Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (30 page)

"Suppose Zeb
Gossett was shown a quick way out of here," she said. "Suppose you
and I got to be partners in the spring and other matters."

"What kind
of partners?"

She winnowed
close then. I made out she didn't have on air stitch under her silky dress. She
was proudly made, and well she knew it. She stood so close she near about
touched me.

"What kind
of partners would you like us to be?" she whispered.

"Miss
Craye," said I, "no, thank you. No partnerships in the spring or in you,
either one."

If she'd had the
power to kill me with a look, I'd have died then and there. For hell's worst
fury is a woman scorned, says another poet.

"I don't
know why I don't raise my voice and set my pack on you," she breathed out
in my face, and drew off a step.

"Maybe I can
make one of those educated guesses," I said. "Your pack might not be
friendly to you, not when you've just failed at something."

"You're the
failure!" she squeaked like a bat.

"A failure
for you, like Zeb Gossett. Isn't the third time the charm? If it doesn't work
the third time, where will the charm put you?"

"I gave you
and Zeb Gossett till sundown tomorrow," she gritted out with her pointy
teeth. "Just about twenty-four hours."

"We'll be
here," I said.

She backed off
amongst the trees. They tossed their branches, like as if in a high wind. I
turned and went back to the cabin. As I helped Zeb do the dishes, I related him
what had passed.

"You bluffed
her out of something she might try on you," said Zeb.

"I wasn't
a-bluffing. If she's got the power of evil, I've been up against that in my
time, and folks will say evil nair truly won over me. I hope some power of good
is in me."

"Sure it
is," he said. "Look out yonder at that healing spring. But she says
bad will fall on us by sundown tomorrow. How can we go all right against
that?"

"I don't
rightly know how to answer that," I made confession. "We'll play it
by ear, same as I play this guitar." And I picked it up to change the
subject.

Out yonder was a
sound, like a whisper, but too soft and sneaky to be a real voice. And a shadow
passed outside a window.

I stopped my
picking. Zeb had taken a dark-covered book from the shelf and was opening it.
"What's that?" I asked.

"The
Bible." He flung the covers wide and stabbed down his finger. "I'm
a-going to cast a sign for us."

I knew about
that, open the Bible anywhere and put your finger on a text and look for
guidance in it.

"Here, the
last verse in thirteenth Mark." Zeb read it out: "'And what I say
unto you I say unto all, Watch.'"

"Watch,"
I repeated. "That's what we'll do tonight."

Shadows at the
window again. Zeb looked in the Bible, but didn't read from it anymore. I
picked my guitar, the tune of "Never Trust a Stranger." Outside rose
a rush of wind, and when I looked out it was darkened. Night, and, from what I
could judge, no moon. The owl hooted. On the hearth, the fire burnt blue. Zeb
got up and lit a candle. Its flame fluttered like a yellow leaf.

Then a scratchy
peck at the door. Zeb looked at me, his eyes as wide as sunflowers. I put down
the guitar and went to the door.

It opened by
hiking the latch on a string. I cracked it inward a tad and looked at what was
out there. A dog? It was as big as a big one, black and bristly-haired. Its
eyes shone, likewise its teeth. It looked to be a-getting up on its hind legs,
and for a second I thought its front paws were hairy hands.

"Thanks,"
I said to it, "whatever you got to sell, we don't want any."

I closed the door
and the latch fell into place. I heard that big body a-pressing against the
wood. A whiney little sound, then the wind again. Zeb put more wood on the
fire, though it wasn't cold. "What must we do?" he asked.

"Watch, the
way the Bible told us," I replied him.

Things moved
heavily all round the cabin. A scratch at a windowpane. Feet tippy-toed on the
roof.

"I reckon
it's up to you, John," said Zeb, his Bible back in his hand. "Up to
you to see us through this night. You've got good in you to stand off the
bad."

I thought of
saying that Craye had given us to sundown the next day, which should ought to
mean we'd last till then. As to the good in me, I hoped it was there. But it's
not a right thing to claim aught for yourself, just be thankful if it helps.

Zeb gave us both
a whet out of a jug of good blockade, and again I picked guitar. He joined in
with me to sing "
Lonesome
River
Shore
" and "Call Me from
the Valley," and wanted me to do the one that had minded him of Tilda.
Things quietened outside while we sang. The devil's afraid of music, I'd heard
tell from a preacher in a church house one time.

