Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC

by John the Balladeer (v1. 1)

  I looked to the house—it was new and wide and solid, with whitewashed clay chinking between the squared logs of it. Through a dogtrot from front to back I saw clear down valley, west to where the sunball dropped red toward a far string of mountains. The valley-bottom's trees were spaced out with a kind of path or road, the whole length. The house windows began to light up as I played. Somebody was putting a match to lamps, against the night's fall.

  End of the tune, everybody clapped me loud and long. "More! More!" they hollered, bunched among the yard trees, still fighting their nervouses.

  "Friends," I managed to be heard, "let me make my manners to the one who's giving this party."

  "In, Miss Donie!" yelled out the drunk man. "Come meet John!"

  From the house she walked through the crowded-around folks, stepping so proud she looked taller than she was. A right much stripy skirt swished to her high heels; but she hadn't such a much dress above, and none at all on her round arms and shoulders. The butter yellow of her hair must have come from a bottle, and the doll pink of her face from a box. She smiled up to me, and her perfume tingled my nose. Behind her followed that big dance-caller, with his dead black hair and wide teeth, and his heavy hands swinging like balance weights.

  "Glad you came, John," she said, deep in her round throat.

  I looked at her robin-egg blue eyes and her butter hair and her red mouth and her bare pink shoulders. She was maybe 35, maybe 40, maybe more and not looking it. "Proud to be here," I said, my politest. "Is this a birthday, Miss Donie Carawan?"

  Folks fell quiet, swapping looks. An open cooking fire blazed up as the night sneaked in. Donie Carawan laughed deep.

  "Birthday of a curse," and she widened her blue eyes. "End of the curse, too, I reckon. All tonight."

  Some mouths came open, but didn't let words out. I reckoned that whatever had scared out the fiddle band was nothing usual. She held out a slim hand, with green-stoned rings on it.

  "Come eat and drink, John," she bade me.

  "Thanks," I said, for I hadn't eaten ary mouthful since crack of day.

  Off she led me, her fingers pressing mine, her eye-corners watching me. The big dance-caller glittered a glare after us. He was purely jealoused up that she'd made me so welcome.

  Two dark-faced old men stood at an iron rack over a pit of coals, where lay two halves of a slow-cooking hog. One old man dipped a stick with a rag ball into a kettle of sauce and painted it over the brown roast meat. From a big pot of fat over yet another fire, an old woman forked hush-puppies into pans set ready on a plank table.

  "Line up!" called Donie Carawan out, like a bugle. They lined up, talking and hollering again, smiles back on their faces. It was some way like dreams you have, folks carrying on loud and excited, and something bad coming on to happen.

  Donie Carawan put her bare arm through my blue-sleeved elbow while an old man sliced chunks of barbecued hog on paper plates for us. The old woman forked on a hush-puppy and a big hobby of cole slaw. Eating, I wondered how they made the barbecue sauce—wondered, too, if all these folks really wanted to be here for what Donie Carawan called the birthday of a curse.

  "John," she said, the way you'd think she read what I wondered, "don't they say a witch's curse can't work on a pure heart?"

  "They say that," I agreed her, and she laughed her laugh. The big dance-caller and the skinny mouth-harp man looked up from their barbecue.

  "An old witch cursed me for guilty twenty years back," said Donie Carawan. "The law said I was innocent. Who was right?"

  "Don't know how to answer that," I had to say, and again she laughed, and bit into her hush-puppy.

  "Look around you, John," she said. "This house is my house, and this valley is my valley, and these folks are my friends, come to help me pleasure myself."

  Again I reckoned, she's the only one here that's pleasured, maybe not even her.

  "Law me," she laughed, "it's rough on a few folks, holding their breath all these years to see the curse light on me. Since it wouldn't light, I figured how to shoo it away." Her blue eyes looked up. "But what are you doing around High Fork, John?"

  The dance-caller listened, and the thin mouth-harp man. "Just passing through," I said. "Looking for songs. I heard about a High Fork song, something about a little black train."

  Silence quick stretched all around, the way you'd think I'd been impolite. Yet again she broke the silence with a laugh.

