Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05 (14 page)

 
          
He
had command over things like those dice, but I swore to myself that he didn't
have command over me. Not by a long shot with a bush in the way.

 
          
I
yawned again. A-sitting on the bed, I shucked off my clothes. In the bathroom I
turned me on a shower, got into it with a square chunk of blue soap and sudsed
myself all over from my head to my heels, and built up
a
lather
in my hair and rinsed it out. Afterward, I rubbed down with a
shuck towel that had the name of a hotel on it, and I felt some better after
the trying, busy day I'd had. I lay down on the
bed,
all stripped as I was, and pulled the sheet and blanket over me.

           
I thought and thought about all I'd
been through lately. 1 wondered myself if Tombs McDonald had a worry about me.
Likely he had, by now. And likewise I wondered myself what tomorrow's talk with
Ruel Harpe would be like.

 
          
About
then, I went off to sleep. Like always, I dreamed. It was a dream about some
big city I'd never been in, on a street where folks walked in crowds, dressed
up in strange clothes, and cars ran back and forth, strange cars of makes I'd
nair seen in my wakeaday life. And the air of that city was so clear, so pure,
that far off and off, miles away, I could see tall buildings as plain as you
can see tall mountains far off away from the smoke and fog of towns.

 
          
It
was a right good dream. Naught happened to me in it. It might
could
have been a sign of good things to come, if truly
there is something to be told to you in your dreams.

 
          
I
woke up easy, but I woke up quick. As likely I’ve said before this, I can do
that. Nobody has to yell me or shake me or blow the bugle over me; I wake up
right off and know who I am and where 1
am
.

 
          
Who
I was, was John. Where I was, was in this comfortable bedroom I’d been given by
Ruel Harpe, betwixt the times when he’d showed me the other side of the world
or fetched his wants by a-tugging a rope or just a-shooting dice, to prove to
me how big he was, how all-powerful.

 
          
I
hopped out of the bed and into the bathroom and had me a good wash, face and
hands and neck and ears. I scrubbed my teeth. I soaped the stubble on my face
and shaved it off close, and looked better. I tried to comb my hair I’d washed
the night before. It was still wavy over my ears, and pale threads showed in
the dark of it, silvery-white as the strings on my guitar. Finally I dressed
myself and went out along the narrow hallway and into the main room.

 
          
They
were all at the table together, Harpe and the three women. They looked round
and hailed me, the whole bunch. Harpe put up a hand, a-grinning the way I’d
come to know he did. He wore a good-cut white jacket and a white shirt and a
blue neck scarf. Scylla shone her eyes and sort of smiled, but it was a smile
as tight as a snake’s. Alka nodded, and the light shifted on her big wide
glasses. Tarrah downright beamed on me. She'd made up her face and her hair was
combed down at the sides, with a red ribbon round her temples.

           
“Just in time, John, we're having
breakfast," said Harpe, in a purely welcoming voice. “Sit down, and choose
what you'd like to eat."

 
          
I
took a chair, and there was a plate and knife and fork set for me there, and a
coffee cup. Midways of the table stood a big china platter with a whole heap of
scrambled eggs and a stack of slices of home-smoked ham, and beside that a dish
of grits and another of hot biscuits and another with a round chunk of butter.
Likewise a jar of honey.
I helped myself well, for I was
hungry. Tarrah leant across me, a-shoving herself to me as she leant, and
poured me out coffee from a silver pot. I started in to eat, and it was as fine
a breakfast as a man could wish. I wondered where they'd got it by just a pull
on their rope.

 
          
Scylla
squinted at me. She knew what was on my mind.

 
          
“That
happens to come from Buck’s Tavern, outside
Asheville
," she told me, and, as usual, she
spoke to me in words edged with acid. For some reason, she truly hated me. It
showed in all she did and said with me like as if she had a knife in her hand.

 
          
I
tried not to rile her. “I've eaten at Buck's in my time," I said. “They
give you the best of rations there. They know what they’re doing."

 
          
“At
this moment, they must wonder what they’re doing, or who’s doing," said
Alka, a-taking a forkful of scrambled eggs. “They wonder what made a big
breakfast for
a party of hungry customers vanish
into
the thinnest air."

 
          
With
that, we sort of chatted back and forth like a bunch of choice friends at
breakfast. All of them wanted to know if I'd had a good night’s sleep, even
Scylla asked me that, not so harsh in the voice as a moment or so back. I ate
well and had me another cup of coffee.

 
          
When
we’d all finished, Harpe leant back in his chair. “Ladies,” he said, “I want to
talk to John in private.”

 
          
“Talk
to John,” Scylla repeated him.
“Talk about what—the Judas
Gospel?
You’ve been harping on that ever since John came here.”

 
          
“Just
about how he fits in here,” replied Harpe. “In private, I said.”

 
          
“And
I’m not to hear?” she squeaked at him, at me, at the other two.

 
          
“Wherever
you’ll be, probably you’ll hear something of what we say to each other, Scylla.
You’re good at eavesdropping. But you won’t take part in the conversation.”

 
          
“Well,
I swear!” she squalled out, and Harpe laughed, the loudest I’d heard him laugh
so far.

 
          
“Don’t
swear, Scylla,” he teased her. “You mustn’t swear. Somebody somewhere might
hear you, and not like it, and punish you for it. The preachers say you can go
to hell for swearing.”

 
          
She
got up, a-glowering. “The preachers,” she echoed. “They all ought to go to hell
themselves. Well, you others, come on.”

 
          
The
three of them picked up the dishes. Harpe watched them trail off, one behind
the other, past their green curtain. Then his eyes came round and fixed me.