But when I put
the guitar by, I heard another kind of singing. It was outside, it was a
moanish tune and a woman's voice a-doing it. I tried to make out the words:

Cummer, go ye
before, cummer, go ye,
 
Gif ye not go before, cummer, let me . . .  
 

And I'd heard
that same song before. It was sung, folks said, near about four hundred years
back, at
North Berwick
, in
Scotland
,
to witch a king on his throne and the princess he wanted to marry. I didn't
reckon I'd tell Zeb that.

"Sounds like
Craye Sawtelle's voice," he said as he listened. "What does cummer
mean, John?"

"I think
that's an old-timey word for a chum, a friend," I replied him.

"Then what
cummers are out there with Craye?" His face was white—so white I never
mentioned the dog-thing that had come to the door.

"She'd
better not fetch her cummers in here," I said to hearten him. "They
might could hear what wouldn't please them."

"Hear
what?"

I had to tell him
something, so I took the guitar and sang:

Lights in the
valley outshine the sun,
 
Look away beyond the blue . . .  
 

He looked to feel
better. Outside, the other singing died out.

"Would it
help if we had crosses at the windows?" he asked, and I nodded him it
wouldn't hurt. He tied splinters of firewood crosswise with twine string and
put two at the windows and hung another to the latch of the door. Out yonder,
somebody moaned like as if the somebody had felt a pain somewhere. Zeb actually
grinned at that.

Time dragged by,
and the wind sighed round the cabin, or anyway something with a voice like
wind. I yawned and stretched, and told him I felt like sleep.

"Take the
bed yonder," Zeb bade me. "I'll sit up. I won't be able to
sleep."

"That's what
you think," I said. "Get into your bed. I'll put down this blanket I
fetched with me, just inside the door."

And I did, and
wropped up in it. I didn't stay awake long, though once it sounded like as if
something sniffed at where the door came down to the bottom. Shoo, gentlemen,
you can sleep if you're tired enough.

What woke me up
was the far-off crow of a rooster. I was glad to hear that, because a rooster's
crow makes bad spirits leave. I rolled over and got up. Zeb was at the
fireplace, with an iron fork to toast pieces of bread. A saucepan was a-boiling
eggs.

"We're still
here," he said. "It wonders me what Craye Sawtelle was up to last
night."

"Just a try
at scaring us," I said. "She gave us till sundown tonight, you
recollect."

Somehow, that
pestered him. He didn't talk much while we ate. I said I'd fetch a pail of
water, and out I went with it to the spring. There, at the spring but not right
close up beside it, stood Craye Sawtelle. This time she wore a long black
dress, with black sandals on her bare feet, and her hair was tied up with a
string of red beads.

"Good day,
ma'am," I said. "How did you fare last night?"

"I was a
trifle busy," she answered. "A-getting ready for sundown."

I dipped my
bucket in the spring. The water looked sweet.

"I note by
your tracks that you've been round and round here," I said, "but you
nair once got close enough to dip in the spring."

"That will
come," she promised me. "It will come when the spring's mine, when
there's no bar against me. How does that sound to you, John?"

"Why, since
you ask, it sounds like the same old song by the same old mockingbird. Like a
try at scaring us out. Miss Craye, I've been a-figuring on you since we met up
yesterday, and I'll give you my straight-out notion. There's nothing you can do
to me or Zeb Gossett, no matter how you try."

"You'll be
sorry you said that."

"I'm already
sorry," I said. "I hate to talk thisaway to

lady-folks, but
some things purely have to be said."

"And yonder
comes Zeb Gossett," she said, pointing. "He'll do like you, try to
talk himself out of being afraid."

Zeb came along to
where I stood with the bucket in my hand. He looked tight-mouthed and pale
under his brown beard.

"Have you
come to talk business?" Craye inquired him, and showed him her pointy
teeth.

"I talk no
business with you," he said.

"Wait until
the sun slides down behind the mountain," she mocked at him. "Wait
until dark. See what I make happen then."

"I don't
have to wait," he said. "I've made my mind up."

"Then why
should I wait, either?" she snarled out, "Why not do the thing
now?"

She lifted up her
hands, crooked like claws. She began to say a string of wild words, in whatever
language I don't know. Zeb gave back from her.

"I hate
things like this, folks," I said, and I upped with the bucket and flung
that water from the spring all over her.

She screamed like
an animal caught in a trap. I saw yellow foam come a-slathering out of her
mouth. She whirled round and whirled round again and slammed down, and by then
you couldn't see her on account of the thick dark steam that rose.

