by Bill Brooks
Yours maybe, not mine.
I’ll pray for you.
Hell if’n I need it.
Hell if’n you don’t.
I watched him go on back toward his camp. Watched until the darkness swallowed him, then went back toward my place instead of Melton’s. I figured we could all of us use a little peace.
Whoo, whoo said the owl.
Whoo—whoo—whoo?
CHAPTER 10
Tom Dooley
Tom!
Tom Dooley!
A bullet pierced my neck, in the dream it did. I was just sitting around the camp having a fine cup of barley coffee with the boys, laughing and telling stories, when something sharp snapped through my throat.
I heard the boys, saw their peering faces o’er me, heard their groans of disbelief.
He’s kilt.
Bleeding out, nothing can be done.
Drummer boy’s been shot!
Farewell, ol’ friend.
Louis took a scarf, a lovely white scarf his darling Minnie had sent him to remember her by, and tied it round my blood wound.
Hesh, hesh, sweet Tom.
I could see the sun fracture in his eyes—all my breath stole. He placed his mouth on mine and took the last of my air into him.
I came awake in a fright, fighting for life, covers all damp from sweat. The cabin as quiet as a coffin. Then I heard the voice calling my name.
Tom Dooley!
Moonlight crept across the floor and the foot of my bed and was climbing up the near wall. A pair of eyes stared and stared. There in the ghostly light a glass painting of my pa. He was a vain man and had it done in a Knoxville studio one time when he was there gambling and chasing sporting ladies—this Ma told me, anyways.
Goddamn you, Tom Dooley.
Voice from outside, angry drunk. I pulled on a pair of drawers, considered the small pistol I kept on the night table by my pillow. It had been Louis’s—an old cap and ball, black powder Colt Dragoon. But it’s bad luck to shoot a man in the night—everyone knows it is.
The voice outside my cabin was rising and falling in a crazy singsong way. From the window I saw Grayson sitting his Tennessee stud, moonlight in its marble eyes.
Stepping out, forgoing the pistol after all, I stood there on the porch.
Kinda late ain’t it, Mr. Grayson?
You owe me, Tom.
Owe you for what?
That love-starved nigger. He up and disappeared.
None of my doing.
Sure as hell was.
Grayson swayed there in the saddle, thought he’d fall off and bash his brains out on the hard ground. In a way, I wished he would, but then I’d get blamed for that too most likely.
It’s a free country last I heard, Mr. Grayson. I reckon the niggers can go where they want same as anybody else.
Don’t sass me, Dooley. Don’t make light of a serious matter.
I need my sleep.
I saw the shining barrel of a revolver in his one hand, a bottle of whiskey in his other—both equally fatal in the hands of the wrong man.
Shoot me, what good’s that do? It don’t bring your man back.
It might give me a deep amount of satisfaction to shoot you. It might give a lot of folks in this valley a deep amount of satisfaction if you wasn’t around any longer.
Still won’t get you your man back.
Maybe not, but somebody’s got to take up his slack.
You figure me?
That’s the way I figure it.
Your figuring’s all wrong.
A bank of clouds drifted over the face of the moon, and made the world feel like a sad and lonesome place, like a cemetery of night. I saw the shadow of Grayson shift. Wasn’t all that sure he wasn’t ready to pull the trigger on me, send me to perdition. Maybe if he did I’d see Louis again. I wondered if death gave you wings so you could fly to wherever it was the dead went. Wings seemed somehow unfitting.
You do what you got to, Mr. Grayson, I’m going back to bed.
The clouds swam over the face of the moon, drifted silver light over the land, lighting Grayson up like a ghost. He turned his stud around three times in a tight circle as if to prove something, then started off toward his farm, the Walker kicking out its front hooves in a jolly little trot. He seemed a clownish pathetic thing, Grayson did.
I sat on the step of my poor little porch and breathed in the dank night, grateful I had not been killed by a drunk man. Of all the poor ways I could think to die, being killed by a drunk man seemed to me the poorest.
