Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (10 page)

 
          
"Oh!"
And Miss Annalinda dropped down to grab. "Look—he's giving us—"

 
          
Tugging
my eyes from One Other's, I looked at what she held out. It shone and lighted
up, like a hailstone by lantern light. It was the size of a hen egg, and it had
a many little edges and flat faces, all full of fire, pale and blue outside and
innerly many-colored like the soap bubble light in the Bottomless Pool. She
shoved it into my hand, and it felt sticky and slippery, like soap. I let it
fall on the ground again.

 
          
"You
fool, that's a diamond!" she squeaked at me. "It's bigger than the
Orloff! Bigger than the Koh-i-noor!"

 
          
She
scrabbled with both hands for more of the shiny things, that lighted up with
every color you could call for. "Here's an emerald," she yipped,
"and here's a ruby! John, he's our friend, he likes us, he's giving us
things worth more money than—"

 
          
On
her knees before One Other, she gathered two fistfuls of those things he'd
flung down for her to pick up. But I had my eyes back on him. He looked at
me—not at her, he was sure of her. He knew humankind's greed for shiny stones.
About me he wasn't sure yet. He studied me as I've seen folks study an animal,
to see where to hit with a stick or slice with a skinning knife. The shiny
stones didn't fetch me. He'd find something that would.

           
I know how like a crazy tale to
scare young ones this sounds. But there and then, One Other was so plain to see
and make out, the way you'd see him if I was to make a clay image of him and
stand it up on one leg in your sight, and it grew till it was twice as tall as
you, with stale green eyes and one hayfork paw and one tabletop foot. In a
moment with no sound, he and I looked at each other. Miss An-nalinda, down on
the ground between us, gopped and goggled at the stones she gathered in her
hands. Then the silence broke. A drip of water fell. Another.
Drip, drip, drip,
like what Miss
Annalinda had dripped into the fire—water from the Bottomless Pool, dripping
off of One Other's body and head and his one arm and one leg.

 
          
Then
he turned his eyes and mind back to Miss Annalinda, for long enough to spare me
for a jump past him at my guitar.

 
          
He
turned quick and swung down at me with his paw, but I had it and was running
backward. I got the guitar across me, my left hand on the frets, and my right
hand clawing the silver strings. They sang out, and One Other teetered on his
broad sole, cocked his head to listen.

 
          
I
started the Last Judgment Song, that in my boyhood old Uncle T. P. Hinnard had
said was good against evil things:

 
          
Three holy kings, four holy saints, At
heaven's high gate that stand, Speak out and bid all evil wait, And stir no
foot or hand. . . .

 
          
But
he came at me. The charm didn't serve against One Other, as I'd been vowed to
it'd serve against any evil in the world. One Other wasn't of this world,
though just now he was in it. He was from the Bottomless Pool, and from
whatever was beyond, below, behind where its bottom should be.

 
          
I
ran around the fire and around Miss Annalinda still crouched down among those
jewels. After me he hopped, like the almightiest big one-legged rabbit in song
or story. He had me almost headed off, coming alongside me, and I ran right
through the fire that was less fear to face than he was. My shoes spurned its
coals as I ran through. On the far side I made myself stop and look back. I
still had to face him somehow. I couldn't just run from him and leave Miss
Annalinda to pay, all alone for her foolishness.

           
He'd stopped, too, in his one track.
The fire, scattered by my feet, blazed up in scattered chunks, and he was sort
of pulling himself together, back away from it.
Drip, drip,
the water fell from him. I felt I couldn't stand that
dripping noise, and I sang another verse of the Last Judgment Song:

 
          
The fire from heaven will fall at last On
wealth and pride and power, We will not know the minute, and We will not know the
hour. . . .

 
          
One
Other hopped a long hop back, away from the fire and from me and from the song.

 
          
Something
whispered me what I'd needed to know.

 
          
From
out of the water he'd come. If I didn't want him to get me, to make me sell out
at a price I'd never redeem—as jewels beyond all reckoning could buy Miss
Annalinda—I'd have to fight him like any water-thing.

