Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (8 page)

 
          
"I
want to sleep at the door," I told him.

 
          
He
looked at me, at the door, and, "Have it your way," he said.

 
          
I
pulled off my shoes. I said a prayer and stretched out on the quilt he gave me.
But when all others slept, I lay and listened.

 
          
Hours
afterward, the sound came. The fire was just a coal ember, red light was soft
in the cabin when I heard the snicker. Mr. Loden stooped over me at the door
sill, and couldn't come closer.

 
          
"You
can't get in," I said to him.

 
          
"Oh,
you're awake," he said. "The others are asleep. They'll stay so, by
my doing. And you won't move, any more than they will."

 
          
I
couldn't sit up. It was like being dried into clay, like a frog or a lizard
that must wait for the rain.

 
          
"Bind,"
he said to someone over me. "Bind, bind. Unless you can count the stars,
or the drops in the ocean, be bound."

 
          
It
was a spell-saying. "From the
Long-Lost
friend?" I
asked.

           
"Albertus Magnus," he
answered, "or the book they say he wrote."

 
          
"I've
seen the book."

 
          
"You'll
stay where you lie till sunrise. Then—"

 
          
I
tried to get up. It was no use.

 
          
"See
this?" He held it to my face. It was my picture, drawn true to me. He had
the drawing gift. "At sunrise I'll strike it with this."

 
          
He
laid the picture on the ground. Then he brought forward his gold-headed cane.
He twisted the handle, and out of the cane's inside came a blade of pale iron,
thin and mean as a snake. There was writing on it, but I couldn't read in that
poor light.

 
          
"I
touch my point to your picture," Mr. Loden said, "and you won't
bother Vandy or me. I should have done that to Hosea Tewk."

 
          
"Hosea
Tewk," I said after him, "or Washington Millen."

 
          
The
tip of his blade wiggled in front of my eyes. "Don't say that name,
John."

 
          
"Washington
Millen," I said it again. "Named after George Washington. Why don't
you like George Washington's name? Did you know him?"

 
          
He
took a long, mean breath, as if cold rain fell on him. "You've guessed
what these folks haven't guessed, John."

 
          
"I've
guessed you're not a witch man's grandson, but a witch woman's son," I
said. "You got away from that
Salem
school in 1692. You've lived near 300
years, and when they're over, you know where you'll go."

 
          
His
blade hung over my throat, like a wasp over a ripe peach. Then he drew it back.
"No," he told himself. "The Millens would know I stabbed you.
Let them think you died in your sleep."

 
          
"You
knew
Washington
," I said over again.
"Maybe—"

 
          
"Maybe
I offered him help, and he was foolish enough to refuse it. Maybe—"

 
          
"Maybe
Washington
scared you away from him," I broke in
the way he had, "and maybe he won his war without witch magic. And maybe
that was bad for you, because the one who gave you 300 years expected pay—good
folks turned into bad folks. Then you tried to win Vandy for yourself. The
first Vandy."

 
          
"Maybe
a little for myself," he half sang, "but mostly for—"

 
          
"Mostly
for the one who gave you 300 years," I finished another sentence.

           
I was tightening and swelling my
muscles, trying to pull loose from what held me down. I might as well have
tried to wear my way through solid rock.

 
          
"Vandy,"
Mr. Loden's voice touched her name. "The third Vandy, the sweetest and
best. She's like a spring day and like a summer night. When I see her with a
bucket at the spring or a basket in the garden, my eyes swim, John. It's as
if I
see a spirit walking past."

 
          
"A
good spirit. Your time's short. You want to win her from a good way to a bad
way."

 
          
"Her
voice is like a lark's," he crooned, with the blade low in his hand.
"It's like wind over a bank of roses and violets. It's like the light of
stars turned into music."

 
          
"You
want to lead her down to hell," I said.

 
          
"Maybe
we won't go to hell, or heaven either. Maybe we'll live and live. Why don't you
say something about that, John?"

 
          
"I'm
thinking," I made answer.

 
          
And
I was. I was trying to remember what I had to remember.

 
          
It's
in the third part of the Albertus Magnus book Mr. Loden mentioned, the third
part full of holy names he sure enough wouldn't read. I'd seen it, as I'd told
him. If the words would come back—

 
          
Something
sent part of them. "The cross in my right hand," I said, too soft for
him to hear, "that I may travel the open land. . . ."

 
          
"Maybe
300 years more," said Mr. Loden, "without anybody like Hosea Tewk, or
Washington Millen, or you, John, coming to stop us. Three hundred years with
Vandy, and she'll know the things I know, do the things I do."

