The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [76]
We may with good reason wonder: why, if Jacob achieved office by popular election, did nobody in Newton County know about it? Didn’t they have the election in Newton County? Probably not, because the departure of Jacob’s cavalry had brought Cecil’s Rebels out of hiding, and Newton County was temporarily under Confederate control at the time of the election. But surely, we might ask, didn’t a single one of Jacob’s cavalrymen get furloughed or discharged after Little Rock fell to them, and return home to Newton County to spread the news of Jacob’s success? Apparently not, for General Steele intended to keep as large a force as possible on duty in Little Rock. Still, we might reasonably argue, Newton County wasn’t so isolated that no news of Jacob’s governorship would somehow trickle into it. But obviously it must have been. Because it was nearly a month after Jacob’s inauguration before Eli Willard brought the news. He had read about it in a Connecticut newspaper. Now, selling a line of elixirs, balms and unguents, which few people had the money to pay for, he came again to Stay More and was somewhat surprised to find Sarah Ingledew and her younger children still living, or trying to, at the old dogtrot.
“My congratulations, madam,” he said to her. “Or should I offer my sympathies? Have you and your husband come to a parting of the ways?”
“Naw, he’s jist off some’ers a-fightin that infernal War,” she informed Eli Willard.
Eli Willard wondered if there might be some other Jacob Ingledew, but it was not a common name, and the newspaper item had clearly implied that the new governor was from an isolated settlement in the Ozarks.
“You aren’t divor—” he started to ask her, but changed this to: “You are still married?”
“Why, shore,” she replied.
Suddenly Eli Willard understood, and was moved. If Jacob Ingledew despite his humble origins had attained the governorship of the state, he would not want to display his ragtag family in the marble halls of the capitol, so he had deliberately refrained from sending for them.
“I feel for you,” Eli Willard said to Sarah.
She drew back. “You’d jist better not, Eli Willard.”
“I mean—” he said, “that I understand how you must feel, and I am touched.”
He sure was talking as if he was touched, Sarah decided. How must she feel? she wondered.
“But looking at the more positive side of it,” Eli Willard remarked, “I suppose it is more comfortable to abide in the tranquillity of these sylvan mountains than cope with the myriad concerns and distractions of the urban hurly-burly.”
Sarah decided that he must be building up some new sales pitch, and she said, “Whatever yo’re sellin this time, Mister Willard, I’m sorry to tell ye, but we’uns couldn’t find a red cent around this place if it was ransom fer our life.”
“You know your credit is always good with me,” he reminded her. “But doesn’t he even send you any of his salary?”
“Who?”
“The governor.”
Sarah was convinced now that Eli Willard didn’t have all his buttons. Probably it was the result of being out in the hot broiling sun all day long. The poor feller was sunstruck. She invited him into the shade of the breezeway while she fetched him a dipper of cold water. If that didn’t help, she would have to make him a tea of jimsonweed leaves.
Eli Willard, while he drank the water, began to wonder if Jacob Ingledew had chosen not only to keep his family at home but also to withhold from them the news of his gubernatoriality. If that were true, then Jacob Ingledew