Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05 (4 page)

           
Jonas Larrowby acted like as if it
made his day to meet me. “We're proud to have you here, John," he said.
“Is there aught in this world we can do for you?"

 
          
“I’d
like to get to a phone," I told him.
“To make a
longdistance call.
I'll pay what the call costs."

 
          
“Shoo,"
he said, “call
who
air you want to, air place in this
whole country, and forget about the payment. I say, it's a privilege to have
you with us. There's the phone over yonder, next to the post office desk."

 
          
I
put through a call to Sam Heaver, to tell him I'd got myself lost up that
mountain, but I’d been found again and was all right. He was truly glad and
relieved to hear me say it. Then I turned round to where Jonas Larrowby had
Tombs’s crumbs of gold out to weigh on a little scale.

 
          
All
the time, more and more folks were a-coming in. Naturally, in that sort of
settlement, the store was where all sorts would come in to see what might
could
be a-going on. I shook hands with a big sight of
folks, and I found time to talk to two men.

 
          
One
was their old doctor, Sam Bullard. He wore jeans about like
mine,
he was short and stocky-built. His hair was as white as a fresh-picked flock of
cotton, down yonder in the lowlands low. He wore spectacles fitted close and
chubby to his lined face. About eighty years old, as I reckoned, but a-plenty
of gristle in him still.

 
          
“Sure
enough," he told me, “I try to look after these Larrowby folks when
they're ailing. If to look after them is beyond me, I see that they get to the
hospital at the county seat. It’s good to make your acquaintance, John. And
here, let me make you acquainted with Preacher Davis Larrowby too. Right this minute,
I'd judge that you and I and Preacher are the only intellectuals in the
neighborhood.”

           
Preacher Davis Larrowby was as
gaunted up as a rake, and near about twice as tall. He even towered a couple
inches over me, a-standing straight and high for all he must have been near
about as old as Dr. Bullard. He had on a long black jimswinger coat, but his
shirt was a blue work shirt, with an old string necktie. He had a long nose and
a long jaw, and grinned with teeth like a friendly horse.

 
          
“Intellectual,”
he repeated the word. “Doc, you love that term. Well, at that, you have a big
shelf of
books,
I have a big shelf of books. We've
always borrowed one another’s books, and given them back again. John, will you
be here Sunday? You'll be welcome at our church. It's only a little shed of a
place, but it's easy to recognize from the cross on top. The Lord’s Service
Station, some people here call it.”

 
          
“That’s
a right good name for a church,” I said. “Preacher, I can't rightly say where
I’ll be on Sunday, but if I'm here I’ll come hark at your sermon.”

 
          
“Our
observances are simple,” he said. “Enough people come to sing a hymn or two and
say a prayer and maybe profit by the Golden Text. And during the school year, I
teach the children in this area. That fixes me with enough to live on.” “But
hardly enough to go wild on,” said the doctor. “He gets some money, and meat
and commeal and firewood, and he has a good cabin; his kinfolks pitched in and
built it for him, about a quarter of a century ago. And he preaches good
sermons, so I’ve been led to believe. I don’t go to church very often myself. I
don’t know whether he prefers the Old Testament or the New.”

 
          
“I
prefer both,” Preacher Larrowby said, with a chuckle in it. “If you would read
those two Testaments, Doc, you’d find some interesting things in them.”

 
          
Just
then, the other folks hollered me to pick guitar again. They were out on the
wide porch, a-forming up two sets of fours to dance. So I picked for them, and
Doc Bullard called the dance figures. What I picked was a string of fast-step
dance tunes like “
Cripple Creek
” and “Old Joe Clark” and “Laurel Lonesome” and so on. I saw Tombs out
there, a-stepping it off with Myrrh Larrowby, and her cheeks were rosy with how
she enjoyed herself.

 
          
After while, the dancing stopped and I went back into the store to
buy me some clothes.
Another blue shirt, some
underwear, a couple pairs of socks, a razor.
Time passed and Tombs
allowed we could buy us some lunch there, but Doc Bullard bade us come eat with
him. His cabin had a great big living room in front and a side room he called
his office, with a kitchen shedded on behind. His nice old wife gave us fried
chicken and white bread and butter, and Tombs made her a present of a jar of
wild honey. After we’d eaten, Preacher Larrowby came in the front door and had
coffee with us, and he inquired me what I figured to do thereabouts.

 
          
“Mainly,
find out all I can about
Cry
Mountain
,” I said. “Does air soul go there?”

 
          
Just
as I spoke those words, we heard the cry. It was fainter there than at Tombs’s
cabin, but you could sure enough hear
it,
from how
many miles off I couldn’t guess.

 
          
Awoooooo
, it howled its call to us, and
I hope none of you all air hear the like. It died down and away, and we all
looked at one another.

