Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05 (3 page)

 
          
“It
eats right good," I said. “I noticed your smokehouse sort of stands away
from the cabin. Doesn't somebody come now and then and carry some meat
off?"

 
          
“Oh,
sure," he said. “Somebody hungry, I always figure. If a hungry man came to
my door and asked, I’d share what I had with him. With air man who needs it
more than I do, and I don’t need it right bad."

 
          
It
did me good to hear him talk thataway. “But what can I do for you?" I
inquired him.

 
          
“Why
don’t you get your guitar and let’s hear some music?"

 
          
So
I picked and sang, and he joined in with me. I recollect what some of the songs
were, they were “Dream True" and “Curtains of Night" and some verses
of “
Cripple
Creek
."
Tombs could sing fairly
good
, sang true at least. He
purely loved those old songs, vowed he’d heard them often, had near about
forgotten them, and didn’t want to forget them all over again.

 
          
It
got dark, and he fetched out a Bear-Paw quilt and an old blue blanket to make
me up a bed on his woven-seated sofa. I lay down there and went off to sleep
like a groundhog in the winter.

 
          
Maybe
I did wake up one time in the night, or halfway woke up. I reckon it must have
been that mountain, a-crying out in the dark. At sunup next morning, we had us
a breakfast of fried eggs and prime home-smoked bacon and more com dodgers with
honey to them. I inquired Tombs if he’d heard that sound in the dark hours.

           
“I’ve heard it so much I’m kindly
used to it,” he replied me. “I don’t care for it, but I settled here so close
because of the gold in that stream out yonder. I hope that ain’t a greedy-
sounding thing to say.”

 
          
“No,
sir,” I said.
“Nothing greedy about you, Tombs.”

 
          
“Well,
I don’t pan out more gold than will pay for what I need in cash. All right now,
John, we’ll wash up here and take off for Larrowby, if you’ll just let me feed
my chickens first.”

 
          
“Go
out there and feed them now,” I said, “and let me do the dishes and get my
boots on.”

 
          
He
went out, and I put on my shirt. It had dried out overnight, only it was all
crinkly from washing. I could have used a shave, but I didn’t have me a razor,
nor
Tombs wouldn’t
have one with his beard. I washed
up our breakfast dishes and flung the soapy water out, and back came Tombs. We
made ready to take off.

 
          
Tombs
had filled a croker sack with a peck of shelled com and maybe a quart over, and
I hiked it up on my shoulder to wag along with my guitar. He put his little
purse of gold in his pants pocket and picked him up a clay jug, half a gallon
size, with a stopper cork in it. Outside, it was fine weather, with the sun
a-getting from dawn to morning amongst the leafy trees. We left out of Tombs’s
front yard and took a sort of trail betwixt oaks and locusts and little clumps
of mountain laurels, with pines and hemlocks tall behind them.

 
          
“I’m
near about the only human soul uses this here path,” allowed Tombs, “though I
reckon
there’s animals walks
on it.”

 
          
“I
reckon the same,” I said, for there were deer tracks in two-three soft, damp
places.

 
          
We
went a-using along there beside the least trickle of water, hardly enough to be
called a branch. The trees went up on ground that rose in slopes both right and
left, trees of all sorts a-growing there. And closer in to the sides of the
trail, here and there where the sun soaked through, blue dustflowers and
specklesy-blooming jewelweed grew in bunches and beds. I can't rightly say for
certain how far we went—two miles, maybe three—before we got to a place where
the trees had been chopped back from the branch, and there stood a shackly
little old shed hogpenned up of logs, for a tub mill. Tombs hollered out
"Hello!" and through the open door showed a lanky old miller in a
straw hat and dusty big overalls. He hailed Tombs by name.

 
          
"John,"
said Tombs to me, "
shake
hands with my friend
Chop
Temple
," and we shook hands together.
Chop
Temple
stared me up and down.

 
          
"I
take it you're the John we hear tell about so much," he said.
"Silver John, the man with the silver-strung guitar."

 
          
"That's
who," I agreed him.

 
          
"And
here, Chop," said Tombs, a-hiking the sack of com off my shoulder.
"There's a peck in there for you to grind for me, and enough on top of the
peck for the toddick to pay you. We'll come back by this evening for it."

 
          
"Sure
thing," said
Chop
Temple
, a-taking the sack in his hands. "But
before youins go, would John just pick a song one time for me to hear?"

 
          
So
I tuned my strings here and there, and sang him some of "Old Mountain
Dew" that Mr. Bascom Lamar Lunsford made up long ago:

 
          
"They
took me to court and I'm here to report
It
looked like
my case was lost,

           
But the judge said to me, 'I will
set you free
If
you will pay the cost;

           
They call it that old mountain dew,

           
And them that refuse it are few,

           
You’ve acted the man and I’ll help
you if I can,

           
Just give me some good old mountain
dew.’ ”

 
          
Chop
Temple laughed so hard at that, I got to believing what I’d started to suspect;
that he had his tub mill out there so far from folks because a right much of
his business would be to grind meal and make malt out of sprouted com for
blockade distillers. "John,” he said to me, "you act like as if you’d
known these here woods since yesterday.”

