by Bill Brooks
I should tell my husband that you came here and raped me.
It wasn’t the first time she’d threatened such.
And do you think he’d believe that?
He might if I put enough tears behind it. If I clung and begged him to defend my honor, he might take up a gun and find you and shoot you.
Then go ahead, it might be the best thing could ever happen to me. He’d have you all to himself, unless he got so mad he killed us both!
You’ve changed something dreadful, Tom. You’re not the same man I once loved so wildly. There’s something mean and niggardly about you. You hurt me inside just now, what you done. You didn’t have to do that to me.
It was like being stabbed in the heart to hear her say those things, but they were true. I confess to you now, they were true. I felt so completely lost to myself that I didn’t hardly know right from wrong anymore. She was right, I had changed, but she had changed too. And our changing had changed one another.
How much had to do with the fact you loved Laura?
Most of it, I guess. Maybe none of it. I don’t know hardly anything anymore, Liza.
Do you think some of what you were feeling was because Ann was the wife of another man, that you’d cuckolded Melton? Was it the cuckolding of another man that made you want to keep on with her?
Yes, I suppose looking back on it, that could have been some of it.
And maybe truth was, Melton liked it in a way too—some men have strange and perverse desires, Tom. Do you think Melton liked it, being cuckolded?
Maybe so. What do I know of such matter, truly?
Your sin and Melton’s sin and Ann’s sin—all one great sin mixed together, Tom.
You’re starting to sound like Shinbone.
Elizabeth Brouchard
My own jealousy of hearing such things did make me a bit self-righteous—I could not help it when I’d heard Tom speaking thus of Ann and Melton, and Laura and even Pearl. Even though he was, as Ann had said, confessing in the shadow of the gallows, and even though I loved him deeply, I still could not ignore such tender sad torments. And sometimes I’d change the subject altogether because I could not bear another moment of hearing him recount his life with those other women, knowing as I did every second the terrible price he was paying for his youthful indiscretions.
Tom Dooley
One evening after you left the jail, sweet Liza, after that time I told you about going to Ann’s and practically raping her, I fell asleep and dreamt of Pearl. In the dream Pearl was standing in the Yadkin, the water up to her shoulders, its black wetness swirling around her, rising sometimes high as her chin. I knew it was trying to drown her. She was calling to me—Tom, Tom. Help me, Tom!
What is it, Pearl? What’s got you scared enough to go stand in the river?
It’s Raymond, Tom. Raymond’s after me. He wants to cut my throat with a razor.
A shadowy figure come into my dream, a heartbreak of a figure whose face I could not see clearly.
I gonna kill her, Mr. Tom. I gonna kill Pearl for leavin’ me like she done. She my woman. Mr. Swain done sold her to me. But she leave me, would rather drown herself than be with me. ’Cause I a nigger, ’cause I daft in the head. I gonna kill her, Mr. Tom.
Come closer, Raymond.
And when he did, I saw his eyes had been eaten away.
She thinks drownin’ is the easy way. It ain’t. I done drowned and dem big snappin’ turtles done eat my eyes out and chewed off my fingers, and the water done come in my mouth so much I couldn’t swallow it all.
O, it was the most terrible dream, Liza. The worst I had to that point ever. Then I watched Pearl slip beneath the surface of the water and then resurface, naked and white, her breasts eaten away by turtles. I woke weeping.
& sometimes I awaken and see a shadow of something outside the bars of my cell that causes my skin to crawl.
That you, Raymond?
A tiny scraping sound from the dark. Mice, maybe.
Keyes, you out there?
No answer.
I hold my breath.
Mr. Keyes?
It is so dark it feels as though I’m inside a grave and maybe I am and my heart races until it feels as though it will burst. I gasp and claw for air. I pace and cannot sleep until the first morning light sifts down into the room through the small window above my cot.
Thy little horrors.
Yes, yes, sweet Liza.
Is it guilt or simply fear that strangles you?
Tyree Shinbone
O, I went often as I could to see poor Tom. His health had declined in such short fashion. His sunburnt skin gone pasty, his weight dropped off, his eyes near hollow with fret. He begged me to bring him ink and foolscap. I asked was he going to write goodbye letters. He simply smiled wanly and didn’t say but instead declared he needed something to keep his mind and hands busy. So I went to Mizrus Boots and got him the ink and paper and some nibs and saw in her twinkling blue eyes love starved from her for untold time. One can always tell when a woman has been starved from love. And though she was a good bit older than me, I knew I’d bring to her the next time I came a potion that would cure her.
She told me anytime Tom wanted more foolscap and ink to let her know and she’d bring it along.
Tom Dooley
Shinbone arrives with a fresh bottle of ink, foolscap, nibs.
This place is taking all the starch out of you, Tom.
I dream of dead people. It ain’t pleasant.
Laura?
Yes, sometimes. But others too.
Have faith.
That’s your department.
