One of Wellman’s strong suits is the timelessness of his
tales. Given the technology and attitudes
of characters, we know only that they might take place sometime in the first
half-dozen decades of the twentieth century.
That’s a long stretch of time covering everything from pre-WWI horse and
buggy backroads to the last gasp of heritage America before the 1964
Immigration Act would shift the culture away from respect for the pioneering
spirit and towards the proposition that there are no non-Americans, only those
who haven’t yet journeyed to her shores.
Regardless of whether the stories take place in the post-war
50’s, the Depression Era 30’s (my own favorite take), or even the roaring 20’s,
the backroads down with Silver John travels lie on the border between
civilization and the unknown. The
characters he meets are not the safe and secure Mayberry types, but those
simple country folk too poor for middle-class upgrade, too socially clumsy to
thrive in more civilized lands, or those who, with a casual disregard for
tradition and law, opt to put as much distance between themselves and organized
law enforcement as possible.
As a result, many of Wellman’s tales of monsters and black
magic and Things Man Was Not Meant to Know take place on these fringes among
people who lend an additional air of mystery to the proceedings. They are tucked well off the roads, down in
hollows, in the depths of mines, or way out in the middle of the endless muddy
swamps. Places that are nearby as the
crow flies, but hard to find for we land-bound men.
Consider Shiver in the
Pines where the haunt who guards a Spanish gold mine. The opening to the mine lies at the bottom of
a dark hollow, and the thing that guards the treasure lurks way down in that
hole.
Walk Like a Mountain
begins with the line, “Once at Sky Notch, I never grudged the trouble getting
there.” Silver John’s journey takes him
over ridges and up a twenty mile stretch of valley river even before the long
climb to Sky Notch. The giant of man who
lives even beyond that high destination might as well be on the moon for all that
modern man can reach him.
Even a country college like Flournoy seems trapped in a far
off Brigadoon-like hollow. Silver John
makes his way up and up and over ridge and over a high saddleback to get his
first glimpse of that plain and poor college in Old Devlins Was A Waiting. Making
something as cosmopolitan as a college seem to be a far flung place inaccessible
to all but the most determined, but Wellman pulls the trick off with the ease
of a stage magician.
So don’t let anyone fool you into thinking the world lacks
dark places. The dark places are dark
because they don’t want you to know they are there until it’s too late. But make no mistak, they still exist – all around
us – you just have to know where to look.
