The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [9]
So went their debate, and both men realized that what they were actually debating was the beginning of their Great Debate: Who has the right to Stay More, the Indian or the white man? although they did not ever say so in other than metaphorical terms. When it came the usual time for Fanshaw to go back to his lady, and Jacob uttered his ritual “Stay more,” Fanshaw replied, “Thank you, I believe I shall,” and he stayed a long time. Jacob gave him a big hunk of stewed venison and took one for himself, and both men washed their meat down with great gulps of the Arkansas sour mash and began for the first time to get drunk together, but kept on with their Great Debate until neither man was sober enough to reason logically, at which point Fanshaw expressed an idea, a peculiar notion the exact motive of which I have never quite been able to determine:
“It is time, old lad, that you experience the one-on-top-together-fastened-between.”
“Huh? How? Who?” stammered Jacob, who if sober would not have been able to utter a sound in response to such a suggestion.
“My lady,” Fanshaw replied.
Jacob was still sober enough to blush, and say, “Aw, shoot. That’d be adultery.”
“What is ‘adultery’?”
“That’s when a feller does the one-on-top business with another feller’s wife.”
“Your people forbid it?”
“Wal, the Bible’s agin it. God punishes adulterers.”
“But you do not believe in God.”
“Yeah, but I dasn’t ask yore woman.”
“No need to ask. Often she has mentioned the thought. I have but to tell her you will.”
Jacob began trembling. “But if she was even to look at me, I dasn’t.”
“If she looks at you, you will not see her. It will be very dark.”
Jacob was in a quandary. He realized that to refuse might be taken by the Indian as an insult. But to do for the first time something he had never done before, even with the nerve of much drink, might require talent which he did not possess.
Fanshaw prompted, “There is much joy in it.”
“I reckon,” Jacob allowed, but he was afraid that if there was so much joy in it he might develop a hankering for it and want to do it again sometime. He remembered the first time he had taken a drink of whiskey. On the other hand, this might be the only opportunity in his life to have a woman without going through all the long bother of courting her and playing games and being embarrassed and finally working up enough nerve to ask her and then even more nerve to keep pursuing her if she turned you down the first time and then the final uncertainty of whether she would even like it or not. “Okay,” Jacob whispered hoarsely.
Fanshaw clapped him on the shoulder. “Good. I will go tell her. She will be much pleased. You will enter our domicile by the west door, her door, and she will be there. There is but one consideration. A delicate matter. I apologize in advance. It must be revealed to you that, to our people, especially to the women, the body of white man has an odor which is…not altogether agreeable. Here is what I suggest. You should first wash in three waters. Wash in rainwater, then in creekwater, then in springwater. After, do not replace your buckskins, which carry the same odor. Come unadorned. She will be waiting.” Fanshaw stood up then and left.
Jacob had one more drink while he built up the fire in his fireplace and hung the kettle there filled with water from his rain-barrel. He found a piece of lye soap. He took off his buckskin jacket and trousers and moccasins, and when the water was hot he finished his drink and wetted the soap and began scrubbing himself with