The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [32]
But we should know this much, about all of those early houses in Stay More, in contrast to all of the houses that we live in today: the very architecture of “garrison”-type houses, hermetic as it was, insulating and isolating the inhabitants from extremes of hot and cold, the possibly hostile wilderness, etc., fostered because of this an atmosphere of family “togetherness” more intense than any that has ever existed since. By closing the family in on itself, the architecture forced the people of these families into a happy intimacy which we cannot comprehend because we have never known it. There were few or no secrets in these families.
In the case of the Swains, the atmosphere of togetherness was so intense that they thought of themselves not as individuals but as parts of one person. We have already seen an example in the way they cooperated as a team to propel Sarah along the route to Jacob’s cabin and heart. But that was nothing. To observe the degree of their absorption one in another we would have to join them at the table, where there was never any need for anybody to ask to have something passed because everybody knew who wanted what and when and how much. They knew, the Swains, all of them, and nobody ever had to ask to have anything passed. When one of them was supremely happy, they were all supremely happy, and when one of them was sad, they were all sad. The only exception to this, strangely, was Murray’s frakes, which seems to be the one condition whose mood is not contagious, the one condition that must be suffered alone, without empathy from those so close around one. Whatever it was, it was not empathy that caused Sarah to climb up to Murray’s bed.
But Murray did not improve. In addition to his usual feeling of worthlessness, he developed a strange sensation that can only be called a kind of stationary acrophobia. The boys’ sleeping loft was not all that high; just about nine feet above the floor; and indeed it was not the loft that he was afraid of falling out of. Nor his bed, which was a scant two feet high. He was simply afraid of falling out of…of…well, he was simply afraid of falling. In his dreams, when he managed to sleep, he was always falling. Not from anything nor to anything, but falling. He would wake with a cry from these dreams, and, because there were no secrets in those families, in those houses, he would tell his dream to his brothers, and they to his mother and sisters, so that when in the deep of night thereafter anyone was wakened from their sleep by Murray’s cries, they would simply realize, “Murray is fallin,” and turn over and go back to sleep.
Lizzie consulted Noah Ingledew, who enjoyed some esteem as the first person to catch and suffer and endure and survive the frakes, but Noah could not remember having had any sensation of falling, and thus was not able to offer any advice. Lizzie then consulted with Jacob, who, although he had not yet experienced the frakes, was looked upon as the village sage. Jacob agreed to study the problem. He got a stick and sat with it and whittled at it with his new pocketknife. He studied and studied, whittling stick after stick. He wished Fanshaw were still around; Fanshaw might know some answers to what might help acrophobia (although Jacob, of course, did not know or use that word); whatever the condition was, it had to be related to gravity, and Fanshaw was an expert on gravity.
Jacob whittled his sticks and meditated upon how and why objects fall. At length he formulated two important premises: (1) an object must fall from somewhere, and (2) an object must stop falling when it gets to somewhere. He demonstrated and proved these concepts by throwing a rock straight