Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (19 page)

 
          
"Just
to see how you make the rain fall," I said, under the overhang of the
ledge. "Help me up."

 
          
Down
came a bare brown honey-hairy arm, and a hand the size of a scoop shovel. It
got my wrist and snatched me away like a turnip coming out of a patch, and I
landed my feet on broad flat stones.

 
          
Below
me yawned up those rock-toothed tops of the Notch's jaws. Inside them the brush
and trees looked mossy and puny. The cabins were like baskets, the pigs and the
cow like play-toys, and the branch looked to run so narrow you might bridge it
with your shoe. Shadow fell on the Notch from the fattening dark clouds.

 
          
Then
I looked at Rafe Enoch. He stood over me like a sycamore tree over a wood shed.
He was the almighties! big thing I'd ever seen on two legs.

 
          
Eight
foot high, Oakman Dillon had said truly, and he was thick-made in keeping.
Shoulders wide enough to fill a barn door, and legs like tree trunks with
fringe-sided buckskin pants on them, and his big feet wore moccasin shoes of bear's
hide with the fur still on. His shirt, sewed together of pelts—fox, coon, the
like of that—hadn't any sleeves, and hung open from that big chest of his that
was like a cotton bale. Topping all, his face put you in mind of the full moon
with a yellow beard, but healthy-looking brown, not pale like the moon. Big and
dark eyes, and through the yellow beard his teeth grinned like big white sugar
lumps.

 
          
"Maybe
I ought to charge you to look at me," he said.

 
          
I
remembered how he'd struck a man dead for wanting him in a show, and I looked
elsewhere. First, naturally, at Page Jarrett on the rock spur. The wind from
the clouds waved her brown hair like a flag, and fluttered her blue skirt
around her drawn-up feet. Then I turned and looked at the broad space above the
falls.

 
          
From
there I could see there was a right much of higher country, and just where I
stood with Rafe Enoch was a big shelf, like a lap, with slopes behind it. In
the middle of the flat space showed a pond of water, running out past us to make
the falls. On its edge stood Rafe Enoch's house, built wigwam-style of big old
logs leaned together and chinked between with clay over twigs. No trees to
amount to anything on the shelf—just one behind the wigwam-house, and to its
branches hung joints that looked like smoke meat.

           
"You hadn't played that guitar
so clever, maybe I mightn't have saved you," said Rafe Enoch's
thunder-voice.

 
          
"Saved?"
I repeated him.

 
          
"Look."
His big club of a finger pointed to the falls, then to those down-hugged
clouds. "When they get together, what happens?"

 
          
Just
at the ledge lip, where the falls went over, stones looked halfway washed out.
A big shove of water would take them out the other half, and the whole thing
pour down on the Notch.

 
          
"Why
you doing this to the folks?" I asked.

 
          
He
shook his head. "John, this is one rain I never called for." He put
one big pumpkin-sized fist into the palm of his other hand. "I can call
for rain, sure, but some of it comes without me. I can't start it or either
stop it, I just know it's coming. I've known about this for days. It'll drown
out Sky Notch like a rat nest."

 
          
"Why
didn't you try to tell them?"

 
          
"I
tried to tell her." His eyes cut around to where Page Jarrett hung to the
pointy rock, and his stool-leg fingers raked his yellow beard. "She was
walking off by herself, alone. I know how it feels to be alone. But when I told
her, she called me a liar. I brought her up here to save her, and she cried and
fought me." A grin. "She fought me better than ary living human I
know. But she can't fight me hard enough."

 
          
"Can't
you do anything about the storm?" I asked him to tell.

 
          
"Can
do this." He snapped his big fingers, and lightning crawled through the
clouds over us. It made me turtle my neck inside my shirt collar. Rafe Enoch
never twitched his eyebrow.

 
          
"Rafe,"
I said, "you might could persuade the folks. They're not your size, but
they're human like you."

 
          
"Them?"
He roared his laugh. "They're not like me, nor you aren't like me, either,
though you're longer-made than common. Page yonder, she looks to have some of
the old Genesis giant blood in her. That's why I saved her alive."

 
          
"Genesis
giant blood," I repeated him, remembering the Book, sixth chapter of
Genesis. " There were giants in the earth in those days.'"

 
          
"That's
the whole truth," said Rafe. "When the sons of God took wives of the
daughters of men—their children were the mighty men of old, the men of renown.
That's not exact quote, but it's near enough."

           
He sat down on a rock, near about as
tall sitting as I was standing. "Ary giant knows he was born from the sons
of the gods," he said. "My name tells it, John."

 
          
I
nodded, figuring it. "Rafe—Raphah, the giant whose son was Goliath,
Enoch—"

 
          
"Or
Anak," he put in. "Remember the sons of Anak, and them scared-out
spies sent into
Canaan
? They was grasshoppers in the sight of the
sons of Anak, and more ways than just size, John." He sniffed. "They
got scared back into the wilderness for forty years. And Goliath!"

 
          
"David
killed him," I dared remind Rafe.

 
          
"By
a trick. A slingshot stone. Else he'd not lasted any longer than that."

