Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05 (2 page)

 
          
“Hey,
friend,” he said. “You look to be in a fix.”

 
          
I
wasn’t about to argue that point with him. I got out just one hoarse word, and
that word was “Water.”

 
          
“Surest
thing you know,” he said, and walked
quick
to where I
stood a-swaying on my feet. He was about as tall as up to my ear, built
close-coupled, with a black-and-white checked shirt and old jeans pants like
mine. He had a tawny brown beard, thick-grown and cut short to his jaw. He got
his chunky right arm round me and helped me make a few stumbling steps to the
door and up over the door-log and inside.

 
          
“You
have you a seat right there,” he bade me, and slid me onto a sort of homemade
sofa of a thing with a dark blue blanket on it. Then he went to where a
galvanized iron pail stood on a bench and dipped a tin cup into it and fetched
it to me. I took it in both my shaky hands. There was maybe an inch of water in
the bottom of the cup. I drank it down in just one swig, and I could swear to
heaven I heard it sizzle in my throat.

 
          
“Is
that all the water you’re a-going to give me?” I was able to ask him.

 
          
“You
can have some more directly,” he said, a-taking the cup back. "Maybe your
mouth is wet enough with that swallow to tell me what I might could call you

           
"Just call me John,” I said.

 
          
"John,”
he echoed me. "Shoo, are you that John, the one they call Silver John? I
should ought
to have guessed it, by them silver strings on
your guitar there. All right now, you can have you some more water.”

 
          
He
gave me another inch in the cup and watched me while I drank it. Then he
stooped down and dragged my old boots off me, one and then the other. I wanted
to say I’d do that, but I’d have been too tired out to try. Then he fetched me
a little bitty more water, and then more again. Each drink of it just purely
soaked into me till at last I found myself a-sitting up straight, not all
limped over, and a-feeling a right much better.

 
          
"John,”
he said, "if I’d given you a whole big bunch of water right off, you’d
have made yourself sick a-drinking it down fast, likely right bad sick. But by
now, you look to be fairly all right. I’ll fix us up a little snack to eat, and
you can tell me how came you to be in that bind I found you in.”

 
          
He
started in to stir up a corn dodger in an iron pan and built a fire in his
stone fireplace and propped the pan slantways to cook the dodger. From a shelf
he took down a little can of
Vienna
sausages and prized that open. Next, he
fetched water in a tin basin for me to wash off my face and hands, and that
made me feel another sight better yet. I told him my tale of how I’d got myself
lost, and my ears felt long and fuzzy to own up to it. He heard me all out to
the end, and then he allowed it might
could
have
happened to air man of mankind if he got to a-wandering round in that lost part
of the mountains.

 
          
While
I talked, I was a-having me a pretty close look at where I’d been fetched into.
The room must have been all the front half of the cabin, something like sixteen
feet square as I reckoned.
Its walls showed to be of logs
with plaster chinking betwixt them, and here and there was
tacked up a
colored picture. The floors were of broad adze-chopped planks, round about
eighteen inches across, fastened down with hardwood pegs and smooth from
rubbing or either just a-being trod on for years and years. The
furniture—table, chairs, bench, cot bed in a back comer, the sofa-thing I sat
on—all of it was homemade and stout-made. The legs of the things were thick pieces
of branch from this hardwood tree or that, the bark still on. The chairs and
the sofa were seated with broad splits of wood. A black bearskin lay out in
front of the fireplace. As for that fireplace itself, it was mortared of
different stones, gray, dark gray, brown, one or two bits a sort of greenish.
On the fireboard shelf above it were stacked pots and dishes, and there were
four-five books that looked worn from lots of a-being read.

 
          
Meanwhile,
the food got cooked. He cut the great big hot dodger in two and put a hunk on
each of two old plastic plates, and dumped out the sausages for the both of us.
I got off the sofa and came and sat on a chair, and you’d purely better believe
I tied into those good rations. He set out a glass jar of honey to dab on the
dodger and poured mugs of hot coffee as black as
midnight
and strong as a plow mule, and we sat and
ate and drank together like as if we’d known one another all our lives.

 
          
Air
bite of that food, air sup of that coffee, did wonders for making me feel more
like my own man again. The achy tiredness leaked out of my back, my legs,
my
eyes.

 
          
When
we’d finished our eating, he put out two little glasses and poured some
blockade whiskey for us. It was straw-colored and sharp and so good you could
bite it right out at the rim of the glass.

 
          
“Now,
John,” he said, “you've done told me something about yourself. Maybe it's my
turn to tell you about myself.” So he told me about himself, and it was a right
interesting tale to hark at.

           
He was named Tombs McDonald and, the
way he told it,
here's
how come him to get that name:

           
Once, thirty-some-odd years back
from where he’d got to be when he told me, a nice old couple named Peter and
Sancy McDonald went out to take them a night walk, past an old neglected burying
ground on a hill slope, mostly grown up with brush and weeds round the graves.
It was a right dark night without more than just a little old scrap of moon in
the sky; and as they walked past together, they heard a sad whining and
whimpering in there amongst where the graves were. They must have had good sand
in their craw, because they went right into that creepy burying ground to see
what it was a-making such a noise. And on top of a worn-down grave rock there
lay a little baby child, all wrapped up in a ragged quilt, and it was a-crying
like that little lost lamb in that song I sung you all.

