by Bill Brooks
I’d like to tell him what a pretty boy he is. But I got my job to keep and I don’t say anything to him about any of that, for it wouldn’t do no good for him or me. I reckon there’ll be other pretty boys come along.
Hey, Wiley, I got to go to the privy.
It stirs something in me. I tell him to piss in the honey pot. I seen him do it before and it stirs something in me. Something I ain’t got no control over and I go home at night and think about seeing him pissing in the honey pot and it does something to me.
But he begs me to take him out back. He says he wants to taste some free air one last time. Bribes me with his watch. It wouldn’t take that much. Tells me I can keep the shotgun on him and shoot him if he tries anything. I couldn’t shoot him.
I couldn’t shoot such a pretty boy.
Elizabeth Brouchard
Yesterday a letter came from Tom—the second this week.
Dear Liza,
I will be sending on the papers of my time kept. Things I’ve recorded since jailed two years now. I’ve no one else to give them to, and I know how much you appreciate words written. I appreciate as much your letters to me, and having come to visit me as a friend in the Wilkesboro jail when no one else would except my mother and the crazy preacher. You might wonder why I am giving my journal to you and not my mother or other kin. They cannot read or write is one reason. Another is, I wouldn’t want them to know some of the thoughts I’ve been having, some of the accounts of the events that have landed me in this tough spot. Only a woman like you could understand such things. I knew the first time I looked into your eyes that you were someone I could trust with every little secret. If I have one regret in my whole life, it is that I did not get to know you better—that I allowed myself to be guided more by pleasure than by good horse sense. Had I known then what I now know about you, there would have been no other love for me, no Ann or Pauline or—God, how it grieves me to even mention her name—no Laura. And maybe had I loved you instead of them, there would have been no murder. My papers should arrive to you in a few days hence. I ask that you wait only until my kin have all passed over before you show it to anyone else. Yr. dutiful servant & friend, Tom.
I read it with silent heartbreak, then put it with the others I keep tied with a scarlet ribbon there in the same place I keep my own diary of the events that have occurred. The events of love, betrayal, and murder. For we were all witness to the same events, to the same lives damaged and destroyed, and no one was innocent completely.
Don’t ask me if he did it, I dare not ask myself.
But my heart tells me his bones and marrow have no murder in them. Yet I do confess my eyes are cloudy with unrequited love, and love makes fools of us all. Just as it surely must have to the others: Ann and Pauline and Laura: Laura most of all—for she paid the dearest price.
Tom speaks to me about regretting not professing his love for me. And I, who cannot speak, am equally at fault when it comes to such confessions. Nature rendered me mute of tongue, but not of heart. There were other ways I could have exclaimed to him the nature of my love, the depth and breadth of it. But, he loved the others, and I thought it impossible he could love me as well; Ann with her beauty and cunning; Pauline with her naïveté; Laura, with her sweet innocence, or so it seemed. What did I have to compare with all that?
Had I confessed my love in a letter, would that, say, have been enough to change the events? The words in my heart are like caged canaries fighting to be set free, my tongue the lock that holds them captive. I should have written to him my confession and let matters fall in place, or not. But do words ever alter history of self?
So tomorrow they will kill my love and he will fall into eternity and be as silent as my tongue.
I dread the hours between now and then.
I dread the thought of the day being beautiful, of birds singing, of music and laughter and happy small children and all things I once held as wonderful. For tomorrow will be black, black, black.
And though I have not told him when exactly, I will leave first chance for New York, then on to Paris, and never again return to this place. For love, and the death of love, tear at the heart as nothing else can and I must do something with all these caged birds that flutter around in my heart so wildly, or else go mad. But for the moment, it is better if Tom believes I will be here for him—someone who did not abandon him in life or death.
O, I shall be there when he returns again, just as I was the first time. Only this time, it will be only me, and not one of his false lovers. And I shall go up to the grave where they will bury him and wait until all have left before coming out of the shadows. And I will kneel there beside him and stay awhile. My heart will speak to his heart and he will hear me this time. For angels know what angels know.
And in that cold and lonely place he’ll sleep, he’ll sleep with knowing he was loved truly.
Perhaps before tomorrow, he will receive my last and final letter.
And, if you are listening, dear sweet Jesus, remember the promise you made: ask anything in my name and it shall be given. Well, I am asking now that you make Tom know I love him.
That I have always loved him.
Tom Dooley
I try not to pray, but cannot keep from it. Shinbone, the mad preacher, tried his level best to convince me of the spirit world and I tried my best not to believe him. For who can believe in a God that allows war and death to those who don’t deserve it? And what I’ve seen, I’ve seen, and I won’t ever forget except by death’s grace. Still, I find myself spewing pleas to this ghost called Jesus.
O, Lord, don’t let this thing happen to me. Where is there any meaning in this injustice? If you are the embodiment of love as they say you are, then why don’t you love me enough to save me?
But time does not stop and the final hour comes closer with each breath and no spirit, holy or otherwise, comes to save me.
I tell myself it is all foolishness, that I am so desperate I will believe anything—that no man is Saved until he sees he is about to die and convinces himself of God and God’s salvation. All this praying and I don’t feel saved at all. I just feel foolish for allowing myself to try and bargain with a ghost.
