Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05 (12 page)

 
          
“Is
that where the Judas book is?” I asked next.

 
          
“I
hope to find out exactly,” he said. “Watch, and you'll see me go there.”

 
          
Again
he grabbed onto the charm round his neck, and put the other hand onto his head.
He mumbled words, so soft I couldn’t catch them.
Next
instant, just his empty chair.
He was gone like a popped bubble.

 
          
I
looked back to the picture in the window, and there Harpe was in it, a-wearing
his fringed buckskin. The beadwork twinkled in the light of the fire. He spoke
to a couple of men, and they spoke back and bowed, each with a hand to his
forehead. He spoke again, and one of the two trotted into one of the doorways.
I watched. The man came out again, and with him another man.

 
          
This
one’s blue gown shimmered, and so did the blue cloth on his head. They must
have been silk. His dark face was thin, with a great big white beard all the
way down to his waist. He walked up to Harpe, bowed just a little small bow,
and lifted a hand to his forehead. This time Harpe bowed and put up his own
hand, right polite about it.

 
          
The
two of them talked in that language I didn’t know. It was quiet talk, but it
was what you all might call earnest. Harpe seemed to be a-pleading to that old
man. He spread out his big hands to do it. But the old man wasn’t about to have
aught of it. He shook his head one more time and headed back to his cave.

 
          
As
he did that, there wasn’t air a Ruel Harpe in the picture, either. He was gone,
the way he’d gone from across the table. The picture died out and went gloomy,
and when I looked, Harpe was a-sitting in his chair again.

 
          
“You
see what I can do?” he inquired me, like as if he wanted to be praised for it.
“I go to that cave village from time to time. Somewhere there, or in reach of
there, is the book I want.”

 
          
“That
old man must be chief of that bunch,” I reckoned.

 
          
“He’s
their chief and their religious head.
A rabbi or an imam,
more likely something of both.
He’s spent a long life in becoming wise
and learned. He and I have come to know each other well. I still hope to
persuade him to show me the book I need. But, though he’s courteous, he seems
to mistrust me. I don’t know why.”

 
          
I
could have given him a heap of reasons for the old man to mistrust him, but all
I said was “You reckon that book will help you a right much.”

 
          
“It
very well could do everything for me here, John,” he said. “It surely would
fill in certain empty places in the structure I’ve planned.”

 
          
He
poured himself a sup. He seemed like a man who drank near about all the time,
but it nair took hold on him, not to matter.

 
          
“Even
if you did know where the Judas book was,” I said. “If you knew that, wouldn’t
it be a right hard job to get hold of it?”

 
          
He
shook his head above his drink. “No. If I knew its exact location, could
establish that, I could get it by just a pull on my rope yonder. And I’d be in
business.”

 
          
“With your big temple here?”

 
          
“That
would be only a modest beginning, on just a tiny bit of earth’s surface.
But back to Judas Iscariot and what he’s supposed to have written.
I hope you’re interested.”

 
          
“I
sure enough am,” I said, and I was.

 
          
“Judas—that’s
the Greek for his name,
Judah
—was someone who understood very well the
concept of world dominion, who hoped to see world dominion established by
supernatural means. The world was full of faults and infamies back then, and
it’s fuller of them today. One of the world’s many faults is that there are far
too many people in it, most of them not fit to live. Agree?”

 
          
“There's
lots of folks say that very thing,” I said.

 
          
“Billions
of useless, idle, harmful people everywhere,” he went ahead.
“Parasites.
Just now, they seem to be working themselves up to a third world war, which
certainly would be the war to end all wars and to end all mankind as well.”

 
          
“You're
right about that,” I said.

 
          
“Suppose
some useful and dramatic miracle cut down the human race to, say a million
apiece for each continent,” said Harpe, and he talked faster, talked higher.
“A million apiece, and those survivors to be taught their place in
the work of reorganizing the world.”

 
          
“The
world,” I repeated him. “It would be a world cluttered up with more billions of
dead than those few millions could bury.”

 
          
“Perhaps
those useless corpses could be spirited away,” he said, like as if it was
already fixed up to do that.
“Perhaps sent up to the moon, to
make a new distant blotch there.
Don’t look so bleak, John. Neither you
nor I would have that happen to us.”

