Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC

by John the Balladeer (v1. 1)

  He made out squat bodies, knobs of craniums, the green gleam of eyes, not all of the eyes set two and two. The Indians, those old Indians, had been right to fear presences like these. Everything drew near. Above the encircling, approaching horde, Mark saw things that

  fluttered in the air. Bats? But bats are never that big. He heard a soft mutter of sound, as of panting breath.

  Even if Ruth hadn't been there to hold on her feet, Mark could never have run now. The way was out off. It would have to be a battle. What kind of battle?

  Just then, abrupt music rang out in the shining night. And that was a brave music, a flooding burst of melody, like harps in the hands of minstrels. A powerful, tuneful voice sang words to it:

  The cross in my right hand,

  That I may travel open land,

  That I may be charmed and blessed,

  And safe from any man or beast . . .

  The pressing throng ceased to press around Mark and Ruth. It ebbed away, like dark water flowing back from an island.

  The song changed, the guitar and the voice changed:

  Lights in the valley outshine the sun,

  Lights in the valley outshine the sun

  Lights in the valley outshine the sun—

  Look away beyond the blue.

  Those creatures, if they could be called creatures, fell back. They fell back, as though blown by the wind. The singing voice put in words of its own, put in a message, a guidance:

  Head for the bridge and I'll follow you,

  Head for the bridge and I'll follow you,

  Head for the bridge and I'll follow you—

  Look away beyond the blue.

  Ruth would have run again. Mark held her tightly by the arm, kept her to a walk. Running just now might start something else running. They stumbled back along the rough stones with the grass between the edges. The moonlight blazed upon them. Behind them, like a prayer, another verse of the song:

  Do, Lord, oh do, Lord, oh do remember me,

  Do, Lord, oh do, Lord, oh do remember me,

  Do, Lord, oh do, Lord, oh do remember me—

  Look away beyond the blue.

  But this time, a confident happiness in that appeal. Mark felt like joining in and singing the song himself, but he kept silent and urged Ruth along by her arm. He thought, though he could not be sure, that soft radiances blinked on and off in the shantylike old houses strung along the road. He did not stop to look more closely. He peered ahead for the bridge, and then the bridge was there and thankfully they were upon it, their feet drumming the planks.

  Still he panted for breath, as they reached the other side. He held Ruth to him, glad that he could hold her, glad for her that he was there to hold her. He looked across. There on the bridge came something dark. It was the guitar-picker, moving at a slower pace than Mark and Ruth had moved. He sang, softly now, softly. Mark could not make out the song. He came and joined them at last. He stood tall and lean with his hair rumpled, holding his guitar across himself like a rifle at the port.

  "You all can be easy now," he said gently. "Looky yonder, they can't come over this far."

  Over there, all the way over there at the far bridge head, a dark cluster of forms showed under the moon, standing close together and not coming.

  "The fact about it is," said the guitar-picker, "they don't seem to be up to making their way across a run of water."

  Mark was able to speak. "Like Dracula," he said numbly. "Like the witches in Tam O'Shanter."

  "Sure enough, like them. Now, folks," and the voice was gentler than ever, "you all see they'd best be left alone on their side yonder, the way folks have mostly left them alone, all the way back to when the whole crew of the mill went off to nowhere. Old ways can be best."

  "Mark, I was such a fool," Ruth mumbled against Mark's shirt.

  "I told you that, dear," he said to her.

  "Did you call me dear?"

  "Yes."

  "It makes me feel right good to hear talk like that with nice young folks like you two," said the guitar-picker.

  Mark looked up above Ruth's trembling golden head. "You were able to defeat them," he said. "You knew music would hold them back."

  "No, I nair rightly knew that." The big hand swept a melody from the silver string. "I hoped it, was all, and the hope wasn't vain."

  Mark held out a shaking hand. "We'll never be able to thank you, Mr.—I don't even know your name."

  "My name's John."

  "John what?" Mark asked.

  "Just call me John."

  Where Did She Wander?

