Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (28 page)

Where I've been
is places and what I've seen is things, and there've been times I've run off
from seeing them, off to other places and things. I keep moving, me and this
guitar with the silver strings to it, slung behind my shoulder. Sometimes I've
got food with me and an extra shirt maybe, but most times just the guitar, and
trust to God for what I need else.

I don't claim
much. John's my name, and about that I'll only say I hope I've got some of the
goodness of good men who've been named it. I'm no more than just a natural man;
well, maybe taller than some. Sure enough, I fought in the war across the sea,
but so does near about every man in war times. Now I go here and go there, and
up and down, from place to place and from thing to thing, here in among the
mountains.

Up these heights
and down these hollows you'd best go expecting anything. Maybe everything.
What's long time ago left off happening outside still goes on here, and the
tales the mountain folks tell sound truer here than outside. About what I tell,
if you believe it you might could get some good thing out of it. If you don't
believe it, well, I don't have a gun out to you to make you stop and hark at
it.

If the gardinel's
an old folks' tale, I'm honest to tell you it's a true one.

Few words about
them are best, I should reckon. They look some way like a shed or cabin, snug
and rightly made, except the open door might could be a mouth, the two little
windows might could be eyes. Never you'll see one on main roads or near towns;
only back in the thicketty places, by high trails among tall ridges, and they
show themselves there when it rains and storms and a lone rarer hopes to come
to a house to shelter him.

The few that's
lucky enough to have gone into a gardinel and win out again, helped maybe by
friends with axes and corn knives to chop in to them, tell that inside it's
pinky-walled and dippy-floored, with on the floor all the skulls and bones of
those who never did win out; and from the floor and the walls come spouting
rivers of wet juice that stings, and as they tell this, why, all at once you
know that inside a gardinel is like a stomach.

Down in the
lowlands I've seen things grow they name the Venus flytrap and the pitcher
plant, that can tole in bugs and flies to eat. It's just a possible chance that
the gardinel is some way the same species, only it's so big it can tole in
people.

Gardinel. Why
they're named that I can't tell you, so don't inquire me.

Jabe Mawks
howdied Sol Gentry, cutting up a fat deer in his yard. Sol sliced off enough
for a supper and did it up in newspaper for Jabe to carry home, past Morg
McGeehee's place that you can see from Sol's gate, and from where you can see
Jabe's cabin.

Jabe never got
home that day. As if the earth had opened, he was swallowed up. Only that
wrapped-up meat lay on the trail in front of Morg's. The high sheriff
questioned. Jabe's wife sought but did not find. Some reckoned Jabe to be
killed and hid, some told he'd fled off with some woman. Twenty-eight long
years died.

When one day Morg
hollered from his door: "Jabe Mawks!"

"Where's the
meat?" Jabe asked to know. "Where's it gone?"

He looked no
older than when last he was there. He wore old wool pants, new checked shirt,
broad brown hat, he'd worn that other day. "Where's the meat?" he
wondered Morg.

Jabe's wife was
dead and gone, and he didn't know his children, grown up with children of their
own. He just knew he didn't have that deer meat he'd been fetching home for
supper.

Science men allow
maybe there's a nook in space and time you can stumble in and be lost beyond
power to follow or seek, till by chance you stumble out again. But if that's
so, Jabe is none wiser for the trip.

Last time I saw
him, he talked about that deer meat Sol gave him. "It was prime," he
said, "I had my mouth all set for it. Wish we had it now, John, for you
and me to eat up. But if twenty-eight years sure enough passed me on my way
home, why, they passed me in the blink of an eye."

Fifty of us paid
a dollar to be in the Walnut Cap beef shoot, and Deputy Noble set the target, a
two-inch diamond out in white paper on a black-charred board, and a cross
marked in the diamond for us to try at from sixty steps away.

All reckoned
first choice of beef quarters was betwixt Niles Lashly and Eby Coffle.
Niles
aimed, and we knew he'd loaded a bat's heart and liver in with his bullet.
Bang!

Deputy Noble went
to look. "Drove the cross," he hollered us. "The
up-and-down-mark, just above the sideways one."

Then Eby. He'd
dug a skull from an old burying ground and poured lead through the eye-hole
into his bullet mold. Bang!

