The Beyonders, Page 3

  Now and then he left his painting and strolled here and there. When he found the Longcohrs fiddling with their stalled old cash register, he took it to pieces and made it run again. Similarly, at Duffy Parr's station, he was able to transfer parts from a junked motor to that of a car of widely different make, fitting them in with bewildering success. And, seeing Bo Fletcher perplexed at restoring the cuckoo to his immemorial Swiss clock, Crispin did it for him. All grateful thanks for such things he smiled away. People were glad he was in Sky Notch.

  About sundown of the last Monday in May, a number of people decided to have music and other fun at Longcohr's store. Longcohr and a couple of others pushed the counters back to the walls and hustled crates and bags into corners to clear as much floor as they could. Gander Eye came in as they finished, just too late to give help. He set down his banjo case. Right behind him appeared Slowly with her shiny brown guitar. They sat on old chairs to one side, tuning their instruments with knowing fingers.

  Others entered, listening to the twang of the strings. They were all sorts, middle-aged men and women as well as young ones, and two or three oldsters. Mostly they wore overalls and house dresses. But Duffy Parr had a blindingly gaudy Hawaiian shirt and Peggy Longcohr walked in with a bright red blouse and pale blue shorts, her fair hair in a stormy tumble. Young men and older ones stared. One woman clicked her tongue. People sat on counters, on benches, on boxes and upturned buckets.

  Doc Hannum and Crispin came in. Voices hailed them both. Doc unlatched his case and brought out his dark fiddle. People had heard him say that it had been his father's. He had refused two hundred and fifty dollars for it. Setting it under his strong chin, he also tuned expertly. He found a chair and sat beside Slowly.

  "Let's start with 'Fire in the Mountains,' " said Gander Eye.

  He had armed the thumb and first two fingers of his right hand with clawlike banjo picks. He struck experimental chords. Then he stamped his booted left foot, once, twice, again. All of them began playing together. The old song surged balefully. Burning trees crackled in it as it built to its hurried terror of climax, Fire in the mountains, run, boys, run! Listeners yelled approval. As the song started again, people got up and quickly formed two sets of dancers. Duffy Parr found Peggy Longcohr pulling him into one set. Grinning above his banjo, Gander Eye called the figures:

  "Honor your partner, all hands round,

  Do-si-do and up and down.

  Ladies go gee and men go haw,

  And a thousand miles to Arkansaw ..."

  They danced skillfully, swiftly. Applause at the end. Gander Eye flashed his teeth, and Slowly bowed above her guitar.

  "That was splendid," said Crispin, walking to the musicians. "You're artists. You deserve to be heard farther away."

  "This is far enough," said Doc. "Do you pick any instrument, Jim? How would you like to sit in?"

  Someone called for Gander Eye to sing. The others backed him in "I Wish I Was Some Little Sparrow." Duffy Parr trembled at the last verse:

  "Bat had I known before I courted

  That you would be so cruel to me,

  I'd locked my heart in a silver locket

  And closed it with a golden key."

  "Where did you hear that one?" demanded Crispin.

  "I reckon from my grandsire, he knew a right many tunes."

  "But it's in Percy's Reliques. Bishop Percy published it more than two hundred years ago, and it was old then."

  "I've that book at home," said Doc. "I'll look it out for you, Gander Eye."

  More people were coming in, a dozen upstanding men and women in what looked like clothes homesewn of dull goods. Among them towered a tall figure with a blizzard of white beard.

  "Captain Kimber," said Doc, getting up to shake hands. "Glad you came, your folks, too. Let me introduce you to James Crispin, he's been painting pictures here in Sky Notch."

  "Hidy," said Captain Kimber. He took Crispin's slender hand in his own great fingers. "Doc, we more or less heared you all the way to our place. Thought we'd come and hark at you."

  He greeted the Longcohrs gravely, nodded to Duffy, to Mayor Ballinger, as at a formal ceremony. He and his companions found places to sit, or lounged in corners and against walls. They were impressive, all of them, handsome men and comely women. "I wish you'd play something where Doc could use his fiddle," said Captain Kimber.

