Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (32 page)

Man-eaters—such things were told of
by old Indians, wise men who'd sworn to them. The wendigo, up in Northern
parts. The anisgina, recollected in Cherokee tales to make you shiver. Supposed
to be all died out and gone these days, but when bones rise up …

The bones came a-slaunching close.
I heard them click.

I hiked up the shovel with both my
hands, and held the blade edge forward like an axe. I'd chop with that. The
bones stood a second, the whole skeleton of them, tall over me. In the glow of
the moon those bones looked like frosty silver. My head wouldn't have come put
to those big cliffs of shoulders. The jaws opened and shut. They made a
snapping sound.

Because they wanted to bite a chunk
out of me. Those teeth in the jaws, they were as long and sharp as knives. They
could break a man's arm off if they jammed into it.

But I didn't run. To run nair had
helped me much in such a case. I'd stand my ground, fight. If I lost the fight,
maybe Hallcott could get away and tell the tale. I bent my knees and made my
legs springly. I hoped I could move faster and surer than those big, lumbering
bones.

Preacher Melick had said the Bible
words to make them live, had said them without a-thinking. And that song, I'd
have been better off if I'd nair sung it. I watched the thick, bony arms rise
up and fetch the club down to bust my head.

That quick, I sidestepped and
danced clear, and down came the big hunk of tree, so hard on the ground it
boomed there like a slamming door. I made a swing with my own shovel, but the
club was up again and in the way. My blade bounced off. Again the club hiked up
over me; it made a dark blotch against the moon. I set myself to dodge again.

Then it was that Embro Hallcott, come
back up just behind me, started in to sing in his husky voice:

The toe bone's connected from the
foot bone,
The foot bone's connected from the heel bone …

And quick on from there, about the
shin and thigh and hip bones, about the back bone and the shoulder bone. I
stood with my shovel held up in both hands, and watched the thing come apart
before my eyes.

It had dropped that club that would
have driven me into the ground like a nail. It swayed in broken-up moonlight
that shone through tree branches. It fell to pieces while I watched.

I looked at the bones, down and
scattered out now. The skull stared up at me, and one more time it gave a
hungry snap of those jaws. I heard:

The neck bone's connected from the
jaw bone,
The jaw bone's connected from the head bone,
Hear the word of the Lord.

The jaw bone snapped no more. It
rolled free from the skull.

Hallcott was up beside me. I could
feel him shake all over.

"It worked," he said, in
the tiredest voice you could call for.

"That song built him up,"
I said back. "And that song, sung different, took him back down again.
Though it appears to me the word should be 'disconnected.'"

"Sure enough?" he
wondered me. "I don't know that word, that disconnected. But I thought on
an old tale, how a man read in a magic book and devilish things came all 'round
him, so he read the book backward and made them go away." His eyes bugged
as he looked at a big thigh bone, dropped clear of its kneecap and shin.
"What if it hadn't worked, John?"

"Point is, it did work and
thank the good Lord for that," I told him. "Now, how you say for us
to put him back in his coffin again, and not sing air note to him this
time?"

Hallcott didn't relish to touch the
bones, and, gentlemen, neither did I. I scooped them in the shovel, all the way
along to where the grave was open and the coffin lid flung back. In I shoved
them, one by one, in a heap on top of the Turkey Track quilt. I sought out air
single bone, even the little separate toe bones that come in the song, a-picking
them up with the shovel blade. Somewhere I've heard tell there are two hundred
and eight bones in a skeleton. Finally I got all of them. I swung the lid down,
and Hallcott fastened the hook into the staple. Then we stood and harked. There
was just a breath of sweet, cool breeze in some bushes. Nair other sound that
we made out.

Hallcott picked up another of the
shovels, and quick we filled that grave in again. We patted it down smooth on
top. Again we harked. Nair sound from where we'd buried the bones a second
time.

"I reckon he's at rest
now," I felt like a-saying. "Leastways, all disconnected again
thataway, he can't get up unless some other gone gump comes here and sings that
song to him again."

