Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02 (4 page)

 
          
"The
alexandrite,” said Callie.

           
“What's that?" I inquired him,
for it was another new word to me.

 
          
“This
here is what."

 
          
He
dug in the pocket of his blue pants and handed something to me.

 
          
It
was a pretty thing, and no I reckon about that. A jewel like naught I could
remember a-seeing my whole life long. It was as big as my thumb and it shone a
shiny red, with dark lights in it.

 
          
“When
the sun's out, it's green," Mr. Ben said. “It changes to this red color by
lamplight. I got it when I was away to the war in
Germany
. My outfit met some Russian soldiers in a
little town where our lines sort of touched, and one of them traded this to me
for my watch and some iron rations I had. I heard tell from a major that the
Russian czars thought there was power in them kind of stones, back when the
Russians had czars."

 
          
“It
was called alexandrite after a czar named Alexander," said
Warren
, a-taking it in his hand and a-turning it
this- away and that. “And you may be right about a power in it. I've heard of
mystics, people that are called psychometrists, picking up strong impulses from
alexandrites. But why do the Shonokins seem to want it?"

 
          
“They've
nair come out and told me that. They seem to know I've got it, and they want to
buy it a right much.
Offered me big money.
I allowed
that if it's worth that much to them, it's worth that much to me. You see,
folks, I don't much value a-being round with them Shonokins, no way."

 
          
“Whatever
had they done against you?" I asked.

 
          
“Oh, nothing much so far.
I've reckoned I could take care of
my end of whatever they might
could
try on with me.”
He looked like as if he meant that thing. “But I'm like
Jackson
. What I crave to know is, how come them to want
it so much?” He shook his head. “One of youins is a-going to have to ask them.
They ain't nair told me yet.” “Things were the other way round with Thunstone,”
said
Warren
. “The Shonokins tried hard to give him a
rather peculiar jewel, and he managed to destroy it. Thunstone connected the
matter with something that happened long ago in
Connecticut
, back in the 1850s, when a woman named Mary
Staplies had two brightly shining jewels she said were gods of some savage
sort. Thunstone showed me the case in John Taylor's history of old witchcraft
trials in
Connecticut
.”

 
          
“I've
been a-doing some thinking here,” I came in to say. “If there's aught to this
Shonokin tale that they were here in
America
before the Indians, there's maybe some justice
on their side.”

 
          
“That's
been their argument, again and again,” said
Warren
. “But I keep asking myself, what sinister
enchantment are they mixing into it?”

 
          
“I've
heard it said, air thing that deceives may be said to enchant,” allowed Ben
Gray.

 
          
I
looked up at him. “Where did you get that, Mr. Ben?” “Out of
Plato's Dialogues
yonder.” He cut his
eye over toward his shelf of books. “
Old Dr.
Ollebeare gave that one to me when I was
just ten years old, a-helping him chop some wood for his hospital fires. I've
done read through it, time and time over again.”

 
          
“I
know the passage,”
Warren
told us. “As a matter of fact, Plato was quoting Socrates.”

 
          
Callie
had set the cup on the fireboard above the hearth, and Ben Gray got up and
walked over to look at it.

 
          
“Enchantment,”
he said over again. “Why ain't they scared?”

 
          
“The
Shonokins mostly fear just their own dead,” said
Warren
. “So Thunstone has found out.”

 
          
“Hark
at me, John and Jackson,” went on Mr. Ben. “
Should we ought
to keep this here cup thing, when the Shonokins gave it to John, maybe with
something or other wrong in there where we can't make it out?”

 
          
“We
don't have to pester ourselves about that,” I said. “They nair gave it to me. I
won it off them fair, for my guitar picking. And Miss Callie is a-going to win
it off me fair, to trade for the song she's agreed she'll help me learn.”

 
          
“I
think John has the right of it," spoke up
Warren
. “Any sort of enchantment should be broken
by the exchange.”

 
          
Callie
and I got our guitars and she taught me the song. I could pick the tune right
off, and in a while I learnt the words. We sang it verse and verse about,
Callie a-singing for the Queen, I for
England
, like this:

 
          
“Lady,
this long space

           
Have I loved thy
grace,

           
More than I durst well say;

           
Hoping at the last,

           
When all storms were past,

           
For to see this
joyful day.”

           
And of all the verses Callie sang
for the Queen, I liked one the best:

 
          
“Yes,
yet must I forgive

           
All such as do live,

           
If they will hereafter amend;

           
And for those that are gone,

           
God forgive them every one,

           
And his mercy on them extend.”

