Short Fiction · The Valley Was Still (2/2)

It was a proud pronouncement, Paradine realized. Here was the man diligent in business, who could stand before kings. So might speak a statesman who had long served his constituency, or the editor of a paper that had built respectful traditions, or a doctor who had guarded a town’s health for decades, or a blacksmith who took pride in his lifetime of skilled toil. This gaffer who called himself a witch-man considered that he had done service, and was entitled to respect and gratitude. The narrator went on, more grimly:

“Sometimes I been laffed at, an’ told to mind my own bizness. Young ’uns has hooted, an’ throwed stones. I coulda cursed ’em⁠—but I didn’t. Nossir. They’s my friends an’ neighbors⁠—Channow folks. I kep’ back evil from ’em.”

The old figure straightened, the white beard jutted forward. An exultant note crept in.

“But when the Yanks come, an’ everybody run afore ’em but me, I didn’t have no scruples! Invaders! Tyrants! Thievin’ skunks in blue!” Teague sounded like a recruiting officer for a Texas regiment. “I didn’t owe them nothin’⁠—an’ here in the street I faced ’em. I dug out this here little book, an’ I read the sleep words to ’em. See,” and the old hands gestured sweepingly, “they sleep till I tell ’em to wake. If I ever tell ’em!”

Paradine had to believe this tale of occult patriotism. There was nothing else to believe in its place. The old man who called himself Teague smiled twinklingly.

“Yo’re secesh. Ye fight the Yanks. If ye’ll be good, an’ not gimme no argyments, blink yore left eye.”

Power of blinking returned to that lid, and Paradine lowered it submissively.

“Now ye kin move again⁠—I’ll say the words.”

He leafed through the book once more, and read out; “Ye horsemen an’ footmen, conjered here at this time, ye may pass on in the name of⁠ ⁠…” Paradine did not catch the name, but it had a sound that chilled him. Next instant, motion was restored to his arms and legs. The blood tingled sharply in them, as if they had been asleep.

Teague offered him a hand, and Paradine took it. That hand was froggy cold and soft, for all its boniness.

“Arter this,” decreed Teague, “do what I tell ye, or I’ll read ye somethin’ ye’ll like less.” And he held out the open book significantly.

Paradine saw the page⁠—it bore the number 60 in one corner, and at its top was a heading in capitals: To release spellbound persons. Beneath were the lines with which Teague had set him in motion again, and among them were smudged inky marks.

“You’ve crossed out some words,” Paradine said at once.

“Yep. An’ wrote in others.” Teague held the book closer to him.

Paradine felt yet another chill, and beat down a desire to turn away. He spoke again, because he felt that he should.

“It’s the name of God that you’ve cut out, Teague. Not once, but three times. Isn’t that blasphemy? And you’ve written in⁠—”

“The name of somebody else.” Teague’s beard ruffled into a grin. “Young feller, ye don’t understand. This book was wrote full of the name of God. That name is good⁠—fer some things. But fer curses an’ deaths an’ overthrows, sech as this ’un⁠—well, I changed the names an’ spells by puttin’ in that other name ye saw. An’ it works fine.” He grinned wider as he surveyed the tumbled thousands around them, then shut the book and put it away.

Paradine had been wwell educated. He had read Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, at the University of Virginia, and some accounts of the New England witchcraft cases. He could grasp, though he had never been called upon to consider, the idea of an alliance with evil. All he could reply was:

“I don’t see more than five thousand Yankees in this town. Our boys can whip that many and more, without any spells.”

Teague shook his old head. “Come on, let’s go an’ set on them steps,” he invited, pointing.

The two walked back down the street, entered a yard and dropped down upon a porch. The shady leaves above them hung as silent as chips of stone. Through the fence-pickets showed the blue lumps of quiet that had been a fighting division of Federals. There was no voice, except Teague’s.

“Ye don’t grasp what war means, young feller. Sure, the South is winnin’ now⁠—but to win, men must die. Powder must burn. An’ the South hain’t got men an’ powder enough to keep it up.”

If Paradine had never thought of that before, neither had his superiors, except possibly General Lee. Yet it was plainly true.

Teague extended the argument:

“But if every Yank army was put to sleep, fast’s it got in reach⁠—what then? How’d ye like to lead yore own army into Washington an’ grab ole Abe Lincoln right outen the White House? How’d ye like to be the second greatest man o’ the South?”

