The Beyonders (5 page)

"All these trees seem to have sneaked close in around us," he said.

"When I was a little girl, I used to hear tell something like that," remarked Slowly. "About how trees moved and walked at night, could sort of follow after you if they didn't much like you."

"And that's a creepy notion, Slowly. Just now it seems like a true one. Folklorists would like to hear about it."

They came to where the road threaded its way through a narrow gap. On either side loomed the heights, thronged with their trees. Underfoot, the road was studded with rough chunks of stone. Even a Kimber would have to drive carefully here, Crispin told himself. He wished that he had brought some sort of staff to help himself walk more safely.

They must have been on their journey from Sky Notch for two hours when they came to a turn around a jutting rise of rock. Carefully they picked their way.

"You can stop right there, whoever you are," ordered a gruff voice.

Two tall men had stepped out into the middle of the road.

"How come you to be out hereabouts?" asked the one who had challenged. "Oh, that there's Slowly. You're all right, Slowly, but who's this here stranger man?"

"This is Mr. James Crispin," said Slowly, as if making a formal introduction. "Captain Kimber told me I could fetch him along tonight."

"That's right, that's who he is," spoke up the other man, who stood leaning on a rifle. "I seen him the other night at that play-party doings at the Longcohr store. The Captain allowed it was all right for him to come, and that's the truth. We was just waiting here to make certain sure nobody else was along, somebody or other that hadn't got leave."

"Mr. Crispin's entirely welcome," said the first man, more good-humoredly.

"Thank you, and I'm glad to hear it," said Crispin.

"Then let's us just head down to where the meeting's due to start," said the one who had challenged. "Come on along, but mind some of these here rocks, they're right loose under the foot."

"They've been bad to walk on all the way over the mountain," said Slowly. "Well, come on."

The four moved together around a second curving shoulder of tall rock. On the far side of that, a gap appeared to the right. It led down between belts of trees into a gulley beyond. From the edge of the road, it was possible to see a sprinkle of lights some distance below.

"Is that your settlement?" asked Crispin.

"No, sir, the settlement's on along the road, where it goes on down to another hollow," one of the two replied. "Over yonder, a piece farther along." He pointed. "Bull Creek comes off the mountain at the settlement and flows past here. But on this other side there's a trail to another hollow. That's the place we baptize in. Come on, but you better use that light you fetched along."

With gingerly steps they picked their way downward. Trees and brush hemmed the narrow trail in. As they descended toward the lights, another figure stole gingerly in their wake and came to a halt and stood up, staring in the gloom.

At that point on the road, the trail and the little platterlike hollow below would have been hard to see by daylight. But now the hollow seemed to crawl with flecks of radiance among the thrusting shadows of tree-crowded heights all around it, as though stars had fluttered down to visit there. The watcher strove to see more clearly what was below.

"Lights in the valley outshine the sun," he whispered to himself, a line from an old mountain song he loved.

The watcher was Gander Eye Gentry.

V

The Kimbers were out in the night, all of them, perhaps fifty or sixty men, women, and children in their homespun, home-sewn clothes. A good half of the gathering carried old-fashioned oil lanterns, and several others bore aloft brilliant torches made of heavy split chunks of pitch pine. Crispin and Slowly and their escorting companions found their way to the brink of a pool, with green grass all around it. Its surface gave back reflections of the lanterns, like a flow of fresh tar. Farther away, with trees clumped on either hand, could be seen what must be a cavern, a rocky opening in the mountain as broad as a front yard and twenty feet high or more. Light came from within, a softly glistening blue light like the radiance that lies in a jewel.

But none of the Kimbers looked toward that cavern. They drew up around the pool, and they gazed expectantly at the newcomers. Among them towered Captain Kimber. He was wrapped in a great patchwork quilt, caught and folded vigorously around him like a ceremonial robe, and his white beard flowed pallidly down upon it. As Crispin and Slowly came to the waterside, he moved to meet them, with measured steps.

"Here you are," he said in his deep-flowing voice. "Glad to see you both. We're near about ready to start."

"We came the quickest we could, Captain," said Slowly.

"I want to thank you again for letting me come," added Crispin. "Now, please tell me what I must do here."

"Don't do nothing," replied Captain Kimber. "Just stand here alongside the water and watch. Keep quiet."

He wheeled away from them and walked back. Several of his clan joined him, and he stooped his bearded head and spoke to them. Then he paced to the far end of the pool. Crispin, gazing in silence, thought a sort of fountain rose from the rocks at that point. Captain Kimber turned and faced the gathering. His every movement was consciously meaningful.

"Now's the time," he said, his voice ringing above the water like a bell. "Right now. The time is now."

Someone sounded a humming note, as if to set a pitch. Other voices rose in song:

"Free grace, undying love,

To ring them chiming hells . . ."

It was a harmony, simple but sweet. Everyone seemed to sing true, to sing melodiously:

" 'Way over Jordan, Lord,

To ring them chiming bells . . ."

