Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 02

by The School of Darkness (v1. 1)

  “I’ll introduce you, Chief Manco,” he said, “and then I’ll get clear off stage and leave you to massacre the palefaces. You’re going to have another full house, it seems. Countess Monteseco, Mr. Thunstone, find yourselves seats.”

  He went away with Manco. Sharon and Thunstone found places on the aisle well to the front. Father Bundren came and stood there, “May I?” he asked.

  “Please do,” said Thunstone, and he and Sharon moved in to let Father Bundren sit down, “Where’s Shimada?” Thunstone asked.

  “I don’t know. I’d expected him to be here.”

  All around them rose a buzz of chattering voices from the waiting crowd. The auditorium was filling up fast. Toward the rear sat Grizel Fian, vivid in that red dress she wore. Among a press of people at the back, Thunstone made out a bald head and bulky shoulders, oppressively familiar to him.

  He glanced at his watch. It was exactly one o’clock. Lee Pitt and Reuben Manco came on stage, side by side. A lectern had been set there, with a lamp and a microphone upon it. Pitt came close to the lectern. His amplified voice rose in the chamber.

  “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the morning session of the American Folklore Survey Symposium,” he said. “It’s my great privilege to present Chief Reuben Manco of the Cherokee Nation, Master of Arts and Phi Beta Kappa at Dartmouth. Some of you heard him briefly yesterday. Here he is, to speak about what Native Americans have done and said and believed.”

  With that, Pitt walked away into the wings. Manco came to the lectern and bowed his feathered head to the applause. His brown face had deep furrows, made into dark lines by the overhead lights.

  “How, ” he said, in the deep voice he used for formalities. “Yes, as you’ve heard, I’m a Tsukali—what white men call a Cherokee. I’m a full-blooded American Indian, and I’m proud to say that.”

  He leaned above the lectern. “Can’t many of you claim some of that blood? Genealogists will tell you that if your ancestry goes back before the Revolutionary War, you’re almost sure to have Indian blood in your veins. And if your forefathers came here later than the Revolution, by way of Ellis Island, your America is still Indian America. You smoke tobacco, lie in hammocks, eat com and squash and sweet potatoes, you paddle canoes and wear moccasins and catch American fish and hunt American deer. You are of America, though you forget what America was when the first white explorers found it.”

  He sighed deeply. The amplifying microphone carried his sigh over the listeners like a lingering puff of wind.

  “The white strangers came and took the land from the Indians. They changed everything. Once the buffalo blackened the Western prairies, the passenger pigeons filled the skies with the thunder of their wings. Where have they gone? Where has everything gone? The forests cut down, the lakes and rivers poisoned, the earth made bare and sterile. The Indians never did that, not in their forty thousand years. The white men have done it in less than five hundred. Yes, but you will say, America is progress. The white men have civilized and educated the Indians. But is that really so? Was the Indian really just a savage?”

  “No,” said somebody in the midst of the audience. Thunstone wondered who had spoken.

  “No is the right word,” said Manco. “Permit me to quote an illustrious American, a man without whom the United States would have had some difficulty in becoming the United States. I refer to Benjamin Franklin. Here’s what he said, and I can quote him by heart: ‘Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs.’ ”

  He lifted his head with its tall feather and let his eyes rove over the audience.

  “Oh,” he said in a voice that suddenly rang, “our lands have been taken, but our names stay on those lands. On states called Massachusetts, Connecticut, Arkansas, Tennessee. Texas; on rivers like the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Ohio, the Potomac; on towns, on villages, all through the country. You can’t wipe those Indian names away!”

  Again he paused, and smiled as though in self-deprecation.

  “But I didn’t come here to moralize,” he said, more gently. “There isn’t time for me to consider all Indian peoples throughout the nation. I’m a Tsukali, a Cherokee, and maybe I should just talk about my own people.”

  Then he talked about the Cherokees. They had once lived in the Lake Erie country, had quarreled with their kinsmen, the Iroquois, and had migrated to the Appalachian country. Before that, as he quoted scientific opinions, they may have descended from the Mound Builders, whose structures still survive in the Mississippi Valley. Coming into what would in time be called the states of the Eastern South, they had lived and hunted and farmed and built their special culture.

