Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02

by After Dark (v1. 1)

  We all of us started a-feeling better, right that moment.

  "Then youins believe my word for sure," whimpered Hazel Techeray, and she bent over the old Bible and hugged it to herself like as if it would save her from a-drowning in deep water. "Oh, folks," she said, "this here is a happy moment for me."

  "And you said you were hungry," said Callie gently. "Come and sit down at the table."

  She ladled out some of the soup into a blue bowl and set it on a corner of the table. She fetched over a spoon and a paper napkin and a square of the cornbread left from what we'd had at lunch. Hazel Techeray sort of whispered out a couple of words, maybe a thank you, and she went to sit herself down and pick up the soup.

  "Hold on just a second," said Mr. Ben. "Before you eat, wait."

  He tramped to his shelf and got his jug of blockade and poured a good man-sized drink into a glass. He fetched it to Hazel Techeray.

  "If you're a-feeling puny, Miss Hazel," he said, "that should ought to help set you right."

  That, I told myself, was the first time he hadn't spoken to her, or about her, as Hazel Techeray, her whole name, like the saying of some bad word. He stood beside her and poured himself a good bait, too. The two of them drank together. It was something like what you hear about the old Indians when they smoked a pipe of peace. Hazel Techeray downed her drink like so much water and then she started to go after that soup.

  "Why don't I have me some of that, too?” said Mr. Ben. "It does smell right good, daughter. Let's all have us some. It's past five, it's close on to suppertime.''

  "Let me just keep a watch while the rest of you all eat,'' I made offer.

  The others gathered round to the table. Mr. Ben said him a grace, and they began to eat.

  Me, I moved thisaway and that in the room, a-looking out to each side in turn, through the spaces betwixt the logs. The evening sun was bright out yonder, and I saw no movement but the branches of the trees. I went into a back room and had a look out from there, too. No movement behind the house, either. But there was a-going to be something there; there was bound to be. The Shonokins had set things up to come and visit us, and be the worst range of visitors when they did.

  The folks talked to one another at the table, just like a bunch of old friends. Didn’t say aught about the Shonokins as I recollect, just something about the weather and how crops might come along, the like of that. But I, back in the front room again, had me a look at the guns all leaned against the wall by the door. They were loaded and ready. They said nothing whatever, but they were all set to speak when the speaking time came.

  Finally Mr. Ben shoved back his chair and drew in his breath. "I've had me a plenty, John,” he said. "Sit down here and have you something, and I'll take on the guard.”

  "I'll do it with you,” said Warren, a-getting up along with Mr. Ben. "Callie, when you’re ready to do the dishes, I'll wipe them.”

  "No, I'll do that,” said Hazel Techeray.

  By that time, I felt hungry. I was glad to dip me out a bowl of that soup, red with tomatoes and tangy with onions. It was champion to eat, without salt or either pepper —Callie must have put them in when she mixed it up. As I dipped my spoon in, Callie left the table to look at what was left in the kettle. Hazel Techeray still ate, slowly and carefully, like as if she took note of air spoonful. She looked up at me, some stronger and better-spirited than she'd been up to then.

  “How we a-going to face them, John?" she asked me.

  “More or less play it by ear, Miss Hazel," I said. “We do know one thing—they can't stand to be killed. Likely they figure to do all the killing that'll be done."

  “I'm here to help," she said, quickly, strongly. “I'm one of youins now. When I took that there Bible in my hand, I knew I'd got to be one of you. Mr. Ben can let me have one of them guns."

  “I don't reckon to be a-doing that, Miss Hazel," said Mr. Ben, who'd been a-harking at us from over at one side of the room.

  She looked at him, a wondering look, a worried look. And he sure enough gave her a smile.

  “Not I don't trust you,” he said, right gentle in the voice. “I wouldn't have drunk with you nor had soup with you if I didn't trust you. But I'm a-stretching one point to let Callie yonder have a gun with us, and I been a-teaching her how to aim and pull trigger all her life long. These here two men, John and Jackson, they been soldiers in their time and I figure they can be relied on. But you, Miss Hazel, you been a right much excited and stirred up. I don't want to have no gun a-going off at the wrong time and maybe a-hitting the wrong mark."