 
          
Fight
fire with water, the wise folks say for a saying. Fire and water are enemies.
Fight water with fire.

 
          
He
circled around again, and I didn't flee this time. I grabbed toward the
scattered fire. One Other's flat hand slapped me spinning away, but my own fist
had snatched a burning chunk. When I staggered back onto my feet, I still held
my guitar in one hand, and the chunk in the other.

 
          
I
whipped that fire around my head, and it blazed up like pure lightwood. As One
Other stooped for me again, I rushed to meet
him
and shoved the fire at
him.

 
          
He
couldn't face it. He broke back from it. I jumped sidewise, myself, so he was
between me and the fire, and sashayed the burning stick at him again. He jumped
back. His foot slammed down into the fire.

 
          
I
hope none of you all ever hear such a sound as he made, with no mouth to make
it. Not a yell or a roar or a scream, but
Hark
Mountain
's whole top hummed and danced to it. He
flung himself out of the fire again, and I dashed my torch like a spear for
where his face should be, and made a direct hit.

 
          
I
tell you, he couldn't face fire, he couldn't stand it. He spun around and dived
into the water from which he'd come, into the Bottomless Pool, with a splash
like a wagon falling from a bridge. Running to the rocks, I saw him cleave down
below there into the deep clearness like a diving one-legged frog—among the
soap bubble colors, getting so small he looked a hand's size, a finger's size,
a bean's size. And then light gulped him. Then I stepped back to the scattered
fire.

 
          
Miss
Annalinda still huddled on the ground. I question whether she'd paid any
attention to what had gone on. Her hands were full of jewels, shining green,
red, blue, white.

 
          
I
put out my hand and pulled her to her feet. "Give those to me," I
said.

 
          
Her
eyes stabbed at me like fish-gigs. She couldn't believe that I'd said such
words. I took her right wrist and pried open her right hand, trying not to hurt
her, and got the jewels out of it. Into the Bottomless Pool I plugged them, one
by one. They splashed and sank like pebbles.

 
          
"Don't!"
she screamed, but I took her other hand and pried away the rest of them.
Plop.
I threw one after the first bunch.
Plop.
I threw another.
Plop, plop, plop,
more.

 
          
"They
were a fortune," she whimpered, clawing at my arm. "The greatest
fortune ever dreamed of."

 
          
"No,
not a fortune," I said. "A misfortune. The greatest misfortune ever
dreamed of."

 
          
"But—no—"

 
          
I
threw the rest in.
Plop, plop,
the
rest of the jewels. "What would you have given for them?" I asked
her.

 
          
"Anything—anything—"

 
          
"You
mean everything. If he paid high for us, he meant to have his worth from us. He
needs folks to serve him, more folks than Mr. Howsen." I waved for her to
look into the pool. "I hope he stays where things are more comfortable
than what I gave him to taste."

 
          
She
looked down to where the pool should have a bottom. "John, you're
right," she said, as if she dreamed. "Those colors do look like soap
bubble tints, stretched out, with nothing we can imagine beyond the film of
suds. A great big soap bubble, like the one you say the Creator blew."

 
          
"Maybe,"
I said, "there's more than one soap bubble. Maybe there's a right many.
Each one a life and universe strange to us."

 
          
The
pain of that new thought made her silent. I went on.

           
"Maybe there's two soap bubbles
touching. Maybe the spot where they come together is where something can leave
one sort of life and come into another."

 
          
She
sat down. The new thought was weight as well as pain. "Oh," she said.

 
          
"Maybe
some born venturer would dare try to move into the new bubble," I said,
"through whatever maybe matches the Bottomless Pool on the far side, in
that other world. Maybe, I say. There's a God's plenty of maybes."

 
          
"They
aren't maybes," she said all of a sudden. "You saw him. No such
creature was ever born in our world. A creature looking like that must
be—"

 
          
"You
still don't understand," and I shook my head. "I don't reckon he
looks like that in his own soap bubble. He made himself look like that, to be
as much as possible like our kind, here in this world. We can't guess what he
looks like naturally."