There is noticeable change in him. His face is shaved clean revealing blistered cheeks. His voice has an airiness, like a fine fiddle playing on a pure warm day.
I owe you for the supplies?
Not a penny.
How was Mizrus Boots?
We prayed together.
There was something in the way he said it made me feel uneasy.
You best be careful, Shinbone.
I could use the company of someone young and fair, Tom. I surely could.
She’s a spinster—maybe twice as old as you.
Preacher’s got cravings just like spinsters do, Tom.
He laughed and laughed.
Beloved I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul . . . One Peter, Verse 2, Chapter 11.
He grins like a possum and quotes scripture, but I don’t know why. I’m guessing he’s going mad, mad, mad.
The Lord expects much of us, Tom. Some days I’m not up to all He expects of me. It’s been two years since I’ve had any female companionship. In some ways I’m jealous of you, Tom, your free ways with love.
I told him I didn’t want to hear about it. He laughed and carried on anyway. No point in me telling you all the things he said. Stay clear of him, Liza. I don’t trust him.
Elizabeth Brouchard
Tom had good instincts. Shinbone went completely mad later. And who is to say what carnal acts or otherwise he committed before his madness claimed him? Would murder be among his forte? I think anything possible.
The young girls come every day for the piano lessons, and their mamas go shopping for hats even in the rain. The air of my apartment is filled with discordant melodies by the tiny chubby hands of soon to be mademoiselles. Their hopeful luminous eyes attend with glee their dancing little fingers. O, what does it matter to most of them? They will undoubtedly marry fine young monsieurs and live in luxury and never have to depend on earning their keep as pianists.
See the rain how gently it falls. And the same rain that falls in Paris also falls in Happy Valley upon the graves of dead Tom and Laura and all the others in that mournful place.
And it is just me now, here in my lovely apartment with its tall windows and high ceilings and carpets
& the letters, Tom’s journal and my recordings of
the unhappy memory of a
l
ife done too soon.
Play my little darlings, play.
CHAPTER 18
Tom Dooley
Days that twisted in my gut like tainted food came and went without relief and still I refused to go over the bald again to see Laura. I had an old squirrel gun and I’d look at it and think what it would be like to press the barrel to my head and send myself to wherever people like me end up when they’re dead. I wondered if I’d feel an instant of pain before I died, would it be just a sharp, jagged thing that ripped through my senses. I took up the gun several times and tested its heft—it seemed all out of balance to me, much like my life.
But I couldn’t do it. My hands could never take another life, not even my own. The war had ruined my taste for blood.
My hands trembled terribly when I put the gun back in its corner.
But, I sometimes think the real reason I couldn’t kill myself was because I didn’t want any of the others to have free rein with Laura. The thought of her with another man made the ache in my belly seem all the worse. And yet, I refused to go over the bald for fear I’d see Grayson’s horse there, or Swain’s or Billy Dixon’s—or any of the others who were after her. Thinking of their hands on her, their mouths their hungry eyes . . .
O, that your passion was so great for someone worthy of such love, Tom.
O, that it were.
But as it turned out, I didn’t have to go to her. Instead, she returned to me.
This time she arrived under a rainless sky.
You’re not dancing, Tom.
It ain’t raining.
Golly but her smile could melt lead.
You only do your dancing in the rain?
I didn’t answer, for I was afraid of my anger, what I might say to turn her away, but glad she was there and too full of pride to speak.
You only do things you like, don’t you, Tom? You make promises to a woman, then break them because you changed your mind and don’t feel you owe anybody any explanation, including me.
O, she had such beautiful skin—like that of a doll’s.
Bisque?
Yes, that’s it, I believe.
Tell of her beauty, how it made you weak and willful and willing to do anything.
I snubbed up on her. I wanted her to know I was mad at her for allowing Grayson to come round, knowing he’d try and win her over with his fancy ways, his fine horse and money, knowing I was no match for such. So I didn’t say anything for a long time. I wanted her to make an effort to win back my affection and finally she did.
The cat got your tongue, Tom Dooley?
About the onliest cat I know is you, Miss Foster.
What’s that supposed to mean?
Means what it means.
Well, she couldn’t understand why I was the way I was and I was too damn het up to explain it just then, so I stood there not saying more, for I knew if I did words might come out that could never be put back in. In spite of how mad I was, deep down I didn’t want to run her off. I just wanted this madness to go away and to feel like she wanted only me.
She abided your anger; it didn’t trouble her that you were so taciturn?
She didn’t run off, if that’s what you mean.
No, I suppose she did not.
And did I tell you she had sunlit hair and cornflower blue eyes?
I remember her as pretty, Tom.
She stood her ground and I stood mine. I was mighty snubbed.
Ain’t you going to tell me what’s wrong, Tom?
Then, before I could stop it, it burst out of me like I suppose those pigs did that fellow Shinbone was telling me about—the ones Jesus scared out of that lunatic fellow.
You letting Grayson court you is what’s wrong.