"For hell's sake, whatever was
he?" Hallcott asked, of the whole starry night sky.

"Maybe not even science folks
could answer that," I said. "I'd reckon he was of a devil—people long
gone from this country—a people that wasn't man nor either beast; a kind of
people that pure down had to go, but gets recollected in ugly old tales of
man-eating things. That's all I can think to say to it."

I flung down the shovel and went
back to where my stuff lay against the walnut tree. I slung my blanket roll and
soogin on my back, and took my guitar up under my arm. Right that moment, I
sure enough didn't have a wish to play it.

"John," said Hallcott.
"Where you reckon to head now?"

"Preacher Melick kindly
invited me to his house. I have it in mind to go there."

"Me, too, if he's got room for
me," said Hallcott. "Money wouldn't buy me to go nowheres alone in
this night. No sir, nor for many a night to come."

That was what
Mark Banion's grandparents told him when he was a five-year-old with tousled
black hair, looking from the porch and out across Catch River to a big dark
building and some small dark ones clumped against the soaring face of Music
Mountain, rank with its gloomy huddles of trees.

His grandparents
towered high to tell him, the way grownups do when you're little, and they
said, "Nobody ever goes there," without explaining, the way grownups
do when you're little. Mark was a good, obedient boy. He didn't press the
matter. And he sure enough didn't go over.

The town had been
named Trimble for somebody who, a hundred and forty-odd years ago, had a stock
stand there, entertainment for man and beast. In those old days, stagecoaches
and trading wagons rolled along the road chopped through the mountains, and
sometimes came great herds of cattle and horses and hogs. Later there had been
the railroad that carried hardly anything anymore. Trucks rumbled along
Main
Street
and on, northwest to
Tennessee
or southeast to
Asheville
. Trimble
was no great size for a town. Maybe that was why it stayed interesting to look
at. It had stores on
Main Street
,
and Mark's grandfather's chair factory, the town hall and the Weekly Record. On
side streets stood the bank, the high school where students came by bus from
all corners of the rocky county, and three churches. All those things were on
this side of
Catch
River
.

But over yonder
where nobody went, loomed the empty-windowed old textile mill, like the picture
of a ruined castle in an outlawed romantic novel. Once it had spun its acres of
cloth. People working there had lived in the little houses you could barely see
from this side. Those houses had a dusky, secret look, bunched against
Music
Mountain
. When Mark asked why it
was called
Music
Mountain
,
his grandparents said, "We never heard tell why." So once, in his bed
at night, Mark thought he heard soft music from across
Catch
River
to his window. When he
mentioned that next day, they laughed and said he was making it up.

He stopped
talking about that other side of the river, but he kept his curiosity as he
grew older, He found out a few things from listening to talk when he played in
town. He found out that a police car did cruise over there two or three times a
week on the rattly old bridge that nobody else used, and that the cruise was
made only by daylight. When he was in high school, tall and tanned and a
hot-rock tight end on the football team, he and two classmates started to amble
across one Saturday. They were nearly halfway to the other side when a
policeman came puffing after them and scolded them back. That night, Mark's
grandparents told him never to let them hear of doing such a fool thing again.
He asked why it was foolish, and his grandmother said, "Nobody ever goes
there. Ever." And shut up her mouth with a snap.

One who did tell
Mark something about it was Mr. Clover Shelton, the oldest man in Trimble, who
whittled birds and bear cubs and rabbits in his little shop behind the Worley
Cafe. Once a month he sold a crate of such whittlings to a man who carried them
to a tourist bazaar off in another county. Mr. Glover was lamed so that he had
an elbow in one knee, like a cricket. He wore checked shirts and bib overalls
and a pointed beard as white as dandelion fluff. And he had memories.

"Something
other happened there round about seventy-five years back," he said.
"I was another sight younger than you then. There was the textile mill,
and thirty-forty folks a-living in them company houses and a-working two
shifts. Then one day, they was all of a sudden all gone."

