Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (9 page)

 
          
"But—"
Miss Annalinda made out to begin.

 
          
"Both
of you stay," Mr. Howsen said again, and with his shoe toe he scuffed a
mark across the trail. He hawked, and spit on the mark. "Don't cross that
line. It would be worse for you than if fire burned you behind and before,
inside and out."

 
          
Like
a lizard he had bobbed over the edge and down the trail.

 
          
"Let's
go, too," I said to Miss Annalinda, but she stared at the mark of Mr.
Howsen's shoe toe, and the healthy blood had paled out from under the tan on
her face.

           
"Pay him no mind," I said.
"Let's start, it's toward evening."

 
          
"He
said not to cross the mark," she reminded me, scared.

 
          
"I
don't care a shuck for his saying. Come on, Miss Annalinda," and I took
her by the arm.

 
          
That
quick she was fighting me. Holding her arm was like holding the spoke of a
runaway wheel. Her other hand racked hide and blood from my cheek, and she
tried to bite. I couldn't hang on without hitting her, so I let her go, and she
sat on a rock by the poolside and cried into her hands.

 
          
"Then
I'll have to go alone," I said, and took a step.

 
          
"John!"
she called, loud and shaky as a horse's whinny. "If you cross that mark,
I'll throw myself into this Bottomless Pool!"

 
          
Sometimes
you can tell a woman means her words. This was such a time. I walked back, and
she looked to where the down-sunk sun made the sky's edge red and fiery. It
would be cold and dark when the sun went. With trembling brown hands she rolled
the blue jeans down her long legs.

 
          
"I'll
build up the fire," I said, and tried to break a branch from a
claw-looking tree.

 
          
But
it was tough and had thorny stickers. So I went to the edge of the clearing,
away from where Mr. Howsen had drawn his mark on us, and found an armful of
dead-fallen wood to freshen the fire she'd made for her witching. It blazed up,
the color of the setting sun. High in the sky, that grew pale before it would
grow dark, slid a big buzzard. Its wings flopped, slow and heavy, spreading
their feathers like long fingers.

 
          
"You
don't believe all this, John," said Miss Annalinda, in a voice that
sounded as if she was just before freezing with cold. "But the spell was
true. The rest of it's true, too—about One Other. He must have been here since
the beginning of tune."

 
          
"There's
one thing peculiar enough to the truth," I answered her. "Nothing's
been norrated about One Other until the last year or so. Nothing about his
being here at the Bottomless Pool, or about folks being able to do witch stuff,
or how he aids the witches and takes payment for his aid. It's no old country
tale, it's right new and recent."

 
          
"Payment,"
she said after me. "What kind of payment?"

 
          
I
poked the fire. "That depends. Sometimes one thing, sometimes another. You
notice Mr. Howsen goes around with only one eye. I've heard it sworn that One
Other took an eye from him. Maybe he won't want an eye from you, but he'll want
something. Something for nothing."

 
          
"What
do you mean?" and she frowned her brows.

 
          
"You
witched me to love you, but you don't love me. It was done for spite, not
love."

 
          
"Why—why—"

 
          
Nothing
flurries a woman like being caught in the truth. She laid hold on a poolside
rock next to her.

 
          
"That
will smash my head or either my guitar," I gave her warning. "Smash
my head, you're up here alone with a dead corpse. Smash my guitar, I'll go down
the trail."

 
          
"And
I'll jump into the pool."

 
          
"All
right, jump. I won't stay where people throw rocks at me. Fair warning's as
good as a promise."

 
          
She
let go the rock. She was ready to cry again. My foot at the edge, I looked down
in the water.

 
          
The
sky was getting purely dark, but low and away down was that soap bubble shiny
light. I remembered an old tale they say came from the Indians that owned the
mountains before white folks came. It was about people living above the sky and
thinking their world was the only one, till somebody pulled up a big long root,
and through the hole they could see another world below, where people lived.
Then Miss Annalinda began to talk.

 
          
She
was talking for company, and she talked about herself. About her rich father
and her rich mother, and her rich aunts and uncles, the money and automobiles
and land and horses she owned, the big chance of men who wanted to marry her.
One was the son of folks as rich as hers. One was the governor of a state,
who'd put his wife away if Miss Annalinda said the word. One was a nobleborn
man from a foreign country. "And you'd marry me too, John," she said.

 
          
"I'm
sorry," I said. "Sorry to death. But I wouldn't."

 
          
"You're
lying, John."

 
          
"I
never lie, Miss Annalinda."

 
          
"Well,
talk to me, anyway. This is no place for silence."

 
          
I
talked in my turn. How I'd been born next to Drowning Creek and baptized in its
waters. How my folks had died in two days of each other, how an old teacher
lady taught me to read and write, and I taught myself to play the guitar. How
I'd roamed and rambled. How I'd fought in the war, and a thousand fell at my
side and ten thousand at my right hand, but it hadn't come nigh me. I left out
things like meeting up with the Ugly Bird or visiting the desrick on Yandro. I
said that though I'd never had anything and never rightly expected to have
anything, I'd always made out for bread to eat and sometimes butter on it.

