The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [7]
“Shitfire, why don’t ye quit wastin yore time with him?” Noah said. Jacob repeated in detail Fanshaw’s arguments for the earth being round, including his theory of gravity. Noah, however, remained unconvinced. Everybody of any sense knew that the earth was flat. (And indeed, the debating societies of every little settlement in the Ozarks would continue year by year to have this topic in their repertoire, until finally, years later, somebody brought in from St. Louis one of those disturbing volumes known as a “textbook.”)
Early winter found the two friends hunting together, Jacob with his flintlock, Fanshaw with his bow. Again, it would be difficult to decide which of the two was the better marksman; they were both deadly accurate. Jacob’s weapon seemed more effective in killing a bear rather than merely wounding it, but on at least one occasion Jacob’s life was saved when, charged by a wounded bear or panther who still had enough life to bite and scratch, he fell and would have been mangled save for the speedy and accurate arrows of Fanshaw.
Fanshaw’s bow was a large one, made of well-seasoned wood from the bois d’arc, coincidentally the same tree that his house was made of. A small but illuminating digression on language is necessary at this point, to help us get all our arks together. Bois d’arc is of course French and may be translated as Bow Wood, which is one of its names, the others being ironwood, yellowwood, hedge, mock orange, and Osage-orange, the last two referring to the fruit, which is a large yellow ball vaguely resembling an orange but which, as any schoolboy who has ever bitten into one has discovered, is quite bitter. “Osage-orange” is so called because the Osages used it to make their bows with, also their houses.
Arc, and also ark, comes from an Indo-European word root, arkw, which means bow or arrow (it is uncertain which; perhaps both together as a unit, since one is no good without the other). The Old Norse arw supplies our word for arrow. In almost all Indo-European languages, arkw is the root of such words as arc, arcade, arch, architecture, archer (shooter of arrow), arciform, arcuate, etc. Arc is also an obsolete form of ark, which meant originally a chest, box, coffer and hence a place of refuge, as in the Biblical Noah’s vessel and as in all over this present book. Both Chaucer and Milton were wont to spell an arc as curve or arch as ark. The name of our state, Arkansas, is thought to mean in Indian the smoky, bow-shaped river, since Kansas means smoky river and ark means bow (although we should all know that Arkansas does not rhyme with Kansas and is accented on the first syllable). The name of our region, the Ozarks, is said by one early authority (Schoolcraft, who should know) to be compounded from “Osage” (our Indian again) and “Arkansas,” which makes just as much sense as the usual idea that it comes from the French, Aux Arc. Therefore, when we speak of “the bois d’arc in the arciform architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks,” every unit in this sentence can be traced to the same root.
What does it feel like to live inside Fanshaw’s house? To settle this question once and for all, I propose that an enterprising group of students reconstruct an example of it, out in the hilly woods, and spend a night in it. And record their dreams the next morning. Many other tribes of Indians lived in the Ozarks down through history, and many of them lived in recesses under bluffs, caverns if you will, and these were rounded and curvilinear too. It is probably difficult to adapt rectilinear furniture to a curvilinear dwelling, but Fanshaw didn’t have any.
One more round thing, and then we must search for the end of this chapter. In Fanshaw’s garden there had grown a plant which Jacob Ingledew had not seen before. Luxuriant green bushes produced a rounded green fruit which, when ripened, turned red, but had a taste that was not sweet like other fruit but tangy, almost acrid, and produced a feeling of voluptuousness. Upon inquiry from Jacob, Fanshaw said this