 
          
Not
only were Peter and Sancy McDonald brave folks, they were good-hearted, kindly
folks. They fetched that poor crying baby child home to their farm cabin, gave
it warm milk for its supper, washed it up clean, fixed it a soft bed in an old
basket woven of willow twigs. Next day they inquired all round of their
neighbor folks if air soul had lost a child, but nobody had. So they decided,
since they’d nair had children of their own, they’d adopt this lost one and
raise it up. It was a boy baby, and they named him Tombs because that meant
where he’d been found.

           
Tombs McDonald allowed to me he'd
had the best of a
raising
up, and a right happy one to
boot. His step-folks were just poor farmers, but they were proud ones. They
worked hard on their little patch of ground, and they taught Tombs to work,
too, but they didn't work him to death. They gave him time to play. His
step-daddy was a good carpenter and builder, and he taught Tombs about that.
Taught him likewise to plant by the moon and the zodiac signs, how to raise
good com and good potatoes and all like that. Taught him what wood to cut for
a fishing
pole, how to bait for trout, for bass, for other
fish. Saw that he got what learning a pretty good little country school could
give him. But those old McDonald step-folks were up in years; they died within
just a few days of one another when Tombs was about nineteen. He saw them
buried and prayed over, and he sold the place they’d inherited to him for a few
hundred dollars, and lit out into the world to work for
himself
.

 
          
He
tried at different jobs, on farms and in a couple of towns. He worked in a
lumber mill and in a slaughterhouse, he did a hitch in the army, though not
overseas and under fire like me. I reckon he did all right at those, but he
nair much relished a-taking orders from another man, be it an army colonel or a
straw boss somewhere. So at last he came to where he was a-living now, bought
himself his chunk of land, and ran him up a cabin on it, with the help of a
couple of friends. For food, he raised him some com and vegetables, he hunted
wild meat,
he
caught fish. The reason he picked out
that special spot to live was that he could find gold nearby, for what money he
needed.

 
          
“Gold?"
I repeated him when he said that. “You got
yourself a gold mine here? I nair heard the like of that in these parts."

 
          
He
grinned
me with square teeth in his beard. “Why, John,
this here state produced more gold than air other in the
Union
, right up to the time of the big rush to
California
. But no, naught to be called a real mine
hereabouts. There's a stream off behind my place here that works down from
quartzy rocks somewhere. I can wash me out specks of the stuff there, enough if
I make a true day of it to get me twenty dollars' worth of it sometimes. I'll
show you later."

 
          
The
rest of his life story was that he felt well and happy, a-living alone
thataway. The books on his mantel were
Walden
by Thoreau and
Robinson Crusoe
by
Defoe, and one of those big books on building and repairing that teaches you
all the way from how to drive a nail to how to build a chimney that will draw.
And, naturally, a Bible.

 
          
“Thoreau
and old man Crusoe's boy Robinson have taught me a right much about building
and farming," he said. “I've read them over and over, so many a
time
I could near about quote them to you from memory. But
how you come on by now, John?"

 
          
“I'm
fine," I said, “and I thank you most to death for a-look- ing after me the
way you have."

 
          
“Feel
up to a-taking a little walk out?"

 
          
“I'd
like that, first-class."

 
          
He
fetched a basin, another basin than the one I'd washed my face in. This one was
made of iron, it was round and shallow. He likewise picked up a rough towel and
a little chunk of yellow soap. We went outside, and it felt right good to be on
my feet. I had on my boots again, couldn't recollect when I'd put them on.

 
          
“You
seem to snap back right quick," said Tombs.

 
          
“Well
now," I said, “I always try to keep in the best shape I can, and that
little rest I had, and the food and coffee and blockade helped."

 
          
Outside
the cabin, I saw that Tombs had good big trees in his yard, pine and oak and
hickory. The ground behind was cleared, and he had sheds back yonder. One was a
comcrib, another was a smokehouse. And there was a chicken run, with a rooster
and a few hens a-picking up com flung there.
On behind the
sheds, a well-kept vegetable garden.
He had turnips, I saw, and
squashes, tomatoes, cabbage.
And beyond the garden, quite a
com patch, and the com a-getting ripe.

 
          
“I
always grow enough com for both me and the chickens,'” Tombs said. "I get
me a peck of it ground air week for meal. I know right well how to make bread
of it. Thoreau’s book taught me some about that.”

 
          
I
looked at his smokehouse. “I take it you dry yourself some hams and bacon,” I
said, “but I don’t see your hog lot.”