Zeb ran back off
a dozen steps, but I stood there to watch, the empty bucket in my hand.

The steam
thinned, but you couldn't see Craye Sawtelle. She was gone.

Only that black
dress, twisted and empty, and only those two black sandals on the soaked
ground, with no feet in them. Naught else. Not a sigh of Craye Sawtelle. The
last of the steam drifted off, and Zeb and I stared at each other.

She's gone,"
Zeb gobbled in his throat. "Gone. How did you—"

"Well"—I
steadied my voice—"yesterday you said it washed away air bad thing
whatever. So I thought I'd see if it would do that. No doubt about it, Craye
Sawtelle was badness through and through."

He looked down at
the empty dress and empty sandals. "Blessed water," he said.
"Holy water. You made it so."

"I can't
claim that, Zeb. More likely it was your doing, when you started in to use it
for help to sick and troubled folks."

"But you
knew that if you threw it on her—"

"No." I
shook my head. "I just only hoped it would work, and it did. Wherever
Craye Sawtelle's been washed to, I don't reckon she'll be back from
there."

He looked up
along the trail. Yonder came Tilda Fleming.

"Tilda,"
he said her name. "What shall I tell Tilda?"

"Why not
tell her what's in your heart for her?" I asked. "I reckon she's
plumb ready to hark at you."

He started to
walk toward her and I headed back to the cabin.

That time back
yonder, I found the place myself, the way folks in those mountains allowed I
had to.

I was rough hours
on the way, high up and then down, over ridges and across bottoms, where once
there'd been a road. I found a bridge across a creek, but it was busted down in
the middle, like a warning not to use it. I splashed across there. It got late
when I reached a cove pushed in amongst close-grown trees on a climbing slope.

An owl hooted
toward where the sun sank, so maybe I was on the right track, a path faint
through the woods. I found where a gate had been, a rotted post with rusty
hinges on it. The trees beyond looked dark as the way to hell, but I headed
along that snaky-winding path till I saw the housefront. The owl hooted again,
off where the gloom grayed off for the last of daylight.

That house was
half logs, half ancient whipsawed planks, weathered to dust color. Trees
crowded the sides, branches crossed above the shake roof. The front-sill timber
squatted on pate rocks. The door had come down off its old leather hinges.
Darkness inside. Two windows stared, with flowered bushes beneath them. The
grassy yard space wasn't a great much bigger than a parlor floor.

"What ye
wish, young sir?" a scrapy voice inquired me, and I saw somebody a-sitting
on a slaty rock at the house's left corner.

"I didn't
know anybody was here," I said, and looked at him and he looked at me.

I saw a gnarly
old man, his ruined face half-hid in a blizzardy white beard, his body wrapped
in a brown robe. Beside him hunkered down what looked like a dark-haired dog.
Both of them looked with bright, squinty eyes, a-making me recollect that my
shirt was rumpled, that I sweated under my pack straps, that I had mud on my
boots and my dungaree pant cuffs.

"If ye nair
knowed nobody was here, why'd ye come?" scraped his voice.

"It might
could be hard to explain."

"I got a
lavish of time to hark at yore explanation."

I grinned at him.
"I go up and down, a-viewing the country over. I've heard time and again
about a place so far off of the beaten way that owls hoot in the daytime and
they have possums for yard dogs."

An owl hooted
somewhere.

"That's a
saying amongst folks here and yonder," said the old man, his broad brown
hand a-stroking his beard.

"Yes,
sir," I agreed him, "but I heard tell it was in this part of the
country, so I thought I'd find out."

The beard stirred
as he clamped his mouth. "Is that all ye got to do with yore young
life?"

"Mostly
so," I told him the truth. "I find out things."

The animal
alongside him hiked up its long snout.

It was the
almightiest big possum I'd ever seen, big as a middling-sized dog. Likely it
weighed more than fifty pounds. Its eyes dug at me.

"Folks at
the county seat just gave me general directions," I went on. "I found
an old road in the woods. Then I heard the owl hoot and it was still daytime,
so I followed the sound here."

I felt funny,
a-standing with my pack straps galled into me, to say all that.

"I've heard
tell an owl hoot by daytime is bad luck," scraped the voice in the beard.
"Heap of that a-going, if it's so."

"Over in
Wales
,
they say an owl hooting means that a girl's a-losing her virginity," I
tried to make a joke.

"Hum."
Not exactly a laugh. "Owls must be kept busy a-hooting for that,
too." He and the possum looked me up and down. "Well, since ye come
from so far off, why don't me bid ye set and rest?"

