,” said Monroe. “You’re closer to him,” Denton pointed out. “You’re older’n me,” Monroe countered. After further argument, the brothers agreed to shake him simultaneously, which they did, warily. Their father did not respond. Rigor mortis was so advanced that they had to bury him still sitting in his captain’s chair with his hands gripping the arms of it, and even though they used silver dollars to try to close his eyelids, they could not get them closed, and had to leave them open. The entire population of Newton County, over ten thousand people, attended the funeral and stood in the rain at the Stay More cemetery to watch entranced as Brother Stapleton delivered the eulogy, a four-hour show, “The Incredible Epic of Colonel Coon Ingledew,” and then the ten thousand voices were lifted in funereal song:

Tempted and tried we’re oft made to wonder

Why it should be thus all the day long

While there are others living about us

Never molested though in the wrong.

and the resplendent, mournful chorus:

Farther along we’ll know all about it,

Farther along we’ll understand why;

Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,

We’ll understand it, all by and by.

The members of the family, instead of sprinkling handfuls of dirt into the grave, substituted flour and corn meal. The headstone bore the inscription, “Now he sleeps,” but some folks weren’t at all too sure of that. Salina Ingledew, well aware of the fact that Jacob’s wife Sarah had followed him out of existence on the day after his death, felt beholden to continue the tradition, and took to her bed, trying hard to give up the ghost, but the ghost would not give. She felt disgraced by this failure, and remained in seclusion for the rest of her life, which lasted and lasted.

The Beautiful Girl was working as a teller in the bank one day when E.D. returned to Stay More, having broken out of the military jail. He tried to persuade her to run away with him, but she did not want to leave Stay More. He tried to stay more and persuade her to marry him, but Raymond’s five brothers ganged up on him and ran him out of town a second time.

The Jasper Disaster announced that an amendment had been added to the United States Constitution prohibiting the manufacture, sale or possession of alcoholic beverages. The Stay More Lodge of T.G.A.O.T.U. vowed to resist unto death. But Waymon Chism, just to be safe, moved his operation off up the mountain, to a remote cave concealed by a waterfall.

Time passed. The Beautiful Girl was feeding her hogs one evening after supper, when E.D. appeared once again, having once again broken out of Fort Leavenworth. Once again he tried to persuade her to run away with him: once again she protested that Stay More was her home. The argument was futile; out of futility he raped her. Then out of further futility, the following day, while she was working alone at the bank during John Ingledew’s lunch hour, he appeared in disguise and pointed a revolver at her, and robbed the bank of eight thousand dollars, and was not seen again for eighteen years.

The decline of Stay More had begun.

Chapter thirteen

Bevis Ingledew was lucky. Although his father had refused to permit him to withdraw his savings in order to build a house for his new bride, Bevis had gone to the bank one day when it was being attended only by the Beautiful Girl, had made out a withdrawal slip, and had said to her, “Goldang it, I’m thirty years old and I got a right to git my own money if I wanter.” The Beautiful Girl had not argued, but had given him the money, although she had later been tongue-lashed for it by John Ingledew.