 
          
I
studied over what he was a-saying. At last I spoke up: “With just those few
millions left, all the big cities would be empty.”

 
          
“Empty,”
he said after me, and grinned at the thought.
“Abandoned.
People would have to go back to first principles, live like their ancestors.”

 
          
“Like
back in the Stone Age times?” I wondered him.

 
          
“No,
John, nothing
so
primitive as that. Perhaps more in
the way people lived on the frontier when Micajah Harpe and his brother roamed
to and fro. People would make clearings and set up cabins. Work stones for
gristmills. Weave wool and flax and cotton into cloth, sew their own garments.
Pick up the old ways and ideals, and be better for it.”

           
I sat quiet and studied that over,
too. There was something in what he said. Me, I’d lived the simple way myself.
I’d helped build cabins and dig up ground for crops of com and cabbage and
beans and all like that. I could swing an axe or a grubbing hoe with the best
man on this earth. But then I spoke up with a problem for him.

 
          
“Here
on top of
Cry
Mountain
, you can just call for what you want,” I pointed
out to him. “Whatair of heart's desire you want, you get it for only a tug of
your rope yonder. But if the world turned back to what you say, wouldn’t you be
left to suffer for stuff you like?”

 
          
“Delicate
food,” he sort of crooned. “Splendid clothes, beautiful objects of art and so
on. Oh, here and there the cleveregt men could produce those for me to take. Or
I could get them from the ruins of abandoned cities like
London
,
Tokyo
,
New York
. Meanwhile, those surviving, deserving people would thrive on their own
labors, and when they looked to someone to bless for their welfare, they
could—”

 
          
He
broke off for a second. Then: “They could bless,” he said, and stopped again.

 
          
“I
get it,” I said. “You want them to bless you.”

 
          
“You
said it, John, I didn’t. But since you’ve said it, they could bless Ruel Harpe.
Bless his name, and be thankful.”

 
          
So
he thought of himself as a sort of God Almighty. I read him as plain as print.

 
          
“You
aim to get all that,” I said.

 
          
“I
aim to get all that, once I have the book I want, I need.”

 
          
“The Judas book.”

 
          
“The
Judas book, as you call it,” he nodded. “And I think I see my way to having
it.” He sat back in his chair. “But just now, it's suppertime, or nearly. Let's
have the ladies in and see what we'll eat."

 
          
“One
thing first," I said. “Just where in the name of all that's holy do I fit
in?"

 
          
“John,
don't you know?" he almost howled out. “Don’t you
know,
when I’ve credited you with all that wisdom? Those surviving peoples would need
instruction on how to lead the simple life, and who could teach them better
than John?"

 
          
“Me?"
I said, and well I knew that I sounded stupid. “Me teach them?"

 
          
“You,"
he said me back, a-smiling all the time. “Teach them to build their own homes,
plow their own fields,
earn
their own bread in the
sweat of their brows. Yes, maybe to make their own songs. And all the while, to
be glad for what they had, to be thankful."

 
          
When
I said naught, he chuckled at me and swung his big hands together to make three
loud claps.

 
          
They
came in past the green curtain: Scylla first, then, when Harpe told her to call
for them, Alka and Tarrah. They talked some about what would be good to eat.
Scylla scraped out that she'd like broiled lobster, and Alka seconded the
nomination. So Scylla went to the rope in the comer, ran her hand down along
it, and came back with a steel platter with a big lobster on it, red as a
tomato and a-putting out steam. She put it on the table, went back to the rope,
and fetched us more plates and more lobsters.
Finally, a dish
of shoestring potatoes and another of salad of green leaves, and a littler dish
of something sort of buttery yellow.

 
          
“Sauce
aioli
," said Harpe.
“Splendid."

 
          
“Those
lobsters are out of the kitchen of a fancy place in
Boston
," Scylla squawked to us. “The chefs
will be wondering how they vanished away."

 
          
We
drew up our chairs and ate. That was the first time in all my bom days I'd had
lobsters. Scylla asked me, the politest she'd spoken to me so far, how I liked
it.

