"Lane, Doris - The Jersey Devil And The Dancing Fool" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lane Doris)

THE JERSEY DEVIL AND THE DANCING FOOL
By
Doris Lane

It is hard to know what makes the night so black here. They all are here, every night, black as pitch. Look up and the clouds racing across the moon are black. The green grasses at night are black. The water is not blue, but brown. The river is the color of weak coffee from the cedar and the iron ore. That river damn near never moves, you know. It is the slowest flowing river, the Mullica. You could float on your back for five months and go nowhere a-tall. The water is very close to the ground here, 17 trillion gallons of it, sitting just underneath the million acres of Jersey Pine Barrens. There are places one wrong step could drown a man.

The trees are low here, stunted and dwarfed, but not too short to hang a man. The lonely sand roads wind their way through the forest of pygmy pine. These roads are forlorn and carpeted thick with pine needles. You should not be able to hear footsteps out there in the night atop all those soft pine needles, but you do. The screams that tear your heart out through your chest, you hear them, too.

We don't go out at night here. A gun might help you with some sights you can see here, but not all of them. You might as well stay in. We who live here stopped going out at night a century or more now. It's become the local custom, you might say, staying home at night. It's the night sights we'd rather not see out there in the black. The lady all dressed in white, the hanged man who goes looking for his gold to pay off the Devil, but mostly we don't want to see the devil itself, so we stay in at night here.

The devil is about four feet high. Not tall for a man or woman, but tall as some of the cedars around here. The devil has hooves for feet and paws for hands, legs that are long in the hind and up short in the front. A head like my great-aunt's collie, a face like Grandpa's horse, a nice long neck, legs as strong as a kangaroo's, and wings that can almost out fly a cannon ball shot off by a Commodore of the U.S. Navy. I should tell you, witnesses swore that ball went through the devil before the devil flew on its way. There was a hole gaping big they could see straight through to the trees on the other side. A hunting rifle shot by a King of Spain could not stop the devil, neither.

Kings and Commodores can't stop making war on the world, and the devil can't stop screaming through the Jersey Pine Barrens. Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Viet Nam; you name the war, the devil came on screaming through the Jersey Pine Barrens.

Shipwrecks, too, sometimes.

The devil does have that forked tail you hear so much about. Around these parts, we say fork-ed, though, so the devil has a fork-ed tail. Streaks of fire shoot out the devil's mouth in a certain mood. Ah, well, they say the devil don't exist even if it's been seen thousands of times for over 200 years, some nights seen almost all at once in every last corner of these million acres of Pine Barren. Goes off sometimes elsewhere, once in a while, to Philadelphia, Long Beach Island, Mount Holly, Trenton, even once in California, they say. It lives here with us, but it is seen in all sorts of places and not just by your ordinary backwoods Piney, no, but by military men, politicians, postmasters, pharmacists, captains of industry and farmers' daughters, trappers, hunters, doctors and lawyers, policemen, clergymen, reporters like you, and everybody else you can think of, even a King of Spain.

Of course, Hannah Butler didn't help any, the old bog hag, saying, "Aye, he is there! And a storm like the one when I see'd the Leeds Devil!" There were only a few drops of rain that day she mouthed off without a tooth. And she never saw no Leeds Devil, because if anything don't exist it's that. But because of her they try to say the devil was born at Leeds Point in the marsh between the Barrens and the Atlantic Ocean. Bunk, I say. Around here we know where the devil was born and when and why.

But what they do say is that Mrs. Leeds, a Quaker witch, if you can imagine, in extrem's of childbirth, her thirteenth live birth this was, called out for the Devil and the devil popped out of her womb. That baby devil grew to full growth before their eyes in minutes that night. It curled its fork-ed tail and beat its own mother with it. That's when it gave out with that ear-piercing scream for the very first time. It flapped its wings and flew up the chimney and out into a terrific storm. It flew screaming into the night over the Pine Barrens. Ignorant people try to say the devil ate its whole family before leaving the house, but we all know the devil don't eat humans. Besides, it wasn't its mother, but its grandmother it beat with his tail.

Now this is said to have taken place in the 1740s, with Mrs. Leeds of Leeds Point, but I think that's just because of the exorcism date. You see, the devil was exorcised and by a pastor with a bell, book and candle and it was supposed to be good for 100 years flat. The devil did get excited and went screaming around in the 1840s, ate a whole lot of livestock, but not because the exorcism ended after 100 years. The truth is, the devil was seen in between the exorcism and the 1840s. It was the Mexican War brought the devil out in full strength in the 1840s and any fool should see that. Why, I seen the devil, myself, December 7, 1941, scamperin' along the banks of the Mullica River.

And that should tell you something.

The Jersey Devil was born with the nation in 1781, wartime, don't you know, our first war as a country all our own. Back when the iron furnaces at Batsto were turning out ammo for General Washington's troops. After the lousy British rowed up the Mullica to Chestnut Neck and burnt the town down. The British said Mullica River country was a nest of rebel pirates and it was. After Chestnut Neck, they were cocky, thought they'd destroy the bog iron furnace in Batsto, but our local boys had another idea and drove them Redcoats back and out to sea. Count Pulaski's regiment turned up a week late to defend Batsto, but it was all over by then. We know how to take care of ourselves around here and always have.

