Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC

by John the Balladeer (v1. 1)

  He grunted and mumbled and opened his eyes. Then he got up, joint by joint, careful and sore, like a sick bull. He tried to stop the blood from his nose with the back of his big hand. Donie Carawan looked at him and then she looked at me.

  "Get out of here, Jeth," she ordered him. "Off my place."

  He went, cripply-like, with his knees bent and his hands swinging and his back humped, the way you'd think he carried something heavy.

  The drunk man hiccupped. "I reckon to go, too," he said, maybe just to himself.

  "Then go!" Donie Carawan yelled at him. "Everybody can go, right now, this minute! I thought you were my friends—now I see I don't have a friend among the whole bunch! Hurry up, get going! Everybody!"

  Hands on hips, she blared it out. Folks moved off through the trees, a sight faster than Jeth had gone. But I stood where I was. The mouth-harp man gave me back my guitar, and I touched a chord of its strings. Donie Carawan spun around like on a swivel to set her blue eyes on me.

  "You stayed," she said, the way she thought there was something funny about it.

  "It's not midnight yet," I told her.

  "But near to," added the mouth-harp man. "Just a few minutes off. And it's at midnight the little black train runs."

  She lifted her round bare shoulders. She made to laugh again, but didn't.

  "That's all gone. If it ever was true, it's not true any more. The rails were taken up—

  "Looky yonder through the dog-trot," the mouth-harp man broke in. "See the two rails in place, streaking along the valley."

  Again she swung around and she looked, and seemed to me she swayed in the light of the dying fires. She could see those streaky rails, all right.

  "And listen," said the mouth-harp man. "Don't you all hear something?"

  I heard it, and so did Donie Carawan, for she flinched. It was a wild and lonely whistle, soft but plain, far down valley.

  "Are you doing that, John?" she squealed at me, in a voice gone all of a sudden high and weak and old. Then she ran at the house and into the dog-trot, staring down along what looked like railroad track.

  I followed her, and the mouth-harp man followed me. Inside the dog-trot was a floor of dirt, stomped hard as brick. Donie Carawan looked back at us. Lamplight came through a window, to make her face look bright pale, with the painted red of the mouth gone almost black against it.

  "John," she said, "you're playing a trick, making it sound like—"

  "Not me," I swore to her.

  It whistled again, woooooeeeeel And I, too, looked along the two rails, shining plain as plain in the dark moonless night, to curve off around a valley-bend. A second later, the engine itself sounded, chukchukchukchuk, and the whistle, woooooeeeeel

  "Miss Donie," I said, close behind her, "you'd better go away."

  I pushed her gently.

  "No!" She lifted her fists, and I saw cordy lines on their backs— they weren't a young woman's fists. "This is my house and my land, and it's my railroad!"

  "But—" I started to say.

  "If it comes here," she broke me off, "where can I run to from it?"

  The mouth-harp man tugged my sleeve. "I'm going," he said. "You and me raised the pitch and brought the black train. Thought I could stay, watch it and glory in it. But I'm not man enough."

  Going, he blew a whistle-moan on his mouth-harp, and the other whistle blew back an answer, louder and nearer.

  And higher in the pitch.

  "That's a real train coming," I told Donie Carawan, but she shook her yellow head.

  "No," she said, dead-like. "It's coming, but it's no real train. It's heading right to this dog-trot. Look, John. On the ground."

  Rails looked to run there, right through the dog-trot like through a tunnel. Maybe it was some peculiar way of the light. They lay close together, like narrow-gauge rails. I didn't feel like touching them with my toe to make sure of them, but I saw them. Holding my guitar under one arm, I put out my other hand to take Donie Carawan's elbow. "We'd better go," I said again.

  "I can't!"

  She said it loud and sharp and purely scared. And taking hold of her arm was like grabbing the rail of a fence, it was so stiff and unmoving.

  "I own this land," she was saying. "I can't leave it."

  I tried to pick her up, and that couldn't be done. You'd have thought she'd grown to the ground inside that dog-trot, sprang between what looked like the rails, the way you'd figure roots had come from her pointy toes and high heels. Out yonder, where the trackmarks curved off, the sound rose louder, higher, chukchukchukchuk—woooooeeeee! And light was coming from round the curve, like a headlight maybe, only it had some blue to its yellow.

