With Read online

  Praise for Donald Harington’s With

  “With is among the best of many fine novels produced by Harington, and may be, for all its expansive humanity, his finest yet…. With, in short, is a novel about everything that matters…. If any more life-affirming, more surprising, more beautifully written novel has been published in recent years, I've missed it. Don’t you, fellow readers, miss this one.”

  The Boston Globe

  “With is a joy to read…as whimsical as a paper-doll show while being deeply rooted in the earth; it gives the Garden of Eden myth a happy ending, and should find the wide readership that Harington so richly deserves.”

  The Washington Post

  “A sweet, lightly erotic fable about coming of age, real love and the gravitational force exerted by a sense of place…surprising, puckish, poignant…a fictive crazy quilt that accomplishes many things, none of which will leave its readers on steady ground.”

  Time Out New York

  “Transforming a kidnapping plot into an epic rural fable and then a touchingly poignant love story, Harington crafts a wildly imaginative tour de force…this powerful effort should further enhance his reputation as one of the great undiscovered novelists of our time.” Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “It’s sexy, funny, and reaches a splendid crescendo as Robin grows into the full power of her womanhood, becoming both an Eve conceived in innocence but elevated beyond it to knowledge, and the crucial element in what can only be called a creation myth. A key work in Harington’s one-of-a-kind oeuvre.”

  Kirkus, starred review

  “Imagine if Larry McMurtry somehow teamed with Laura Ingalls Wilder to craft a postmodern, magical realist fable that dropped her frontier homestead on the outskirts of his modern-day Thalia. That’'s the neat trick Harington pulls off with this richly imagined, lovingly rendered exploration of the unintended consequences of human—and animal—desire.”

  Booklist starred review

  “…a marvelous story of improbable growth, heroic resolve, and life-giving love. With is still a Harington novel—which is to say a work of sprightly, delightful humor. But With mixes the light with the very dark…With conjures a magic that is exceptional even for Harington.”

  Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

  “Arkansas novelist Donald Harington has tilled his corner of the Ozarks for nearly 40 years, and the soil shows no signs of exhaustion. His yarns defy classification—one reason you haven’t seen them on a rack at your neighborhood supermarket. They combine old-fashioned, down home storytelling with postmodern, Nabokovian trickery…one of America’s rarer literary sensibilities.”

  LA Times

  “A beautiful and terrifying story of self-reliance and flowering self-discovery…. Always a treat, Mr. Harington’s novels are stylistically inventive, warm and funny. Capturing the best in “Arkansas Traveler” mountain wit, with a depth rarely matched in modern fiction, Mr. Harington’s novels are not to be missed.”

  Ghoti Magazine

  “…With is many things: a crime story, a love story and a ghost story. It is a tale of survival and a homage to the natural world. It is a literary tour de force that takes readers on a wild ride—emphasis on the wild. With starts out like Lolita, then detours through Swiss Family Robinson before allowing its Odysseus to get back home to his true love. It sounds wacky and it is, but here’s the thing, here’s the marvelous thing: It works…. This is a clever, sensual, empathetic and, above all, moving book, and it should have lots of readers.”

  The News & Observer

  “Don Harington plumbs the resources of the novel form, from grammar and syntax—pronouns, verb tenses—to topics such as the missing father and genres such as animal fable, ghost story and Biblical myth…a rare entertainment…he is among our most daring Makers.”

  The Providence Journal

  “Harington makes the novel more and more formally playful by revealing deeper and deeper layers to the story and its narrator…burying ideas deep in the tale and only revealing them slowly and gradually, a story as striptease. As a result, the final hundred pages are as finely imagined and gorgeously whimsical as anything you’re likely to read this year.”

  Book Reporter.com

  “The Arkansas novelist takes us to an imaginative place where we care deeply about each personality. And the ending, oh my, the ending. Suspense story. Love story. Ghost story. Coming-of-age story. Take your pick. Each one accurately describes this Ozarkian world you’ll love to inhabit.”

  Southern Living

  “If you aren't considered America's greatest novelist, there's a certain cachet to being known as ‘America's greatest unknown novelist.’ A number of contemporaries, colleagues and critics have put Donald Harington on that unknown throne—and he is certainly a legitimate pretender and contender…in With, we return to Stay More for a tale that may be the author’s most magical, mystical tour.”