Colonel Grayson
I blame Dooley for most of the troubles in this valley since his return. He’s stirred up things plenty. Came down to my place and talked to my hired man and the next I know, I got no hired man. I did some asking around and what I heard was there was some trouble between Dooley and Swain and the girl who worked for Swain, Pauline Foster. I don’t know rightly what it was except Dooley and Swain had a falling out over it and after, Dooley came round and talked to my man Raymond while he was down to the river cutting ice. Next day Raymond went missing. They found his body in the self same river that spring. Drowned.
That’s the sort of troubles I’d lay at Tom Dooley’s doorstep. Raymond was a happy child till Dooley came and talked to him.
Tom Dooley
It was that very morning after Grayson came drunk in the night when Ann arrived at my door, her eyes fierce as a copperhead’s.
You come by yesterday, didn’t you? When I wasn’t there? When it was just you and that little tart there alone. I don’t even have to guess what you two were up to!
I came to see you.
Her breathing was little sharp daggers of anger. Morning was rising over the ridges, the sky a ragged gray—too early for quarreling with any woman.
I warn you this, I catch you with her, I’ll . . .
Then from now on, you come see me, you walk that miserable trail to my place.
She went wild from jealousy and tried to scratch and claw me and I had to catch her up and hold her. And the more wild she became the more I desired to possess her. She fit me and I held her in my grip and kissed her mouth hard until she bit my lip and drew blood. I threw her across the bed and she cursed me.
You white nigger bastard.
Is that what Melton calls me? Is that what your lovely husband says I am?
I fell atop her and kissed her again, harder this time, the bitter salt of my blood smearing her mouth, her tongue licking at it. My cob rose stiff between my legs and I pressed it between hers, through the folds of her skirts until I knew she could feel it.
You want every woman but me. You had me, now you want every woman you ain’t had, including Cousin Pauline. I know you already had her, I know it ain’t enough you have us both!
She shoved her hand down between us, grabbed my cob. It felt like she was trying to tear it from my body.
Don’t!
I will!
I rose from her enough to tear open her capote, to get at the buttons of her dress and tear them as well, tear and tear until her breasts fell free and lay full and white with their hard brown tips alert.
Her glare lost none of its viper intensity. She hissed. I lifted her skirts. She tried to claw my eyes. I pinned her wrists.
I don’t want her in me!
She won’t be in you. I’ll be in you.
She bucked and fit, lurching her hips upward into me, tossing her head wildly, her sunny hair a sweet tangled nest that hid half her face.
If you do this, I’ll say you raped me.
Go ahead say it. Everybody knows about us.
I’ll say . . . I’ll say . . .
But even as she fit and protested and cursed my existence, she parted her legs for me to enter her. It was like a crazy game, of course. We both knew it, understood it. She wanted me to take her, wanted me to force her to give herself to me, to prove somehow that I wanted her worse than I wanted any other woman.
Fuck me, Tom.
Yes, I�
�ll fuck you.
She could swear as well as any soldier when she wanted.
But our love was like that of two angry angels wrestling each other. We churned and struggled as though locked in mortal combat. Our minds and bodies were crazed and delirious. Whatever wild spirits were inside of us wanted to get out and enter the other. She tore at me and I tore at her, and when we’d finished, we lay exhausted, two spent souls who had fit for their lives, both so defeated neither cared if they lived another day.
Tom?
Yes.
Do you love me?
Yes.
Would you kill for me?
It was an odd question, even for Ann, who could be so volatile I was sometimes afraid to close my eyes on her.
I’d like to think I’ll never have to.
But if you had to, would you?
Ann, you are as precious to me as my own blood but you’re asking me something I can’t rightly answer.
Oh damn you, Tom Dooley.
She cursed me still, for I could not give her what she wanted. I did not know what she wanted. I told her about my midnight visit from Grayson in order to change the subject.
