The Year's Best Science Fiction 9

MOURNING SONG Charles Beaumont

He had a raven on his shoulder and two empty holes where his eyes used to be, if he ever had eyes, and he carried a guitar. I saw him first when the snow was walking over the hills, turning them to white velvet. I felt good, I felt young, and, in the dead of winter, the spring wind was in my blood. It was a long time ago.

I remember I was out back helping my daddy chop up firewood. He had the ax up in the air, about to bring it down on the piece of soft bark I was holding on the block, when he stopped, with the ax in the air, and looked off in the direction of Hunter’s Hill. I let go of the bark and looked off that way, too. And that’s when I saw Solomon for the first time. But it wasn’t the way he looked that scared me, he was too far away to see anything except that it was somebody walking in the snow. It was the way my daddy looked. My daddy was a good big man, as big as any I ever met or saw, and I hadn’t ever seen him look afraid, but he looked afraid now. He put the ax down and stood there, not moving or saying anything, only standing there breathing out little puffs of cold and looking afraid.

Then, after a while, the man walking in the snow walked up to the road by our house, and I saw him close. Maybe

I wouldn’t have been scared if it hadn’t been for the way my daddy was acting, but probably I would have been. I was little then and I hadn’t ever in my whole life seen anybody without eyes in his head.

My daddy waited until he saw that the blind man wasn’t coming to our house, then he grabbed me up off the ground and hugged me so hard it hurt my chest. I asked him what the matter was, but he didn’t answer. He just started off down the road after the blind man. I went along with him, waiting for him to tell me to get on home, but he didn’t. We walked for over two miles, and every time we came to somebody’s house, the people who lived there would stand out in the yard or inside at the window, watching, the way my daddy did, and when we passed, they’d come out and join the parade. Pretty soon there was us and Jake Overton and his wife and Peter Briley and old man Jaspers and the whole Randall family, and more I can’t remember, trailing down along the road together, following the blind man.

I thought sure, somebody said.

So did I, my daddy said.

Who you suppose it’s going to be? Mr. Briley said.

My daddy shook his head. Nobody knows, he said. Except him.

We walked another mile and a half, cutting across the Pritchetts’ field where the snow was up to my knees, and nobody said anything more. I knew the only place there was in this direction, but it didn’t mean anything to me because nobody had ever told me anything about Solomon. I know I wondered as we walked how you could see where you were going if you didn’t have eyes, and I couldn’t see how you could, but that old man knew just exactly where he was going. You knew that by looking at him and watching how he went around stumps and logs on the ground. Once I thought he was going to walk into the plow the Pritchetts left out to rust when they got their new one, but he didn’t. He walked right around it, and I kept wondering how a thing like that could be. I closed my eyes and tried it but I couldn’t keep them closed more than a couple of seconds. When I opened them, I saw that my daddy and all the rest of the people had stopped walking. All except the old blind man.

We were out by the Schreiber place. It looked warm and nice inside with all the lamps burning and gray smoke climbing straight up Out of the chimney. Probably the Schreibers were having their breakfast.

Which one, I wonder, my daddy said to Mr. Randall.

The old one, Mr. Randall said.

Yes, that’s probably right.

He’s going on eighty.

My daddy nodded his head and watched as the old blind man walked through the snow to the big pine tree that sat in the Schreibers’ yard and lifted the guitar strap over his head.

Going on eighty, Mr. Randall said again.

Yes.

It’s the old man, all right.

Everybody quieted down then. Everybody stood still in the snow, waiting, what for I didn’t know. I wanted to pee. More than anything in the world I wanted to pee, right there in the snow, and watch it melt and steam in the air. But I couldn’t, any more than I could at church. In a way, this was like church.

Up ahead the old blind man leaned his face next to the guitar and touched the strings. I don’t know how he thought he was going to play anything in this cold. It was cold enough to make your ears hurt. But he kept touching the strings, and the sound they made was just like the sound any guitar makes when you’re trying to get it tuned, except maybe louder. I tried to look at his face, but I couldn’t because of those holes where his eyes should have been. They made me sick. I wondered if they went all the way up into his head. And if they didn’t, where did they stop?

