Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (11 page)

 
          
"Good
evening, ma'am," I said.

 
          
Then
her dark eyes moved in her pale face, her sweet, firm-jawed face. Her short,
sad mouth opened, slow and shaky.

 
          
"You're
not—" she started to mumble, half to herself. "I didn't mean—"

 
          
There
was a copper light moving in her hair as she bent her head and looked down into
the empty plate, and then I remembered that talk under the store porch.

 
          
"Dumb
supper," I said. "I'm right sorry. The ram drove me in here. I reckon
this is the only house around, and when nobody answered I walked in. I didn't
mean to bother you."

 
          
And
I couldn't help but look at how she'd set the dumb supper out. Knowing how such
things weren't done any more, and hearing that very thing said that night, I
was wondered to find it. Through my mind kept running how some scholar-men say
it's a way of doing that came over from the Old Country, where dumb suppers
were set clear back to the beginning of time. Things that old don't die easy
after all, I reckoned.

 
          
"He'll
stih
¹
come and sit down," she said to me in her soft voice,
like a low-playing flute heard far off. "I've called him and he'll
come."

 
          
I
hung my wet coat by the fireplace, and she saw my guitar.

 
          
"Sing
to help guide him," she said to me.

 
          
I
looked at her, so proudly tall behind the
chair.
She wore a long green dress, and her eyes were darker than her copper hair,
that was all in curly ringlets.

           
"Sing" she said again.
"Tole him here."

 
          
I
felt like doing whatever she told me. I swung the guitar in front of me, and
began the song I'd given them at the store:

 
          
Oh, call me sweetheart, call me dear, Call
me what you will, Call me from the valley low, Call me from the hill I hear you
as the turtle dove That flies from bough to bough, And as she softly calls her
mate, You call me softly now. . . .

 
          
One
long hand waved me to stop, and I stopped with the silver strings still
whispering to both of us. I felt my ears close up tight, the way they feel when
you've climbed high, high on a mountain top.

 
          
"There's
a power working here," I said.

 
          
"Yes,"
she barely made herself heard.

 
          
The
fire, that had been just coals, found something to blaze up on. Smoke rose dark
above the bright flames. The rain outside came barreling down, and there was a
rising wind, too, with a whoop and shove to it that made the lock-joints of the
cabin's logs creak.

 
          
"Sounds
like old Forney Meechum's hard at work," I tried to make half a joke, but
she didn't take it as such. Her dark-bright eyes lifted their lids to widen,
and her hands, on the chair back again, took hold hard.

 
          
"Forney
doesn't want me to do this," she told me, as if it was my ordinary
business.

 
          
"He's
dead," I reminded her, like to a child.

 
          
"No,"
she shook her copper head. "He's not dead, not all of him. And not all of
me, either."

 
          
I
wondered what she meant, and I stepped away from the fire that was burning
bright and hot.

 
          
"Are
you a Meechum or a Donovant?" I asked.

 
          
"A
Meechum," she told me. "But my true love's a Donovant."

 
          
"Like
Lute Meechum and Jeremiah Donovant?"

 
          
"You
know about that." Her hands trembled a mite, for all they held so hard to
the chair. "Who are you?"

 
          
"My
name's John." I touched the strings to make them whisper again. "Yes,
I know the tale about the feud. Old Forney Meechum, who could witch down the
rani, said Lute Meechum mustn't have Jeremiah—"

 
          
"He's
here!" she cried out, with all her loud voice at last.

 
          
The
wind shook the cabin like a dice-box. The shakes on the roof must have ruffled
worse than a hen's feathers. Up jumped the fire, and out winked the candle.

 
          
Jumpy
myself, I was back against the logs of the wall, my free hand on a shelf-plank
that was wedged there. The rain had wetted the clay chinking soft between the
logs, and a muddy trickle fell on my fingers. I was watching the fire, and its
dirty gray smoke stirred and swelled, and a fat-looking puff of it came
crawling out like a live thing.

 
          
The
smoke stayed in one bunch. It hung there, a sort of egg-shaped chunk of it,
hanging above the stones of the hearth. I think the girl must have half fallen,
then caught herself; for I heard the legs of the chair scrape on the puncheons.
The smoke molded itself, in what light I could make out, and looked solid and
shapy, as tall as me but thicker, and two streamy coils waving out in the air
like arms.

 
          
"Don't!"
the girl was begging something. "Don't let him—"

 
          
On
that shelf at my hand stood a dish and an empty old bottle, the kind of bottle
the old glassmakers blew a hundred years ago. I took up the dish in my right
fist. I saw that smoke-shape drifting sort of slow and greedy, clear from the
hearth, and between those two wavy streamy arm-coils rose up a lumpy thing like
a head. There was enough firelight to see that this smoke was thicker than just
smoke; it must have soot and ash-dust in it, solid enough to choke you. And in
that lumpy head hung two dull sparks, for the eyes.

