and the frakes. Because these afflictions are not universally known but are particularly severe in the Ozarks, a word of description may be in order. Everybody gets mosquitoes, cockroaches, lice, fleas, houseflies, ants, gnats, moths, etc., and the Ingledews had more than their share of these too, but they were particularly plagued by ticks, chiggers, and frakes. Ticks (order Acarina, suborder Mesostigmata) are medium-sized to minute arachnids, coming in many shapes and colors; under a magnifying glass they are hideous, especially their mouths, with which they attach themselves to the body and suck blood until engorged and sometimes thereafter; some of them are also carriers of dreadful fevers. Chiggers (suborder Prostigmata, family Thrombidiidae) are tiny red mites, almost invisible to the naked eye, which also attach themselves to the body with a hideous mouth, and produce swelling and intense itching. Frakes (it is always plural; while a man might say he has a chigger or a tick, he always has the frakes), like many viruses, are not fully understood by medical science; most medical experts consider it a usually benign fungus, but others are convinced it is a variant form of herpes; all it has in common with ticks and chiggers is a predilection for the genital area; in fact, whereas ticks and chiggers may afflict any part of the body, the frakes is confined to the genital area, where it produces a rash of small blisters that eventually erupt with a discharge. Unlike ticks and chiggers too, which only come in warm weather, the frakes may strike at any time of the year. Experts are agreed that the only known predisposing cause of the frakes is hard work. It used to be thought that overwork was the cause, but now it is known that any long, sustained task, any hard and fruitful labor, is liable to bring on the frakes, as if Nature were punishing man for his puny efforts to accomplish something. This is borne out by the fact that while ticks and chiggers afflict many animals other than man, the only animals that get the frakes are horses, mules, sled dogs, beasts of burden, etc., that is, working animals. The itching is not quite as severe as that produced by chiggers and ticks, but the worst effect is the aftermath: that for weeks, months, possibly years after the condition has cleared up, the sufferer is left feeling that there is nothing worth doing, that all labor is vain, that life is a bad and pointless joke. The Ingledew brothers were destined to get the frakes on several occasions. The pity is, there was never anybody to tell them what caused it.
The clock which came from Connecticut was not, it must be said, a very good one. One night at midnight it struck twenty-six times. “Git up, Jake!” Noah hollered. “Shitfire, it’s later than I’ve ever knowed it to be!” Jacob suspected that something in the inner works was amiss, for at the rate the clock was running, by his calculation, he would be a hundred and forty-three years old when the clock peddler returned. Methuselah and the other longevous old men of the Bible must have got their clocks from Connecticut. Still, Jacob dutifully wound up the clock each night before retiring. “If you got it, use it,” must have been his philosophy. He was, however, required to silence the striking mechanism after the novelty of it wore off and it became annoying. After three weeks of careful investigation, Jacob found a way to open the back of the clock, and he stuffed a wadded-up vacated wasp’s nest into the striking mechanism, silencing it. Jacob continued keeping time by the sun and moon and stars, but it was a diversion to watch the minute hand of his clock running around and around in the still cabin.
Not all of their land was forested; the portion that bordered the creek was flat, rich soil which was “bottom” land. But except for the clearing where the Indian camp had been, it was all covered with a dense growth of cane, bamboo, leatherwood, hazel, grapevines and large saw briars, which had to be grubbed and burned, a job which made clearing the forest seem easy. This good bottom