 
          
"I
don't want to guess," she said, as if she was about to cry.

 
          
"A
stranger like that needs friends and helpers in the strange place. Some of the
things he knows from his own home are like power here, power we don't
understand and think is witch stuff. But he'd pay high for helpers, like Mr.
Howsen and like us."

 
          
"Will
he come back?" she asked.

 
          
"Not
right away." I picked up my guitar. "Let's head down trail as far as
we can grope in the dark, and if he does come back he won't find us. If we
can't grope all the way down, we'll build a fire somewhere below and wait for
light to show us the rest of the way."

 
          
"You
were right about me, John," said Miss Annalinda, starting to gabble fast.
"You saw all through me, my spell was to get you up here for spite. But
it's not spite any more, John, it's love, it's love—I love you, John—"

 
          
"You
know," I right away changed the subject, "there's one more thing
about this soap bubble idea. The soap bubble we live in keeps stretching and
swelling. But a soap bubble can't last forever. Some time or other, it
stretches and swells so tight, it just bursts."

 
          
That
did what I was after. It stopped her flood of words. She stared up and away and
all around. I saw the whites of her eyes glitter in the last of the fireglow.

           
"Bursts?" she said slowly.
"Then what?" "Then nothing, Miss Annalinda. When a soap bubble
bursts, it's gone." And we had silence to start our climb down
Hark
Mountain
.

 
          
.Down
it rained, on hill and hollow, the way you'd think the sky was too heavy to
hold it back. It fell so thick and hard fish could have swum in it, all around
where we sat holed up under the low wide porch of the country store—five of us.
A leather-coated deputy sheriff with a pickup truck. A farmer, who'd sheltered
his mule wagon in a shed behind. The old storekeeper, and us two strangers in
that part of the hills, a quiet old gentleman and me with my silver-strung
guitar.

 
          
The
storekeeper hung a lantern to the porch rafters as it got dark. The farmer
bought us all a bottle of soda, and the storekeeper broke us open a box of
cookies. "Gentlemen, you'll all be here for a spell, so sit
comfortable," he said. "Friend," he said to me, "did I ask
your name?"

 
          
"John,"
I named myself.

 
          
"Well,
John, do you play that there guitar you're a-toting?"

 
          
I
played and sang for them, that old song about the hunter's true love:

 
          
Oh, call me sweetheart, call me dear, Call
me what you will, Call me from the valley low, Call me from the hill . . .

 
          
Then
there was talk about old things and thoughts. I recollect what some of them
said: Such as, you can't win solitaire by cheating just once, you've got to
keep cheating; some animals are smarter than folks; who were the ancients who
dug mine-holes in the Toe River country, and what were they after, and did they
find it; nobody knows what makes the lights come and go like giant fireflies
every night on Brown Mountain; you'll never see a man exactly six feet tall,
because that was the height of the Lord Jesus.

 
          
And
the farmer, who next to me was the youngest there, mentioned love and
courting, and how when you true-love someone and need your eyes and thoughts
clearest, they mist up and maybe make you trouble. That led to how you step
down a mullein stalk toward your true love's house, and if it grows up again
she loves you; and how the girls used to have dumb suppers, setting plates and
knives and forks on the table at night and each girl standing behind a chair
put ready, till at midnight the candles blew out and a girl saw, or she thought
she saw, a ghosty-looking somebody in the chair before her, that was the
appearance of the somebody she'd marry.

 
          
"Knew
of dumb suppers when I was just a chap," allowed the storekeeper,
"but most of the old folks then, they didn't relish the notion. Said it
was a devil-made idea, and you might call it something better left
outside."

 
          
"Ain't
no such goings-on in this day and tune," nodded the farmer. "I don't
take stock in them crazy sayings and doings."

 
          
Back
where I was born and raised, in the Drowning Creek country, I'd heard tell of
dumb suppers but I'd never seen one, so I held my tongue. But the deputy
grinned his teeth at the farmer.

