"But what if it's not right? My old folks, my grandsires—I don't know if they ought to be called up."
"Moon-Eye," said Professor Deal, "I'm just watching, observing. I hdven't yet been convinced of anything due to happen here tonight. But if it should happen—I know your ancestors must have been good country people, nobody to be ashamed of, dead or alive."
"I'm not ashamed of them," Moon-Eye told us all, with a sort of sudden clip in his voice. "I just don't think they were the sort to be stirred up without a good reason."
"Moon-Eye," said Dr. McCoy, talking the way any man who's a man would want a woman to talk to him, "science is the best of reasons in itself."
He didn't speak, didn't deny her, didn't nod his head or either shake it. He just looked at her blue eyes with his dark ones. She got up from where she'd knelt.
"John," she spoke to where I was sitting, "that song we mentioned. About the lonesome river ford. It may put things in the right tune and tempo."
Moon-Eye sat on the edge of the porch, his lantern beside him. The light made our shadows big and jumpy. I began to pick the tune the best I could recollect it, and sang:
Old Devlins was a-waiting
By the lonesome river ford,
When he spied the Mackey captain
With a pistol and a sword. . . .
I stopped, for Moon-Eye had tensed himself tight, "I'm not sure of how it goes from there," I said.
"I'm sure of where it goes," said someone in the dark, and up to the porch ambled Rixon Pengraft.
He was smoking that cigar, or maybe a fresh one, grinning around it. He wore a brown corduroy shirt with officers' straps to the shoulders, and brown corduroy pants tucked into shiny half-boots worth maybe twenty-five dollars, the pair of them. His hair was brown, too, and curly, and his eyes were sneaking all over Dr. Anda Lee McCoy.
"Nobody here knows what that song means," said Moon-Eye.
Rixon Pengraft sat down beside Dr. McCoy, on the step below Moon-Eye, and the way he did it, I harked back in my mind to something Moon-Eye had said: about something Rixon Pengraft wanted, and why he hated Moon-Eye over it.
"I've wondered wasn't the song about the Confederate War," said Rixon. "Maybe Mackey captain means Yankee captain."
"No, it doesn't," said Moon-Eye, and his teeth sounded on each other.
"I can sing it, anyway," said Rixon, twiddling his cigar in his teeth and winking at Dr. McCoy. "Go on picking."
"Go on," Dr. McCoy repeated, and Moon-Eye said nothing. I touched the silver strings, and Rixon Pengraft sang:
Old Devlins, Old Devlins,
I know you mighty well,
You're six foot three of Satan,
Two hundred pounds of hell. . . .
And he stopped. "Devils—Satan," he said. "Might be it's a song about the Devil. Think we ought to go on singing about him, with no proper respect?"
He went on:
Old Devlins was ready,
He feared not beast or man,
He shot the sword and pistol
From the Mackey captain's, hand. . . .
Moon-Eye looked once at the diagram, chalked out on the floor of the porch. He didn't seem to hear Rixon Pengraft's mocking voice with the next verse:
Old Devlins, Old Devlins,
Oh, won't you spare my life?
I've got three little children
And a kind and loving wife.
God bless them little children,
And I'm sorry for your wife,
But turn your back and close your eyes,
I'm going to take your—
"Leave off that singing!" yelled Moon-Eye Newlands, and he was on his feet in the yard so quick we hadn't seen him move. He took a long step toward where Rixon Pengraft sat beside Dr. McCoy, and Rixon got up quick, too, and dropped his cigar and moved away.
"You know the song," blared out Moon-Eye. "Maybe you know what man you're singing about!"
"Maybe I do know," said Rixon. "You want to bring him here to look at you?"
We were all up on our feet, We watched Moon-Eye standing over Rixon, and Moon-Eye just then looked about two feet taller than he had before. Maybe even more than that, to Rixon.
"If that's how you're going to be—" began Rixon.
"That's how I'm going to be," Moon-Eye told him, his voice right quiet again. "I'm honest to tell you, that's how I'm going to be."
"Then I won't stay here," said Rixon. "I'll leave, because you're making so much noise in front of a lady. But, Moon-Eye, I'm not scared of you. Nor yet the ghost of any ancestor you ever had, Devlins or anybody else."
