The Color of Evil - The Dark Descent V1 (1991)
Page 52
sorry!”
home.
Manly Wade Wellman
Vandy, Vandy
Manly W ade Wellman was a prolific writer for the pulp
magazines in the 1930s and 1940s whose work appeared in many genres. Today he is remembered for that portion of his work, principally from Weird Tales magazine, that is horror fiction, and for a series of regional horror tales published in the 1950s in The Magazine of
Fantasy and Science Fiction (alongside Shirley Jackson’s stories and the works of Matheson, Sturgeon and most of the other masters of that decade). Now called
the "Silver John" stories and novels, these supernatural
tales of an itinerant, John, whose guitar is strung with
silver strings, are rich in Southern U.S. folklore and settings. John meets a variety of supernatural evils but perhaps the most typical, and one of Wellman's finest achievements, is the historic warlock of "Vandy, Vandy.”
Wellman’s best stories are collected in Worse Things
Waiting (1973) and Who Fears the Devil? (1963).
n ary name that valley had. Such outside folks as knew
about it just said, ‘‘Back in yonder,” and folks inside
said, ‘‘Here.” The mail truck would drop a few letters in a
hollow tree next to a ridge where the trail went up and over
and down. Three-four times a year bearded men in homemade clothes and shoes fetched out their makings—clay dishes 422
Vandy, Vandy
423
and pots, mostly—for dealers to sell to the touristers. They
toted back coffee, salt, gunpowder, a few nails. Stuff like
that.
It was a day’s scramble along that ridge trail. I vow, even
with my long legs and no load but my silver-strung guitar.
The thick, big old trees had never been cut, for lumber
nor yet for cleared land. I found a stream, quenched my
thirst, and followed it down. Near sunset time, I heard music
a-jangling, and headed for that.
Fire shone out through an open cabin door, to where folks
sat on a stoop log and front-yard rocks. One had a banjo,
another fiddled, and the rest slapped hands so a boy about
ten or twelve could jig. Then they spied me and fell quiet.
They looked at me, but they didn’t know me.
“ That was right pretty, ladies and gentlemen,” I said,
walking in, but nobody remarked.
A long-bearded old man with one suspender and no shoes
held the fiddle on his knee. I reckoned he was the grandsire.
A younger, shorter-bearded man with the banjo might could
be his son. There was a dry old mother, there was the son’s
plump wife, there was a young yellow-haired girl, and there
was that dancing little grandboy.
“ What can we do for you, young sir?” the old man asked.
Not that he sounded like doing aught—mountain folks say
that even to the government man who comes hunting a still
on their place.
“ Why,” I said, “ I sort of want a place to sleep.”
“ Right much land to stretch out on down the hollow a
piece,” said the banjo man.
I tried again. “ I was hearing you folks play first part of
Fire in the M ountains.”
“ Is they two parts?” That was the boy, before anyone
could silence him.
“ Sure enough, son,” I said. “ I ’ll play you the second
part.”
The old man opened his beard, like enough to say wait till
I was asked, but I strummed my guitar into second part, best
424
Manly Wade Wellman
I knew how. Then I played the first part through, and, “ You
sure God can pick that,” said the short-bearded one. “ Do it
again.”
I did it again. When I reached the second part, the fiddle
and banjo joined me in. We went round Fire in the Mountains
one time more, and the lady-folks clapped hands and the boy
jigged. When we stopped, the old man made me a nod.
“ Sit on that there rock,” he said. “ What might we call
you?”
“ My name’s John.”
“ I ’m Tewk Millen. Mother, I reckon John’s a-tired, coming from outside. Might be he’d relish a gourd of cold water.”
“ We’re just before having a bite,” the old lady said to me.
“ Ain’t but just smoke meat and beans, but you’re welcome.”
“ I ’m sure enough honored, Mrs. Millen,” I said. “ But I
don’t wish to be a trouble to you.”
“ No trouble,” said Mr. Tewk Millen. “ Let me make you
known to my son Heber and his wife Jill, and this here is
their boy Calder.”
“ Proud to know you, John,” they said.
“ And my girl Vandy,” said Mr. Tewk.
I looked on her hair like yellow com silk and her eyes like
purple violets. “ Miss Vandy,” I said.
Shy, she dimpled at me. “ I know that’s a scarce name,
Mr. John. I never heard it anywhere but among my kinfolks.”
“ I have,” I said. “ It’s what brought me here.”
Mr. Tewk Millen looked funny above his whiskers.
“ Thought you was a young stranger-man.”
“ I heard the name outside, in a song, sir. Somebody allowed the song’s known here. I ’m a singer, I go a for piece after a good song.” I looked around. “ Do you folks know
that Vandy song?”
“ Yes, sir,” said little Calder, but the others studied a minute. Mr. Tewk rubbed up a leaf of tobacco into his pipe.
Vandy, Vandy
425
“ Calder,” he said, “ go in and fetch me a chunk of fire to
light up with. John, you certain sure you never met my girl
Vandy?”
