Read Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02 for Free Online

Warren set out on the table. He likewise poured us more of that good coffee.
Beside each stack Callie served a couple of brown sausage patties. Then we all
sat down together and Mr. Ben said a blessing. We squeezed honey out of the
combs with a spoon and had us as good-tasting a breakfast as a man could call
for. That honey had the tang of sour-wood to it. The sort of eating that makes
you want to go out in the sun and loosen up and breathe deep, like a lizard.
                 “I’ll
wash up here,” said Callie, "and then maybe Jackson will go with me to fetch back the rest of
that good honey.”
                 "No,
daughter, you go on now,” Mr. Ben bade her. " Me and John will do these here dishes one time. Youins can take the Immer
Settlement Trail. I broke off twigs to show youins where to head into the
woods.”
                 "All
right, but sometimes that trail gives me a squiggly feeling,” said Callie, and
she hiked her pretty shoulders to show what she meant.
                 "It
ain't no far way from here,” said Ben Gray, "and
anyway, I'd like for Jackson to see if he picks up that same feeling while he walks the trail.”
                 The
two of them found big hats and draped on the netting, and each of them took two
big kettles to pack the honey in. Out they went, a-talking to one another right
fast and friendly.
                 We
filled a big pan with hot water and Mr. Ben Gray washed the dishes while I
wiped them on a towel made of a flour sack.
                 "I
got them out of here so we could talk,” Mr. Ben said.
                "John, what's your idea of this
Jackson Warren man?” "I've only just met him,” was all I could reply.
"I like him so far.”
                "Well, I ain't been a-knowing
him but a couple days my own self. I reckon him to be all right, a-being as how
Mr. Thunstone sent a letter by him to say he was a good fellow. But after all,
I got to pay him some mind, the way he seems to like Callie and Callie don't seem to hate him.”
                 He
went on to tell me how much store he set by Callie. She'd been a scholar at
Flomoy College, a-studying to be a music teacher, but when her mother had died
all of a sudden, she'd come right back home to keep house for her daddy. And
she seemed to feel happy about that, and nowadays her only music study was the
old, old songs of the mountains. It seemed to Mr. Ben that Callie wanted to
leam those pretty much the same way I'd always wanted. But about Jackson
Warren:
                 "It's
always been my way to make up my mind quick on a stranger,” he said.
"Decide by just how I feel about him if I'm a-going to trust him as a
friend, or either not even talk to him if I ain't got
a business reason to. And I ain't much gone wrong on that sort of plan. I liked
Jackson Warren from the first five minutes. Now, of course, he's older than
Callie. Maybe twelve-fifteen years.”
                 "Sure
enough,” I said, "and I take notice that he reminds that thing to her,
wants her to take it into air thought about him. I call that a-being honest.”
                 "And
I agree you there. Well, let's talk about something else. The
Shonokins.”
                 While
we finished up the last of the dishes and put them away, we talked about the
Shonokins. He allowed that they'd been sort of to themselves, off there in that
tom-down old settlement of Immer where the folks had left out and the Shonokins
had come in. The Shonokins seemed to do all right for themselves there. One
place and another they’d even helped some of the folks still a-living round,
had cured sickness with plants they knew and the like of that. But he didn’t
relish what he kept a-calling the “outlander” way they had, and how they wanted
to pester him to sell his place, and especially how they went on about that
alexandrite stone he always