Rixon smiled at Dr. McCoy and walked away. We heard him start to whistle in the dark. He meant it for banter, but I couldn't help but think about the boy whistling his way through the graveyard.
Then I happened to look back at the diagram on the porch. And it didn't seem right for a moment, it looked like something else. The two circles, with the string of writing between them, the six-point star, and in the very middle of everything the word square:
"Shoo," I said. "Look, folks, that word square's turned around."
"Naturally," said Professor Deal, plain glad to talk and think about something besides how Moon-Eye and Rixon had acted. "The first two words are reversals of the—"
"I don't mean that, Professor." I pointed. "Look. I take my Bible oath that Dr. McCoy wrote it out so that it read rightly from where I am now. But it's gone upside down."
"That's the truth," Moon-Eye agreed me.
"Yes," said Dr. McCoy. "Yes. You know what that means?"
"The square's turned around?" asked Professor Deal. "The whole thing's turned around. The whole diagram. Spun a whole hundred and eighty degrees—maybe several times—and stopped again. Why?" She put her hand on Moon-Eye's elbow, and the hand trembled. "The thing was beginning to work, to revolve, the machine was going to operate—"
"You're right." Moon-Eye, put his big hand over her little one, "Just when the singing stopped."
He moved away from her and picked up his lantern. He started away.
"Come back, Moon-Eye!" she called after him. "It can't work without you!"
"I've got something to see Rixon Pengraft about," he said.
"You can't hit him, you're bigger than he is!" I thought she was going to run and catch up with him.
"Stay here," I told her. "I'll go talk to him."
I walked quick to catch up with Moon-Eye. "Big things were near about to happen just now," I said.
"I realize that, Mr. John. But it won't go on, because I won't be there to help it." He lifted his lantern and stared at me. "I said my old folks weren't the sort you ruffle up for no reason."
"Was the song about your folks?"
"Sort of."
"You mean, Old Devlins?"
"That's not just exactly his name, but he was my great-grandsire on my mother's side. Rixon Pengraft caught onto that, and after what he said—"
"You heard that doctor lady say Rixon isn't as big as you are, Moon-Eye," I argued him. "You hit him and she won't like it."
He stalked on toward the brick building where the scholars had their rooms.
Bang!
The lantern went out with a smash of glass.
The two of us stopped still in the dark and stared. Up ahead, in the brick building, a head and shoulders made itself black in a lighted window, and a cigar-coal glowed.
"I said I didn't fear you, Moon-Eye!" laughed the voice of Rixon Pengraft. "Nor I don't fear Old Devlins, whatever kin he is to you!"
A black arm waved something. It was a rifle. Moon-Eye drew himself up tall in the dark.
"Help me, John," he said. "I can't see a hand before me.
"You going to fight him, Moon-Eye? When he has that gun?"
"Help me back to Professor Deal's." He put his hand on my shoulder and gripped down hard. "Get me into the light."
"What do you aim to do?"
"Something there wasn't a reason to do, till now." That was the last the either o
f us said. We walked back. Nobody was on the porch, but the door was open. We stepped across the chalk-drawn diagram and into the front room. Professor Deal and Dr. McCoy stood looking at us.
"You've come back," Dr. McCoy said to Moon-Eye, the gladdest you'd ever call for a lady to say. She made a step toward him and put out her hand.
"I heard a gun go off out there," she said,
"My lantern got shot to pieces," Moon-Eye told her, "I've come back to do what you bid me do. John, if you don't know the song—"
"I do know it, Moon-Eye," I said. "I stopped because I thought you didn't want it."
"I want it now," he rang out his voice. "If my great-grandsire can be called here tonight, call him. Sing it, John."
I still carried my guitar. I slanted it across me and picked the strings:
He killed the Mackey captain,
He went behind the hill,
Them Mackeys never caught him,
And I know they never will. . . .
Great-grandsire!" yelled out Moon-Eye, so that the walls shook with his cry. "I've taken a right much around here, because I thought it might be best thataway. But tonight Rixon Pengraft dared you, said he didn't fear you! Come and show him what it's like to be afraid!"
