The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [41]
The cows knelt and died. The people who felt like it (and by this time Jacob was not the only person feeling useless and helpless) loaded their oak-stave barrels and tubs and buckets and pails into their wagons, and drove off down the dry creek in search of water. Days later they returned with some murky river water. They reported that the people of Mount Parthenon were dry and suffering too; the Little Buffalo River was dry all along its length; they had followed it into the Big Buffalo, which was also dry, and followed that into the White River, which still had puddles remaining here and there, but each of these puddles was guarded day and night by fierce men with shotguns; they followed the White for miles before finding a puddle that was not guarded, and there they filled their oak-stave containers with this murky swill. They hauled it back to Stay More, strained it, and discovered that after removing all of the fish, minnows, tadpoles, crawdads, turtles, water moccasins, and a few beaver, they had only half as much water as they had started with, and then this water had to be boiled for so long to purify it that half again evaporated, so they were left with only a quarter of what they had found, and this had to be strictly rationed: a half-saucer per day per person. And then a quarter-saucer, an eighth, and so on, down, down.
These people of Stay More had come originally from eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, and northern Georgia, an area of the country which has more consistent annual rainfall than any other, and not one of these persons, even the oldest, had ever known a drought before. Since the drought had coincided so closely with the onslaught of Jacob’s frakes, the people began to wonder, naturally, if there was any connection. If Jacob Ingledew, who was their much-respected steward, shepherd, chieftain, or at least official mayor, had no hope, and couldn’t care less whether it rained or not, then that might well be the reason it didn’t. Many of the Stay Morons who had been performing superstitious acts to make it rain, with no luck, or praying to God for rain, with less luck, began to wonder if they had not better and more profitably direct their attentions to Jacob Ingledew instead of to God. A delegation of the menfolk was appointed, and they appeared, hats in hands, beside Jacob’s bed.
Elijah Duckworth, their spokesman, spoke: “Squire Ingledew, sir, we’uns is powerful pervoked by the lack of rain, and seein as how yore affliction come smack dab at the same time, we’uns has got to wonderin if they might be tied up some way, one with th’other.”
Jacob stared at Elijah Duckworth for a while and studied the notion. “I hadn’t thought of that, Lige,” he declared. “I don’t do much thinkin, one way or the other, lately.”
“Do ye want it to rain, or not?” Elijah asked.
“Tell ye the truth, I don’t honestly keer,” Jacob replied.
“But you’re shore to starve of thirst along with the rest of us.”
“I reckon so,” Jacob acknowledged.
“Do ye want yore womarn and that fine young’un to die too?” Elijah demanded. (Sarah at this time was one of the few living creatures in Stay More still producing liquid, nursing the baby Benjamin, by dint of the efforts of her mother and her many brothers and sisters, who pooled a portion of their daily ration of water for her.)
“What kin I do?” Jacob lamented morosely and rhetorically. “What kin ary man do? What’s the use, nohow?”
“Mind if we set down?” Elijah Duckworth asked. Jacob gestured feebly toward the new mule-eared chairs that Noah had made, and the men drew them up beside Jacob’s bed and sat in them.
Then, one by one, each man told the funniest joke he could remember. Elijah told of an old man trying to trade mules and offering to another feller a strong, lively horse mule, who, however, while being examined,