Wiley shuffles back in again, a letter in his hand, sniffing the envelope.
Smells like it’s from somebody sweet, Tom.
Escaping from his droopy eye is a certain suffering that I cannot too long look at.
He hands the letter to me through the bars and refuses for an instant to let it go, making sure that his fingers touch mine. I am the caged dog he feeds more to torment than to keep alive.
He chomps down on his plug, turns his head ever so slightly, and spits, without once letting me escape the gaze of that haughty eye.
Probably that same gal’s been writing you right along. She must be something real special to attract a pretty boy like you. Something real, real sweet.
Then to my relief he goes back out again.
Dearest Tom,
I hope and pray this letter reaches you in time. I wish you had given permission for me to come and be there tomorrow. Well, a part of me wishes that, and a part of me is relieved that I won’t be there. O, this is so difficult to even speak of, but understand this—I love you. I’ve always loved you. And I will always love you and nothing can separate me from your love. Nothing. I will keep your words close to me, and if you’ll permit, I’ll arrange them so that someday the world will hear them and judge for themselves what occurred here in this place. It is the one gift I can still give you—to see that your story is rightly told. I’ve decided to take up the pursuit of poetry. I know I cannot earn a living at it, not just now anyway, but perhaps someday I shall. To sustain myself, I’ll give piano lessons. Of course, I’ll have to eventually move away. I was thinking about Paris. What a grand place I’ve heard it is. We could have had such fun in Paris, you and me. For you have the soul of a wanderlust . . . and so do I.
I have to stop reading because my eyes burn with tears.
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It is enough I am loved at all.
It is far more than I could have hoped for: to be loved by this woman who I gave so little to when the chance was there. Did I think a woman who could speak and whisper her desire for me better than one who could not? Surely I did. And surely I am the worse for it. I allowed false hearts to conquer me, to capture and cage me. And look at me now.
For love is the greatest of these, the ghost said.
I will read the rest of Liza’s letter in a little while. I will read it in small bits and digest every word and let it settle into my blood and transform me, if anything can, and make me whole and ready for the thieves of righteousness.
For steal my life they surely will.
But sweet Jesus, let them not steal my soul.
CHAPTER 3
Tom Dooley
The husk mattress shifts beneath me, whispers like a thousand tiny voices whispering my sin.
A square of winter light beckons me from the far end of the cabin. Panes of frosted glass separated by a cross of wood.
The cold breathes my name.
Tom.
I remember an early morning like this one along the Rappahannock. Me and the boys. The river cold black. Cooking coffee. Grass full of frost. Me, a drummer. Ghosts across the river. Fear settled o’er us. Each day more of us missing until we were hardly more than a ragged blanket of God’s unmaking.
Beat the drum, Tom.
Ann stirs beside me, one arm across my chest. Over in the corner sleeps Melton. Hair sprouting from the blankets: a bramble of startled gray. She calls him husband. He calls her, wife.
Beat the drum, Tom.
I slip from bed, from Ann’s slumbered embrace, and pull on drawers, shirt, boots, quiet as I can so as not to disturb Melton, Ann, the world.
The room’s only hope is the frosty light falling long through the room. Fire in the stone hearth burned out sometime during the night, sometime between the throes of Ann’s desire and Melton’s regret. Melton’s heart is grown cold as those ashes, my own nearly so.
An old squirrel rifle leans in the corner where morning light has tiptoed, climbed its stock and barrel. I make a silent journey to the door.
I was a soldier once, a drummer mostly, but knew how to go quietly about so as not to disturb the dead. I was full of pride most days: proud to be with the boys and proud to be one of them. Me and the boys gathered by the river, cooking coffee, chewing tack, talking, laughing, being shot at, being scared. Look at me now. Some around here call me a backdoor man.
O pride, where have thou fled? To a rusted cage of thy own hand’s making.
Ann lies in the bed like a wilted flower I’ve torn from Melton’s garden. But his hands knew not how to raise the lily and care for it, nor keep it alive with love. Where my own hand was careful, knew the ways of the flower and when ready, how to pluck it. And now our sin is our sin. I am not proud of my easy harvest, but not so ashamed I avoid it.
Beat the drum, Tom.
Ann Foster Melton
Who can tell a wild heart not to beat?
When Tom left for the war, Melton came for me. Rained all the night before; it should have been a warning. Melton rode up on a mule. I don’t know who was uglier, Melton or that mule. I should have run and kept on running. But where is a child to go alone among these hills? I had not heard from Tom for months. Not one letter to let me know if he was safe or dead.
Melton’s voice was high and pinched like a woman’s.
Hidey.
Climb down, climb down, my mother said. Liquor was her curse and she was in its grip then.
Don’t mind if I do.
The mule snorted in relief of his weight.
Melton never once took his indecent eyes off me. I felt skittish and thought if I ran and threw myself into the river, that would do it. Even Melton wouldn’t have truck with a drowned girl.
Him and mother languished over a crock of corn liquor, sipping and negotiating the price he’d pay for me.
She’s young and tender and never once been touched; that oughter mean something.
