The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [160]
Business was not very brisk. Willis tactfully pointed out to Eli Willard that the word “bag” means scrotum throughout the Ozarks, and that instead of saying “Fresh roasted peanuts! A nickel a bag!” Eli Willard should say “Fresh roasted peanuts! A nickel a poke!” Therefore the peanut peddler altered his pitch, but business did not improve. Willis offered the further opinion that the word “peanuts” itself was suspect, because it suggested not only the testicles but also micturition. “Goobers” also suggested the male genitals, but was not as suggestive as peanuts. So Eli Willard began to say, “Fresh roasted goobers! A nickel a poke!” whenever anyone came along, which wasn’t often. He sold a few pokes. Hank decided that maybe Eli Willard intended to rejoin the circus as soon as he had sold all of the peanuts. To test this notion, he casually asked the old man if he knew where the circus was going after it left Jasper. Eli Willard nodded. Hank left the store and went around from house to house in Stay More, telling everybody that old Eli Willard was back in town, and offering a whole half-pound of goobers for just five cents. Soon the store porch was crowded with people cracking and eating peanuts, and before long they were up to their ankles in peanut shells. As the afternoon waned, Eli Willard sold his last poke of peanuts. Willis Ingledew swept the peanut shells off the store porch, and closed his store and went home to eat supper. Eli Willard and Hank were alone. The profits from the sale of peanuts had come to exactly five dollars, which Eli Willard gave to Hank, saying it was payment for the ride from Jasper to Stay More.
“How you gorn to git back?” Hank wanted to know.
“I’m not.”
“Huh? You aint givin up on the circus fer good, air ye?”
Eli Willard nodded.
“Wal, will ye tell me whar they went, so’s I can fine ’em?”
Eli Willard shook his head. Then he asked, “What’s your name, Ingledew?”
“John Henry. Everbody calls me Hank.”
Eli Willard seemed to be only thinking about that, without comment. Then he unbuttoned his left sleeve and removed from his wrist a dazzling gold wristwatch; even the band was gold. He handed it to Hank. “It’s a chronometer,” he explained. “Keeps perfect time. Never loses a second. Not a fraction of a second. But it isn’t for you, except in trust. Keep it for your son.”
“My son?” Hank said. “Heck, I ain’t but ten year old.”
“Yes, but you’ll have a son some day.”
Hank thought about that. He realized that in order to have a son you first had to find a girl and sweet-talk her into marrying you, and then you had to persuade her to get into bed with you and let you do it to her, and more than once if it wasn’t the right time of month. Hank could never do anything like that, and he told Eli Willard so, but the old man just laughed and assured him that he would indeed eventually do all of those things, and more.
“But what if it aint a son but a daughter?”
“Try again. And again. And when your son is old enough to appreciate, give him that chronometer and tell him my story.”
“What’s your story?”
“Four score and ten years ago, I sold a clock to your great-greatgrandfather, who, as you probably know, was the first white settler of Stay More. It wasn’t a very good clock, I must confess…” Eli Willard went on, and told Hank the whole long story of his many many returns to Stay More, what merchandise he had offered if not sold, the experiences he had had, not excluding the humiliations and the boredom. He talked through and past suppertime, and Hank was getting mighty hungry, but he figured the least he could do in return for such a fine gold watch, even if he couldn’t wear it himself but only keep it for his son, was to listen carefully to the old man’s story and try to remember it so that he could tell it to his son on the day that he would give him the fine gold watch, and maybe his son could make some sense out of the story even if Hank couldn