"Hope my truck'll wallow up that muddy road to town," he said. "Who can I carry with me?"
"I got my mule," added the farmer. "I'll follow along and snake you out when you get stuck in one of them mud holes. John, you better ride with me, you and Mr. Jay."
I shook my head. "I'm not going to town, thank you kindly. I'm going down that valley trail. Swore to an old friend I'd be at his family reunion, up in the hills on the yonder side, by supper tune tomorrow."
Mr. Jay said he'd be going that way, too. The storekeeper offered to let us sleep in his feed shed, but I said I'd better start. "Coming, sir?" I asked old Mr. Jay.
"After while," he told me, so I went on alone. Three minutes down trail between those wet dark trees, and the lantern light under the porch was gone as if it had never shone.
Gentlemen, it was lonesome dark and damp going. I felt my muddy way along, with my brogan shoes squashy-full of water. And yet, sometimes, it wasn't as lonesome as you might call for. There were soft noises, like whispers or crawlings; and once there was a howl, not too far away, like a dog, or a man trying to sound like a dog, or maybe the neither of them. For my own comfort I began to pick the guitar and sing to myself; but the wrong tune had come unbidden:
In the pines, in the pines,
Where the sun never shines,
And I shiver where the wind blows cold! . . .
I stopped when I got that far, it was too much the truth. And it came on to rain again.
I hauled off my old coat to wrap my guitar from it. Not much to see ahead, but I knew I kept going down slope and down slope, and no way of telling how far down it went before it would start up to go to the hills where my friend's kinfolks would gather tomorrow. I told myself I was a gone gump not to stay at the store, the way I was so kindly bid. I hoped that that old Mr. Jay had the sense to stay under cover. But it was too far to go back. And I'd better find some place out of the wet, for my guitar more than me.
Must have been a bend to that trail, because I came all at once in view of the light in the cabin's glass window, before I notioned there was any living place around. The light looked warm yellow through the rain, and I hastened my wet feet. Close enough in, I could judge it was an old-made log house, the corners notch-locked and the logs clay-chinked, and the wide eaves with thick-split shakes on them, but I couldn't really see. "Hello, the house!" I yelled out.
No sound back. Maybe the rain was keeping them from hearing me. I felt my way to the flat door-stone and knocked. No stir inside.
Groping for a knob, I found none, only a leather latch string, old style. And, old style, it was out. In my grandsire's day, a latch string out meant come in. I pulled, and a wooden latch lifted inside and the door swung in before me.
The room was lit from a fireplace full of red coals, and from a candle stuck on a dish on a table middleway of the puncheon floor. That table took my eye as I stepped in. A cloth on it, and a plate of old white china with knife and fork at the sides, and a cup and saucer, yes and a folded napkin. But no food on the table, no coffee in the cup. A chair was set to the plate, and behind the chair, her hands crossed on its back, stood a woman, young and tall and proud-standing.
She didn't move. Nothing moved, except the candle flame in the stir of air from the open door. She might have been cut from wood and put up there to fool folks. I closed the door against the hard drum of the rain, and tracked wet marks on the puncheons as I came toward the table. I took off my old hat, and the water fell from it.
"Good evening, ma'am," I said.
Then her dark eyes moved in her pale face, her sweet, firm-jawed face. Her short, sad mouth opened, slow and shaky.
"You're not—" she started to mumble, half to herself. "I didn't mean—"
There was a copper light moving in her hair as she bent her head and looked down into the empty plate, and then I remembered that talk under the store porch.
"Dumb supper," I said. "I'm right sorry. The ram drove me in here. I reckon this is the only house around, and when nobody answered I walked in. I didn't mean to bother you."
And I couldn't help but look at how she'd set the dumb supper out. Knowing how such things weren't done any more, and hearing that very thing said that night, I was wondered to find it. Through my mind kept running how some scholar-men say it's a way of doing that came over from the Old Country, where dumb suppers were set clear back to the beginning of time. Things that old don't die easy after all, I reckoned.