  She gave him a long look, and ducked her head in a nod.

  “I see what you mean, Mr. Ben,” she said. “Likely there's a lot in what you say.”

  "I hope and trust I'm right,” he said. "If I know the first thing about what we're up against, I figure it for the biggest danger I ever seen; and I seen enough danger in my time to last a healthy man a hundred long years.”

  "Yes, sir,” she said. "What must I do?”

  "You ask John that; he's the captain.”

  "Help us,” I told her. "Take a turn at the watch. Maybe you can figure on some of the Shonokin doings. That'll be good on our side.”

  Hazel Techeray and I finished eating. We carried our dishes to the sink. Callie and Warren had started in to wash up there, a-talking while they did that, but Hazel Techeray took the towel from Warren and said she'd help Callie. Warren didn't look whole-souled about quitting, but he went to watch at the back. Mr. Ben beckoned me over by the door.

  "Here's the situation as I see it,” he said. "They'll be a-coming here. Likely they're on their way now. If they wait for night, at least we'll have some part of a moon up there to help us. Now, we've all said you're in command. How do we handle it?”

  "Keep quiet and keep the lights down,” I said. "One lamp at the dimmest it can be burned. There are five of us now—that should give two of us lying-down time now and then to rest while the other three use round the house and spy out for Shonokins. Make as little noise as possible. And not a shot fired without a-being sure it'll smack home.”

  "Smack home,” he said the words after me, and he truly seemed to love to say them. "Maybe wait till they're almost up against the house, and then let them have it where they're biggest.”

  "One thing Hazel Techeray said,” I reminded him. "About your alexandrite. They want to get hold of it. They reckon it'll give them command over you.”

  “All right, it stays right here in my pocket,” he said, and slapped the place.

  “No, hold on,” I said, and made up my mind as I spoke. “Likely they’ll do what they can to lay hold on you and get it away from you. That thing should be put somewhere else, where they wouldn’t count on it being.”

  “Where?”

  “Let me take it.” I held out my hand, and he passed it over. A beam of sunlight came through a space in the logs and made it glitter green. I tore off a scrap of a paper napkin and rolled the thing up in that, and stowed it deep in the pocket of my own old pants.

  “They purely want that alexandrite, and they figure on a-getting it from you,” I said. “But now, if they lay hold on you, you won’t have it. And let them try to get it from me, even if they find out I’ve got it.”

  “That’s a good notion, John,” he said. “All right, let them try their tricks on me. They can kill me, but they can’t scare me.”

  And dogged if he didn’t say it the way you’d figure he purely meant it.

  Callie and Hazel Techeray were a-finishing up the dishes. Warren looked from a rear door and looked at Callie, and she knew he was a-looking. She sang a few words of a song, “Little Margaret” as I recollect, and he tried to sing it with her, not as tuneful as she was.

  “Callie,” he said, “when this business is over, you and I ought to sit down together and make a book of the songs you know. I know some publishers.”

  “I’d love to, Jackson,” she said back to him.

  And no doubt in her voice but that this wo
uld be all over and the two of them could do that thing. When they talked thataway, it made me feel better about the trouble we were in, betwixt the rock and the hard place, you might call it; and about how we could figure to win out some way.

  Hazel Techeray came to where I was. That good soup and that sup of blockade had done wonders for her. She stepped stronger and her face wasn't so peaked up.

  “Those young folks are in love/' she whispered me.

  “I do truly think they are,” I said.

  “It's right good to see them. Good to think what's ahead for them—'' She broke off. “Whatever can be ahead for them, if the Shonokins come?''

  “The Shonokins will come all right, Miss Hazel,'' I said, “but maybe we can show them a quick way back from here.''

  “How?”

  “We’ll do it,” I said, a-wondering how.

  Mr. Ben had sat himself down by the fireplace. He had the Bible that Warren had used to show us how Hazel Techeray had stopped from her witchcraft ways. “Me,” he said, “I'll just cast the signs to see what to do.”

