The Ballad of Tom Dooley: A Ballad Novel

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Gently, without another word, he began to examine the body, and the rest of us edged forward again so we could watch what he was doing, but not so close as to be noticed and told to step back. I couldn’t see much, on account of the hole the body was in being so deep, and the doctor’s back being in my line of sight, but at least I could tell he had peeled back the material of that rotting checkered dress, and he was probing her chest with his fingers, trying to find some sign of what had killed her.

  At last he stood up, drew a white linen handkerchief out of the pocket of his coat, swabbed his forehead, and then wiped his hands again and again on it. He addressed his remarks to the Colonel, but loud enough for the rest of us to hear. “Well, the body is that of Laura Foster, as I am sure you know already.”

  They nodded, and somebody muttered, “Didn’t need a doctor to tell us that.”

  Colonel Isbell’s expression didn’t change. “How long has she been dead?”

  “Oh, since the last morning she was seen, I have no doubt. That body has been in the ground there a good three months.”

  “Can you tell what killed her, then?”

  The doctor nodded, and motioned for Colonel Isbell to kneel beside him at the grave. Then he reached down, and lifted a bit of the rotting cloth on the bodice of that checkered dress. “There’s a slit here. Do you see it?”

  Those closest to the grave leaned over to get a look, and the rest of us hung back, listening. The smell from the open trench hung over us like a thundercloud, and few cared to get any closer to the source of the stench. Back in June when the laurels bloomed, the scent of their pink flowers might have covered the smell of decay, but now at summer’s end the odor of death had no rivals. I had seen all I wanted to, and smelled more than that, but I still wanted to hear what the doctor made of the matter.

  “This cut was deliberately made. You can just see the corresponding wound in the flesh beneath it. Here, someone help me to remove these clothes so that I can get a better look.”

  The Colonel stepped away, and let one of the farmers in the search party assist the doctor in his grim task. A few men looked away, from modesty, I suppose, but though there might have been a few among them that would have liked to see Laura Foster naked while she was living, the sight of her now roused in them nothing but disgust, or perhaps, in the weakest ones, a stirring of pity. One or two sodden old fools even wiped away a tear.

  I had got accustomed to the smell now, so I edged past the squeamish ones for another look.

  When her naked breast lay open to the air, the doctor put two fingers into the hole in her flesh, and poked around a bit. Then he put his face down close to the wound to peer inside. Nobody moved or spoke. We just waited to hear what he would say.

  Finally he motioned for Colonel Isbell to take a look, and we heard him say quietly, “Something sharp—I should say a short-bladed knife—was thrust up through her breast, here between the third and fourth ribs.”

  “Into her heart?” said the Colonel.

  “Well … I cannot be sure. If the blade was thrust straight in, it would have missed her heart entirely. But if the knife had been held in a slightly elevated position, it would certainly have cut the heart. The body is so badly decomposed that I cannot tell which.”

  “But that’s what killed her, then?”

  “If the knife missed the heart, it need not have been a mortal wound, but if the heart were punctured, then it would have necessarily been fatal.”

  “I hope she did not suffer.”

  The doctor made no answer to this, which made me think that he knew very well that she had. Before anyone could ask again, someone called out, “Was she with child?”

  Dr. Carter sighed, and shook his head. “Again, I cannot know for certain. If she was less than ten weeks into her term, then there would be no trace. You see the state of the body.” He shrugged. “If she were more than ten weeks gone, and if I opened her up, I might find foetal bones in her womb, but I cannot see that it matters, as we could not tell who the father was. And unless the sheriff or a judge instructs me to do this, I am inclined to leave her be. She was put through enough, poor child.”

  Some of the searchers murmured agreement. They led me away then, as they were making preparations to bring the body up out of the hole and take her down the ridge to a more sanctified resting place. I thought she’d end up buried back in German’s Hill, probably on the land her father was sharecropping, and half the county would attend the funeral. That would be no tribute to Laura Foster, though. Most of the crowd would be curiosity seekers, and they’d go just to say they had been, without caring one whit more for Laura dead than they had for her when she was alive. She was a nine days’ wonder, nothing more.

  They took me back to Cowle’s store then, where there’d be a meeting about what had transpired, and I was glad to go, because it had been a long, wearing day, and I was so hungry that I could feel my backbone against my belly button. I spent the whole ride there thinking about food, and hoping they’d offer me something stronger than water to wash it down with, but they didn’t seem much interested in me anymore, now that I had told what I knew. Here and there along the river road that went along to the store, people stood outside their houses or on the edge of their fields and stared at us as went past. I felt like a queen in a parade, and I raised my hand a time or two to wave at them, but they just stood stock-still and stared back with stony expressions. But I didn’t care. It was my day in the sun.

  * * *

  It took most of the afternoon, and there was a great to-do when the searchers brought the body in and laid it out on a counter in the store, with everybody outshouting everybody else to tell what happened, but finally they let me go, and I was glad to leave all the tale telling and the gawking to that horde of folks who crowded into the store so they could say they were part of the story.

