Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (12 page)

 
          
"Then—"
I said, but I didn't have to say it. I knew who she was by now.

 
          
"I
told you I wasn't all dead," reminded Lute Meechum. "Forney shot me
in the heart and flung me in a grave, but I couldn't all die. I just lay there
till I knew Jeremiah was heading back here for me."

 
          
I
got my coat from beside the fireplace. It felt funny to be in that cabin, with
one haunt inside the bottle and one standing behind the chair.

 
          
"Thank
you for everything, John," she said, old-folksy mannerly. "Thank you
kindly. You can go now, it's all right."

 
          
The
door squeaked open.

 
          
In
out of the night came one of the wettest people you ever could call for. His
shoulders and pant legs were soaked, water dripped from his white hair and his
old man's chin.

 
          
"Mr.
Jay," I greeted him.

 
          
"Jeremiah,"
Lute Meecham greeted him.

 
          
He
walked across, paying me no mind. "I had to come," he said to her,
and the candle went out again.

 
          
But
I could see him sink down in the chair, and the light from the fireplace made
his face look all of a sudden not old any more.

 
          
He
put up his face, and she put hers down. He went all slack and limp. Restful.

 
          
I
was outside, with the bottle and guitar. There was nary cloud in the sky, and
the moon shone down like a ball of white fire.

 
          
The
cabin was dark inside now, and I could see by the moon that it was a ruined
wreck. The roof fallen in, the window broken, the logs rotten—you'd swear
nobody had set foot there for fifty years back. But inside, Jeremiah Donovant
and Lute Meechum were together at last, and peaceful. So peaceful most folks
would think they were dead and gone.

 
          
On
along the trail that was now so clear, I found a tree that looked hollow. Down
in its dark inside I put the bottle, and left it there.

 
          
It
seemed to me I ought to be shaky and scared, but I wasn't. I felt right good.
That dumb supper, now—the way I'd heard it said, sometimes a dumb supper calls
up things that oughtn't be there; but now I'd seen a dead haunt, setting a dumb
supper to tole a living man to her. And it wasn't bad. It wasn't wrong. They
were happy about it, I knew that.

 
          
Walking
in the bright moonlight, I began to strum my guitar, and, gentlemen, the song I
sang is really an old song:

 
          
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers and
fading seen
—
Duty, faith, love, are
roots and ever green. . . .

 
          
I
here in the High Fork country, with peaks saw-toothing into the sky and hollows
diving away down and trees thicketed every which way, you'd think human foot
had never stepped. Walking the trail between high pines, I touched my guitar's
silver strings for company of the sound. But then a man squandered into sight
around a bend— young-like, red-faced, baldy-headed. Gentlemen, he was as drunk
as a hoot. I gave him good evening.

 
          
"Can
you play that thing?" he gobbled at me and, second grab of his shaky hand,
he got hold of my hickory shirt sleeve. "Come to the party, friend. Our
fiddle band, last moment, they got scared out. We got just only a mouth-harp to
play for us."

 
          
"What
way was the fiddle band scared?" I asked
him
to tell.

 
          
"Party's
at Miss Donie Carawan's," he said, without replying me. "Bobbycue pig
and chicken, bar'l of good stump-hole whisky."

 
          
"Listen,"
I said, "ever hear tell of the man invited a stranger fiddler, he turned
out to be Satan?"

 
          
"Shoo,"
he snickered, "Satan plays the fiddle, you play the guitar, I don't pay
your guitar no worry. What's your name, friend?"

 
          
"John.
What's yours?"

 
          
But
he'd started up a narrow, grown-over, snaky-turny path you'd not notice. I
reckoned the party'd be at a house, where I could sleep the night that was coming,
so I followed. He nearly fell back top of me, he was so stone drunk, but we got
to a notch on the ridge, and the far side was a valley of trees, dark and
secret looking. Going down, I began to hear loud laughing talk. Finally we
reached a yard at the bottom. There was a house there, and it looked like
enough men and women to swing a primary election.

           
They whooped at us, so loud it rang
my ears. The drunk man waved both his hands. "This here's my friend
John," he bawled out, "and he's a-going to play us some music!"