“Second greatest man?” echoed Paradine breathlessly, forgetting to fear. He was being tempted as few chivalric idealists can endure. “Second only to⁠—Robert E. Lee!”

The name of his general trembled on his lips. It trembles to this day, on the lips of those who remember. But Teague only snickered, and combed his beard with fingers like skinny sticks.

“Ye don’t ketch on yet. Second man, not to Lee, but to⁠—me, Teague! Fer I’d be a-runnin’ things!”

Paradine, who had seen and heard so much to amaze him during the past hour, had yet the capacity to gasp. His saber was between his knees, and his hands tightened on the hilt until the knuckles turned pale. Teague gave no sign. He went on:

“I hain’t never got no respect here in Channow. Happen it’s time I showed ’em what I can do.” His eyes studied the windrows of men he had caused to drop down like sickled wheat. Creases of proud triumph deepened around his eyes. “We’ll do all the Yanks this way, son. Yore gen’rals hain’t never done nothing like it, have they?”

His generals⁠—Paradine had seen them on occasion. Jackson, named Stonewall for invincibility, kneeling in unashamed public prayer; Jeb Stuart, with his plume and his brown beard, listening to the clang of Sweeney’s banjo; Hood, who outcharged even his wild Texans; Polk blessing the soldiers in the dawn before battle, like a prophet of brave old days; and Lee, the gray knight, at whom Teague had laughed. No, they had never done anything like it. And, if they could, they would not.

“Teague,” said Paradine, “this isn’t right.”

“Not right? Oh, I know what ye mean. Ye don’t like them names I wrote into the Powwows, do ye? But ain’t everything fair in love an’ war?”

Teague laid a persuasive claw on the sleeve of Paradine’s looted jacket. “Listen this oncet. Yore idee is to win with sword an’ gun. Mine’s to win by conjurin’. Which is the quickest way? The easiest way? The only way?”

“To my way of thinking, the only way is by fair fight. God,” pronounced Paradine, as stiffly as Leonidas Polk himself, “watches armies.”

“An’ so does somebody else,” responded Teague. “Watches⁠—an’ listens. Happen he’s listenin’ this minit. Well, lad, I need a sojer to figger army things fer me. You joinin’ me?”

Not only Teague waited for Paradine’s answer.⁠ ⁠… The young trooper remembered, from Pilgrim’s Progress, what sort of dealings might be fatal. Slowly he got to his feet.

“The South doesn’t need that kind of help,” he said flatly.

“Too late to back out,” Teague told him.

“What do you mean?”

“The help’s been asked fer already, son. An’ it’s been given. A contract, ye might call it. If the contract’s broke⁠—well, happen the other party’ll get mad. They can be worse enemies ’n Yanks.”

Teague, too, rose to his feet. “Too late,” he said again. “That power can sweep armies away fer us. But if we say no⁠—well, it’s been roused up, it’ll still sweep away armies⁠—Southern armies. Ye think I shouldn’t have started sech a thing? But I’ve started it. Can’t turn back now.”

Victory through evil⁠—what would it become in the end? Faust’s story told, and so did the legend of Gilles de Retz, and the play about Macbeth. But there was also the tale of the sorcerer’s apprentice, and of what befell him when he tried to reject the force he had thoughtlessly evoked.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked, through lips that muddled the words.

“Good lad, I thought ye’d see sense. First off, I want yore name to the bargain. Then me ’n’ you can lick the Yanks.”

Lick the Yankees! Paradine remembered a gayly profane catchphrase of the Confederate camp: “Don’t say Yankee, say damned Yankee.” But what about a damned Confederacy? Teague spoke of the day of victory; what of the day of reckoning?

What payment would this ally ask in the end?

Again Faust popped into his mind. He imagined the Confederacy as a Faust among the nations, devil-lifted, devil-nurtured⁠—and devil-doomed, by the connivance of one Joseph Paradine.

Better disaster, in the way of man’s warfare.

The bargain was offered him for all the South. For all the South he must reject, completely and finally.

Aloud he said: “My name? Signed to something?”

“Right here’ll do.”

Once more Teague brought forth the Powwows book which he had edited so strangely. “Here, son, on this back page⁠—in blood.”