He began to play the Mourning Song then. I didn’t know that was the name of it, or what it meant, or anything, but I knew I didn’t like it. It made me think of sad things, like when I went hunting by myself one time and this doe I shot fell down and got up again and started running around in circles and finally died right in front of me, looking at me.

Or when I caught a bunch of catfish at the slew without bait. I carried them home and everything was fine until I saw that two of them were still alive. So I did what my daddy said was a crazy thing. I put those catfish in a pail of water and carried them back to the slew and dumped them in. I thought I’d see them swim away happy, but they didn’t. They sank just like rocks.

That song made me think of things like that, and that was why I didn’t like it then, even before I knew anything about it.

Then the old blind man started singing. You wouldn’t expect anything but a croak to come out of that toothless old mouth, but if you could take away what he was singing, and the way he looked, you would have to admit he could really sing. He had a high, sweet voice, almost like a woman’s, and you could understand every word.

Long valley, dark valley ... hear the wind cry!...in darkness we’re born and in darkness we die...all alone, alone, to the end of our days...to the end of our days, all alone...

Mr. Schreiber came outside in his shirtsleeves. He looked even more afraid then my daddy had looked. His face was white and you could see, even from where I stood, that he was shaking. His wife came out after a minute and started crying, then his father, old man Schreiber, and his boy Carl who was my age.

The old blind man went on singing for a long time, then he stopped and put the guitar back over his head and walked away. The Schreibers went back into their house. My daddy and I went back to our own house, not following the blind man this time but taking the long way.

We didn’t talk about it till late that night. Then my daddy came into my room and sat down on my bed. He told me that the blind man’s name was Solomon, at least that was what people called him because he was so old. Nobody knew how he lost his eyes or how he got around without them, but there were lots of things that Solomon could do that nobody understood.

Like what? I asked.

He scratched his cheek and waited a while before answering. He can smell death, he said, finally. He can smell it coming a hundred miles off. I don’t know how. But he can.

I said I didn’t believe it. My daddy just shrugged his shoulders and told me I was young. When I got older I’d see how Solomon was never wrong. Whenever Solomon walked up to you, he said, and unslung that guitar and started to sing the Mourning Song, you might as well tell them to dig deep.

That was why he had looked so scared that morning. He thought Solomon was coming to our house.

But didn’t nothing happen to the Schreibers, I said.

You wait, my daddy said. He’ll keep on going there and then one day he’ll quit.

I did wait, almost a week, but nothing happened, and I began to wonder if my daddy wasn’t getting a little feeble, talking about people smelling death and all. Then on the eighth day, Mr. Randall came over.

The old man? my daddy asked.

Mr. Randall shook his head. Alex, he said, meaning Mr. Schreiber. Took sick last night.

My daddy turned to me and said, You believe it now?

And I said, No, I don’t. I said I believed that an old blind man walked up to the Schreibers’ house and sang a song and I believed that Mr. Alex Schreiber died a little over a week later but I didn’t believe any man could know it was going to happen. Only God could know such a thing, I said.

Maybe Solomon is God, said my daddy.

That dirty old man without any eyes in his head?

Maybe. You know what God looks like?

No, but I know He ain’t blind, I know He don’t walk around with a bird on His shoulder, I know He don’t sing songs.

How do you know that?

I just do.

Well and good, but take heed—if you see him coming, if you just happen to see him coming down from Hunter’s Hill some morning, and he passes near you, don’t you let him hear you talking like that.

What’ll he do?

I don’t know. If he can do what he can do, what can’t he do?

He can’t scare me, that’s what—and he can’t make me believe in him! You’re crazy! I said to my daddy, and he hit me, but I went on saying it at the top of my voice until I fell asleep.

I saw Solomon again about six months later, or maybe a year, I don’t remember. Looking the same, walking the same, and half the valley after him. I didn’t go along. My daddy did, but I didn’t. They all went to the Briley house that time. And Mrs. Briley died four days afterward. But I said I didn’t believe it.