 
          
They
whooped louder at that, and easiest thing for me to do was start picking
"Hell Broke Loose in
Georgia
"; and, gentlemen, right away they
danced up a storm.

 
          
Wild-hike,
they whipped and whirled. Most of them were young folks dressed their best. One
side, a great big man called the dance, but you couldn't much hear him,
everybody laughed and hollered so loud. It got in my mind that children laugh
and yell thataway, passing an old burying-ground where ghosts could be. It was
the way they might be trying to dance down the nervouses; I jumped myself,
between picks, when something started moaning beside me. But it was just a
middling-old fellow with a thin face, playing his mouth-harp along with my
guitar.

 
          
I
looked to the house—it was new and wide and solid, with whitewashed clay
chinking between the squared logs of it. Through a dogtrot from front to back
I saw clear down valley, west to where the sunball dropped red toward a far
string of mountains. The valley-bottom's trees were spaced out with a kind of
path or road, the whole length. The house windows began to light up as I
played. Somebody was putting a match to lamps, against the night's fall.

 
          
End
of the tune, everybody clapped me loud and long. "More! More!" they
hollered, bunched among the yard trees, still fighting their nervouses.

 
          
"Friends,"
I managed to be heard, "let me make my manners to the one who's giving
this party."

 
          
"In,
Miss Donie!" yelled out the drunk man. "Come meet John!"

 
          
From
the house she walked through the crowded-around folks, stepping so proud she
looked taller than she was. A right much stripy skirt swished to her high
heels; but she hadn't such a much dress above, and none at all on her round
arms and shoulders. The butter yellow of her hair must have come from a bottle,
and the doll pink of her face from a box. She smiled up to me, and her perfume
tingled my nose. Behind her followed that big dance-caller, with his dead black
hair and wide teeth, and his heavy hands swinging like balance weights.

 
          
"Glad
you came, John," she said, deep in her round throat.

 
          
I
looked at her robin-egg blue eyes and her butter hair and her red mouth and her
bare pink shoulders. She was maybe 35, maybe 40, maybe more and not looking it.
"Proud to be here," I said, my politest. "Is this a birthday,
Miss Donie Carawan?"

 
          
Folks
fell quiet, swapping looks. An open cooking fire blazed up as the night sneaked
in. Donie Carawan laughed deep.

 
          
"Birthday
of a curse," and she widened her blue eyes. "End of the curse, too, I
reckon. All tonight."

 
          
Some
mouths came open, but didn't let words out. I reckoned that whatever had scared
out the fiddle band was nothing usual. She held out a slim hand, with
green-stoned rings on it.

 
          
"Come
eat and drink, John," she bade me.

 
          
"Thanks,"
I said, for I hadn't eaten ary mouthful since crack of day.

 
          
Off
she led me, her fingers pressing mine, her eye-corners watching me. The big
dance-caller glittered a glare after us. He was purely jealoused up that she'd
made me so welcome.

 
          
Two
dark-faced old men stood at an iron rack over a pit of coals, where lay two
halves of a slow-cooking hog. One old man dipped a stick with a rag ball into a
kettle of sauce and painted it over the brown roast meat. From a big pot of fat
over yet another fire, an old woman forked hush-puppies into pans set ready on
a plank table.

 
          
"Line
up!" called Donie Carawan out, like a bugle. They lined up, talking and
hollering again, smiles back on their faces. It was some way like dreams you
have, folks carrying on loud and excited, and something bad coming on to
happen.

 
          
Donie
Carawan put her bare arm through my blue-sleeved elbow while an old man sliced
chunks of barbecued hog on paper plates for us. The old woman forked on a
hush-puppy and a big hobby of cole slaw. Eating, I wondered how they made the
barbecue sauce—wondered, too, if all these folks really wanted to be here for
what Donie Carawan called the birthday of a curse.

 
          
"John,"
she said, the way you'd think she read what I wondered, "don't they say a
witch's curse can't work on a pure heart?"

 
          
"They
say that," I agreed her, and she laughed her laugh. The big dance-caller
and the skinny mouth-harp man looked up from their barbecue.