In one swift, smooth motion, the Captain flung aside his muffling quilt. He stood naked in the dancing glow, a huge, muscle-ridged figure of a white-bearded man, like a sculptured figure from some ancient temple in the wilderness. Beyond him and beyond the water and the gathered throng, the light softly pulsed in the cave. Captain Kimber stepped to the brink, set a foot in the water, waded in to his knotted calves, his powerful thighs. Waist deep, the lights playing upon him, he churned forward to the very center of the darkly growing surface.

His people sang together:

"Free grace, undying love,

To ring them chiming bells . . ."

There was motion at the far end of the people, where it flowed out and away somewhere in the night. A knot of women gathered there, in dresses of clean, dark-figured cloth. They helped one of their number to unfasten and put off a dark robe. Another nude figure stepped into the light.

This was a young girl, with a white, compactly plump body. Her shoulders lifted straight, her breasts were proud and firm, her hips curved like a vase. Upon her neck tumbled her black hair, like a cloud. She cried out wordlessly, but it did not jar against the music. Quickly she waded in, up to her waist and above, toward Captain Kimber. He held out his strong arms and spread his great hands and beckoned with them, welcomingly.

"Blessings on you, sister!" called a woman from the crowd.

"Long life on you!" yelled a man."Joy on you!"

"Amen, amen!" boomed back a chorus of voices. They sang:

"Sister, sister, you just come along

To ring them chiming bells . . ."

Crispin watched, holding his breath. Slowly stood close to him. Their elbows touched lightly.

The two naked figures met midway of the pool and faced each other, the rugged tower of Captain Kimber's body, the smooth, firm young whiteness of the girl. She seemed to be weeping as she put her small hands in his great ones. The onlookers began to sing a new song:

"When the— gate is open, When the— gate is open,

We'll be there to help them in . . ."

Captain Kimber s hands slid up the girl's arms to her elbows and took firm hold. With a strong, powerful motion he drew down on her arms and she went under the water.

A great wild cry beat up all around as she struggled. Up she came, and again Captain Kimber dragged her down until the water closed over her head. A second time she rose, and for a third time he immersed her. Then he let go and stepped back. She struggled back into the night air, her arms flung wide, her mouth open to scream and scream. Her body danced like a wind-blown white flower. The Captain put his hand on her shoulder, turned her around, and gave her a push to start her wading back the way she had come.

"Glory," the people chanted. "Glory, glory, glory . . ."

Crispin opened his mouth as if to join in that chant, but remembered Captain Kimber s admonition and closed it again.

"Glory—glory, glory, glory . . ."

The girl had reached the far end of the pool and was scrambling out upon the grass. Her wet, plump legs trembled under her. The women closed around her, shutting her from sight. They seemed to be rubbing her with cloths. Then they put her robe back on her and led her away. The song rose more loudly than before, died back down to a murmur and then to silence.

Captain Kimber, too, had emerged from the water and draped himself in his quilt. He strode through the crowd to speak to Crispin and Slowly. His white beard was wet.

"All right," he said. "That was it."

"It's over?" asked Crispin.

"Sure enough. Some folks make a big long loud thing of a baptizing, but we do things different. Well, you came to see how we done it. You saw. Let us hear what you thought of it."

All around them, people waited to hear.

"It was impressive," said Crispin. "It was beautiful. It had a great dignity and holiness. "

"You mean that, sir?" asked the Captain.

"I certainly do. I stood and wished I could paint that scene as it happened before me."

As he spoke he looked appealingly at Captain Kimber, but the bearded head shook in refusal.

"Now hold on, Mr. Crispin. That there's as good a place as any to draw a line. I said for you to come here with us because I reckoned it to be all right. But if you was to make a picture of us, who might could be looking at it that would make fun of us?"

Crispin creased his brows. "I believe you may have the right of it, Captain. All right, I won't ask to come and paint here. But I might sketch up something, from imagination, and not give a name to it."

The firm old lips moved in the white beard, not quite smiling. "I don't reckon I could stop you doing that. Now then, us folks usually has a little scrap of fun after a service like this. We eat and drink and sing and all like that. You wait till I get me some clothes on."

Women were busying themselves over a great bed of coals. Pots hung there, steaming, and cuts of meat dangled from cords above the heat of the fire.

"We'll be glad and grateful to join you," said Crispin.

All these things Gander Eye watched from a distance, up on the trail where it branched off from the sloping road. The figures of the people were like tiny moving pictures. The lights of the lanterns made patterns, changed, made other patterns. The cooking fire was a patch of rosy light. But Gander Eye watched another light, apart from these things.

It was at the dark fold of rocks above the pool. The radiance there was not white like the lanterns or red like the cooking fire. To Gander Eye, it seemed to be blue, such a glow as he remembered seeing in a lamplit sapphire. It pulsed softly, that radiance. Only, for it to be a sapphire it would have to be near about as big as all the sapphires in the world.