  “We didn’t five in wigwams, we had comfortable houses with pitched roofs,” said Manco. “Our chiefs were wise governors and made just laws and saw that those laws were obeyed. We had the finest of stone tools. We had copper, traded from up in the Great Lakes region from which we had come. When de Soto came through, in 1540, we were hospitable to him, courteous to him, although he killed our warriors. Maybe, if de Soto and the others had waited a few centuries, we’d have developed our own civilization, greater than the Aztecs or the Peruvians. As it is, we were called one of the Civilized Tribes. Education? Sequoyah gave us our own written language. John Ross and Elias Boudinet and Major Ridge were our brilliant chiefs. Then came the Trail of Tears and we were exiled across the Mississippi. I won’t go into the details of that infamy. Later in our history, Stand Watie and Tandy Walker were generals in the Confederate Army. Like all Indian tribes, we’ve been stolen stone-blind by the Americans. It was only in recent years that we got the guarantee the Constitution gives to all its citizens, that we could worship our own gods.”

  He cocked his head and grinned. It was a fierce grin.

  “None of the newcomer white settlers on our lands wanted that. They wanted to force their own religion on the Indians. Let me quote to you what Sagoyewacha, chief of the Senecas—the white man’s histories call him Red Jacket —what he said to a bullying missionary. Sagoyewacha said, ‘You have taken our country but are not satisfied. You want to force your religion upon us,’ he said. ‘We also have a religion which has been handed down from our fathers. It teaches us to be thankful for all the favors we receive, to love each other and be united.’ ”

  He spread his brown hands above the lectern.

  “To be thankful, to love each other and be united—aren’t those good, wholesome teachings? We Cherokee have the same lesson from those we worship. From back to our beginnings, we have turned in reverence to the sun, the moon, the wind and the rain. We respect all living things. We even respect the rattlesnake. Doesn’t it seem very likely that all your own prehistoric ancestors turned in reverence to those same elements?”

  Father Bundren muttered something that sounded like “huh.”

  “My convictions are the ancient ones of my tribe,” Manco went on. “Yet, allow me to say that I must respect other religions. I feel that any religion whatever is so good that it is better than no religion at all.”

  A whisper in the audience. Thunstone, looking back, saw that Grizel Fian sat up straight and nodded her head.

  “I have knelt down in churches,” said Manco. “I believe that my oath sworn on the Bible will bind me. I’m always ready to hear and respect any profession of faith, and I hope you’ll hear mine.”

  He elaborated. He told of the Cherokee belief, not only in benificent deities, but in stealthy evil beings. He described the anisgina, the grisly creatures that are not ghosts exactly, but things that move and flit like shadows and look for wickedness to do for wickedness’ sake. He spoke of the terrible Raven Mockers, the eaters of human flesh, whose arms are feathered like wings to make a roar in the air as they swoop down on a sick or wounded man to suck his blood as a vampire sucks blood. He imitated the cry of the Raven Mockers, kraa-kraa, and it seemed to fill the auditorium to its high, vaulted roof.

  “And do I
believe in these terrible things?” he cried. “I do, because I’ve encountered them. I’m a Cherokee medicine man, and it’s my job to keep them from hurting my people. Do I have magic power? Maybe it isn’t good taste to show off, but shall I show off here, a little, for the benefit of the skeptics?”

  “Yes,” said a voice from somewhere in the crowd, a woman’s voice. Manco grinned again, white-toothed.

  “Very well, ma’am, with your permission I’ll try. I ask you to think of what the weather was like when you came here this morning. Bright, wasn’t it? A clear blue sky, not a cloud up there, isn’t that how it was?”

  He stepped away from the lectern and stood straight, his moccasined heels held together, as though he were a soldier at attention. He lifted his arms above his head, close together. His hands bent forward, side by side, toward the audience.