"He'll stih1 come and sit down," she said to me in her soft voice, like a low-playing flute heard far off. "I've called him and he'll come."
I hung my wet coat by the fireplace, and she saw my guitar.
"Sing to help guide him," she said to me.
I looked at her, so proudly tall behind the chair. She wore a long green dress, and her eyes were darker than her copper hair, that was all in curly ringlets.
"Sing" she said again. "Tole him here."
I felt like doing whatever she told me. I swung the guitar in front of me, and began the song I'd given them at the store:
Oh, call me sweetheart, call me dear, Call me what you will, Call me from the valley low, Call me from the hill I hear you as the turtle dove That flies from bough to bough, And as she softly calls her mate, You call me softly now. . . .
One long hand waved me to stop, and I stopped with the silver strings still whispering to both of us. I felt my ears close up tight, the way they feel when you've climbed high, high on a mountain top.
"There's a power working here," I said.
"Yes," she barely made herself heard.
The fire, that had been just coals, found something to blaze up on. Smoke rose dark above the bright flames. The rain outside came barreling down, and there was a rising wind, too, with a whoop and shove to it that made the lock-joints of the cabin's logs creak.
"Sounds like old Forney Meechum's hard at work," I tried to make half a joke, but she didn't take it as such. Her dark-bright eyes lifted their lids to widen, and her hands, on the chair back again, took hold hard.
"Forney doesn't want me to do this," she told me, as if it was my ordinary business.
"He's dead," I reminded her, like to a child.
"No," she shook her copper head. "He's not dead, not all of him. And not all of me, either."
I wondered what she meant, and I stepped away from the fire that was burning bright and hot.
"Are you a Meechum or a Donovant?" I asked.
"A Meechum," she told me. "But my true love's a Donovant."
"Like Lute Meechum and Jeremiah Donovant?"
"You know about that." Her hands trembled a mite, for all they held so hard to the chair. "Who are you?"
"My name's John." I touched the strings to make them whisper again. "Yes, I know the tale about the feud. Old Forney Meechum, who could witch down the rani, said Lute Meechum mustn't have Jeremiah—"
"He's here!" she cried out, with all her loud voice at last.
The wind shook the cabin like a dice-box. The shakes on the roof must have ruffled worse than a hen's feathers. Up jumped the fire, and out winked the candle.
Jumpy myself, I was back against the logs of the wall, my free hand on a shelf-plank that was wedged there. The rain had wetted the clay chinking soft between the logs, and a muddy trickle fell on my fingers. I was watching the fire, and its dirty gray smoke stirred and swelled, and a fat-looking puff of it came crawling out like a live thing.
The smoke stayed in one bunch. It hung there, a sort of egg-shaped chunk of it, hanging above the stones of the hearth. I think the girl must have half fallen, then caught herself; for I heard the legs of the chair scrape on the puncheons. The smoke molded itself, in what light I could make out, and looked solid and shapy, as tall as me but thicker, and two streamy coils waving out in the air like arms.
"Don't!" the girl was begging something. "Don't let him—"
On that shelf at my hand stood a dish and an empty old bottle, the kind of bottle the old glassmakers blew a hun
dred years ago. I took up the dish in my right fist. I saw that smoke-shape drifting sort of slow and greedy, clear from the hearth, and between those two wavy streamy arm-coils rose up a lumpy thing like a head. There was enough firelight to see that this smoke was thicker than just smoke; it must have soot and ash-dust in it, solid enough to choke you. And in that lumpy head hung two dull sparks, for the eyes.
Gentlemen, more about it than that you'd not care to have me tell you.
I flung the dish, and it went singing through the room and it went straight for where I threw, but it didn't stop. It sailed right on past and into the fireplace, and I heard it smash to pieces on the stones. Where it had hit the smoke-shape, there showed a notchy hole all the way through, where the cheek would be on a living creature. And whatever it was I'd thrown at, it never stopped its slow drift over toward the table, gray and thick and horrible. And in the chimney the wind stomped up and down, like a dasher in a churn.
"No," the girl wailed again, and moved back, dragging the chair along with her.