Gander Eye wondered what it might be and told himself that there was no point in guessing. Those Kimbers had various things that nobody could guess at. He himself had been to their settlement only a few times, usually meeting them in the fields where he worked with them now and then to harvest tobacco and vegetables. At last he shrugged, turned, and started picking his way along the dark, rocky road toward Sky Notch.

He made it around one shoulder of rock and around a second. The trees closed in above him, shutting out the light of the moon. It was deep dark there where he walked, and full of night noises. His ear picked out the trill of tree frogs, the dry chatter of katydids, the plaintive note of an owl. He smiled. He always like to hear live things. It was like making music at a play-party. He worked his way along, one hand to the face of rock at his left to keep himself away from the drop to the right. He was going downhill just at this point, into deeper darkness like a pool.

Then, of an abrupt suddenness, all the frogs and bugs hushed up. Silence dropped down on Gander Eye like a blanket flung over him.

He came to a halt and stood silently motionless, peering. On the road there ahead of him, something waited. Or somebody? No, it was something, just something. No, somebody. He didn't know which.

He held himself without moving and stared through the gloom. He could see just enough to see it wasn't a man by the way it stood up, the way whatever it was had stood up in that brush beyond Crispin's cabin. It, too, hung there motionless, grotesque. It seemed to be swaddled in two or three oversized, ill-fitting coats. The head moved a trifle, if that was a head. It was a lump at the top, extra big, rising like a dome, like a pot turned upside down. Gander Eye's right hand slid back to the pistol he almost always had ready in the hip pocket of his dungarees.

"What you want with me?" he said quietly.

The shape came toward him, darker than the shadows of the trees. It did not seem to walk, somehow it just stirred along. He heard a soft crackle of noise, like the falling of fine sleet. Closing in on him, it held out an arm, or a finlike something that moved like an arm. Gander Eye fell back a step beside the high face of rock and brought out the pistol. His flesh stirred on his bones, his lips clamped together, but he did not feel afraid. He wondered why he did not feel afraid.

"What you want?" he demanded again.

His voice seemed to clank in the quietness around them both.

It was close to him when it stopped, whatever it was. It was so close that he could easily have shot it where it was biggest. What he could see of it through the cloaking darkness told him that it wasn't wearing real clothes, after all, it was hard and smooth and blacker than the night all over. He thought, or imagined, that it had joints, like pictures he had seen of old armor. He smelled a hotness, like the smell you smelled on a gun when it had been fired over and over and over. He remembered the scorched moss and bark he had found among the thickets the morning after James Crispin had come to town. This must be that same thing, or its brother. Again he wondered why he wasn't afraid of it.

A faint click in the silence. That armlike projection straightened toward Gander Eye, as though it grew toward him. It was trying to give him something or other it held in what must be claws.

"No," said Gander Eye. "Nothing for me, thanks."

By then he had backed close against the rock. He felt it at his shoulders. He aimed the pistol from next to his hip and silently thumbed back the hammer.

The arm moved again. A louder noise, a ringing thud on the rocks in front of Gander Eye. It had tossed something there, something that had fallen almost at his feet. Next moment it was sliding back away, as swift as a squirrel. It sank somewhere out of sight over the ledge on the far side of the road. He heard a crash of twigs in the woodsy growth below.

Then it hadn't had any notion of hurting him. It had only tried to give him whatever was lying there in front of his toes.

Gander Eye stared at the place where it had vanished. He licked his dry lips and carefully squatted down. He put out his free hand cautiously, cautiously. There was a feeling of warmth at that point above the road, and he drew back his hand again without trying to touch anything.

He took a moment to think about what to do. With his left hand he fished a handkerchief from his pocket and shook it out. Then, with the muzzle of the pistol, he groped among the pebbles until he felt something hard, and coaxed the something upon the handkerchief. Carefully he drew the corners of the handkerchief together to form a slinglike pouch and stood up again, lifting what he had found. It was heavy. Even so far from his fingers, it gave a feeling of warmth. And it was heavy.

He uncocked the pistol and slid it back into his pocket.

"Is this for me?" he called into the night. "Well, I do thank you."

At the moment he spoke, the voices of the night creatures began to whisper and chirp all around him.

Again he started carefully downward on the roadway. With a woodsman's caution he set a foot down, made sure of firmness beneath, then set the other foot down. It was slow progress until he emerged into better light and could make faster time. But it was a long, long way back to where he could see the scatter of lights from the houses of Sky Notch.

Nobody was stirring on Main Street as Gander Eye came across from beside the schoolhouse. He paused at his own doorway and looked up and down. Doc Hannum's front door was open, and light flowed out into the yard to show Doc sitting there on an old chair. For a moment Gander Eye turned in that direction, then decided not to talk to Doc just yet. So far he had done all right without letting any neighbors into his secrets.

He went in, turned on the fight, and sat at the table. He dumped the thing out of his handkerchief.

It was oblong in shape, about the size of a ladylike bar of soap, and it was solid metal. Its color, thought Gander Eye, was like that of a brass cartridge left over the summer in the box. Or like—