When Mr. Randall himself came running over one night saying he’d had a call from Solomon and him and my daddy got drunk on wine, and Mr. Randall died the next day, even then I didn’t believe it.

How much proof you got to have, boy? my daddy said.

I couldn’t make it clear then what it was that was tormenting me. I couldn’t ask the right questions, because they weren’t really questions, then, just feelings. Like, this ain’t the world here, this place. People die all over the world, millions of people, every day, every minute. You mean you think that old bastard is carting off all over the world? You think he goes to China in that outfit and plays that guitar? And what about the bird? Birds don’t live long. What’s he got, a dozen of ‘em? And, I wanted to know, why does he do what he does? What the hell’s the point of telling somebody they’re going to die if they can’t do something about it?

I couldn’t believe in Solomon because I couldn’t understand him. I did say that, and my daddy said, If you could understand him, he wouldn’t be Solomon.

What’s that mean?

Means he’s mysterious.

So’s fire, I said. But I wouldn’t believe in it if it couldn’t put out heat or burn anything.

You’re young.

I was, too. Eleven.

By the time I was grown, I had the questions, and I had the answers. But I couldn’t tell my daddy. On my eighteenth birthday, we were whooping it up, drinking liquor and singing, when somebody looked out the window. Everything stopped then. My daddy didn’t even bother to go look.

Could be for anybody here, somebody said.

No. I feel it. It’s for me.

You don’t know.

I know. Lonnie’s a man now, it’s time for me to move on.

I went to the window. Some of the people we hadn’t invited were behind Solomon, gazing at our house. He had the guitar unslung, and he was strumming it.

The people finished up their drinking quietly and looked at my daddy and went back out. But they didn’t go home, not until Solomon did.

I was drunk, and this made me drunker. I remember I laughed, but my daddy, he didn’t and in a little while he went on up to bed. I never saw him look so tired, so worn out, never, and I saw him work in the field eighteen hours a day for months.

Nothing happened the first week. Nor the second. But he didn’t get out of bed that whole time, and he didn’t talk. He just waited.

The third week, it came. He started coughing. Next day he called for my mother, dead those eighteen years. Doc Garson came and looked him over. Pneumonia, he said.

That morning my daddy was still and cold.

I hated Solomon then, for the first time, and I hated the people in the valley. But I couldn’t do anything about it. We didn’t have any money, and nobody would ever want to buy the place. So I settled in, alone, and worked and tried to forget about the old blind man. He came to me at night, in my sleep, and I’d wake up, mad, sometimes, but I knew a dream couldn’t hurt you, unless you let it. And I didn’t plan to let it.

Etilla said I was right, and I think that’s when I first saw her. I’d seen her every Sunday at church, with her ma, when my daddy and I went there together, but she was only a little thing then. I didn’t even know who she was when I started buying grain from her at the store, and when she told me her name, I just couldn’t believe it. I don’t think there’s been many prettier girls in the world. Her hair wasn’t golden, it was kind of brown, her figure wasn’t skinny like the pictures, but full and lush and she had freckles, but I knew, in a hurry, that she was the woman I wanted. I hadn’t ever felt the way she made me feel. Excited and nervous and hot.

It’s love, Bundy Matthews said. He was my best friend. You’re in love.

How do you know?

I just do.

But what if she ain’t in love with me?

You’re a fool.

How can I find out?

You can’t, not if you don’t do anything except stand there and buy grain off of her.

It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, asking her to walk with me, but I did it, and she said yes, and that’s when I found out that Bundy was right. All the nervousness went away, but the excitement and heat, they stayed. I felt wonderful. Every time I touched her it made my whole life up to then nothing but getting ready, just twenty-four years of getting ready to touch Etilla.

Nothing she wouldn’t talk about, that girl. Even Solomon, who never was talked about, ever, by anybody else, except when he was traveling.

Wonder where he lives, I’d say.

Oh, probably in some cave somewhere, she’d say.

Wonder how he lives.

I don’t know what you mean.

