The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [63]
Jacob too, in his dogtrot, was taking note of the bigeminality of his dwelling and thinking about how even countries can be divided. His trouble was that he was caught in the wrong wing of the House. And like Noah too, he was fondling a new Sharps rifle.
Chapter six
The prairie schooner, or conestoga wagon, which our example clearly is not, was the prototypical mobile home, although it was less a home than a vehicle to those who used it, and those were all heading west. Conestoga wagons may have been built in the Ozarks, but were not used there, save in passing. The Ozark’s first true mobile home, in the modern sense of that term, i.e., a vehicle more often immobile than mobile although capable of the latter, is illustrated to the left. We do not know who built it, nor whether it was actually built in the Ozarks proper, although that was where it traveled.
The driver was an immature youth called Moon Satterfield. He was silent and humorless; we know very little about him, except that he did not like Stay More, and was eager to move on. The wagon was parked at Stay More for less than two weeks.
The occupant of the other of the two interior chambers of this mobile home (yes, it too was apparently bigeminal) was a barely post-adolescent damsel named Viridiana Boatright, called “Virdie.”
We know much more about her than about Moon Satterfield, but still we do not know exactly who her employers were. When she first arrived in Stay More, it was “norated” around town that a cat wagon had fetched up just outside the village, but two peculiarities were soon noted about this cat wagon: (1) there was only one cat in it, and (2) she wasn’t charging anything. She dispensed her voluptuous favors to any and all willing and able Stay More men, and most of the hot-blooded boys of the town wanted in too, but she wasn’t taking anyone under eighteen, although some of the bolder lads lied about their age to get in. The reason Virdie wasn’t taking anyone under eighteen wasn’t known, but presently it was rumored that she was recruiting, or trying to recruit, soldiers to the cause of the Confederate States of America. When Jacob Ingledew heard this rumor, he went to her at once, waited a minute until her current prospect came out of the wagon, then barged in on her. “Now lookee here, young lady…” he began, wagging his finger in her face, but she threw her soft arms around his neck and buried her full lips beneath his earlobe. He tried to separate himself from her, but she gyrated her hips against his, pressing and stroking and fluttering, and darting her tongue into his ear, which caused his legs to fail him, so that she quite easily pulled him down to her bed.
When she was finished with him, she asked, “Now weren’t thet a heap o’ fun?” Jacob had to allow that it was, that by his three standards of measure, Fanshaw’s squaw, Sarah his wife, and the lady in Little Rock, Virdie Boatright was the best of them all. “Yeah, but I don’t aim to jine up with the Rebels, and I don’t want the menfolks of this here town to jine up neither, so you’d better jist get on back to wharever ye come from.” Virdie laughed. She had a right pleasant and womanly laugh, Jacob had to allow.
“Who,” she asked, “are you to be talkin so big?” “I’m the mayor of this here town,” Jacob informed her, “and what I say gener’ly goes.” “Air ye now?” Virdie exclaimed, her face lighting up right winsomely, Jacob had to allow. “The mayor! Wal, I declare! I never had me a mayor afore. In thet case, let’s do it again!” and before Jacob could protest she spread him out on her bed and employed her full stock of novel therapies to revive and temper his root, whereupon she clambered atop him. He’d never had a woman on top of him before and at first he resented her usurpation of his rightful position, as if, by taking over from him, she symbolized her intention of taking over the town from him. But as she churned and squirmed, rising and falling gently and then