Deputy Noble
looked and hollered; "Drove the cross, too, just under that there
line-joining."

Eby and
Niles
fussed over who'd won, while I took my turn, with Luns Lamar's borrowed rifle.
Bang! Deputy Noble looked, and looked again.

"John's
drove the cross plumb center!" he yelled. "Right where them two lines
cross, betwixt the other two best shots!"

Niles
and Eby bug-eyed at me. "Whatever was your spell, John?" they
wondered to know.

"Nary
spell," I said. "But in the army I was the foremost shot in my
regiment, foremost shot in my brigade, foremost shot in my division. Preacher
Ricks, won't you cut up this quarter of beef for whoever's families need it
most round Walnut Gap?"

After Evadare
caught up with me on that high mountain, her poor feet were worn so sore that
we stayed there all next day. I snared a rabbit for dinner and dried its sinews
by the fire and sewed up her torn shoes with them. Our love talk to one another
would have sounded stupid to air other soul on earth. Next morning we ate our
last smoked meat and corn pone, and Evadare allowed, "I can walk with a
staff, John." So I bundled our two packs behind my back and slung my
guitar on top. Off southwest, we reckoned, was another state line. Across that,
folks could marry without a long wait or a visit to the county seat.

For hours we made
it slantways down the mountain side and then across rocks in a river. We
climbed a ridge beyond, midway towards evening, and saw a narrower stream
below. There was a wagon track across and cabins here and yonder and, on the
stream's far side, a white-steepled church and folks there, little as ants.

"We'll head
there," I said, and she smiled up from under the bright toss of her hair.
Down we came Evadare a-limping with her staff. At the stream I picked her up
like a flower and waded over. Not one look did the folks at the church give us,
so hard they harked at what a skinny little man tried to say.

"Here's
sixty dollars in money bills," he hollered, "for who'll take her sins
and set her soul free."

I set Evadare
down. We saw a dark-painted pine coffin among those dozen ladies and men.
Shadow looked to lie on and around the coffin, more shadow than it could cast
by itself. The man who talked looked pitiful, and his hair was gravel-gray.

"Who'll do
it?" he begged to them. "I'll pay seventy-five. No, a hundred—my last
cent." He dug money from his jeans pocket. "Here's a hundred.
Somebody do it for Trill and I'll pray your name in my prayers
forevermore."

He looked at a
squatty man in a brown umbrella hat. "Bart, if—"

"Not for a
thousand dollars, Jake," said the squatty man. "Not for a
million."

The man called
Jake spoke to a well-grown young woman with brown hair down on her bare shoulders.
"Nollie," he said, "I'd take Trill's sins on myself if I could,
but I can't. I stayed by her, a-knowing what she was."

"You should
ought to have thought of that when you had the chance, Jake," she said,
and turned her straight back.

In the open
coffin lay a woman wrapped in a quilt. Her hair was smoky-red. Her shut-eyed
face had a proud beauty look, straight-nosed and full-lipped. The man called
Jake held out the money to us.

"A hundred
dollars," he whined. "Promise to take her sins, keep her from being
damned to everlasting."

I knew what it
was then, I'd seen it once before. Sin-eating. Somebody dies after a bad life,
and a friend or a paid person agrees the sin will be his, not the dead one's.
It's still done here and there, far back off from towns and main roads.

"I'll take
her sins on me, John," said Evadare to me.

Silence then, so
you might could hear a leaf drop. Jake started in to cry. "Oh,
ma'am," he said, "tell me your name so's I can bless it to all the
angels."

Somebody laughed
a short laugh, but when I turned round, nair face had nair laugh on it.

"I'm called
Evadare, and this is John with me."

"Take
it." Jake pushed the money at her.

"I wouldn't
do such a thing for money," Evadare said. "Only to give comfort by
it, if I can."

Jake blinked his wet
eyes at her. The squatty man shut the coffin lid. "All right, folks,"
he said, and he and three others took hold and lifted. The whole bunch headed
in past the church, to where I could see the stones of a burying ground. Round
us the air turned dull, like as if a cloud had come up in the bright evening
sky.

Jake hung back a
moment. "Better you don't come in," he mumbled, and followed the
others.

"I do hope I
did right," said Evadare, to herself and me both.

