The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [62]
But Jacob did not resign his seat. When he left the capitol that afternoon, the woman who had thrown the bouquet of flowers at his feet was waiting for him. This woman, whose name we cannot know because she was a member of one of Little Rock’s finest families, a family still prominent socially and politically today, took Jacob home with her to her very fine house, which had no slaves, and fed him supper, and gave him to drink, and took him to bed. In the morning she fed him breakfast and sent him off to the capitol, where he claimed his seat and his right to vote for Newton County, and participated in the day’s session. He supported the convention in its work, and voted “No” only on those issues related to slavery and secession.
The convention remained in session until the close of the month, and each night Jacob went to the woman’s house for supper and bed and pleasure. Once she told him that she thought the real reason for the War was not slavery itself but the ungratified sexual appetites of the men involved. It was always men who made war. Jacob felt no desire to fight anybody, but he went on voting “No” at the convention; he voted “No” against the raising of an “Arkansas Army,” he voted “No” against a two-million-dollar “Arkansas War Loan,” he voted “No” against the confiscation of all public lands and money in the state, and finally he voted “No” against a motion to hang Jacob Ingledew for treason and sedition. The motion narrowly passed, however, and might have been carried out if they could have found him, not knowing that he was staying at the house of the woman. That night he lay with her a final time, then took his trousers off the bedpost and announced that he had better get on out of town. She hated to let him go, but knew it was for the best. “My darling backwoodsman,” she said in parting, kissing him and letting him ride off home to his backwoods, where he told nobody that Arkansas was out of the Union, nor that the Union was torn, nor that men were killing one another.
That was, as I say, two years before Eli Willard showed up again carrying a line of Sharps rifles and sidearms, and still nobody but Jacob knew that the country had been at war for two years, except for the scarcity of coffee, tea, black pepper and such, a shortage which, like all shortages, was difficult if not impossible to understand, and so no attempt was made to understand it, rather only to get around it, by using substitutes: parched okra seeds and chicory for coffee, ordinary sassafras for tea, and ground garden pepper for pepper.
Now Eli Willard was selling firearms right and left, in defiance of Jacob, who was fuming and on the verge of demolishing Eli Willard and his wagon. His own brother Noah had been the first to buy a Sharps rifle, and was already demonstrating how he could shoot the eye out of a squirrel from eight hats off.
Jacob couldn’t stand it. Finally he demanded of Eli Willard, “Don’t you know there’s a War on?”
“All the more reason,” Eli Willard retorted.
“War?” Noah said. “What war?”
“Yeah, what war?” the other men joined in.
Jacob wondered how to explain it, or even whether or not to try. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them; that had been his policy for two years. But how much longer could he protect his people from the strife of the nation?
“Why don’t you tell them?” he said to Eli Willard. “You’re a Yankee.”
“Are you a Rebel?” Eli Willard asked him.
“Hell no,” Jacob declared, “but I aint exactly a Yankee either.”
“Well, then,” Eli Willard began, “you see, gentlemen, it’s like this…”
That night Noah sat in his treehouse, fondling his new Sharps rifle and puzzling over what Eli Willard had said. From what we know of Noah, by now, we can assume that he was struck with wonder, no, that he was positively dumbfounded, at the idea of the whole country splitting in two, and of men killing each other. We would not be going too far to imagine that his gaze fell upon the opposite wing