  That gravelly old road ran betwixt high rocks and twiny-branched trees. I tramped with my pack and silver-strung guitar past a big old dornick rock, Wide as a bureau, with words chopped in with a chisel:

  THIS GRAVE DUG FOR

  BECKY TIL HOPPARD

  HUNG BY THE TRUDO FOLKS

  AUG THE 12 18 & 49

  WE WILL REMEMBER YOU

  And flowers piled round. Blue chicory and mountain mint and turtlehead, fresh as that morning. I wondered about them and walked on, three-four miles to the old county seat named Trudo, where I'd be picking and singing at their festival that night.

  The town square had three-four stores and some cabin-built houses, a six-room auto court, a jail and courthouse and all like that. At the auto court stood Luns Lamar, the banjo man who was running the festival, in white shirt and string tie. His bristly hair was still soot-black, and he wore no glasses. Didn't need them, for all his long years.

  "I knew you far down the street, John," he hailed me. "Long, tall, with the wide hat and jeans, and your guitar. All that come tonight will have heard tell of you. And they'll want you to sing songs they recollect—Vandy, Vandy,' 'Dream True,' those ones."

  "Sure enough, Mr. Luns," I said. "Look, what do you know about Becky Til Hoppard's grave back yonder?"

  He squinted, slanty-eyed. "Come into this room I took for us, and I'll tell you what I know of the tale."

  Inside, he fetched out a fruit jar of blockade whiskey and we each of us had a whet. "Surprised you don't know about her," said Mr. Luns. "She was the second woman to get hung in this state, and it wasn't the true law did it. It was folks thought life in prison wasn't the right call on her. They strung her up in the square yonder, where we'll sing tonight."

  We sipped and he talked. Becky Til Hoppard was a beauty of a girl with strange, dark ways. Junius Worral went up to her cabin to court her and didn't come back, and the law found his teeth and belt buckle in her fireplace ashes; and when the judge said just prison for life, a bunch of the folks busted into the jail and took her out and strung her to a white oak tree. When she started to say something, her daddy was there and he hollered. 'Die with your secret, Becky!' and she hushed and died with it, whatever it was."

  "How came her to be buried right yonder?" I asked him.

  "That Hoppard set was strange-wayed," said Mr. Luns. Her father and mother and brothers put her there. They had dug the hole during the trial and set up the rock and cut the words into it, then set out for other places. Isaiah Hoppard, the father, died when he was cutting a tree and it fell onto him. The mother was bit by a mountain rattler and died screaming. Her brother, Harrison, went to Kentucky and got killed stealing hogs. Otway, the youngest brother, fell at Chancellorsville in the Civil War."

  "Then the family was wiped out."

  "No," and he shook his head again. "Otway had married and had children, who grew up and had children, too. I reckon Hoppards live hereabouts in this day and time. Have you heard the Becky Til Hoppard song?"

  "No, but I'd sure enough like to."

  He sang some verses, and I picked along on my silver strings and sang along with him. It was a lonesome tune, sounded like old-country bagpipes.

  "I doubt if many folks know that song today," he said at last. "It's reckoned to be unlucky. Let's go eat some supper and then start the show."

  They'd set up bleachers in the courthouse square for maybe a couple thousand
. Mr. Luns announced act after act. Obray Ramsey was there with near about the best banjo-picking in the known world, and Tom Hunter with near about the best country fiddling. The audience clapped after the different numbers, especially for a dance team that seemed to have wings on their shoes. Likewise for a gold-haired girl named Rilla something, who picked pretty on a zither, something you don't often hear in these mountains.

  When it came my turn, I did the songs Mr. Luns had named, and the people clapped so loud for more that I decided to try the Becky Til Hoppard song. So I struck a chord and began:

  Becky Til Hoppard, as sweet as a dove,

  Where did she wander, and who did she love?

  Right off, the crowd went still as death, I sang:

  Becky Til Hoppard, and where can she be?

  Rope round her neck, swung up high on the tree.

  And that deathly silence continued as I did the rest of it:

  On Monday she was charged, on Tuesday she was tried,

  By the laws of her country she had to abide.