 
          
A
finger-snap, and lightning winged over us like a hawk over a chicken run. I
tried not to scrouch down.

 
          
"What
use to fight little old human men," he said, "when you got the sons
of the gods in your blood?"

 
          
I
allowed he minded me of Strap Buckner with that talk.

 
          
"Who's
Strap Buckner? Why do I mind you of him?"

 
          
I
picked the guitar, I sang the song:

 
          
Strap Buckner he was called, he

 
          
was more than eight foot tall, And he walked
like a mountain

 
          
among men. He was good and he was great,

 
          
and the glorious Lone Star

 
          
State Will never look upon his like

 
          
again.

 
          
"Strap
Buckner had the strength of ten lions," I said, "and he used it as
ten lions. Scorned to fight ordinary folks, so he challenged old Satan himself,
skin for skin, on the banks of the
Brazos
, and
if Satan hadn't fought foul—"

 
          
"Another
dirty fighter!" Rafe got up from where he sat, quick as quick for all his
size. "Foul or not, Satan couldn't whup me!"

 
          
"Might
be he couldn't," I judged, looking at Rafe. "But anyway, the Notch
folks never hurt you. Used to give you stuff to eat."

           
"Don't need their stuff to
eat," he said, the way you'd think that was the only argument. He waved
his hand past his wigwam-house. "Down yonder is a bunch of hollows, where
ain't no human man been, except maybe once the Indians. I hoe some corn there,
some potatoes. I pick wild salad greens here and yonder. I kill me a deer, a
bear, a wild hog—ain't no human man got nerve to face them big wild hogs, but I
chunk them with a rock or I fling a sharp ash sapling, and what I fling at I
bring down. In the pond here I spear me fish. Don't need their stuff to eat, I
tell you."

 
          
"Need
it or not, why let them drown out?"

 
          
His
face turned dark, the way you'd think smoke drifted over it.

 
          
"I
can't abide little folks' little eyes looking at me, wondering themselves about
me, thinking I'm not rightly natural."

 
          
He
waited for what I had to say, and it took nerve to say it.

 
          
"But
you're not a natural man, Rafe. You've allowed that yourself, you say you come
from different blood. Paul Bunyan thought the same thing."

 
          
He
grinned his big sugar-lump teeth at me. Then: "Page Jarrett," he
called, "better come off that rock before the rain makes it slippy and you
fall off. I'll help you—"

 
          
"You
stay where you are," she called back. "Let John help."

 
          
I
went to the edge of that long drop down. The wind blew from some place—maybe
below, maybe above or behind or before. I reached out my guitar, and Page
Jarrett crawled to where she could lay hold, and that way I helped her to the
solid standing. She stood beside me, inches taller, and she put a burning mean
look on Rafe Enoch. He made out he didn't notice.

 
          
"Paul
Bunyan," he said, after what I'd been saying. "I've heard tell his
name—champion logger in the northern states, wasn't he?"

 
          
"Champion
logger," I said. "Bigger than you, I reckon—"

 
          
"Not
bigger!" thundered Rafe Enoch.

 
          
"Well,
as big."

 
          
"Know
ary song about him?"

 
          
"Can't
say there's been one made. Rafe, you say you despise to be looked on by
folks."

 
          
"Just
by little folks, John. Page Jerrett can look on me if she relishes to."

 
          
Quick
she looked off, and drew herself up proud. Right then she appeared to be taller
than what Mr. Oakman Dillon had reckoned her, and a beauty-looking thing she
was, you hear what I say, gentlemen. I cut my eyes up to the clouds; they hung
down over us, loose and close, like the roof of a tent. I could feel the
closeness around me, the way you feel water when you've waded up to the line of
your mouth.

 
          
"How
soon does the rain start falling?" I asked Rafe.

 
          
"Can
fall ary time now," said Rafe, pulling a grass-stalk to bite in his big
teeth. "Page's safe off that rock point, it don't differ me a shuck when
that rain falls."

 
          
"But
when?" I asked again. "You know."

 
          
"Sure
I know." He walked toward the pond, and me with him. I felt Page Jerrett's
grape-green eyes digging our backs. The pond water was shiny tarry black from
reflecting the clouds. "Sure," he said, "I know a right much.
You natural human folks, you know so pitiful little I'm sorry for you."

 
          
"Why
not teach us?" I wondered him, and he snorted like a big mean horse.

 
          
"Ain't
the way it's reckoned to be, John. Giants are figured stupid. Remember the
tales? Your name's John—do you call to mind a tale about a man named Jack, long
back in time?"

 
          
"Jack
the Giant Killer," I nodded. "He trapped a giant in a hole—"

 
          
"Cormoran,"
said Rafe. "Jack dug a pit in front of his door. And Blunderbore he
tricked into stabbing himself open with a knife. But how did them things
happen? "He blew a trumpet to tole Cormoran out, and he sat and ate at
Blunderbore's table like a friend before tricking him to death." A louder
snort. "More foul fighting, John. Did you come up here to be Jack the
Giant Killer? Got some dirty tricks? If that's how it is, you done drove your
ducks to the wrong puddle."