Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (2 page)

 
          
There
are moments in literature—very rare and very marvelous— when a writer creates a
unique character. One such moment occurred in 1951 when Manly Wade Wellman
began to write stories about John the Balladeer.

 
          
He
had no last name, no other name: he was known only as John. Some reviewers
suggested that Wellman intended John to be a Christ figure. Manly firmly denied
this, but he often hinted that there might exist some mystic link to John the
Baptist
(cf.
Mark 1. 2-3).

 
          
We
never knew a lot about John's past. He was born in
Moore County
,
North Carolina
, and Manly said he sort of pictured John as a young Johnny Cash. He
also told us that John was a veteran of the Korean War, and that he could hold
up his end of things in a barroom brawl. John had a profound knowledge of
Southern folklore and folksongs—as did Manly. John had a guitar strung with
silver strings, a considerable knowledge of the occult, and his native wit. He
needed all three as he wandered along the haunted ridges and valleys of the
Southern Appalachians
—sometimes encountering supernatural evil,
sometimes seeking it out.

 
          
John
first appeared in the December 1951 issue of
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction,
but Wellman had given
us foreshadowings. He sometimes liked to claim that two stories from
Weird Tales,
"Sin's Doorway"
(January 1946) and "Frogfather" (November 1946), were stories about
John before he got his silver-strung guitar, but usually he grouped them
instead with his other regional fantasies. Not coincidentally, following his
move from
New
Jersey
to
Moore
County
,
North Carolina
after the War, Wellman began to make use of
Southern legends and locales in his stories. When he moved to
Chapel Hill
in 1951, his subsequent acquaintance with
folk musicians of the
Carolina
mountains combined with Man-ly's lifelong interest in folklore to
generate the stories of John. The transition can be seen in Wellman's
abandonment of his then-popular series character, John Thunstone, an urbane
occult detective who worked the
New York
night-club set. Thunstone's final
appearance in
Weird Tales
("The
Last Grave of Lill Warran" in the May 1951 issue) finds nun in hiking gear
and stomping through the Sand Hills in search of a backwoods vampire. Seven
months later John the Balladeer made his first appearance in "O Ugly
Bird!". The difference was the mountains—and the music.

 
          
There
hadn't been anything like the John stories at that tune, and there hasn't been
since. No one but Manly Wade Welhnan could have written these stories. Here his
vivid imagination merged with authentic Southern folklore and a heartfelt love
of the South and its people. Just as J.R.R. Tolkien brilliantly created a
modern British myth cycle, so did Manly Wade Wellman give to us an imaginary
world of purely American fact, fantasy, and song.

 
          
Between
1951 and 1962 Welhnan wrote eleven stories about John, in addition to a
grouping of seven short vignettes. These were collected in the 1963 Arkham
House volume,
Who Fears the Devil?.
The
original magazine versions were somewhat revised (Manly grumbled that this was
done to give the collection some semblance of a novel), and four new vignettes
were added. When I first met Manly in the summer of 1963, he gave me the grim
news that he was all through writing about John. Fortunately, this wasn't to be
true. Manly loved his character too much.

 
          
John
would next appear on film, with folksinger Hedge Capers miscast as John. The
film was partially shot in Madison County, North Carolina (the general setting
for the John stories) in October 1971. Despite a surprisingly good supporting
cast and the incorporation of two of the best stories ("O Ugly
Bird!" and "The Desrick on Yandro"), the film was an
embarrassment—largely due to its shoestring budget and stultifying script. It
was released in 1972 as
Who Fears the
Devil?
and flopped at the box office. It was then re-edited and re-released
the following year as
The Legend of
Hillbilly John,
with equal success. Sometimes it turns up on videocassette.

 
          
But
it would take more than a bad film to finish off John. Renewed interest in his
earlier fantasy work coupled with summer trips to his cabin in
Madison
County
soon had Welhnan writing about the
mountains again. John returned—this time in a series of novels.