Then at once I saw what was in whatever that thing had for a mind, and I ran at the table too, passing so close to one of the smoke-streamers that the wind I made fluttered it like a rag. Just as it slid in toward the chair, bending to sit down, I slapped my guitar across the seat with the silver strings up.
I'd figured right. It couldn't touch the silver, being an evil haunt. It moved behind the table, and its sparks flickered at us both. I felt a creeping hot smelly sense, like duty smoke. It made me feel sick and shake-legged, but I made my eyes look back at those two glaring sparks.
"Are you Forney Meechum?" I asked at it. "Want to sit down at this dumb supper? Think it was laid out for you?"
It swayed back and forth, like a tree-branch, and outside the rain fell in its bucketfuls.
I moved quick around the table, with the guitar held toward it. I'd thought it moved slow, but it was across the room to the other side the way a shadow flings itself when you move the lamp. I ran after it, quick, and got to the door first.
"Not out this way," I yelled at it, and jabbed a finger into wet clay chinking between logs. I quick marked a cross on the inside of the door planks. Then the Forney Meechum thing was sliding at the window.
"Not that way, either!" I shooed it back with the guitar, and sketched a cross on the glass pane. Then the waving arm-streaks and the lumpy cloud of head and body were sliding back toward the table.
"Light that candle!" I hollered to the girl. "Light it!"
She heard, and she grabbed the candle up from the table. She ran across the floor, the cloud hovering after her, and then she was down on one knee, shoving the candle into the fireplace, and that quick it lighted up.
And there wasn't any smoke-shape anywhere in the room we now eaw plain.
"Where did he go?" she asked me.
I looked around to see. He hadn't left by the door or the window, for I'd made my crosses there.
"He ran," I said. "Ran before us like a scared-out coward."
"But he was strong—" she started to say.
"He was bad," I put in, not very mannerly. "Badness thinks it's strong, but it's scared—of lights and crosses, and silver."
Taking my guitar, I picked at the silver strings, and in the music I made I walked around the room, and around again, looking. For what was left of Forney Meechum must be somewhere, hiding. And we'd better find out where he hid, or he might be out at us again when we weren't ready.
I glanced in the corners, up in the rafters. Then at the shelf. Then I glanced at the shelf twice.
The old bottle that stood there, it was dark-looking, like muddy water. Or like muddy water, and in the muddy water maybe a hiding thing, like what can hide in such a place; a snake or a worse thing than a snake, waiting its time.
I didn't want her to see then, so I made up something quick.
"Look over in the corner yonder," I said to her. "Take the candle."
She moved to look, and I moved to follow her. Close against a wall, I scooped a lump of clay from the chinking, a wet gob as big as my thumb. I was within a long reach of the shelf.
"The corner," I said, pointing.
And, quick as I could make it, I jammed that clay down on top of the open bottle neck and shoved it in like a cork.
"What—" she began to say.
I picked up the bottle. It felt warm and tingly. In the candlelight we could see the thick dark boiling cloud inside, stirring and spinning and fighting every which-away, with no way out. I took the candle and dripped wax on the clay, and in the wax I marked a cross with my thumb nail.
"Remember the Arabian Nights book?" I asked.
She shook her head. "No. It's foreign, isn't it?"
"Has a thousand and one stories," I said, "and one of them tells how a haunt was tricked in a bottle like this and sealed away forever. Forney Meechum's safe in there."
She moved with the candle and put it on the table. She pushed the chair back into place and stood behind it in her green dress, straight and tall and proud, the way I'd first seen her.
"Now he can come," she said to me, very sure. "Jeremiah."
"Jeremiah Donovant?" I bubbled out.
"Who else?" she asked. "He's coming back to me, after all these years. I felt him coming."
"Then—" I said, but I didn't have to say it. I knew who she was by now.
"I told you I wasn't all dead," reminded Lute Meechum. "Forney shot me in the heart and flung me in a grave, but I couldn't all die. I just lay there till I knew Jeremiah was heading back here for me."
