Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (23 page)

"But what's
the meaning?" I wanted to know again.

She
began to write on a paper. "SATOR," she said out loud, "
the
creator
. Whether that's the creator of some machine, or the Creator of all things
. . . I suppose it's a machine-creator."

"I reckon
the same," I agreed her, "because this doesn't sound to me the kind
of way the Creator of all things does His works."

Mrs. Deal smiled
and excused herself. We could talk and talk, she said, but she had sewing to
do.

"AREPO,"
Professor Deal kind of hummed to himself. "I wish I had a Latin
dictionary, though even then I might not find it. Maybe that's a corruption of
 
repo
 
or
 
erepo
—to
crawl or climb—a vulgar form of the word—"

I said nothing. I
didn't think Professor Deal would say anything vulgar in front of a lady. But
all Dr. McCoy remarked him was: "AREPO—wouldn't that be a noun ablative?
By means of?"

"Write it
down like that," nodded Professor Deal. "By means of creeping,
climbing, by means of great effort. And TENET is the verb to hold. He holds,
the creator holds."

"OPERA
is
 
works
, and ROTAS is
 
wheels
," Dr. McCoy tried
to finish up, but this time Professor Deal shook his head.

"ROTAS
probably is accusative plural, in apposition." He cleared his throat, long
and loud. "Maybe I never will be sure, but let's read it something like
this:
 
The creator, by means of
great effort, holds the wheels for his works
."

I'd
not said a word in all this scholar-talk, till then. TENET Might still be
 
faith
," I offered them.
"Faith's needed to help the workings. Folks without faith might call the
thing foolishness."

"That's
sound psychology," said Professor Deal.

"And
it fits in with the making of spells," Dr. McCoy added on. "Double
meanings, you know. Maybe there are double meanings all along, or triple or
fourfold meanings, and all of them true." She read from her paper.
 
"The creator, by means of
great effort, holds the wheels for his works."
 
 

"It might
even refer to the orbits of planets," said Professor Deal.

"Where do I
come in?" I asked. "Why was I bid here?"

"You can
sing something for us," Dr. McCoy replied me, "and you can have
faith."

A knocking at the
door, and Professor Deal went to let the visitor in. Moon-Eye Newlands walked
into the house, lifted his lantern chimney and blew out his light, He looked
tall, the way he'd looked when first I met him in the outside dark, and he wore
a hickory shirt and blue duckins pants. He smiled, friendly, and moon-eyed or
not, he looked first of all at Dr. McCoy, clear and honest and glad to see her.

"You said
you wanted me to help you, Doctor," he greeted her.

"Thank you,
Mr. Newlands," she said, gentler and warmer than I'd heard her so far.

"You can
call me Moon-Eye, like the rest," he told her.

He was a college
scholar, and she was a doctor lady, but they were near about the same age. He'd
been off to the Korean War, I remembered.

"Shall we go
out on the porch?" she asked us. "Professor Deal said I could draw my
diagram there. Bring your guitar, John."

We went out.
Moon-Eye lighted his lantern again, and Dr. McCoy knelt down to draw with a
piece of chalk.

First she made
the word square, in big letters:

Around these she
made a triangle, a good four feet from base to point. And another triangle
across it, pointing the other way, so that the two made what learned folks call
the Star of David. Around that, a big circle, with writing along the edge of
it, and another big circle around that, to close in the writing. I put my back
to a porch post. From where I sat I could read the word square all right, but
of the writing around the circle I couldn't spell ary letter.

"Folks,"
said Moon-Eye, "I still can't say I like this."

Kneeling where
she drew, Dr. McCoy looked up at him with her blue eyes. "You said you'd
help if you could."

"But what if
it's not right? My old folks, my grandsires—I don't know if they ought to be
called up."

"Moon-Eye,"
said Professor Deal, "I'm just watching, observing. I hdven't yet been
convinced of anything due to happen here tonight. But if it should happen—I
know your ancestors must have been good country people, nobody to be ashamed
of, dead or alive."

"I'm not
ashamed of them," Moon-Eye told us all, with a sort of sudden clip in his
voice. "I just don't think they were the sort to be stirred up without a
good reason."

"Moon-Eye,"
said Dr. McCoy, talking the way any man who's a man would want a woman to talk
to him, "science is the best of reasons in itself."

He didn't speak,
didn't deny her, didn't nod his head or either shake it. He just looked at her
blue eyes with his dark ones. She got up from where she'd knelt.

"John,"
she spoke to where I was sitting, "that song we mentioned. About the
lonesome river ford. It may put things in the right tune and tempo."

Moon-Eye sat on
the edge of the porch, his lantern beside him. The light made our shadows big
and jumpy. I began to pick the tune the best I could recollect it, and sang:

Old Devlins was
a-waiting
 
By the lonesome river ford,
 
When he spied the Mackey captain
 
With a pistol and a sword. . . .
 
 

I stopped, for
Moon-Eye had tensed himself tight, "I'm not sure of how it goes from
there," I said.

"I'm sure of
where it goes," said someone in the dark, and up to the porch ambled Rixon
Pengraft.