  The crowd was buzzing with tales about the case, with most of them telling more than they knew. I kept still and listened to what they were saying, and one time I heard the storekeeper’s wife telling one of the women that Ann Melton had been to the store a week or so back, and she asked her if she was afraid that the lawmen were going to arrest her over the death of Laura Foster. The storekeeper’s wife dropped her voice to a hoarse whisper, but I had edged close enough to hear her say, “And when I asked her that, Mrs. Melton just laughed at me—laughed, mind you!—and then she said, ‘They’ll not put a rope around this pretty little neck.’” Her listeners gasped at the brass of that remark, and the storekeeper’s wife nodded with grim satisfaction, but hearing it caused me to shiver, for Ann Melton is a beautiful woman. When people say that beautiful women get away with murder, maybe it is more true than they mean it to be.

  Mr. Pickens Carter, the justice of the peace, heard everybody out, as if it were a court, except that no lawyers were present. The searchers told how I had helped them find the burial place, and that I had cooperated with them by telling all I knew.

  He said to me, “You are free to go, Pauline Foster, but you may not leave this jurisdiction, for you will be called as the state’s chief witness in a few weeks’ time at court in Wilkesboro. You must swear an oath that you will testify.”

  I don’t know why people set such a store by the swearing of oaths, for they don’t cost anybody a red cent, but I could see that the justice of the peace believed in them, so I stood up before him, big-eyed and solemn, and I faithfully promised that I would appear in court when they called me. I probably would, too, because I had started it all, and I wanted to see it end.

  I waited around on the edge of the crowd at Cowle’s store until I heard Mr. Justice Carter say to the constables, “Go and arrest Ann Melton.”

  * * *

  I wasn’t there when they took her away, though I was sorely tempted to go and watch in case she fought and cried, and had to be dragged screaming from the house. I went back at dusk, though, to see about getting my clothes and what they owed me for my last days of work. James Melton was there al
one, sitting at the table, making a pair of boots.

  I stood there in the doorway, watching him work in the fading light, and looking for some sign of distress in a man whose wife has just been taken away on a charge of murder. But he looked just the same as ever, with his blond head bent over that boot, intent on sewing the leather, as if the only thing in the world that mattered was making that shoe.

  I made a little noise to let him know that I was there, and finally he looked up. “I’ve come for my wages and my things, James.”

  He nodded. “They have taken Ann away. I guess you’d know about that.”

  “I was there. They found Laura’s body. She had showed me where it was a few weeks back. Did she take on when they came to get her?”

  “Ann? No. She turned pale at first, but then she swept out of here like they were taking her off to a dance. She didn’t make a sound or shed a tear. She didn’t even look back.”

  It crossed my mind that Ann and Tom were together at last. There was a wall between them in the Wilkesboro jail. I wondered if they could talk through it, or if they would try.

  James set the shoe aside, and looked up at me. “Where are you headed, Pauline?”

  “I don’t know. I’d go back to Watauga County if they’d let me, but they say I must stay here in Wilkes until the trial. I am to be a witness. I might see if other kinfolk will take me in, but they didn’t want to last March, and I don’t reckon they’ll think me any more of a bargain now.”

  “You can stop on here.”

  I stared at him for a minute, trying to tell from his face what he had in his mind, but you never could tell what James Melton was thinking by looking at him. “Stay here?”

  “I still have the babies to be looked after, and with Ann gone, there’s no one to cook or tend to the house.” He almost smiled when he said it, because both of us knew that Ann wasn’t any more use than a chicken when it came to housekeeping, but that didn’t make what he said about needing help any less true. “I reckon I could still pay you just the same.”

  “All right. I can stay on. But you know I’ll be called as a witness in the trial.”

  “So will I.”

  I had not thought of that. “What will you say, James?”

  “I will tell the truth, whatever they ask me. It’s my duty.”

  “Even if it gets Ann hanged?”

  “I don’t know anything that could harm her. Or Tom, either, come to that. I was here that night. I saw people come and go. That’s all I can swear to.”

  “Are you going to go see her in jail?”

  He was silent for so long that I didn’t think he heard me. Finally he looked down at that boot again, and he barely whispered, “I don’t think I’ll have time. I don’t suppose she’ll be locked up for very long—one way or the other.” He went back to sewing the leather then, as if he had forgotten I was there.

  I don’t know if James Melton ever went to see his wife in jail or not, or if she even wanted him to. I never went.

  That was in September 1866, and the trial was set for the beginning of October, which is when they held Superior Court in the courthouse in Wilkesboro. I thought it would all be over quick. Trials only lasted a day or two at most, for the high court only met twice a year, and they had so many cases to settle that they could not dally over any of them, not even something as serious as a killing. I thought there would be more graves in Reedy Branch before the leaves fell.

  I was wrong about that.

  The court went and appointed Governor Vance, that was, to defend Tom and Ann, and they ordered him to do it for free. He got his teeth into that case like a terrier cornering a rat. First he moved the trial over to Statesville, so that all the witnesses had to travel forty miles or more to get to court, and nobody thanked him for that, but he managed to drag the proceedings out for another year and a half out of sheer contrariness.

