Tom Dooley

by Bill Brooks

  But Laura was like a refuge for me, a safe place where I didn’t have to sin anymore against myself, or others; I could feel clean and unmarked by starting anew with Laura.

  And when I went to see her, my spirit felt light and airy like a fast fiddle tune that made my feet want to dance and dance. And whilst my feet were dancing, my heart acted like a quick bird that sought to fly away, its wings thrumming in my chest for release.

  So I made up my mind that once I went to courting Laura, I’d end it with Ann and Pearl. And the mere thought of ending it was like weight off my shoulders, a mountain water washing the sludge of corrupted blood from my veins.

  I even stripped naked and went out and stood in the rain and scrubbed my scalp with a bar of lye soap and scrubbed my flesh till it felt like new skin again. I turned my face to the sky and let the rain fall upon my closed eyes and upon my tongue until I nearly wept with the joy of it all. I felt free for the first time since the officers announced to the boys the war was over, that we was free to go home.

  O, I know how foolish it must sound to you, of all people, Liza, to equate the two—love and war. One offers death and the other life.

  Word of the war’s end took our breath away. Some of the boys went about stunned, disbelieving, their gaunt faces like the living dead, their eyes no longer to see hope’s horizon. Others danced a jig; their arms interlocked, and sang joyous songs. And some simply sat on their blankets and wept.

  Hell, she’s finished, boys!

  Lee surrendered his sword.

  No! No!

  We been whipped!

  Lord almighty!

  Beat the drum, Tom. Drum the men to order.

  But there was no order anymore—the flesh and the hearts of the boys had been freed and they could be whatever they wanted to be and do whatever they wanted to do. No one could give them any more orders. We were as free as the niggers most of us never owned nor hardly even knew anything about.

  I beat the drum and the men sang Dixie but their hearts weren’t in it like they once were. Their pride had become as ragged as the raggedy flag we’d been following for nearly three years. And when I struck the last drumbeat, we straggled off, leaving behind us a great silence.

  Goddamn, goddamn.

  And I walked away from the camp and away from the others amid the smoke and dust, knowing I’d left my shadow somewhere on the land. I walked off and stood upon a small ridge and looked down at a river whose name I did not know snaking lazily under a blood-red sun as it had always done. A river without any valor or defeat to it known, I thought, a river without any regret. A river that had washed away all the blood in it.

  Looking down on it, I imagined a little wood boat with a letter tied to it floating away to a far-off dream where Louis waited for the rest of us to join him. Someday, someday.

  We’d fit the whole damn war for nothing it seemed to me. For that river was as it had always been, and the hills were as they had always been and the sky was as it had always been. Whereas Louis and thousands like him were dead for a vainglorious notion that nobody understood except the generals and politicians. We died in ragged lines, blown apart by shell and ball and sometimes chain. Bayoneted and shot and burned alive. Our hands and feet and torsos decorated the lands from Virginia to Tennessee. Our bones fertilize the earth still, and for a hundred years more. The only thing that had changed was us boys and a colored man’s right to go where he pleased—all the rest remained as God had made it.

  The deer and bear and birds will return, but we never will.

  The trees and grass will grow up again, but we never will.

  Our lost sweethearts will find new love again, but we never will—those of us left behind the shattered walls, the shorn fields, the tattered woods, never will again. Goddamn, goddamn.

  Elizabeth Brouchard

  And while you were gone, there was this empty valley of a place, Tom. This valley grown bereft of youth, and it seemed we’d grown old almost overnight—old and out of balance with young women going about with empty hearts and nowhere to place their love, except for the old men and lame and useless who would take advantage.

  But surely our sorrow was not the same as yours.

  Our burden was not as great or tragic.

  And when you and a few of the others did return again, it brought once more hope to this place. So it seems so unfair that the seeds of hope returned, never blossomed into what might have been. And you did not blossom, Tom. Instead you were let grow to seed and trampled and pulled out by the root.

  And all your youth and all your beauty could not save you. And now, even love cannot save you. For if it could, I would kiss your sweet tender mouth and free you from this cell and nurture you all the rest of my days with love. My love would be balm to your injured soul. My love would be music to your ears. My love would be the rich dark soil for you to take root in again and grow and blossom.

  Grant to me, Glorious Father, this right to save him.

  Tom Dooley

  Yes, surely the journey was long and twisted and all out of shape. And life’s truest hope did not lead me to you, sweet Liza. For the war had turned my head all around and left me insensible and foolish and not afraid of death or the consequences of living. So let me tell you how it was, how it was, how it was.

  Relief at first that she was over, and then gladness seeped back into us because we were still alive and able to know such things and home we went, bereft, defeated, but alive, sighing relief, but too, our hearts heavy with guilt to be alive still.

  And in my long journey I had time to think about it all and conclude that there are never any tomorrows, just the now. And it was this very thinking that led me to dance in the rain for the joy of thinking of Laura Foster as the skies burst open. For to me, she was my second chance at life—a true and honest life without sin or guilt.

