Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (27 page)

I laughed myself,
and heaven pardon me the lie I put into my laugh, trying to sound as if naught
pestered me. Shull frowned; he didn't like how my laugh hit his ear.

"Just for
argument's sake," I said to him, "How do you explain what you say
your music can do?"

"I don't do
any explaining. I just do the playing."

"I've heard
tell how a fiddler can be skilled to where he plays a note and breaks a glass
window," I recollected. "I've heard tell he might possibly even make
a house fall down."

"Dogs howl
when fiddles play," said Evadare. "From pain it makes."

Shull nodded at
us both. "You folks are right. There's been power-music long before this.
Ever hear of a man named Orpheus?"

"He was an
old-timey Greek," I said.

"He played
his harp, and trees danced for him. He played his way down to the floor of
hell, and back out again. Maybe I've got some of that power. A fiddle can sing
extra sharp or extra sweet, and its sound's solid—like a knife or club or rope,
if you can work it."

I remembered in
my mind that sound goes in waves like light, and can be measured; and a wave is
power, whether of sound or light. Waves can wash, like the waves of the sea
that strike down tall walls and strong men. Too bad, I decided, that educated
folks couldn't use that black fiddle, to make its power good and useful. In
devil-taught hands, it was the devil's instrument. Not like my silver-strung
guitar, the way harps, certain harps in a certain high place, are said to be
strung with gold . . .

Shull listened.
You could almost see his ears stick up, like the ears of an animal.
"Something's out there," he said.

I heard it, too.
Not a step or a scramble, but a movement.

"Kalu,"
said Evadare, her eyes the widest yet in the firelight.

"Yes, it's
Kalu," said Shull. "John, wouldn't it be kindlier to the lady if you
met him outside?"

"Much
kindlier," I agreed him, and got up.

"You know
this isn't personal, John," Shull said, fiddle at his chin. "But
Kalu's bound to have somebody. It won't be Evadare, because some way he's let
her be. And it won't be me, with you here. You've got a reputation, John, for
doing things against what Kalu stands to represent. I figure he wants something
good, because he's got plenty of the strong evil."

"The way you
think you've got to have Evadare," I said.

"That's it.
You're in the line of what he wants to devour." He began to play again.
"Come on, John."

I was coming. I'd
made up my mind. The weight of the music was on me, but not quite as deadening
and binding as before. Shull Cobart walked out, fiddling. I just winked at
Evadare, as if I figured it would be all right. Then I walked out, too.

The light was
greeny-pale, though I saw no moon. Maybe the trees hid it, or the haze in the
sky.

"Where will
you face him?" asked Shull, almost polite above his soft playing.

"There's a
grave down yonder—" I began to say.

"Yes, just
the place. Come on."

I
followed after him on the trail. My left hand chorded my guitar at the neck, my
right-handed fingers found the strings. What was it Evadare had told me? . . .
 
I say a prayer by the grave and
sing a hymn. It seems brighter when I sing . . .
 
 

Then there could
be two kinds of power-music.

I began to pick
the tune along with Shull, softer even than Evadare's whisper. He didn't hear;
and, because I followed him like a calf to the slaughter-pen, he didn't guess.

Around the bend
was the grave, the green light paler around it. Shull stopped. All of a quick,
I knew Kalu was in the trees over us. Somewhere up there, he made a heaviness
in the branches.

"Stand where
you want to, John. I vow, you've played the man so far."

I moved past him,
close to the cross, though there wasn't light enough to see the name or the
prayer.

"Drop that
guitar!" Shull howled at me.

For I began to
play loud, and I sang to his tune, changing the rhythm for my own quick-made-up
words:

I came to where
the pilgrim lay,
 
Though he was dead and gone,
 
And I could hear his comrade say,
 
He rests in peace alone—
 

"Hush up
with that!"

Shull Cobart
stopped playing and ran at me. I clucked away and around the cross, and quick I
sang the second verse:

Winds may come and
thunders roll
 
And stormy tempests rise,
 
But here he sleeps with a restful soul
 
And the tears wiped from his eyes—  
 

"Come for
him, Kalu!" Shull screamed.

Kalu drop-leaped
out of the branches between us.

Gentlemen, don't
ask me to say too much what Kalu was. Bones, yes—something like man-bones, but
bigger and thicker, also something like bear-bones, or big ape-bones from a
foreign land. And a rotten light to them, so I saw for a moment that the bones
weren't empty. Inside the ribs were caged puffy things, like guts and lungs and
maybe a heart that skipped and wiggled. The skull had a snout like I can't say
what, and in its eye-holes burned blue-green fire. Out came the arm-bones, and
the finger-bones were on Shull Cobart.