I got my coat from beside the fireplace. It felt funny to be in that cabin, with one haunt inside the bottle and one standing behind the chair.
"Thank you for everything, John," she said, old-folksy mannerly. "Thank you kindly. You can go now, it's all right."
The door squeaked open.
In out of the night came one of the wettest people you ever could call for. His shoulders and pant legs were soaked, water dripped from his white hair and his old man's chin.
"Mr. Jay," I greeted him.
"Jeremiah," Lute Meecham greeted him.
He walked across, paying me no mind. "I had to come," he said to her, and the candle went out again.
But I could see him sink down in the chair, and the light from the fireplace made his face look all of a sudden not old any more.
He put up his face, and she put hers down. He went all slack and limp. Restful.
I was outside, with the bottle and guitar. There was nary cloud in the sky, and the moon shone down like a ball of white fire.
The cabin was dark inside now, and I could see by the moon that it was a ruined wreck. The roof fallen in, the window broken, the logs rotten—you'd swear nobody had set foot there for fifty years back. But inside, Jeremiah Donovant and Lute Meechum were together at last, and peaceful. So peaceful most folks would think they were dead and gone.
On along the trail that was now so clear, I found a tree that looked hollow. Down in its dark inside I put the bottle, and left it there.
It seemed to me I ought to be shaky and scared, but I wasn't. I felt right good. That dumb supper, now—the way I'd heard it said, sometimes a dumb supper calls up things that oughtn't be there; but now I'd seen a dead haunt, setting a dumb supper to tole a living man to her. And it wasn't bad. It wasn't wrong. They were happy about it, I knew that.
Walking in the bright moonlight, I began to strum my guitar, and, gentlemen, the song I sang is really an old song:
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers and fading seen— Duty, faith, love, are roots and ever green. . . .
The Little Black Train
I here in the High Fork country, with peaks saw-toothing into the sky and hollows diving away down and trees thicketed every which way, you'd think human foot had never stepped. Walking the trail between high pines, I touched my guitar's silver strings for company of the sound. But then a man squandered into sight around a bend— young-like, red-faced, baldy-headed. Gentlemen, h
e was as drunk as a hoot. I gave him good evening.
"Can you play that thing?" he gobbled at me and, second grab of his shaky hand, he got hold of my hickory shirt sleeve. "Come to the party, friend. Our fiddle band, last moment, they got scared out. We got just only a mouth-harp to play for us."
"What way was the fiddle band scared?" I asked him to tell.
"Party's at Miss Donie Carawan's," he said, without replying me. "Bobbycue pig and chicken, bar'l of good stump-hole whisky."
"Listen," I said, "ever hear tell of the man invited a stranger fiddler, he turned out to be Satan?"
"Shoo," he snickered, "Satan plays the fiddle, you play the guitar, I don't pay your guitar no worry. What's your name, friend?"
"John. What's yours?"
But he'd started up a narrow, grown-over, snaky-turny path you'd not notice. I reckoned the party'd be at a house, where I could sleep the night that was coming, so I followed. He nearly fell back top of me, he was so stone drunk, but we got to a notch on the ridge, and the far side was a valley of trees, dark and secret looking. Going down, I began to hear loud laughing talk. Finally we reached a yard at the bottom. There was a house there, and it looked like enough men and women to swing a primary election.
They whooped at us, so loud it rang my ears. The drunk man waved both his hands. "This here's my friend John," he bawled out, "and he's a-going to play us some music!"
They whooped louder at that, and easiest thing for me to do was start picking "Hell Broke Loose in Georgia"; and, gentlemen, right away they danced up a storm.
Wild-hike, they whipped and whirled. Most of them were young folks dressed their best. One side, a great big man called the dance, but you couldn't much hear him, everybody laughed and hollered so loud. It got in my mind that children laugh and yell thataway, passing an old burying-ground where ghosts could be. It was the way they might be trying to dance down the nervouses; I jumped myself, between picks, when something started moaning beside me. But it was just a middling-old fellow with a thin face, playing his mouth-harp along with my guitar.
Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC Page 8