 
          
“I’ve
heard that some have tried it, long ago, and didn’t come back,” said Preacher.
“I remember one such—his name was Zeb Plattenburg—and nothing’s been heard of
him since, not in all those years.”

 
          
“People
here have got into the wise habit of staying away from
Cry
Mountain
,” Doc added on.

 
          
“Certainly,
I’ve never been there in all my long life,” Preacher said.

           
“I haven't, either,” said Doc, “nor
do I plan to go.”

           
“I plan to go,” I said.

           
They all opened their eyes wide on
me, like as if I'd said I planned to open the brass gates of hell and walk in.

 
          
After
some more talk, and I tell you all that it was talk that plumb steered away
from
Cry
Mountain
, Tombs and I went back to Jonas Larrowby’s
store to pick up the
things
we’d shopped there. I
looked along the shelves of canned things and chose out three different items
and paid for them.

 
          
“You
seem to do a good business here,” I said to Mr. Jonas.

 
          
“Good
enough to live all right,” he said. “Once in a big while there’s a little
shoplifting, but not enough to matter.”

 
          
Meanwhile,
Tombs was a-talking to Myrrh, and plain to see she harked at him, and smiled
bunchy-cheeked like as if she liked to hark at him. At last we said our
goodbyes to folks in the store and folks
outside,
and
headed back the way we’d come.

 
          
Gentlemen,
each and all of us know how it is; you travel a strange way and it seems quite
a trudge. Then you make your return, and it’s not so far back over the same
ground. So it didn’t seem air much of a time before we came to where Tombs
scrambled up the bank to that hollow tree.

 
          
But
he was gone quite a spell of time, while I stood and waited and hoped he was
all right. When he came back down again, he carried a curly-eared jug, but not
the same one he’d left.

 
          
“I
didn’t find aught up there, so I went to the house of the blockader,” he
explained me. “We figured some good neighbor had helped himself. So I bought us
another half gallon.”

 
          
I
recollected what Jonas Larrowby had said about shoplifters.

           
“You
should ought
to have let me pay,” I said, for I had still a little money in my pocket.

           
“No way,” said Tombs. He unstoppered
the jug and handed it to me.

 
          
“Take
you a whet, John,” he invited me. “I truly tell you, this is the pure quill,
it’s as good blockade as you’ll find in all these here mountains.”

 
          
I
turned it up over my elbow and took a mouthful. It was as good as he’d said,
lively and flavory. He took the jug in his turn and had him his drink.

 
          
“That
would make a man wish he was a drunkard,” he allowed.

 
          
He
undid his belt and ran it through the ear of the jug and buckled up again. As we
walked on, I touched my silver strings and sang him some lines of an old song:

 
          
“You’ll
nair get shed of old drunkards,

           
I’ll tell you the reason why—

           
There’s two old drunkards get
theirselves born

           
For air old
drunkard to die.”

 
          
Tombs
laughed about that. “And ain’t it the truth?” he said.
“Though
you nor I ain’t to be numbered with the drunkards.
Where did you learn
that one?”

 
          
“Down
in the lowlands,” I replied him. “In a county named
Moore
.”

 
          
We
kept on a-using along, with the trees and the rocks and that little branch of
water to company us, and finally we came to
Chop
Temple
’s mill. He was ready with the meal from the
com we’d left, and we each tasted a tweak of it before he did up the mouth of
the sack. It was as sweet in the mouth as syrup. I hiked the sack on my
shoulder, and we bade him a good day and took our trail again. It was near
about
three o'clock
in the evening, as I judged by the sun, when we came to Tombs’s cabin and toted
our stuff in and put it down.

           
We sat down, me on the sofa, Tombs
on a chair, and he looked at me.

 
          
“All
right,” he said, “what are your thoughts?”

           
“Right off,” I said back, “I see
what you meant about the pretty girl in Larrowby. Miss Myrrh Larrowby is the
pure sunshine for beauty. 1 can see right plain why you want to be with her
whenair you can.”

 
          
He
made a shrug of his shoulders. “There’s folks one place another would say I’m
not good enough for her Folks who question why I live out here by my lone self,
folks who’d even say I ain’t got a very reputable reputation.”

 
          
“If
you ask me,” I said, a-thinking how to use my words, “I’d say that the
important one to judge on you,
it’s
Miss Myrrh her own
self. And I’d likewise judge that she thinks a right much of you.”

 
          
“Oh,
she’s polite and clever to all the folks, she’s always that. But you know,
John, she’s a big sight younger than I am.
Years and years
younger.
Maybe she’s nice to me just because she reckons I’m an old
man.”

 
          
“I’d
nair think such a thing if I were in your place,” I said back. “She doesn’t act
to you like as if she thought you were old. And I’ll wager you that over the
years you’d find out that she’d catch up to you some way.”

 
          
“Maybe,”
he said.
“Maybe.
And now, one other
thing.”