 
          
“I
use wild hogs,” said Tombs. “They run in these woods, they feed on fallen
acorns and all like that, they get up sometimes to three-four hundred pounds.
Autumn time, with frosty days, I take me my gun and go out, hunt one or two of
them down, and butcher them. They eat right good—better than just a tame hog as
I reckon—but I’ll tell you a true word, they can be mean. You’d better shoot
them plumb center, else they’ll get after you, try to kill you. The last one I
killed and butchered out looked near about as big as the smokehouse. Likely
we’ll have us a slice off a smoked shoulder of his for supper tonight.”

 
          
On
the far side of the garden patch and corn rows came the woods, and a trail
showed into it. We came along in amongst the trees to the side of a
swift-running branch. On the far side grew more trees, steep uphill, but I made
out that there was a sort of gap beyond the water.

 
          
“Where
does that get to?” I inquired Tombs, but another answer came from over yonder.
That long-drawn-out, lonesome call,
awooo awooo.
The voice of the mountain.

 
          
“That
there’s where
Cry
Mountain
is,” said Tombs. “To me, it sounds like as
if it says, stay away,
stay
away. And I stay away.
Somehow other, I ain’t got no relish to go there.”

 
          
I
changed the subject: “You gave me honey to eat, but I haven’t seen your bee
gums.”

 
          
“My
bees are wild, too,” he said. “I hunt their trees, cut them down, and fetch
their honey home. Sometimes I get enough to wag it to a store and sell it.”

 
          
While
we talked he was a-shucking off his clothes and I did the same. He waded into
the stream and soaped himself all over and sat down, beardy chin deep, to wash
the suds off. Then he took his iron pan and waded away upstream and scooped mud
and gravel and water into the pan and sloshed it back and forth.

 
          
“Sure
enough,” he yelled to me. “You can pan day wages out of here if you want to
stand up to your tail all day long in this chizzly cold water.”

 
          
1
waded in, too. He’d said the true word, it was cold, but it braced me up to
feel it. I soaped and rinsed and got out,
then
I
squatted down to soap and wash out my sweaty shirt and socks and underwear, for
I had no other change of clothes. I wrang those things out and spread them on
some bushes and sat down in a patch of sun. That felt right good and helped me
to dry off. After while, Tombs came to show me what he’d found. The mud was all
washed out of the pan and in the bottom, amongst some gravels, clung a few
bright yellow specks, bright where the sun touched on them.

 
          
“No
great much, you’ll likely tell me,” he said, “but air little bit a man gets,
added to what he’s got, makes just a little bit more. Gold is a-getting up in
price these days. I’ll fetch along a little poke of dust to Larrowby—that’s the
closest settlement. Fetch it there tomorrow.”

 
          
“And
I’ll go with you,” I decided.

 
          
“Shoo,
John, it’s a good few miles. Do you want to try that after all the climbing and
shammocking round you’ve been up to today?”

 
          
“Just
let me have a good night’s sleep and I’ll be up to my usual again.”

 
          
I
put on just my jeans pants and boots and toted my wet things as we went back to
the cabin. As we came in past the garden, I had time to note what a good-built
little cabin it was. We hung up my wet clothes in front of the fireplace and
built a little blaze to help them dry out. Tombs rummaged out his jug of
blockade whiskey and we each one had a fair whet of that. When I allowed one
more time that I'd go with him to Lar- rowby, he still wondered me should I
walk so
far.

 
          
“When
I was a soldier, I was in the infantry/' I said. “We'd go long ways on foot. I
recollect one time we marched eighteen miles a day, three days in a row, and we
fought at the end of that.”

 
          
He sort of gopped at me.
“You
truly done
that? Fought at the end of them three marching days? Did you win the fight?”
“Yes, we won, but I don’t enjoy
to talk
about it, not
even to think about it. Tell me something about this Larrowby town we'll be
a-going to tomorrow.”

           
“Why, as to that, Larrowby ain't
rightly to be called a town, it's just a little bitty settlement.
It's
most part just one family, the Larrowbys. Good folks,
the sort of folks I'd wager you'd like. It’s near about the only place I go to,
most times. I shop there a
little,
get my mail there,
if there's aught of mail to get. And talk to friends I know.”

 
          
He
went on to say that there was a good general store there, and a little church
with a preacher, and a doctor, too, and maybe twenty cabins with farming
families in them. He made me feel right anxious to go see for my own self.
“Just a little bitty settlement,” he said again.

 
          
“No
matter how little bitty a settlement is,” I said, “there always seems to be a
pretty girl in it, and usually a bad man.” “Can’t rightly speak to a bad man in
Larrowby, but there's sure God a pretty girl there,” he said, and deep in his
beard he smiled a smile to himself.

           
We more or less loafed the rest of
that day. Tombs put his specks of gold with some others, into a little small
poke of deer leather he'd tanned and sewed himself. For supper we had good soup
made of com, with wild greens and some slips of smoked meat from that big wild
hog he told me about. I allowed I was a-being too much trouble.

 
          
“Nair
bit of trouble, John," Tombs said. “I’m proud to have you. What you think
of this smoked meat?"