 
          
I'd
been able to twist my right forefinger over my middle one, for the cross in my
right hand. I said more words as I remembered:

 
          
".
. . So must I be loosed and blessed, as the cup and the holy bread. . . ."

 
          
Now
my left hand could creep along my side as far as my belt. But it couldn't lift
up just yet, because I didn't know the rest of the charm.

 
          
"The
night's black before dawn," Mr. Loden was saying. "I'll make my fire.
When I've done what I'll do I can step over your dead body, and Vandy's
mine."

           
"Don't you fear
Washington?" I asked him, and my left fingertips were in my dungaree
pocket.

 
          
"Will
he
come
from where he is? He's
forgotten me."

 
          
"Where
he is, he remembers you," I allowed.

 
          
He
was on his knee. His blade point scratched a circle around him on the ground of
the dooryard. The circle held him and the paper with my picture. Then he took a
sack from his coat pocket, and poured powder into the scratched circle. He
stood up, and golden-brown fire jumped around him.

 
          
"Now
we begin," he told me.

 
          
He
sketched in the air with his blade. He put his boottoe on my picture. He looked
into the golden-brown fire.

 
          
"I
made my wish before this," he spaced out the words. "I make it now.
There was no day when I did not see my wish fulfilled." His eyes shone,
paler than the fire. "No son to follow John. No daughter to mourn him."

 
          
My
fingers in my pocket touched something round and thin. The quarter he'd been
scared by, that Mr. Tewk Millen made me take back.

 
          
He
spoke names I didn't like to hear. "Haade," he said. "Mikaded.
Rakeben. Rika. Tasarith. Modeca."

 
          
My
hand worried out and in it the quarter.

 
          
"Tuth,"
Mr. Loden said. "Tumch. Here with this image I slay—"

 
          
I
lifted my hand, my left hand, three niches and flung the quarter. My heart went
rotten with sick despair, for it didn't hit him—it fell into the fire—

 
          
And
then up shot white smoke in one place, like a steam-puff from an engine, and
the fire had died around everywhere else. Mr. Loden stopped his spellspeaking
and wavered back. I saw the glow of his goggling eyes and of his teeth in his
open mouth.

 
          
Where
the steamy smoke had puffed, it made a shape, taller than a man. Taller than
Mr. Loden or me, anyway. Wide shouldered, long legged, with a dark tail coat
and high boots and hair tied back of its head. It turned, and I saw the big,
big nose to its face—

 
          
"King
Washington!" screamed Mr. Loden, and tried to stab.

 
          
But
a long hand like a tongs caught his wrist, and I heard the bones break like
sticks, and Mr. Loden whinnied like a horse that's been hurt. That was the grip
of the man who'd been
America
's strongest, who could jump twenty-four
feet broad or throw a dollar across the
Rappahannock
or wrestle down his biggest soldier.

 
          
The
other hand came across, flat and stiff, to strike. It sounded like a door
slamming in a high wind, and Mr. Loden never needed to be hit the second time.
His head sagged over sidewise, and when the grip left his broken wrist he fell
at the booted feet.

 
          
I
sat up, and stood up. The big nose turned to me just a second. The head nodded.
Friendly. Then it was gone back into steam, into nothing.

 
          
I'd
been right. Where George Washington had been, he'd remembered Mr. Loden. And
the silver quarter, with his picture on it had struck the fire just when Mr.
Loden was conjuring with a picture that he was making real. And there happened
what happened.

 
          
A
pale streak went up the black sky for the first dawn. There was no fire left
and no quarter, just a spatter of melted silver. And there was no Mr. Loden,
only a mouldy little heap like a rotten stump or a hummock of loam or what
might be left of a man that death had caught up with after two hundred years. I
picked up his iron blade and broke it on my knee and flung it away into the
trees. I picked up the paper with my drawn picture. It wasn't hurt a bit.

 
          
I
put that picture inside the door on the quilt where I'd lain. Maybe the Millens
would keep it to remember me by, after they found I was gone and Mr. Loden
didn't come around any more to court Vandy.

 
          
I
started away, carrying my guitar. I meant to be out of the valley by noontime.
As I went, pots started to rattle—somebody was awake in the cabin. And it was
hard not to turn back when Vandy sang to herself, not thinking what she sang:

 
          
Wake up, wake up! The dawn is breaking,

 
          
Wake up, wake up! It's almost day. Open up
your doors and your divers windows,

 
          
See my true love march away. . . .