"Thank you,
sir." I unslung my pack and put it down and laid my guitar on it. Then I
stepped toward the dark door hole.

"Stay out of
yonder," came quick warning words. "What's inside is one reason why
nobody comes here but me. Set down on that stump acrost from me. What might I
call ye?"

I dropped down on
the stump. "My name's John. And I wish you'd tell me more about how is it
folks don't come here."

"I'm Maltby
Sanger, and this here good friend I got with me is named Ung. The rest of the
saying's fact, too. I keep him for a yard dog."

Ung kept his
black eyes on me. His coarse fur was grizzled gray. His forepaws clasped like
hands under his shallow chin.

"Maybe I'd
ought to fix us some supper while we talk," said Maltby Sanger.

"Don't
bother," I said. "I'll be a-heading back directly."

"Hark at
me," he said, scrapier than ever. "There ain't no luck a-walking
these here woods by night."

"There'll be
a good moon."

"That
there's the worst part. The moon shows ye to what's afoot in the woods. Eat
here tonight and then sleep here."

"Well, all
right." I leaned down and unbuckled my pack. "But let me fix the
supper, since I came without bidding." I fetched out a little poke of
meal, a big old can of sardines in tomatoes. "If I could have some water,
Mr. Sanger."

"'Round
here, there's water where I stay at."

He got off his
rock, and I saw that he was dwarfed. His legs under that robe couldn't be much
more than knees and feet. He wouldn't stand higher than my elbow.

"Come on,
John," he said, and I picked up a tin pan and followed him round the house
corner.

Betwixt two trees
was built a little shackly hut, poles up and down and clay-daubed for walls,
other poles laid up top and covered with twigs and grass for a roof. In front
of it, in what light was left, flowed a spring. I filled my pan and started
back.

"Is that all
the water ye want?" he asked after me.

"Just to
make us some pone. I've got two bottles of beer to drink."

"Beer,"
he said, like as if he loved the word.

He waddled back,
a-picking up wood as he came. We piled twigs for me to light with a match, then
put bigger pieces on top. I poured meal into the water in the pan and worked up
a batter. Then I found a flat rock and rubbed it with ham rind and propped it
close to the fire to pour the batter on. Afterward I opened the sardines and
got my fork for Maltby Sanger and took my spoon for myself. When the top of the
pone looked brown enough, I turned it over with my spoon and knife, and I dug
out those bottles of beer and twisted off the caps.

We ate, squatted
on two sides of the fire. Maltby Sanger appeared to enjoy the sardines and
pone, and he gave some to Ung, who held chunks in his paws to eat. When we'd
done, not a crumb was left. "I relished that," allowed Maltby Sanger.

It had turned
full dark, and I was glad for the fire.

"Ye pick
that guitar, John?" he inquired. "Why not pick it some right
now?"

I tuned my silver
strings and struck chords for an old song I recollected. One verse went like
this:

We sang good songs
that came out new,
 
But now they're old amongst the young,
 
And when we're gone, it's just a few
 
Will know the songs that we have sung. 
 

"I God and
that's a true word," said Maltby Sanger when I finished. "Them old
songs is a-dying like flies."

I hushed the
silver strings with my palm. "I don't hear that owl hoot," I said.

"It ain't
daytime no more," said Maltby Sanger.

"Hark at me,
sir," I spoke up. "Why don't you tell me just what's a-happening
here, or anyway a-trying to happen?"

He gave me one of
his beady looks and sighed a tired-out sigh. "How'll I start in to tell
ye?"

"Start in at
the beginning."

"Ain't no
beginning I know of. The business is as old as this here mountain itself."

"Then it's
right old, Mr. Sanger," I said. "I've heard say these are the oldest
mountains on all this earth. They go back before Adam and Eve, before the first
of living things. But here we've got a house, made with hands." I looked at
the logs, the planks. "Some man's hands."

"John,"
he said, "that there's just a housefront, built up against the rock, and
maybe not by no man's hands, no such thing. I reckon it was put there to tole
folks in. But I been here all these years to warn folks off, the way I tried to
warn ye." He looked at me, and so did Ung, next to him. "Till I seen
ye was set in yore mind to stay, so I let ye."

I studied the
open door hole, so dark inside. "Why should folks be toled in, Mr.
Sanger?"