  He began to sing, deeply, rhythmically, with words that Thunstone did not know. After a moment, his feet moved. He paced off in a sort of dance, around in a circle and around, singing all the time in rhythm to his steps.

  All watched and listened, in a silence so deep that Thunstone could hear Sharon’s deep breathing. But suddenly, a prolonged peal of thunder clattered above the auditorium’s high roof, a sort of fusillade of sound that greatened into a deafening, crackling roar. And up there above them, the loud patter of rain, like myriad galloping hoofs.

  Manco dropped his arms and stepped back to the lectern. He leaned to the microphone. He beamed, as though in triumph.

  “Rain!” he cried, his voice ringing above the downpour. “Do you doubt that it’s rain? Do you think I’m using some sort of hidden sound effect? Go out to the door, some of you, and make sure.”

  Two men rose and headed up the aisle. Father Bundren left his seat beside Thunstone and went at a swift stride after them. The rain belabored the roof of the auditorium.

  “It’s raining, all right,” shouted the first man at the door. “Raining bucketfuls!”

  “And not exactly needed just now,” said Manco into his microphone. “I’ll bring it to an end. Keep watch at the door, if you please.”

  Again he raised his arms, but apart this time, in a V. He went into his dance, he sang again. He made a circle, his moccasins shuffling.

  Up there on high, the stormy tumult died away, so abruptly and completely that the silence oppressed. Back to the microphone came Manco.

  “Look out there again, please,” he called, and the men at the door went out and then came back.

  “It’s clear,” shouted Father Bundren’s voice. “The sun’s out, no clouds in the sky.”

  He came quickly back to his seat beside Thunstone. He frowned thoughtfully. Manco waited for him to sit down.

  “That’s just as I expected,” said Manco then. “And now, are there questions?” He pointed to a woman who had raised her hand, and she rose.

  “How can you explain your method in bringing rain and then stopping it?” ske asked.

  “Certainly I can explain,” answered Manco, his voice deep in his chest. “I make a certain mystic sign with my arms and hands, I sing a certain song and dance a certain dance. And that brings the rain, and more of the same sends it away. Next question?”

  A man rose this time, gaunt and bearded. “Could you teach your rain-making method to me?” he asked.

  “Not unless you’re of the true Cherokee blood and are apprenticed to learn the art and wisdom of a medicine man,” said Manco. “There are other tribes, mostly off in the Southwest, who dance and pray to bring rain. I understand that they, too, are careful about revealing the secret.” Someone else wanted to know how the Cherokee nation had descended from the Mound Builders, and Manco quoted the opinions of archaeologists and spoke of similarities between recovered artifacts from certain mounds and later tools and ornaments among his own people. Another questioner rose to bring up Manco’s remark about respect for rattlesnakes. To that, Manco said that respect for poisonous reptiles did not extend to pushing too close to them, and that Cherokee medicine included the use of remedies for snake bite. Other questions on various subjects. One of these by a lady, about Cherokee cooking, Manco answered with a smile as though of relish. At last:

  “No more questions?” he asked. “None? Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for listening with such patience.”

  He walked off stage, and Lee Pitt came on and spoke into the microphone.

  “It’s now half past two, more or less,” he said. “At three o’clock, we’ll hear from Father Mark Bundren, on the history of diabolism and the influence of its belief today. Tonight, at eight o’clock, the Department of Dramatic Arts presents, under direction of Ms. Grizel Fian, a program of scenes from the plays of William Shakespeare that deal with the supernormal. Now, suppose we take a brief recess until three.”

  Everyone rose; everyone began to talk. As Thunstone followed Father Bundren into the aisle, he felt, as he would feel a physical touch, eyes fixed upon him. Someone had turned at the outer door to look, someone with a bald head and a huge, hooked nose above big shoulders.

  V

  “Is that someone you know?” Father Bundren asked.

  “Yes,” said Thunstone. “Yes, it is.”

  For it was Rowley Thome. It could be nobody other than Rowley Thome,

  Rowley Thome, who once had slid away into nothingness before Thunstone’s eyes. Rowley Thome, who now had returned from nothingness, had returned here upon this campus, whose presence was a black threat to Thunstone and to Sharon, Countess Monteseco.