  "Why," she said, "I've known that song as long as I've known about the curse, near to. Want me to sing it for you?"

  Folks were watching, and, "Please, ma'am," I asked her.

  She sang, there in the yellow lamplight and red firelight, among the shady-shadowy trees and the mountain dark, without ary slice of moon overhead. Her voice was a good voice. I put down my plate and, a line or two along, I made out to follow her with the guitar.

  / heard a voice of warning, A message from on high, "Go put your house in order For thou shall surely die. Tell all your friends a long farewell And get your business right— The little black train is rolling in To call for you tonight."

  "Miss Donie, that's a tuneful thing," I said. "Sounds right like a train rolling."

  "My voice isn't high enough to sound the whistle part," she smiled at me, red-mouthed.

  "I might could do that," said the mouth-harp man, coming close and speaking soft. And folks were craning at us, looking sick, embarrassed, purely distasted. I began to wonder why I shouldn't have given a name to that black train song.

  But then rose up a big holler near the house, where a barrel was set. The drunk man that'd fetched me was yelling mad at another man near-about as drunk, and they were trying to grab a drinking gourd from each other. Two-three other men on each side hoorawed them on to squabble more.

  "Jeth!" called Donie Carawan to the big dance-caller. "Let's stop that before they spill the whisky, Jeth."

  Jeth and she headed for the bunch by the barrel, and everybody else was crowding to watch.

  "John," said a quiet somebody—the mouth-harp man, with firelight showing lines in his thin face, salty gray in his hair. "What you really doing here?"

  "Watching," I said, while big Jeth hauled those two drunk men off from each other, and Donie Carawan scolded them. "And listening," I said. "Wanting to know what way the black train song fits in with this party and the tale about the curse. You know about it?"

  "I know," he said.

  We carried our food out of the firelight. Folks were crowding to the barrel, laughing and yelling.

  "Donie Carawan was to marry Trevis Jones," the mouth-harp man told me. "He owned the High Fork Railroad to freight the timber from this valley. He'd a lavish of money, is how he got to marry her. But," and he swallowed hard, "another young fellow loved her. Cobb Richardson, who ran Trevis Jones's train on the High Fork Railroad. And he killed Trevis Jones."

  "For love?" I asked.

  "Folks reckoned that Donie Carawan decided against Trevis and love-talked Cobb into the killing; for Trevis had made a will and heired her all his money and property—the railroad and all. But Cobb made confession. Said Donie had no part in it. The law let her go, and killed Cobb in the electric chair, down at the state capital."

  "I declare to never," I said.

  "Fact. And Cobb's mother—Mrs. Amanda Richardson—spoke the curse."

  "Oh," I said, "is she the witch that—"

  "She was no witch," he broke me off, "but she cursed Donie Carawan, that the train that Cobb had engine-drove, and Trevis had heired to her, would be her death and destruction. Donie laughed. You've heard her laugh. And folks started the song, the black train song."

  "Who made it?" I asked him.

  "Reckon I did," he said, looking long at me. He waited to let me feel that news. Then he said, "Maybe it was the song decided Donie Carawan to deal with the Hickory River Railroad, agreeing for an income of money not to run the High Fork train no more."

  I'd finished my barbecue. I could have had more; but I didn't feel
like it. "I see," I told him. "She reckoned that if no train ran on the High Fork tracks, it couldn't be her death and destruction."

  He and I put our paper plates on one of the fires. I didn't look at the other folks, but it seemed to me they were quieting their laughing and talking as the night got darker.

  "Only thing is," the mouth-harp man went on, "folks say the train runs on that track. Or it did. A black train runs some nights at midnight, they say, and when it runs a sinner dies."

  "You ever see it run?"

  "No, John, but I've sure God heard it. And only Donie Carawan laughs about it."

  She laughed right then, joking the two men who'd feathered up to fight. Ary man's neck craned at her, and women looked the way you'd figure they didn't relish that. My neck craned some, itself.

  "Twenty years back, the height of her bloom," said the mouth-harp man, "law me, you'd never call to look at anything else."

  "What does she mean, no more curse?"