"Now, now—" began Professor Deal, then stopped it.
I sang on:
When there's no moon in heaven
And you hear the hound-dogs bark,
You can guess that it's Old Devlins
A-scrambling in the dark. . . .
Far off outside, a hound-dog barked in the moonless night.
And on the door sounded a thumpety-bang knock, the way you'd think the hand that knocked had knuckles of mountain rock.
I saw Dr. McCoy weave and sway on her little feet like a bush in a wind, and her blue eyes got the biggest they'd been yet. But Moon-Eye just smiled, hard and sure, as Professor Deal walked heavy to the door and opened it.
Next moment he sort of gobbled in his throat, and tried to shove the door closed again, but he wasn't quick enough. A wide hat with a long dark beard under it showed through the door, then big, hunched shoulders like Moon-Eye's. And, spite of the Professor's shoving, the door came open all the way, and in slid the long-bearded, big-shouldered man among us.
He stood without moving inside the door. He was six feet three, all right, and I reckoned he'd weigh at two hundred pounds. He wore a frocktail coat and knee boots of cowhide. His left arm cradled a rifle-gun near about as long as he was, and its barrel was eight-squared, the way you hardly see any more. His big broad right hand came up and took off the wide hat.
Then we could see his face, such a face as I'm not likely to forget. Big nose and bright glaring eyes, and that beard I tell you about, that fell down like a curtain from the high cheekbones and just under the nose. Wild, he looked, and proud, and deadly as his weight in blasting powder with the fuse already spitting. I reckon that old Stonewall Jackson might have had something of that favor, if ever he'd turned his back on the Lord God.
"I thought I was dreaming this," he said to us, deep as somebody talking from a well-bottom, "but I begin to figure the dream's come true."
His eyes came around to me, those terrible eyes, that shone like two drawn knives.
"You called me a certain name in your song," he said. "I've been made mad by that name, on the wrong mouth.
"Devlins?" I said.
"Devil Anse," he nodded. "The McCoy crowd named me that. My right name's Captain Anderson Hatfield, and I hear that somebody around here took a shoot at my great-grandboy." He studied Moon-Eye. "That's you, ain't it, son?"
"Now wait, whoever you are—" began Professor Deal.
"I'm Captain Anderson Hatfield," he named himself again, and lowered his rifle-gun. Its butt thumped the floor like a falling tree.
"That shooting," Professor Deal made out to yammer. "I didn't hear it."
"I heard it," said Devil Anse, "and likewise I heard the slight put on me by the shooter."
"I—I don't want any trouble—" the Professor still tried to argue.
"Nor you won't have none, if you hear me," said Devil Anse. "But keep quiet. And look out yonder."
We looked out the open door. Just at the porch stood the shadows of three men, wide-hatted, tall, leaning on their guns.
"Since I was obliged to come," said Devil Anse Hatfield, and his voice was as deep now as Moon-Eye's, "I reckoned not to come alone." He spoke into the night. "Jonce?"
"Yes, pa."
"You'll be running things here. You and Vic and Cotton Top keep your eyes cut this way. Nobody's to go from this house, for the law nor for nothing else."
"Yes, pa."
Devil Anse Hatfield turned back to face us. We looked at him, and thought about who he was.
All those years back, sixty, seventy, we thought to the Big Sandy that flows between West Virginia and Kentucky. And the fighting between the Hatfields and the McCoys, over what beginning nobody can rightly say today, but fighting that brought blood and death and sorrow to all that part of the world. And the efforts to make it cease, by every kind of arguer and officer, that couldn't keep the Hatfields and the McCoys apart from each other's throats. And here he was, Devil Anse Hatfield, from that time and place, picking me out with his eyes.
"You who sung the song," he nodded me. "Come along,"
I put down my guitar. "Proud to come with you, Captain," I said.
His hand on my shoulder gripped like Moon-Eye's, a bear-trap grip there. We walked out the door, and off the porch past the three waiting tall shadows, and on across the grounds in the night toward that brick sleeping building.
"You know where we're going?" I inquired him.