“ Sure as can b e ,” I replied him. “ Only I can figure how
any young fellow might come long miles to meet her.”
She stared down at her hands in her lap. “ We learnt the
song from papa,” she half-whispered, “ and he learnt it from
his papa.”
“ And my papa learnt it from his,” finished Mr. Tewk for
her. “ I reckon that song goes long years back.”
“ I ’d relish hearing it,” I said.
“ After you learnt it yourself,” said Mr. Tewk, “ what
would you do then?”
“ Go back outside,” I said, “ and sing it some.”
He enjoyed to hear me say that. “ Heber,” he told his son,
“ you pick out and I ’ll scrape this fiddle, and Calder and
Vandy can sing it for John.”
They played the tune through once without words. The
notes came together lonesomely, in what schooled folks call
minors. But other folks, better schooled yet, say such tunes
come out strange and lonesome because in the ancient times
folks had another note-scale from our do-re-mi-fa today. Little Calder piped up, high and young but strong:
“ Vandy, Vandy, I ’ve come to court you,
Be you rich or be you poor,
And if you’ll kindly entertain me,
I will love you forever more.
“ Vandy, Vandy, I ’ve gold and silver,
Vandy, Vandy, I ’ve a house and land,
Vandy, Vandy, I ’ve a world of pleasure,
I would make you a handsome man. . . . ”
He sang that far for the fellow come courting, and Vandy
sang back the reply, sweet as a bird:
426
Manly Wade Wellman
> “ I love a man who’s in the army,
He’s been there for seven long years,
And if he’s there for seven years longer,
I won’t court no other dear.
“ What care I for your gold and silver,
What care I for—”
She stopped, and the fiddle and banjo stopped, and it was
like the sudden death of sound. The leaves didn’t rustle in
the trees, nor the fire didn’t stir on the hearth inside. They
all looked with their mouths half open, where somebody
stood with his hands crossed on the gold knob of a black
cane and grinned all on one side of his toothy mouth.
Maybe he’d come down the stream trail, maybe he’d
dropped from a tree like a possum. He was built slim and
spry, with a long coat buttoned to his pointed chin, and brown
pants tucked into elastic-sided boots, like what your grand-
sire wore. His hands on the cane looked slim and strong. His
face, bar its crooked smile, might could be called handsome.
His dark brown hair curled like buffalo wool, and his eyes
were as shiny pale gray as a new knife. Their gaze crawled
all over us, and he laughed a slow, soft laugh.
“ I thought I ’d stop by,” he crooned out, “ if I haven’t worn
out my welcome.”
“ Oh, no, sir!” said Mr. Tewk, quick standing up on his
two bare feet, fiddle in hand. “ No, sir, Mr. Loden, we’re
right proud to have you,” he jabber-squawked, like a rooster
caught by the leg. “ You sit down, sir, make yourself easy.”
Mr. Loden sat down on the rock Mr. Tewk had got up
from, and Mr. Tewk found a place on the stoop log by his
wife, nervous as a boy caught stealing apples.
“ Your servant, Mrs. M illen,” said Mr. Loden. “ Heber,
you look well, and your good wife. Calder, I brought you
candy.”
His slim hand offered a bright striped stick, red and yellow. You’d think a country child would snatch it. But Calder
Vandy, Vandy
427
took it slow and scared, as he’d take a poison snake. You’d
know he’d decline if only he dared, but he didn’t dare.
“ For you, Mr. Tewk,” went on Mr. Loden, “ I fetched
some of my tobacco, an excellent weed.” He handed out a
soft brown leather pouch. ‘‘Empty your pipe and fill it with
this.”
“ Thank you kindly,” said Mr. Tewk, and sighed, and began to do as he’d been ordered.
“ Miss Vandy.” Mr. Loden’s crooning voice petted her
name. “ I wouldn’t venture here without hoping you’d receive
a trifle at my hands.”
He dangled it from a chain, a gold thing the size of his
pink thumbnail. In it shone a white jewel that grabbed the
firelight and twinkled red.
“ Do me the honor, Miss Vandy, to let it rest on your heart,
that I may envy it.”
She took the thing and sat with it between her soft little
hands. Mr. Loden’s eye-knives turned on me.
“ Now,” he said, “ we come round to the stranger within
your gates.”
“ We come around to m e,” I agreed him, hugging my guitar on my knees. “ My name’s John, sir.”
“ Where are you from, John?” It was sudden, almost fierce,
like a lawyer in court.
“ From nowhere,” I said.
“ Meaning, from everywhere,” he supplied me. “ What do
you do?”
“ I wander,” I said. “ I sing songs. I mind my business
and watch my manners.”
“Touche!” he cried out in a foreign tongue, and smiled
on that one side of his mouth. “ My duties and apologies,
John, if my country ways seem rude to a world traveler. No
offense meant.”
“ None taken,” I said, and didn’t add that country ways
are most times polite ways.