I heard Shull
Cobart scream one more time, and then Kalu had him, like a bullfrog with a
minnow. And Kalu was back up in the branches. Standing by the grave, still
tweaking my strings, I heard the branches rustle, and no more sounds after that
from Shull Cobart.

After while, I
walked to where the black fiddle lay. I stomped with my foot, heard it smash,
and kicked the pieces away.

Walking back to
the cabin seemed to take an hour. I stopped at the door.

"No!"
moaned Evadare, and then she just looked at me. "John—but—"

"That's
twice you thought I was Shull Cobart," I said.

"Kalu—"

"Kalu
took
 
him
, not me."

"But—"
she stopped again.

"I figured
the truth about Kalu and Hosea Palmer, walking out with Shull," I began to
explain. "All at once I knew why Kalu never pestered you. You'll wonder
why you didn't know it, too."

"But—"
she tried once more.

"Think,"
I bade her. "Who buried Hosea Palmer, with a cross and a prayer? What dear
friend could he have, when he came in here alone? Who was left alive here when
it was Hosea Palmer's time to die?"

She just shook
her head from side to side.

"It was
Kalu," I said. "Remember the story, all of it. Hosea Palmer said he
knew how to stop Kalu's wickedness. Folks think Hosea destroyed Kalu some way.
But what he did was teach him the good part of things. They weren't enemies.
They were friends."

"Oh,"
she said. "Then—"

"Kalu buried
Hosea Palmer," I finished for her, "and cut his name and the prayer.
Hosea must have taught him his letters. But how could Shull Cobart understand
that? It wasn't for us to know, even, till the last minute. And Kalu took the
evil man, to punish him."

I sat on the
door-log, my arms around my guitar. "You can go home now, Evadare," I
said. "Shull Cobart won't vex you again, by word of mouth or by sight of
his face."

She'd been
sitting all drawn up, as small as she could make herself. Now she managed to
stand.

"Where will
you go, John?"

"There's all
the world for me to go through. I'll view the country over. Think me a kind
thought once in a while when we're parted."

"Parted?"
she said after me, and took a step, but not as if a web of music dragged her.
"John. Let me come with you."

I jumped up.
"With me? You don't want to go with me, Evadare."

"Let me
come." Her hand touched my arm, trembling like a bird.

"How could I
do that, take you with me? I live hard."

"I've not
lived soft, John." But she said it soft and lovely, and it made my heart
ache with what I hadn't had time before to feel for her.

"I don't
have a home," I said.

"Folks make
you welcome everywhere. You're happy. You have enough of what you need. There's
music wherever you go. John, I want to hear the music and help the song."

I wanted to try
to laugh that thought away, but I couldn't laugh. "You don't know what you
say. Listen, I'll go now. Back to my camp, and I'll be out of here before
sunup. Evadare, God bless you wherever you go."

"Don't you
want me to go with you, John?" I couldn't dare reply her the truth of
that. Make her a wanderer of the earth, like me? I ran off. She called my name
once, but I didn't stop. At my camp again, I sat by my died-out fire,
wondering, then wishing, then driving the wish from me.

In the black hour
before dawn, I got my stuff together and started out of Hosea's Hollow. I came
clear of it as the light rose, and mounted up a trail to a ridge above.
Something made me look back.

Far down the
trail I'd come, I saw her. She leaned on a stick, and she carried some kind of
bundle—maybe her quilts, and what little food she had. She was following.

"That fool-headed
girl," I said, all alone to myself, and I up and ran down the far side. It
was hours until I crossed the bottom below and mounted another ridge beyond. On
the ridge I'd left behind I saw Evadare still moving after me, her little shape
barely bigger than a fly. Then I thought of that song I've told you before:

On yonder hill
there stands a creature,
 
Who she is I do not know,
 
I will ask her if she'll marry . . .
 
Oh, no, John, no, John, no! 
 

But she didn't
stand, she came on. And I knew who she was. And if I asked her to marry she
wouldn't answer no.

The rest of that
day I fled from her, not stopping to eat, only to grab mouthfuls of water from
streams. And in the dusky last end of the day I sat quiet and watched her still
coming, leaning on her stick for weariness, and knew I must go down trail to
meet her.

She was at the
moment when she'd drop. She'd lost her ribbon, and the locks of her hair fell
round her like a shadow. Her dress was torn, her face was white-tired, and the
rocks had cut her shoes to pieces and the blood seeped out of her torn feet.