 
          
Up
on
Hark
Mountain
I climbed all alone, by a trail like a
ladder. Under my old brogans was sometimes mud, sometimes rock, sometimes
rolling gravel. I laid hold on laurel and oak scrub and sour-wood and dogwood
to help me up the steepest places. Sweat soaked the back of my hickory shirt
and under the band of my old hat. Even my silver-strung guitar, bouncing behind
me, felt weighty as an anvil. Hark Mountain's not the highest in the South, but
it's one of the sleepiest.

 
          
I
reckoned I was close to the top, for I heard a murmuring voice up there, a
young-sounding woman's voice. All at once she like to yelled out a name, and it
was my name.

 
          
"John!"
she said, and murmured again, and then, "John. . . ."

 
          
Gentlemen,
you can wager I sailed up the last stretch, on hands and knees, to the very
top.

 
          
On
top of
Hark
Mountain
's tipmost top was a pool.

 
          
Hush,
gentlemen, without a stream or a draw or a branch to feed it, where no pool
could by nature be expected, was a clear blue pool, bright but not exactly
sweet-looking. That highest point of Hark Mountain wasn't bigger, much, than a
well-sized farmyard, and it had room for hardly the pool and its rim of tight
rocks. And the trees that grew between those tight rocks at its rim looked
leafless and gnarled, but alive. Their branch-twigs crooked like claw nails.

 
          
Almost
in reach of me, by the pool's edge, burned a fire, and tending it knelt a girl.

 
          
She
was tall, but not strong-built like a country girl. She was slim-built, like a
town girl, and she wore town clothes—a white blouse-shirt, and blue jeans
fold-rolled high up on her long legs, and soft slipper-shoes on her feet. Her
arms and legs and neck were brown as nutmeat, the way fashiony girls seek to be
brown. She put a tweak of stuff in the fire, and I saw her long, sharp, red
fingernails. My name rose in her speech as she sang, almost:

 
          
".
. . it is the bones of JOHN that I trouble. I for JOHN burn his laurel."

 
          
She
put in some laurel leaves. "Even as it crackles and burns, even thus may
the flesh of JOHN burn for me."

 
          
In
went something else. "Even as I melt this wax, with ONE OTHER to aid, so
speedily may JOHN for love of me be melted."

 
          
From
a little clay pot she dripped something.
Drip,
the fire danced.
Drip,
it danced
again, jumping up.
Drip,
a third
jumpup dance.

 
          
"Thrice
I pour libation. Thrice, by ONE OTHER, I say the spell. Be it with a friend he
tarries, a woman he lingers, may JOHN utterly forget them."

 
          
Standing
up, she held out something red and wavy that I knew.

 
          
"This
from JOHN I took, and now I cast it into—"

 
          
But
quietly I was beside her, and snatched the red scarf away.

 
          
"I've
been wondering where I lost that," I said, and she turned and faced me.

 
          
Slightly
I knew her from somewhere. She was yellow-haired, blue-eyed, brown-faced. She
had a little bitty nose and a red mouth. Her blue eyes widened almost as wide
as the blue pool itself, and she smiled, with big, even white teeth.

 
          
"John,"
she sang, halfway, "I was saying it for the third time, and you came to my
call." She licked her red lips. "The way Mr. How-sen promised you
would."

 
          
I
didn't let on to know Mr. Howsen. I stuffed the red scarf into the hip pocket
of my blue duckins. "Why were you witch-spelling me? What did I ever do to
you? I disremember even where I've met you."

 
          
"You
don't remember me? Remember Enderby Lodge, John."

 
          
Of
course. A month ago I'd strolled through with my guitar. Old Major Enderby bid
me rest my hat awhile. He was having a dance, and to pleasure him I sang for
his guests.

 
          
"You
must have been there," I said. "But what did I do to you?"

 
          
Her
lips tightened, red and hard and sharp as her nails. "Nothing at all,
John. You did nothing, you ignored me. Doesn't it make you furious to be
ignored?"

 
          
"Ignored?
I never notice such a thing."

 
          
"I
do. I don't often look at a man twice, and usually they look at me at least
once. I don't forgive being ignored." Again she licked her mouth, like a
cat. "I'd been told a charm can be said three times, beside Bottomless
Pool on
Hark
Mountain
, to burn a man's soul with love. And you
came when I called. Don't shake your head, John, you're in love with me."

 
          
"Sorry.
I beg your pardon. I'm not in love with you."

 
          
She
smiled in pride and scorn, like at a liar. "But you climbed
Hark
Mountain
."

 
          
"Reckoned
I'd like to see the Bottomless Pool."

 
          
"Only
people like Mr. Howsen know about the Bottomless Pool. Bottomless pools usually
mean the ones near
Lake
Lure
, on Highway 74."

 
          
"Those
aren't rightly bottomless," I said. "Anyway, I heard about this one,
the real one, in a country song."