  None of us could read, so it’s no use asking me what the rights of it were, because I never did know. I just went when they told me to, and said my piece on the witness stand as many times as they asked me to.

  One thing did worry me, though. I never understood all the legal twists and turns as the lawyers tried to sort out what a jury could hear, and what some clerk had got wrong in filling out the legal papers. I thought of it as a game of noughts and crosses, and I figured that everybody had just clean forgotten about Laura Foster, who was tucked away by now in a solitary grave on the Foster farm in German’s Hill. All she had wanted was to get away from there, and in death they took her right on back there, so now she must stay forever. Unless she went to heaven, if there is one. I never heard it said that anybody had ever seen her ghost lingering about the place.

  The one thing that worried me was the one person who knew almost as much as I did. John Anderson. In the weeks leading up to that first day in court, the lawyers from both sides were scurrying around, collecting witnesses, until it seemed like most of Elkville would be congregated in that courtroom, telling what they knew.

  I was afraid that someone would think of adding John Anderson to the list, or else that he would hunt them up himself and offer to testify. But when I said something to Wash Anderson about it, he just laughed at me.

  “What would they want to talk to him for, Pauline?”

  I wasn’t about to tell him, so I just hung my head and muttered, “I only wondered because I hear that you and your sister are on the witness list, and your house is right next to the Bates’ place. So maybe they think he saw something.”

  Wash snickered. “You don’t know nothing, Pauline. John may be near as light as you are, but to the law he ain’t nothing but a darky. He can’t testify in court, not when the accused and the dead victim are all white folks. What would he know about it anyhow?”

  “I just wondered,” I said.

  It set my mind at ease somewhat to know that John Anderson could not be a witness in court, but I was still afraid he might go seek out one of the lawyers, and tell them the truth about Laura’s elopement. I had not seen him alone since Laura went missing. I think he knew how dangerous it would be for him if anyone guessed the truth. But if he ever got to the point where he didn’t care, he could ruin everything, for he could put me squarely back into the case. I didn’t want it known that I had lied to Ann. If everyone kept quiet about how it really happened, the law might hang them both.

  * * *

  I waited it out, though. Least said, soonest mended. I was right to do that. They found Tom guilty. The court ordered him to hang in Statesville on November 9, 1866, but the lawyer, Governor Vance, labored on Tom’s behalf as if he were being paid in gold instead of working for nothing. He fought and objected and quibbled about every little thing, fighting like he was back in the War again. He was an important man with half the quality folks in the state counting themselves as his friends, so he got his way.

  By and by we heard there was to be a new trial for Tom, on account of they hadn’t got it right the first time around. I never understood the rights of it. Since the high court only met twice a year, spring and fall, that gave Tom another six months of life, or six more months to spend penned up in a cell, depending on how you looked at it. I remembered what he had said about that Union prison camp, and I reckoned he was burning to get out, one way or another.

  Ann continued to bide in the jail, and months went by with nothing done about her. Since Governor Vance had arranged for them to be tried separately, she would have to wait until it was settled with Tom, once and for all, before they would consider her part in it.

  The next time the court met, we all got ready to traipse down to Statesville to say our piece all over again, but then we heard that the defense wasn’t ready, on account of some of their witnesses not turning up. That was Mr. Vance, up to his old tricks again, we figured, so things got moved along to the fall of 1867. A year in jail for Tom, with that first death sentence hanging over his head. I thought that if I were the Iredell County jailer, I’d invest in a couple of extra guards.
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  I was back in Elkville in June, visiting folks, and mainly asking around to see what was transpiring in the court case. That’s when I heard that Governor Vance was trying to round up new witnesses for the second trial, and I began to worry that he might stumble on to somebody who knew more than he bargained for. He might use his fancy tricks to get Tom off on new evidence, and then turn around and get Ann freed based on her beauty and the Governor having friends in high places.

  I decided to pay a call on someone while I was there. I went to see James Melton first, and found him well and working as hard as ever. He looked older than his years, perhaps from all the worry and from having to run the place all on his own now. The little girls were still too young to be much help.

  “I just came by to say how-do,” I told him, sipping the tin cup of well water he had given me. “How is my cousin Ann faring in jail?”

  He sighed and mopped his forehead with a rag. I thought that I could see strands of gray in his yellow hair. “You’d do better to ask her mother about her. It’s a long way to town, and I have no time to go.”

  “Don’t you miss her?”

  He thought about it. James never was one for making hasty replies. “She was beautiful, you know. Like having a fairy maiden out of an old ballad come to stay, but you know how those songs end. The fairy always goes back to where she came from. She never stays forever. And after a while it just seems like it was all a dream.”

  I just looked at him, while I tried to picture lazy, foul-tempered Ann Melton as a fairy queen, but it sounded like pure foolishness to me. One thing was clear, though: as far as he was concerned, she was gone.

  I left him soon after that, just as it was gathering dark, and I walked down the hill to the Andersons’ house, but I didn’t aim to pass the time with Wash or his sister Eliza. Wash was all right when he was sober, but that Eliza was a milk and water miss, and it near ’bout put me to sleep to try to talk to her.