The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [20]
“But allow as how we got us a cow now,” Jacob replied.
“Wow,” Noah said. “So let’s have some milk.”
But Jacob realized that the heifer would have to be serviced and have a calf before she would start giving milk. Where would they find a bull? Occasionally a small herd of buffalo wandered through the valley; Jacob wondered if a buffalo bull could service a Jersey heifer. If a jackass could service a mare and produce offspring, why not? Jacob had hoped that maybe his bitch hound Tige would get serviced by a wolf or coyote and produce dogs well-suited for wilderness living. Tige was now all swollen out around the middle but as far as Jacob knew she hadn’t met up with any eligible wolves or coyotes; probably the father had been that short-tailed cur of Fanshaw’s. Yes, a few weeks later, when Tige had her litter, Jacob noted that the pups seemed to resemble Fanshaw’s dog. Well, we’re even, in a way, now, Jacob reflected: I serviced his squaw, his dog serviced my bitch.
But where, or how, to find a bull? Winter came on, yet no more herds of buffalo wandered into the valley. Probably the Indians had wiped out all the buffalo. Jacob’s Jersey heifer, who with want of imagination he named “Jerse,” went into heat and bawled and bawled, but there was no relief.
Then Eli Willard the clock peddler returned after being away six months (or 143 years by his clock’s reckoning). Again he had only a single clock strapped to his saddlebag. He observed, “This is still the end of the road. But you have survived. Many don’t, you know.” Then he asked, “How’s the clock?”
“Blankety-blank,” Jacob replied. “Goshawful. Cuss-fired. No-account. Tinhorn. Punk. Torrible. Infernal. One-gallused. Muckeldydun. Not worth the powder to blow it up.”
“But does it run?” Eli Willard asked.
“It’s runnin fer its life,” Jacob said. “It’s runnin like hell was only a mile away and all the fences down.”
“Well, well,” said Eli Willard and coughed. “I always insist upon my customer’s satisfaction. I will replace your defective clock with this superior model. The works are not made of wood but of brass. Recently in Connecticut all the clockmakers have converted from wood to brass.”
“I aint so sartin that we’uns need ary kind of clock, even if it was made of gold.”
“Everyone needs a clock,” Eli Willard declared. “All the other people hereabouts have clocks.”
“What other people? There’s jist me and Noah.”
“The Ozarks are filling up with people.”
“I aint seed any of ’em. Did ye happen to notice if any of them people had a bull?”
“A bull?”
“Yeah, I got a heifer near ’bout two year old and she needs sarvice somethin turrible.”
“I don’t examine my customers’ livestock,” Eli Willard said. “I’m sorry.”
“Wal, whar is all them folks you’re talkin about?”
“That way,” Eli Willard said, and pointed, the way he had come, toward the north. Jacob realized that he and Noah had come in from the east and that he had gone south and come back from the west, but they had never been north. The bulls would be to the north.
Eli Willard produced the I.O.U. that Jacob had signed six months previously. “If you will settle your account, sir, I shall be happy to leave this new clock of entirely brass works with you.” Jacob realized that his primary purpose in selling the fur pelts had been to pay off the clock peddler, and he did have the twenty dollars, so he gave the money to Eli Willard, who thanked him, but added, “Of course brass being more accurate than wood and in other ways more desirable, it is also more expensive than wood, and, regretfully, we are required to charge a little extra for—”
“How much?” Jacob asked.
“Twenty dollars,” Eli Willard declared.
“I’ll see you in six months,” Jacob said. So he signed another I.O.U., and Willard rode off the way he had come, toward the north.
The new clock compensated for the old one by being as slow as the old one was fast, and Jacob calculated that he was regaining all the years he had lost to the old clock. Also, the new clock had a metal chime to strike the hours in place of the harsh wooden pecker of the old clock. The new