 
          
“It's
prime," I vowed, and she laughed, a crow caw of a laugh. Tarrah laughed
too, a-sitting next to me, but she didn't nudge me with her sandal or her knee.
She just only looked on me sideways, a sort of a sad tease of a look, like as
if she hoped I liked her as much as I liked the lobster.

 
          
For
our dessert we had some sort of a creamy fruit pudding, fetched to us by more
pulls on that rope. It was right good, too.

           
I said so, and the others acted
pleased to hear me. Finally we were done, and the three women hustled the
dishes off somewhere and came back again.

 
          
“And
now,” said Harpe, “this has been more or less a busy day, busy with business
and its transaction. What do you say to some relaxation this evening?
Music, perhaps?”

 
          
They
all allowed they wanted that. Alka spoke up first, she'd enjoy
to hear
what must just be a-starting in some place up north,
something she called the Boston Pops. Scylla sneered at that; what she’d most
like was bound to be a-going on in
Salem
, a witch thing where they’d sing and dance
their witch ways. She and Alka sort of glittered at one another when she said
that.

 
          
“I’ll
tell you,” spoke up Tarrah. “We’ve had two different voices, one by Alka, one
by Scylla. I’m going to make a choice that John will endorse. Some sort of
country music, the traditional music of these parts.”

 
          
With
that, her sandal did nudge me, just a
bit,
you might
could say a little timid bit.

 
          
“An
interesting choice,” said Harpe. “John, what do you say?”

           
“Miss Tarrah here has already said
it for me,” I replied him. “She must have read my mind.”

 
          
Tarrah’s
sandal nudged me again.

 
          
“If
she read your mind, she displays a great talent,” said Harpe, and I knew he’d
tried to read it. “My vote goes with you two, just to make an agreeable
majority. Let’s see what we can get.”

 
          
“If
you try Haynie’s Fork on the
Laurel
River
, there’s something due to happen there this
evening,” I said.

 
          
“Haynie’s
Fork,” he repeated me. “
Laurel
River
. I’m aware of the place. I’ll try.”

 
          
He
grabbed onto the charm thing that hung on his neck, and he said those same
words I was a-getting to know better and better:

 
          
“Fetegan . . . Gaghagan . . . Beigan . . .
Deigan . . . Usagan ...”

           
The dark window churned itself and
then cleared out, and 1 saw a place I’d been so often before. There was a
string of rental pole cabins with cement betwixt the poles for chinking, and
the poles painted black. It was nighttime, of course, and lights showed there,
and folks there too, dozens of them, scores of them, likely better than a
hundred men, women, and children.

 
          
All
of them chattered and laughed together, and they were a-having something to
eat. Best I could figure, it was a fish fry. Fish likely new-caught that very
day out of the
Laurel
River
, and hct com bread with the fish, all that.

 
          
Up
on one of the cabin porches stood the musicians. My old friend Obray Ramsey was
there, with his high forehead and his long straight nose, and his banjo that he
plays so well. The others with him I didn’t make out so plain at first.

 
          
“Ladies
and gentlemen,” Obray was a-saying, and his voice carried over the crowd under
the trees, carried across the miles to where we sat, “we’ll try to play you a
right good old one— ‘Bonaparte’s Retreat.’ ”

 
          
The
crowd clapped loud for that, and those musicians slid into it, with Byard Ray
and his fiddle a-moving to the front.

 
          
“What
an interesting tune, and what timing,” said Alka. “Do you know it, John?”

 
          
“I’ve
picked and sung it a many times,” I said.

 
          
“Then
why not sing it now?” she asked.

 
          
“If you say so.”
And I joined in with my voice, halfway
through:

 
          
“Oh,
the moon that night

           
Seemed to hold us in its light,

           
And I heard her say,

           
‘You must never go away . . .’

           
Then I took her in my arms

           
And told her of her million charms,

           
And listened to the fiddle playing ‘Bonaparte’s
Retreat’ ”

 
          
Harpe
and the women clapped me for that, even mean old Scylla put her skinny hands
together. “You’re a naturally tuneful singer, John,” said Harpe. “I’m planning
things for you in that area, too.”