 
          
Jackson
Warren listened with all his heart and clapped for us when we finished. I knew
well that he wished he could pick and sing along with Callie.

 
          
"Folks,”
said Mr. Ben finally, "we'd better get us some sleep if John and I get up
soon in the morning to go bee hunting. John, Fve put
Jackson
up here in our loft, where there's just the
one cot bed. How would it be if we made you up a pallet here next the fire?”

 
          
"I
thank you,” I said, "but why don't I just bed down out on the porch? I've
slept so much in the
open,
I've come on to like it”

 
          
"If
that's what you want, John, but here, let me give you a quilt to go with your
blanket. The nights can be airish hereabouts.”

 
          
I
took the quilt and blanket out the door and spread them on the planks. Inside,
they blew out the lamp and went off to their own rooms. I pulled off my boots
and rolled up in the quilt and blanket. I hadn't long to lie there to wait for
what I'd more than halfway expected.

 
          
I'd
slept, but I woke up quick all over, the way I always do, because I heard the
sound of feet. With my ear to the planks of the porch, I heard them a-coming. I
sat up and stared out into the yard. There was a bare wash of light from the
moon, and I saw three shapes out there.

 
          
They
stood close up together. I couldn't rightly make them out, only enough to see
that there was something mean about them.

 
          
Softly
they whispered to one another:

 
          
"Him?”
said one, soft and secret.
"No, not him.”

 
          
"Not
him,” another repeated the first.
"The ones inside.
This one is to be kept.”

 
          
"Not
to be killed,” muttered the third.

 
          
I
got up on my bare feet. "What do you all want?” I called to them.

 
          
They
bunched closer together at that.

 
          
“So
I'm not to be killed?” I said. “All right then,
get
out of here. If you don't kill me, I might
could
kill
one of you all.”

 
          
And,
barefoot, I walked down the steps into the yard.

 
          
They
whipped round and went a-scuttling out of there like thieves caught in a
henhouse. A moment later, they were gone amongst the darkness of the trees.

 
          
I
sat myself down on the edge of the porch and pulled my blanket up round me, for
I felt a touch of chill. I tried to look and see if they meant to come back,
but nair sign of them.

 
          
Hunkered
there, I passed the time by a-singing to myself under my breath. I went over
all the verses I'd learnt from Callie for “Come
Over
the Bourn, Bessy.”
After that, others.
One was a charm
song I recollected, about “Three Holy Names, Four Holy Saints.” Back in my
past, I'd known that one to be of good help.

 
          
Time
went on and on, the way it always does, one minute after another. I dozed now
and then, but no more than dozed, for I was on watch.

 
          
Finally
I saw the stars pale out, yonder to the east, and a little fingery touch of
pink where the sun would be a-com- ing up. Inside, I could hear a racket of
dishes, so I got on my feet and pulled on my boots and went in.

 
          
They
were all awake and dressed up and a-doing things together in there. Ben Gray
had built up a hearth fire on last night's bright coals. Callie, in a gingham
housedress, was at the stove with a big granite coffeepot.
Warren
had put him on a checked shirt and now he
set us out big plastic cups and saucers. All of them gave me good morning. I
didn't speak right off about what had gone on in the yard last night.

 
          
“I’ll
root you out some bee gear, John,'' said Mr. Ben, and went to rummage in a
corner cupboard. He handed me a roll of mosquito netting and a big pair of
thick canvas gloves, engineer-style, with heavy cuffs to them. "You can
roll your sleeves down and pull them gantlets high onto your wrists,'' he said
. "
Now, Callie, pour us out some of that there coffee,
and I do hope it's stout."

 
          
"It's
stout all right, Daddy," she said, and it was.
Sooty
black and powerful for strength.
It grabbed hold on my insides the right
way.

 
          
"Want
another cup, John?'' Mr. Ben inquired me. "No? All right then, come along.
We’ll fetch us back some wild honey for breakfast."

 
          
He
picked him up a sort of squirt-pump thing and an ax and gave me an iron kettle
to carry. He and I went out, and then at last I told him, in a few words, about
those three things in the yard during the night.

 
          
"Shonokins,"
he said, like a cussword, while we
walked
 
round
the house to the back and past a
chicken run and hogpen and into a trail in the woods behind. "I swear,
John, Fve had my possible fill of them. I don't value them no way. There just
ain't
no
luck where they push in with their outlander
ways, all their poking round where they ain't wanted. But come along here to my
fishpond.”

