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By Root 1458 0

wife of the boy, because she is several months pregnant. The boy, who like Vernon is nineteen years old, says that they have been wandering around exploring various ghost towns, and they like Stay More, even if it isn’t completely a ghost town, and they would like to use the old yellow house if nobody else wants it, but one of the upstairs bedrooms contains a glass showcase with the dead body of a very old man in it, and they can’t very well live in the same house with a dead body. Vernon explains to them the historical significance of the dead body, and tells them that if they really want to live in the yellow house he will ask his father if they can move the body to some other place. Then Vernon remembers that his father is angry with him because of his affair with Jelena, so he says to Day Whittacker, “On second thought, let’s you and me jist move it ourself. I’ll git my truck.” He gets his truck and with Day’s help they transport the showcase back to its original location, appropriately, in the abandoned Ingledew general store.

Day Whittacker and Vernon Ingledew become good friends; they have in common not only their age but also a boundless curiosity about nature. Day Whittacker is an expert in forestry, and knows everything about wood. I have partially examined the story of his visit to Stay More in another volume; his significance in the present volume is merely that he provides Vernon Ingledew with many hours of companionship, and for that matter will continue to be Vernon’s best buddy for the rest of their lives.

Now in particular he and his wife or girlfriend or whoever she is help to divert Vernon’s attention from Jelena. Vernon tells them all that he knows of the history of Stay More, and they tell him of their adventures and exploits exploring ghost towns in Connecticut, Vermont and North Carolina. They are “tracking” the old near-hermit Dan, who had lived in all those places, and who has died, or been killed, here in Stay More. Vernon takes an interest in the story of Dan, particularly Dan’s place in the history of Stay More.

Vernon is shown something that he had not noticed before, thinking it only wallpaper: the plaster walls of Dan’s bedroom are covered with writings, in pencil: aphorisms, epigrams, mottoes, observations on nature and on human nature, including references to various Ingledews. Vernon learns, for instance, something that neither he nor his father ever knew: that the reason his grandfather Bevis Ingledew never spoke to his grandmother Emelda was not that they were not on speaking terms but that they could communicate telepathically. Bevis and Emelda are both now dead. Vernon learns also that his great-uncle Tearle, who is not dead, knows several secrets about his great-grandfather John “Doomy” Ingledew. Vernon copies all of the writings on the walls into a leather-bound journal. He becomes obsessed with the history of Stay More, and even forgets about Jelena. He searches attics. In the attic of the double-doored house of Bevis and Emelda, now abandoned, he finds a box of dozens of photographs, taken early in this Century by Eli Willard, and showing just about everybody who lived in Stay More when its population was over four hundred. In the attic of the old hotel that had been built originally as Jacob Ingledew’s trigeminal house, Vernon finds the unfinished but nearly complete manuscript of The Memoirs of Former Arkansas Governor Jacob Ingledew. He also finds there, in a trunk containing women’s old clothing, concealed beneath the clothing, eighty-nine small journals, diaries, a daily record of the existence of the Woman Whom We Cannot Name from her fourteenth year until the day of her death. He breaks open a rusted safe in the back room of the abandoned general store and finds record books which reveal all of the activities of: (1) the store, (2) the post office and (3) the fraternal organization that was at first the Free and Accepted Masons and later The Grinning and Ogling Tipplers’ Union. It is all there; the chronicle of the birth and growth and decline of Stay More is complete.