  The sound of the coming engine made the notes of the song in my head:

  Go put your house in order For thou shall surely die—

  Getting higher, getting higher, changing pitch as it came close and closer—

  I don't know when I began picking the tune on my guitar, but I was playing as I stood there next to Donie Carawan. She couldn't flee. She was rooted there, or frozen there, and the train was going to come in sight in just a second.

  The mouth-harp man credited us, him and me, with bringing it, by that pitch-changing. And, whatever anybody deserved, wasn't for me to bring their deservings on them. I thought things like that. Also:

  Christian Doppler was the name of the fellow who'd thought out the why and wherefore of how pitch makes the sound closeness. Like what the mouth-harp man said, his name showed it wasn't witch stuff. An honest man could try ...

  I slid my fingers back up the guitar-neck, little by little, as I picked the music, and the pitch sneaked down.

  "Here it comes, John," whimpered Donie Carawan, standing solid as a stump.

  "No," I said. "It's going—listen!"

  I played so soft you could pick up the train-noise with your ear. And the pitch was dropping, like with my guitar, and the whistle sounded woooooeeeee! Lower it sounded.

  "The light—dimmer—" she said. "Oh, if I could have the chance to live different—"

  She moaned and swayed.

  Words came for me to sing as I picked.

  Oh, see her standing helpless,

  Oh, hear her shedding tears.

  She's counting these last moments

  As once she counted years.

  She'd turn from proud and wicked ways,

  She'd leave her sin, O Lord!

  If the little black train would just back up

  And not take her aboard.

  For she was weeping, all right. I heard her breath catch and strangle and shake her body, the way you'd look for it to tear her ribs loose from her backbone. I picked on, strummed on, lower and lower.

  Just for once, I thought I could glimpse what might have come at us.

  It was little, all right, and black under that funny cold-blue light it carried. And the cars weren't any bigger than coffins, and some way the shape of coffins. Or maybe I just sort of imagined that, dreamed it up while I stood there. Anyway, the light grew dim, and the chukchukchukchuk went softer and lower, and you'd guess the train was backing off, out of hearing.

  I stopped my hand on the silver strings. We stood there in a silence like what there must be in some lifeless, airless place like on the moon.

  Then Donie Carawan gave out one big, broken sob, and I caught her with my free arm as she fell.

  She was soft enough then. All the tight was gone from her. She lifted one weak, round, bare arm around my neck, and her tears wet my hickory shirt.

  "You saved me, John," she kept saying. "You turned the curse away."

  "Reckon I did," I said, though that sounded like bragging. I looked down at the rails, and they weren't there, in the dog-trot or beyond. Just the dark of the valley. The cooking fires had burned out, and the lamps in the house were low.

  Her arm tightened around my neck. "Come in," she said. "Come in, John. You and me, alone in there."

  "It's time for me to head off away," I said.
r />   Her arm dropped from me. "What's the matter? Don't you like me?" she asked.

  I didn't even answer that one, she sounded so pitiful. "Miss Donie," I said, "you told a true thing. I turned the curse from you. It hadn't died. You can't kill it by laughing at it, or saying there aren't such things, or pulling up rails. If it held off tonight, it might come back."

  "Oh!" She half raised her arms to me again, then put them down.

  "What must I do?" she begged me.

  "Stop being a sinner."

  Her blue eyes got round in her pale face.

  "You want me to live," she said, hopeful.

  "It's better for you to live. You told me that folks owe you money, rent land from you and such. How'd they get along if you got carried off?"

  She could see what I meant, maybe the first time in her life.

  "You'd be gone," I minded her, "but the folks would stay behind, needing your help. Well, you're still here, Miss Donie. Try to help the folks. There's a thousand ways to do it. I don't have to name them to you. And you act right, you won't be so apt to hear that whistle at midnight."

  I started out of the dog-trot.

  "John!" My name sounded like a wail in her mouth.

  "Stay here tonight, John," she begged me. "Stay with me! I want you here, John, I need you here!"

  "No, you don't need me, Miss Donie," I said. "You've got a right much of thinking and planning to do. Around about the up of sun, you'll have done enough, maybe, to start living different from this on."

