Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (26 page)

"He
didn't," I said. "And I did. Do you care to talk about it?"

She acted glad to
talk about it, once she started. She'd worked at weaving for Shull Cobart, with
maybe nine-ten others, in a little town off in the hills. He took the cloth to
places like
Asheville
and sold at a
high mark to the touristers that came there. Once or twice he made to court
Evadare, but she paid him no mind. But one day he went on a trip, and came
again with the black fiddle.

"And he was
different," she said. "He'd been scared and polite to folks before
that. But the fiddle made him somebody else. He played at dances and folks
danced their highest and fastest, but they were scared by his music, even when
they flocked to it. He won prizes at fiddle-playing. He'd stand by the shop
door and play to us girls, and the cloth we wove was more cloth and better
cloth—but it was strange. Funny feel and funny look to it."

"Did the
touristers still buy it?" I inquired her.

"Yes, and
payed more for it, but they seemed scared while they were buying it. So I've
heard tell from folks who saw."

"And Shull
Cobart made you run off."

"It was when
he said he wanted me to light his darkness."

I saw what those
words meant. An evil man speaking them to a good girl, because his evil was
hungry for good. "What did you reply him?"

"I said I
wanted to be quiet and good, he wanted to be showy and scary. And he said that
was just his reason, he wanted me for my goodness to his scariness." She
shivered, the way folks shiver when ice falls outside the window. "I swore
to go where he'd not follow. Then he played his fiddle, it somehow made to bind
me hand and foot. I felt he'd tole me off with him then and there, but I
pretended—"

She looked sad
and ashamed of pretending, even in peril.

"I said I'd
go with him next day. He was ready to wait. That night I ran off."

"And you
came to Hosea's Hollow," I said. "How did you make yourself
able?"

"I feared
Kalu another sight less than I fear Shull Cobart," Evadare replied me.
"And I've not seen Kalu—I've seen nothing. I heard a couple of things,
though. Once something knocked at the door at night."

"What was it
knocked, Evadare?"

"I wasn't so
foolish for the lack of sense that I went to see." She shivered again,
from her little toes up to her bright hair. "I dragged up the quilt and
spoke the strongest prayer I remember, the old-timey one about God gives His
angels charge over us by day and by night." Her blue eyes fluttered,
remembering. "Whatever knocked gave one knock more and never again, that
night or ary night since."

I was purely
ready to talk of something else. "Who made this cabin for you?" I
asked, looking around.

"It was here
when I came—empty. But I knew good folks had made it, by the cross."

I saw where her
eyes went, to the inside of the half-shut door. A cross was cut there, putting
me in mind of the grave by the trail.

"It must
have been Hosea Palmer's cabin. He's dead and buried now. Who buried him?"

She shook her
head. "That wonders me, too. All I know is, a good friend did it years
ago. Sometimes, when I reckon maybe it's a Sunday, I say a prayer by the grave
and sing a hymn. It seems brighter when I sing, looking up to the sky."

"Maybe I can
guess the song you sing, Evadare." And I touched the guitar again, and
both of us sang it:

Lights in the valley outshine the sun—  
 

Look away beyond the blue! 
 

As we sang I kept
thinking in my heart—how pretty her voice, and how sweet the words in Evadare's
mouth.

She went on to
tell me how she hoped to live. She'd fetched in meal and salt and not much
else, and she'd stretched it by picking wild greens, and there were some nuts
here and there around the old cabin, poked away in little handfuls like the
work of squirrels; though neither of us had seen a squirrel in Hosea's Hollow.
She had planted cabbages and seed corn, and reckoned these would be worth
eating by deep summer. She was made up in her mind to stay in Hosea's Hollow
till she had some notion that Shull Cobart didn't lie in wait for her coming
back.