 
          
In
1979 Doubleday published
The Old Gods
Waken,
the first of five John novels. This was followed by
After Dark
(1980),
The Lost and the Lurking
(1981),
The Hanging Stones
(1982), and
The
Voice of the Mountain
(1984). A sixth John novel,
The Valley So Low,
was planned but never started due to Wellman's
final illness; instead it was published by Doubleday in 1987 as a collection of
Wellman's recent mountain stories.

 
          
But
there was more to be heard from John. Welhnan always maintained that he
preferred to write about John in short-story form rather than in novel length.
And to prove he could still do both, Manly wrote six new John stories in
between work on his novels. Shortly after completing his final novel for Doubleday
(Cahena,
1986), Manly wrote a new
John story, "Where Did She Wander?". This was to be his final story.
A few days after completing it, Well-man suffered a crippling fall, shattering
his shoulder and elbow. Despite the weakness and pain, he managed to revise and
polish the final draft of "Where Did She Wander?".

 
          
Five
years before Manly would have been back at his desk before the plaster cast
hardened, but at age 82 complication followed complication. Death came on
April 5,
1986
, a few weeks
short of his 83rd birthday.

 
          
John
will live on, as long as there are readers who love good stories—and good
storytelling.

 
          
John the Balladeer
is the complete
collection of all of the short stories of John. All of the stories in this book
are Manly Wade Wellman's original versions, reprinted from their initial
magazine or anthology appearances. To approximate as closely as possible the
order in which they were written, I have arranged these stories according to
date of original publication. I regret a certain awkwardness in the clustering
of the vignettes between two stories which are directly connected (albeit
having been written twenty-one years apart). Think of this as an interlude,
perhaps, between the old and the new.

 
          
While
the John stories can be read in any order one wishes, I chose this method of
presentation deliberately. John is one of the most significant characters in
all of fantasy literature. For thirty-five years John lived in the marvelous
imagination of Manly Wade Well-man, one of fantasy's foremost authors. As such
it is desirable to provide a definitive, orderly text so that we may consider
the growth and development of both character and creator over those
three-and-one-half decades.

 
          
On
the other hand, if you're simply looking for a good read, you're holding one of
the best. Dip into it anywhere. These stories are chilling and enchanting,
magical and down-to-earth, full of wonder and humanity. They are fun. They are
like nothing else you've ever read before.

 
          
Savor
this book. Treasure it to reread in years to come.

 
          
I
wish you the joy and wonder I have found here.

 
          
Karl Edward Wagner
Chapel
Hill
,
North
Carolina

 
          
I
swear I'm licked before I start, trying to tell you all what Mr. Onselm looked
like. Words give out—for instance, you're frozen to death for fit words to tell
the favor of the girl you love. And Mr. Onselm and I pure poison hated each
other. That's how love and hate are alike.

 
          
He
was what country folks call a low man, more than calling him short or small; a
low man is low otherwise than by inches. Mr. Onselm's shoulders didn't wide out
as far as his big ears, and they sank and sagged. His thin legs bowed in at the
knee and out at the Shank, like two sickles point to point. On his carrot-thin
neck, his head looked like a swollen pale gourd. Thin moss-gray hah".
Loose mouth, a bit open to show long, even teeth. Not much chin. The right eye
squinted, mean and dark, while the hike of his brow twitched the left one wide.
His good clothes fitted his mean body like they were cut to it. Those good
clothes were almost as much out of match to the rest of him as his long, soft,
pink hands, the hands of a man who never had to work a tap.

 
          
You
see what I mean, I can't say how he looked, only he was hateful.

 
          
I
first met him when I came down from the high mountain's comb, along an animal
trail—maybe a deer made it. Through the trees I saw, here and there in the
valley below, patch-places and cabins and yards. I hoped I'd get fed at one of
them, for I'd run clear out of eating some spell back. I had no money. Only my
hickory shirt and blue duckin pants and torn old army shoes, and my guitar on
its sling cord. But I knew the mountain folks. If they've got ary thing to eat,
a decent spoken stranger can get the half part of it Towns aren't always the
same way.

 
          
Downslope
I picked, favoring the guitar in case I slipped and fell, and in an hour made
it to the first patch. Early fall was browning the corn out of the green. The
cabin was two-room, dog-trotted open in the middle. Beyond was a shed and a
pigpen. In the yard the man of the house talked to who I found out later was
Mr. Onselm.