  She started to cry. As I walked away I noticed how, farther I got, lower her voice-pitch sounded.

  I sort of stumbled on the trail. The mouth-harp man sat on a chopped-down old log.

  "I listened, John," he said. "Think you done right?"

  "Did the closest I could to right. Maybe the black train was bound to roll, on orders from whatever station it starts from; maybe it was you and me, raising the pitch the way we did, brought it here tonight."

  "I left when I did, dreading that thought," he nodded.

  "The same thought made me back it out again," I said. "Anyway, I kind of glimmer the idea you all can look for a new Donie Carawan hereabouts, from now forward."

  He got up and turned to go up trail. "I never said who I was."

  "No, sir," I agreed him. "And I never asked."

  "I'm Cobb Richardson's brother. Wyatt Richardson. Dying, my mother swore me to even things with Donie Carawan for what happened to Cobb. Doubt if she meant this sort of turn-out, but I reckon it would suit her fine."

  We walked into the dark together.

  "Come stay at my house tonight, John," he made the offer. "Ain't much there, but you're welcome to what there is."

  "Thank you kindly," I said. "I'd be proud to stay."

  Shiver in the Pines

  We sat along the edge of Mr. Hoje Cowand's porch, up the high hills of the Rebel Creek country. Mr. Hoje himself, and his neighbor Mr. Eddy Herron who was a widowman like Mr. Hoje, and Mr. Eddy's son Clay who was a long tall fellow like his daddy, and Mr. Hoje's pretty-cheeked daughter Sarah Ann, who was courting with Clay. And me. I'd stopped off to hand-help Mr. Hoje build him a new pole fence, and nothing would do him but I'd stay two-three days. Supper had been pork and fried apples and pone and snap beans. The sun made to set, and they all asked me to sing.

  So I picked the silver strings on my guitar and began the old tuneful one:

  Choose your partner as you go, Choose your partner as you go.

  "Yippeehoo!" hollered old Mr. Eddy. "You sure enough can play that, John! Come on, choose partners and dance!"

  Up hopped Clay and Sarah Ann, on the level-stamped front yard, and I played it up loud and sang, and Mr. Eddy called figures for them to step to:

  "Honor your partner! . . . Swing your partner! . . . Do-si-do! . . . Allemand right!" Till I got to one last chorus and I sang out loudly:

  Fare thee well, my charming gal, Fare thee well, I'm gonel

  Fare thee well, my charming gal With golden slippers on!

  "Kiss your partner and turn her loose!" whooped out Mr. Eddy as I stopped. Clay kissed Sarah Ann the way you'd think it was his whole business in life, and Sarah Ann, up on her little toes, kissed him back.

  "Won't be no better singing and dancing the day these young ones marry up," said Mr. Hoje. "And no fare thee wells then."

  "And I purely wish I could buy you golden slippers, Sarah Ann," said Clay as the two sat down together again.

  "Gold's where you find it," quoted Mr. Eddy from the Book. "Clay, you might ransack round them old lost mines the Ancients dug, that nobody knows about. John, you remember the song about them?"

  I remembered, for Mr. Eddy and Mr. Hoje talked a right much about the Ancients and their mines. I sang it:

  Where were they, where were they, On that gone and vanished day When they shoveled for their treasure

  of gold?

  In the pines,in the pines, Where the sun never shines, And I shiver when the wind blows cold. . . .

  As I stopped, a throat rasped, loud. "Odd," said somebody, walking into the yard, "to hear that song just now."

  We didn't know the somebody. He was blocky-made, not young nor either old, with a store suit and a black hat, like a man running for district judge. His square face looked flat and white, like a face drawn on paper.

  "Might I sit for a minute?" he asked, mannerly. "I've come a long, long way."

  "Take the door-log, and welcome," Mr. Hoje bade him. "My name's Hoje Cowand, and this is my daughter Sarah Ann, and these are the Herrons, and this here's John, who's a-visiting me. Come a long way, you said? Where from, sir?"

  "From going to and fro in the world," said the stranger, lifting the hat from his smoke-gray hair, "and from walking up and down in it."

  Another quotation from the Book; and if you've read Job's first chapter, you know who's supposed to have said it. The man saw how we gopped, for he smiled as he sat down and stuck out his dusty shoes.

