The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [181]
In the middle of the fourth month, it worked: Sonora knew the night she had conceived, and her days thereafter were still dull with television and an occasional women’s club meeting, but she no longer felt purposeless. She was five months pregnant before John Henry even noticed, and that was because she said “Ow” when his paunch was bearing down too hard upon her middle, whereupon he looked down between them and observed, “Hey, you’re gettin a potbelly too.” She just smiled, and he went on, “Unless…” He finished what they were doing, and then lay beside her and asked, “Have you not been wearin that thing?” She shook her head. He asked, “Wal, what was the sense in gettin it, then?” She shrugged her shoulders. John Henry did not get angry. He concluded, “Well, it durn well better be a boy, this time.” Not only was he well aware of the heavy responsibility he carried to perpetuate the Ingledew name, but also his daughters were spoiled and they were all over the place. He was constantly tripping on their toys, and constantly bringing home more toys for them to leave for him to trip on. And when all four of the girls were gathered around their mother, gossiping away like some gabby hen party, John Henry felt excluded from his family.
He missed males. He missed his uncles and his father and his brother. Twice a year, on the average, the Stay Morons of Anaheim would get together with the other Ozarkers of Anaheim for an Old-timey Day, where the women would load tables with platters of fried chicken and ’mater dishes and every manner of pie and cake, and the men would congregate to themselves to swap remembered hunting and fishing yarns, or to attempt to remember and relate the old jokes, although nobody was very good at it. These bull sessions always wound up with each of the men declaring fervently that, while, yes, he shore missed them ole Ozarks and shore aimed to git back fer a visit one of these days, it was frankly obvious that after all has been said and done, in this day and age California is the place to be endowed with this world’s goods and to feel well repaid for our efforts and to entertain high hopes of enjoying the finer side of life or even be cradled in luxury or at least live the even tenor of one’s ways to the heart’s content.
John Henry thought these men seemed a little bit runny around the edges. He had grown up with some of the men, and they seemed to have changed. Maybe, he realized, he was runny around the edges himself, and didn’t know it. He touched his potbelly and noticed that the other men had potbellies too. He ought to walk more, he decided, but there weren’t many sidewalks in Anaheim outside of downtown, and pedestrians on the roads were stared at by drivers as if they were in trouble. John Henry had taken a long walk, once, and seventeen cars had stopped and offered him a ride. Dogs had barked and howled at him. Children had stared and pointed. A housewife had come out of her house and offered him the use of her telephone, and when he had said he was just walking for exercise, she had invited him into her house for a beer, and after he had finished it she had opened her housecoat revealing nothing underneath and had thrown herself upon him, and he had marveled at the novelty of fucking an absolute stranger, but he hadn’t gone for any more walks since then.
He told himself that he would make up for it whenever they went back to Stay More for a visit. He promised himself that if they went back to Stay More for a visit he would walk up and down every road in Newton County. But every year, when his two-week vacation came, they went to Yosemite or