  It was as though God hisself brought her to me, for when I opened my eyes, she sat her pap’s horse there in the rain and said:

  I never saw a naked man dancing in the rain.

  The rain had left her hair to hang in dark tangles about her face. Her wet dress clung to her as if she was shedding her skin. She seemed a woman born of water, risen straight out of Atlantis—or some mermaid I’d read about that prowls the seas, but here she was among the mountains.

  You must think I’m crazy dancing around like this.

  She didn’t say a word, just sat looking at me.

  The rain beaded upon her sweet face.

  Aren’t you afraid you’ll catch your death?

  No, ma’am, I’m afraid I’ll catch my life if I look at you much longer, or have you look at me, thus.

  That’s an odd thing to say.

  You wouldn’t think so if you knew what was in my heart this very moment.

  Why don’t you tell me what’s in your heart, Tom Dooley.

  The way she said my name was like hearing the church bell ring down in the glade on Sunday morning, or a warbler singing among the pines.

  I feel plum foolish standing here thus before you.

  Then maybe you should invite me in out of the rain and clothe thyself.

  I think that’s a fine idea.

  Inside my cabin, I rubbed dry and she sat before the fire and I said it would be she who caught her death if she didn’t get out of her wet clothes.

  I think a gentleman would offer to assist me.

  I’ve been accused of many things but never called such a name.

  She smiled and lifted her wet hair from her neck and I took the buttons of her dress starting at the top and undid them. I brushed her bare shoulders and back with a dry towel and she inclined her head exposing her nape and I kissed it gently.

  Her dress fully removed was heavy and dripping and I hung it before the fire on a drying rack, then set about helping her remove her underclothing, peeling it from her, exposing more and more of Laura Foster to eyes that craved to see her thus. I couldn’t help but compare her in my mind to those cousins of hers, Ann and Pearl, f
or there were similarities, but none that mattered to me.

  She took my face in her hands and kissed me, her mouth so terribly tender I lost all thought of Ann and Pearl or any other woman I’d ever known. Of course I did not think of you, Liza, in that way back then. For if I had, there would have been no Laura Foster, no Pearl, no Ann. But then I know you might find that hard to believe considering the circumstances as they are. But if you think it a lie, ask yourself what good would it do me to lie about such things now?

  Elizabeth Brouchard

  O, even if it is a lie, Tom, I choose to believe it. For I did not present myself to you in such a manner as to give you indication of my availability, and even if I had, there is nothing to say you would have taken notice. Girls with tongues as sharp as Ann’s or Pearl’s or Laura’s, tongues that could whisper sweet promises, what would you have seen in me with a tongue so dull and useless?

  I knew that Laura was prettiest of all the Foster girls, and Ann so wildly beautiful. What chance would I have stood against their beauty? And with my muted tongue, what chance would I have stood to win you?

  None, none at all.

  Tom Dooley

  O, I wish you would not write of such things to me now that nothing can be done about it. But still, I’m glad you do. For, even though I gave myself to others, I will go to my grave knowing that if I could do it all again, I would give myself only to you.

  Go on with your story, Tom. I didn’t mean to interrupt.

  Well, on that rainy day, the fire crackled in the hearth & the flames leapt against the blackened stone & steam rose from her wet clothing. I kissed her as passionately and yet as delicately as I knew how. I didn’t want to frighten her. But she wasn’t frightened at all.

  Cousin Ann warned me about you.

  Hesh, hesh, sweet girl.

  I want you to know, Tom, that whatever you are, whatever you were before I came here, doesn’t matter to me.

  I’ve been waiting for you all this time.

  She rested her head against my chest as softly as a child would and I held her tenderly as I would a child:

  You must promise me one thing, Tom.

  Anything.

  That if I give myself to you, if I give my heart to you, you won’t mock me, you won’t tell the others and see me as a thing to play with for your amusement.

  I began to promise, but she put her fingers to my lips to stop whatever promise I was about to make.

  Think carefully, Tom, before you speak. Don’t steal from me the only thing I own that is yet precious. I’m not sophisticated like Cousin Ann, and I’m not a fool like Cousin Pauline. I’m a common girl with common dreams, don’t take advantage of me, will you promise me that?

  And even as I promised she trembled in my arms; I thought from her being cold and wet, but she said it was really because her heart was fearful of being ruined by loving me.

  There can’t be any ruin in love. Tell me how.

  If I give my love to you and you leave me, if I become your lover and you become a stranger, then it will be ruin, Tom.

  There was no doubt in my mind that I had loved her from the first moment our eyes met. But to prove to her that I loved her and would not ruin her, I refused to take advantage of her when I knew I could possess her in front of the fire.

  Instead I wrapped her in a blanket and dressed in dry shirt and trousers and fixed a meal of mush and biscuits and slices of salted ham and black coffee sweetened with sugar.

