Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (14 page)

 
          
The
mouth-harp man grabbed up my guitar. "This here'll be a square
fight!" he yelled, louder than he'd spoken so far. "Ain't a fair one,
seeing Jeth's so big, but it'll be square! Just them two in it, and no
more!"

 
          
"I'll
settle you later," Jeth promised him, mean.

 
          
"Settle
me first," I said, and got betwixt them.

 
          
Jeth
ran at me. I stepped sidewise and got him under the ear again as he went
shammocking past. He turned, and I dug my fist right into his belly-middle, to
stir up all that stump-hole whisky he'd been drinking, then the other fist
under the ear yet once more, then on the chin and the mouth, under the ear, on
the broken nose—ten licks like that, as fast and hard as I could fetch them in,
and eighth or ninth he went slack, and the tenth he just fell flat and loose,
like a coat from a nail. I stood waiting, but he didn't move.

 
          
"Gentlemen,"
said the drunk man who'd fetched me, "looky yonder at Jeth laying there!
Never figured to see the day! Maybe that stranger-man calls himself John is
Satan, after all!"

 
          
Donie
Carawan walked across, slow, and gouged Jeth's ribs with the pointy toe of her
high-heeled shoe. "Get up," she bade him.

 
          
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.

 
          
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."