  The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “…if readers give themselves to this demanding, suspenseful and joyful novel, it will thrive in their hearts and imaginations. The success of With depends not only on readers’ willingness to go along with Harington on this perilous, inevitable, lovely journey, but on the exuberantly homely, humble and poetic Ozark language with which he fills the book. For almost 500 pages, this irresistible tide of unique talk and narration individualized for humans and animals, sweeps you along.”

  The Memphis Commercial Appeal

  “…will surprise and delight you…. Harington’s writing is at once playful and serious, tender, sexy, tragic, brutal and redemptive…. He never falters, and you never doubt him for a second.”

  Bookpage

  With

  By the Author

  The Cherry Pit (1965)

  Lightning Bug (1970)

  Some Other Place. The Right Place. (1972)

  The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks (1975)

  Let Us Build Us a City (1986)

  The Cockroaches of Stay More (1989)

  The Choiring of the Trees (1991)

  Ekaterina (1993)

  Butterfly Weed (1996)

  When Angels Rest (1998)

  Thirteen Albatrosses (or, Falling off the Mountain) (2002)

  With (2004)

  The Pitcher Shower (2005)

  Farther Along (2008)

  Enduring (2009)

  Donald Harington

  With

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2003 Donald Harington

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by AmazonEncore

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN: 978-1-61218-902-4

  For Brian Walter

  and Lynnea Brumbaugh-Walter

  who believed

  Contents

  Part One: Parted with

  Chapter one

  Chapter two

  Chapter three

  Chapter four

  Chapter five

  Chapter six

  Chapter seven

  Chapter eight

  Chapter nine

  Chapter ten

  Part Two: Sleeping with

  Chapter eleven

  Chapter twelve

  Chapter thirteen

  Chapter fourteen

  Chapter fifteen

  Chapter sixteen

  Chapter seventeen

  Chapter eighteen

  Chapter nineteen


  Chapter twenty

  Part Three: Without

  Chapter twenty-one

  Chapter twenty-two

  Chapter twenty-three

  Chapter twenty-four

  Chapter twenty-five

  Chapter twenty-six

  Chapter twenty-seven

  Chapter twenty-eight

  Chapter twenty-nine

  Chapter thirty

  Part Four: Within

  Chapter thirty-one

  Chapter thirty-two

  Chapter thirty-three

  Chapter thirty-four

  Chapter thirty-five

  Chapter thirty-six

  Chapter thirty-seven

  Chapter thirty-eight

  Chapter thirty-nine

  Chapter forty

  Part Five: Whither with her

  Chapter forty-one

  Chapter forty-two

  Chapter forty-three

  Chapter forty-four

  Chapter forty-five

  Chapter forty-six

  Chapter forty-seven

  Chapter forty-eight

  Chapter forty-nine

  Chapter fifty

  About the Author

  Part One:

  Parted with

  Chapter one

  She tried to run away. You’re not supposed to do that, it’s a blow to the whole idea of devotion, and she ran away not because she lost even a smidgin of the true blue faith that bound her to him forever but simply because she began to believe that he might do her greater harm than he already had, might even do away with her.

  She had been bad. He had told her to watch the truck, to stay with the truck, to guard the damn truck, and she had done her best, patient as only she knew how to be patient, as he had gone away with his arms full with a box and then had come back by and by and had taken another box and disappeared once again and then kept on doing that, box after box, and she had yearned to go with him, the late afternoon had been coming on, and he had been gone such a long, long time, and she had convinced herself that there was nobody else around, nobody was going to bother the stuff left in the truck, she couldn’t catch the faintest wind of any person anywhere for miles, and therefore what harm could it be if she just explored a little bit, not going far from the truck, keeping it always within range, and keeping a closer guard for the first sign of his return? But a deer with two fawns had come into view and she had been thrilled to pieces, especially by the fawns, so cute and innocent and curious, and before she had realized what she was doing, she had followed them off into the woods for a considerable distance before she had realized that she had completely lost touch with the truck.

  And when she had returned, he had been there, and he had been furious. The very tone of his voice had hacked and slashed her, and then he had taken a stick and had beaten her with it. She had protested and whined but he had kept on beating her until she could hardly stand up. Then he had told her to get back onto the truck and stay there and not even think about leaving it again. He had taken another box and gone away once more, and she had lain in the truckbed among the few remaining boxes and had inspected some places on her ribs and her legs where he had actually drawn blood. She had been very sad. She had understood why he had beaten her, and she was terribly ashamed for having disobeyed him and abandoned the truck, and she had been miserable in her guilt and in her unhappiness.