I mean, where does he find anything to eat.

I never thought about it.

Stray dogs, probably.

And we’d laugh and then talk about something else. Then, after we’d courted six months, I asked Etilla to be my bride, and she said yes.

We set the date for the first of June, and I mean to tell you, I worked from dawn to dusk, every day, just to keep from thinking about it. I wanted so much to hold her in my arms and wake up to find her there beside me in the bed that it hurt, all over. It wasn’t like any other hurt. It didn’t go away, or ease. It just stayed inside me, growing, till I honestly thought I’d break open.

I was thinking about that one day, out in the field, when I heard the music. I let go of the plow and turned around, and there he was, maybe a hundred yards away. I hadn’t laid eyes on him in six years, but he didn’t look any different. Neither did the holes where his eyes used to be, or the raven. Or the people behind him.

Long valley, dark valley ... hear the wind cry!...in darkness we’re born and in darkness we die...all alone, alone, to the end of our days ... to the end of our days, all alone...

I felt the old hate come up then, because seeing him made me see my daddy again, and the look on my daddy’s face when he held the ax in the air that first time and when he died.

But the hate didn’t last long, because there wasn’t any part of me that was afraid, and that made me feel good. I waited for him to finish and when he did, I clapped applause for him, laughed, and turned back to my plowing. I didn’t even bother to see when they all left.

Next night I went over to Etilla’s, the way I did every Thursday night. Her mother opened the door, and looked at me and said, You can’t come in, Lonnie.

Why not?

Why not? You know why not.

No, I don’t. Is it about me and Etilla?

You might say. I’m sorry, boy.

What’d I do?

No answer.

I didn’t do anything. I haven’t done what you think. We said we’d wait.

She just looked at me.

You hear me? I promised we’d wait, and that’s what we’re going to do. Now let me in.

I could see Etilla standing back in the room, looking at me. She was crying. But her mother wouldn’t open the door any farther.

Tell me!

He called on you, boy. Don’t you know that?

Who?

Solomon.

So what? I don’t believe in all that stuff, and neither does Etilla. It’s a lot of lies. He’s just a crazy old blind man. Isn’t that right, Etilla!

I got mad then, when she didn’t answer, and I pushed the door open and went in. Etilla started to run. I grabbed her. It’s lies, I said. We agreed on that!

I didn’t think he’d call on you, Lonnie, she said.

Her mother came up. He never fails, she said. He’s never been wrong in forty years.

I know, and I know why, too! I told her. Because everybody believes in him. They never ask questions, they never think, they just believe, and that’s why he never fails! Well, I want you to know I don’t believe and neither does Etilla and that’s why this is one time he’s going to fail!

I could have been talking to cordwood.

Etilla, tell your mother I’m right! Tell her we’re going to be married, just like we planned, and we aren’t going to let an old man with a guitar spoil our life.

I won’t let her marry you, the old woman said. Not now. I like you, Lonnie Younger, you’re a good, strong, hardworking boy, and you’d have made my girl a fine husband, but you’re going to die soon and I don’t want Etilla to be a widow. Do you?

No, you know I don’t, but I keep trying to tell you, I’m not going to die. I’m healthy, and if you don’t believe it, you go ask Doc Garson.

It wouldn’t matter. Your daddy was healthy, remember, and so was Ed Kimball and Mrs. Jackson and little Petey Griffin, and it didn’t matter. Solomon knows. He smells it

The way Etilla looked at me, I could have been dead already.

I went home then and tried to get drunk, but it didn’t work. Nothing worked. I kept thinking about that old man and how he took the one thing I had left, the one good, beautiful thing in my whole life, and tore it away from me.

He came every day, like always, followed by the people, and I kept trying to see Etilla. But I felt like a ghost. Her mother wouldn’t even come to the door.

I’m alive! I’d scream at them. Look at me. I’m alive!

But the door stayed barred.

Finally, one day, her mother yelled at me, Lonnie! You come here getting my Etilla upset one more time and I’ll shoot you and then see how alive you’ll be!

