The brothers stumbled toward the light, nonetheless, and finally found themselves standing in the reeking muck and calling up to the one man who could not have heard them, Deaf Jones, who, in the throes of amoebic distress, proceeded to make their lot slightly more miserable. Nor did a visit to the outhouse by slow-witted Simpy Mathune guarantee expeditious rescue. His report that Deaf Jones had just shat out two full-grown men was angrily dismissed by the grieving villagers as “that same ol’ Simpy Lunacy.”
I don’t know whether to believe Odger or not (thus, the reason for the story’s relegation to these endnotes). Even though he seemed earnest, Odger had previously claimed — just as earnestly — that he had written the pop hit “Volaré” and was sole inventor of the adjustable spud wrench.
10. The Plints and the Blashettes had been residents of Wilkinson County for fifty years. According to Mary Jane Pucci in her An Encapsulated History of Wilkinson County, Arkansas (pamphlet, n.p., n.d.), Wilkinson County, Arkansas (like its sister counties in Georgia and Mississippi) was named for the cowardly, venal and historically discredited General James Wilkinson (1757–1825) who first conspired with Aaron Burr in his acts of treason, then persecuted Burr to save his own neck. In 1979, the county, under pressure from local historians who likened their lot to that of one living in, say, Borgia, Hitler, or Judas County, Arkansas, held a referendum to choose a new name. The highest vote-getter was Tubman, for abolitionist and former slave Harriet Tubman. Some white residents bristled at the idea of having their county named for a black woman, no matter how historically significant. In reaction they created one Billy Tubman, a “local farmer, beloved by all who knew him.” Legend has it that Billy was popular with the local gentry, friendly to a fault, and had a pet pig, also named Billy, who could smoke a pipe. Billy (the man) was fluent in seven languages and once grew a squash that resembled either a boot or the nation of Italy depending on one’s familiarity with footwear and European geography.
11. Nobody came. Jewel Romine in her richly detailed, self-published family history The Blashettes and the Plints: A War of the Roses, Arkansas Style (Pettiville Library Local History Collection) departs from the accepted notion that the lack of attendance at the wedding was due to the family feud that had divided the Blashettes and the Plints for decades (but which had dipped to its nadir the year of Emmaline and Addicus’s nuptials), insisting, instead, that attendees had been directed to the wrong church. She admits, however, that as the families awaited the arrival of the bride and bridegroom at the second chapel, a feud-fueled melee did, in fact, ensue. Ms. Romine describes it in her breathless style:
“The Blashettes fell back against the north wall of the chapel, and the Plints regrouped against the south wall and the minister, a Reverend Aloysius Green, best described as a little man attached to a very large goiter, played the role of conciliator until he was silenced by a hobnail boot to the head, and both parties commenced to flinging hymnals and psalters at one another with the exception of three young female Blashette cousins who sat behind the chancel fence guiltily eating book paste.”
12. The chivaree lasted until dawn.. The serenaders also sang, “A Ribbon in her Hair; A Smile Upon her Lips,” “Sing me a Berceuse, Berenice,” Come Down to the Bandstand, Malinda,” “Roll the Hoop to My Heart.” “Gazebo Gazibo, This Boy’s in Love, Oh,” “I Have Posies; Kiss m’ Nosey!” “How Do I Know? A Little Birdy Told Me So!” “Spoonin’ ’Neath the Willows,” and “Pretty as a Picture (without the Corset Frame)” and, as the night wore on and the singers exhausted their honeymoon repertoire, “Dixie,” “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” and “Cry-baby, Cry (Wipe Your Little Eye; Go Tell Mammy to Give You Some Pie.” Odger Blashette, interview.
13. While Emmaline took in knitting, Addicus became a jack-of-all trades. Seeking to contribute to the nearly empty family coffer, Emmaline also took in wash, baked rhubarb biscuits, scoured out post-office spittoons, sold her own line of shirtwaists, provided lemonade at local temperance meetings, raised rabbits for ladies’ muffs, led calisthenics at the Pettiville School for Orphaned Indian Girls, sold home-boiled lye soap, hired herself out to 450-pound Opal Jamfry to “scratch the unreachable places,” picked apples and pecans, chopped cotton, raced a crippled nag on a bet with the horse’s owner, and read law to young law student Stanley Crew who, although illiterate, entertained dreams of being a Lincolnesque litigator. Jonathan Blashette, Early Memories (unpublished manuscript), JBP.
3 GROWING, GROWING…THEN GONE
1. The fire started in the barn. All sources agree on this fact. They differ, however, on how the fire reached the house. Brett Benningfield in his excellent One Hundred Years of Fires in Wilkinson County, Arkansas; a Pyrogenealogical Guide (Little Rock: Cottontail Press, 1977) writes that cinders from the flaming barn must have been blown to the flammable wooden roof of the farmhouse. Odger insists, however, that the overalls of Blashette’s farmhand Slow Jimjoe McKessick caught fire at about the same time that the hay was ignited by an ill-placed cigarette, and instead of dropping and rolling upon the ground, flaming Jimjoe actually ventured into the kitchen looking for baking soda and immediately ignited a pile of wood-stove-desiccated newspapers stacked by the door, kicked over a bottle of turpentine, its lid left carelessly underscrewed, and knocked off a leaking camp lantern teetering precariously on the edge of the kitchen counter. Miraculously, according to Odger, the dimwitted farmhand not only recovered from his burns, but went on to implication in the Arkansas Queen steamboat wreck of 1895 that claimed the life of Hector Hamlen, the doily magnate.
2. Aunt Renata was not a happy hostess. Renata Goldpaw pulls no punches in her own assessment of those months in which she boarded her temporarily homeless brother and sister-in-law and their three-legged son. In her diary, Renata calls the time spent in the company of her brother’s family “hell, pure unadorned, unadulterated hell.” One entry offers a particularly insightful look at her harsh feelings for young Jonathan in particular.
“Everyone thinks Jonathan’s such an angel. Ye Gods and Little Fishes, ain’t that a rip-snorter! Ask my little Timmy. He reports that when no one is looking, Cousin Jonny kicks him — not once, not twice, but three times! Each with a different leg. Good God and Jesus Pudding, this unbearable situation had better end soon or Timmy will become a nerve-frayed little quiver-boy whom no one will want to look upon and may even throw stones at. I could not bear that! I volunteered to go with Addicus to that farm and help him rebuild the house to speed up their departure, but he declined. This morning Timmy came to me and said that Jonathan had hidden his toy soldiers and had stolen the little sweet I had tucked beneath his pillow for helping Mommy roll the dough for the lattice pie we had last night. This is while everyone else is singing the demon child’s praises. I cannot wait until the evil is removed from this house!”
Apparently Renata never confronted her brother Addicus with these charges. I am certain they were baseless. Little Timmy’s tendency toward mendacity and self-bruising was widely known, even at the time of the Blashette’s stay.
3. A fresh coat of paint was all that was needed now. Odger Blashette, interview.