  They played "Orange Blossom Special," the evocation of the hurrying train. Doc's fiddle carried the melodic rhythm; Gander Eye tweaked his strings for the sound of the tolling bell. Captain Kimber stalked across to praise it. "Long time since I've seen a train," he said.

  "Long time between trains these days," said Gander Eye. "If you want to ride somewheres, you take the bus."

  "I don't want to ride nowheres," the Captain assured him.

  "I want to know you and your people," ventured Crispin.

  "We keep a right much to ourselves."

  "But you're friends with Doc and Gander Eye."

  "Doc gives us medicine and all like that," said Captain Kimber. "And we rent Gander Eye's land from him on shares."

  "Them tomatoes and corn and potatoes, you never seen the like," said Gander Eye. "I work with them folks now and then, to be neighborly."

  "I'd do the same, for the same reason," offered Crispin.

  Captain Kimber did not seem to hear. "Gander Eye," he said, "play a tune one time and just let our crowd dance it. Would these others mind?"

  "Not them." Gander Eye rose. "Hark at me," he called loudly. "Captain Kimber's folks want to do their dance to help along, so let's just sit and watch. What'll we play you, Captain?"

  "How about 'When the Stars Begin to Fall'?"

  "That's a hymn tune."

  "We dance it."

  Gander Eye stamped his foot to give the time, and they struck into the old, minor-keyed mountain-spiritual. The Kimbers flowed into the open space, forming a circle, men and women alternating. They began to dance, gliding rather than gyrating with the song:

  "Sinner, what will you do

  When the stars begin to fall?"

  Captain Kimber stood in the center of the circle. His feet stirring in time, he turned this way and that. His hands gestured, somewhat as though he conducted an orchestra. The circle moved around him, left to right, the dancers moving in and out, always keeping time and place.

  "You'll hide from the light on the mountain When the stars begin to fall."

  Guided by the Captain's moving hands, the circle tightened and closed toward him, made almost a cloak around him, all bowing close to him. Then they drew back to their first formation.

  Slowly had put down her guitar and risen. She moved to join the circle. They made a space for her. Next moment, as though she had called him, Crispin was in the circle on the opposite side. They moved rhythmically with the others.

  "You'll wish you had salvation When the stars begin to fall."

  The circle made its wide turn, made it again, once more drew in close around the Captain. All bowed and backed away.

  "My Lord, what a morning

  When the stars begin to fall."

  Spread to full extent, the circle moved counterclockwise, then drew in yet again, all bowing inward to Captain Kimber and backing away. The music came to a sudden end, and the circle broke up. Captain Kimber stood in the center of the floor. He looked at Crispin, and Crispin looked back at him. Everyone else looked at both of them, not knowing what to expect.

  They had the only two beards in the room, the Captain's like a great white curtain, Crispin's short and brushed and brown.

  "Where did you learn our dance?" the Captain asked, in a voice like water running deep in a cave.

  "I didn't learn it," replied Crispin evenly. "I watched, and it didn't seem so much like a set of dance figures as a sort of multiple self-expression. I've seen Greeks do something like that, and Basque shepherds in Wyoming."

  "The Greeks are sure enough old people," said Captain Kimber.

  "So are the Basq
ues," Crispin told him. "Some scientists think they go all the way back to Cro-Magnon man, the Stone Age."

  Captain Kimber gazed at Crispin with level blue eyes under white-thatched brows. "Usually nobody butts in on our dancing," he said. "Might could be you meant all right, but you'd ought to inquire us if you could."

  Crispin smiled disarmingly. "If I'd asked, maybe you'd have said no. But I've heard of you people, and I want to know you well." Again he smiled. "About the way you worship—your baptizing, for instance."

  Absolute silence fell. Several Kimber men seemed to glare. Captain Kimber stroked his beard.

  "You make yourself sound good," he pronounced, then fell silent himself, with his face going into deep lines of thought. He might have been extracting a square root in his mind. Finally:

  "These here Sky Notch folks let on to like you." The great bearded head turned. "Is that a fact, Slowly?"

  "Mr. Crispin's all right, Captain," said her gentle voice.

  "Well, let's see. It's the full of the moon day after tomorrow night. Slowly, it's for you to say. If you want to come over, you can fetch him with you."