 
          
"You
plant by the moon, don't you?" he asked. "Aboveground things like
corn at the full, and underground things like 'taters in the dark?"

 
          
"That
ain't foolishness, that's the true way," the farmer said back. "Ask
anybody's got a lick of sense about farming."

 
          
Then
a big wiggling three-forked flash of lightning struck, it didn't seem more than
arm's-length off, and the thunder was like the falling in of the hills.

 
          
"Law
me," said the old gentleman, whose name seemed to be Mr. Jay. "That
was a hooter."

 
          
"Sure
God was," the farmer agreed him. "Old Forney Meechum wants us to
remember he makes the rain around here."

 
          
My
ears upped like a rabbit's. "I did hear this is the old Meechum-Donovant
feud country," I said. "I've always been wanting to hear the true
tale of that. And what about Forney Meechum making the rain—isn't he
dead?"

 
          
"Deader
than hell," the storekeeper told me. "Though folks never thought he
could die, thought he'd just ugly away. But him and all the Meechum and
Donovant men got killed. Both the names plumb died out, I reckon, yonder in the
valley so low where you see the rain a-falling the lavishest. I used to hear
about it when I was just a chap."

 
          
"Me,
too," nodded the deputy. "Way I got it, Forney Meechum went
somewheres west when he was young. Was with the James boys or the Younger boys,
or maybe somebody not quite that respectable."

 
          
"And
when he come back," took up the storekeeper again, "he could make it
rain whenever it suited him."

 
          
"How?"
I asked, and old Mr. Jay was listening, too.

 
          
"Ain't
rightly certain how," said the farmer. "They tell he used to mix up
mud in a hole, and sing a certain song. Ever hear such a song as that,
John?"

 
          
I
shook my head
no,
and he went on:

 
          
"Forney
Meechum done scarier things than that. He witched wells dry. And he raised up
dead ghosts to show him where treasure was hid. Even his own kinfolks was
scared of him, and all the Meechums took orders from him So when he fell out
with Captain Sam Donovant over a property line, he made them break with all the
Donovants."

 
          
"Fact,"
said the storekeeper, who wanted to tell part of the tale. "And them
Meechums did what he told them, saving only his cousin's oldest girl, Miss
Lute Meechum, and she'd swore eternal love with Captain Ben Donovant's second
boy Jeremiah."

 
          
Another
lightning flash, another thunder growl. Old Mr. Jay hunched his thin shoulders
under his jeans coat, and allowed he'd pay for some cheese and crackers if the
storekeeper'd fetch it out to us.

 
          
"Law
me," said the farmer. "I ain't even now wanting to talk against
Forney Meechum. But they tell he'd put his eye on Lute himself, and he'd
quarreled with his own son Derwood about who'd have her. But next court day at
the county seat, was a fight betwixt Jeremiah Donovant and Derwood Meechum, and
Jeremiah stuck a knife in Derwood and killed
him
dead."

           
Mr. Jay leaned forward in the
lantern light. It showed the gray stubble on his gentle old face. "Who
drew the first knife?" he asked.

 
          
"I've
heard tell Derwood drew the knife, and Jeremiah took it away and stuck it into
him," said the farmer. "Anyway, Jeremiah Donovant had to run from the
law, and down in the valley yonder the Meechums and the Donovants began a-shooting
at each other."

 
          
"Fact,"
the storekeeper took it up again as he fetched out the cheese and crackers.
"That was 50 years back, the last fight of all. Ary man on both sides was
killed, down to boys of ten-twelve years. Old Forney called for rain, but
somebody shot him just as he got it started."

 
          
"And
it falls a right much to this day," said the farmer, gazing at the pour
from the porch eaves. "That valley below us is so rainy it's a swamp like.
And the widows and orphans that was left alive, both families, they was purely
rained out and went other places to live."

 
          
"What
about Miss Lute Meechum?" I asked next.

 
          
"I
wondered about her, too," said Mr. Jay.