 
          
"No
meat at all?" said Mr. Onselm. His voice was the last you'd expect him to
have, full of broad low music, like an organ in a town church. I decided
against asking him to sing when I glimpsed him closer, sickle-legged and
gourd-headed and pale and puny in his fine-fitting clothes. For he looked mad
and dangerous; and the man of the place, though he was a big, strong old
gentleman with a square jaw, looked afraid.

 
          
"I
been short this year, Mr. Onselm," he said, begging like. "The last
bit of meat I fished out of the brine on Tuesday. And I don't want to have to
kill the pig till December."

 
          
Mr.
Onselm tramped over to the pen. The pig was a friendly one, it reared its front
feet against the boards and grunted up to him. Mr. Onselm spit into the pen.
"All right," he said, "but I want some meal."

 
          
He
sickle-legged back to the cabin. A brown barrel stood in the dog trot. Mr.
Onselm lifted the cover and pinched some meal between his pink fingertips.
"Get me a sack," he told the man.

 
          
The
man went indoors and brought out the sack. Mr. Onselm held it open while the
man scooped out meal enough to fill it. Then Mr. Onselm held it tight shut while
the man lashed the neck with twine. Finally Mr. Onselm looked up and saw me
standing there.

 
          
"Who
are you?" he asked, sort of crooning.

 
          
"My
name's John," I said.

 
          
"John
what?" Then, without waiting for my answer, "Where did you steal that
guitar?"

 
          
"It
was given to me," I replied. "I strung it with silver wires
myself."

 
          
"Silver,"
he said, and opened his squint eye by a trifle.

 
          
With
my left hand I clamped a chord. With my right thumb I picked a whisper from the
silver strings. I began to make a song:

 
          
Mister Onselm,

 
          
They do what you tell 'em
—

 
          
"That
will do," said Mr. Onselm, not so musically, and I stopped playing. He
relaxed. "They do what I tell 'em," he said, half to himself.
"Not bad."

 
          
We
studied each other a few ticks of tune. Then he turned and tramped out of the
yard in among the trees. When he was out of sight the man of the place asked,
right friendly, what he could do for me.

 
          
"I'm
just walking through," I said. I didn't want to ask right off for some
dinner.

 
          
"I
heard you name yourself John," he said. "So happens my name's John
too, John Bristow."

 
          
"Nice
place you've got," I said, looking around. "Cropper or tenant?"

 
          
"I
own the house and the land," he told me, and I was surprised; for Mr.
Onselm had treated
him
the way a mean boss treats a cropper.

 
          
"Then
that Mr. Onselm was just a visitor," I said.

 
          
"Visitor?"
Mr. Bristow snorted. "He visits everybody here around. Lets them know what
he wants, and they pass it to him. Thought you knew him, you sang about him so
ready."

 
          
"Shucks,
I made that up." I touched the silver strings again. "I sing a many a
new song that comes to me."

 
          
"I
love the old songs better," he said, and smiled, so I sang one:

 
          
I had been in Georgia Not a many more weeks
than three, When I fell in love with a pretty fair girl, And she fell in love
with me.

 
          
Her lips were red as red could be, Her eyes
were brown as brown, Her hair was like the thundercloud Before the rain comes
down.

 
          
You
should have seen Mr. Bristow's face shine. He said: "By God, you sure
enough can sing it and play it."

 
          
"Do
my possible best," I said. "But Mr. Onselm don't like it." I
thought a moment, then asked: "What way can he get everything he wants in
this valley?"

 
          
"Shoo,
can't tell you way. Just done it for years, he has."

 
          
"Anybody
refuse him?"

 
          
"Once
Old Jim Desbro refused him a chicken. Mr. Onselm pointed his finger at Old
Jim's mules, they was plowing. Them mules couldn't move ary foot, not till Mr.
Onselm had the chicken. Another time, Miss Tilly Farmer hid a cake when she
seen him come. He pointed a finger and dumbed her. She never spoke one mumbling
word from that day to when she died. Could hear and understand, but when she
tried to talk she could just wheeze."

