Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02 (2 page)

 
          
"Yes, ma’am.”

 
          
Somebody
else was there, a-scowling. "Are you having trouble, Callie?”

 
          
"I
was, but I took care of it,” she replied him. "John, this is a friend of
mine, Mr. Jackson Warren.”

 
          
He
was a man my age or nearly, maybe five feet ten, with two-three silver streaks
in his black hair. His tan jacket and pants weren’t as fancy as Brooke Aide’s,
but they looked good on his square shoulders and straight legs. We shook hands
together.

 
          
"Did
she call you John?” he asked. "Then I’ve heard of you, I think.”

 
          
"I’m
right proud for so many folks to know me by name.”

 
          
“And,”
he said, “
you
seem to have met Miss Callie Gray here.
I’m visiting her father, Mr. Ben Gray. He lives over toward where Immer used to
be.”

 
          
“And
there's no chance now of my hoping for the guitarpicking prize, now that John's
here,” said Callie, though she didn't make herself mourn over it.

 
          
It
was the first I'd heard about prizes. “There's no such a thing as no chance,
ma'am,” I said, and she smiled at me. I saw Jackson Warren smile, too. He kept
his eyes on Callie.

 
          
A
loudspeaker made itself heard. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” said Brooke
Altic's voice over it. “Welcome to our little festival of folk music. You were
kind to join us. Let's start by listening to the band that calls itself the
Four Seekers.”

 
          
That
dark-dressed bunch carried its instruments up the steps at a trot. Lanterns
hung overhead to light them up there. I thought they looked like the men in the
black coats who had met me at the gateway. They bunched together and went right
into a song, pretty handy at it, all their strings at once. It was the kind of
tune you'd call lonesome, with a wail to it and a long moan in the harmony
underneath. They sang with it, but the words were hard to understand. “Way,
way,” it sounded like as if they sang. “Way, way—” What kind of words were
those, if they were words?

 
          
But
from where I stood a little clear off from the steps, I could see the audience
a-sitting up with tight faces to hark at it, the way you'd think that was its
main business in life. When the Four Seekers finished, the whole crowd clapped
and clapped. The Four Seekers picked and sang again, another sneaky, minory
thing. When they finished and bowed, they got a right much handclapping again.

 
          
Brooke
Altic came back center
stage,
mike in hand, to
introduce a father and son named Hunter. They played fiddles, duets of ‘Tire in
the Mountains” and “Laurel Lonesome” and “The Devil's Dream.” Sometimes they
played just a rolling harmony, sometimes one would take the tune and the other
would pick his strings like a banjo. They were good, and the audience let them
know it.

 
          
After
them: “Miss Callie Gray and her guitar,” announced Altic.

 
          
She
got up there, little and pretty and a-smiling. She picked in what sounded like
a modal scale, minor-sounding and yet not minor. Sweetly she sang:

 
          
“Come
over the bourn, Bessy,

           
Come over the bourn, Bessy,

           
Sweet Bessy, come over to me;

           
And I shall thee take

           
And my dear lady make,

           
Before all other that ever I did
see. . . .”

 
          
On
she went, with a verse to answer that, and it turned out it was meant to be the
old-timey English people a-talking to Queen Elizabeth, the great Queen
Elizabeth back then. I harked, and wondered myself at how good a song it was.
When she was done and made a curtsey at the end, she got her round of applause.

 
          
“That
was beautiful,” said Jackson Warren beside me, and it was.

 
          
Other
performers followed; it's hard to recollect all of them. I liked one set of
clog dancers in special.

 
          
Finally
Brooke Altic announced: “Now for a stranger in our midst, who says his name's
John. I want him to play the song he made up about himself.”

 
          
I
went up there with my guitar. Right off, folks began to holler things:

 
          
“I
vow
,
that's no stranger whatever!”

 
          
"That's
John—how you come on, John?"

 
          
And
yells and handclappings before
I
even started in. It
was good to know I had friends or, anyway, well-wishers out there.