 
          
Slinging
my guitar forward, I strummed and sang:

 
          
Way up on
Hark
Mountain
I
climb all alone, Where the trail is untravelled, The top is unknown.

 
          
Way up on
Hark
Mountain
Is
the Bottomless Pool. You look in its waters And they mirror a fool.

 
          
"You're
making that up," she charged me.

 
          
"No,
it was made up before my daddy's daddy was born. Most country songs have truth
in them. The song brought me here, not your witch-spell."

 
          
She
laughed, short and sharp, almost a yelp. "Call it the long arm of
coincidence, John. You're here, anyway. Look in the water and see whether it
mirrors a fool."

 
          
Plainly
she didn't know the next verse, so I sang that

           
You
can boast of your learning And brag of your sense, It won't make no difference
A hundred years hence.

 
          
Stepping
one foot on a poolside rock, I looked in.

 
          
It
mirrored neither a fool nor a wise man. I could see down former and ever, and
I recollected all I'd ever heard norrated about the Jottomless Pool. How it was
blue as the sky, but with a special light »f its own; how no water ran into it,
excusing some rain, but it tayed full; how you couldn't measure it, you could
let down a inker till the line broke of its own weight.

 
          
Though
I couldn't spy out the bottom, it wasn't rightly dark down here. Like looking
up into blue sky, I looked down into blue water,
ind
in the blue was a many-color shine, like
deep lights.

 
          
"I
didn't need to use the stolen scarf," she said at my elbow. 'You're lying
about why you came. The spell brought you."

 
          
"I'm
sorry to say, ma'am," I replied, "I don't even call your name o my
mind."

 
          
"Do
names make a difference if you love me? Call me Annalinda. 'm rich. I've been
loved for that alone, and for myself alone."

 
          
"I'm
plain and poor," I told her. "I was raised hard and put up vet. I
don't have more than 60 cents in my old clothes. It wonders ne, Miss Annalinda,
why you need to bother."

 
          
"Because
I'm not used to being ignored," she said again.

 
          
Down
in the Bottomless Pool's blueness wasn't a fish, or a weed of ;rass. Only that
deep-away sparkly flash of lights, changing as you py changes on a bubble of
soap blown by a little child.

 
          
Somebody
cleared his throat and spoke, "I see the spell I gave you vorked, ma'am."

 
          
I
knew Mr. Howsen as he came up the trail to
Hark
Mountain
's op.

 
          
He
was purely ugly. I'd been knowing him ten years, and he ooked as ugly that
minute as the first time I'd seen him, with his nean face and his big hungry
nose and the black patch over one eye. When he'd had both his eyes, they were
so close together you'd twear he could look through a keyhole with the two of
them at once.

 
          
"Yes,"
said Miss Annalinda. "I want to pay you what I owe you."

 
          
"No,
you pay One Other," said Mr. Howsen, his hands in the pockets of the long
black coat he wore summer and winter. "For value received, ma'am. I only
passed his word along to you."

 
          
He
tightened his lips at me, in what wasn't any smile. "John," he said,
"you relish journeying. You've relished it since you were just a chap,
going what way you felt like. You've seen a right much of this world. But she
tolled you to her, and you'll stay with her, and you're obliged to One
Other."

 
          
"One
other what?" I asked him.

 
          
Though
that was just a defy. Of course, hearing of
Hark
Mountain
and the Bottomless Pool, I'd heard of One
Other. That mountain folks say he's got the one arm and the one leg, that he
runs on the one leg and grabs with the one arm, and what he grabs goes with him
into the Bottomless Pool; that it's One Other's power and knowledge that lets
witches do their spells next to Bottomless Pool.

 
          
"Be
here with the lady when One Other asks payment," he said. "That spell
was good a many years before Theocritus written it down in Greek. It'll be good
when English is as old as Greek is now. It tolled you here."

 
          
For
the life of me, I couldn't remember seeing Miss Annalinda at Major Enderby's.
"My will brought me, not hers," I said. "I wanted to see the
Bottomless Pool. I wonder at the soap bubble color in it."

 
          
"Ain't
any soap in there, John," said Mr. Howsen. "Soap bubbles don't get so
big as to have that much color."

 
          
"You're
rightly sure how big soap bubbles get, Mr. Howsen? Once I heard a science
doctor say this whole life of ours, the heaven and the earth, the sun and moon
and stars, hold a shape like a big soap bubble. He said it stretched and spread
like a soap bubble, all the suns and stars and worlds getting farther apart as
time passed."

 
          
"Both
of you stay where you are," said Mr. Howsen. "One Other will want to
find the both of you here."