The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [29]
Early in their marriage, Jacob’s wife Sarah developed a disconcerting habit which Jacob at first attributed to absent-mindedness: whenever she was outside of the cabin, working in the garden or feeding the chickens or whatever, she would not afterwards return to the cabin but instead wander down the road to her mother’s house and enter it, and stay there, until Jacob came to fetch her home. Undoubtedly a psychiatrist would interpret this as a sign of her dissatisfaction with her marriage, but actually, it seems to me (as in time it dawned on Jacob), that it was a sign of her dissatisfaction with Jacob’s cabin, her perhaps unconscious recognition that her mother’s house was superior to it, more comfortable, less primitive. When Jacob realized this, he began to build his next house, which was as superior to the Swain house as the latter was to his first cabin.
An outsider visiting Jacob’s cabin would have received the impression that Sarah was a slatternly housekeeper, but the fact was that a house with a dirt floor was very difficult to keep clean, and this discouraged Sarah from making the effort. As soon as she became pregnant for the first time, Sarah discontinued further relations with Jacob, until such time as he had completed construction of their new home, which, as we shall see, did not have a dirt floor but a puncheon floor that Jacob took the trouble to shave smooth with a drawing knife, so that Sarah would never get a splinter in her foot.
Lizzie Swain and her brood always joined the Ingledews at noon on the second Tuesday of each month to hear Jacob’s clock say prong, and they began combining the event with the feast of fried chicken; this was the chief social occasion in Stay More for many years. Still, Jacob had never told Lizzie where he got the clock, so one day when Eli Willard showed up at the Swain house, Lizzie did not know who he was. He was just a “furriner” on horseback with bulging saddlebags.
“Ah hah,” observed Mr. Willard. “Another house, and a fair one too. May the lares and penates bless you and your happy home, madam.”
He talked mighty funny, Lizzie thought. “Whar ye from, stranger?” she asked him.
“Connecticut,” he replied. “Willard is the name. Eli Willard. Formerly trafficker in timepieces. Now a purveyor of sundry hard goods.” He patted his saddlebags. “Madam, have I got some nice things for you!”
By this time all of her children (except Murray, abed with the frakes) had gathered ’round, and they watched as Eli Willard dismounted and opened his saddlebags. To each of the boys Eli Willard gave a stick of rosewood studded with small bolts, which, he demonstrated, enclosed a knife that folded out! So that it could be carried in one’s pocket without sticking one, Eli Willard explained. The boys were awed. To each of the girls he gave a pair of knives that were crossed and bolted at the cross and had rings in one end whereby, he demonstrated by inserting his thumb and forefinger through the rings, the knives could be made to move against one another, snipping, so that a straight even cut could be made through cloth, he using the hem of his own coat for a subject. The girls were lost in amazement, and their mother exclaimed, “I declare! If them aint the beatin’est things ever I saw!” Before their mother could stop them, the girls gathered up all the fabric that was in their house, namely, two muslin dishrags and a bit of linsey-woolsey, and quickly reduced this material to shreds. To Lizzie Swain Eli Willard gave an even larger pair of these scissoring knives which would cut through buckskin, the material in which all of the Swains, as well as the Ingledews, were clothed.
“Bless yore heart,” said Lizzie Swain. “We’uns jist don’t know how to thank you.” Eli Willard explained that there was, in fact, a way that they could thank him. His suggestion puzzled Lizzie but after muddling it over for