  “Is that someone you know?” Father Bundren asked again.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s someone I know,” replied Thunstone. “Will you please wait, right here in the aisle, for a few moments? Stay with Father Bundren, Sharon. I’ll see you both later.”

  He walked quickly forward, jostling people without apology. He came out into the vestibule and through that to the outer porch above the steps. Rowley Thorne waited there. For a moment Grizel Fian was in sight, too, but she seemed to hurry away somewhere.

  Thome faced Thunstone. His high skull was bald with a faint sheen, his nose was a beak, and his wide mouth held itself thin and hard.

  “All right, here I am,” Thome said. “What now, Thunstone?”

  “I’ve had glimpses of you again and again, ever since I came here,” said Thunstone, looking Thome up and down. They were both big men, more or less of a height, and both of them strongly, muscularly built. Thome wore a suit of dark, dull cloth, and his neck was swathed in the folds of a black-checked scarf. Above the scarf, his face had cheeks like slabs, a thrusting chin, a colorless mouth, shrouded eyes as hard and gray as gunmetal. The colorless mouth worked slightly.

  “If I hadn’t wanted you to see me and talk to me, I wouldn’t have waited for you,” said Thome. People moved past them and into the open. One or two glanced curiously at the two big, stem-faced men. “Let me ask you a plain, civil question, Thunstone,” Thome said after a moment. “What do you think you’ll do about my being here?”

  “That’s a question I don’t care to answer,” said Thunstone, who at the moment had no answer. “What I’ll do depends a great deal on what you do or try to do, because I’m sure you’ll try something. But I’m sorry to see you at all. I did have some optimistic notion that you were gone forever, gone into another dimension, or another plane or something like that.”

  “You turned my helpers against me,” Thome said, in a tone of harsh accusation. “I summoned them, and you drove them back out of this world. And they took me with them.”

  “They must have kept you for quite a while,” said Thunstone in the most casual of manners. “What happened to you, wherever you went?”

  “I wouldn’t tell you if I knew, and I don’t really know,” Thome flung back. “How should I know for certain? It’s like a dream, half-forgotten—you’d wonder if it was real time or space. But I was brought back by the prayers of someone to whom I’ll always be grateful.”

  “Prayers?” repeated Thunstone. “Who pra
yed for you? To what gods?”

  “I’ve come back,” grated Thome, “to this place called Buford.” His heavy brows locked themselves in a scowl. “Now,” he said, “you’ll try to persecute me, won’t you? Try to send me back there again.”

  “Remember that your journey into nowhere was your own doing. You called on a whole battalion of evil names against me. When I was able to banish them, they took you along. I didn’t exile you—they did. You ought to find better company to consort with.”

  “That’s as may be,” said Throne. “But now, here I am in Buford, listening to the speeches at this symposium. No law forbids me to do that. Goodbye for now, I think we’ll be seeing each other again.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it for a minute,” said Thunstone.

  Thome turned and fairly ran down the steps outside the auditorium. For all his size, and he was as big as Thunstone, he moved swiftly, surely. He vanished into a passing group of students.

  Thunstone stood where he was. Sharon’s voice spoke at his side, a hushed, unhappy voice.

  “Rowley Thome,” she was saying. “Rowley Thome’s really here.”

  “You’re right, he is,” replied Thunstone. “But I’m here, too. He and I have had encounters before this, and so far he’s never had the better of any of them.”

  “We’ll be in for trouble,” Sharon almost whispered.

  “Trouble,” repeated Father Bundren at Thunstone’s other elbow. “If I’ve heard correctly about your Rowley Thome, he more or less delights in causing trouble. Count on me if you think you need me.”

  “Thanks,” said Thunstone. “I’ll certainly do that.”

  They had walked down the steps to the pavement. They could see university buildings on both sides of the street. They walked a few steps farther, and to the left they could see a wide stretch of open space, green with grass and set with huge old trees. In its middle rose a sort of obelisk.

  “I wonder what that monument commemorates,” said Thunstone.