  We talked as we ate, our desire cooling temporarily, as she told me about her life and her pap and how they’d left Iredell County because her pap was forever restless and it was the fourth or fifth place they’d lived in the last several years. I asked about her ma; she said she didn’t know that much about her, that her pap never talked about her.

  All he ever said was, that one day she just up and left us.

  I told her about me, about my adventures in the war—some of them, anyway—and how happy I was to have come home again whole, but that lately I’d gotten a restlessness in me—like bugs crawling on my skin—and was thinking about going over the mountains, maybe going all the way to the ocean.

  You sound like daddy.

  I’m not shiftless if that’s what you mean. I’m just a plain curious fellow.

  Oh, I know you are, Tom. I seen it in your eyes that very first moment. I knew you were different than the others.

  You known other men intimately, Laura?

  I’ve had beaus that pursued me. I been asked to marry twice and refused. But no man has known me in that way you speak of.

  O, my heart sang with joy, for every man wants a woman untouched by another man—a woman unfamiliar with intimacies.

  But answer me this, Tom. Suppose I had been with other men, would it make a difference to you now?

  I told her that nothing would matter to me—but was I sure? O, I can’t say that I was. So I told her what I thought was the right thing to say instead.

  All that matters is just what I am now and what I’ll be when I’m with you.

  The sound of rain makes me sleepy, Tom.

  I carried her to my bed and laid her on it and lay down next to her and she watched me in that curious way she had of watching me.

  It’s okay if you want to have me, Tom. I made up my mind riding over here. If you want me, it’s okay.

  No. I don’t want you this time, Laura.

  O, why not Tom, don’t I please you?

  You please me fine. I want to think about it a little while and keep thinking about it until I can’t stand thinking about it.

  I thought how easy it had been the first time with Ann, and the first time with Pearl and the first time with a lot of girls in the valley. I didn’t want it to be that easy between Laura and me. I wanted it to be special, take my time with it, let it simmer in my heart.

  I feel so sleepy.

  Close your eyes.

  I watched her sleep until the rain stopped and when it did, she opened her eyes and kissed me and kissed my hands. It stirred the passion in me all over again and I was tempted to take her there in the stillness that’s left behind when the rain stops. But I held off, and holding off seemed to increase the pleasure, knowing that the time would come soon and I wouldn’t need to hold off any longer.

  I took great pleasure in watching her dress. It was all I could do to keep from stopping her. I walked her outside and gave her a foot up onto the back of her pap’s horse.

  Come court me, Tom. Come court me proper and make me feel as special as I do this very minute.

  I’ll come. I’ll come soon and court you.

  And someday maybe . . .

  Yes, someday maybe we will . . .

  O, don’t say it, Tom. Don’t say the words just yet. Let me keep them like little gifts in my heart until I hear you say them to me someday.

  I touched her foot and off she rode toward the bald & beyond the bald, fingers of silvery clouds laced the evening crimson sky. The cicadas had started up and sang an evening song and the sun threw its last red rays up against the gloaming like a fiery breath. Above the bald a lopsided grin of moon stood smiling down on the lower valley that was already grown dark. I felt alone, more alone than ever, standing there—alone but happy as I’d ever been.

  Perhaps if there had been a gypsy-telling woman in the valley she might have told me of the ill fortune that awaited us, Laura and me. She might have told me about you, Liza, and how you would have saved me from all this. But as it stood, I could see nothing in my future but unbound joy and went inside and took my fiddle down and played and played such happy songs my heart near burst. I played and the cicadas became still and listened, and so did the moon and the evening stars. I played so hard because I wanted the sounds to carry across the bald and have Laura hear the happy music.

  Your love for her makes me weep.

  My love turned into tragedy.

  & Murder entered into it?

  I cannot say, for I do not rightly know.

  Eliza
beth Brouchard

  Postscript:

  Are you yet the brightest star that appears in the blackboard sky, the tip of Sagittarius’s arrow aimed at all the cherubs’ hearts, dear Tom? Or, were you that shooting star I saw that streaked so bright for the span of a breath, then vanished?

  Each day extends the distance between now and then—between the rain of Paris and that time when you strode, nay, strutted, through the lush green Yadkin Valley with a heart full of love and promise, never seeing the dangling rope, nor hearing the hangman’s nervous cough.

  I am both blessed and cursed by this fading memory.

  Both blessed & cursed.

  BOOK II

  CHAPTER 15

  Tom Dooley

  He says his name is Winston Newbolt and that he’s a reporter for the New York Herald. He smells of whiskey and cigar and wants me to tell him about the events. He sits outside my cell and scribbles notes for an hour at a time. But lest he tell it wrong, I’ve taken to keeping my own account, writing it all down as best I can on sheets of foolscap brought me by one of the ladies from the Society of Friends. She says the society is made up of Quakers. She is motherly. Her name is Polly Boots. Funny name, Polly Boots. I’ve written her name down so those who read my account won’t forget who was kind to me and who was not. Polly is a spinster, has a sister who is a spinster too.