Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (33 page)

"Well, son,
with Indians the right song can make the rain to fall. An Indian hunter sings
to bring him luck before he goes after game. Medicine men sing to cure a sick
man or a hurt man. One time another, music's been known to do the like of such
things."

Mark asked for
the story of the mill that had been built under
Music
Mountain
. It seemed that Derwood
Neidger had interested some Northern financiers and had built his mill, with
Trimble's townspeople shaking their heads about it. But there was good pay, and
families came from other places to live in the houses built for them and to
spin the cloth. Until the night they all vanished.

"What if
there had been music at the mill?" Mark wondered. "In the
houses?"

"Doesn't
seem like as if there was much of that, so we can't rightly tell. And it's too
late to figure on it now."

The sun sank over
the western mountains. Dusk slid swiftly down into the town. Mark listened as
his companion struck the silver strings and sang again:

She came down the stair,
 
Combing back her yellow hair . . . 
 

He muted the
melody with his palm. "Sounds like that beauty-looking young girl that
came here with you. Where's she gone off to?"

Mark jumped up
from where he sat. Ruth was nowhere in sight. He hurried out of the shop,
around the cafe and out into the street.

"Ruth,
wait—"

Far along the
sidewalk, in the light of a shop window, he saw her as she turned off and out
of view, where the old alley led to where the bridge was.

"Wait!"
he yelled after her, and started to run.

It was a long
sprint to the alley. One or two loungers gazed at Mark as he raced past. He
found the alley, headed into it, stumbled in its darkness and went to one knee.
He felt his trousers rip where they struck the jagged old cobbles. Up again, he
hurried to the bridge.

It
was already too dim to see clearly, but Ruth must be there. She must be moving
along, almost as fast as he. "You damned fool," he wheezed into the
darkening air as he ran. "You damned little fool, why did you do
this?" And in his heart her voice seemed to answer him,
 
I'm someone who wants to know
things.
 
 

The old, old
boards of the bridge rattled under his feet. He heard the soft, purling rush of
Catch River. There she was now, at the far end, a darker point in the night
that came down on them. "Ruth," he tried to call her once more, but
his breath wasn't enough to carry it. He ran on after her.

Now he had come
out on the other bank, where nobody ever went. He turned to his left. A road of
sorts had been there once, it seemed. Its blotchy stones were rank between with
grass. His shoe skidded on what must have been slippery moss and he nearly went
down again. To his right climbed the steep face of Music Mountain, huddled with
watching trees as black as ink. On ahead of him, small, dark houses clung
together at the roadside. Farther beyond them rose the sooty pile of the old
mill. He stood for a moment and wheezed to get his breath. Something came
toward him. He quivered as he faced it.

"I knew
you'd come too, Mark," said Ruth's merry voice.

At that moment,
the moon had scrambled clear of the mountain and flung pale light around them,
He saw that Ruth smiled.

"Why ever
did you—" he began to say.

"I told you,
Mark, I want to find things out. Nobody else here wants to. Dares to."

"You come
right back to town with me," he commanded.

She laughed
musically.

On into the sky
swam the round, pallid moon, among a bright sprinkling of stars. Its light
picked out the mill more clearly. It struck a twinkle from the glass of a
window; or could there be a stealthy light inside? Ruth laughed again.

"But you
came across, at least," she said, as though happy about it.

The glow of the
moon beat upon her, making her hair pale. And something else moved on the road
to the mill.

He hurried toward
Ruth as the something drifted from between those dubious houses, a murky series
of puffs, like foul smoke. He thought, for a moment hoped, that it might be
fog; but it gathered into shapes as it emerged, shadowy, knobby shapes.
Headlike lumps seemed to rise, narrow at the top, with, Mark thought, great
loose mouths. Wisps stirred like groping arms.

"Let's get
out of here," he said to Ruth, and tried to catch her by the hand.

But then she,
too, saw those half-shaped things that now stole into groups and advanced. She
screamed once, like an animal caught in a trap, and she lost her head and ran
from them. She ran toward the mill in the moonlight that flooded the old paving
stones.

Mark rushed after
her because he must, because she had to be caught and hustled back toward the
bridge. As the two of them fled, the creatures from among the houses slunk,
stole after them, made a line across the road, cut off escape in that
direction.