Still, they’s gals all over this valley since the war took off all the able men. You’ll have to put a fair price on her. ’Sides, how can you say she’s not been touched? She was with Tom Dooley for a time, wasn’t she, mother?
If’n you feel such, why you come for her, if they’s gals so plentiful and my child here is so tainted with another man’s love?
I guess I always had an eye for her.
She’d make you a good wife, give you all the young’ns you could muster. Jus’ look at the hips on her.
I’d go twenty dollars, that oughter do it.
Twenty dollars! Why you can’t buy you a good mule for no twenty dollars, much less a fresh young sprite such as her.
They haggled over me like I was a nigger.
What Melton feared was true—if he bought me, he was buying used goods. What he wanted to get so bad had already been gotten. Tom got free what that old fool Melton was willing to pay cash money for. And others got it free too—long before Tom even, and long before Melton. I’d rather have married the mule.
But soon enough the negotiations were finished and I packed what few clothes I had into a carpetbag and climbed on the back of Melton’s mule, my arms around his bony ribs while mother counted out her fifty dollars and never even said a word of farewell.
Melton proved hard on me. Tried to wear me out that first night. I bit inside my cheek and stood it and when he rolled off me, I vowed he’d have no more of me unless he beat me and tied me to the bed. He did that too, ’bout every time. I fought him like a wild cat, clawed at his eyes and scratched his face. But mostly it did no good; I’d end up with bruises on my legs, back—everywhere. And when he was full mean drunk, he’d smite my face and blacken my eyes.
Tom don’t know the half of what I’ve had to put up with. He fought his war. I fought mine.
O, I begged Tom not to go and leave me to other men such as Melton. I begged him from the very first. But Tom’s head was filled with glory, he said his eyes saw the far shining seas and distant places and that he heard the beat of the drums and my love couldn’t hold him. Nothing could, he said.
I gave myself to him, all that he wanted and all that I wanted and wherever he wanted. It didn’t matter to me, I had no pride when it came to Tom Dooley. Some men are like that, they make you throw away your pride, they make you want to do anything for them, to keep them. And so that’s what I did. I did anything I could to keep him.
Tom Dooley
O, I was well warned the price I’d pay by leaving, by sallying forth to the march of drums, the rattling sabers, the screaming lead.
O, proud soldier, march with thee and recline thy head upon thy tunic
& weep with thee on summer’s eve as we count our score of boys dead,
Whose eyes pale as distant stars hold no longer hope or glory! Hear them
Sigh their constant warning and take heed all ye not yet gone to faraway places
That in a blink and nod you too will join them still there on that unholy ground.
Our first time together and before I went off, was in a corncrib not far from Melton’s cabin.
Melton aims to marry me, Tom.
He’s old, old.
Can’t we run away together?
Don’t ask me to know your heart before I know my own.
Then he, or another, shall have me if you will not.
Then I reckon he will, if you let him.
She sobbed away while the thunder gods summoned me. O, the war was a jolly thing. We played soldiers until came the death upon us. Then our jolly notions fled and left us only with ragged wounds and frightened hearts.
As I unlatch the door—its leather hinges barely protest—and step foot forth into this new world, I think of those days—how far away and rousing they were. But here in the silence of frost in the grass and trees that are stark and white and cool as the lips of a corpse, those days are hardly even a dream t
o me. Melton’s old horse stands frozen, snorting steam. It reminds me of the steam-snorting deer that would drift down from the woods to scavenge corn in the morning silence before battles were pitched—O, what was it, two, three years ago? Louis taking aim, bringing a velvet doe to its delicate knees at a distance of a hundred yards—yelps with glee, Yahoo, boys, we’ll eat good tonight, the camp gathering. And for a time it seemed hardly war at all, for we could hear the Yanks at night across the river calling out feverishly:
Trade you baccy for some deer meat, Reb!
Trade you a pocketknife for some of that corn liquor!
Trade you my galdurn gal for some!
But not enough to go around for them and us both: one skinny little doe. Feed the Federals and they’ll damn sure kill you the next day Sergeant Carnes warned. We shout back and forth, them saying how they’ll get even with us in the morning and us saying how they should come on over and get a kiss from Betsy Bore. Laughter. Silence. Dread like cold creeping into our bones.
A night like long sorrow lay o’er us, our blanket of truth.
Come the morning we fight like hell, try and kill each other, then retreat and go somewhere else and fight again. Half them dead, half us—left there on the battlefield for the bottle flies. Bloated dark corpses upon memory’s pages.
O, but that was back then and time becomes confused and I don’t trust it, I don’t.
Outside Melton’s cabin the world seems foreign. The tree-sloped mountains gleam like the frosty beards of old men in repose. Ribbons of smoke curl up from the black creeks. It seems as though God himself breathed down upon the earth a hasty cold breath in his retreat from here.
The grass crunches beneath my boots as I walk to the privy. A chill more unbearable than the morning air touches the back of my neck. I know Melton is watching me through a circle of frosted glass wiped clear by the heel of his hand. I don’t care. I don’t care.
The dewy scent of Ann clings to me like a nosegay of dead flowers.
Is it drums I hear there beyond the far mountains?