Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02 (17 page)

 
          
“Those
young folks are in love/' she whispered me.

 
          
“I
do truly think they are,” I said.

 
          
“It's
right good to see them. Good to think what's ahead for them—'' She broke off.
“Whatever can be ahead for them, if the Shonokins come?''

 
          
“The
Shonokins will come all right, Miss Hazel,'' I said, “but maybe we can show them
a quick way back from here.''

 
          
“How?”

 
          
“We’ll
do it,” I said, a-wondering how.

 
          
Mr.
Ben had sat himself down by the fireplace. He had the Bible that
Warren
had used to show us how Hazel Techeray had
stopped from her witchcraft ways. “Me,” he said, “I'll just cast the signs to
see what to do.”

 
          
I'd
seen that trick of old folks, how you open the Bible three times just by chance
and put your finger each time on a text. Mr. Ben
flopped
the Bible open on his knee and stabbed down with his finger.

 
          
“Here
we are,” he allowed. “Hark at this: *
Whoever
perished, being innocent? Or where were the righteous cut
off?"'

 
          
“That's
out of the Book of Job,” I said, “and I sure enough hope
it's
true, and I hope we've got the innocence and righteousness to qualify.”

 
          
“Amen,”
said Hazel Techeray.

 
          
Mr.
Ben opened the Bible again. “What youins reckon this here might could mean
? '
The horseleech hath two daughters, crying Give, give.' ”
He gave us all a look. “That there's one of the Proverbs, but how you a-going
to get action on it?"

 
          
“Horseleech,”
Hazel Techeray said after him. “Once I heard tell, that means a vampire.”

 
          
“I’ve
heard the same,” said Jackson Warren.

 
          
“One more time now.”
Mr. Ben had the Bible open farther
along. He read out loud:
“ When
it is evening, ye say,
It will be fair weather; for the sky is red.'”

 
          
He
got up and put the Bible back in its place on the shelf. We watched while he
walked to the western wall and peeked out through a crack betwixt the logs.

 
          
“The
sun's a-fixing to go down red,” he said.
“A-fixing to be fair
weather, all right.”

 
          
Then
he shoved closer to the wall. “Ladies and men,” he said, “ain't only sunset out
there, but I think I see something on the move, behind them trees at the edge
of the yard.”

 
          
I
jumped to a place beside him and looked out, too.

 
          
I
made out the trees, the ground,
the
bright red of the
sun a-going down.
Then something else.

 
          
A
streak of flame shot up from a dark place in the pines, sailed at the house and
up above it.

 
          
“What
was that?” I said.

 
          
“By
God, a fire arrow,” yelled Mr. Ben. “They done set them an arrow on fire and
shot it up on the roof.”

 
          
Then
we all of us stood still and quiet, the whole bunch of us, for seconds. All of
a sudden I heard, or reckoned I heard, a sound of crackling. The sound of wood
caught afire.

 
          
“They’re
a-going to burn us out!” moaned Hazel Techeray, and she hung with both her
hands to the back of a chair. “They’ll drive us out of here into the
open,
get us where they’ll do us however they want to do!”

 
          
“I’ll
be
go
to hell if they do,” said Mr. Ben. “Me, I’m
a-going to get up yonder on the roof, and I’ll—”

 
          
“You
hold on there, Mr. Ben!” I yelled at him, so loud he stopped right in his
tracks. “I’ll tend to this matter.
A plate, where’s a plate,
somebody?”

 
          
“A
plate, John?” said Callie, like as if she wondered herself what I meant, but
she ran and fetched me one and put it on the table, a plate of blue plastic.

 
          
I
grabbed me hold of a pencil and I wrote on it. The pencil made faint letters,
but plain enough to read, the old magic square I knew by heart:

 
         
S
A T
O
R

 
          
A
R E P
O

 
          
T
E
N
E T

 
          
O
P E R A

 
          
R
O
T A S

           
Those strange words, that read the
same backward or forward, or up and down. . . . Then I whipped the plate over
quick and set the same letters on the bottom of it. I grabbed it and ran for
the back room where the ladder was.

 
          
"
It’s
almighty dark up in that there loft,” said Mr. Ben,
right behind me.