  The next day he had done the same thing, going into a town to a store and loading up the truck and driving it back and up, up the mountain road so rough and bouncy she was nearly thrown out of the truckbed, more than once, and then making her stay with the truck all afternoon while he unloaded it, box by box, sack by sack. And the next day, the same. And the next.

  Now she thought and thought about the whole situation, and felt a nagging wonder about the possibility that somebody else might be a lot nicer to her than he was. Mostly he was good to her, but ever since he had taken her away from her mother he had not shown her much affection or even much attention, except when he had needed her for something. He had provided a good home for her, and had fed her well, and she had liked the place a lot, but now it appeared that he was getting ready to move, and she didn’t think she wanted to move. Why else would he be toting all those boxes and sacks up here to the different place? Once or twice (or was it three times?) in the beginning he had allowed her to walk with him to the different place and look it over. The truck could not get to it, or even near it, and she managed to understand why. The road ended at a deep gully where rains had washed the road away. And even if the road had not been washed away there, the road later fell to pieces all over the place, and they had to go down into deep ravines, so steep she sometimes slipped if she didn’t watch her footing, and very hard to climb out of, and once they climbed out of it they were on a very narrow bluff ledge that scared her with its height and danger. She tried to picture him alone with his arms full of those boxes and bags trying to climb down into those ravines and then back up out of them and across that awful bluff ledge, and she could almost understand why he would be in such a bad mood that he would beat her unmercifully. Then after trekking up and down through all that rough rocky land and across that bluff ledge and into the deep dark forest again, the road, or path, what barely remained visible of it, climbed sharply and trickled out for good, rising to an old homestead in a bramble-clogged meadow on the very top of the mountain. She had been stunned by her first view of the old house, and of the house’s view of distant miles of mountains. She could tell that nobody had been up there for a long, long time. It was in her nature to search, upon first seeing any strange house, for signs that might betray any information about the inhabitants. But there was no information whatsoever there. After he had taken her inside the house and she got a whiff of the interior, she began to sort through a cluster of old stale smells, not one of which was familiar to her, except that of rodents. Clearly whoever had lived here had departed ages ago.

  Behind the house, near an orchard that was swallowed up in brush and briars, were the remains of an old barn, and there she could detect the fact, barely, that it had once been inhabited by a cow and a pair of mules. There was the rodent smell again. Another building, smaller than the barn, but unlike it not in danger of collapse, was just an open shed with benches along its walls and an assortment of round wooden drums or casks unlike any in her acquaintance. There was one other tiny little building by itself between the barn and the house, its door ajar, and inside she saw a bench-like seat that had two large holes cut in it. There was a distinct odor of fresh poop overlying an assortment of ancient poop-smells, and she assumed that he had been using this little building to do his business.

  A few of the small things which he had already moved into this place had come from his house, and thus she managed to understand that he was indeed planning to transfer the contents of that house, her home, to this place. She didn’t like it. Or did she? Strangeness, unfamiliarity in any form disturbed her at the same time that it piqued her curiosity. She was adaptable and could easily learn to enjoy life here, if that was what he wanted. But why did he want it?

  Why was he going to take her away from her home and move her into this strange, stranded dwelling-place? So many times already he had taken the truck, empty, to huge stores in big towns, where he had loaded it up and brought it up here and slowly unloaded it, a box or a bag at a time, and carried it to the remote house. Maybe he just liked all the exercise. But why did she have to stay with the truck? In the beginning it had been fun to watch but now it was old and dull and she was tired of it. And she had no idea how much longer it would go on. He had been mean to beat her so cruelly. She began to think seriously about the startling idea of running away. First she had to think seriously about where she would go if she did run away, and to consider what her chances would be of an alternative existence elsewhere. Then she had to make a mental list of all the things she didn’t like about him.

  What he called her, for instance. Bitch. On the surface, there
was nothing wrong with that, because that’s what she was, but it was such a neutral name, no affection in it, and the way he said it sometimes made it sound like he was cursing her. She had a perfectly nice name, Hreapha, and it was a great pity that he would not call her that. Probably he just couldn’t pronounce it properly. It was a name that she liked to declaim to the entire world, enthusiastically or warningly, depending on the occasion. “Hreapha! Hreapha!” she often declared. It was what she told him whenever he returned to her after one of his foot-trips to carry boxes to the old house, but when she’d said “Hreapha” after his return the time she’d gone to watch the deer and fawns she had meant for the sound of it to carry abject apology, and yet he had beaten her viciously anyway.