  "She made another deal, John. She sold off the rails of the High Fork Road, that's stood idle for twenty years. Today the last of them was torn up and carried off. Meanwhile, she's had this house built, across where the right of way used to be. Looky yonder, through the dog-trot. That's where the road ran."

  So it was the old road bed made that dark dip amongst the trees. Just now it didn't look so wide a dip.

  "No rails," he said. "She figures no black train at midnight. Folks came at her invite—-some because they rent her land, some because they owe her money, and some—men folks—because they'll do ary thing she bids them."

  "And she never married?" I asked.

  "If she done that, she'd lose the money and land she heired from Trevis Jones. It was in his will. She just takes men without marrying, one and then another. I've known men kill theirselves because she'd put her heart back in her pocket on them. Lately, it's been big Jeth. She acts tonight like pick-herself a new beau lover."

  She walked back through the lamplight and firelight. "John," she said, "these folks want to dance again."

  What I played them was "Many Thousands Gone," with the mouth-harp to help, and they danced and stomped the way you'd think it was a many thousands dancing. In its thick, Donie Carawan promenaded left and right and do-si-doed with a fair-haired young fellow, and Jeth the dance-caller looked pickle-sour. When I'd done, Donie Carawan came swishing back. "Let the mouth-harp play," she said, "and dance with me." "Can't dance no shakes," I told her. "Just now, I'd relish to practice the black train song."

  Her blue eyes crinkled. "All right. Play, and I'll sing." She did. The mouth-harp man blew whistle-moanings to my guitar, and folks listened, goggling like frogs.

  A bold young man kept mocking, Cared not for the warning word, When the wild and lonely whistle Of the little black train he heard. "Have mercy, Lord, forgive me! I'm cut down in my sin/ O death, will you not spare me?" But the little black train rolled in.

  When she'd sung that much, Donie Carawan laughed like before, deep and bantering. Jeth the dance-caller made a funny sound in his bull throat.

  "What I don't figure," he said, "was how you all made the train sound like coming in, closer and closer."

  "Just by changing the music," I said. "Changing the pitch."

  "Fact," said the mouth-harp man. "I played the change with him."

  A woman laughed, nervous. "Now I think, that's true. A train whistle sounds higher and higher while it comes up to you. Then it passes and goes off, sounding lower and lower."

  "But I didn't hear the train go away in the song," allowed a man beside her. "It just kept coming." He shrugged, maybe he shivered.

  "Donie," said the woman, "reckon I'll go along."

  "Stay on, Lettie," began Donie Carawan, telling her instead of asking.

  "Got a right much walking to do, and no moon," said the woman. "Reuben, you come, too."

  She left. The man looked back just once at Donie Carawan, and followed. Another couple, and then another, went with them from the firelight. Maybe more would have gone, but Donie Carawan snorted, like a horse, to stop them.

  "Let's drink," she said. "Plenty for all, now those folks I reckoned to be my friends are gone."

  Maybe two-three others faded away, between there and the barrel. Donie Carawan dipped herself a drink, watching me over the gourd's edge. Then she dipped more and held it out.

  "You drink after a lady," she whispered, "and get a kiss."

  I drank. It was good stump-hole whisky. "Tasty," I said.

  "The kiss?" she laughed. But the dance-caller didn't laugh, or either the mouth-harp man, or either me.

  "Let's dance," said Donie Carawan, and I picked "Sourwood Mountain" and the mouth-harp moaned.

  The dancers had got to be few, just in a short while. But the trees they danced through looked bigger, and more of them. It minded me of how I'd heard, when I was a chap, about day-trees and night-trees, they weren't the same things at all; and the night-trees can crowd all round a house they don't like, pound the shingles off the roof, bust in the window glass and the door panels; and that's the sort of night you'd better never set your foot outside. . . .

  Not so much clapping at the end of "Sourwood Mountain." Not such a holler of "More!" Folks went to take another drink at the barrel, but the mouth-harp man held me back.

  "Tell me," he said, "about that business. The noise sounding higher when the train conies close,"

  "It was explained out to me by a man I know, place in Tennessee called Oak Ridge," I said. "It's about what they call sound waves, and some way it works with light, too. Don't rightly catch on how, but they can measure how far it is to the stars thataway."

