Part 27 (1/2)
But Sarah Ann kept the golden slippers, and n.o.body could see any reason why not. She wore them to marry up with Clay, and danced in them while I played song after song-”Pretty Fair Maid,” and ”Willie From the Western States,” and ”I Dreamed Last Night of My True Love, All In My Arms I Had Her.”
Preacher Miller said the service, what G.o.d hath joined together let no man put asunder. I kissed the pretty-cheeked bride, and so did many a kind friend, but the only man of us she kissed back was long tall Clay Herron.
Walk Like a Mountain
Manly Wade Wellman
Once at Sky Notch, I never grudged the trouble getting there. It was so purely pretty, I was glad outlanders weren't apt to crowd in and spoil all.
The Notch cut through a tall peak that stood against a higher cliff. Steep brushy faces each side, and a falls at the back that made a trickly branch, with five pole cabins along the waterside. Corn patches, a few pigs in pens, chickens running round, a cow tied up one place. It wondered me how they ever got a cow up there. Laurels grew, and viney climbers, and mountain flowers in bunches and sprawls. The water made a happy noise. n.o.body moved in the yards or at the doors, so I stopped by a tree and hollered the first house.
”h.e.l.lo the house!” I called. ”h.e.l.lo to the man of the house and all inside!”
A plank door opened about an inch. ”h.e.l.lo to yourself,” a gritty voice replied me. ”Who's that out there with the guitar?”
I moved from under the tree. ”My name's John. Does Mr. Lane Jarrett live up here? Got word for him, from his old place on Drowning Creek.”
The door opened wider, and there stood a skimpy little man with gray whiskers. ”That's funny,” he said.
The funnyness I didn't see. I'd known Mr. Lane Jarrett years back, before he and his daughter Page moved to Sky Notch. When his uncle Jeb died and heired him some money, I'd agreed to carry it to Sky Notch, and, gentlemen, it was a long, weary way getting there.
First a bus, up and down and through mountains, stop at every pig trough for pa.s.sengers. I got off at Charlie's Jump-who Charlie was, nor why or when he jumped, n.o.body there can rightly say. Climbed a high ridge, got down the far side, then a twenty-devil way along a deep valley river. Up another height, another beyond that. Then it was night, and n.o.body would want to climb the steep face above, because it was grown up with the kind of trees that the dark melts in around you. I made a fire and took my supper rations from my pocket. Woke at dawn and climbed up and up and up, and here I was.
”Funny, about Lane Jarrett,” gritted the little man out. ”Sure you ain't come about that business?”
I looked up the walls of the Notch. Their tops were toothy rocks, the way you'd think those walls were two jaws, near about to close on what they'd caught inside them. Right then the Notch didn't look so pretty.
”Can't say, sir' ” I told him, ”till I know what business you mean.”
”Rafe Enoch!” he boomed out the name, like firing two barrels of a gun. ”That's what I mean!” Then he appeared to remember his manners, and came out, puny in his jeans and no shoes on his feet. ”I'm Oakman Dillon,” he named himself. ”John-that's your name, huh? Why you got that guitar?”
”I pick it some,” I replied him. ”I sing.” Tweaking the silver strings, I sang a few lines:
By the sh.o.r.e of Lonesome River Where the waters ebb and flow, Where the wild red rose is budding And the pleasant breezes blow, It was there I spied the lady That forever I adore, As she was a-lonesome walking By the Lonesome River sh.o.r.e. . . .
”Rafe Enoch!” he grit-grated out again. ”Carried off Miss Page Jarrett the way you'd think she was a banty chicken!”
Slap, I quieted the strings with my palm. ”Mr. Lane's little daughter Page was stolen away?”
He sat down on the door-log. ”She ain't suchy little daughter. She's six foot maybe three inches-taller'n you, even. Best-looking big woman I ever seen, brown hair like a wagonful of home-cured tobacco, eyes green and bright as a fresh-squoze grape pulp.”
”Fact?” I said, thinking Page must have changed a right much from the long-leggy little girl I'd known, must have grown tall like her daddy and her dead mammy, only taller. ”Is this Rafe Enoch so big, a girl like that is right for him?”
”She's puny for him. He's near about eight foot tall, best I judge.” Oakman Dillon's gray whiskers stuck out like a mad cat's. ”He just grabbed her last evening where she walked near the fall, and up them rocks he went like a possum up a jack oak.”
I sat down on a stump. ”Mr. Lane's a friend of mine. How can I help?”
”n.o.body can't help, John. It's right hard to think you ain't knowing all this stuff. Don't many strangers come up here. Ain't room for many to live in the Notch.”
”Five homes,” I counted them with my eyes.
”Six. Rafe Enoch lives up at the top.” He jerked his head toward the falls. ”Been there a long spell-years, I reckon, since when he run off from somewhere. Heard tell he broke a circus man's neck for offering him a job with a show. He built up top the falls, and he used to get along with us. Thanked us kindly for a mess of beans or roasting ears. Lately, he's been mean-talking.”
”n.o.body mean-talked him back? Five houses in the Notch mean five grown men-couldn't they handle one giant?”
”Giant size ain't all Rafe Enoch's got.” Again the whiskers bristled up. ”Why! He's got powers, like he can make rain fall-”
”No,” I put in quick. ”Can't even science men do that for sure.”
”I ain't studying science men. Rafe Enoch says for rain to fall, down it comes, ary hour day or night he speaks. Could drown us out of this Notch if he had the mind.”
”And he carried off Page Jarrett,” I went back to what he'd said.
”That's the whole truth, John. Up he went with her in the evening, daring us to follow him.”
I asked, ”Where are the other Notch folks?”
”Up yonder by the falls. Since dawn we've been talking Lane Jarrett back from climbing up and getting himself neck-twisted. I came to feed my pigs, now I'm heading back.”
”I'll go with you,” I said, and since he didn't deny me I went.
The falls dropped down a height as straight up as a chimney, and a many times taller, and their water boiled off down the branch. Either side of the falls, the big boulder rocks piled on top of each other like stones in an almighty big wall. Looking up, I saw clouds boiling in the sky, dark and heavy and wet-looking, and I remembered what Oakman Dillon had said about big Rafe Enoch's rain-making.
A bunch of folks were there, and I made out Mr. Lane Jarrett, bald on top and bigger than the rest. I touched his arm, and he turned.
”John! Ain't seen you a way-back time. Let me make you known to these here folks.”
He called them their first names-Yoot, Ollie, Bill, Duff, Miss Lulie, Miss Sara May and so on. I said I had a pocketful of money for him, but he just nodded and wanted to know did I know what was going on.
”Looky up against them clouds, John. That pointy rock. My girl Page is on it.”
The rock stuck out like a spur on a rooster's leg. Somebody was scrouched down on it, with the clouds getting blacker above, and a long, long drop below.
”I see her blue dress,” allowed Mr. Oakman, squinting up. ”How long she been there, Lane?”
”I spotted her at sunup,” said Mr. Lane. ”She must have got away from Rafe Enoch and crope out there during the night. I'm going to climb.”
He started to s.h.i.+nny up a rock, up clear of the brush around us. And, Lord, the laugh that came down on us! Like a big splash of water, it was clear and strong, and like water it made us s.h.i.+ver. Mr. Oakman caught onto Mr. Lane's ankle and dragged him down.
”Ain't a G.o.d's thing ary man or woman can do, with him waiting up there,” Mr. Oakman argued.
”But he's got Page,” said Mr. Lane busting loose again. I grabbed his elbow.