 
          
"I
told you, let me tend to this,” I said to him, and I purely sailed up that
ladder. In the blackness of the loft, I had to grope up over my head for the
rafters, but I found the roof trapdoor and flung it up.
Loud
sounded that crackly fire, like corn a-popping.
The red light of it
showed me the place to shove my head and shoulders up into the open.

 
          
It
was bright fire, sure enough, all against the darkening night sky, a big blaze
of it on the broad old home-split shakes of the roof. I held the plate with its
letters in both my hands, and I shouted out something else I recollected from
The Long Lost Friend:

 
          
“Our
dear Sarah journeyed through the land, having a fiery hot brand in her hand,” I
repeated over, loud as I could. “The fiery brand heats, the fiery brand sweats.
Fiery brand, stop your heat; fiery brand, stop your sweat.”

 
          
And
with that, I flung the plate right where the fire was the hottest-looking.

 
          
Right
off that quick while I watched, the flames drew all down and disappeared away.
I wondered myself, as at times before, if the Sarah in the charm meant Sarah,
the wife of Abraham and the mother of Isaac. Or was it like
Fd
heard somewhere from somebody, it might could mean Seraph, a holy angel. I
looked out. Not air spark showed itself now. The fire had gone plumb out. I looked
one more time, to make sure, and got back down.

 
          
“What
was that there thing you said?” Mr. Ben inquired me in the dark of the loft.

           
I dragged the trapdoor back into its
place. “Just a thing to douse out the fire and keep it doused,” was all I could
reply to him. “Let's go back down there again, and see what they'll try to do
to us next."

 
          
He
climbed down the ladder and I followed after him. All the others sort of
goggled
us in the front room. “What happened?" asked
Jackson Warren.

 
          
“John
here just done put that fire arrow of theirs clean out of business," said
Mr. Ben, and smacked his hand down hard on my shoulder.

 
          
“And
it’ll stay out," I added to that, sure of what I said.
“The
same way that witchcraft stuff was taken off this place.
Whatever the
Shonokins want to do to us, they've got to do it some natural way of
doing."

 
          
“Oh,"
breathed Callie, “how can
we
thank you, John?"

 
          
“Don’t
thank me," I said. “Thank the man that wrote that old book of mine,
The Long Lost Friend

 
          
I
went and poured me a cup of strong black coffee from the pot on the stove. It
was right scaldy all the way down, but it made me feel better. It took out the
shake from me that that business on the roof had given me.

 
          
“All
right, now," I said. “What are they up to out in the yard?"

 
          
Jackson
Warren had gone to a place where he could see out betwixt logs. He held his
rifle ready. “Nothing that I can see," he reported me, “and there's moon
enough by now that I think I could see them if they came into the open."

 
          
“They
ain't about to come into the open," sniffed out Mr. Ben.
“If they done that, I'd give them another dead Shonokin to scare
the hell out of them."

 
          
“Callie,
will you go watch at the back of the house?" I said. “You two men, keep
guard at the two side walls in here. I’m a-going to holler out yonder and talk
to them."

           
“You be almighty careful, John/' Mr.
Ben warned at me.

 
          
“The
thought of a-being careless hasn't nair entered my head," I told him.

 
          
I
went to the front door and dragged it open a few inches. I could feel Hazel
Techeray a-looking at my back. I stood close to the open space.

 
          
“Hello, out there yonder!"
I yelled. “Speak up and tell
us what you think you want."

 
          
“We
don't want you, John," came back the voice I well knew belonged to Brook
Altic. “We want Ben Gray to do whatever talking is to be done."

 
          
“I'm
a-doing the talking for in here," I called into the early dark. “Do you
have a word to say? Say it, and I'll hark at it."

 
          
“Then
come out on the porch with your hands up," he said. I had him figured to
be some good way into the front yard, likely behind a big tree or some other
thing to hide him from air shot.

 
          
“I
said I'd hark at you," I called again. “I nair said I'd do what you
ordered me. I'm nair such a gone gump as to come out yonder."

 
          
“You
can never get away, John. None of you can get away. We've got you penned up in
that little cabin."