"He's
waiting," she felt sure. "He laughed when I spoke of running off.
Said he'd know all I meant to do, all he needed was to wonder a thing while he
played his fiddle and the answer was in his mind." Her pink tongue wet her
lips. "He had a song he played, said it had power—"

"Was it
maybe this one?" I asked, trying to jolly her; and again I touched the
strings. I sang old words to the music I heard inside:

My pretty little
pink, I once did think
 
That you and I would marry,
 
But now I've lost all hope of you,
 
And I've no time to tarry.
I'll take my sack upon my back,
 
My rifle on my shoulder,
 
And I'll be off to the Western States
 
To view the country over . . . 
 

"That's the
tune," she said, "but not the words." Again she shivered.
"They were like something in a dream, while he played and sang along, and
I felt I was trapped and tangled and webbed."

"Like
something in a dream," I repeated her, and made up words like another
thing I'd heard once, to fit the same music:

I dreamed last
night of my true love,
 
All in my arm I had her,
 
And her locks of hair, all long and fair,
 
Hung round me like a shadow . . . 
 

"That's not
his song, either," said Evadare.

"No, it
isn't," a voice I'd heard before came to agree her.

In through that
half-open door stepped Shull Cobart, with his sooty hair and his grin, and his
shiny black fiddle in his hand.

"Why don't
you say me a welcome?" he asked Evadare, and cut his eyes across at me.
"John, I counted on you being here, too."

Quick I leaned my
guitar to the wall and got up. "Then you counted on trouble with me,"
I said. "Lay aside that fiddle so I won't break it when I break you."

But it was to his
chin, and the bow across. "Hark before we fight," he said, and
gentlemen, hush! how Shull Cobart could play.

It was the same
tune, fiddled beyond my tongue's power to tell how wild and lovely. And the
cabin that had had red-gold light from the fire and soft-gold light from
Evadare's hair, it looked that quick to glow silver-pale, in jumping, throbbing
sweeps as he played. Once, a cold clear dry winter night, I saw in the sky the
Northern Lights; and the air in that cabin beat and throbbed and quivered the
same way, but pale silver, I say, not warm red. And it came to my mind, harking
helpless, that the air turned colder all at once than that winter night when
I'd watched the Northern Lights in the sky.

I couldn't come
at Shull Cobart. Somehow, to move at him was like moving neck-deep against a
flooding river. I couldn't wear my way a foot closer. I sat on the stool again,
and he stripped his teeth at me, grinning like a dog above a trapped rabbit.

"I wish the
best for you, John," he said through the music. "Look how I make you
welcome and at rest here."

I knew what way
he wanted me to rest, the same way Hosea Palmer rested out yonder. I knew it
wouldn't help to get up again, so I took back my guitar and sat quiet. I looked
him up and down. He wore a suit of dark cloth with a red stripe, a suit that
looked worth money, and his shoes were as shiny as his fiddle, ready to make
manners before rich city folks. His mean dark eyes, close together above that
singing, spell-casting fiddle, read my thoughts inside me.

"Yes, John,
it's good cloth," he said. "My own weaving."

"I know how
it was woven," Evadare barely whispered, the first words she'd spoken
since Shull came in.

She'd moved
halfway into a corner. Scared white—but she was a prettier thing than I'd ever
seen in my life.

"Like me to
weave for you?" he inquired me, mocking; and then he sang a trifly few
words to his tune:

I wove this suit
and I cut this suit,
 
And I put this suit right on,
 
And I'll weave nine yards of other cloth
 
To make a suit for John . . . 
 

"Nine
yards," I repeated after him.

"Would that
be enough fine cloth for your suit?" he grinned across the droning fiddle
strings. "You're long and tall, a right much of a man, but—"

"Nobody
needs nine yards but for one kind of suit," I kept on figuring. "And
that's no suit at all."

"A
shroud," said Evadare, barely making herself heard, and how Shull Cobart
laughed at her wide eyes and the fright in her voice!

"You reckon
there'll be a grave for him here in Kalu's own place, Evadare?" he gobbled
at her. "Would Kalu leave enough of John to be worth burying? I know about
old Barebones Kalu."

"He's not
hereabouts," Evadare half-begged to be believed. "Never once he
bothered me."