 
          
As
I'd been bid, I sang the song Altic had mentioned, and they purely tore up the
logs with their hollering and whooping.
Altic came close to
me with his grin.
“Listen, John," he said, “might you know a scary
song—a ghost song? I particularly like that sort."

 
          
“I’ll
try one," I said to him, and when the racket died down he stuck the mike
in my face.

 
          
“Friends,"
I said, “let me try a song they call ‘Murder Bull.’ I learnt it from a
Texas
man, who said the thing truly happened in
his part of the world."

 
          
I
struck a chord, then another chord, to make sure I was sure of the tune, and
started out:

 
          
"When
the night is dark and stormy

           
And the ghost wind moans and
chills,

           
They tell about the Murder Bull

           
That roams the
Texas
hills.

 
          
“It
was at that big roundup

           
In eighteen eighty-four,

           
Two riders claimed a stray bull calf

           
On the old
Red River
shore.

 
          
"He
wasn't much to fight for,

           
But Jillson's hate was black;

           
He fired a shot through Graham's
chest

           
And it came out the back.

 
          
"Graham
drew his bowie knife

           
And struck in Jillson's side,

           
And both fell down, and no one knew

           
Which was the
first that died.
"

 
          
"Ohh,”
I heard a pretty-dressed lady say from the front log as I went on:

 
          
"The
others at the roundup,

           
They gathered round and said,

           
"There's none of us will claim
that calf,

           
Now both of them are dead.”

 
          
"A
running iron they heated,

           
The calf they roped and tied,

           
And in big, burning letters

           
Spelled MURDER on
his hide.”

 
          
I
heard the whole listening bunch draw in their breath.

 
          
“They
drove him out to roam the hills,

           
And when his time was full,

           
He grew up big and terrible,

           
The maverick
Murder Bull.

           
"And many a year's been born
and died,

           
But still he prowls at night

           
With MURDER branded on his flank

           
In letters red and bright.

 
          
"If
you live in
East
Texas
,

           
Be always on your guard,

           
Because some night the bull may
come,

           
Walk right into your yard.

 
          
"While
you sit in there, watching

           
The fire that dulls and dies,

           
He’ll come up to your window

           
With MURDER in
his eyes.

 
          
"Then
turn and look the other way

           
And hold your frightened breath,

           
For if you face the Murder Bull

           
His eyes will give you death.”

 
          
I
finished and laid my palm on the guitar strings to make them quiet. Then I
bowed and waited.

 
          
There
was dead silence all over, for while I counted about half a dozen ticks. Then
they broke out with their racket. I walked off, and Brooke Altic met me as I
came down the steps from the stage. He grabbed my hand in his thin, strong one
and shook it.

 
          
“That
was magnificent, John,” he said. “Listen to them
applaud
.”

 
          
We
waited until the noise died down. Then Brooke Altic walked up there again and
took the mike in hand. Callie Gray and Jackson Warren came up on my right and
left.

 
          
“That
song’s a great one,” said Callie. “It made me shiver but it’s great.”

 
          
“You’re
a true artist, John,” said
Warren
.

 
          
“I
wonder myself why he asked me to sing a ghost song,” I told them.

 
          
Meanwhile,
Aide’s voice was a-coming on loud over the public address system. “Ladies and
gentlemen,” he said, “thank you for seeming to enjoy our efforts here tonight.
Now it’s time to give the prizes.”

 
          
One
of the black-coated men, likely the one who’d taken up the money at the gate,
brought a tray with gold-shining cups.

 
          
“I’m
going to read out the names in the various categories,” announced Altic.
“Please clap for whoever you think should win.”

 
          
He
read out the names for fiddle, banjo, guitar, dance, and so on. There was
clapping for name after name, but most of all came when, in the guitar class,
Altic said, “John.”

 
          
“Go
on up,” said Warren, and I went up. Several other winners were there, the
fiddling Hunters amongst them. Altic gave out the cups, one by one. Mine was a
beauty, a round one to hold better than half a pint, with a foot to stand on.
We all of us bowed our thanks and left the stage.
Warren
looked at the cup.