Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC Read Online Free Page A

The
girl he'd called Winnie just leaned against the wall as if she was tired. I
asked: "Why did he light out like that?"
                 She
took the quarter. "It doesn't scare me much," she said, and rung it
up on the old cash register. "All that scares me is—Mr. Onselm."
                 I
picked up the crackers and sardines. "He's courting you?"
                 She
shuddered, though it was warm. "I'd sooner be in a hole with a snake than
be courted by Mr. Onselm."
                 "Why
not just tell him to leave you be?"
                 "He'd
not listen. He always does what pleases him. Nobody dares stop him."
                 "I
know, I heard about the mules he stopped and the poor lady he dumbed." I
returned to the other subject. "Why did he squinch away from money? I'd
reckon he loved money."
                 She
shook her head. The thundercloud hair stirred. "He never needs any. Takes
what he wants without paying."
                 "Including
you?"
                 "Not
including me yet. But he'll do that later."
                 I
laid down my dime I had left. "Let's have a coke drink, you and me."
                 She
rang up the dime too. There was a sort of dry chuckle at the door, like a stone
rattling down the well. I looked quick, and saw two long, dark wings flop away
from the door. The Ugly Bird had spied.
                 But
the girl Winnie smiled over her coke drink. I asked permission to open my fish
and crackers on the bench outside. She nodded yes. Out there, I worried open
the can with my pocket knife and had my meal. When I finished I put the trash
in a garbage barrel and tuned my guitar. Winnie came out and harked while I
sang about the girl whose hair was like the thundercloud before the rain comes
down, and she blushed till she was pale no more.
                 Then
we talked about Mr. Onselm and the Ugly Bird, and how they had been seen in two
different places at once—
                 "But,"
said Winnie, "who's seen them together?"
                 "Shoo,
I have," I told her. "Not long ago." And I told how Mr. Onselm
sat, all sick and miserable, and the conjer bird crowded up against him.
                 She
heard all that, with eyes staring off, as if looking for something far away.
Finally she said, "John, you say it crowded up to him."
                 "It
did that thing, as if it studied to get right inside him."
                 "Inside
him!"
                 "That's
right."
                 "Makes
me think of something I heard somebody say about hoodoo folks," she said.
"How the hoodoo folks sometimes put a stuff out, mostly in dark rooms. And
it's part of them, but it takes the shape and mind of another person—once in a
while, the shape and mind of an animal."
                 "Shoo,"
I said again, "now you mention it, I've heard the same thing. It might
explain those Louisiana stories about werewolves."
                 "Shape
and mind of an animal," she repeated herself. "Maybe the shape and
mind of a bird. And they call it echo—no, ecto—ecto—"
                 "Ectoplasm,"
I remembered. "That's right. I've even seen pictures they say were taken
of such stuff. It seems to live—it'll yell, if you grab it or hit it or stab
it."
                 "Could
maybe—" she began, but a musical voice interrupted.
                 "He's
been around here long enough," said Mr. Onselm.
                 He
was back. With him were three men. Mr. Bristow, and a tall, gawky man with
splay shoulders and a black-stubbled chin, and a soft, smooth-grizzled man with
an old fancy vest over his white shirt.
                 Mr.
Onselm acted like the leader of a posse. "Sam Heaver," he crooned at
the soft, grizzled one, "can tramps loaf at your store?"