"You always
do right," I replied her.

We walked to
where some trees bunched on the far side of the wagon road. I dropped our
bundles under a sycamore. We could see the folks a-digging amongst the graves.
I got sticks and made us a fire. Evadare sat on a root. Chill had come into the
air, along with that dimness. We talked, love talk but not purely cheerful
talk. The sunset looked bloody-red in the west.

The folks
finished the burying and headed off this way and that. I'd hope to speak to
somebody, maybe see if Evadare could stay the night in a house. But they made
wide turns not to come near us. I looked in my soogin sack to see if we had
aught left to eat. But nair crumb.

"There's
still some coffee in my bundle," said Evadare. "That'll taste
good." I took the pot to the stream and scooped up water. Somebody made a
laughing noise and I looked up.

"I didn't
get your name," said the bare-shouldered woman, a-smiling her mouth at me.

"John,"
I said. "I heard you called Miss Nollie."

"Nollie
Willoughby."

Her eyes combed
me up and down in that last light of day. They were brown eyes, with hard, pale
lights behind them.

"Long and
tall, ain't you, John?" she said. "You nair took Trill Coster's
sins—only that little snip you're with did that. If you've got the sense you
look to have, you'll leave her and them both, right now."

"I've got
the sense not to leave her," I said.

"Come with
me," she bade me, a-smiling wider.

"No, ma'am,
I thank you."

I walked off from
her. As I came near the trees, I heard Evadare say something, then a man's
voice. Quick I moved the coffeepot to my left hand and fisted up my right and
hurried there to see what was what.

The fire burned
with blue in its red. It showed me the Jake fellow, a-talking to Evadare where
she sat on the root. He had a bucket of something in one hand and some tin dishes
in the other.

"John,"
he said as I came up, "I reckoned I'd fetch youins some supper."

"We do thank
you," I replied him, a-meaning it. "Coffee will be ready directly.
Sit down with us and have a cup," and I set the pot on a stone amongst the
fire and Evadare poured in the most part of our coffee.

Jake dropped down
like somebody weary of this world. "I won't stay long," he said.
"I'd only fetch more sins on you." He looked at Evadare. "On
her, who's got such a sight of them to pray out the way it is."

Evadare took the
bucket. It was hot squirrel stew and made two big bowls full. We were glad for
it, I tell you, and for the coffee when it boiled. Jake's cup trembled in his
hand. He told us about Trill Coster, the woman he still loved in her grave, and
it wasn't what you'd call a nice tale to hear.

She'd been as
beautiful as a she-lion, and she'd used her beauty like a she-lion, a-gobbling
men. She could make men swear away their families and lives and hopes of
heaven. For her they'd thieve or even kill, and go to jail for it. And not a
damn she'd given for what was good. She'd dared lightning to strike her; she'd
danced round the church and called down a curse on it. Finally all folks turned
from her—all but Jake, who loved her though she'd treated him like a dog. And
when she'd died on a night of storm, they said bats flew round her bed.

Jake had stayed
true to her who was so false. And that's how come him to want to get somebody
to take her sins.

"For her
sins run wild round this place, like foxes round a hen roost," he said.
"I can hear them."

I heard them too,
not so much with my ears as with my bones.

"I promised
I'd pray them away," Evadare reminded him. "You'd best go, Jake.
Leave me to deal with them."

He thanked her
again and left. Full dark by then outside the ring of firelight, and we weren't
alone there. I didn't see or hear plain at first, it was more like just a sense
of what came. Lots of them. They felt to be a-moving close, the way wolves
would shove round a campfire in the old days, to get up their nerve to rush in.
A sort of low crouch of them in the dark, and here and there some sort of
height half-guessed. Like as if one or other of them stood high, or possibly
climbed a tree branch. I stared and tried to reckon if there were shapes there,
blacker than the night, and couldn't be sure one way or the other.

"I'm not
about to be afraid," said Evadare, and she knew she had to say that thing
out loud for it to be true.

"Don't
be," I said. "I've heard say that evil can't prevail against a pure
heart. And your heart's pure. I wish mine was halfway as pure as yours."

I pulled my
guitar to me and touched the silver strings, to help us both. "They say
there are seven deadly sins," said Evadare. "I've heard them named,
but I can't recollect them all."

