The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [152]
Harry returned to the porch and said to Emelda, “Make me a wholesale offer. Whaddayasay three for a buck? Gimme eighteen.” She fetched the dolls for him, loaded his arms with them. He packed them into the trunk of the Sports Phaeton, then gave Emelda six more dollars, and the tourists drove away. As they passed back through the town, the women were seen to point together at the hotel sign on Drussie’s hotel. Drussie watched the car slow down. The women seemed to be pleading with the men to stop at the hotel, and Drussie hoped the men would agree to stop, but apparently they did not, for the Sports Phaeton went on out of town and was not seen again.
Emelda Ingledew, however, had eight dollars, which was more money of her own than she had ever held in her hand before. She ran all the way to Willis’s store, where Bevis and the boys were loafing, and, forgetting herself, spoke aloud publicly to Bevis for the first time, showing him the money and saying, “Lookee what them tourists paid me for a passel of cornshuck dolls!” Bevis was extremely embarrassed on several counts: he was embarrassed because a female was speaking to him, because she was publicly displaying money, because she was admitting that she made corn-husk dolls, and above all because he did not believe that tourists would pay eight dollars for any amount of cornhusk dolls, although, since he could read her mind, he knew that she was not lying to him. Together, and with the help of their four sons, they went into Willis’s store and bought eight dollars’ worth of Corn Flakes, Quaker Oats, Vienna sausages, sardines, sody crackers, coffee, flour, and fistfuls of Hershey bars, O Henrys and Baby Ruths. The latter items were not good for their teeth, and they all developed cavities which the dentist, Bevis’s oldest brother E.H., refused to treat for less than cash money. They resigned themselves to letting their teeth rot until they fell out, but they were saved from this fate by the arrival of a letter at the post office addressed simply to: The Dollmaker, Stay More, Ark. By then, everybody knew that Emelda made cornhusk dolls, and they didn’t dare laugh at her since she had sold eight dollars’ worth of them.
Postmaster Uncle Willis delivered the letter to her. It was signed by a St. Louis woman named Isadora Lubitschi, and it said: “Dear Madame: My good friend Louise Goldstein recently returned from a delightful tour of the woodsy mountains and presented me with a pair of dolls which she had purchased from you, if you are the person in question who manufactures these items, which consist of some sort of dried plant material covered with bits of cloth in the fashion of women’s long dresses and men’s working overhalls. If you are the person in question who manufactures these charming curios, I would be pleased to inform you that I am in the business of middleman, or middlewoman, to the trade in objets d’art, and I am able to quote you an offer of $36.00 (thirty-six dollars) per gross for whatever quantities of such items you can supply. Please ship them parcel post to the above address.” Emelda was dumbfounded. She did not know what “gross” meant, unless the St. Louis woman considered her cornhusk dolls coarse, vulgar or obscene. Emelda asked Bevis telepathically what “gross” meant, but he had only heard the word when Jim Tom Duckworth spoke of “gross injustice” in court. So they asked Uncle Jim Tom what it meant and he said it meant something so mighty awful or misdone that it can’t be pardoned. Emelda showed him one of her dolls and asked him for his opinion, but he opined that as far as his taste was concerned, the doll might look pretty awful but it wasn’t so gross that it couldn’t be pardoned. He, for one, was willing to pardon it. Emelda