Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05

by The Voice of the Mountain (v1. 1)

  Meanwhile, the food got cooked. He cut the great big hot dodger in two and put a hunk on each of two old plastic plates, and dumped out the sausages for the both of us. I got off the sofa and came and sat on a chair, and you’d purely better believe I tied into those good rations. He set out a glass jar of honey to dab on the dodger and poured mugs of hot coffee as black as midnight and strong as a plow mule, and we sat and ate and drank together like as if we’d known one another all our lives.

  Air bite of that food, air sup of that coffee, did wonders for making me feel more like my own man again. The achy tiredness leaked out of my back, my legs, my eyes.

  When we’d finished our eating, he put out two little glasses and poured some blockade whiskey for us. It was straw-colored and sharp and so good you could bite it right out at the rim of the glass.

  “Now, John,” he said, “you've done told me something about yourself. Maybe it's my turn to tell you about myself.” So he told me about himself, and it was a right interesting tale to hark at.

  2

  He was named Tombs McDonald and, the way he told it, here's how come him to get that name:

  Once, thirty-some-odd years back from where he’d got to be when he told me, a nice old couple named Peter and Sancy McDonald went out to take them a night walk, past an old neglected burying ground on a hill slope, mostly grown up with brush and weeds round the graves. It was a right dark night without more than just a little old scrap of moon in the sky; and as they walked past together, they heard a sad whining and whimpering in there amongst where the graves were. They must have had good sand in their craw, because they went right into that creepy burying ground to see what it was a-making such a noise. And on top of a worn-down grave rock there lay a little baby child, all wrapped up in a ragged quilt, and it was a-crying like that little lost lamb in that song I sung you all.

  Not only were Peter and Sancy McDonald brave folks, they were good-hearted, kindly folks. They fetched that poor crying baby child home to their farm cabin, gave it warm milk for its supper, washed it up clean, fixed it a soft bed in an old basket woven of willow twigs. Next day they inquired all round of their neighbor folks if air soul had lost a child, but nobody had. So they decided, since they’d nair had children of their own, they’d adopt this lost one and raise it up. It was a boy baby, and they named him Tombs because that meant where he’d been found.

  Tombs McDonald allowed to me he'd had the best of a raising up, and a right happy one to boot. His step-folks were just poor farmers, but they were proud ones. They worked hard on their little patch of ground, and they taught Tombs to work, too, but they didn't work him to death. They gave him time to play. His step-daddy was a good carpenter and builder, and he taught Tombs about that. Taught him likewise to plant by the moon and the zodiac signs, how to raise good com and good potatoes and all like that. Taught him what wood to cut for a fishing pole, how to bait for trout, for bass, for other fish. Saw that he got what learning a pretty good little country school could give him. But those old McDonald step-folks were up in years; they died within just a few days of one another when Tombs was about nineteen. He saw them buried and prayed over, and he sold the place they’d inherited to him for a few hundred dollars, and lit out into the world to work for himself.

  He tried at different jobs, on farms and in a couple of towns. He worked in a lumber mill and in a slaughterhouse, he did a hitch in the army, though not overseas and under fire like me. I reckon he did all right at those, but he nair much relished a-taking orders from another man, be it an army colonel or a straw boss somewhere. So at last he came to where he was a-living now, bought himself his chunk of land, and ran him up a cabin on it, with the help of a couple of friends. For food, he raised him some com and vegetables, he hunted wild meat, he caught fish. The reason he picked out that special spot to live was that he could find gold nearby, for what money he needed.

  “Gold?" I repeated him when he said that. “You got yourself a gold mine here? I nair heard the like of that in these parts."

  He grinned me with square teeth in his beard. “Why, John, this here state produced more gold than air other in the Union, right up to the time of the big rush to California. But no, naught to be called a real mine hereabouts. There's a stream off behind my place here that works down from quartzy rocks somewhere. I can wash me out specks of the stuff there, enough if I make a true day of it to get me twenty dollars' worth of it sometimes. I'll show you later."