Ruth ran fast in
her unreasoning terror, toward where a great squat doorway gaped in the old
mill. But then she stopped, so suddenly that Mark nearly blundered against her
as he hurried from behind.

"More—"
she whimpered. "More of them—"

And more Of them
crept out through that door. Many more of them, crowding together into a
grotesque phalanx. Ruth pressed close against Mark. She trembled, sagged, her
pert daring was gone from her. He gathered his football muscles for a fight, whatever
fight he could put up. They came closing in around him and Ruth, those shapes
that were only half-shapes. They churned wispily as they formed themselves into
a ring.

He made out squat
bodies, knobs of craniums, the green gleam of eyes, not all of the eyes set two
and two. The Indians, those old Indians, had been right to fear presences like
these. Everything drew near. Above the encircling, approaching horde, Mark saw
things that

fluttered in the
air. Bats? But bats are never that big. He heard a soft mutter of sound, as of
panting breath.

Even if Ruth
hadn't been there to hold on her feet, Mark could never have run now. The way
was out off. It would have to be a battle. What kind of battle?

Just then, abrupt
music rang out in the shining night. And that was a brave music, a flooding
burst of melody, like harps in the hands of minstrels. A powerful, tuneful
voice sang words to it:

The cross in my right hand,
 
That I may travel open land,
 
That I may be charmed and blessed,
 
And safe from any man or beast . . .
 

The pressing
throng ceased to press around Mark and Ruth. It ebbed away, like dark water
flowing back from an island.

The song changed,
the guitar and the voice changed:

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

Those creatures,
if they could be called creatures, fell back. They fell back, as though blown
by the wind. The singing voice put in words of its own, put in a message, a
guidance:

Head for the bridge and I'll follow you,
 
Head for the bridge and I'll follow you,
 
Head for the bridge and I'll follow you—
Look away beyond the blue.
 
 

Ruth would have
run again. Mark held her tightly by the arm, kept her to a walk. Running just
now might start something else running. They stumbled back along the rough
stones with the grass between the edges. The moonlight blazed upon them. Behind
them, like a prayer, another verse of the song:

Do, Lord, oh do, Lord, oh do remember me,
 
Do, Lord, oh do, Lord, oh do remember me,
 
Do, Lord, oh do, Lord, oh do remember me—
Look away beyond the blue. 
 

But this time, a
confident happiness in that appeal. Mark felt like joining in and singing the
song himself, but he kept silent and urged Ruth along by her arm. He thought,
though he could not be sure, that soft radiances blinked on and off in the
shantylike old houses strung along the road. He did not stop to look more
closely. He peered ahead for the bridge, and then the bridge was there and
thankfully they were upon it, their feet drumming the planks.

Still he panted
for breath, as they reached the other side. He held Ruth to him, glad that he
could hold her, glad for her that he was there to hold her. He looked across.
There on the bridge came something dark. It was the guitar-picker, moving at a
slower pace than Mark and Ruth had moved. He sang, softly now, softly. Mark
could not make out the song. He came and joined them at last. He stood tall and
lean with his hair rumpled, holding his guitar across himself like a rifle at
the port.

"You all can
be easy now," he said gently. "Looky yonder, they can't come over
this far."

Over there, all
the way over there at the far bridge head, a dark cluster of forms showed under
the moon, standing close together and not coming.

"The fact
about it is," said the guitar-picker, "they don't seem to be up to
making their way across a run of water."

Mark
was able to speak. "Like
 
Dracula
,"
he said numbly. "Like the witches in
 
Tam
O'Shanter
."

"Sure enough,
like them. Now, folks," and the voice was gentler than ever, "you all
see they'd best be left alone on their side yonder, the way folks have mostly
left them alone, all the way back to when the whole crew of the mill went off
to nowhere. Old ways can be best."

"Mark, I was
such a fool," Ruth mumbled against Mark's shirt.

"I told you
that, dear," he said to her.

"Did you
call me dear?"

"Yes."

"It makes me
feel right good to hear talk like that with nice young folks like you
two," said the guitar-picker.

Mark looked up
above Ruth's trembling golden head. "You were able to defeat them,"
he said. "You knew music would hold them back."