Not everybody here was a Patriot, not by a long shot. We had our local Tories and a good lot of them. A few had to hightail it out of here. Most stayed on, though, and a lot of these folks like to claim Patriots for ancestors are lying in their teeth. But it's the easiest thing in the world to lose yourself and live your life outside society in the Jersey Pine Barrens. I mean, who cares who's who in 2,000 square miles of nothing? Even today, all shrunken by progress, real estate enterprise, and government installations, a man can walk ten miles one day in every direction and never see another human being.

Some of these Tories in the Revolution called themselves "Refugees," but others called them "Pine Robbers." The Refugees were nothing but a lawless gang of bandits, really -- thieving, pillaging bandits. Joe Mulliner was one of them who led a gang of 40 Refugees out in the Hemlock Swamp near Sweetwater. A handsome fellow with charm enough to talk the bloomers off a clothesline. From a good family and educated was Joe Mulliner, but he stood for the King and that made him an outlaw.

Joe Mulliner was a dancing fool and this piney country in the day was a dancing fool's paradise. Every little hamlet and crossroad had a dancehall or a hotel parlor that could turn into one and had a fiddle. Called them stage-stop hotels on the Jersey stage roads connecting Philadelphia with York. Joe never could resist a dance with a pretty girl. It was a problem, of course, him being a wanted man in enemy territory and himself wanting nothing more than a dance. Not one to let circumstances stop his fun, Joe made a custom of arriving at some point of an evening with his gun in his hand. He'd wave it around until the men lined up against the wall. Then he'd take the arm of the prettiest girl, aim his pistol at the fiddlers until they started up again, and he'd be off dancing across the floor. They say nobody could hold a candle to Joe in a country-dance.

His legend is that he was some kind of Robin Hood, but most people say he stole from anybody rich or poor. He did like to capture prominent Patriots, though, and hold them for ransom. Kidnapped an heiress once, he did, but she escaped and was rescued by friends of her family. I never heard of Joe Mulliner giving a dime to nobody but once, and maybe that's at the root of the Robin Hood notion.

It was always a woman with Joe, even this time, although he wasn't even there. He'd been captured briefly before being traded for a Patriot captain. His gang, leaderless and out for bear, stopped at the Leeds farm near the fork in the road. They knew four of the Leedses were in the Revolutionary Army. And they knew Widow Leeds, herself, was one big, loud-mouthed Patriot. The woman would shout down the Royal George if he ever showed his face in the Pine Barrens. This Mrs. Leeds did not live at Leeds Point, she lived right here near the fork in the road to Old Washington, so it shows you how people don't know what they are talking about when it comes to the Jersey Devil.

She was at the meetinghouse with her younger kids when the Refugees took possession of her house. Mrs. Leeds was a widow woman, but she was a prosperous farmer, too. She liked her fine furnishings and such. These Refugees ransacked her house and had sacks full of her belongings set outside the front door. Some of the gang had already gone off with her pigs and chickens.

She showed up with her young boys and her lovely teenaged daughter. Widow Leeds was thunderstruck quiet for the first time in her life. Once she got her wind and after she saw her family silver sticking out of one of their sacks, she let loose with a stream of verbosity that would turn a bluebell yellow. Finally, when she wouldn't shut up, they tied her to a tree and stuck her own hanky in her mouth. Well, then, the boys and the girl started throwing rocks at the bandits, so they had to tie the boys to another tree. One of the Refugees tossed the girl onto his saddle, jumped up behind her, and rode off into the woods. Even in the thick of things the Refugees never forgot that a Patriot kidnapping for ransom was the main chance. The rest of the gang stood there and watched the house burn to the ground before they untied the Leeds family and left them there.

Meanwhile, Joe Mulliner, on his way home from captivity, meets up with his henchman and the girl on a road out a ways. This girl was a delicate little thing, surprising she ever came out of her mother, who everybody agreed looked like nothing but a man. Joe takes one look into those cornflower blue eyes, reaches out and touches her long silver hair. Real towhead she was, that white blonde hair like most youngers grow in these parts. Had it myself once upon a time. When Joe touches it like it's spun platinum, the Leeds girl spits right in his face. Joe just laughs, licks the spittle off with his long and talented tongue, and takes her by her small waist onto his own horse.

Nobody knows what happened between then and the time they rode up to the Leeds farm. Joe Mulliner was a thief, but he was a gentleman thief, so, of course, never said. But it was springtime in the Pine Barrens and no place more beautiful. Blueberry blossoms, Orchids, Lady Slipper, Dogwood, Swamp Azalea and Magnolia, Sundew, and Rose Pogonia, just everywhere you look. Suffice it to say no silver haired girl could have resisted the charms of handsome dancing Joe Mulliner in the circumstance of springtime in the Pine Barrens.

When they finally ride up, the Leeds family is just standing around in the yard looking at the smoking ruins of their homeplace. They look up at the sound of horse's hooves on the road. Mrs. Leeds sees her daughter and tears off down the lane. She was a big woman, like I said, built like a man, and a big man, but she moved like a bat out of hell. Joe was scared shite-less and dropped the girl to the ground.

All he could hear as he galloped down the road was Mrs. Leeds's bellowing curse, "Joe Mulliner, the Devil take you!"