 
          
"An
old witch cursed me for guilty twenty years back," said Donie Carawan.
"The law said I was innocent. Who was right?"

           
"Don't know how to answer
that," I had to say, and again she laughed, and bit into her hush-puppy.

 
          
"Look
around you, John," she said. "This house is my house, and this valley
is my valley, and these folks are my friends, come to help me pleasure
myself."

 
          
Again
I reckoned, she's the only one here that's pleasured, maybe not even her.

 
          
"Law
me," she laughed, "it's rough on a few folks, holding their breath
all these years to see the curse light on me. Since it wouldn't light, I
figured how to shoo it away." Her blue eyes looked up. "But what are
you doing around High Fork, John?"

 
          
The
dance-caller listened, and the thin mouth-harp man. "Just passing
through," I said. "Looking for songs. I heard about a High Fork song,
something about a little black train."

 
          
Silence
quick stretched all around, the way you'd think I'd been impolite. Yet again
she broke the silence with a laugh.

 
          
"Why,"
she said, "I've known that song as long as I've known about the curse,
near to. Want me to sing it for you?"

 
          
Folks
were watching, and, "Please, ma'am," I asked her.

 
          
She
sang, there in the yellow lamplight and red firelight, among the shady-shadowy
trees and the mountain dark, without ary slice of moon overhead. Her voice was
a good voice. I put down my plate and, a line or two along, I made out to
follow her with the guitar.

 
          
/
heard a voice of warning, A message from
on high, "Go put your house in order For thou shall surely die. Tell all
your friends a long farewell And get your business right
—
The little black train is rolling in To call
for you tonight."

 
          
"Miss
Donie, that's a tuneful thing," I said. "Sounds right like a train
rolling."

 
          
"My
voice isn't high enough to sound the whistle part," she smiled at me,
red-mouthed.

 
          
"I
might could do that," said the mouth-harp man, coming close and speaking
soft. And folks were craning at us, looking sick, embarrassed, purely
distasted. I began to wonder why I shouldn't have given a name to that black
train song.

 
          
But
then rose up a big holler near the house, where a barrel was set. The drunk man
that'd fetched me was yelling mad at another man near-about as drunk, and they
were trying to grab a drinking gourd from each other. Two-three other men on
each side hoorawed them on to squabble more.

 
          
"Jeth!"
called Donie Carawan to the big dance-caller. "Let's stop that before they
spill the whisky, Jeth."

 
          
Jeth
and she headed for the bunch by the barrel, and everybody else was crowding to
watch.

 
          
"John,"
said a quiet somebody—the mouth-harp man, with firelight showing lines in his
thin face, salty gray in his hair. "What you really doing here?"

 
          
"Watching,"
I said, while big Jeth hauled those two drunk men off from each other, and
Donie Carawan scolded them. "And listening," I said. "Wanting
to know what way the black train song fits in with this party and the tale
about the curse. You know about it?"

 
          
"I
know," he said.

 
          
We
carried our food out of the firelight. Folks were crowding to the barrel,
laughing and yelling.

 
          
"Donie
Carawan was to marry Trevis Jones," the mouth-harp man told me. "He
owned the High Fork Railroad to freight the timber from this valley. He'd a
lavish of money, is how he got to marry her. But," and he swallowed hard,
"another young fellow loved her. Cobb Richardson, who ran Trevis Jones's
train on the High Fork Railroad. And he killed Trevis Jones."

 
          
"For
love?" I asked.

 
          
"Folks
reckoned that Donie Carawan decided against Trevis and love-talked Cobb into
the killing; for Trevis had made a will and heired her all his money and
property—the railroad and all. But Cobb made confession. Said Donie had no part
in it. The law let her go, and killed Cobb in the electric chair, down at the
state capital."

 
          
"I
declare to never," I said.

 
          
"Fact.
And Cobb's mother—Mrs. Amanda Richardson—spoke the curse."

 
          
"Oh,"
I said, "is she the witch that—"

 
          
"She
was no witch," he broke me off, "but she cursed Donie Carawan, that
the train that Cobb had engine-drove, and Trevis had heired to her, would be
her death and destruction. Donie laughed. You've heard her laugh. And folks
started the song, the black train song."