"Maybe he's
just spared you, hoping for something better," said Shull. "But he
won't be of a mind to spare all of us that came here making a fuss in his home
place. That's why I toled John here."

"You toled
me?" I asked, and again he nodded.

"I played a
little tune so you'd come alone, John. I reckoned Kalu would relish finding you
here. Being he's the sort he is, and I'm the sort I am, it's you he'd make way
with instead of me. That lets me free to take Evadare away."

"I'll not go
with you," Evadare said, sharper and louder than I thought possible for
her.

"Won't you,
though?" Shull laughed. His fiddle-music came up, and Evadare drew herself
tight and strong, as if she leaned back against ropes on her. The music took on
wild-sounding notes to fit into itself Evadare's hands made fists, her teeth
bit together, her eyes shut tight. She took a step, or maybe she was dragged.
Another step she took, another, toward Shull.

I tried to get
up, too, but I couldn't move as she was moving. I had to sit and watch, and I
had the thought of that saying about how a snake draws a bird to his coil. I'd
never believed such a thing till I saw Evadare move, step by step she didn't
want to take, toward Shull Cobart.

Suddenly he
stopped playing, and breathed hard, like a man who's been working in the
fields. Evadare stood still and rocked on her feet. I took up my muscles to
make a jump, but Shull pointed his fiddle-bow at me, like a gun.

"Have
sense!" he slung out. "You've both learned I can make you go or stay,
whichever I want, when I fiddle as I know how. Sit down, Evadare, and I'll
silence my playing for the time. But make a foolish move, John, and I might play
a note that would have the bones out of your body without ary bit of help from
Kalu."

Bad man as he
was, he told the truth, and both of us knew it. Evadare sat on the other stool,
and I put my guitar across my knees. Shull Cobart leaned against the door jamb,
his fiddle low against his chest, and looked sure of himself. At that instant I
was dead sure I'd never seen a wickeder face, not among all the wicked faces of
the wide world.

"Know where
I got this fiddle, you two?" he asked.

"I can
guess," I said, "and it spoils my notion of how good a trader a
certain old somebody is. He didn't make much of a swap, that fiddle for your
soul; for the soul was lost before you bargained."

"It wasn't a
trade, John." He plucked a fiddle-string with his thumbnail. "Just a
sort of little present between friends."

"I've heard
the fiddle called the devil's instrument," said Evadare, back to her soft
whisper; and once again Shull Cobart laughed at her, and then at me.

"Folks have
got a sight to learn about fiddles. This fiddle will make you and me rich,
Evadare. We'll go to the land's great cities, and I'll play the dollars out of
folks' pockets and the hearts out of folks' bodies. They'll honor me, and
they'll bow their faces in the dirt before your feet."

"I'll not go
with you," she told him again.

"No? Want me
to play you right into my arms this minute? The only reason I don't,
Evadare—and my arms want you, and that's a fact—I'd have to put down my fiddle
to hold you right."

"And I'd be
on you and twist your neck around like the stem on a watch," I added onto
that. "You know I can do it, and so do I. Any moment it's liable to
happen."

As he'd picked
his fiddle-string, I touched a silver string of my guitar, and it sang like a
honey-bee. "Don't do that any more, John," he snapped. "Your
guitar and my fiddle don't tune together. I'm a lone player."

To his chin went
that shiny black thing, and the music he made lay heavy on me. He sang:

I'll weave nine
yards of other cloth
 
For John to have and keep,
 
He'll need it where he's going to lie,
 
To warm him in his sleep . . . .  
 

"What are we
waiting for?" I broke in. "You might kill me somehow with your
fiddling, but you won't scare me."

"Kalu will
do the scaring," he said as he stopped again. "Scare you purely to
death. We're just a-waiting for him to come."

"How will we
know—" began Evadare.

"We'll
know," said Shull, the way he'd promise a baby child something.
"We'll hear him. Then I'll play John out of here to stand face to face
with Kalu, if it's really a face Kalu has."