 
          
"Yesterday
was the first day I got into them,” I said.

 
          
Tombs
allowed again that we’d come back later for our meal, and we kept on our way.
It was maybe another two-three miles along, Tombs stopped on the path.

 
          
"I’ll
just leave this here jug,” he said. "I’ll put five dollars in it.”

 
          
"Where
you figure on a-leaving it?” I asked.

 
          
"Yonder
on the bank there’s a big old tulip poplar with a hole in it, and I know that
tree and so likewise does a fellow I trust.”

 
          
"Here,”
and I dug down into my pants pocket. "Here’s a five-dollar bill, let me
pay the price.”

 
          
He
argued me, but I argued him down and he took the money and rolled it up and
stuck it through the curly handle of the jug.
Then he swarved
on up the bank to leave it.
When he came down we started on ahead, and I
picked and sang more of Mr. Bascom’s old song:

 
          
"There’s
an old hollow tree up the road here from me,

           
Where I lay down a dollar or two;

           
I go away and then, when I come back
again,

           
There’s some good old mountain dew
...”

 
          
“I
vow and declare, you done sung a parable," said Tombs. “Come along now,
we're near about to Larrowby."

 
          
“You
step out like as if you're right anxious to see that pretty girl you say lives
there."

 
          
“Just
you wait till you see her."

 
          
We
slogged along betwixt thickets and rocks, and then we got to the Larrowby
settlement.

 
          
It
was more or less the way Tombs had told, a few houses bunched up together at
the bottom of a big wide hollow. Up the slopes on all sides, the trees had been
mostly cut away and you could see fields of corn and gardens of vegetables, and
here and there pastures of green grass with cows and sheep in them. The stream
we'd followed ran through amongst the cabins, and there was a sort of main
street of stomped-down clay that must be right miry in a rainstorm. And folks
were out here and yonder, and when they saw us they hollered out Tombs's name:

 
          
“Tombs McDonald, as I live and draw breath!"

 
          
“Hey, Tombs, how you, how you come on?"

 
          
“Who's
that there stranger man you done fetched with you?"

 
          
A
dozen of them came and gathered with us, country-dressed men and country-dressed
women and
a couple-three children
, all of them
healthy-looking, happy-faced. Tombs hollered them back:

 
          
“This
here's a friend of mine, and his name's John!"

 
          
They
all came closer round to shake hands, to say they'd heard tell good things
about me, to ask me to pick them a song. I did, and it was a song I'd always
loved:

 
          
“Vandy,
Vandy, I've come to court you,

           
Be you rich or be you poor,

           
And if you'll kindly entertain me,

 
          
I
will love you forever more ..."

 
          
They
hollered and clapped for that, and wanted another; but Tombs allowed we had
business to tend to, and headed for the biggest house in sight. The most part
of them trailed along with us.

 
          
That
house Tombs headed for was broad-fronted, the only one in Larrowby with two
floors to it. It was a country-style general store, the walls of wide planks
straight up and down and painted white, with thick home-split shakes to cover
the roof. All the way across the front ran a porch. Inside were counters and
shelves and barrels and stacked-up things— canned goods, different things in
jars and sacks and boxes and so on, cheap clothes and shoes, bundles of brooms
and rakes and all like that. Up on one wall, a big calendar with a picture of
an Indian a-paddling a canoe. In one comer, a little desk with pigeonholes back
of it and a sign that said
larrowby post
office.
Behind the main counter stood a stocky gray man in a shop apron,
and a fair-haired rosy-cheeked girl that was bound to be the one
Tombs
swore was so pretty.

 
          
“Why,
Tombs!” she said, and her voice sang his name, and her smile bunched her rosy
cheeks and purely lighted up the whole place.

 
          
“Hey
there, Myrrh,” he said back, with a big smile of his own. “Let me introduce you
my friend John. This here is Myrrh Larrowby, John, and here’s her daddy, Mr.
Jonas Larrowby.”

 
          
Mr.
Jonas Larrowby shook me by the hand and looked at my guitar. He allowed, the
way all those others had, that he knew who I was, had heard right good things
about me.
Tombs was
a-talking up a storm to Myrrh
while she waited on a couple of men at the counter. One of them asked her to
open him a can of greengage plums, the other called for sliced peaches. She
opened the cans and gave them plastic spoons and they ate the fruit right out
of the cans, the same way folks used to do in country stores in years back
before there was ice cream so far from town.