She couldn't even
speak. She just sagged into my arms when I held them out to her.

I carried her to
my camp. The spring trickled enough so I could wash her poor cut feet. I put
down her quilt and my blanket for her to sit on, with her back to a big rock. I
mixed a pone of cornmeal to bake on a flat stone, and strung a few pieces of
meat on a green twig. I brought her water in my cupped hand.

"John,"
she managed at last to speak my name.

"Evadare,"
I said, and we both smiled at each other, and I sat down beside her.

"I'll cease
from wandering," I vowed to her. "I'll get a piece of land and put up
a cabin. I'll plant and hoe a crop for us—"

"No such
thing, John! I'm tired now—so tired—but I'll get over that. Let's just—view the
country over."

I pulled my
guitar to me, and remembered another verse to the old song that fitted Shull
Cobart's tune:

And don't you
think she's a pretty little pink,
And don't you think she's clever,
 
And don't you think that she and I
 
Could make a match forever?  
 

Some Footprints
on John's Trail
          
Through
Magic
Mountains

Then I Wasn't
Alone

Reckoning I had that woodsy place all to
myself, I began to pick
 
Pretty
Saro
 
on my guitar's silver
strings for company. But then I wasn't alone; for soft fluty music began to
play along with me.

Looking sharp, I saw him through the green
laurels right in front. He was young. He hadn't a shirt on. Nary razor had ever
touched his soft yellowy young beard. To his mouth he held a sort of hollow
twig and his slim fingers danced on and off a line of holes to make notes.
Playing, he smiled at me.

I smiled back, and started
 
The Ring That Has No End
. Right
away quick he was playing that with me, too, soft and sweet and high, but not
shrill.

He must want to be friends, I told myself,
and got up and held out a hand to him.

He whirled around and ran. just for a
second before he was gone, I saw that he was a man only to his waist. Below
that he had the legs of a horse, four of them.

You Know the Tale
of Hoph

The
noon
sun was hot on the thickets but in his
cabin was only blue dim light. His black brows made one streak above
iron-colored eyes' "Yes, ma'am?" he said.

"I'm writing a book of stories,"
she said, and she was rose-faced and butter-haired. "I hear you know the
tale of Hoph. How sailors threw him off a ship in a terrible storm a hundred
years ago, but the sea swept him ashore and then he walked and walked until he
reached these mountains. How he troubled the mountain people with spells and
curses and sendings of nightmares."

His long white teeth smiled in his long
white face. "But you know that story already."

"No, not all of it. What was Hoph's
motivation in tormenting the people?"

"His food was the blood of pretty
women," was what he replied her. "Each year he made them give him a
pretty woman. When she died at the year's end, with the last drop of her blood
gone, he made them give him another."

"Until he died too," she tried
to finish.

"He didn't die. They didn't know that
he had to be shot with a silver bullet."

Up came his hands into her sight,
shaggy-haired, long-clawed.

She screamed once.

From the dark corner where I hid I shot
Hoph with a silver bullet.

Blue Monkey

"I'll turn this potful of pebbles
into gold," the fat man told us at
midnight
, "if you all keep from thinking
about a blue monkey."

He poured in wine, olive oil, salt, and
with each he said a certain word. He put the lid on and walked three times
around the pot, singing a certain song. But when he turned the pot over, just
the pebbles poured out.

"Which of you was thinking about a
blue monkey?" They all admitted they'd thought of nothing else. Except
me—I'd striven to remember exactly what he'd said and done. Then everybody
vowed the fat man's gold-making joke was the laughingest thing they'd seen in a
long spell.

One
midnight
a year later and far away, I shovelled
pebbles into another pot at another doings, and told the folks: "I'll turn
them into gold if you all can keep from thinking about a red fish."

I poured in the wine, the olive oil, the
salt, saying the word that went with each. I covered the pot, walked the three
times, sang the song. Then I asked: "Did anybody think about a blue
monkey?"

"But, John," said the prettiest
lady, "you said not to think about a red fish, and that's what I couldn't
put from my mind.'

"I said that to keep you from
thinking about a blue monkey," I said, and tried to tip the pot over.

But it had turned too heavy to move, I
lifted the lid. There inside the pebbles shone yellow. The prettiest lady
picked up two or three. They clinked together in her pink palm.

"Gold!" she squeaked.
"Enough to make you rich, John!"

"Divide it up among yourselves,"
I said. "Gold's not what I want, nor yet richness."