  The rest of his life story was that he felt well and happy, a-living alone thataway. The books on his mantel were Walden by Thoreau and Robinson Crusoe by Defoe, and one of those big books on building and repairing that teaches you all the way from how to drive a nail to how to build a chimney that will draw. And, naturally, a Bible.

  “Thoreau and old man Crusoe's boy Robinson have taught me a right much about building and farming," he said. “I've read them over and over, so many a time I could near about quote them to you from memory. But how you come on by now, John?"

  “I'm fine," I said, “and I thank you most to death for a-look- ing after me the way you have."

  “Feel up to a-taking a little walk out?"

  “I'd like that, first-class."

  He fetched a basin, another basin than the one I'd washed my face in. This one was made of iron, it was round and shallow. He likewise picked up a rough towel and a little chunk of yellow soap. We went outside, and it felt right good to be on my feet. I had on my boots again, couldn't recollect when I'd put them on.

  “You seem to snap back right quick," said Tombs.

  “Well now," I said, “I always try to keep in the best shape I can, and that little rest I had, and the food and coffee and blockade helped."

  Outside the cabin, I saw that Tombs had good big trees in his yard, pine and oak and hickory. The ground behind was cleared, and he had sheds back yonder. One was a comcrib, another was a smokehouse. And there was a chicken run, with a rooster and a few hens a-picking up com flung there. On behind the sheds, a well-kept vegetable garden. He had turnips, I saw, and squashes, tomatoes, cabbage. And beyond the garden, quite a com patch, and the com a-getting ripe.

  “I always grow enough com for both me and the chickens,'” Tombs said. "I get me a peck of it ground air week for meal. I know right well how to make bread of it. Thoreau’s book taught me some about that.”

  I looked at his smokehouse. “I take it you dry yourself some hams and bacon,” I said, “but I don’t see your hog lot.”

  “I use wild hogs,” said Tombs. “They run in these woods, they feed on fallen acorns and all like that, they get up sometimes to three-four hundred pounds. Autumn time, with frosty days, I take me my gun and go out, hunt one or two of them down, and butcher them. They eat right good—better than just a tame hog as I reckon—but I’ll tell you a true word, they can be mean. You’d better shoot them plumb center, else they’ll get after you, try to kill you. The last one I killed and butchered out looked near about as big as the smokehouse. Likely we’ll have us a slice off a smoked shoulder of his for supper tonight.”

  On the far side of the garden patch and corn rows came the woods, and a trail showed into it. We came along in amongst the trees to the side of a swift-running branch. On the far side grew more trees, steep uphill, but I made out that there was a sort of gap beyond the water.

  “Where does that get to?” I inquired Tombs, but another answer came from over yonder. That long-drawn-out, lonesome call, awooo awooo. The voice of the mountain.

  “That there’s where Cry Mountain is,” said Tombs. “To me, it sounds like as if it says, stay away, stay away. And I stay away. Somehow other, I ain’t got no relish to go there.”

  I changed the subject: “You gave me honey to eat, but I haven’t seen your bee gums.”

  “My bees are wild, too,” he said. “I hunt their trees, cut them down, and fetch their honey home. Sometimes I get enough to wag it to a store and sell it.”

  While we talked he was a-shucking off his
clothes and I did the same. He waded into the stream and soaped himself all over and sat down, beardy chin deep, to wash the suds off. Then he took his iron pan and waded away upstream and scooped mud and gravel and water into the pan and sloshed it back and forth.

  “Sure enough,” he yelled to me. “You can pan day wages out of here if you want to stand up to your tail all day long in this chizzly cold water.”

  1 waded in, too. He’d said the true word, it was cold, but it braced me up to feel it. I soaped and rinsed and got out, then I squatted down to soap and wash out my sweaty shirt and socks and underwear, for I had no other change of clothes. I wrang those things out and spread them on some bushes and sat down in a patch of sun. That felt right good and helped me to dry off. After while, Tombs came to show me what he’d found. The mud was all washed out of the pan and in the bottom, amongst some gravels, clung a few bright yellow specks, bright where the sun touched on them.

