Part 31 (1/2)

But I didn't run. To run nair had helped me much in such a case. I'd stand my ground, fight. If I lost the fight, maybe Hallcott could get away and tell the tale. I bent my knees and made my legs springly, I hoped I could move faster and surer than those big, lumbering bones.

Preacher Melick had said the Bible words to make them live, had said them without a-thinking. And that song, I'd have been better off if I'd nair sung it. I watched the thick, bony arms rise up and fetch the club down to bust my head.

That quick, I sidestepped and danced clear, and down came the big hunk of tree, so hard on the ground it boomed there like a slamming door. I made a swing with my own shovel, but the club was up again and in the way. My blade bounced off. Again the club hiked up over me, it made a dark blotch against the moon. I set myself to dodge again.

Then it was that Embro Hallcott, come back up just behind me, started in to sing in his husky voice:

The toe bone's connected from the foot bone, The foot bone's connected from the heel bone . . .

And quick on from there, about the s.h.i.+n and thigh and hip bones, about the back bone and the shoulder bone. I stood with my shovel held up in both hands, and watched the thing come apart before my eyes.

It had dropped that club that would have driven me into the ground like a nail. It swayed in broken-up moonlight that shone through tree branches. It fell to pieces while I watched.

I looked at the bones, down and scattered out now. The skull stared up at me, and one more time it gave a hungry snap of those jaws. I heard:

The neck bone's connected from the jaw bone, The jaw bone's connected from the head bone, Hear the word of the Lord.

The jaw bone snapped no more. It rolled free from the skull.

Hallcott was up beside me. I could feel him shake all over.

”It worked,” he said, in the tiredest voice you could call for.

”That song built him up,” I said back. ”And that song, sung different, took him back down again. Though it appears to me the word should be 'disconnected'.”

”Sure enough?” he wondered me. ”I don't know that word, that disconnected. But I thought on an old tale, how a man read in a magic book and devilish things came all round him, so he read the book backward and made them go away.”

His eyes bugged as he looked at a big thigh bone, dropped clear of its kneecap and s.h.i.+n. ”What if it hadn't worked, John?”

”Point is, it did work and thank the good Lord for that,” I told him. ”Now, how you say for us to put him back in his coffin again, and not sing air note to him this time?”

Hallcott didn't relish to touch the bones, and, gentlemen, neither did I. I scooped them in the shovel, all the way along to where the grave was open and the coffin lid flung back. In I shoved them, one by one, in a heap on top of the Turkey Track quilt. I sought out air single bone, even the little separate toe bones that come in the song, a-picking them up with the shovel blade. Somewhere I've heard tell there are two hundred and eight bones in a skeleton. Finally I got all of them. I swung the lid down, and Hallcott fastened the hook into the staple. Then we stood and harked. There was just a breath of sweet, cool breeze in some bushes. Nair other sound that we made out.

Hallcott picked up another of the shovels, and quick we filled that grave in again. We patted it down smooth on top. Again we harked. Nair sound from where we'd buried the bones a second time.

”I reckon he's at rest now,” I felt like a-saying. ”Leastways, all disconnected again thattaway, he can't get up unless some other gone gump comes here and sings that song to him again.”

”For h.e.l.l's sake, whatever was he?” Hallcott asked, of the whole starry night sky.

”Maybe not even science folks could answer that,” I said. ”I'd reckon he was of a devil-people long gone from this country-a people that wasn't man nor either beast; a kind of people that pure down had to go, but gets recollected in ugly old tales of man-eating things. That's all I can think to say to it.”

I flung down the shovel and went back to where my stuff lay against the walnut tree. I slung my blanket roll and soogin on my back, and took my guitar up under my arm. Right that moment, I sure enough didn't have a wish to play it.

”John,” said Hallcott. ”Where you reckon to head now?”

”Preacher Melick kindly invited me to his house. I have it in mind to go there.”

”Me, too, if he's got room for me,” said Hallcott. ”Money wouldn't buy me to go nowheres alone in this night. No sir, nor for many a night to come.”

n.o.body Ever Goes There

That was what Mark Banion's grandparents told him when he was a five-year-old with tousled black hair, looking from the porch and out across Catch River to a big dark building and some small dark ones clumped against the soaring face of Music Mountain, rank with its gloomy huddles of trees.

His grandparents towered high to tell him, the way grownups do when you're little, and they said, ”n.o.body ever goes there,” without explaining, the way grownups do when you're little. Mark was a good, obedient boy. He didn't press the matter. And he sure enough didn't go over.