You should have kept clear of that whole business. I wished now that I had not listened to you and let you talk me into taking her in. You see what happens when you try and have a generous heart, Tom?
I thought about Raymond, about how even a daft creature such as he could feel a crushed heart. But then love isn’t a thing that requires very much thinking. Love just is and it doesn’t matter whether you’re daft or not.
Ann Foster Melton
O, is that the way he told the story? It isn’t true, not a word of it. Yes, I went there on that winter morning. But I went out of kindness, not jealousy. I’d heard he was sick with a cold and I brought him some broth and biscuits. He was wild crazy about some incident with Grayson, how Grayson threatened him or the like. I’m not exactly clear. I tried to calm his anger, but instead he grew angry at me and when I tried to leave, he wouldn’t let me. Instead, he . . .
I told him while he was doing it that it wasn’t what I wanted, that I’d tell my husband if he didn’t stop. But he wouldn’t stop and threatened to kill me if I told anyone. I don’t know what got in to him, what it was that changed him so drastically from a friend to a fiend. When he finally let me go I was too scared to tell anyone, even my husband, what Tom did to me. And I never did tell anyone until just now.
O, I know you loved him, Liza Brouchard, like we all did. I know you would have been a fool for him like we all were if it wasn’t that he ignored you and chose others in your place. But be glad that he didn’t set his ways for you—be glad you escaped his snare. You, of all of us, was the lucky one.
Tom Dooley
With Ann and me it was always like a storm, and after the storm passed, everything was calm again and I told her my thoughts about not wanting to stay in the valley any longer and she listened like she was interested.
I was thinking maybe of going over the mountains.
Where over the mountains?
I don’t know. Just I look at them sometimes and I feel like I should go and see what’s over them.
I thought you been all over them mountains, Tom. Didn’t you go over ’em when you joined the Army and fit in the war?
It wasn’t the same thing as it would be now.
Good God, Tom. You talk like a wild man sometimes.
I was thinking how maybe a new start might be just the thing. I wouldn’t have no enemies over the mountains. There’d just be strangers. I wouldn’t have to compete over the love of a married woman. I’d gotten hungry to go over those mountains once and now I was getting hungry to go over them again. And when I mentioned these things, Ann grew restless and questioned me and I was near afraid I’d stirred her up again.
You wouldn’t leave me, would you, Tom? You’d take me with you if you was to go?
Yes, I reckon.
I don’t know if I’d taken her or not.
You won’t find no woman good as me over them mountains.
No, probably not, just strangers.
You won’t find no woman who will do this . . .
O, but she had her ways of twisting my head round. Her sunny hair lay gathered across my loins as I felt the warm wetness of her mouth try and stir my cob to life again. I lay there staring up at a spider’s web, lovely and delicate, woven between the roof beams. There waiting in the eye of the web, a fat sleek body of a Black Widow like a watchful dark eye waiting for the proper opportunity. And from below I could hear Ann encouraging me.
That’s it, Tom. That’s it.
I closed my eyes and near choked on the sweetness of it all.
Elizabeth Brouchard
The storm was always in you, Tom. Always raging and raging. And into your rage you gathered the rage of others—& Melton, Pauline & Grayson—and caused them to storm like a hot wind until everything blew down and was left in tatters.
And now your rage has blown itself out, and like the sea that suffers under the storm, the waters are all calm again and there is no trace of you, no sign that you’ve ever been, except for one:
My tattered heart.
CHAPTER 11
Tom Dooley
Winter died without a whimper, and next anyone knew, the dogwoods were blooming and the mountains were whispering a warm breath over us all. Ann came several times to visit, but mostly I went to Melton’s to see her. And when it wasn’t Ann I was visiting, it was Pauline, for I couldn’t seem to quit either. I thought soon enough, things would work themselves out the way they were meant to without me having a direct hand in it. After all, I reasoned, why should a fellow have to give up things of pleasure in a world so filled with sorrow?