  He thought, frowning. "Something like what's called radar?"

  I shook my head. "No, no machinery to it. Just what they name a principle. Fellow named Doppler—Christian Doppler, a foreigner— got it up."

  "His name was Christian," the mouth-harp man repeated me. "Then I reckon it's no witch stuff."

  "Why you worrying it?" I asked him.

  "I watched through the dog-trot while we were playing the black train song, changing pitch, making it sound like coming near," he said. "Looky yonder, see for yourself."

  I looked. There was a streaky shine down the valley. Two streaky shines, though nary moon. I saw what he meant—it looked like those pulled-up rails were still there, where they hadn't been before.

  "That second verse Miss Donie sang," I said. "Was it about—"

  "Yes," he said before I'd finished. "That was the verse about Cobb Richardson. How he prayed for God's forgiveness, night before he died."

  Donie Carawan came and poked her hand under my arm. I could tell that good strong liquor was feeling its way around her insides. She laughed at almost nothing whatever. "You're not leaving, anyway," she smiled at me.

  "Don't have any place special to go," I said.

  She upped on her pointed toes. "Stay here tonight," she said in my ear. "The rest of them will be gone by midnight."

  "You invite men like that?" I said, looking into her blue eyes. "When you don't know them?"

  "I know men well enough," she said. "Knowing men keeps a woman young." Her finger touched my guitar where it hung behind my shoulder, and the strings whispered a reply. "Sing me something, John."

  "I still want to learn the black train song."

  "I've sung you both verses," she said.

  "Then," I told her, "I'll sing a verse I've just made up inside my head." I looked at the mouth-harp man. "Help me with this."

  Together we played, raising pitch gradually, and I sang the new verse I'd made, with my eyes on Donie Carawan.

  Go tell that laughing lady

  All filled with worldly pride,

  The little black train is coming,

  Get ready to take a ride.

  With a little black coach and engine

  And a little black baggage car,

  The words and deeds she has said and done

  Must roll to the judgment bar.


  When I was through, I looked up at those who'd stayed. They weren't more than half a dozen now, bunched up together like cows in a storm; all but Big Jeth, standing to one side with eyes stabbing at me, and Donie Carawan, leaning tired-like against a tree with hanging branches.

  "Jeth," she said, "stomp his guitar to pieces."

  I switched the carrying cord off my neck and held the guitar at my side. "Don't try such a thing, Jeth," I warned him.

  His big square teeth grinned, with dark spaces between them. He looked twice as wide as me.

  "I'll stomp you and your guitar both," he said.

  I put the guitar on the ground, glad I'd had but the one drink. Jeth ran and stooped for it, and I put my fist hard under his ear. He hopped two steps away to keep his feet.

  Shouldn't anybody name me what he did then, and I hit him twice more, harder yet. His nose flatted out under my knuckles and when he pulled back away, blood trickled.

  The mouth-harp man grabbed up my guitar. "This here'll be a square fight!" he yelled, louder than he'd spoken so far. "Ain't a fair one, seeing Jeth's so big, but it'll be square! Just them two in it, and no more!"

  "I'll settle you later," Jeth promised him, mean.

  "Settle me first," I said, and got betwixt them.

  Jeth ran at me. I stepped sidewise and got him under the ear again as he went shammocking past. He turned, and I dug my fist right into his belly-middle, to stir up all that stump-hole whisky he'd been drinking, then the other fist under the ear yet once more, then on the chin and the mouth, under the ear, on the broken nose—ten licks like that, as fast and hard as I could fetch them in, and eighth or ninth he went slack, and the tenth he just fell flat and loose, like a coat from a nail. I stood waiting, but he didn't move.

  "Gentlemen," said the drunk man who'd fetched me, "looky yonder at Jeth laying there! Never figured to see the day! Maybe that stranger-man calls himself John is Satan, after all!"

  Donie Carawan walked across, slow, and gouged Jeth's ribs with the pointy toe of her high-heeled shoe. "Get up," she bade him.