 
          
Gentlemen,
more about it than that you'd not care to have me tell you.

 
          
I
flung the dish, and it went singing through the room and it went straight for
where I threw, but it didn't stop. It sailed right on past and into the
fireplace, and I heard it smash to pieces on the stones. Where it had hit the
smoke-shape, there showed a notchy hole all the way through, where the cheek
would be on a living creature. And whatever it was I'd thrown at, it never
stopped its slow drift over toward the table, gray and thick and horrible. And
in the chimney the wind stomped up and down, like a dasher in a churn.

           
"No," the girl wailed
again, and moved back, dragging the chair along with her.

 
          
Then
at once I saw what was in whatever that thing had for a mind, and I ran at the
table too, passing so close to one of the smoke-streamers that the wind I made
fluttered it like a rag. Just as it slid in toward the chair, bending to sit
down, I slapped my guitar across the seat with the silver strings up.

 
          
I'd
figured right. It couldn't touch the silver, being an evil haunt. It moved
behind the table, and its sparks flickered at us both. I felt a creeping hot
smelly sense, like duty smoke. It made me feel sick and shake-legged, but I
made my eyes look back at those two glaring sparks.

 
          
"Are
you Forney Meechum?" I asked at it. "Want to sit down at this dumb
supper? Think it was laid out for you?"

 
          
It
swayed back and forth, like a tree-branch, and outside the rain fell in its
bucketfuls.

 
          
I
moved quick around the table, with the guitar held toward it. I'd thought it
moved slow, but it was across the room to the other side the way a shadow
flings itself when you move the lamp. I ran after it, quick, and got to the
door first.

 
          
"Not
out this way," I yelled at it, and jabbed a finger into wet clay chinking
between logs. I quick marked a cross on the inside of the door planks. Then the
Forney Meechum thing was sliding at the window.

 
          
"Not
that way, either!" I shooed it back with the guitar, and sketched a cross
on the glass pane. Then the waving arm-streaks and the lumpy cloud of head and
body were sliding back toward the table.

 
          
"Light
that candle!" I hollered to the girl. "Light it!"

 
          
She
heard, and she grabbed the candle up from the table. She ran across the floor,
the cloud hovering after her, and then she was down on one knee, shoving the
candle into the fireplace, and that quick it lighted up.

 
          
And
there wasn't any smoke-shape anywhere in the room we now eaw plain.

 
          
"Where
did he go?" she asked me.

 
          
I
looked around to see. He hadn't left by the door or the window, for I'd made my
crosses there.

 
          
"He
ran," I said. "Ran before us like a scared-out coward."

           
"But he was strong—" she
started to say.

 
          
"He
was bad," I put in, not very mannerly. "Badness thinks it's strong,
but it's scared—of lights and crosses, and silver."

 
          
Taking
my guitar, I picked at the silver strings, and in the music I made I walked
around the room, and around again, looking. For what was left of Forney Meechum
must be somewhere, hiding. And we'd better find out where he hid, or he might
be out at us again when we weren't ready.

 
          
I
glanced in the corners, up in the rafters. Then at the shelf. Then I glanced at
the shelf twice.

 
          
The
old bottle that stood there, it was dark-looking, like muddy water. Or like
muddy water, and in the muddy water maybe a hiding thing, like what can hide in
such a place; a snake or a worse thing than a snake, waiting its time.

 
          
I
didn't want her to see then, so I made up something quick.

 
          
"Look
over in the corner
yonder," I said to her. "Take the candle."

 
          
She
moved to look, and I moved to follow her. Close against a wall, I scooped a
lump of clay from the chinking, a wet gob as big as my thumb. I was within a
long reach of the shelf.

 
          
"The
corner," I said, pointing.

 
          
And,
quick as I could make it, I jammed that clay down on top of the open bottle
neck and shoved it in like a cork.

 
          
"What—"
she began to say.

 
          
I
picked up the bottle. It felt warm and tingly. In the candlelight we could see
the thick dark boiling cloud inside, stirring and spinning and fighting every
which-away, with no way out. I took the candle and dripped wax on the clay, and
in the wax I marked a cross with my thumb nail.

 
          
"Remember
the Arabian Nights book?" I asked.

 
          
She
shook her head. "No. It's foreign, isn't it?"

 
          
"Has
a thousand and one stories," I said, "and one of them tells how a
haunt was tricked in a bottle like this and sealed away forever. Forney
Meechum's safe in there."

 
          
She
moved with the candle and put it on the table. She pushed the chair back into
place and stood behind it in her green dress, straight and tall and proud, the
way I'd first seen her.

 
          
"Now
he can come," she said to me, very sure. "Jeremiah."

 
          
"Jeremiah
Donovant?" I bubbled out.

           
"Who else?" she asked.
"He's coming back to me, after all these years. I felt him coming."