  “No great much, you’ll likely tell me,” he said, “but air little bit a man gets, added to what he’s got, makes just a little bit more. Gold is a-getting up in price these days. I’ll fetch along a little poke of dust to Larrowby—that’s the closest settlement. Fetch it there tomorrow.”

  “And I’ll go with you,” I decided.

  “Shoo, John, it’s a good few miles. Do you want to try that after all the climbing and shammocking round you’ve been up to today?”

  “Just let me have a good night’s sleep and I’ll be up to my usual again.”

  I put on just my jeans pants and boots and toted my wet things as we went back to the cabin. As we came in past the garden, I had time to note what a good-built little cabin it was. We hung up my wet clothes in front of the fireplace and built a little blaze to help them dry out. Tombs rummaged out his jug of blockade whiskey and we each one had a fair whet of that. When I allowed one more time that I'd go with him to Lar- rowby, he still wondered me should I walk so far.

  “When I was a soldier, I was in the infantry/' I said. “We'd go long ways on foot. I recollect one time we marched eighteen miles a day, three days in a row, and we fought at the end of that.”

  He sort of gopped at me. “You truly done that? Fought at the end of them three marching days? Did you win the fight?” “Yes, we won, but I don’t enjoy to talk about it, not even to think about it. Tell me something about this Larrowby town we'll be a-going to tomorrow.”

  “Why, as to that, Larrowby ain't rightly to be called a town, it's just a little bitty settlement. It's most part just one family, the Larrowbys. Good folks, the sort of folks I'd wager you'd like. It’s near about the only place I go to, most times. I shop there a little, get my mail there, if there's aught of mail to get. And talk to friends I know.”

  He went on to say that there was a good general store there, and a little church with a preacher, and a doctor, too, and maybe twenty cabins with farming families in them. He made me feel right anxious to go see for my own self. “Just a little bitty settlement,” he said again.

  “No matter how little bitty a settlement is,” I said, “there always seems to be a pretty girl in it, and usually a bad man.” “Can’t rightly speak to a bad man in Larrowby, but there's sure God a pretty girl there,” he said, and deep in his beard he smiled a smile to himself.

  We more or less loafed the rest of that day. Tombs put his specks of gold with some others, into a little small poke of deer leather he'd tanned and sewed himself. For supper we had good soup made of com, with wild greens and some slips of smoked meat from that big wild hog he told me about. I allowed I was a-being too much trouble.

  “Nair bit of trouble, John," Tombs said. “I’m proud to have you. What you think of this smoked meat?"

  “It eats right good," I said. “I noticed your smokehouse sort of stands away from the cabin. Doesn't somebody come now and then and carry some meat off?"

  “Oh, sure," he said. “Somebody hungry, I always figure. If a hungry man came to my door and asked, I’d share what I had with him. With air man who needs it more than I do, and I don’t need it right bad."

  It did me good to hear him talk thataway. “But what can I do for you?" I inquired him.

  “Why don’t you get your guitar and let’s hear some music?"

  So I picked and sang, and he joined in with me. I recollect what some of the songs were, they were “Dream True" and “Curtains of Night" and some verses of “Cripple Creek." Tombs could sing fairly good, sang true at least. He purely loved those old songs, vowed he’d heard them often, had near about forgotten them, and didn’t want to forget them all over again.

  It got dark, and he fetched out a Bear-Paw quilt and an old blue blanket to make me up a bed on his woven-seated sofa. I lay down there and went off to sleep like a groundhog in the winter.

  Maybe I did wake up one time in the night, or halfway woke up. I reckon it must have been that mountain, a-crying out in the dark. At sunup next morning, we had us a breakfast of fried eggs and prime home-smoked bacon and more com dodgers with honey to them. I inquired Tombs if he’d heard that sound in the dark hours.

