The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [95]
“Howdy. Whar at is yore post office?”
The only office Isaac had ever heard tell on was his father Jacob’s office, where the ex-governor claimed he was writing his memoirs, but was not. Isaac remained silent, but at length got up from the ground, dusted himself off, and looked down at the little rider. “What’s a post office?” he said.
“Whar at do you’uns git yore mail?”
Near ’bout ever farmer in Stay More valley had one or more males around the place, if this feller was referrin to topcows, but since he was ridin a stallion there weren’t no sense in his lookin fer a cow-critter male. Isaac remained silent.
The stranger turned to his saddlebags, opened them, and drew out a small card, which he offered to Isaac. “This here postcard is addressed to ‘The Good People of Stay More, Arkansas.’ I reckon this here is Stay More, aint it?”
Isaac nodded.
“Then take it,” the stranger requested, and Isaac took it. Thus, in the beginning of the Decade of Light, in, coincidentally, the same year postcards were invented, Stay More became a post office.
The stranger turned his horse and prepared to ride off, but paused. He stared at Isaac for a moment and then asked, “Jist out of curiosity, what war you a-laying thar on the ground fer, when I rid up?”
Isaac studied the postcard, which he could not read, then gave the stranger a look that was not exactly hostile, but not cordial either. “Layin low fer moles,” he answered, and the rider stared at him for only an instant longer before spurring his horse and riding off. Isaac decided to deliver the postcard to his father, who could read it. His father’s house was only half as far as it used to be, and Isaac reached it in half the time. His father too, he discovered, was shrunk to half his size, sitting in his tiny office pretending to write his half-baked memoirs. Isaac gave him the little card. Jacob took the card and read both sides of it, was at first puzzled, then chuckled.
“It’s from ole Eli Willard,” Jacob told his son. “He must’ve got so all-fired rich sellin his whale oil that he’s done took off for a tour of the world. Sent this’un here from some’ers called ‘Stone-hinge,’ in Old England, clear across the sea. Says, ‘Having marvelous time. Wish you were here. Onward to London t’morrow. My fondest regards to all of you. Eli Willard.’” Jacob chuckled again, and observed, “Right thoughty of him, weren’t it?” He poked the postcard into a pigeonhole of his desk, and resumed pretending to write his memoirs, not noticing, or not commenting upon, the fact that his son Isaac positively reeked of Seth Chism’s aqua vitae. Isaac left, vaguely troubled with the thought that Eli Willard was expanding the world that Isaac was trying to contract. For several years following, throughout the Decade of Light, postcards kept coming from Eli Willard in Paris, Geneva, Venice, Rome, Naples, Athens, Istanbul, Sevastopol, Tehran, Bombay, Rangoon, Singapore, Shanghai, Osaka, Honolulu, and, the last one, San Francisco.
Every day, Isaac drank half a jug of corn whiskey to keep the world to half its size, but nobody seemed to notice that he was constantly half seas o’er, not even his better half, Salina, who, however, continued not to climb him. Seth Chism raised his price to half a dollar a jug, but this did not strain Isaac’s finances, because he continued to run his mill, half for corn, half for wheat, troubled only by having to double each measure to get it right, and vaguely troubled by postcards that came from halfway around the world. Stay More was officially declared a United States Post Office, and the postmastership was appointed to Isaac’s younger brother, Christopher Columbus “Lum” Ingledew, who, however, like everybody else except Jacob and his ladyfriend, could neither read nor write, a considerable handicap for a postmaster. It was decided to start a school, the first since Jacob’s little academy of many years previous, and everybody pitched in to build the schoolhouse, which we shall examine in the next chapter. Jacob declined the schoolmastership on the grounds of being past