"Gone
where?" Mark asked him. "Don't rightly know how to answer that. Just
gone. Derwood Neidger the manager, and Sam Brood the foreman, and the whole
crew on shift-gone." Mr. Clover whittled at the bluejay he was making.
"One night just round sundown, the whistle it blowed and blowed, and folks
over here got curiosed up and next day some of 'em headed over across the
bridge. And nair soul at the mill, nor neither yet in the houses. The wives and
children done gone, too. Everybody."

"Are you
putting me on, Mr. Glover?"

"You done
asked me, boy, and I done told you the thing I recollect about it."

"They just
packed up and left?"

"They left,
but they sure God nair packed up. The looms was still a-running. Derwood
Neidger's fifty-dollar hat was on the hook, his cigar burnt out in a tray on
his desk. Even supper a-standing on the stoves, two-three places. But nair a
soul to be seen anywheres."

Mark looked to
see if a grin was caught in the white beard, but Mr. Glover was as solemn as a
preacher. "Where did they go?" Mark asked.

"I just wish
you'd tell me. There was a search made, inquiries here and yonder, but none of
them folks air showed theirself again."

"And
now," said Mark, "nobody ever goes there."

"Well now, a
couple-three has gone, one time another . . . from here, and a hunter or so
a-cooning over
Music
Mountain
from the far side. But none air come back no more. Only them policemen that
drives over quick and comes back quick—always by daylight, always three in the
car, with pistols and sawed-off shot-guns. Boy," said Mr. Glover,
"folks just stays off from that there place, like a-staying off from a
rocky patch full of snakes, a wet bottom full of chills and fever."

"And now
it's a habit," said Mark. "Staying out."

"Likewise a
habit not to go a-talking about it none. Don't you go a-naming it to nobody I
told you this much."

Mark played good
enough football to get a grant in aid at a lowland college, about enough help
to make the difference between going and not going. Summers, he mostly worked
hard to keep in condition, in construction and at road mending. By the time he
graduated, his grandparents had sold the chair factory and had retired to
Florida
.
Mark came back to Trimble, where they hired him to coach football and baseball
and teach physical education at his old high school.

And still nobody
ever went across
Catch
River
.
He felt the old interest, but he quickly became more interested in Ruth Covell,
the history teacher.

She was small and
slim, and her hair was blonde with a spice of red to it. She wore it more or
less the length Mark wore his own black mane. She came up to about his coat
lapel. Her face was round and sweet. She gave him a date, but wanted to sit and
talk on the porch of the teacherage instead of driving to an outdoor movie.

It was a balmy
October night. She fetched them out two glasses of iced tea, flavored with lemon
juice and ginger. They sat on bark-bottomed chairs, and Ruth said it was good
to be in Trimble.

"I've liked
it here from the first," she said, "I've thought I might write a
history of this town."

"A history of
Trimble?" Mark repeated, smiling. "Who'd read that?"

"You might,
when I finish it. This place has stories worth putting on record. I've been to
the town hall and the churches. I've found out lots of interesting things, but
one thing avoids me."

"What's that,
Ruth?" Mark asked, sipping.

"Why nobody
ever goes across the river, and why everybody changes the subject when I bring
it up."

From where they
sat they could see a spattery shimmer of moonlight on the water, but
Music
Mountain
beyond was as black as soot.

"Ruth,"
Mark said, "you're up against a story that just never is told in
Trimble."

"But why
not?" Her face hung silvery in the moonglow.

"I don't
know. I never found out, and I was born here. Old Mr. Clover Shelton told me a
few things, but he's dead now." He related the old man's story. "I'm
unable to tell you why things are that way about the business," he wound
up. "It's just not discussed, sort of the way sex didn't used to be
discussed in polite society. I suspect that most people have more or less
forgotten about it, pushed it to the back of their minds."

"But the
police go over," she reminded him. "The chief said it was just a
routine check, a tour in a deserted area. Then he changed the subject,
too."

"If I were
you, I'd not push anyone too hard about all this," said Mark. "It's a
sort of rule of life here, staying on this side of the river. As an athletic
coach, I abide by rules."

"As a
historian, I look for the truth," she said back, "and I don't like to
have the truth denied me."