  If I knew where she lay, to her side I would go.

  Round sweet Becky's grave pretty flowers I would strow . . . .

  When I was done, not a clap, not a voice. I went off the little stage, wondering to myself about it. After the show, Rilla, the zither girl, came to my room to talk.

  "Folks here think it's unlucky to sing that Becky Hoppard song, John," she said. "Even to hark at it."

  "I seem to have done wrong," I said. "I didn't know."

  "Well, those Hoppards are a right odd lot. Barely come into town except to buy supplies. And they take pay for curing sickness and making spells to win court cases. They're strong on that kind of thing."

  "Who made the song?" I asked.

  "They say it was sung back yonder by some man who was crazy for Becky Til Hoppard, and she never even looked his way. None of the Hoppard blood likes it, nor either the Worral blood. I know, because I'm Worral blood myself."

  "Can you tell me the tale?" I inquired. "Have some of this blockade. Mr. Luns left it in here, and it's good."

  "I do thank you." She took a ladylike sip. "All I know is what my oldest folks told me. Becky Hoppard was a witch-girl, the pure quill of the article. Did all sorts of spells. Junius Worral reckoned to win her with a love charm."

  "What love charm?" I asked, because such things interest me.

  "I've heard tell she let him have her handkerchief, and he did something with it. Went to the Hoppard cabin, and that's the last was seen of him alive. Or dead, either—he was all burnt up except his buckle and teeth."

  "The song's about flowers at her grave," I said. "I saw some there."

  "Folks do that, to turn bad luck away."

  I tweaked my silver guitar strings. "Where's the Hoppard place?"

  "Up hill, right near the grave. A broken-off locust tree there points to the path. I hope I've told you things that'll keep you from going there."

  "You've told me things that make me to want to go."

  "Don't, John," she begged to me. "Recollect what happened to Junius Worral."

  "I'll recollect," I said, "but I'll go." And we said goodnight.

  I woke right soon in the morning and went to the dining room to eat me a good breakfast with Mr. Luns. Then I bade him good day and set out of Trudo the same way I'd come in, on the gravelly road.

  Rilla had said danger was at the Hoppard place, but my guitar's silver strings had been a help against evil time and time again. Likewise in my pocket was a buckeye, given me one time by an Ozark fellow, and that's supposed to guard you, too—not just against rheumatics but all kinds of dangers. No man's ever found dead with a buckeye in his pocket, folks allow. So I was glad I had it as I tramped along with my pack and my guitar.

  As I got near to the grave rock, I picked me some mountain laurel flowers. As I put those round the stone, I noticed more flowers there, besides the ones I'd seen the day before. Beyond was the broken-off locust, and a way uphill above it.

  That path went through brush, so steep I had to lean forward to climb it. Trees crowded close at the sides. They near about leaned on me, and their leaves bunched into unchancey green faces. I heard a rain crow make its rattly call, and I spied out its white vest and blotchy tail. It was supposed to warn of a storm, but the patch of sky above was clear; maybe the rain crow warned of something else than rain. I kept on, climbed a good quarter mile to where there was a cabin amongst hemlocks.

  That cabin was of old, old logs chinked with clay. It must have been built before the last four wars. The roof's split shakes were cracked and curly. A lean-to was tacked on at the left. There were two smudgy windows and a cleated plank door, and on the door-log sat a man, watching me as I climbed into his sight.

  He was dressed sharp, better than me in my jeans and old hat. Good-fitting pants as brown as coffee and a bright-flowered shirt. He was soft-pudgy, and I'd reckon more or less fifty years old. His cheeks bunched out. His bald brow was low and narrow. He had a shallow chin and green eyes like grape pulps. His face had the look of a mean snake.

  "We been a-waiting for you," he said when I got there.

  "How come you to know I'd come, Mr. Hoppard?" I asked him.

  He did a creaky laugh. "You know my name, and I don't know yours yet," he said, "but we been a-waiting on you. We know when they come." He grinned, with mossy-green teeth. "What name might I call you?"

  "John."