  I'd seen that trick of old folks, how you open the Bible three times just by chance and put your finger each time on a text. Mr. Ben flopped the Bible open on his knee and stabbed down with his finger.

  “Here we are,” he allowed. “Hark at this: * Whoever perished, being innocent? Or where were the righteous cut off?"'

  “That's out of the Book of Job,” I said, “and I sure enough hope it's true, and I hope we've got the innocence and righteousness to qualify.”

  “Amen,” said Hazel Techeray.

  Mr. Ben opened the Bible again. “What youins reckon this here might could mean? 'The horseleech hath two daughters, crying Give, give.' ” He gave us all a look. “That there's one of the Proverbs, but how you a-going to get action on it?"

  “Horseleech,” Hazel Techeray said after him. “Once I heard tell, that means a vampire.”

  “I’ve heard the same,” said Jackson Warren.

  “One more time now.” Mr. Ben had the Bible open farther along. He read out loud: “ When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather; for the sky is red.'”

  He got up and put the Bible back in its place on the shelf. We watched while he walked to the western wall and peeked out through a crack betwixt the logs.

  “The sun's a-fixing to go down red,” he said. “A-fixing to be fair weather, all right.”

  Then he shoved closer to the wall. “Ladies and men,” he said, “ain't only sunset out there, but I think I see something on the move, behind them trees at the edge of the yard.”

  I jumped to a place beside him and looked out, too.

  I made out the trees, the ground, the bright red of the sun a-going down. Then something else.

  A streak of flame shot up from a dark place in the pines, sailed at the house and up above it.

  “What was that?” I said.

  “By God, a fire arrow,” yelled Mr. Ben. “They done set them an arrow on fire and shot it up on the roof.”

  12

  Then we all of us stood still and quiet, the whole bunch of us, for seconds. All of a sudden I heard, or reckoned I heard, a sound of crackling. The sound of wood caught afire.

  “They’re a-going to burn us out!” moaned Hazel Techeray, and she hung with both her hands to the back of a chair. “They’ll drive us out of here into the open, get us where they’ll do us however they want to do!”

  “I’ll be go to hell if they do,” said Mr. Ben. “Me, I’m a-going to get up yonder on the roof, and I’ll—”

  “You hold on there, Mr. Ben!” I yelled at him, so loud he stopped right in his tracks. “I’ll tend to this matter. A plate, where’s a plate, somebody?”

  “A plate, John?” said Callie, like as if she wondered herself what I meant, but she ran and fetched me one and put it on the table, a plate of blue plastic.

  I grabbed me hold of a pencil and I wrote on it. The pencil made faint letters, but plain enough to read, the old magic square I knew by heart:

  S A T O R

  A R E P O

  T E N E T

  O P E R A

  R O T A S

  Those strange words, that read the same backward or forward, or up and down. . . . Then I whipped the plate over quick and set the same letters on the bottom of it. I grabbed it and ran for the back room where the ladder was.

  "It’s almighty dark up in that there loft,” said Mr. Ben, right behind me.

  "I told you, let me tend to this,” I said to him, and I purely sailed up that ladder. In the blackness of the loft, I had to grope up over my head for the rafters, but I found the roof trapdoor and flung it up. Loud sounded that crackly fire, like corn a-popping. The red light of it showed me the place to shove my head and shoulders up into the open.

  It was bright fire, sure enough, all against the darkening night sky, a big blaze of it on the broad old home-split shakes of the roof. I held the plate with its letters in both my hands, and I shouted out something else I recollected from The Long Lost Friend:

  “Our dear Sarah journeyed through the land, having a fiery hot brand in her hand,” I repeated over, loud as I could. “The fiery brand heats, the fiery brand sweats. Fiery brand, stop your heat; fiery brand, stop your sweat.”

  And with that, I flung the plate right where the fire was the hottest-looking.

  Right off that quick while I watched, the flames drew all down and disappeared away. I wondered myself, as at times before, if the Sarah in the charm meant Sarah, the wife of Abraham and the mother of Isaac. Or was it like Fd heard somewhere from somebody, it might could mean Seraph, a holy angel. I looked out. Not air spark showed itself now. The fire had gone plumb out. I looked one more time, to make sure, and got back down.