  Everybody breathed deeply. It may have been relief, more likely it was amazement. No such permission had ever been given anyone from Sky Notch, not even Doc, not even Gander Eye. Captain Kimber walked over to the chairs where Doc and Gander Eye sat.

  "Why not some more music?" he asked. "Somebody else might could want to stomp out a dance. "

  "Why, sure," said Doc. "What'll we play, Gander Eye?"

  "Let's try 'Arkansas Traveller.' "

  They swung into the lively tune together. People got up and formed fours. Duffy made a step toward Slowly, reaching for her, but she had already taken Crispin's hand. The dancers moved into figures as Gander Eye called them:

  "Right and left . . . swing your partner . . . bird in a cage . . . down the middle . . ."

  The Kimbers stood off and watched courteously. When the dance was finished, the Kimbers applauded. Everybody applauded except for Duffy Parr. He had gone into the shadows at the back, drinking unhappily all by himself.

  The music and dancing were over. It was past midnight. Gander Eye and Duffy sat in the lean-to behind Duffy's station where Duffy ate and slept and sometimes sold blockade. Its walls were of imitation wood panelling, dull gray and hung with clothes and cooking utensils and calendars for this year, the year before, and the year before that. Above the square table where they sat hung a naked electric lamp, blazing white as a midwinter star. Duffy drank some clear blockade from a fruit jar. A drop hung to his chin like a tear.

  "I'm done for, Gander Eye," he said lifelessly. "Done for and out in the cold."

  Gander Eye took the jar and sipped in turn. "Hark at me, Duffy, have you seen some sort of strange thing using 'round in the woods here? Maybe as big as a big calf, with a softly shine to it and leaves no tracks?"

  "Don't go asking me no crazy riddles. I'm telling you a fact, my heart's broke. I ain't got nothing left to live for, no way." He shut one eye to gaze more directly at the table top. Even his gaudy shirt seemed subdued. "You don't know aught about this here kind of thing, Gander Eye. You want a girl, you always get her."

  "Not always." Gander Eye sipped again and set down the jar. Duffy clutched at it as at an anchor in a reeling world. He drank noisily.

  "You never been like me thisaway," he said as he came up from the drink. "Loving a girl and she won't no more than look at you like as if you was a lost soul. You know how I been about Slowly, year in, year out."

  "I know," said Gander Eye, wondering how often Duffy had told him.

  "Lately I thought I might could have a chance. But then this Jim Crispin comes, and he's got her."

  "I never reckoned nobody'd got her," Gander Eye said.

  Yet again Duffy took a deep drink. "They went home together, didn't they? I don't fault Jim, I like him. But he's got Slowly, and that's the end of things for me. The pure down dead end of things. What I got to live for?"

  If he had meant the question rhetorically, Gander Eye did not choose to take it so. "There's always another drink to live for," he said.

  "And that's about all." Duffy drank and set down the jar. "Now I've done took it, and that's all she wrote."

  "All who wrote?" inquired Gander Eye, from deep inside where he was enjoying himself to the full.

  "That's all there is," said Duffy, a laborious word at a time. "My heart's broke, and I'm a-going to kill myself."

  Fumblingly he opened a drawer in the table and groped inside. His broad hand brought out a revolver, a blue .38 police special. "Going to shoot myself, and you tell Slowly it was for her."

  Slowly, unsurely, he lifted the pistol toward his temple.

  "Now hold on," said Gander Eye, speaking sharply at last.

  "Ain't no way you can stop me," Duffy assured him thickly. "Ain't nobody can stop me."

  "You're doing stupid," Gander Eye snapped. "That's the worst thing you can do."

  Duffy lowered the pistol a trifle. His other hand lifted the jar and he drank from it and set it down again, almost overturning it.

  "It's the best thing I can do," he mumbled doggedly. "Take myself out of her way. Put that on my grave, I took myself out of Slowly's way."

  "You don't understand," said Gander Eye.

  "I understand right well." The pistol wavered upward again.

  "That's the unpardonable sin, Duffy, a-killing yourself."