"No, I nair
rightly knew that." The big hand swept a melody from the silver string.
"I hoped it, was all, and the hope wasn't vain."

Mark held out a
shaking hand. "We'll never be able to thank you, Mr.—I don't even know
your name."

"My name's
John."

"John
what?" Mark asked.

"Just call
me John."

That gravelly old
road ran betwixt high rocks and twiny-branched trees. I tramped with my pack
and silver-strung guitar past a big old dornick rock, Wide as a bureau, with
words chopped in with a chisel:

THIS GRAVE DUG FOR
BECKY TIL HOPPARD
HUNG BY THE TRUDO FOLKS
AUG THE 12 18 & 49
WE WILL REMEMBER YOU

And flowers piled
round. Blue chicory and mountain mint and turtlehead, fresh as that morning. I
wondered about them and walked on, three-four miles to the old county seat
named Trudo, where I'd be picking and singing at their festival that night.

The town square
had three-four stores and some cabin-built houses, a six-room auto court, a
jail and courthouse and all like that. At the auto court stood Luns Lamar, the
banjo man who was running the festival, in white shirt and string tie. His
bristly hair was still soot-black, and he wore no glasses. Didn't need them,
for all his long years.

"I knew you
far down the street, John," he hailed me. "Long, tall, with the wide
hat and jeans, and your guitar. All that come tonight will have heard tell of
you. And they'll want you to sing songs they recollect—Vandy, Vandy,' 'Dream
True,' those ones."

"Sure
enough, Mr. Luns," I said. "Look, what do you know about Becky Til
Hoppard's grave back yonder?"

He squinted,
slanty-eyed. "Come into this room I took for us, and I'll tell you what I
know of the tale."

Inside, he
fetched out a fruit jar of blockade whiskey and we each of us had a whet.
"Surprised you don't know about her," said Mr. Luns. "She was
the second woman to get hung in this state, and it wasn't the true law did it.
It was folks thought life in prison wasn't the right call on her. They strung
her up in the square yonder, where we'll sing tonight."

We sipped and he
talked. Becky Til Hoppard was a beauty of a girl with strange, dark ways.
Junius Worral went up to her cabin to court her and didn't come back, and the
law found his teeth and belt buckle in her fireplace ashes; and when the judge
said just prison for life, a bunch of the folks busted into the jail and took
her out and strung her to a white oak tree. When she started to say something,
her daddy was there and he hollered. 'Die with your secret, Becky!' and she
hushed and died with it, whatever it was."

"How came
her to be buried right yonder?" I asked him.

"That
Hoppard set was strange-wayed," said Mr. Luns. Her father and mother and
brothers put her there. They had dug the hole during the trial and set up the
rock and cut the words into it, then set out for other places. Isaiah Hoppard,
the father, died when he was cutting a tree and it fell onto him. The mother
was bit by a mountain rattler and died screaming. Her brother, Harrison, went
to
Kentucky
and got killed
stealing hogs. Otway, the youngest brother, fell at
Chancellorsville
in the Civil War."

"Then the
family was wiped out."

"No,"
and he shook his head again. "Otway had married and had children, who grew
up and had children, too. I reckon Hoppards live hereabouts in this day and
time. Have you heard the Becky Til Hoppard song?"

"No, but I'd
sure enough like to."

He sang some
verses, and I picked along on my silver strings and sang along with him. It was
a lonesome tune, sounded like old-country bagpipes.

"I doubt if
many folks know that song today," he said at last. "It's reckoned to
be unlucky. Let's go eat some supper and then start the show."

They'd set up
bleachers in the courthouse square for maybe a couple thousand. Mr. Luns
announced act after act. Obray Ramsey was there with near about the best
banjo-picking in the known world, and Tom Hunter with near about the best
country fiddling. The audience clapped after the different numbers, especially
for a dance team that seemed to have wings on their shoes. Likewise for a
gold-haired girl named Rilla something, who picked pretty on a zither,
something you don't often hear in these mountains.

When it came my
turn, I did the songs Mr. Luns had named, and the people clapped so loud for
more that I decided to try the Becky Til Hoppard song. So I struck a chord and
began:

Becky Til Hoppard,
as sweet as a dove,
 
Where did she wander, and who did she love?  
 