  “I’ve heard it so much I’m kindly used to it,” he replied me. “I don’t care for it, but I settled here so close because of the gold in that stream out yonder. I hope that ain’t a greedy- sounding thing to say.”

  “No, sir,” I said. “Nothing greedy about you, Tombs.”

  “Well, I don’t pan out more gold than will pay for what I need in cash. All right now, John, we’ll wash up here and take off for Larrowby, if you’ll just let me feed my chickens first.”

  “Go out there and feed them now,” I said, “and let me do the dishes and get my boots on.”

  He went out, and I put on my shirt. It had dried out overnight, only it was all crinkly from washing. I could have used a shave, but I didn’t have me a razor, nor Tombs wouldn’t have one with his beard. I washed up our breakfast dishes and flung the soapy water out, and back came Tombs. We made ready to take off.

  Tombs had filled a croker sack with a peck of shelled com and maybe a quart over, and I hiked it up on my shoulder to wag along with my guitar. He put his little purse of gold in his pants pocket and picked him up a clay jug, half a gallon size, with a stopper cork in it. Outside, it was fine weather, with the sun a-getting from dawn to morning amongst the leafy trees. We left out of Tombs’s front yard and took a sort of trail betwixt oaks and locusts and little clumps of mountain laurels, with pines and hemlocks tall behind them.

  “I’m near about the only human soul uses this here path,” allowed Tombs, “though I reckon there’s animals walks on it.”

  “I reckon the same,” I said, for there were deer tracks in two-three soft, damp places.

  We went a-using along there beside the least trickle of water, hardly enough to be called a branch. The trees went up on ground that rose in slopes both right and left, trees of all sorts a-growing there. And closer in to the sides of the trail, here and there where the sun soaked through, blue dustflowers and specklesy-blooming jewelweed grew in bunches and beds. I can't rightly say for certain how far we went—two miles, maybe three—before we got to a place where the trees had been chopped back from the branch, and there stood a shackly little old shed hogpenned up of logs, for a tub mill. Tombs hollered out "Hello!" and through the open door showed a lanky old miller in a straw hat and dusty big overalls. He hailed Tombs by name.

  "John," said Tombs to me, "shake hands with my friend Chop Temple," and we shook hands together. Chop Temple stared me up and down.

  "I take it you're the John we hear tell about so much," he said. "Silver John, the man with the silver-strung guitar."

  "That's who," I agreed him.

  "And here, Chop," said Tombs, a-hiking the sack of com off my shoulder. "There's a peck in there for you to grind for me, and enough on top of the peck for the toddick to pay you. We'll come back by this evening for it."

  "Sure thing," said Chop Temple, a-taking the sack in his hands. "But before youins go, would John just pick a song on
e time for me to hear?"

  So I tuned my strings here and there, and sang him some of "Old Mountain Dew" that Mr. Bascom Lamar Lunsford made up long ago:

  "They took me to court and I'm here to report It looked like my case was lost,

  But the judge said to me, 'I will set you free If you will pay the cost;

  They call it that old mountain dew,

  And them that refuse it are few,

  You’ve acted the man and I’ll help you if I can,

  Just give me some good old mountain dew.’ ”

  Chop Temple laughed so hard at that, I got to believing what I’d started to suspect; that he had his tub mill out there so far from folks because a right much of his business would be to grind meal and make malt out of sprouted com for blockade distillers. "John,” he said to me, "you act like as if you’d known these here woods since yesterday.”

  "Yesterday was the first day I got into them,” I said.

  Tombs allowed again that we’d come back later for our meal, and we kept on our way. It was maybe another two-three miles along, Tombs stopped on the path.

  "I’ll just leave this here jug,” he said. "I’ll put five dollars in it.”

  "Where you figure on a-leaving it?” I asked.

  "Yonder on the bank there’s a big old tulip poplar with a hole in it, and I know that tree and so likewise does a fellow I trust.”

  "Here,” and I dug down into my pants pocket. "Here’s a five-dollar bill, let me pay the price.”