Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1952 (18 page)

           
“But he was blind,” put in Randy.
“He was blind day before yesterday, at least. I made a test of my own. I shoved
a book almost against his eyes, and he didn’t know it was there. He couldn’t
see a thing —not then, anyway.”

 
          
“I
can’t see in the daytime,” Tasman explained, in the same hopeless voice. “Only
in dim light—twilight and moonlight, the times when most people just grope
around. Out there in your yard, my eyes could work fairly well. In here, with
these lamps blazing all around me, I’m as blind as a day-old puppy.”

 
          
“I
still can’t make out this thing he had,” Driscoll put in, turning the tubelike
object over and over in his hands.

 
          
“I
saw that at the house that burned down,” announced Randy. “It was the
mysterious thing in the pocket of that cowskin coat. At first I thought it was
a whistle—”

 
          
“It
is one,” said Sam, taking it in turn.

 
          
“But
it doesn’t blow,” Randy argued.

 
          
“You
can’t hear it. It’s a supersonic whistle. I’ve seen them before. A man I knew
in my show days used one, to signal his trained dogs.”

 
          
“What
is it?” asked Jebs. “How does it work?”

 
          
“It
makes a blast that’s too high in pitch for human ears to hear,” said Sam. “But
dogs hear
better
than we do. They can pick up its
signals and obey them.” His stem, bearded face stooped above the slim figure in
the chair. “Tasman must be something of a dog- trainer himself.”

 
          
“I
think the best thing he can do is explain this crazy business,” suggested Mr.
Martin.

 
          
The
clay-potter’s lean, weary head nodded agreement.

 
          
“All
right,” said Tasman. “I’ll explain. Then you can decide whether it was a crazy
business or not.”

 
          
TO
SEE IN THE DARK

 
          
“These
boys here—Jebs Markum and Randy Hunter—have already heard the public part of my
life story,” began Tasman. He spoke quietly, slowly, as though to be sure
everyone understood. “I come from the mountains in the western part of North
Carolina. I hoped to work my farm there and study natural history. Then I went
blind.

 
          
“It’s
the light of day that makes me blind. I’m completely without sight when it’s
really bright. But when the sun sets, the darkness comes to the earth— but not
to me. My blindness goes away then. I can make out objects and find my way
around, in the dusk of evening, or by moonlight.”

           
“Would you feel better if we doused
these lights?” asked Driscoll with sudden sympathy.

 
          
“He
might be trying to play some trick,” warned Mr. Martin.

 
          
“But
look,” said Driscoll. “Even if we cut off the light in here, the glow from the
kitchen will trickle in. Let me do it.”

 
          
He
flicked the switch. At once the front-room light was gone. Only a gentle
diffusion came from the rear of the house, enough to see by, with an effort.

 
          
“My
power of sight’s coming back,” said Tasman after a moment.

 
          
“Well,
don’t get up,” Sam cautioned him. “Sit where you are and go on with your
story.”

 
          
“Maybe
if I’d been blind both night and day, I’d have had to go to some sort of
hospital or home,” continued Tasman. “But when I knew I could count on being
able to care for myself during dark hours, I made my plans to stay independent.
I explained to Randy and Jebs how I had to leave the mountains. You can’t grope
around on those high places at night. I hired someone to drive me to Lee
County, in the level central part of the state. I knew there was good clay in
Lee County. I had rent money coming in for my farm, and I thought I might make
more, enough to live by, with pottery. I’d taught myself to make it by touch,
you know. It’s not too hard to do that— lots of blind people work the potter’s
wheel.”

 
          
“And
you had friends who’d sell anything you finished and shipped off to them,”
prompted Randy.

 
          
“Yes.
So I rented an old tenant house in the woods, close to Lee County’s western
line. I began sleeping until noon of every day. That left only a few hours
until evening. When evening came, my eyesight would return.”

 
          
“Sure
enough?” said Jebs. “All of your eyesight?”

 
          
“Well,
maybe not all. It’s blotchy, if you know what I mean. It’s as if I can see
around the edge of something—sidelong, you might say. But by night I’d go out
into the woods of Lee County and study the nature of night. It was a different
sort of nature than the daylight kind. You see bats and moths, and night birds.
There’s an entirely different stir of life in the darkness.”

 
          
“The
hunting animals are out,” said Sam.

 
          
“Exactly.
And the raccoons go down to the streams to fish.
Certain flowers that look like buds by
day,
open into
wide blossoms. A lot of things were new to me, coming from the mountain country
as I did, and I was glad to learn about them.

 
 
          
“Of
course, I didn’t see much of other folks. My neighbors were farm people. They
worked from early dawn to sunset, and went to bed at
nine o’clock
. They’d think I was strange—uncanny. I
didn’t tell any of them I could see at night. I’d quarrelled with my cousins,
and didn’t keep in touch with them. So I was left pretty much to myself for a
while. Then I found some friends.”

 
          
He
paused, smiling.

 
          
“Other
people out in the night?” asked Sam.

 
          
“It
began like this: I was sitting beside a creek, on a moonlit night something
like this one. I had my fishing line in the water. Then I heard a noise in the
brush, and a dog came out. He acted timid. He watched me closely. I spoke to
him, and then I threw him the fish I’d caught a minute before. He acted glad to
get it. Other dogs came out into the open. They looked hungry, too, and I had
plenty of fish, so I gave them all some. I caught
them
fish for hours. They were grateful. When I walked back home through the dark,
they came along. They acted like a kind of escort.”

 
          
“And
you made friends with them?” Randy asked.