 
          
“By
now, you realize that you’re established here,” he said. “I won’t say caught
here, that sounds too much like prison.
Established here,
with everything set to your advantage.”

 
          
“I
don’t rightly see what the advantage would be to me,” I said, and he grinned
broader and harder yet.

 
          
“Wealth,”
he said. “Isn’t wealth worth having?”

 
          
From
the inside pocket of his white coat he fetched out a roll of bills, big enough
to choke a cow.

 
          
“I
told you how easily I can get this,” he drawled.
“Here and there
in those gambling places.
Not only at dice. At black jack and chemin de
fer, games like that. I could give you half of this and never miss it. Isn’t
wealth good?”

 
          
“Don’t
give me aught of your money,” I said. “Sure enough, wealth can be good, if it
so
happens
you can buy some good thing with it for
yourself.”

 
          
“Of course, John, of course.”
He tucked his big roll away
again. “Wealth can buy luxury to an extent you’ve never known.”

 
          
“Luxury,”
I repeated him. “I haven’t known air great much of that in my time. I keep on
a-settling for comfort now and then, but I haven’t known air great much of
that, either.”

 
          
“Rule
over people in time to come,” he said.
“Over peoples.”

 
          
I
shook my head. “Nair in this world have I wanted rule over air soul, and I sure
God haven’t wanted air soul to have rule over me.”

 
          
He
gazed at me, and shook his own head.
“If these things don’t
have a pleasant sound to you, how about sweet love?”

 
          
I
reckon I just only gopped at him on that, and he snickered.

 
          
“I
said love,” he repeated me. “The love of the woman you most truly desire.
Perhaps I’ve read you pretty clearly on that subject. I see a response in you.”

 
          
I
studied his grinning face, his squinted eyes,
those
bannery eyebrows that turned up. It came to my mind that he not only looked
like Satan, the old boy himself, but that he wanted to look like him a-making
his promises.
All these will I give thee
,
if thou wilt fall down and worship me,
Satan had said one time, to what Son of Man you all know. I’m not about to
compare myself to one so high, but I said naught to Harpe. If I said naught,
that should be enough for him and me and
all the
world.

 
          
“But
just at present,” he went on, “I need your help on a very, very important
matter. Remember the troglodyte settlement we saw on the
Sahara
yesterday—those cave dwellers? Let’s just
call them up to look at again, there at the window.”

 
          
His
Satan-face grinned as his hand went to the T-shaped amulet he dangled at his
neck. He spoke the words I recollected,
“Fetegan
. . .
Gaghagan
. . .
Beigan
. . .
Deigan
. . .
Usagan
...”

 
          
The
window lighted up and cleared itself to us. I saw what he’d showed me before,
the cave places in the face of the bluff, those folks in their long gowns and
robes and head-scarfs, on the move back and forth. It was daytime, and air
thing in sight was burnt to a blaze in the sun.

 
          
“It’s
only a little after
nine o’clock
here,” said Harpe, “and over there, five
hours later in the east, just past two. That’s the heat of the day in that
African desert. Go get your hat, John, or the heat will strike you flat as a
pancake.”

 
          
“What
you a-talking about?” I asked.

 
          
“Go
get your hat,” he said again, “and bring along your guitar, too. I’m going to
take you with me.”

 
          
“Take
him there with you?” rattled out the shrill voice of Scylla, and she came
a-scurrying in. “I heard that, Ruel, I heard you say—”

 
          
“Of
course you heard,” Harpe cut her off, his own voice gone sharp as steel.

 
          
“Yes,
I did hear, and you said—”

 
          
“You
have your own shrewd ways of hearing at a distance,” he broke in again. “I’ve
known you to do that in the past. A useful sort of magic,” and now he sneered
at her, “to hear at a distance. But this time I don’t approve.”

 
          
“Neither
do I approve,” she said, a-coming to the table to stand and face him.

 
          
He
got up from his chair. I saw that he wore tan shorts and knee-high boots of
tawny leather, beautifully cobbled.

 
          
''You
think,” Scylla yammered, “that John can be of some special use more than I’d
be.”

 
          
“That’s
exactly what I think,” allowed Harpe. “He will be accepted, trusted, where you
would never be.
Where I’m not quite trusted.
And I’ll
put him to use.”

 
          
“And
leave me here?”

 
          
“And
leave you here,” he nodded her. “Scylla, you’d be of no help where we’re going,
and John will.” His eyes were on her, like the muzzles of two pistols. “Go and
leave us alone.”

 
          
“Leave
you alone!” she howled. “I’ll leave you alone, all right —I’ll leave everybody
alone!”

 
          
She
hustled herself away, back of the green curtain. Harpe shrugged at me.

 
          
“She’ll
sulk now,” he said. “She was the first I chose to help me, and it’s hard for
her to recognize the fact that she’s not my equal here. She’ll be ugly about
things for a day or so, maybe for several days. But just now, you and 1 are
going to travel.”

 
          
He
went to a side shelf and picked up a white cork helmet and set it on his head.

 
          
“Come
here close to me, John,” he bade me. “We have to make our journey almost as
one. Here, put your arm around my shoulders.”

 
          
I
did that, a-slinging my guitar behind me. He grabbed me tight round the waist.
His free hand hoisted up the T-amulet on its chain and laid itself flat on his
helmet. He said words, so slurred together and muttered I couldn’t make them
out.

 
          
I
felt a windy whirl all round me, I saw a moving whiteness like a storm of snow,
and my feet rested nowhere, on naught. My eyes went blind, my ears sang.
And then, all of a sudden, brightness.
I stood on solidness.
Sight came back to my eyes. I looked down.

 
          
Sand at my feet, all glittery with the hot sun on it.