 
          
It
was a right good one he'd hollowed out where a stream flowed down. “Looky
yonder,” he said, and pointed with his gloved forefinger. “Them there bees
always comes here to get themself a drink. Make ready to follow on.”

 
          
We
watched a few bees where they'd settled down by the waterside. A couple of them
took off with a quick zip and so did Mr. Ben, fast, right there on their track.
I followed along. We pushed amongst some thick-grown hemlocks and buckeyes and
beeches, and then on underneath a big old oak tree that must have been five
feet through at the root. Finally he stopped.

 
          
“Lost
them,” he said. “But the thing is to wait right here; there's bound to be
another one will pass by directly.”

 
          
One
buzzed along past us right when he said the words, and we took off on the
straight line it drew. We came to a little run of water amongst bushes, jumped
across, and climbed a rise. Yet another bee went zip over us, like a bullet.

 
          
“Yonder
we are,” said Ben Gray.

 
          
He
meant the low, broken stump of a rotten old tulip poplar that likely was once
as tall as a church steeple. Most of it had fallen away and there were only two
or three twisty branches still a-putting out their few leaves. In its belly
showed a big, black hole. From off where we were, I saw a stir of bees there,
like steam above a hot pot.

 
          
“Now's
the time to get that there netting hooded on to you,” Mr. Ben said to me.
“Spread it over your hat and fetch it down all
round
to tuck into your shirt and then button your collar to hold it snug. That's the
way. Now, you've pulled them gloves on snug, too. All right, let's go get
it."

 
          
He'd
put on his own netting and gloves. We walked up on that poplar stump. It stood
maybe seven feet high and most of it looked as rotten as punk. The bees
came
a-buzz- ing out round us. Some of them lit on the
mosquito netting right in front of my face. That close, they looked as big as
toad frogs, their legs and wings a-working. Mr. Ben walked to where that hole
showed and set up his squirt- pump thing and lighted it somewhere with a match.

 
          
"I
made this here smoker my own self," he said, above the buzzing of all
those bees. “What I got inside it is a mixtry of stuff—tobacco and such things.
Now."

 
          
He
pumped clouds of black smoke into the place. I saw bees come a-tumbling into
the open like as if they'd been told their rent had run out. More smoke he
pumped and more, puff after puff. It smelled strong and bitter.

 
          
“Use
that there ax, John."

 
          
I
set my feet wide apart and slammed the ax into the rotten wood. I cut a notch,
another notch. The whole punky stump cut easy, and the chips showed as pale as
buttermilk. I heard the stump crack and looked to see which way it would tilt.
More whacks into it. It began to go over.

 
          
“Look
out the way!" yelled Mr. Ben, but already I'd dodged myself clear of the
fall of it. Down it slammed, with a sort of screech as it broke open its whole
length and popped into two halves. I could see its hollow inside, built full of
shiny, brown, dripping combs, square feet of them. Bees crawled over the honey,
a nation of bees. Some came a-clouding to light on us, but their stingers
couldn't get to us through the nets and shirts and gloves.

 
          
“There's
enough there to sell for about fifty dollars in town.” I heard Mr. Ben say.
"But let’s just take us enough for breakfast."

 
          
He
had a big spoon, and he scooped honeycombs out of the hollow to fill the
kettle. "Now," he said, "we're right close on to the old Immer
Settlement Trail. We'll take that out; it's an easier way back home."

 
          
He
led the way across through belts of other trees, a- breaking twigs on the
branches air step he took. Bees followed us along a piece, but they pulled back
off from us when we got on a footpath amongst heavy thickets. That footpath
looked beaten down hard, and I reckoned that it ran as straight as a guitar
string, straight enough even to be drawn by surveyors. The second I put my foot
on it, I felt a sort of tingle in my blood, like as if something hummed inside
me. Not strong, but it was there.

 
          
Ben
Gray pulled the netting off his hat "Do you feel something funny, John?”
he inquired me over his shoulder.

 
          
"I'm
glad you mention it, so I'll know I'm not a-using my imagination," I said
back to him. "What causes that feeling?"

 
          
"I
don't rightly know how to answer that. I've only noticed it myself
lately."

