The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [67]
Word came from Jasper, where Virdie Boatright had gone after leaving Stay More, that the sheriff himself, John Cecil, one of the most popular and revered men in the county, had joined the Confederates and had been appointed captain in charge of Newton County. When Jacob Ingledew heard that, he felt more weak and futile than ever; he also felt more restless and belligerent than ever, and he caught his wife Sarah and raped her. It was the only time in his life that he ever raped her, and for a little while afterwards he felt contrite, and begged her forgiveness, which she withheld, taking her younger children and moving back to her mother’s house, and telling her older son, Isaac, what his father had done to her. Isaac, who was a young man of twenty at this time and already well over six feet tall (and who, of course, along with all the other men of Stay More, had been infected with the frakes and was sharing their suffering and weakness and futility and restlessness and belligerence), put down the fiddle that he was sawing to pieces and sought out his father and said tersely, “Gon whup ye, Paw.” Jacob snorted with derisive laughter, and rolled up his sleeves and prepared to demolish his son. Undoubtedly Isaac, who was several inches taller and many pounds heavier than his father, not to mention being thirty-odd years younger and quicker, would easily have won the contest, might possibly even have killed his father, if they had not been interrupted by Gilbert Swain, bringing news from Jasper that one of the Stay Morons had joined Capt. John Cecil’s Rebels.
“NO!” Jacob thundered. “It caint be. Who was the dawg?”
“I hate to tell ye,” Gilbert demurred.
Jacob grabbed Gilbert Swain by his collar and hauled his face close to his own, and angrily hissed, “You’re jist a-funnin me, boy, and it aint so funny.”
“H-h-honest to God,” Gilbert protested. “I seen him myself.”
Jacob tightened his grip and twisted it, then hollered into Gilbert’s face, “THEN TELL ME WHO IT WAS!”
“Don’t hole it agin me, Uncle Jake, please,” Gilbert begged. “It weren’t my fault.”
“Son,” Jacob said as calmly as he could, “if you don’t tell me who it was, right now, I am fixin to bash yore haid down yore throat.”
“Let go of me, and I will,” Gilbert said.
Jacob released him. Gilbert stepped back, half-turning as if to flee, and nearly whispered. “It was Noey.”
“Huh?” Jacob said. “Noey who?”
“Uncle Noey,” Gilbert said. “Yore brother. Noah Ingledew.”
We will leave Jacob standing there overwhelmed in silent immobility for a very long moment while we meditate upon this situation. It should be remembered that Noah Ingledew was a bachelor, a frustrated virgin until Virdie Boatright came briefly into his life and his treehouse. It should be considered that her strategy or therapy or primum mobile or whatever we may call it, if it worked at all, would most likely work upon a man like Noah. We do not know how many hours he spent in his lonely treehouse reminiscing about the fleeting fulfillment that Virdie Boatright had given him, nor what intensified longings he was left with. We do know that he kicked as many posts and dogs as any other man in Stay More, and that he crushed more rock than most, and that his bout with the frakes was severe and compounded by having no woman to attend his bedfastness. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that while his weakness and futility were greater than any other man’s, so were his restlessness and belligerence. Admittedly it is difficult to think of mild, shy, bland Noah Ingledew as belligerent; even more difficult is it to picture him in uniform;