The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [3]
“Yeah?” said Jacob Ingledew, and pointed toward the peak of what later would be called Ingledew Mountain. “Wal, how about that un?” The top of Ingledew Mountain forms a triangular peak of almost the same geometric angles as the gable roof of the Ingledew cabin. Fanshaw just looked at him and grinned.
Fanshaw changed the subject by inquiring whether or not Jacob’s “lady” was “at home.” Jacob Ingledew blushed and hemmed and hawed and said he aint never had ary, for the fact was that an Ingledew man brave enough to approach a savage Indian would never, could never have approached a female, at least not one above the age of, say, eleven. Jacob Ingledew changed the subject by saying that there wasn’t nobody here but him and his brother, and his brother wasn’t here right now because he was scared shitless of Indians, although in most other respects his brother was brave and fearless and had recently killed a panther by ramming his fist down its throat, although he had a few ugly scars on his arm to show for it.
After a couple of hours of drink and talk, Fanshaw got up to go. “Stay more,” Jacob invited him. “Hell, you jist got here.” But Fanshaw politely explained that his lady would be unhappy if he tarried further, and he must return to her. The pattern of this parting would be duplicated on a number of subsequent occasions, always with Jacob inviting him to “stay more”—this was not necessarily because Jacob Ingledew craved his company, although he did in fact very much enjoy Fanshaw’s visits, but a matter of formality, a custom let us say, of his people. One always urges a departing guest to remain. Yet Fanshaw could not help but remark upon this custom to his wife because among his own people the exact reverse is the case: when a guest has stayed as long as he wants to, his host senses it and sends him packing with an Indian expression which, if translated into modern idiom, would most literally be “Haul ass” or perhaps even “Fuck off.” Fanshaw’s wife was amused by the term “stay more” in the Indian equivalent into which he translated it for her. In time, it got to where whenever Fanshaw was leaving his house to go visit Jacob Ingledew, he would tell his wife that he was going to Stay More. Some folks even today think that it was Jacob and/or Noah Ingledew who gave the town its name, when in fact it was an aborigine, and the significance of the name, in its rustic ambivalence, is going to have, we will find, many ramifications, some of them poignant. We must not allow ourselves to feel that this is entirely a happy story.
But it is of Fanshaw’s house that I should speak. Why was it bigeminal, that is, a duple? Not visible in our illustration is the other door, on the other side—the west door to the other unit. There may or may not have been an interior connecting door as well; unfortunately, information on this point has been impossible to obtain. One would logically think that there was an interior connecting door, one would want to believe so, at any rate, but Jacob Ingledew, who was, on at least several occasions, inside the dwelling, simply neglected ever to mention whether or not there was an interior connecting door. The first time he asked Fanshaw why his house was bigeminal (which wasn’t the word he used; he said “divided” although that is not accurate, for, as one can see, the two units of the building are not divided at all, but very strongly conjoined), Fanshaw simply replied that it was “traditional.” Later on, when Jacob Ingledew raised the matter again, Fanshaw could only explain: “That is hers, this is mine.” Naturally Jacob Ingledew