Right off, the
crowd went still as death, I sang:

Becky Til Hoppard,
and where can she be?
 
Rope round her neck, swung up high on the tree. 
 

And that deathly
silence continued as I did the rest of it:

On Monday she was
charged, on Tuesday she was tried,
 
By the laws of her country she had to abide.
 
If I knew where she lay, to her side I would go.
 
Round sweet Becky's grave pretty flowers I would strow . . . . 
 

When I was done,
not a clap, not a voice. I went off the little stage, wondering to myself about
it. After the show, Rilla, the zither girl, came to my room to talk.

"Folks here
think it's unlucky to sing that Becky Hoppard song, John," she said.
"Even to hark at it."

"I seem to
have done wrong," I said. "I didn't know."

"Well, those
Hoppards are a right odd lot. Barely come into town except to buy supplies. And
they take pay for curing sickness and making spells to win court cases. They're
strong on that kind of thing."

"Who made
the song?" I asked.

"They say it
was sung back yonder by some man who was crazy for Becky Til Hoppard, and she
never even looked his way. None of the Hoppard blood likes it, nor either the
Worral blood. I know, because I'm Worral blood myself."

"Can you
tell me the tale?" I inquired. "Have some of this blockade. Mr. Luns
left it in here, and it's good."

"I do thank
you." She took a ladylike sip. "All I know is what my oldest folks
told me. Becky Hoppard was a witch-girl, the pure quill of the article. Did all
sorts of spells. Junius Worral reckoned to win her with a love charm."

"What love
charm?" I asked, because such things interest me.

"I've heard
tell she let him have her handkerchief, and he did something with it. Went to
the Hoppard cabin, and that's the last was seen of him alive. Or dead,
either—he was all burnt up except his buckle and teeth."

"The song's
about flowers at her grave," I said. "I saw some there."

"Folks do
that, to turn bad luck away."

I tweaked my
silver guitar strings. "Where's the Hoppard place?"

"Up hill,
right near the grave. A broken-off locust tree there points to the path. I hope
I've told you things that'll keep you from going there."

"You've told
me things that make me to want to go."

"Don't,
John," she begged to me. "Recollect what happened to Junius Worral."

"I'll
recollect," I said, "but I'll go." And we said goodnight.

I woke right soon
in the morning and went to the dining room to eat me a good breakfast with Mr.
Luns. Then I bade him good day and set out of Trudo the same way I'd come in,
on the gravelly road.

Rilla had said
danger was at the Hoppard place, but my guitar's silver strings had been a help
against evil time and time again. Likewise in my pocket was a buckeye, given me
one time by an Ozark fellow, and that's supposed to guard you, too—not just
against rheumatics but all kinds of dangers. No man's ever found dead with a
buckeye in his pocket, folks allow. So I was glad I had it as I tramped along
with my pack and my guitar.

As I got near to
the grave rock, I picked me some mountain laurel flowers. As I put those round
the stone, I noticed more flowers there, besides the ones I'd seen the day
before. Beyond was the broken-off locust, and a way uphill above it.

That path went
through brush, so steep I had to lean forward to climb it. Trees crowded close
at the sides. They near about leaned on me, and their leaves bunched into
unchancey green faces. I heard a rain crow make its rattly call, and I spied
out its white vest and blotchy tail. It was supposed to warn of a storm, but
the patch of sky above was clear; maybe the rain crow warned of something else
than rain. I kept on, climbed a good quarter mile to where there was a cabin
amongst hemlocks.

That cabin was of
old, old logs chinked with clay. It must have been built before the last four
wars. The roof's split shakes were cracked and curly. A lean-to was tacked on
at the left. There were two smudgy windows and a cleated plank door, and on the
door-log sat a man, watching me as I climbed into his sight.

He was dressed
sharp, better than me in my jeans and old hat. Good-fitting pants as brown as
coffee and a bright-flowered shirt. He was soft-pudgy, and I'd reckon more or
less fifty years old. His cheeks bunched out. His bald brow was low and narrow.
He had a shallow chin and green eyes like grape pulps. His face had the look of
a mean snake.

"We been
a-waiting for you," he said when I got there.

"How come
you to know I'd come, Mr. Hoppard?" I asked him.