 
          
"He's
a hoodoo man," I said, "which means the law can't do anything."

 
          
"Not
even if the law worried about anything this far from the county seat." He
looked at the meal back against the cabin. "About tune for the Ugly Bird
to fetch Mr. Onselm's meal."

 
          
"What's
the Ugly Bird?" I asked, but he didn't have to answer.

 
          
It
must have hung over us, high and quiet, and now it dropped into the yard like a
fish hawk into a pond.

 
          
First
out I saw it was dark,
heavy-winged, bigger than a buzzard. Then I saw the shiny gray-black of the
body, like wet slate, and how it seemed to have feathers only on its wide
wings. Then I made out the thin snaky neck, the bulgy head and long stork beak,
the eyes set in front of its head—man-fashion in front, not to each side.

 
          
The
feet that taloned onto the sack showed pink and smooth with five graspy toes.
The wings snapped like a tablecloth in a wind, and it churned away over the
trees with the meal sack.

 
          
"That's
the Ugly Bird," said Mr. Bristow. I barely heard him. "Mr. Onselm has
companioned with it ever since I recollect."

 
          
"I
never saw such a bird," I said. "Must be a scarce one. You know what
struck me while I watched it?"

 
          
"I
do know, John. Its feet look like Mr. Onselm's hands."

 
          
"Might
it be," I asked, "that a hoodoo man like Mr. Onselm knows what way to
shape himself into a bird?"

 
          
He
shook his head. "It's known that when he's at one place, the Ugly Bird's
been sighted at another." He tried to change the subject. "Silver
strings on your guitar—never heard of any but steel strings."

 
          
"In
the olden days," I told him, "silver was used a many times for
strings. It gives a more singy sound."

 
          
In
my mind I had it the subject wouldn't be changed. I tried a chord on my guitar,
and began to sing:

 
          
You all have heard of the Ugly Bird So
curious and so queer, That flies its flight by day and night And fills folks'
hearts with fear.

 
          
I never come here to hide from fear, And I
give you my promised word That I soon expect to twist the neck Of the God damn
Ugly Bird.

 
          
When
I finished, Mr. Bristow felt in his pocket.

 
          
"I
was going to bid you eat with me," he said, "but—here, maybe you
better buy something."

 
          
He
gave me a quarter and a dime. I about gave them back, but I thanked him and
walked away down the same trail Mr. Onselm had gone. Mr. Bristow watched me go,
looking shrunk up. My song had scared him, so I kept singing it.

 
          
O Ugly Bird! O Ugly Bird! You snoop and
sneak and thieve! This place can't be for you and me, And one of us got to
leave.

 
          
Singing,
I tried to remember all I'd heard or read or guessed that might help toward my
Ugly Bird study.

 
          
Didn't
witch people have partner animals? I'd read and heard tell about the animals
called familiars—mostly cats or black dogs or the like, but sometimes birds.

 
          
That
might be the secret, or a right much of it, for the Ugly Bird wasn't Mr.
Onselm's other self. Mr. Bristow had said the two of them were seen different
places at one time. Mr. Onselm didn't turn into the Ugly Bird then. They were
just close partners. Brothers. With the Ugly Bird's feet like Mr. Onselm's
hands.

 
          
I
awared of something in the sky, the big black V of a flying creature. It
quartered over me, half as high as the highest woolly scrap of cloud. Once or
twice it seemed like it would stoop for me, like a hawk for a rabbit, but it
didn't. Looking up and letting my feet find the trail, I rounded a bunch of
bushes and there, on a rotten log in a clearing, sat Mr. Onsehn.

 
          
His
gourd-head sank on his thin neck. His elbows set on his knees, and the soft,
pink, long hands hid his face, as if he was miserable. His look made me feel
disgusted. I came toward him.

 
          
"You
don't feel so brash, do you?" I asked.

 
          
"Go
away," he sort of gulped, soft and sick.

 
          
"Why?"
I wanted to know. "I like it here." Sitting on the log, I pulled my
guitar across me. "I feel like singing, Mr. Onsehn."