"I've
thought on that, and come to reckon the mountain wants folks right into its
heart or its belly." He sort of stared his words into me. "Science
allows this here whole earth started out just a ball of fire. The outside
cooled down. Water come in for the sea, and trees and living things got born
onto the land. But they say the fire's still inside. And fire's got to have
something to feed on."

I looked at our
own fire. It was burning small and hot, but if it got loose it could eat up
that whole woods. "You remind me of old history things," I said,
"when gods had furnaces inside them and sacrifices were flung into
them."

"Right,
John," he nodded me. "Moloch's the name in the Bible, fifth chapter
of Amos, and I likewise think somewheres in Acts."

"The name's
Molech another place," I said. "Second Kings; Preacher Ricks had it
for a text one time. How King Joash ruled that no man would make his son or
daughter pass through the fire to Molech. You reckon this place is some way
like that?"

"Might could
be this here place, and places like it in other lands, gave men the idee of
fiery gods to burn up their children."

I hugged my
guitar to me, for what comfort it could give. "You wouldn't tell me all
this," I said, "if you wanted to fool me into the belly of the
mountain."

"I don't
worship no such," he snapped. "I told ye, I'm here to keep folks from
a-meddling into there and not come out no more. It was long years back when I
come here to get away from outside things. I wasn't much good at a man's work,
and folks laughed at how dwarfished-down I was."

"I don't
laugh," I said.

"No, I see
ye don't. But don't either pity me. I wouldn't like that no more than I'd like
laughter."

"I don't
either pity you, Mr. Sanger. I judge you play the man, the best you can, and
nobody can do more than that."

He patted Ung's
grizzled back. "I come here," he said again, "and I heard tell
about this place from the old man who was here then. I allowed I'd take over
from him if he wanted to leave, so he left. It wonders me if this sounds like a
made-up tale to ye."

"No, sir, I
hark at air word you speak."

"If ye
reckon this here is just some common spot, look on them flowers at the window
by ye."

It was a shaggy
bush in the firelight. There were blue flowers. But likewise pinky ones, the
color of blood-drawn meat. And dead white ones, with dark spots in them, like
eyes.

"Three
different flowers on one bush," he said. "I don't reckon there's the
like of that, nowheres else on this earth."

"Sassafras
has three different leaves on one branch," I said. "There'll be a
mitten leaf, and a toad-foot leaf next to it, and then just a plain
smooth-edged leaf." I studied the bush. "But those flowers would be
special, even if there was just one of a kind on a twig."

"Ye done
harked at what I told, John," said Maltby Sanger, and put his bottle up to
his beard to drink the last drop. "Suit yoreself if it makes sense."

"Sense is
what it makes," I said. "All right, you've been here for years. I
reckon you live in that little cabin round the corner. Does that suit
you?"

"It's got to
suit somebody. Somebody's needed. To guard folks off from a-going in yonder and
then not come out."

I strummed my
guitar, tried to think of what to sing. Finally:

Yonder comes the
Devil
 
From hell's last bottom floor,
 
A-shouting and a-singing,
 
There's room for many a more. 
 

"I enjoy to
hear ye make music, John," said Maltby Sanger. "It was all right for
ye to come here tonight. No foolishness. I won't say no danger, but ye'll
escape danger, I reckon."

I looked toward
the open door. It was all black inside—no, not all black. I saw a couple of red
points in there. I told myself they were reflected from our fire.

"I've been
a-putting my mind on what's likely to be down yonder," I said.
"Recollected all I was told when I was little, about how hell was an
everlasting fire down under our feet, like the way heaven was up in the sky
over us."

"Have ye
thought lately, the sky ain't truly up over us no more?" he inquired me.
"It's more like off from us now, since men have gone a-flying off to the
moon and are a-fixing to fly farther than that, to the stars. Stars is what's
in the sky, and heaven's got to be somewheres else. But I ain't made up my mind
on hell, not yet. Maybe it's truly a-burning away, down below our feet, right
this minute."

"Or either,
the fire down in there is what made folks decide what hell was."

"Maybe
that," he halfway agreed me. "John, it's nigh onto when I go to
sleep. I wish there was two beds in my cabin, but—"

"Just let me
sleep out here and keep our fire a-going," I said. "Keep it a-going,
and not let it get away and seek what it might devour."

"Sure thing,
if ye want to." He got up on his stumpy legs and dragged something out
from under that robe he wore. "Ye might could like to have this with
ye."

I took it. It was
a great big Bible, so old its leather covers were worn and scrapped near about
away.

"I thank
you, sir," I said. "I'll lay a little lightwood on the fire and read
in this."