 
          
We
tramped on and on, and when we got to his yard and off the track, the tingle
left out of me. By then, the sun was up and a-showing through the pines, and I
saw for the first time how good the cabin looked. It had been run up by some
builder who knew how to build a cabin, and that was a fact—the logs notched so
they lay close one above the other, the corners square as a box, the shakes on
the roof cut square and heavy. The front yard had summer flowers to grow in it,
bunches of white and yellow and blue, here and there like as if somebody had
flung them down there by the handfuls. As we came along up the stone-flagged path
to the door, I could smell pancakes and hear them pop in the skillet.

 
          
Inside,
Callie gave us a smile. She had a pancake turner in her hand and was a-putting
stacks on plates that
Warren
set out on the table. He likewise poured us more of that good coffee.
Beside each stack Callie served a couple of brown sausage patties. Then we all
sat down together and Mr. Ben said a blessing. We squeezed honey out of the
combs with a spoon and had us as good-tasting a breakfast as a man could call
for. That honey had the tang of sour-wood to it. The sort of eating that makes
you want to go out in the sun and loosen up and breathe deep, like a lizard.

 
          
“I’ll
wash up here,” said Callie, "and then maybe
Jackson
will go with me to fetch back the rest of
that good honey.”

 
          
"No,
daughter, you go on now,” Mr. Ben bade her. "
Me
and John will do these here dishes one time. Youins can take the Immer
Settlement Trail. I broke off twigs to show youins where to head into the
woods.”

 
          
"All
right, but sometimes that trail gives me a squiggly feeling,” said Callie, and
she hiked her pretty shoulders to show what she meant.

 
          
"It
ain't
no
far way from here,” said Ben Gray, "and
anyway, I'd like for
Jackson
to see if he picks up that same feeling while he walks the trail.”

 
          
The
two of them found big hats and draped on the netting, and each of them took two
big kettles to pack the honey in. Out they went, a-talking to one another right
fast and friendly.

 
          
We
filled a big pan with hot water and Mr. Ben Gray washed the dishes while I
wiped them on a towel made of a flour sack.

 
          
"I
got them out of here so we could talk,” Mr. Ben said.

           
"John, what's your idea of this
Jackson Warren man?” "I've only just met him,” was all I could reply.
"I like him so far.”

           
"Well, I ain't been a-knowing
him but a couple days my own self. I reckon him to be all right, a-being as how
Mr. Thunstone sent a letter by him to say he was a good fellow. But after all,
I got to pay him some mind, the way he seems to like Callie and Callie
don't
seem to hate him.”

 
          
He
went on to tell me how much store he set by Callie. She'd been a scholar at
Flomoy College, a-studying to be a music teacher, but when her mother had died
all of a sudden, she'd come right back home to keep house for her daddy. And
she seemed to feel happy about that, and nowadays her only music study was the
old, old songs of the mountains. It seemed to Mr. Ben that Callie wanted to
leam those pretty much the same way I'd always wanted. But about Jackson
Warren:

 
          
"It's
always been my way to make up my mind quick on a stranger,” he said.
"Decide by just how I feel about him if I'm a-going to trust him as a
friend, or either not even
talk
to him if I ain't got
a business reason to. And I ain't much gone wrong on that sort of plan. I liked
Jackson Warren from the first five minutes. Now, of course, he's older than
Callie.
Maybe twelve-fifteen years.”

 
          
"Sure
enough,” I said, "and I take notice that he reminds that thing to her,
wants her to take it into air thought about him. I call that a-being honest.”

 
          
"And
I agree you there. Well, let's talk about something else.
The
Shonokins.”

 
          
While
we finished up the last of the dishes and put them away, we talked about the
Shonokins. He allowed that they'd been sort of to themselves, off there in that
tom-down old settlement of Immer where the folks had left out and the Shonokins
had come in. The Shonokins seemed to do all right for themselves there. One
place and another they’d even helped some of the folks still a-living round,
had cured sickness with plants they knew and the like of that. But he didn’t
relish what he kept a-calling the “outlander” way they had, and how they wanted
to pester him to sell his place, and especially how they went on about that
alexandrite stone he always carried with him.

 
          
“John,”
he said, “I aim to leave that jewel stone to Callie when I go. It ain’t for the
Shonokins.”

 
          
“Maybe
they’re up to some good sort of thing,” I said, though I didn’t much think that
as I said it.

 
          
“Not
them.” Mr. Ben shook his grizzled head. “If they’re up to aught of good, it’s
their own good. It’s like this: I done told you I liked Jackson Warren right
off, because that’s a mountain man’s way with strangers. But I’ll likewise add
on to that—I ain’t nair liked the Shonokins right off, nor yet as time keeps
on.”