The Stars Down
There

"I mean it," she said again.
"You can't go any farther, because here's where the world comes to its
end."

She might could have been a few years
older than I was, or a few years younger. She was thin-pretty, with all that
dark hair and those wide-stretched eyes. The evening was cool around us, and
the sun's last edge faded back on the way I'd come.

"The world's round as a ball,"
and I kicked a rock off the cliff. "It goes on forever."

And I harked for the rock to hit bottom,
but it didn't.

"I'm not trying to fool you,"
she said. "Here's the ending place of the world. Don't step any
closer."

"Just making to look down into the
valley," I told her. "I see mist down there."

"It isn't mist."

And it wasn't.

For down there popped out stars in all
their faithful beauty, the same way they were popping out over our heads. A
skyful of stars. No man could say how far down they were.

"I ask your pardon for doubting
you," I said. "It's sure enough the ending place of the world. If you
jumped off here, you'd fall forever and ever."

"Forever and ever," she repeated
me. "That's what I think. That's what I hope. That's why I came here this
evening."

Before I could catch hold of her, she'd
jumped. Stooping, I saw her failing, littler and littler against the stars down
there, till at last I could see her no more.

Find the Place
Yourself

It might be true that there's a curse on
that house. It's up a mountain cove that not many know of, and those who do
know won't talk to you about it. So if you want to go there you'll have to find
the place yourself.

When you reach it, you won't think at
first it's any great much. Just a little house, half logs and half whip-sawed
planks, standing quiet and gray and dry, the open door daring you to come in.

But don't you go taking any such a dare.
Nor don't look too long at the bush by the door-stone, the one with flowers of
three different colors. Those flowers will look back at you like hard, mean
faces, with eyes that hold yours.

In the trees over you will be wings
fluttering, but not bird wings. Round about you will whisper voices, so soft
and faint they're like voices you remember from some long-ago time, saying
things you wish you could forget.

If you get past the place, look back and
you'll see the path wiggle behind you like a snake after a lizard. Then's when
to run like a lizard, run your fastest and hope it's fast enough.

I Can't Claim
That

When I called Joss Kift's witch-talk a
lie, Joss swore he'd witch-kill me in thirteen days.

Then in my path a rag doll looking like
me, with a pin stuck through the heart. Then a black rooster flopping across my
way with his throat cut, then a black dog hung to a tree, then other things.
The thirteenth dawn, a whisper from nowhere that at midnight a stick with my
soul in it would be broken thirteen times and burnt in a special kind of fire.

I lay on a pallet bed in Tram Colley's
cabin, not moving, not speaking, not opening my mouth for the water Tram tried
to spoon to me.
Midnight
. A fire blazed outside. Its smoke stunk. My friends around me
heard the stick break and break and break, heard Joss laugh. Then Joss stuck
his head in the window above me to snicker and say. "Ain't he
natural-looking?"

I grabbed his neck with both hands. He
dropped and hung across the sill like a sock. When they touched him, his heart
had stopped, scared out of beating.

I got up. "Sorry he ended
thataway," I said. "I was just making out that I was under his spell,
to fool him."

Tram Colley looked at me alive and Joss
dead. "He'll speak no more wild words and frightful commands," he
said.

"I reckon it's as I've heard you say,
Grandsire," said a boy. "Witch-folks can't prevail against a pure
heart."

"I can't claim that," I said.

For I can't. My heart's sinful, and each
day I hope it's less sinful than yesterday.

Who Else Could I
Count On

"I reckon I'm bound to believe
you," I admitted to the old man at last. "You've given me too many
proofs. It couldn't be any otherwise but that you've come back from the times
forty years ahead of now."

"You believe because you can believe
wonders, John," he said. "Not many could be made to believe anything
I've said."

"This war that's going to be," I
started to inquire him, "the one the nobody's going to win—"

"The war that everybody's going to
lose," he broke in. "I've come back to this day and time to keep it
from starting if I can. Come with me, John. We'll go to the men that rule this
world. We'll make them believe, too, make them see that the war mustn't
start."

"Explain me one thing first," I
said.

"What's that?" he asked.

"If you were an old man forty years
ahead of now, then you must have been young right in these times." I
talked slowly, trying to clear the idea for both of us. "If that's so,
what if you meet the young man you used to be?"

So softly he smiled: "John," he
said, "why do you reckon I sought you out of all men living today?"

"Lord have mercy!" I said.

"Who else could I count on?"

"Lord have mercy!" I said again.