Limekiller!

The lamp flared and smoked. Samuel adjusted it. somewhat. He got up and took a bulky object down from a peg on one of the roof-poles. It was a sheet of thick plastic, laced with raw-hide thongs, which he laboriously unknotted. Inside that was a deerskin. And inside that, an ordinary banjo-case, which contained an ordinary, if rather old and worn, banjo.

“Mehk I hear ah sahng… ah sahng ahv you country.”

What song should he make him hear? No particularly Canadian song brought itself to mind. Ah well, he would dip down below the border just a bit. His fingers strummed idly on the strings. The words grew, the tune grew, he lifted up what some (if not very many) had considered a not-bad-baritone, and began to sing and play.

Manatee gal, won’t you come out tonight,

Come out tonight, come out tonight?

Oh, Manatee gal won’t you come out tonight,

To dance by the light of the -

An enormous hand suddenly covered his own and pressed it down. The tune subsided into a jumble of chords, and an echo, and a silence.

“Mon, mon, you not do me right. I no di say, ‘Mehk I hear a sahng ahv you country’?” Samuel, on his knees, breathed heavily. His breath was heavy with rum and his voice was heavy with reproof. and with a something else for which Limekiller had no immediate name. But, friendly it was not.

Puzzled more than apologetic, Jack said, “Well, it is a North American song, anyway. It was an old Erie Canal song. It — Oh. I’ll be damned. Only it’s supposed to go, ‘Buffalo gal, won’t you come out tonight,’ And I dunno what made me change it, what difference does it make?”

“Vhat different? Vhat different it mehk? Ah, Christ me King! You lee’ buckra b’y, you not know w’ehnnah-teeng?”

It was all too much for Limekiller. The last thing he wanted was anything resembling an argument, here in the deep, dark bush, with an all-but-stranger. Samuel having lifted his heavy hand from the instrument, Limekiller, moved by a sudden spirit, began,

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,

To save a wretch like me.

With a rough catch of his breath, Samuel muttered, “Yes. Yes. Dot ees good. Go on, b’y- No stop.”

I once was halt, but now can walk:

Was blind, but now I see.

He sang the beautiful old hymn to the end: and, by that time, if not overpowered by Grace, John Samuel — having evidently broached the second and the third chaparita — was certainly overpowered: and it did not look as though the dinner-guest was going to get any kind of guided tour back to the shore and the skiff. He sighed and he looked around him. A bed rack had roughly been fixed up, and its lashings were covered with a few deer hides and an old Indian blanket. Samuel not responding to any shakings or urgings, Limekiller, with a shrug and a “Well what the Hell,” covered him with the blanket as he lay upon the ground. Then, having rolled up the sacks the supplies had come in and propped them under his head, Limekiller disposed himself for slumber on the hides. Some lines were running through his head and he paused a moment to consider what they were. What they were, they were, From ghoulies and ghosties, long-leggedy feasties, and bugges that go boomp in the night, Good Lord, deliver us. With an almost absolute certainty that this was not the Authorized Version or Text, he heard himself give a grottle and a snore and knew he was fallen asleep.

He awoke to slap heartily at some flies, and the sound perhaps awoke the host, who was heard to mutter and mumble. Limekiller leaned over. “What did you say?”

The lines said, Limekiller learned that he had heard them before. “Eef you tie ah rottlesnake doewn fah me, I veel freeg eet.”

“I yield,” said Limekiller, “to any man so much homier than myself. Produce the snake, sir, and I will consider the rest of the matter.”

The red eye of the expiring fire winked at him. It was still winking at him when he awoke from a horrid nightmare of screams and thrashings-about in the course of which he had evidently fallen or had thrown himself from the bedrack to the far side. Furthermore, he must have knocked against one of the roof-poles in doing so, because a good deal of the thatch had landed on top of him. He threw it off, and, getting up, began to apologize.

“Sorry if I woke you, Mr. Samuel. I don’t know what —” There was no answer, and looking around in the faint light of the fire, he saw no one.

“Mr. Samuel? Mr. Samuel? John? Oh, hey,Johhhn?. ”