Paradine bowed his head. It was to conceal the look in his eyes, and he hoped to look as though he acquiesced. He drew his saber, passed it to his left hand. Upon its tip he pressed his right forefinger. A spot of dull pain, and a drop of blood creeping forth, as had appeared on the wrist of the ensorcelled boy lying yonder among the Yankees in the street.

“That’ll be enough to sign with,” approved Teague.

He flattened out the book, exposing the rear flyleaf. Paradine extended his reddened forefinger. It stained the rough white paper.

“J for Joseph,” dictated Teague. “Yep, like that⁠—”

Paradine galvanized into action. His bloody right hand seized the book, wrenching it from the trembling fingers. With the saber in his left hand, he struck.

A pretty stroke for even a practised swordsman; the honed edge of the steel found the shaggy side of Teague’s scrawny neck. Paradine felt bone impeding his powerful drawing slash. Then he felt it no longer. The neck had sliced in two, and for a moment Teague’s head hung free in the air, like a lantern on a wire.

The bright eyes fixed Paradine’s, the mouth fell open in the midst of the beard, trying to speak a word that would not come. Then it fell, bounced like a ball, and rolled away. The headless trunk stood on braced feet, crumpling slowly. Paradine stepped away from it, and it collapsed upon the steps of the house.

Again there was utter silence in the town and valley of Channow. The blue soldiers did not budge where they lay. Paradine knew that he alone moved and breathed and saw⁠—no, not entirely alone. His horse was tethered at the end of the street.

He flung away his saber and ran, ashamed no more of his dread. Reaching the gray, he found his fingers shaky, but he wrenched loose the knotted reins. Flinging himself into the saddle, he rode away across the level and up the slope.

The pines sighed gently, and that sound gave him comfort after so much soundlessness.

He dismounted, his knees swaying as though their tendons had been cut, and studied the earth. Here were the footprints of Danger’s horse. Here also was a cleft stick, and in it a folded scrap of paper, a note. He lifted it, and read the penciled scrawl:

Dear frend Joe, you ant com back so I left like you said to bring up the boys. I hope your alright & if the Yankies have got you well get you back.

His comrades were coming, then, with gun and sword. They expected to meet Union soldiers. Paradine gazed back into the silence-brimmed valley, then at what he still held in his right hand. It was the Poiu-Wows book, marked with a wet capital J in his own blood.

What had Teague insisted? The one whose name had been invoked would be fatally angry if his help were refused. But Paradine was going to refuse it.

He turned to Page 60. His voice was shaky, but be managed to read aloud:

“Ye horsemen and footmen, conjured here at this time, ye may pass on in the name of”⁠—he faltered, but disregarded the ink-blotting, and the substituted names⁠—“of Jesus Christ, and through the word of God.”

Again he gulped, and finished. “Ye may now ride on and pass.”

From under his feet burst a dry, startling thunder of sound, a partridge rising to the sky. Farther down the slope a crow took wing, cawing querulously. Wind wakened in the Channow Valley; Paradine saw the distant trees of the town stir with it. Then a confused din came to his ears, as though something besides wind was wakening.

After a moment he heard the notes of a bugle, shrill and tremulous, sounding an alarm.

Paradine struck fire, and built it up with fallen twigs. Into the hottest heart of it he thrust Teague’s book of charms. The flame gnawed eagerly at it, the pages crumpled and fanned and blackened with the heat. For a moment he saw, standing out among charred fragments, a bloodred J, his writing, as though it fought for life. Then it, too, was consumed, and there were only ashes. Before the last red tongue subsided, his ears picked up a faint rebel yell, and afar into the valley rode Confederate cavalry.

He put his gray to the gallop, got down the slope and joined his regiment before it reached the town. On the street a Union line was forming. There was hot, fierce fighting, such as had scattered and routed many a Northern force.

But, at the end of it, the Southerners ran like foxes before hounds, and those who escaped counted themselves lucky.

In his later garrulous years, Joseph Paradine was apt to say that the war was lost, not at Antietam or Gettysburg, but at a little valley hamlet called Channow. Refusal of a certain alliance, he would insist, was the cause; that offered ally fought thenceforth against the South.

But nobody paid attention, except to laugh or to pity. So many veterans go crazy.