On the first truly warm day when the sky was the color of a polished pan, I found Billy Dixon asleep on my porch. He was lying on his side, his shoes under his head, his legs pulled up like a child. I don’t know how he got there or when. At first I thought he might be dead, but then I saw his ribs bellow. A string of spit hung from his mouth.
Wake up there, Billy.
No movement.
Said it again, then I took a dipper of rainwater and sloshed it down on his pale, pitted face.
Wha . . . wha . . .
You acting like a stray dog, Billy.
He popped right up, the cold water like a slap. Knuckled his eyes.
Hidey, Tom.
Hidey.
He looked around.
How’d I get here?
You tell me, we’ll both know.
Oh hell, oh hell.
Somebody’s hound bayed up the valley, bayed and bayed and bayed. Billy looked ’round, eyes wide.
Hear that. Means somebody’s dead.
Means just some old dog’s hungry.
No, sir, Tom, means somebody’s gone and died.
Ain’t you supposed to be down at the schoolhouse?
His gaze drifted west toward where the mountains were taking on the shine of the sun along their dark sleepy slopes, and in the meadow beyond the creek where the schoolhouse stood.
I’m not feeling so well, Tom.
You don’t look it, neither.
The baying stopped. The valley fell silent. A hawk scoured the east ridges for breakfast. It was turning into a nice morning. I went inside and poured Billy a tin cup of hot coffee and saw the tatted handkerchief lying on the pillow, an embroidered A for Ann. She said she’d always want to see it there whenever she came to visit.
So’s you won’t ever forget me, Tom, or what is yours for the taking.
It floated like a leaf when she’d dropped it.
I half thought of giving the thing to Billy along with his coffee.
Go on, take it, Billy. Take it and go to her and win her heart and take her away from me and Melton. Take her out of this valley and far away.
We sat and blew off the heat of our cups and sipped the bitter chicory. Billy said it was about the worst coffee he had ever had and I said if he d
idn’t like it he could march on into the village and see if he could find some better for the same price.
I didn’t mean any offense, Tom.
None taken, Billy. What about them kids, won’t they all be waiting for you down at the schoolhouse?
He felt around in his pockets.
I lost my watch somewhere last night.
You might check up under some slattern’s skirts.
Oh, hell.
I reckon it ain’t but eight o’clock.
I’m all blank about last night, Tom.
Hard liquor steals a man’s brains.
We watched the sun crawl all the way to the peaks of the west range—Grandpa’s Knob and Bearhead Knob and Sweetheart’s Gap—till everything was golden. Then the valley itself filled with buttery light that came creeping right up to the steps like a cautious old hound and licked the toes of Billy’s feet.
You think God has a hand in all this, Tom?
Hard for me to believe in God, Billy, after what I seen in the war. I don’t know how any God would let men do such things to one another. And tell me this, what sort of God would give some men regular brains and others made of mush?
You mean fellows like Raymond.
Make him colored and daft all at the same time. That’s a hard way to start out life you ask me, might as well made him a dog—he’d have it better if he was.
Some things just are, Tom. God’s a great big mystery.
Maybe so, but I ain’t got time to figure it through.
Billy drained the dregs of his cup, made a bitter face.
What do you think ever happened to Raymond?
Hard to say—but wouldn’t be hard to figure why he up and left.
I told Billy Grayson blamed me for Raymond’s disappearance.
These fellows round here take things like that serious, Tom. They still got a lot of the old ways in them. I don’t reckon no war is going to change what’s in their bitter hearts.
I fit that war, Billy. Grayson and some of these others seem to have forgotten that.
But why’d you fight in it, Tom? To keep the niggers as slaves?
Fit it ’cause I wanted to be a drummer and I wanted to see what was over them mountains. I dint fit it for no other reasons. I just fit it, Billy.
Not because you wanted to keep the niggers owned?