 
          
"Died,"
said the storekeeper. "Some folks say it was pure down grief killed her,
that and lonesomeness for that run-off Jeremiah Donovant. I likewise heard tell
old Forney shot her when she said for once and all she wouldn't have him."

 
          
The
deputy sipped his soda. "All done and past now," he said. "Looks
like we're rained in here for all night, gentlemen."

 
          
But
we weren't. It slacked off while we ate our cheese, and then it was just a drip
from the branches. The clouds shredded, and a moon poked through a moment, shy,
like a girl at her first play-party. The deputy got up from the slab bench where
he'd been sitting.

 
          
"Hope
my truck'll wallow up that muddy road to town," he said. "Who can I
carry with me?"

 
          
"I
got my mule," added the farmer. "I'll follow along and snake you out
when you get stuck in one of them mud holes. John, you better ride with me, you
and Mr. Jay."

 
          
I
shook my head. "I'm not going to town, thank you kindly. I'm going down
that valley trail. Swore to an old friend I'd be at his family reunion, up in
the hills on the yonder side, by supper tune tomorrow."

 
          
Mr.
Jay said he'd be going that way, too. The storekeeper offered to let us sleep
in his feed shed, but I said I'd better start. "Coming, sir?" I asked
old Mr. Jay.

           
"After while," he told me,
so I went on alone. Three minutes down trail between those wet dark trees, and
the lantern light under the porch was gone as if it had never shone.

 
          
Gentlemen,
it was lonesome dark and damp going. I felt my muddy way along, with my brogan
shoes squashy-full of water. And yet, sometimes, it wasn't as lonesome as you
might call for. There were soft noises, like whispers or crawlings; and once
there was a howl, not too far away, like a dog, or a man trying to sound like a
dog, or maybe the neither of them. For my own comfort I began to pick the
guitar and sing to myself; but the wrong tune had come unbidden:

 
          
In the pines, in the pines,

 
          
Where the sun never shines,

 
          
And I shiver where the wind blows cold! . .
.

 
          
I
stopped when I got that far, it was too much the truth. And it came on to rain
again.

 
          
I
hauled off my old coat to wrap my guitar from it. Not much to see ahead, but I
knew I kept going down slope and down slope, and no way of telling how far down
it went before it would start up to go to the hills where my friend's kinfolks
would gather tomorrow. I told myself I was a gone gump not to stay at the
store, the way I was so kindly bid. I hoped that that old Mr. Jay had the sense
to stay under cover. But it was too far to go back. And I'd better find some
place out of the wet, for my guitar more than me.

 
          
Must
have been a bend to that trail, because I came all at once in view of the light
in the cabin's glass window, before I notioned there was any living place
around. The light looked warm yellow through the rain, and I hastened my wet
feet. Close enough in, I could judge it was an old-made log house, the corners
notch-locked and the logs clay-chinked, and the wide eaves with thick-split
shakes on them, but I couldn't really see. "Hello, the house!" I
yelled out.

 
          
No
sound back. Maybe the rain was keeping them from hearing me. I felt my way to
the flat door-stone and knocked. No stir inside.

 
          
Groping
for a knob, I found none, only a leather latch string, old style. And, old
style, it was out. In my grandsire's day, a latch string out meant come in. I
pulled, and a wooden latch lifted inside and the door swung in before me.

           
The room was lit from a fireplace
full of red coals, and from a candle stuck on a dish on a table middleway of
the puncheon floor. That table took my eye as I stepped in. A cloth on it, and
a plate of old white china with knife and fork at the sides, and a cup and
saucer, yes and a folded napkin. But no food on the table, no coffee in the
cup. A chair was set to the plate, and behind the chair, her hands crossed on
its back, stood a woman, young and tall and proud-standing.

 
          
She
didn't move. Nothing moved, except the candle flame in the stir of air from the
open door. She might have been cut from wood and put up there to fool folks. I
closed the door against the hard drum of the rain, and tracked wet marks on the
puncheons as I came toward the table. I took off my old hat, and the water fell
from it.