  We were being watched. Two heads at one of the windows. A toss-haired woman, a skinny man. When I looked at them they drifted back, then drifted up again.

  "You'll be the John we hear tell about," said Hoppard. "A-sticking your nose in here to find out a tale."

  "The tale of Becky Til Hoppard," I agreed.

  "Poor Becky. They hung her up and cut her down."

  "And buried her below here," I added on.

  "No, not exactly," he said. "That stone down yonder just satisfies folks away from the truth. They don't ask questions. But you do—ask questions about my great-great aunt Becky." He turned his ugly head to the house. "All right, youins," he bawled, "come out there and meet John."

  Those two came. The young man was tall, near about my height, but so ganted he looked ready to bust in two. He wore good pants and shirt, but rumpled and grubby. His eyes were green, too. The girl's frock looked to be made of flowered curtain cloth, and it was down off one rounded bare shoulder. Her tousled hair was as red as if it had been dipped in a mountain sunset. And she looked on me with shiny green eyes like Hoppard's, like the young man's.

  "These is my son and daughter," said Hoppard, a-smirking. "I fetched them up after my fashion, taught them what counts and how to tell it from what doesn't count. She's Tullai. I call the boy Herod."

  "Hidy," I told the two of them.

  Hoppard got up from the door-log, on crooked legs like a toad's. "Come on in the house," he said, and we went in, all four.

  The front room was big, with a puncheon floor worn down with God alone knows how many years, and hooked rag rugs on it. The furniture was home made. I saw a long sofa woven of juniper branches at back and seat, and two stools and an arm chair made of tree chunks, and a table of old planks and trestles. At the back, a sort of statue stood on a little home-made stand. It looked to be chipped from dark rock, maybe three feet high, and it had a grinning head with horns on it. Its eyes were shiny green stones, a kind I didn't know, but the color of Hoppard's eyes.

  "Is that a god?" I inquired of Hoppard.

  "Yes, and it's been worshipped here for I can't tell how many generations," he said. "Walk all round the room and them eyes keep a-looking on you. Try it."

  I tried it. Sure enough, the eyes followed me into every corner. But I'd seen the same thing to happen with a picture of George Washington in a museum, and a photograph of a woman called Mona Lisa. "You all pray to that idol?" I asked.

  "We do, and he answers our prayers," said the girl Tullai, soft-voiced. "He sent you to us."

  "Pa," said the boy Her
od, "you should ought to tell John about us."

  "Sit down," said Hoppard, and we sat here and there while he told the tale. Tullai sat next to me.

  Hoppard allowed that his folks had always been conjure folks. Way back yonder, Becky Til Hoppard had been foremost at it. Some things she'd done was good—cures for sick folks, spells to make rain fall, all like that. But about Junius Worral, he said, what I'd heard wasn't rightly so.

  "They told you he'd had a charm to win Becky?" said Hoppard. "It was more the other way round. She charmed him to fetch him here."

  "What for?" I asked.

  "He was needed here," said, Hoppard; and Tullai repeated, "Needed here," and her green eyes looked at me sidelong, the way a kitten looks at a bowl of milk.

  "To help Becky to a long life," Hoppard went on. "The hanging nair truly killed her, so her folks just set her head back on its neckbone and fetched her home." He nodded to a door that led to the lean-to shed. "She's in yonder now."

  "You a-telling me she's alive?" I asked him.

  "Her folks did things that fetched her back. In yonder she waits, for you to talk to her."

  "John's got him a guitar," spoke up Tullai all of a sudden, her green eyes still cut at me. "Can't we maybe hear him pick it?"

  "Sure enough, if you all want to hark at me," I said.

  I did some tuning, then I sang something I'd been thinking up:

  Long is the road on which I fare,

  Over the world afar,

  The mountains here and the valleys there,

  Me and this old guitar

  The places I've been were places, yes,

  The things that I've seen were things,

  With this old guitar my soul to bless

  By the sound of its silver strings.

  "Hey, you're good!" squeaked out Tullai, and clapped her hands. "Go on, sing the rest."