I drank a quart of wine that night, sitting by the window. The moon was bright. You could see like it was day, almost. For hours the field was empty, then they came, Solomon at their head.

His voice might not have been different, but it seemed that way, I don’t know how. Softer, maybe, or higher. I sat there and listened and looked at them all, but when he sang those words, All alone, I threw the bottle down and ran outside.

I ran right up to him, closer than anyone ever had got, I guess, close enough to touch him.

God damn you, I said.

He went on singing.

Stop it!

He acted like I wasn’t there.

You may be blind, you crazy old son of a bitch, but you’re not deaf! I’m telling you—and all the rest of you —to get off my property, now! You hear me?

He didn’t move. I don’t know what happened inside me, then, except that all the hate and mad and sorrow I’d been feeling came back and bubbled over. I reached out first and grabbed that bird on his shoulder. I held it in my hands and squeezed it and kept on squeezing it till it stopped screaming. Then I threw it away.

The people started to murmuring then, like they’d seen a dam burst, or an earthquake, but they didn’t move.

Get out of here! I yelled. Go sing to somebody else, somebody who believes in you. I don’t. Hear me? I don’t!

I pulled his hands away from the strings. He put them back. I pulled them away again.

You got them all fooled, I said. But I know you can’t smell death, or anything else, because you stink so bad yourself! I turned to the people. Come and take a sniff! I told them. Take a sniff of an old man who hasn’t been near a cake of soap in all his life—see what it is you been afraid of!

They didn’t move.

He’s only a man! I yelled. Only a man!

I saw they didn’t believe me, so I knew I had to show them, and I think it came to me that maybe this would be the way to get Etilla back. I should have thought of it before! If I could prove he wasn’t anything but a man, they’d all have to see they were wrong, and that would save them because then they wouldn’t just lie down and die, like dogs, whenever they looked out and saw Solomon and heard that damn song. Because they wouldn’t see Solomon. He’d be gone.

I had my hands around his throat. It felt like wet leather. I pressed as hard as I could, and kept on pressing, with my thumbs digging into his gullet, deeper and deeper, and then I let him drop. He didn’t move.

Look at him, I yelled, holding up my hands. He’s dead! Solomon is dead! God is dead! The man is dead! I killed him!

The people backed away.

Look at him! Touch him! You want to smell death, too? Go ahead, do it!

I laughed till I cried, then I ran all the way to Etilla’s house. Her mother shot at me, just the way she said she would, but I knew she’d miss. It was an old gun, she was an old woman. I kicked the door open. I grabbed them both and practically dragged them back to my place. They thought I was crazy. I scared them bad. I didn’t care. They had to see it with their own eyes. They had to see the old man sprawled out dead on the ground.

He was right where I dropped him.

Look at him, I said, and it was close to dawn now so they could see him even better. His face was blue and his tongue was sticking out of his mouth like a fat black snake.

I took loose the guitar while they were looking and stomped it to pieces.

They looked up at me, then, and started running.

I didn’t bother to go after them, because it didn’t matter any more.

It didn’t matter, either, when Sheriff Crowder came to see me the next day.

You did murder, Lonnie, he said. Thirty people saw you.

I didn’t argue.

He took me to the jail and told me I was in bad trouble, but I shouldn’t worry too much, considering the facts. He never thought Solomon was anything but a lunatic, and he didn’t think the judge would be too hard on me. Of course it could turn out either way and he wasn’t promising anything, but probably it would go all right.

I didn’t worry, either. Not until last night. I was lying on my cot, sleeping, when I had a dream. It had to be, because I heard Solomon. His voice was clear and high, and sadder than it had ever been. And I saw him, too, when I went to the window and looked out. It was him and no question, standing across the street under a big old elm tree, singing.

Long valley, dark valley ... hear the wind cry!...in darkness we’re born and in darkness we die ... all alone, alone, to the end of our days... to the end of our days, all alone . ..

It scared me, all right, that dream, but I don’t think it will scare me much longer. I mean I really don’t.

Tomorrow’s the trial. And when it’s over, I’m going to take me a long trip. I am.