The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [149]
Others continued to die, though. One day the loafers on the store porch got to reminiscing again about various people they hadn’t seen for a long time, and the name of Eli Willard was mentioned, and they wondered if he were dead or if he would ever come back. The subject was good for a few minutes of speculation and then they tried to think of anybody else they hadn’t seen for a long time, and somebody suddenly realized that the woman Whom We Cannot Name had not been seen since the day of the Unforgettable Picnic. The loafers got up off their nail kegs and crossed the road to her house and politely knocked on the door for several minutes before opening it. They went into her room but she wasn’t there. They crossed the interior door into Jacob’s room and found her upon Jacob’s bed, dressed in her best dress with her hands folded upon her waist. They wondered why she had chosen Jacob’s bed to die on, and they decided that in her old age she must have become somewhat confused. Anyway, she was dead, and they took her up to the cemetery and buried her beside Sarah. Brother Stapleton apologized that he couldn’t show a eulogy because he claimed he didn’t know a blessed thing about the woman but he offered a five-minute short subject showing the scene where Jacob’s carriage is leaving Little Rock for his return to Stay More and he discovers that his wife Sarah is taking her social secretary home with her. Then the few people attending the funeral sang one chorus of:
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 woman had not left a will. Attorney Jim Tom Duckworth was consulted, and he advised that the house and contents should go to Isaac’s heir, who was his wife Salina. Salina did not want the house; she refused to leave the dogtrot, where she remained in seclusion. Next in line was the oldest son, Denton, but he didn’t want the house either. John wanted the house badly, but he had to wait his turn, because Monroe was next in line; Monroe thought about it and thought about it, deliberately taking his time because he knew how much John craved to have the house; it was, after all, the biggest house in town, one of the oldest and most impressive buildings in Stay More. The house that John was living in, and had reared his large family in, isn’t even illustrated in this study, not necessarily because of my personal bias against John but because the house is unnoteworthy in all respects, at least in my opinion. John would have made a large leap up in the world if he could have inherited his grandfather’s house. And for that very reason, Monroe kept it…or, rather, he accepted his inheritance of it, although he didn’t care to live there any more than Denton did; he and Denton had shared the same bed all their lives, and saw no reason to discontinue the habit in their fifties, although this is not in any way to suggest that anything funny was going on; it was common practice for bachelor or spinster siblings to share a bed all their lives: so while Monroe did not abandon his accustomed bed, he deeded the house to his and John’s younger brother Willis, making it convenient to Willis’s store, and Willis moved into it with his younger sister Drussie, who, noting the trigeminality of the house and counting upon her fingers, realized that she and Willis made two, whereas the house was three, so she converted the house into a hotel, and hung a small sign over the porch that said simply “hotel.” She gave the place a good cleaning, and ordered new linen and china and flatware from Sears, Roebuck and dressed up the three-hole privy out back with lace and chromolithographs of children rolling hoops,