The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [198]
The rain that fell during Sonora’s funeral was the hardest that had fallen on the Ozarks since the flood of Noah Ingledew’s time, and it caused all the creeks to overflow their banks. Hank, grieving though he was, had the presence of mind to realize that the old mill and probably the store too would be swept away in the flood, so after the funeral, he and his brother Jackson backed a pickup truck, up to its hubcaps in swirling muddy water, to the porch of the old mill, and they went into the mill, feeling its floor trembling, and lifted the glass showcase containing the body of the old Connecticut peddler, whatever his name was, and loaded it into the pickup truck and got it away just in the nick of time: with a thunderous roar the old mill collapsed and was swept away down the creek. They transported the showcase to higher ground, to the abandoned yellow house of the old near-hermit Dan, where they left it in an upstairs bedroom, and then returned to the village, and with the help of the other men of Stay More used sledgehammers to demolish the old abandoned bank building and stack its stones against the side of the road in an effort to keep the swollen creek from washing away the road. The effort did not succeed; the road was washed away; but after the creek had returned to its normal level, they partially rebuilt the road.
Jelena graduated from Harrison High School at the age of eighteen; she was the valedictorian of her class, and undoubtedly could have won a college scholarship if she had applied for one, but after the death of Vernon’s mother, Jelena was old enough and smart enough to realize that it had been foolish of her to plan, all her life, to marry Vernon when he grew up. When he grew up, she would be twenty-six, at least, past marriageable age. Even if that wasn’t past marriageable age, he was her first cousin, and nowadays first cousins did not marry. Even if first cousins could marry, she could never get him to notice her, except for that one time when they had played “doctor.” At his mother’s funeral, when Jelena had tried to embrace him and say something comforting to him, he did not seem to be aware of her existence. So, if she could not be his wife, perhaps at least she could become his mother, or his stepmother. Waiting for a suitable time some months after the funeral, she said to Hank, “Would you like to marry me?” “That’s real kind of ye, Jelena,” Hank replied, “but I’m your uncle and I caint marry you.” “Vernon needs a mother,” Jelena insisted. “I don’t know about that,” Hank observed. “I reckon he’s jist about old enough to take care of hisself. And he’s got lots of sisters to look after ’im.” “You won’t marry me?” Jelena tried one last time. “I have to tell you somethin, honey,” Hank replied. “I don’t know how to say it, but even apart from me bein twenty-four years older than you, I aint able to…well, you know what a man is supposed to do to his woman, well, I aint able.” “I don’t care,” Jelena replied, “we don’t have to do that.” “Don’t ye want children?” Hank asked. “No,” she said, “Vernon can be my child.” “Tell you the honest truth, Jelena,” Hank said, “nothin against you personal, but I don’t honestly believe that Vernon would want to be your child.”
Crestfallen, Jelena gave up on the idea. Mark Duckworth, son of Mont, son of Oren the erstwhile canning factory operator, and Jelena’s third cousin twice removed, asked Jelena for a date, took her to the drive-in movies at Harrison, kissed her during intermission, took her there again the following Saturday, petted her some, was petted in return on the third date, and after the fifth date persuaded her to get into the back seat with him. The movies