Arktopia County

Two ways to live on the same square

The county is split the way a good story is split: not by fence lines, but by what a person is willing to notice.

Squarefolk

Content. They use the library as a library. They take the sky for weather. They walk through the cobbled square at opening and do not hunt the mist. By day the library door reads as stained glass in a pale brick civic face — three arched bays, blue double doors, a purple ARKTOPIA COUNTY LIBRARY sign, a glass lantern on the roof. Ordinary townsfolk go in. They do not see the winged goats on the tiles.

Cloverfolk

Seekers. Awake to Blue Mist, myths, legends, hidden histories. They pursue them. After the square empties, the smart critters sneak through town. A cloverfolk night porter greets them at the arch. At night the stained glass becomes a door: stone stacks, ivy, forest-green light, a spiral stair.

Inside the stacks

The library pays its debts

Arktopia County Library is a civic building by day and a door by night. On the walls, in both lights, it keeps the first clerks of these hills — the folklorists who wrote the ridges down before Arktopia had a name for Squarefolk and Cloverfolk.

When you seek beauty, take beauty with you.

There is peace and contentment and fullness of life in the out-of-doors if you know the latitude and the longitude of the heart.

Color and contour mean nothing to the individual whose inner harp has a broken string.

— Otto Ernest Rayburn, Rayburn’s Arcadian Life, A Journal of the Well-Flavored Earth, Volume I, Number 8, July 1934. Framed in the front gallery, opposite the purple sign’s inside face.

July 1934 page from Rayburn’s Arcadian Life: a stone-chimney cabin photograph and the beauty quote, with a note on Arkansas Folklore and the Ozark Folklore Society — What hangs in the gallery — Rayburn, July 1934. Squarefolk read a cabin. Cloverfolk read a map of the heart.

Otto Ernest Rayburn

1891–1960. Writer, magazine man, collector of the well-flavored earth. Ozark Life, then The Arcadian, then Arcadian Life. Vance Randolph said that between 1925 and 1950 Rayburn did more to wake popular interest in Ozark folklore than all the professors put together. The library keeps Volume I, Number 8 where the light from the center arch can find it.

Vance Randolph & Mary Celestia Parler

Randolph (1892–1980) walked the hills and wrote them. First book-length portrait: The Ozarks: An American Survival of Primitive Society (1931; the library keeps the Cochran edition on the gallery shelf). Parler (1904–1981) built the University of Arkansas folklore course and the archive the songs still live in. They helped raise the Ozark Folklore Society (later the Arkansas Folklore Society). Arkansas Folklore, 1950–1958, sits on the same shelf as Rayburn — academic view and kitchen-table view bound in one county.

The wonders they wrote down already live in the Dodecahedron and go in and out at will. The library does not trap them. It names who listened first. Some cloverfolk add: the Night Porter never clocked out.

The Arkatype Farms Bestiary — plates →

Randolph’s Fabulous Monsters — the field ledger →

Cover of The Ozarks: An American Survival of Primitive Society by Vance Randolph, edited by Robert Cochran — On the gallery shelf — Randolph, 1931, the book that made the name. The hillman on the jacket is a subject. The listener is the author.

Young Vance Randolph in a dark suit, high collar, and tie. Shiloh Museum of Ozark History — The listener young — Shiloh Museum of Ozark History.

Vance Randolph in a light fedora with a dark band, cigar in his mouth — The cigar that the night office still requires.

Vance Randolph asleep or listening in a wooden porch chair, mustache, a smoke in his hand — He could sleep anywhere. Springdale kept a register.

Vance Randolph at a field recorder on a porch while a fiddler and a guitarist play — The work: fiddle, guitar, a box that keeps the song.

From town · after the square empties

The Night Porter

Cloverfolk. Keeps the arch at Arktopia County Library. Does not live at the farm. When the cobbles are empty, the stained glass becomes a door, and the smart critters are met on the step.

What the porter is

Keys on the ring. Lantern in the hand. Light fedora with a dark band. Cigar in the mouth — that is a requirement of the office. Forest-green scarf for the light that is not electric. Squarefolk never see this shift; they are home, which is a kindness. Tucker comes in the harness. The brown goat comes with him. Charlotte sits first and is counted. The porter does not collect a ticket. The greeting is the whole job.

Some cloverfolk say he is the same listener who slept at the Southern Hotel in Springdale in 1920 and wrote the hills down. He does not confirm. He lights the cigar and opens the arch. The office is still enough for the sign.

From town · both lights

Arktopia County Investigative Services

Cloverfolk. They work the county, not the hill. Squarefolk file missing gates and weather that will not sit still. Cloverfolk file the same paper and keep a second notebook for what the first one cannot hold.

The office does not advertise Blue Mist. It does not have to. Mr. Jake brings the glass. Mr. Elwood brings the clipboard. Between them the ridge is written twice — once for the courthouse, once for the seekers who already know the square has a night side. After hours they play old blues. The courthouse does not list that on the door. The cloverfolk already know which records come out of which desk.

Mr. Jake

Arktopia County Senior Investigator. Older cloverfolk, built like a barrel that learned to dance. Brown fedora, brown tweed three-piece, gold watch on the chain, a smile that has already seen the odd thing and decided to be kind about it. The magnifying glass is not theater. He uses it on dew, on hoof-prints that stop in open grass, and on letters that arrive already answered. When the square empties he sings the old blues like a man who has lived every verse.

