The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [193]
Nine months later she gave birth to, sure enough, a son. She was ecstatic, and there is no word to apply to Hank, who made a fool of himself out of pride and happiness. But after the celebrating was over, he frowned and asked Sonora, “What was the name of that guy we were going to name him after? You know, the World’s Oldest Man, that peddler from Connecticut?” “Yeah, I know who you mean,” Sonora said, frowning; “His name is right on the tip of my tongue…Eh…Eh…Elmer? No. What was it?” She couldn’t remember. Hank asked his father. Bevis said, “It was one of them funny Yankee names, Esau or something.” Hank’s Uncle Tearle thought the first name was “Ezra” but none of his uncles could help him.
Wasn’t the name written down anywhere? Maybe it was written on the glass showcase which served as the man’s coffin. Hank went into the old mill; its timbers were thoroughly rotten; he worried that the mill would collapse upon his head, but he found the glass showcase and dusted it off. The old man hadn’t changed a bit, but the sight of him didn’t refresh Hank’s memory as to what his name had been. “What was your name, old-timer?” Hank said aloud, and wouldn’t have been surprised if he got a reply, but he didn’t. He inspected the glass showcase closely, but there was nothing written on it except the name of the manufacturer, “Acme Display Fixtures, Inc.” He told Sonora that they might as well name their son Acme Display Fixture Ingledew, but Sonora rejected that because of the resemblance between “Acme” and “Acne.” Sonora suggested finding the oldest person in Stay More and asking him or her if he or she could remember the name of the Connecticut peddler. That turned out to be Drussie Ingledew, Grandpa Doomy’s kid sister, in her early eighties, still living in the Stay More Hotel, still operating it in fact, although the last customer to spend the night there was back during the Second War.
“Aunt Drussie,” Hank said, “what was the name of that old peddler who used to come back to Stay More again and again and finally died here when I was a kid?” “Aw, shore,” Drussie replied, “everybody knows his name. I’m ashamed of ye, thet you’ve forgot it. Why, when I was just a little girl, I remember the year he brought the whale oil when the bar oil guv out, and then again when the whale oil guv out he brought coal oil. Then there was the time—” “Aunt Drussie,” Hank interrupted, “what was his name?” “He used to give me candy,” Drussie recalled, “and ask me if I had been a good girl, and if I was being as good a girl as I knew how. I’ll never forget him, to the day I die.” “But you don’t remember his name?” Hank asked. “Ellis Wilkins?” Drussie said. “Ellery Wilkes? Ephriam Wilson? Elton Wallace? Ennis Willoughby? Any of them sound right to you?” Hank shook his head. “Wal, I’ll tell ye,” Drussie offered, “there was a time he druv up to Stay More in the first hossless kerridge, and my oldest brother Denton took ’im to court fer spookin his livestock’ in the building whar the cannin fact’ry used to be, that one time was Denton and Monroe’s barn, and the Jasper newspaper printed a give-out on the court trial. Maybe if you was to find that old newspaper, it would have his name in it.” “What year was it?” Hank asked. “Year?” said Drussie. “Why, I reckon that was the same year, or the year after, that Doomy organized the Masons.” “What year was that? Do you know the number of the year?” “Number of the year? Law, boy, years don’t have numbers!” “Don’t you know the number of this year?” “No. Do you?” Hank said goodbye to his great-aunt and drove into Jasper to search the files of old Disasters, but the fellow on duty in the Disaster office was the same person that Hank had refused permission to photograph him on his