 
          
"How
about girls, John?" she asked me. "You must have had regiments of
them."

 
          
"None
to mention," I said, for it wouldn't be proper to name them, or the like
of that. "Miss Annalinda, it's full dark."

 
          
"And
the moon's up," she said.

 
          
"No,
that's the soap bubble light from down in the pool."

 
          
"You
make me shiver!" she scolded, and drew up her shoulders. "What do you
mean with that stuff about soap bubbles?"

 
          
"Only
what I told Mr. Howsen. The science man said our whole life, what he called our
universe, was swelling and stretching out, so that suns and moons and stars
pull farther apart all the time. He said our world and all the other worlds are
inside that stretching skin of suds that makes the bubble. We can't study out
what's outside the bubble, or either inside, just the suds part. It sounds
crazyish, but when he talked it sounded true."

 
          
"It's
not a new idea, John. James Jeans wrote a book,
The Expanding Universe.
But where does the soap bubble come
from?"

 
          
"I
reckon Whoever made things must have blown it from a bubble pipe too big for us
to figure about."

 
          
She
snickered, so she must be feeling better. "You believe in a God Who blew
only one lone soap bubble." Then she didn't snicker. "How long must
we wait here?"

 
          
"No
time. We can go."

 
          
"No,
we have to stay."

 
          
"Then
we'll wait till One Other comes. He'll come. Mr. Howsen's a despicable man, but
he knows about One Other."

 
          
"Oh!"
she cried out. "I wish he'd come and get it over with."

 
          
And
her wish came true.

 
          
The
firelight had risen high, and as she spoke something hiked up behind the rocks
on the pool's edge. It hiked up like a wet black leech, but much bigger by a
thousand times. It slid and oozed to the top of a rock and as it waited a
second, wet and shiny in the firelight, it looked as if somebody had flung down
a wet coat. Then it hunched and swelled, and its edges came apart.

 
          
It
was a hand, as broad in the back as a shovel, with fingers as long as a
hayfork's tines.

 
          
"Get
up and start down trail," I said to Miss Annalinda, as quiet and calm as I
could make out to be. "Don't argue, just start."

 
          
"Why?"
she snapped, without moving, and by then she saw, too, and any chance for
escape was gone.

 
          
The
hayfork fingers grabbed the rock, and a head and shoulder heaved up where we
could see them.

 
          
The
shoulder was a cypress root humping out of water, and the head was a dark
pumpkin, round and smooth and bald, with no face, only two eyes. They were
green, not bright green like cat eyes or dog eyes in the night. They were stale
rotten green, like something spoiled.

 
          
Miss
Annalinda's shriek was like a train at a crossing. She jumped up, but she
didn't run. Maybe she couldn't. Then a big knee lifted into sight, and all of
One Other came out of the water and rose straight up above us.

 
          
Miss
Annalinda wilted down on her knees, almost in the fire. I dropped the guitar
and jumped to pull her clear. She mumbled a holy name—not a prayer or either a
curse, just the tag end of a habit most of us almost lose, the reminding of
Someone that we're hurting for a little help. I stood, holding her sagging slim
body against me, and looked high up at where One Other loomed.

 
          
One
Other was twice as tall as a tall man, and it was sure enough true that he had
only one arm and one leg. The arm would be his left arm, and the leg his left
leg. Maybe that's why the mountain folks named him One Other. But his stale
green eyes were two, and both of them looked down at us. He made a sure hop
toward us on his big single foot, big and flat as a table top, and he put out
his hand to touch or to grab.

 
          
I
dragged Miss Annalinda clear around the fire. I reckon she'd fainted, or near
to. Her feet didn't work under her, she only moaned, and she was double heavy,
the way a limp weight can be. My strength was under tax to pull her toward
where I'd dropped the guitar. I wanted to get my hands on that guitar. It might
be a weapon—its music or its silver strings might be a distaste to an unchancey
thing like One Other.

           
But One Other had circled the fire
the opposite way, so that we came almost in touch again. He stood on his one
big foot, between me and my guitar. It might be ill or well to him, but I
couldn't reach it and find out.

 
          
Even
then, I never thought of running across Mr. Howsen's mark and down the mountain
in the night. I stood still, holding Miss Annalinda on her feet that were so
limp her shoes were like to drop off, and looked up twice my height into what
wasn't a face save for the two green eyes.

 
          
"What
have you got in mind?" I asked One Other, as if he could understand my
talk; and the words, almost in Miss Annalinda's ear, brought back her strength
and wits. She stood alone, still shoving herself close against me. She looked
up at One Other and said the holy name again.

 
          
One
Other bent his big lumpy knee, and sank his bladdery dark body down and put out
that big splay paw of his. The firelight showed his open palm, slate gray, with
things dribbling out in a clinking, jangling little strew at our feet. He
straightened up again.