 
          
The
musicians started with an old reliable one, “Arkansas Traveler.” The listeners
got right into fours and began to dance, and somebody was a-calling the
figures.

 
          
Tarrah
got up and began to buck dance, her sandals swift and slappy. “Dance with me,
John.”

 
          
“Why
sure.” I got up, too. I don’t do much dancing, usually I’m a-picking music, but
I can dance along with most. I put my boots into a single clog, whack-whack,
then into a double clog, a-facing up to Tarrah. She was a-clogging too, and
a-smiling, her hair on the fly and whip all round her face. Her bosom bounced,
her skirt rode up from her round, bare thighs. I made me a cut—you all know
what that is, you jump high and swing one leg in front of the other, then the
first leg in front, and come down. I heard hand-clapping. That would be Harpe
and Alka, and maybe even Scylla, too.

           
“Again!”
Tarrah panted out.
“Again!”

 
          
High
I went, one leg across, then the other, then the first leg again—three cuts—and
came down without a-missing a beat of the music.

 
          
They
stopped with “Arkansas Traveler” and Tarrah moved back to our chairs.

 
          
Right
away Obray and the musicians slid into another number, slower and sweeter.
“Oh,” said Tarrah, still a-breathing hard from the dance, “that’s another
beautiful one. Can you sing it, John?”

 
          
“Yes
I can,” I said, for the song was one I’d known from when I was just little. And
I sang it:

 
          
“Must
I go bound and you go free,

           
Must I love the girl who won’t love
me?

           
Oh, must I act the foolish part

           
And love the girl that broke my
heart?

           
Round is the ring that has no end,

           
And hard it is to lose a faithful
friend;

           
If you should find a love that’s
true,

           
Change not the old love for the new
...”

 
          
Yet
again they clapped their hands for me, even scowly old Scylla. “Lovely,” said
Tarrah. “Who were you singing that song for, John?”

 
          
“Why,
nobody special,” I said back. “I just sang it.”

 
          
“And
sung it notably well,” put in Harpe. “John, I should think you could be a
successful professional entertainer. Why hasn’t someone ever suggested it?”

 
          
“Two-three
have,” I told him. “Now and then I do pick and sing at a folk festival or just
a play party, but I'd rather not take it up for a full-time job.”

           
“Now let's change music to what Alka
likes,” said Harpe.

 
          
Right
off, the picture in the window was different. A great big stage there, and a
great big sight of folks a-sitting on it, all in black suits with white shirt
fronts and ties, or, with the ladies, dresses a-showing off their pretty bare
arms and shoulders. Fiddles of all sizes, horns, air kind of instrument you
might
could
name and a few I couldn't name.
Up on the leader's stand, a chunky fellow a-beating time for them.
And their music was, well all I can say is, it was sort of like a dream. I sat
quiet, like all the others, to hark at it to the last sweet note.

 
          
“What
was that piece?” I inquired them.

 
          
“ ‘Afternoon
of a Faun,' ” said Alka.

 
          
“A fawn?”
I repeated after her. “A little baby fawn deer,
maybe, out in the woods with its mammy?”

 
          
Harpe
droned a laugh.
“A different sort of faun, John.
Spelled with a
u
.
”

 
          
“Oh,
that kind,” I said. I'd been told what that kind of faun was. Sort of like a
man shape, but with a goat's legs and hoofs, and little goat horns a-sprouting
out through his hair. Mostly up to some sort of pranky doings. I could reckon that
such things might could be right there, right up on
Cry
Mountain
.

 
          
“Can't
we hear some of the music I want?” snapped Scylla.

 
          
“But
of course, my dear Scylla,” Harpe granted her. “We'll look in and listen in on
that coven of yours.”

 
          
A change in the window, one more time.
Trees all round in a
dark night, and a fire blazing up red and smokey, and
folks
a-dancing round it.
Men and women, and none of them with
enough clothes on to wad a shotgun.
Round and round they danced, on a
swing with their backs to one another, then face to face, and all the time they
sang:

 
          
“Cummer,
go ye before, cummer, go ye,

           
Gif ye won’t go before, cummer, let
me . . .”