"Seems to me I do. This seems like the way. What's your name?"
"John, Captain."
"John, I left Moon-Eye back there because he called for me to come handle things. He felt it was my business, talking to that fellow. I can't lay tongue to his name right off."
"Rixon Pengraft?"
"Rixon Pengraft," he repeated me. "Yes, I dreamed that name. Here we are. Open that door for us."
I'd never been in that building. Nor either had Devil Anse Hatfield, except maybe in what dreams he'd had to bring him there. But, if he'd found his way from the long ago, he found the way to where he was headed. We walked along the hallway inside between doors, until he stopped me at one. "Knock," he bade me, and I put my fist to the wood.
A laugh inside, mean and shaky. "That you, Moon-Eye Newlands?" said Rixon Pengraft's voice. "You think you dare come in here? I've not locked myself in. Turn the knob, if you're man enough."
Devil Anse nudged my shoulder, and I opened the door and shoved it in, and we came across the threshold together.
Rixon sat on his bed, with a little old twenty-two rifle across his lap.
"Glad you had the nerve, Moon-Eye," he began to say, "because there's only room for one of us to sit next to Anda Lee McCoy—"
Then his mouth stayed open, with the words ceasing to come out.
"Rixon," said Devil Anse, "you know who I am?"
Rixon's eyes hung out of his head like two scuppernong grapes on a vine. They twitchy-climbed up Devil Anse, from his boots to his hat, and they got bigger and scareder all the time.
"I don't believe it," said Rixon Pengraft, almost too sick and weak for an ear to hear him.
"You'd better have the man to believe it. You sang about me. Named me Devil Anse in the song, and knew it was about me. Thought it would be right funny if I did come where you were."
At last that big hand quitted my shoulder, and moved to bring that long eight-square rifle to the ready.
"Don't!"
Rixon was on his knees, and his own little toy gun spilled on the floor between us. He was able to believe now.
"Listen," Rixon jibber-jabbered, "I didn't mean anything. It was just a joke on Moon-Eye."
"A mighty sorry joke," said Devil Anse. "I never yet laughed at a gun going off." His boot-toe shoved the twenty-two. "Not ev
en a baby-boy gun like that."
"I—" Rixon tried to say, and he had to stop to get strength. "I'll—"
"You'll break up that there gun," Devil Anse decreed him.
"Break my gun?" Rixon was still on his knees, but his scared eyes managed to get an argue-look.
"Break it," said Devil Anse. "I'm a-waiting, Rixon. Just like that time I waited by a lonesome river ford."
And his words were as cold and slow as chunks of ice floating down a half-choked stream in winter.
Rixon put out his hand for the twenty-two. His eyes kept hold on Devil Anse. Rixon lifted one knee from the floor, and laid the twenty-two across it. He tugged at barrel and stock.
"Harder than that," said Devil Anse. "Let's see if you got any muscle to match your loud mouth."
Rixon tugged again, and then Devil Anse's rifle stirred. Rixon saw, and really made out to work at it. The little rifle broke at the balance. I heard the wood crack and splinter.
"All right now," said Devil Anse, still deep and cold and slow. "You're through with them jokes you think are so funny. Fling them chunks of gun out yonder."
He wagged his head at the open door, and Rixon flung the broken pieces into the hall.
"Stay on your knees," Devil Anse bade him. "You got praying to do. Pray the good Lord your thanks you got off so lucky. Because if there's another time you see me, I'll be the last thing you see this side of the hell I'm six foot three of."
To me he said: "Come on, John. We've done with this no-excuse for a man who's broke his own gun."
Back we went, and nary word between us. The other three Hatfields stood by Professor Deal's porch, quiet as painted shadows of three gun-carrying men. In at the door we walked, and there was Professor Deal, and over against the other side of the room stood Moon-Eye and Dr. McCoy.
"Rixon named somebody McCoy here," said Devil Anse. "Who owns up to the name?"
"I do," said she, gentle but steady.
"You hold away from her, Great-grandsire," spoke up Moon-Eye.
"Boy," said Devil Anse, "you telling me what to do and not do?"
Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC Page 16
