The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [148]
Imagination begets imagination. What lasting psychological effect all of this had upon the four boys may be imagined. The population of Stay More was declining, and one by one the Ingledew boys mentally subtracted themselves from it.
The population of Stay More declined for several reasons. People who lost their money when the bank was robbed worked twice as hard in order to replace the money, and by working twice as hard were afflicted with the frakes, and after recovering from the long lethargy and sense of futility that follows a bout with the frakes they wandered out of Stay More and were never seen again. The ones that stayed never really worked very hard again.
Tearle Ingledew, for example, who had been the most industrious of all the Ingledews because he had an excess of sweat, had worked so hard to replace his lost savings that he came down with perhaps the severest case of the frakes that anyone had ever seen: the rash was not confined to the genital area but spread all over his body; he was anointed with all the traditional remedies with all the traditional lack of effect; what little money he had reearned by working so hard he spent entirely for large quantities of Chism’s Dew, and by staying in a constant state of intoxication managed to slight if not ignore his affliction, and in their own time his blisters festered and healed, and he was left with the characteristic feeling that life is a joke. The strange thing was, the joke struck him not as bad and pointless but hilarious. For the rest of his long life, he worked only hard enough to pay for his heavy consumption of Chism’s Dew, and was full of good humor and could tell excellent jokes. He never gave up believing that life is futile, but the futility of it was always good for a laugh, and he was always laughing and causing others to laugh, and I believe I like Tearle Ingledew better than any of the others, even apart from his many kindnesses to me when I was young.
If he does not loom large in this particular saga, it is only because nothing much ever really happened to Tearle Ingledew, which is as it should be for persons who can laugh at the futility of life. He sat on the store porch or the mill porch, depending on where the shrinking crowds were, and told jokes and swapped yarns until he began to feel sober, then he would walk up to Waymon Chism’s place and buy a gourdful to drink on the premises, then meander back to the village. “Meander” is the only word to describe Tearle’s style of walking, and it is revealed as a symbol of the whole Ozarks, where everything meanders. All the rivers, streams, creeks and branches meander. The limbs of trees, especially sycamores, meander. Snakes meander. Tearle Ingledew meandered not so much because of alcohol in his brain as because he had nowhere to get to, and loads of time to get there in. When creeks and snakes and tree limbs and men are young, they go in pretty much of a straight line. When they get older, they meander. A rushing brook becomes a river and meanders. A boy becomes a man and meanders. A story becomes a book and meanders. There is always an end, but no hurry to get there; indeed, there is almost a strong wish not to get there. Let Tearle’s meander, therefore, stand as a symbol both of the Ozarks themselves and of this, our study of its architecture.
Nothing ever happened to Tearle, not even death, although he might be dying as you read this; one would hope not, unless he has laughed at the futility of life for so long that he has at last realized that that very humorousness of life’s futility is precisely the reason that life is precious, and, valuing it, loses it. Tearle, like all of his brothers save Bevis, never