  “What was that there thing you said?” Mr. Ben inquired me in the dark of the loft.

  I dragged the trapdoor back into its place. “Just a thing to douse out the fire and keep it doused,” was all I could reply to him. “Let's go back down there again, and see what they'll try to do to us next."

  He climbed down the ladder and I followed after him. All the others sort of goggled us in the front room. “What happened?" asked Jackson Warren.

  “John here just done put that fire arrow of theirs clean out of business," said Mr. Ben, and smacked his hand down hard on my shoulder.

  “And it’ll stay out," I added to that, sure of what I said. “The same way that witchcraft stuff was taken off this place. Whatever the Shonokins want to do to us, they've got to do it some natural way of doing."

  “Oh," breathed Callie, “how can we thank you, John?"

  “Don’t thank me," I said. “Thank the man that wrote that old book of mine, The Long Lost Friend

  I went and poured me a cup of strong black coffee from the pot on the stove. It was right scaldy all the way down, but it made me feel better. It took out the shake from me that that business on the roof had given me.

  “All right, now," I said. “What are they up to out in the yard?"

  Jackson Warren had gone to a place where he could see out betwixt logs. He held his rifle ready. “Nothing that I can see," he reported me, “and there's moon enough by now that I think I could see them if they came into the open."

  “They ain't about to come into the open," sniffed out Mr. Ben. “If they done that, I'd give them another dead Shonokin to scare the hell out of them."

  “Callie, will you go watch at the back of the house?" I said. “You two men, keep guard at the two side walls in here. I’m a-going to holler out yonder and talk to them."

  “You be almighty careful, John/' Mr. Ben warned at me.

  “The thought of a-being careless hasn't nair entered my head," I told him.

  I went to the front door and dragged it open a few inches. I could feel Hazel Techeray a-looking at my back. I stood close to the open space.

  “Hello, out there yonder!" I yelled. “Speak up and tell us what you think you want."

  “We don't want you, John," came back th
e voice I well knew belonged to Brook Altic. “We want Ben Gray to do whatever talking is to be done."

  “I'm a-doing the talking for in here," I called into the early dark. “Do you have a word to say? Say it, and I'll hark at it."

  “Then come out on the porch with your hands up," he said. I had him figured to be some good way into the front yard, likely behind a big tree or some other thing to hide him from air shot.

  “I said I'd hark at you," I called again. “I nair said I'd do what you ordered me. I'm nair such a gone gump as to come out yonder."

  “You can never get away, John. None of you can get away. We've got you penned up in that little cabin."

  I let myself laugh at that. “Now, whoever said we wanted to come out? It's nice in here, Brooke Altic. We've got meal in the barrel, meat on the hook, water in the bucket, and fire in the stove. We can do all right inside here. We've likewise got guns, in case you don't know that, and if you crowd us just one little bitty bit we may show you the color of Shonokin blood."

  “That's a-telling them good, John," muttered Mr. Ben at my side.

  Mr. Brooke Altic didn't say a word for a few moments then. Likely he busied himself to chew on what Fd said. Then:

  “John, you're in a trap. You and everybody with you. You're most tightly shut up in your little shed. It's dark now, it's our time. We have various ways of getting at you that you don't dream of. So come out with your hands up. All of you."

  “What if we don't?" I asked into the falling darkness. “Then you'll earnestly wish you had. I promise you that you'll wish you had."

  “If you come a-fooling with us," I said back, “you'll do some wishing yourself, will wish you hadn't. You've already tried fire and it didn't work. Right this minute," I said, “none of your crowd has the guts to step out where a fair shot can be had at him."

  “You seem to be talking as though for everybody there inside," said Brooke Altic, “but you and I aren't talking at all profitably. Let me say a word to Ben Gray."

  Ben Gray was right there beside me. “Here I am, Brooke Altic," he hollered past me. “Here I am, a-hungering for a sight of you out in the open, and what you got to answer me back?"