He was smoking
that cigar, or maybe a fresh one, grinning around it. He wore a brown corduroy
shirt with officers' straps to the shoulders, and brown corduroy pants tucked
into shiny half-boots worth maybe twenty-five dollars, the pair of them. His
hair was brown, too, and curly, and his eyes were sneaking all over Dr. Anda
Lee McCoy.

"Nobody here
knows what that song means," said Moon-Eye.

Rixon Pengraft
sat down beside Dr. McCoy, on the step below Moon-Eye, and the way he did it, I
harked back in my mind to something Moon-Eye had said: about something Rixon
Pengraft wanted, and why he hated Moon-Eye over it.

"I've
wondered wasn't the song about the Confederate War," said Rixon. "Maybe
 
Mackey
 
captain
 
means Yankee captain."

"No, it
doesn't," said Moon-Eye, and his teeth sounded on each other.

"I can sing
it, anyway," said Rixon, twiddling his cigar in his teeth and winking at
Dr. McCoy. "Go on picking."

"Go
on," Dr. McCoy repeated, and Moon-Eye said nothing. I touched the silver
strings, and Rixon Pengraft sang:

Old Devlins, Old
Devlins,
 
I know you mighty well,
 
You're six foot three of Satan,
 
Two hundred pounds of hell. . . . 
 

And he stopped.
"Devils—Satan," he said. "Might be it's a song about the Devil.
Think we ought to go on singing about him, with no proper respect?"

He went on:

Old Devlins was
ready,
 
He feared not beast or man,
 
He shot the sword and pistol
 
From the Mackey captain's, hand. . . . 
 

Moon-Eye looked once
at the diagram, chalked out on the floor of the porch. He didn't seem to hear
Rixon Pengraft's mocking voice with the next verse:

Old Devlins, Old
Devlins,
 
Oh, won't you spare my life?
 
I've got three little children
 
And a kind and loving wife.
God bless them little children,
 
And I'm sorry for your wife,
 
But turn your back and close your eyes,
 
 

I'm going to take
your— 

"Leave off
that singing!" yelled Moon-Eye Newlands, and he was on his feet in the
yard so quick we hadn't seen him move. He took a long step toward where Rixon
Pengraft sat beside Dr. McCoy, and Rixon got up quick, too, and dropped his
cigar and moved away.

"You know
the song," blared out Moon-Eye. "Maybe you know what man you're
singing about!"

"Maybe I do
know," said Rixon. "You want to bring him here to look at you?"

We were all up on
our feet, We watched Moon-Eye standing over Rixon, and Moon-Eye just then
looked about two feet taller than he had before. Maybe even more than that, to
Rixon.

"If that's
how you're going to be—" began Rixon.

"That's how
I'm going to be," Moon-Eye told him, his voice right quiet again.
"I'm honest to tell you, that's how I'm going to be."

"Then I
won't stay here," said Rixon. "I'll leave, because you're making so
much noise in front of a lady. But, Moon-Eye, I'm not scared of you. Nor yet
the ghost of any ancestor you ever had, Devlins or anybody else."

Rixon smiled at
Dr. McCoy and walked away. We heard him start to whistle in the dark. He meant
it for banter, but I couldn't help but think about the boy whistling his way
through the graveyard.

Then I happened
to look back at the diagram on the porch. And it didn't seem right for a
moment, it looked like something else. The two circles, with the string of
writing between them, the six-point star, and in the very middle of everything
the word square:

"Shoo,"
I said. "Look, folks, that word square's turned around."

"Naturally,"
said Professor Deal, plain glad to talk and think about something besides how
Moon-Eye and Rixon had acted. "The first two words are reversals of
the—"

"I don't
mean that, Professor." I pointed. "Look. I take my Bible oath that
Dr. McCoy wrote it out so that it read rightly from where I am now. But it's
gone upside down."

"That's the
truth," Moon-Eye agreed me.

"Yes,"
said Dr. McCoy. "Yes. You know what that means?"

"The
square's turned around?" asked Professor Deal. "The whole thing's
turned around. The whole diagram. Spun a whole hundred and eighty degrees—maybe
several times—and stopped again. Why?" She put her hand on Moon-Eye's
elbow, and the hand trembled. "The thing was beginning to work, to
revolve, the machine was going to operate—"

"You're
right." Moon-Eye, put his big hand over her little one, "Just when
the singing stopped."

He moved away
from her and picked up his lantern. He started away.

"Come back,
Moon-Eye!" she called after him. "It can't work without you!"

"I've got
something to see Rixon Pengraft about," he said.

"You can't
hit him, you're bigger than he is!" I thought she was going to run and
catch up with him.

"Stay
here," I told her. "I'll go talk to him."

I walked quick to
catch up with Moon-Eye. "Big things were near about to happen just
now," I said.

"I realize
that, Mr. John. But it won't go on, because I won't be there to help it."
He lifted his lantern and stared at me. "I said my old folks weren't the
sort you ruffle up for no reason."

"Was the
song about your folks?"

"Sort
of."

"You mean,
Old Devlins?"

"That's not
just exactly his name, but he was my great-grandsire on my mother's side. Rixon
Pengraft caught onto that, and after what he said—"