  "My name's Reed Barnitt," he said. "Odd, to hear talk of the Ancients and their mines. For I've roved around after talk of them."

  "Why," said Mr. Hoje, "folks say the Ancients came into these mountains before the settlers. Close to four hundred years back."

  "That long, Mr. Hoje?" asked young Clay.

  "Well, a tree was cut that growed in the mouth of an Ancients' mine, near Horse Stomp," Mr. Hoje allowed. "Schooled folks counted the rings in the wood, and there was full three hundred. It was before the Yankee war they done that, so the tree seeded itself in the mine-hole four hundred years back, or near about."

  "The time of the Spaniards," nodded Reed Barnitt. "Maybe about when de Soto and his Spanish soldiers crossed these mountains."

  "I've heard tell the Ancients was here around that time," put in Mr. Eddy, "but I've likewise heard tell they wasn't Spanish folks, nor either Indians."

  "Did they get what they sought?" wondered Reed Barnitt.

  "My daddy went into that Horse Stomp heading once," said Mr. Eddy. "He said it run back about seven hundred foot as he stepped it, and a deep shaft went down at the end. Well, he figured no mortal soul would dig so far, saving he found what he was after." He had hold of Mr. Hoje's jug, and now he pushed it toward Mr. Barnitt. "Have a drink?"

  "Thank you kindly, I don't use it. What did the Ancients want?"

  "I've seen only one of then- mines, over the ridge yonder," and Mr. Hoje nodded through the dusk. "Where they call it Black Pine Hollow—"

  "Where the sun never shines," put in Mr. Barnitt, "and I shiver when the wind blows cold." His smile at me was tight.

  "I was there three-four tunes when I was a chap, but not lately, for folks allows there's haunts there. I saw a right much quartz laying around, and I hear tell gold comes from quartz rock."

  "Gold," nodded Reed Barnitt. He put bis hand inside his coat.

  "You folks are treating me clever," he said, "and I hope you let me make a gift. Miss Sarah Ann, I myself don't have use for these, so if you'd accept—"<
br />
  What he held out was golden slippers, that shone in the down-going sun's last suspicions.

  Gentlemen, you should have heard Sarah Ann cry out her pleasure, you should have seen the gold shine in her eyes. But she drew back the hand she put out.

  "I couldn't," she said. "Wouldn't be fitting to."

  "Then I'll give them to this young man." Reed Barnitt set the slippers in Clay's lap. "Young sir, I misdoubt if Miss Sarah Ann would refuse a gift at your hands."

  The slippers had high heels and pointy toes, and they shone like glory. Clay smiled at Sarah Ann and gave them to her. To see her smile back, you'd think it was Clay, and not Reed Barnitt, had taken them from nowhere for her.

  "I do thank you kindly," said Sarah Ann. She shucked off her scuffy old shoes, and the golden slippers fitted her like slippers made to the measure of her feet. "John," she said, "was just singing about things like this."

  "Heard him as I came up trail from Rebel Creek," said Reed Barnitt. "And likewise heard him sing of the Ancients in Black Pine Hollow." His square face looked at us around. "Gentlemen," he said, "I wonder if there's heart ha you all to go there with me."

  We gopped again. Finally Clay said, "For gold?"

  "For what else?" said Reed Barnitt. "Nobody's found it there, because nobody had the special way to look for it."

  Nary one of us was really surprised to hear what the man said. There'd been such a story as long as anybody had lived around Rebel Creek. Mr. Hoje drank from the jug. Finally he said, "In what respect a special way, Mr. Barnitt?"

  "I said I'd roved a far piece. I went to fetch a spell that would show the treasure. But I can't do it alone." Again the white face traveled its look over us. "It takes five folks—men, because a woman mustn't go into a mine."

  We knew about that. If lady-folks go down a mine, there'll be something bad befall, maybe a miner killed.

  "You've been kindly to me," said Reed Barnitt. "I feel like asking you, will you all come help me? Mr. Cowand, and Mr. Herron, and you his son, and you, John. Five we'd seek the treasure of the Ancients and five ways we'd divide it."

  Sarah Ann had her manners with her. "I'll just go do the dishes," she said to us. "No, Clay, don't come help. Stay and talk here."