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By Root 1449 0

Sonora, for her part, did not think thoughts, except to remember when it was the wrong time of month; she simply enjoyed herself. Hank couldn’t tell her what was gnawing away at his brain, and yet, compulsively, he went ahead. He was quite fond of ’maters, but that had nothing to do with it. There was simply something about Sonora: the way she looked, the shape of her, her red hair that had a wonderful smell in all its locations, her eyes even, her voice too, the movements of her hands and feet, the shape and capacity of her arms, and above all the shape and capacity of her principal openings, that never failed to animate him and his responsive part. Thinking about this, as he often did, he came to the conclusion that her openings were, after all, sockets, hollows, voids, and therefore if it were possible that somebody did not exist, it was more likely she rather than he, and he arrived at the momentous truth that woman is but the creation of man, his fancy and his delight. He could live with this, and he did: having settled the problem, he endured it.

After the true maternity and paternity of Sonora became known, she did not have to return to Little Rock to her adoptive mother, who was in fact her aunt, but remained in Stay More, finishing her education at Jasper High School. Her father, E.D., had acquired religion, and when he learned from her mother of Sonora’s affair with Hank Ingledew, he attempted to put a stop to it. He was only partly successful. Sonora would not accommodate Hank on school nights, limiting him to weekends. Because weekends often occurred at the wrong time, she also acquired, from a high school girlfriend who clerked in the Jasper drugstore, a package of prophylactics, which she insisted that Hank use. “What’s that fool thang for?” he wanted to know. “Heck, that won’t be no fun,” he protested. “Let’s try it and see,” she suggested, and they did.

But after graduation, in June, she threw away the prophylactics, and she and Hank ran off into the woods, in broad daylight, mornings, afternoons, evenings, and corresponded themselves silly, even in the wrong time, until Sonora was unquestionably pregnant, whereupon they were dutifully married, and on the wedding night, after the shivaree party had been served refreshments and departed, Hank told Sonora of the gold chronometer wristwatch which Eli Willard had given him and which he had buried to await the appropriate time when Hank could give it to his son. Sonora thought that was the marvelousest thing she had ever heard, and she said they ought to name their son Eli Willard Ingledew, and Hank agreed that would be very appropriate. For nine months, they talked every day about Eli Willard Ingledew; they could even picture him grown up, wearing the magic watch that kept perfect time and never lost even a second. They knew he would be somebody very important in the world, maybe even President of the United States, or at the very least Vice President. When Sonora could feel the baby stirring in her womb, she began to picture him, and she and Hank knew that Eli Willard would be the most handsome of all the Ingledews.

Sonora took up sewing, and made all of Eli Willard Ingledew’s clothing up to the age at which he would receive the wristwatch, which would be sixteen. They not only talked about Eli Willard Ingledew to one another, but also to all their family and friends, so that the whole village began to look forward to his birth, almost as if the baby would be an actual reincarnation of the Connecticut peddler. When Sonora went into labor, instead of fetching Doc Swain and having her baby at home like everybody else had always done, she was taken all the way to Harrison, where the nearest hospital was, and the car in which she traveled was followed by every available conveyance in Stay More, with the entire population, in that year just about a hundred, being transported. The waiting room at the hospital wouldn’t hold a fraction of them, but they milled about in the corridors and outside on the lawn. Sonora’s labor was a long one, yet nobody seemed to