“ Mr. Loden,” put in Mr. Tewk again, “ I make bold to
offer you what poor rations my old woman’s made for us—”
428
Manly Wade Wellman
“ They’re good enough for the best man living,” Mr. Loden
broke him off. “ I ’ll help Mrs. Millen prepare them. After
you, ma’am .”
She walked in, and he followed. What he said there was
what happened.
“ Miss Vandy,” he said over his shoulder, “ you might
help.”
She went in, too. Dishes clattered. Through the doorway
I saw Mr. Loden fling a tweak of powder in the skillet. The
menfolks sat outside and said naught. They might have been
nailed down, with stones in their mouths. I studied what
might could make a proud, honorable mountain family so
scared of a guest, and knew it wouldn’t be a natural thing. It
would be a thing beyond nature or the world.
Finally little Calder said, “ Maybe we’ll finish the singing
after while, ’ ’ and his voice was a weak young voice now.
“ I recollect another song from around here,” I said.
“ About the fair and blooming wife.”
Those closed mouths all snapped open, then shut again.
Touching the silver strings, I began:
‘ ‘There was a fair and blooming wife
And of children she had three,
She sent them to Northern school
To study gramarie.
“ But the King’s men came upon that school,
And when sword and rope had done,
Of the children three she sent away,
Returned to her but one. . . . ”
“ Supper’s made,” said Mrs. Millen from inside.
We went in to where there was a trestle table and a clean
home-woven cloth and clay dishes set out. Mr. Loden, by
the pots at the fire, waved for Mrs. Millen and Vandy to dish
up die food.
It wasn’t smoke meat and beans I saw on my plate. What
Vandy, Vandy
429
ever it might be, it wasn’t that. They all looked at their helps
of food, but not even Calder took any till Mr. Loden sat
down.
“ Why,” said Mr. Loden, “ one would think you feared
poison.”
Then Mr. Tewk forked up a bit and put it into his beard.
Calder did likewise, and the others. I took a mouthful; sure
enough, it tasted good.
“ Let me honor your cooking, sir,” I told Mr. Loden. “ It’s
like witch magic.”
His eyes came on me, and he laughed, short and sharp.
“ John, you were singing about the blooming wife,” he
said. “ She had three children who went North to study gra-
marie. Do you know what gramarie means?”
“ Grammar,” spoke up Calder. “ The right way to talk.”
“ Hush,” whispered his father, and he hushed.
“ Why,” I replied. “ Mr. Loden, I ’ve heard that gramarie
is witch stuff, witch knowledge and power. That Northern
school could have been at only one place.”
“ What place, John?” he almost sang under his breath.
“ A Massachusetts Yankee town called Salem. Around
three hundred years back—”
“ Not by so much,” said Mr. Loden. “ In 1692, John.”
Everybody was staring above those steaming plates.
“ A preacher-man named Cotton Mather found
them teaching the witch stuff to children,” I said. “ I hear tell they killed twenty folks, mostly the wrong ones, but two-three were sure
enough witches.”
“ George Burroughs,” said Mr. Loden, half to himself.
“ Martha Carrier. And Bridget Bishop. They were real. But
others got safe away, and one young child of the three. Somebody owed that child the two young lost lives of his brothers, John.”
“ I call something else to mind,” I said. “ They scare young
folks with the tale. The one child lived to be a hundred, and
his son likewise and a hundred years of life, and his son’s
430
Manly Wade Wellman
son a hundred more. Maybe that’s why I thought the witch
school at Salem was three hundred years back. ’ ’ '
“ Not by so much, John,” he said again. “ Even give that
child that got away the age of Calder there, it would be only
about two hundred and eighty years, or thereabouts.”
He was daring any of Mr. Tewk Millen’s family to speak
or even breathe heavy, and none took the dare.
“ From three hundred, that would leave twenty,” I reckoned. “ A lot can be done in twenty years, Mr. Loden.”
“ That’s the naked truth,” he said, the knives of his eyes
on Vandy’s young face, and he got up and bowed all round.
“ I thank you all for your hospitality. I ’ll come again if I
may.”
“ Yes, sir,” said Mr. Tewk in a hurry, but Mr. Loden
looked at Vandy and waited.
“ Yes, sir,” she told him, as if it would choke her.
He took his gold-headed cane, and gazed a hard gaze at
me. Then I did a rude thing, but it was all I could think of.
“ I don’t feel right, Mrs. Millen, not paying for what you
gave me, ’ ’ I allowed, getting up myself. From my dungaree
pocket I took a silver quarter and dropped it on the table,
right in front of Mr. Loden.
“ Take it away!” he squeaked, high as a bat, and out of
the house he was gone, bat-quick and bat-sudden.
The others gopped after him. Outside the night had fallen,
thick as black wool round the cabin. Mr. Tewk cleared his
throat.
“ John, I hope you’re better raised than that,” he said.
‘ ‘We don’t take money from nobody we bid to our table. Pick
it up.”
“ Yes, sir, I ask pardon.”
Putting away the quarter, I felt a mite better. I ’d done that