Squarefolk like him because he looks like a man who still believes in a tidy file. Cloverfolk like him because he never pretends the file is the whole hill.

Mr. Elwood

Arktopia County Junior Investigator. Younger cloverfolk, tall as a fence post in a grey suit. Navy tie, beard kept for the courthouse photograph. The clipboard is the second notebook: dates, weather, who saw what, and a quiet line underneath for what the weather will not explain. He takes the other mic when Jake starts a twelve-bar. Deadpan. In time. The tall one keeps the beat the short one spends.

He does not argue with Jake in the square. He argues in the margin. That is how the office stays open in both lights.

After the square empties

The stacks keep a second shift

When the Night Porter has opened the arch and the smart critters are counted, the investigators put the glass and the clipboard down. Black suits. Dark glasses. The old blues. Squarefolk never hear this set. They are home, which is a kindness to the floorboards.

Elwood takes the harmonica. Jake spends the verse. The moon finds the oculus. The courthouse still thinks they only file weather.

Mr. Jake and Mr. Elwood in black suits, hats, and dark glasses under a shaft of light in the library stacks, one singing, one with arms open — Second shift. The stacks are the hall. The spotlight is the only permit they need.

Jake and Elwood dancing under a circular library skylight with a full moon above the stacks — The moon keeps the downbeat through the glass.

Elwood on harmonica in dark glasses, Jake the barrel in motion across the library floor — Elwood holds the line. Jake spends it. Same pair that walked the wedding grass.

A filed case · the tip bag

They are not only courthouse men. After a Baptist wedding on the farm — Goat Maiden in the lace and brown vest, Bramble in the flower crown and the lemonade panniers, Charlotte keeping the aisle — Dolly reached for the cloth bag that held the day’s tips and found air. Jake brought the glass into the tall grass. Elwood checked the benches and the gardens off the clipboard. The guests helped. Charlotte worked the flowerbeds with her nose.

The bag had not fallen. It had hooked on Bramble’s buckle while they walked the toasts. Dolly found it with her own hand when the goat nudged her. The office still writes the case as closed: not stolen, not mist, only a pannier that kept what it was asked to carry.

Dolly’s Moonlit Mystery — ten pages on the Critter Line, written down at Arkatype Farms.

Moonlit search at Arkatype Farms: Mr. Jake stoops with the glass, Mr. Elwood stands with the clipboard and beard, Dolly in the Maiden vest and flower crown holds Bramble, Charlotte sits in the wildflowers under a full moon — Page 6 of the Mystery. Jake on the grass. Elwood — bearded, tall, clipboard — writes the pass. Dolly, Bramble, and Charlotte wait on the clover.

From town · Fridays only

Arktopia County Food Closet

Arthur, Sterling, and Mara work at the Food Closet in town. They do not sleep on the hill. They come with Dolly and Charlotte on Fridays to deliver rescued grocery food, put on the white jackets, and help the field become a dining room. Then they go back to the county.

Arthur

Food Closet · silver tray · the pigs

Older white man. Works at the Arktopia County Food Closet. Comes Friday to deliver, then serves. The polite bow is not an act. “Good evening, Sir Pig,” he says, and means it.

Sterling

Food Closet · the chicken table

Younger white nerd. Works at the Closet; takes inventory like a theorem. On Fridays: golden grains, fresh lettuce, and the question that makes the hens cluck. “A little more corn for the lady?”

Mara

Food Closet · the cats’ table

New girl at the Closet. Black. She understood that cats will sit in little wooden chairs if the plates are small and the fish is honest. Polite guests. She matches them.

Places the farm leans on

Arktopia County Library — mahogany-scented multi-gallery stacks. On the gallery wall: Rayburn’s July 1934 Arcadian Life page, Randolph’s 1931 book, the young suit, the fedora and cigar, the porch chair, the field recorder. Under a floorboard: three time harnesses of aged leather, brass gears, and copper filigree. A peculiar edition of Ishmael with an orange on the cover sits on a table like a key someone forgot on purpose.
Arktopia County Investigative Services — civic office of Mr. Jake (senior) and Mr. Elwood (junior). Cloverfolk. They take the squarefolk reports and keep a second notebook for mist, odd prints, and weather that will not file. They do not live on the farm. Their portrait hangs on this page the way a badge hangs on a wall.
Arktopia-Prime — the other-time city, also called the Great Gear. Copper roofs, clock towers, boilers, airships, a moon that hangs too close.
Willow Pond — on the farm. Morning for the Blacks, afternoon for the Browns, sunset for everyone, per the Schedule.
Arktopia County Food Closet — town workplace of Arthur, Sterling, and Mara. Rescued grocery food that stores cannot sell moves through here. On Fridays a truckload comes out to Arkatype Farms for the Five-Star dinner. The Closet people go home to the county when the jackets come off.
The night square — after closing, critters may pass. The Night Porter, cloverfolk, keeps the arch. Squarefolk are home by then, which is a kindness to both sides. His card lives on this page, not on the hill.

The old word muggle has been retired. It was never quite right for people who simply wanted the library to be a library. Squarefolk are not the enemy. They are the reason the day door looks like glass.