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By Root 1316 0

a mile up the creek from Fanshaw’s, he woke to the sound of Fanshaw’s morning prayer, and, having never in his life heard anything like it, went to investigate, hiding in the woods near Fanshaw’s camp and watching him. The closest sound it resembled was that of a screaming panther, which Jacob had heard on many occasions, the most recent being just before Noah had rammed his fist down one’s throat. Jacob was astonished to discover that the sound was being produced by the vocal apparatus of his new friend Fanshaw (and possibly, in the back of his mind, after listening to Fanshaw’s Dawn Chant to its conclusion, he felt that Fanshaw was crazy, and this may have been the real reason, rather than fatigue, why he did not soon return to Fanshaw’s house). Long afterward, Jacob Ingledew could do a reasonable imitation of the Dawn Chant, to awe his descendants, frightening the younger ones, and from one of his descendants in turn I have heard it; it lies beyond my power of words to reproduce; I can only say that it began on the highest pitched note that the voice could reach, and after traveling up and down the scale in a nonmusical but nonverbal manner for several long minutes that evoked abstractly supplications and petitions of all manner, ended abruptly on a note that can only be called a sob of frustration. It was this last that most puzzled Jacob Ingledew, but it was a long time before he could get up his nerve to ask Fanshaw what it meant. Jacob returned to his cabin site to find his brother Noah saddling one of the mules. “Shitfire,” Noah said, “I’m a-gorn back to Tennessee, Jake.” Jacob explained that it was only the aborigine singing some kind of morningsong, but it was only with much conciliation that Jacob persuaded his brother to stay.

It was at the height of one of their arguments about God, much later, that Jacob said to Fanshaw, “If you believe in him so durn much, how come when you git to the ‘amen’ part of yore prayers, you make this here noise that sounds like you feel it aint nary bitty use nohow to be prayin?” Fanshaw stared at him for a long moment before saying, “Oh? You listen to my ‘prayers’?” Jacob said, “Hell’s bells, a body caint help listenin to ’em.” “Be glad then,” Fanshaw retorted, “that there is only me. If my tribesmen were here, we would deafen you.” But he relented, and explained to Jacob that the sob of frustration did not mean that he thought his praying was futile but rather that he was, at that point, given to understand that Wahkontah had chosen, for reasons of His own, to deny Fanshaw’s requests. We all want. We must always continue to want, to desire, even if our wants are not gratified. What did Fanshaw want? He could not tell Jacob; to tell another mortal what one wants greatly decreases one’s chances of getting it—no, it is a guarantee that one will not get it.

But Jacob Ingledew, for all his rough frontiersman demeanor, was a man of good mind, and he could guess the source of Fanshaw’s frustration: surely it had to do with the rest of his tribe not returning. He felt sorry for Fanshaw, but of course if the rest of the tribe did return, which he doubted, he himself would have to move on. He had been told before leaving Tennessee that within a few short years, now that Arkansas had achieved statehood and was no longer a territory, every Indian would have to leave the state.

In the fall, when they were sampling the first run of Jacob’s Arkansas sour mash whiskey (Fanshaw had helped him harvest the corn, and had shown him how to grind it, Indian-fashion, by placing it in a hollowed-out rock—of which there are many in the Ozark streams—and pounding it with a stone pestle), Fanshaw happened to pop a question:

“Why do we drink this stuff?”

“You don’t lak it?” Jacob said. “I ’low as how it aint near as good as that I brung from Tennessee, but…”

“Oh, it is fine. Ripping stuff, old boy. I simply raise the philosophical question: why do we drink it?”

Jacob pondered. “Wal, I kinder relish the taste, myself.”

“Yo. But do we not more relish that which it does to us?”

“I don’t feature drunkenness.