           
“What other thing?”

           
“You allowed you’d go search for
Cry
Mountain
. Climb it.”

           
“Yes, sir,” I nodded him. “I said
that thing. I mean that thing. I always mean what I say.”

 
          
“Don’t
you go trying it,
John.
”

 
          
He
spoke those words so
sharp,
I cocked my eye on him.

 
          
“Looky
here, Tombs,” I said, “are you a-telling me or a-asking me?”

           
“I meant just to ask you, John, ask
you in a nice way. It's just I don't want aught bad to happen to you. Since I
took care of you right good after you'd been lost yesterday, I’ve got what I've
heard Doc Bullard call a proprietary interest in folks he's helped out of
fixes.”

 
          
“Yes,”
I granted him, “you did help like a true friend. And I won't forget your help
till my day to die. But well you know that a man’s got to do what he's got to
do.”

 
          
“All
right,” he changed the subject, “why don't we go out and have
us
a little swim, wash off about twelve miles of sweat?”

 
          
We
took the soap and towels and went out to do that thing. While we flung off our
clothes at the edge of the branch, a low, far-off growl of thunder sounded at
us; sounded to our left, some place away downstream. We both looked up at the
blue sky. No clouds there to matter, but there had been that thunder.

 
          
“Thunder
on the left,” muttered Tombs in his beard. “That has some kind of meaning.”

 
          
“I've
often heard tell, it signifies that something big is on the way to happen to
you,” I said. “A good thing or a bad thing, the old saying nair says which one,
so
far as I know.”

 
          
“Like
that little verse we used to say when I was just a chap,” said Tombs, and he
repeated it:

 
          
“A
mole upon the face

           
Tells that something will take
place,

           
But not what that something will be.

 
          
“
Only you
nor neither I got a mole on the face,” he added on.

 
          
We
both laughed over that, and felt some easier, and got into the chill-watered
branch

 
          
That’s
right, the water was just as cold as when I’d been in it before, and after I’d
lathered up and rinsed off I rubbed hard with the towel. We got our clothes
back on and went back to the cabin. There, I built up a fire of hardwood chunks
on the hearth.

 
          
“Let’s
call it my turn to fix dinner,” I said, and reached into the paper poke of
things I’d bought in Larrowby and fetched out the three cans.

 
          
Tombs
sort of goggled at them. “You a-going to feed us just canned stuff?” he wanted
to know.

 
          
“Wait
till you eat it before you fault it,” I said back. I found a kettle the right
size and opened the first can. It was beef stew with potatoes, a brand I knew
was good. I dumped that in, then a can of cut green beans, then a can of little
small onions. I stood with the kettle in my hand and waited for the fire to bum
down a tad, make good coals. Then I hung the kettle on its hook and stirred it
with an iron spoon. When the time was right, I sprinkled in some salt and
pepper.

 
          
“At
least we can have some com pone to go with that,” allowed Tombs, and started to
mix meal and water for it.

 
          
When
it was suppertime I took the kettle off and dished my mixture into two plates.
Tombs had acted sort of bothered with the idea all along, but the first forkful
he put in his mouth, he cheered for it.

 
          
“This
is champion to eat, John,” he said. “How’d you learn to do it?”

 
          
“Just
chance,” I replied him. “Chance works the most part of things in this world. I
was alone in a little cabin at Haynie’s Fork, a-getting ready to scratch up
some supper for me, when Obray Ramsey and Byard Ray came to the door. I looked
amongst what cans I had, and I mixed us up just what we’ve got here now—stew,
beans, onions. They tied into it and ate it and vowed it as first-rate, same as
you did. So now and then I fix it again/'

 
          
We
cleaned up the last speck, and washed the pot and the plates and so on.
After that, another drink, just a thimbleful, of the blockade
whiskey.
Tombs called for me to pick guitar, and I did that, and we sang
a couple songs together. Then I tried the one I'd made up, back a day and a
half ago when I was a-fixing to get myself lost:

 
          
“What's
up across the
mountain,

           
What's there on the yonder side?

           
Nobody's here to tell me,

           
Nobody to be my guide,

           
But nair you doubt, I'm a-going to
find out,

           
All over this world so wide . .
."

 
          
“I
swanny, John, that sounds to be the story of your life," said Tombs.
“A-going round and round, a-finding things out.
That's your
occupation, and I do hope and pray the good Lord it won’t be your sudden
downfall."

 
          
“It's
not been that yet," I said. “Not so far."

 
          
“Folks
will tell you, there's always a first time. Now hang up on the picking and
singing for a spell, John, I've purely got to beg you out of a-hunting for
Cry
Mountain
."

 
          
“Save
your breath and cool your coffee, Tombs. I'm a-going."

 
          
“At
least let me to tell you what I’ve heard tell about Zeb Plattenburg. He went
there, and he nair came back."