The town had been named Trimble for somebody who, a hundred and forty-odd years ago, had a stock stand there, entertainment for man and beast. In those old days, stagecoaches and trading wagons rolled along the road chopped through the mountains, and sometimes came great herds of cattle and horses and hogs. Later there had been the railroad that carried hardly anything anymore. Trucks rumbled along Main Street and on, northwest to Tennessee or southeast to Asheville. Trimble was no great size for a town.

Maybe that was why it stayed interesting to look at. It had stores on Main Street, and Mark's grandfather's chair factory, the town hall and the Weekly Record. On side streets stood the bank, the high school where students came by bus from all corners of the rocky county, and three churches. All those things were on this side of Catch River.

But over yonder where n.o.body went, loomed the empty-windowed old textile mill, like the picture of a ruined castle in an outlawed romantic novel. Once it had spun its acres of cloth. People working there had lived in the little houses you could barely see from this side. Those houses had a dusky, secret look, bunched against Music Mountain. When Mark asked why it was called Music Mountain, his grandparents said, ”We never heard tell why.” So once, in his bed at night, Mark thought he heard soft music from across Catch River to his window. When he mentioned that next day, they laughed and said he was making it up.

He stopped talking about that other side of the river, but he kept his curiosity as he grew older, He found out a few things from listening to talk when he played in town. He found out that a police car did cruise over there two or three times a week on the rattly old bridge that n.o.body else used, and that the cruise was made only by daylight. When he was in high school, tall and tanned and a hot-rock tight end on the football team, he and two cla.s.smates started to amble across one Sat.u.r.day. They were nearly halfway to the other side when a policeman came puffing after them and scolded them back. That night, Mark's grandparents told him never to let them hear of doing such a fool thing again. He asked why it was foolish, and his grandmother said, ”n.o.body ever goes there. Ever.” And shut up her mouth with a snap.

One who did tell Mark something about it was Mr. Clover Shelton, the oldest man in Trimble, who whittled birds and bear cubs and rabbits in his little shop behind the Worley Cafe. Once a month he sold a crate of such whittlings to a man who carried them to a tourist bazaar off in another county. Mr. Glover was lamed so that he had an elbow in one knee, like a cricket. He wore checked s.h.i.+rts and bib overalls and a pointed beard as white as dandelion fluff. And he had memories.

”Something other happened there round about seventy-five years back,” he said. ”I was another sight younger than you then. There was the textile mill, and thirty-forty folks a-living in them company houses and a-working two s.h.i.+fts. Then one day, they was all of a sudden all gone.”

”Gone where?” Mark asked him. ”Don't rightly know how to answer that. Just gone. Derwood Neidger the manager, and Sam Brood the foreman, and the whole crew on s.h.i.+ft-gone.” Mr. Clover whittled at the bluejay he was making. ”One night just round sundown, the whistle it blowed and blowed, and folks over here got curiosed up and next day some of 'em headed over across the bridge. And nair soul at the mill, nor neither yet in the houses. The wives and children done gone, too. Everybody.”

”Are you putting me on, Mr. Glover?”

”You done asked me, boy, and I done told you the thing I recollect about it.”

”They just packed up and left?”

”They left, but they sure G.o.d nair packed up. The looms was still a-running. Derwood Neidger's fifty-dollar hat was on the hook, his cigar burnt out in a tray on his desk. Even supper a-standing on the stoves, two-three places. But nair a soul to be seen anywheres.”

Mark looked to see if a grin was caught in the white beard, but Mr. Glover was as solemn as a preacher. ”Where did they go?” Mark asked.

”I just wish you'd tell me. There was a search made, inquiries here and yonder, but none of them folks air showed theirself again.”

”And now,” said Mark, ”n.o.body ever goes there.”

”Well now, a couple-three has gone, one time another . . . from here, and a hunter or so a-c.o.o.ning over Music Mountain from the far side. But none air come back no more. Only them policemen that drives over quick and comes back quick-always by daylight, always three in the car, with pistols and sawed-off shot-guns. Boy,” said Mr. Glover, ”folks just stays off from that there place, like a-staying off from a rocky patch full of snakes, a wet bottom full of chills and fever.”

”And now it's a habit,” said Mark. ”Staying out.”

”Likewise a habit not to go a-talking about it none. Don't you go a-naming it to n.o.body I told you this much.”

Mark played good enough football to get a grant in aid at a lowland college, about enough help to make the difference between going and not going. Summers, he mostly worked hard to keep in condition, in construction and at road mending. By the time he graduated, his grandparents had sold the chair factory and had retired to Florida. Mark came back to Trimble, where they hired him to coach football and baseball and teach physical education at his old high school.