He changed the
subject. They talked cheerfully of other things. When he left that night, she
let him kiss her and said he could come back and see her again.

Next Saturday
evening, Ruth finished grading a sheaf of papers and just before sundown she
walked out in the town with Mark. She wore snug jeans and a short, dark jacket.
They had a soda at Doc Roberts's drug store and strolled on along
Main
Street
. Mark told her about his boyhood in
Trimble, pointed out the massive old town hall (twice burned down, once by
accident, and rebuilt both times inside its solid brick walls), and led her
behind Worley's Cafe to show her where Glover Shelton once had worked. The door
of the little old shop was open. A light gleamed through it, and a voice from
inside said, "Hidy."

A man sat at the
ancient work bench, dressed in a blue hickory shirt and khaki pants and plow
shoes, carefully shaping a slip of wood with a bright, sharp knife. He was
lean, and as tall as Mark, say six feet. His long, thoughtful face was neither
young nor old. In his dark hair showed silver dabs at the temples and in a
brushed-back lock on top.

"Glover
Shelton and I were choice friends, years back," he said. "I knew the
special kinds of wood he hunted out and used here, and his nephew loaned me a
key so I could come work me out a new bridge for my old guitar."

It was an old
guitar indeed, seasoned as dark brown as a nut. The man set the new bridge in
place, with a dab of some adhesive compound. "That'll dry right while
we're a-studying it," he said. Then he laid the strings across, threaded
them through the pegs, and tightened them with judicious fingers. He struck a
chord, adjusted the pegs, struck and struck again. "Sounds passable,"
he decided.

"Those
strings shine like silver," offered Ruth.

"It just so
happens that silver's what they are," was the reply, with a quiet smile.
"Silver's what the oldest old-timers used. Might could be I'm the last
that uses it."

He achieved a
chord to suit him. Tunefully, richly he sang:

She came down the stair,
 
Combing back her yellow hair,
 
And her cheek was as red as the rose . . . 
 

Mark had made up
his mind to something.

"Sir,"
he said, "I knew Mr. Glover Shelton when I was a boy. This young lady
wishes he had lived for her to talk to. Because he was the only man I ever
heard speak of the far side of
Catch
River
yonder, the
Music
Mountain
side."

"I know a
tad of something about that," said the guitar-picker, while the strings
whispered under his long, skilled fingers. "An old Indian medicine man,
name of Reuben Manco—he mentioned about it to me one time."

"Nobody here
in Trimble talks about it," said Mark. "They just stay away from over
there. Nobody ever goes there."

"I reckon
not, son. The way Reuben Manco had it, the old Indians more or less left the
place alone, too. What was there didn't relish to be pestered."

"Some other
kind of men than Indians?" suggested Ruth.

"Better just
only call them things. The way the old story comes down, they didn't truly look
like aught a man could tell of at first. And they more or less learnt from
a-studying men—Indians—how to get a little bitty bit like men, too."

"They sound
weird," said Mark, interested.

"I reckon
that's a good word for them. The Indians were scared of how they made themselves
to look. So sometimes the Indians got up on the top of the mountain yonder and
sang to the things, to make sure they wouldn't try to come out and make
trouble." The long, thoughtful face brooded above the guitar's soft
melody. "I reckon that's how it come to be named
Music
Mountain
. The Indians would sing
those things back off and into their place, time after time. I reckon all the
way up to when the white men came in."

"Came in and
took the Indians' land," said Mark. "That happened here."

"Shoo, it
happened all over
America
—the
taking of the land. All right, I've given you what Reuben Manco gave me.
Music
Mountain
for the music the Indians
used against those things."

"Why won't
anybody in town tell about this?" Ruth asked.

"I don't
reckon folks in town much heard of it. Especially when they might not want to
hear tell of it."

"I'm glad to
hear it," declared Ruth. "I'm someone who wants to know things."

"There's
always a right much to get to know, ma'am," was the polite rejoinder.

Mark sat down on the
work bench. "Music," he repeated. "Could the Indians control
something like that—something frightening, you said—with music?"