 
          
I
let myself laugh at that. “Now, whoever said we wanted to come out? It's nice
in here, Brooke Altic. We've got meal in the barrel, meat on the hook, water in
the bucket, and fire in the stove. We can do all right inside here. We've
likewise got guns, in case you don't know that, and if you crowd us just one
little bitty bit we may show you the color of Shonokin blood."

 
          
“That's
a-telling them good, John," muttered Mr. Ben at my side.

 
          
Mr.
Brooke Altic didn't say a word for a few moments then. Likely he busied himself
to chew on what
Fd
said. Then:

 
          
“John,
you're in a trap.
You and everybody with you.
You're
most tightly shut up in your little shed. It's dark now, it's our time. We have
various ways of getting at you that you don't dream of. So come out with your
hands up. All of you."

 
          
“What
if we don't?" I asked into the falling darkness. “Then you'll earnestly
wish you had. I promise you that you'll wish you had."

           
“If you come a-fooling with
us," I said back, “you'll do some wishing yourself, will wish you hadn't.
You've already tried fire and it didn't work. Right this minute," I said,
“none of your crowd has the guts to step out where a fair shot can be had at
him."

 
          
“You
seem to be talking as though for everybody there inside," said Brooke
Altic, “but you and I aren't talking at all profitably. Let me say a word to
Ben Gray."

 
          
Ben
Gray was right there beside me. “Here I am, Brooke Altic," he hollered
past me. “Here I am, a-hungering for a sight of you out in the open, and what
you got to answer me back?"

 
          
“I
think you have a reasonable mind, Mr. Gray," said Brooke Aide's voice from
wherever he was hid, in his way that made him sound so reasonable himself. “I
despair of John, for whom I had hoped to do so much. You're more apt to listen
to the voice of sense, even though you killed one of us."

 
          
“He
asked for it," said Mr. Ben. “He was a-trying to kill me.

 
          
“He
only wanted your jewel, your alexandrite."

 
          
“And
he nair got none of it, did he?"

 
          
“Mr.
Gray," said Brooke Altic, “you and I can come to a sensible agreement
here. Take that jewel and wrap it up in a handkerchief, something white. Throw
it out here into the yard where we can get it. And in exchange for that, I’ll
engage to do you favors in a hundred different ways—"

 
          
'That
there's enough of that," busted in Mr. Ben. "I don't want
no
more of such fine talk from you. If you hanker for my
alexandrite, or aught else I've got, come try to take it and see what you wind
up a-getting instead."

 
          
Another
of Aide's waits before he made an answer. Then: "Mr. Gray, you make
yourself sound as intransigent as John himself. Suppose we wait a short while
here and give you time to come to your senses."

 
          
"Hell's
brass gates, you can wait till you're splayfooted and jimberjawed," Mr.
Ben yelled right back to him. "I've spoken my piece and I'll stick to
it."

 
          
He
pulled back away from the door and walked to where his jug stood. "I need
a grain of blockade to take the taste of that no-good Shonokin out of my
mouth," he allowed, and poured him a thimbleful. He took it down in one
quick catch, and I saw his eye to glitter in the soft light in there.

 
          
"Lord
have
mercy," he said, "maybe I talked to him
all wrong."

 
          
"You
talked to him all right, Mr. Ben," said Hazel Techeray. "I done
already told you how come him to want that alexandrite thing, use it to order
you round. It wouldn't nair do to give it to him."

 
          
"What
I mean is, I could have made off to give it to him," he said. "I
should ought
to have talked like as if I agreed him, and
then flung out a white cloth without the alexandrite, and stood by to plug
whichever of them tried to pick it up. Maybe it ain't too late yet, maybe if I
said I'd change my mind, didn't mea.n them things I said, then—''

 
          
"I
fear that won't work, Mr. Ben," I had to say. "The way you got him
told
,
he'd know you meant that thing. He'd figure a
trick and be a-looking out for it"

 
          
"Well
then, all right," he agreed me. "I'll let him have the thing how I
laid it out to him. Let him come and try something on here. It'll be like to
crawl down a black bear's mouth to take his food away from him."