  The pistol came all the way down. Duffy crumpled his brow in thought. "I always heard tell the unpardonable sin's playing with yourself. "

  "If that's so, this here world's full up of unpardonable sinners." Stoically, Gander Eye held back a laugh. "No, Duffy, suicide's the unpardonable sin. Look at it thisaway, whatever other sin you do, you can pray it out. Be saved."

  "Saved," Duffy half crooned, as though it were the first word of a song.

  "You kill yourself, you ain't got time for prayer," Gander Eye elaborated. "You've done it, you're dead and gone to hell. Can't pray it out, can't ask to be forgiven."

  Duffy had laid the pistol on the table, but kept his hand on it.

  "What happens, then?" he appealed. "How do we know about sin and hell and all like that? The Kimbers give up on the church long ago. Maybe they know what the score is."

  "Maybe nobody knows, maybe we got it all to find out," said Gander Eye. "But 1 wouldn't die with no unpardonable sin on me." He held out his hand. "Let me have that there gun."

  "No, you don't." Duffy quickly pointed it. "You make an awkward move, I'll give you the part of it you don't want. What you aim to do?"

  "Maybe do you a favor," said Gander Eye easily. "Why don't I do the thing for you? Shoot you dead."

  Duffy's eyes closed all the way, and only one of them opened. He moaned in his throat.

  "If I done that," went on Gander Eye. "I'd be just a murderer. I could pray it out. You wouldn't have shot yourself, you'd come clear."

  "And you'd be flung under the jail for murder."

  "No, I'd put the gun in your hand and folks would think you'd done it. Slowly would mourn because you'd died for her." Again he held out his hand. "Give it here."

  "You hold your tater," said Duffy, flourishing the pistol. "If you killed me and I let it happen, that'd still be suicide."

  "Not if you shut your eyes tight," said Gander Eye. "Then you wouldn't see it coming. It would be a surprise for you."

  "And you'd do this thing for me?"

  "Yes," said Gander Eye. "We been choice friends this long time, and I know you'd do it for me. " He watched Duffy. "When you're in your coffin, I'll come pick my banjo and sing you a song." He thought a moment. "I'll sing 'Bury Me on the Side of the Mountain.' "

  "Do that," said Duffy. "Sing that one."

  He shoved the pistol across the table and Gander Eye picked it up. He flipped open the cylinder. Five cartridges were in the chambers, and the sixth was empty for the hammer to come down on it.

  "Easy," warned Duffy. "That there trigg
er is hair-set."

  "I've shot with this gun." Gander Eye pushed the cylinder back. "Now stand over yonder beside the door and look thisaway."

  "You said close my eyes." Duffy got up unsteadily and shuffled across the room. "Said not to watch, not know when it happens."

  "That's right, close your eyes."

  Duffy closed them, set his feet apart. "Ready," he breathed.

  Sitting squarely, Gander Eye set his right elbow on the table and steadied his right wrist with his left hand, mountain marksman fashion. He caught and held half a breath of air and thumbed back the hammer. Closing his left eye, he sighted expertly and touched the trigger.

  The gun went off ringingly. Duffy reeled halfway around, eyes staring. On the left side of his head, just above the ear, blood sprang brightly from the gash Gander Eye had contrived to make there.

  "Stand still," Gander Eye said happily. "I'll try it again."

  Duffy snatched the knob, tore the door open, and rushed out. His wild scream winged up to the moon high above him. Crookedly he ran out on Main Street, stopped, and screamed more loudly still.

  Startled voices rose in the dark here and there. From Longcohr's house Peggy came running. She wore purple-and-pink pajamas. The jacket front was open, and her naked breasts surged and tossed like billows.

  "Duffy!" she shrilled out, and hurried close to him. "Whatever in the name of gracious happened to you?"

  "I near about got myself killed," he gurgled.

  She flung her arms around him and plastered herself to him. It was in that posture that William Longcohr found them when he emerged from the house in trousers and T-shirt with a shotgun in his ready hands.

  "Papa," cried Peggy, "Duffy's in a fix. He barely got away with his life."

  "He ain't away with it yet," said Longcohr, surveying the considerable disarray of his daughter. "Not without he tells me when you two is to be a-getting married. "