 
          
“Can
you imagine how good it was to have them for friends?” Tasman almost cried out.
“Seeing only at night, I was almost like somebody cast away on a desert island.
Imagine being cast away alone, and then getting a dog—a whole bunch of dogs—for
your friends. Dogs are the best of animals to have around. They’re grateful if
you do anything for them. The same thing can’t always be said for men.”

 
          
“Mark
Twain remarked something like that once,” observed Sam, more gently than he had
spoken since Tasman’s capture.

 
          
“Next
night, those dogs were waiting to go out walking with me. I caught them some
more fish. They thanked me, the way dogs do—they frisked around and wagged
their tails. But they liked me as well as they liked my fish. I was as glad as
they were. I had company at last, though I couldn’t see or move until after
sunset.”

 
          
“And
those were wild dogs, eh?” said Mr. Martin.

 
          
“Yes,
wild dogs.
A whole pack of them, living in
Lee
County
woods.”

 
          
“Seems
to me I’ve read something about wild dogs there,” nodded Mr. Martin. “It was in
the papers. One notion about where they came from is that, during the hard
times before the war, lots of folks moved to other parts of the country and
left their dogs behind to shift for themselves.”

           
“There you are,” said Tasman
earnestly. “You’ve been looking on wild dogs as villains; but do you see who
the real villains were?
The people who deserted their pets.
What could a lonely, hungry dog do but hunt, roam the woods looking for food?
People in those parts were afraid of them, fought them away from their houses.
But I’d made friends with those dogs. I never had a reason to fear them. And
they seemed to see that I was—well—I was their kind.”

 
          
“Their
kind?” repeated Jebs.

 
          
“I
was lonely,” said Tasman. “I was deserted. I wandered the woods at night. We
understood each other.”

 
          
Sam
moved across to his shelf and took down a book. “Go on talking,” he said, and
headed for the lighted kitchen.

 
          
“News
came out that there’d be an effort to round up the dogs and kill them,” resumed
Tasman. “They were accused of killing stock in
Lee
County
. By then I was with the dogs every night.
It was my one pleasure. I trained them to obey my voice, and to come from far
off when I blew my supersonic whistle —that one you took away from me just now.
There were thorns and brush that made some trouble, so I got this cowskin
jacket to protect my own skin. They learned to know the jacket, and me. All
during the blind day, I’d look forward to a night walk with my dogs. When I
heard they were in danger, I decided to save them if I could. I’d heard of this
piece of halfforgotten woods—”

 
          
“How
did you hear of it?” interrupted Driscoll.

 
          
“
Lee
County
farmers read me newspaper articles about
you boys. All about your Chimney Pot House, and the money you found, and so on.
I thought my dog friends might be safe in a place like this.”

 
          
“So
you came down here to Drowning Creek,” said Driscoll.

 
          
“We
started at sundown one day and traveled all night. There were ten dogs,
following me when I called them. We camped the next day, all during the
sunlight hours, near Pinebluff in
Moore
County
.”

 
          
It
was Jebs’ turn to break in. “You were close to where Randy and I live,” he told
Tasman.

 
          
“We
got here the next night,” continued Tasman. “I made myself a shelter. The
Indians on the shores of Drowning Creek were friendly, and helped me build a
permanent cabin. They were sorry for what seemed to be a blind, helpless man.
When my potter’s wheel and baggage were shipped by truck, the Indians carried
those things in. I paid them for their trouble. And here we were.”

 
          
“Here
you were,” accused Mr. Martin, “figuring to feed your dog pack on pigs and
chickens belonging to other people.”

 
          
“They
were hungry,” Tasman argued. “Game was scarce.”

 
          
“How
long did you think you’d get away with it?” Mr. Martin demanded.

 
          
“I
didn’t think I’d need to make many raids,” pleaded Tasman. “I caught fish for
them, the way I’d done in
Lee
County
. I spent what money I could spare for more
food. And I planned to build some pens of my own—raise chickens and maybe a few
sheep—”

 
          
“All
that for dogs?” asked Randy.

 
          
“You
people still don’t understand. I was all alone, cut off by blindness from the
daytime world. I stuck by my friends. They were hungry dogs, with nobody to
depend on but me.”

 
          
“They’re
no friends of mine,” said Randy. “They tried to kill me.”

 
          
“Stop
and think,” said Tasman. “Where did they find you?”

 
          
“Why,
at that deserted old house.”

           
“Yes.” Tasman leaned forward, gazing
through the dimness with his eyes that saw in weak light. “They were used to
finding me there—we often met at that place. I kept my jacket and whistle
there. When you blew that whistle, it fetched them. They thought you were a
trespasser. You have a dog here —what would you expect him to do if somebody
poked in here when you were gone?”

 
          
“I
see your point,” Randy admitted.

 
          
“Where
is Rebel, by the way?” asked Jebs.

 
          
“Outside,
guarding that big bad wolf,” said Randy. “Only Mr. Tasman argues that he’s a
fairly decent citizen.”

 
          
“I
told him to be quiet,” said Tasman. “He won’t cause trouble.”

 
          
Mr.
Martin raised his voice. “Sam! How about opening the back door and letting both
those dogs in? I want to look at them.”

 
          
“Go
ahead,” seconded Tasman, and a moment later the two beasts strolled in—first
the wolf-dog, then Rebel, close behind. Rebel’s eyes were fixed on his late
opponent, but he did not offer to resume battle.

 
          
“Sit
down by me, boy,” said Tasman, and the gray dog did so. Tasman stroked his
large, pointed ears.

           
“You see,” he said. “He’s gentle
when you know him.”

 
          
“He
really acts like a well-trained pooch,” admitted Mr. Martin. “Go on with your
story, Tasman.”