"I
can," I said. "Pride. Covetousness. Lust. Envy. Greed. Anger.
Gluttony. Who is there that mustn't fight to keep free from all of them?"

I began to pick
and sing, words of my own making to the tune of "Nine Yards of Other
Cloth":

And she's my love,
my star above,
 
And she's my heart's delight,
 
And when she's here I need not fear
 
The terror in the night. 
 

"Who was
that laughed?" Evadare cried out.

For there'd been
a laugh, that died away when she spoke. I stopped my music and harked. A
dfferent noise now. A stir, like something that tried not to make a sound but
made one anyway, the ghost of a sound you had to strain to hear.

I set down my
guitar and stood up. I said, loud and clear:

"Whoever or
whatever's in sound of my voice, step up here close and look at the color of my
eyes."

The noise had
died. I looked all the way round.

Deep night now,
beyond where the fire shone. But I saw a sort of foggy-muddy cloud at a slink
there. I thought maybe somebody had set a smudge fire and the wind blew the
smoke to us. Only there was no wind. The air was as still as a shut-up room. I
looked at the sky. There were little chunks of stars and about half a moon,
with a twitch of dim cloud on it. But down where I was, silence and stillness.

"Look at
those sparks," said Evadare's whispery voice. First sight of them, they
sure enough might could have been sparks—greeny ones. Then you made out they
were two and two in that low dark mist, two and two and two, like eyes, like
the green eyes of meat-eating things on the look for food. All the way round
they were caught and set by pairs in the mist that bunched and clotted
everywhere, close to the ground, a-beginning to flow in, crowd in.

And it wasn't
just mist. There were shapes in it. One or two stood up to maybe a man's height,
others made you think of dogs, only they weren't dogs. They huddled up, they
were sort of stuck together—jellied together, you might say, the way a hobby of
frog's eggs lie in a sticky bunch in the water. If it had been just at one
place; but it was all the way round.

I tried to think
of a good charm to say, and I've known some, but right then they didn't come to
mind. I grabbed up a stick from the pile for whatever good might come of it. I
heard Evadare, her voice strong now:

"Thou shalt
not be afraid for the terror by night."

The dark things
churned, the eye-sparks blinked. I could swear that they gave back for the
length of a step.

"Nor for the
arrow that flieth by day," Evadare said on. "Nor for the pestilence
that walketh in darkness."

They shrank back
on themselves again. They surrounded us, but they were back from where they'd
been.

"What did
you say to them?" I inquired Evadare, still with the stick ready.

"The
Ninety-first Psalm," she said back. "It was all I could think of that
might could possibly help."

"It
helped," I said, and thought how I'd stood like a gone gump, not able to
call up one good word to save us. "If those were sins a-sneaking in "
I said, "there was a sight of them, but good words made them wait."

"How long
will they wait?" she wondered me, little and huddled down by the fire. She
was scared, gentlemen; and, no I reckon about it, so was I.

Those many sins,
a-taking shape and hungry to grab onto somebody. One might not be too bad.
You'd face up to one, maybe drive it back, maybe get it down and stomp it. But
all of those together all sides of you, gummed into one misty mass. Being
scared didn't help. You had to think of something to do.

Think what?

No way to run off
from Trill Coster's sins, bunched all round us. Maybe the firelight slowed them
some, slowed the terror by night, the pestilence in darkness. Evadare had taken
them on her, and here they were. She kept whispering prayers. Meanwhile, they'd
pulled back some. Now their eye-sparks showed thirty or forty feet away, all directions.
I put wood on the fire. The flames stood up, not so much blue in the red now.

I took up my
guitar and dared sit down. Old folks allow the devil is afraid of music. I
picked and I sang:

The needle's eye
that doth supply
 
The thread that runs so true,
 
And many a lass have I let pass
 
Because I thought of you.
And many a dark and stormy night
 
I walked these mountains through;
 
I'd stub my toe and down I'd go
 
Because I thought of you. 
 

Then again a
loud, rattling laugh, and I got up. The laugh again. Into the firelight there
walked that bare-shouldered woman called Nallie Willoughby, a-weaving herself
while she walked, a-clappping her hands while she tossed her syrupy hair.