The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [197]
But Vernon could never put it out of his mind, nor could he completely shake off the fear that his father might cut off his tally-whacker unless he behaved himself, so he continued to behave himself, and he continued to be obsessed with the subject of sex, although he continued to withstand the efforts of his sisters to involve him in their activities and the efforts of his cousin Jelena to get him to notice her. There were no boys in Stay More his own age, although he had a few friends at the Jasper school, with whom he played boys’ games during recess. He excelled in sports. But he would just as soon stay home by himself, or help his mother; he was always striving to do things for his mother, whom he loved. She loved him too, perhaps too much, because her husband never did completely regain his potency after sitting on the roof for seven hours; he suffered recurring bouts of impotency, and went to see a specialist at Little Rock, who examined him and talked about “distinctly low testosterone assay” and prescribed medicine that didn’t help much; he later went all the way to St. Louis to see another specialist, who examined him and talked about “estimation of urinary 17-ketosteroid excretion” and prescribed another medicine which was just a little better, but didn’t cure the problem; so, during a national convention of televison salesmen in Chicago, he slipped off to see a psychiatrist, who traced the problem back to the episode of sitting on the roof for seven hours but was unable to help Hank understand how sitting on the roof for seven hours would make him impotent, so he traced the problem further back to Hank’s childhood when Hank had often wondered whether or not he actually existed because in order to exist his mother and father would have had to have gone to bed together, which they had never done.
“How do you know they didn’t?” asked the psychiatrist. Because they had separate beds, and never slept together, Hank told him. “But,” said the psychiatrist, “that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have had intercourse somewhere, at some time.” Well, anyway, Hank said, the problem never bothered him anymore so he didn’t think it had anything to do with his impotency. “Aha!” said the psychiatrist. “The roots of our problems lie where we least expect them,” and he suggested that Hank commence psychoanalysis, but Hank told him that he was just temporarily in Chicago for a convention, and he went on back to Stay More. Because he didn’t make love to Sonora very often, she was somewhat frustrated, but she had determined never to “cheat” on him again, so she remained a faithful wife but compensated for her frustration by being overaffectionate to Vernon, who returned her affection. They frequently slept together, until he was nine years old, when his growing manhood tempted her and made her ashamed of her temptations, so that she never slept with him thereafter, which he could not understand. There were so many things that he could not understand, although in his fantasy he concocted elaborate and even outrageous explanations for them. When he was ten years old, his mother discovered that she had irreversible breast cancer. At her funeral Vernon listened to them singing:
Farther along we’ll know all about it,
Farther along we’ll understand why;
Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,
We’ll understand it, all by and by.
He did not understand this. He