He did a creaky
laugh. "You know my name, and I don't know yours yet," he said,
"but we been a-waiting on you. We know when they come." He grinned,
with mossy-green teeth. "What name might I call you?"

"John."

We were being
watched. Two heads at one of the windows. A toss-haired woman, a skinny man.
When I looked at them they drifted back, then drifted up again.

"You'll be
the John we hear tell about," said Hoppard. "A-sticking your nose in
here to find out a tale."

"The tale of
Becky Til Hoppard," I agreed.

"Poor Becky.
They hung her up and cut her down."

"And buried
her below here," I added on.

"No, not
exactly," he said. "That stone down yonder just satisfies folks away
from the truth. They don't ask questions. But you do—ask questions about my
great-great aunt Becky." He turned his ugly head to the house. "All
right, youins," he bawled, "come out there and meet John."

Those two came.
The young man was tall, near about my height, but so ganted he looked ready to
bust in two. He wore good pants and shirt, but rumpled and grubby. His eyes
were green, too. The girl's frock looked to be made of flowered curtain cloth,
and it was down off one rounded bare shoulder. Her tousled hair was as red as
if it had been dipped in a mountain sunset. And she looked on me with shiny
green eyes like Hoppard's, like the young man's.

"These is my
son and daughter," said Hoppard, a-smirking. "I fetched them up after
my fashion, taught them what counts and how to tell it from what doesn't count.
She's Tullai. I call the boy Herod."

"Hidy,"
I told the two of them.

Hoppard got up
from the door-log, on crooked legs like a toad's. "Come on in the
house," he said, and we went in, all four.

The front room
was big, with a puncheon floor worn down with God alone knows how many years,
and hooked rag rugs on it. The furniture was home made. I saw a long sofa woven
of juniper branches at back and seat, and two stools and an arm chair made of
tree chunks, and a table of old planks and trestles. At the back, a sort of
statue stood on a little home-made stand. It looked to be chipped from dark
rock, maybe three feet high, and it had a grinning head with horns on it. Its
eyes were shiny green stones, a kind I didn't know, but the color of Hoppard's eyes.

"Is that a
god?" I inquired of Hoppard.

"Yes, and
it's been worshipped here for I can't tell how many generations," he said.
"Walk all round the room and them eyes keep a-looking on you. Try
it."

I tried it. Sure
enough, the eyes followed me into every corner. But I'd seen the same thing to
happen with a picture of George Washington in a museum, and a photograph of a
woman called Mona Lisa. "You all pray to that idol?" I asked.

"We do, and
he answers our prayers," said the girl Tullai, soft-voiced. "He sent
you to us."

"Pa,"
said the boy Herod, "you should ought to tell John about us."

"Sit
down," said Hoppard, and we sat here and there while he told the tale.
Tullai sat next to me.

Hoppard allowed
that his folks had always been conjure folks. Way back yonder, Becky Til
Hoppard had been foremost at it. Some things she'd done was good—cures for sick
folks, spells to make rain fall, all like that. But about Junius Worral, he
said, what I'd heard wasn't rightly so.

"They told
you he'd had a charm to win Becky?" said Hoppard. "It was more the
other way round. She charmed him to fetch him here."

"What
for?" I asked.

"He was
needed here," said, Hoppard; and Tullai repeated, "Needed here,"
and her green eyes looked at me sidelong, the way a kitten looks at a bowl of
milk.

"To help
Becky to a long life," Hoppard went on. "The hanging nair truly
killed her, so her folks just set her head back on its neckbone and fetched her
home." He nodded to a door that led to the lean-to shed. "She's in
yonder now."

"You
a-telling me she's alive?" I asked him.

"Her folks
did things that fetched her back. In yonder she waits, for you to talk to
her."

"John's got
him a guitar," spoke up Tullai all of a sudden, her green eyes still cut
at me. "Can't we maybe hear him pick it?"

"Sure
enough, if you all want to hark at me," I said.

I did some
tuning, then I sang something I'd been thinking up:

Long is the road
on which I fare,
 
Over the world afar,
 
The mountains here and the valleys there,
 
Me and this old guitar
The places I've been were places, yes,
 
The things that I've seen were things,
 
With this old guitar my soul to bless
 
By the sound of its silver strings.