Oh, Tom, you don’t know a thing about my heart.
I know what I seen when I came over the bald. I seen his horse tied up out front of your pap’s and not a body in sight. Reckon you were all tucked inside having a high old time of it.
He come to court me, yes. But I wouldn’t have nothing to do with him. Him and Pap sat around talking crops, the weather, pigs. Talking and drinking whiskey.
She laughed then, suddenly and freely as a happy child. O, she could be such a happy child at times. Still I didn’t want to give in to her.
What’s so damn funny?
How it is you think I’d fall in love with a man old as my pap. You must think me broke in the head. I could have me any man in the valley if I wanted, why’d I want an old one like Mr. Grayson?
There’s one man you can’t have so easily.
Who might that be?
Me, is who.
You think not?
I know so.
She slid off her pap’s horse, come to me then, her eyes fixed on mine. I could feel all my anger just melting away like late snow on the sunny slope of the bald. And when she got close, still staring into my eyes, I thought of that squirrel gun and how I was glad I hadn’t used it.
So you believed her, that she hadn’t been unfaithful with Grayson?
Yes. I would have believed just about anything she told me. O, I can’t tell no more to you, Liza. I can’t go on telling it to you.
Elizabeth Brouchard
It is a small victory I claim without wanting to. Surely he sees it in my eyes when he talks to me about Laura and Ann, how it wounds me even though I do my best to remain stoically his friend. But try to tell a heart that loves that it can only be a heart of friendship. I do my weeping alone in the sanctuary of darkness even as I hear the men who visit my father’s tavern laughing and cursing through the thick walls—their voices as nearly muted as my tongue, but not so muted I cannot hear the din of their shamelessness, or hear my heart breaking.
Tom Dooley
When you are gone away each day and evening from me, Liza, I write down those things I cannot always say to you, or those things that I’ve forgotten. I write things that come to me unbidden, like love or rain or sorrow. I don’t always know what words I’ll write, what thoughts I’ll have, what forces move my hand.
The sound of the pen’s scratching is a small comfort to me.
O’ Daughter of Jerusalem, take thy hands and absolve me.
Bend thy heart to my heart’s will, and rain upon me warm kisses.
Let delicate words woo and win me, let me partake of thy fruits.
Of thy passion let me sing, and swallow down the bitter wine of
Sorrow so that only joyousness flows between us like blood shared.
These things I write without will or want.
I read the words and wonder if maybe some spirit isn’t taking me over, preparing me for the long death. For, where else would such things come if not from another’s spirit? Laura’s spirit, perhaps?
This too, I remember about that day:
Tom, you’re such a sensitive fool. Why I’ve already promised my heart to you.
But when I came over the bald and seen Grayson’s horse . . .
Let’s not talk about that old man . . . let’s go inside and let me show you my truth.
So inside we went, into the cabin that became our small sanctuary. And once inside, she did everything I’d dreamed of her doing. She did it as though she knew my heart better than I knew it. She pressed her mouth to mine and in the doing I breathed her into me and tasted her tangy thick tongue and nibbled at her lips. She was like sweet music playing over my skin.
Oh, Tom. I wish you had come to court me, but since you didn’t, I’ve come to court you.
Peeling away my shirt, her hungry mouth upon my mouth, my fingers woven in her sunlit hair. I sing thy song. She was fresh and ready as ripened fruit and when I lifted her and carried her to my bed, she seemed made of nothing at all; she was pure lightness, the lightness of butterfly wings.
I remember how exactly she watched me as I removed her dress. How exactly her eyes never left mine nor mine hers until we was fully naked.
Is this what you crave, Tom? Am I what you want above all others?
Y
es, yes.
Then I give myself to you gladly and without reserve.
Then I sing love’s song so all the angels can hear.
The gates of love part for thee, dear Tom.
And my gaze traveled the long length of her, from the small round breasts with their rosy tips to the inward curve of her ribs just above her jutting hips. Down along the length of her legs, firmer than I’d expected, down to her feet delicate as porcelain. I touched my lips to her throat and she uttered tiny pleasures.
And as I kissed her, angels stood guard.
I kissed this place and that, the hollows and the hills of her. My lips suckled her breasts and made their tips grow tender and firm as sun-warmed berries.
I cry out to thee & bring to thee love and promises of love.
Tom, Tom . . .
She was like a woman praying to her Lord—supple and beholden. Her fingers threaded through my hair and she pulled me upwards again and I kissed her fully on the mouth, my thumbs swiping away her tears. I asked her if this was what she wanted, should I stop, leave her be, save our love for another time.
Oh, Tom, you know so little about me. I know so little about you. I cry because I am as happy as I’ve ever been. Don’t stop loving me. Please, don’t ever stop loving me.
And I promised her that I wouldn’t.
My lips brushed over the delicate valley of her stomach, my mouth resting there for a moment, my hand poised just below on the golden thatch of her sex feeling its warmth rising to greet my palm. I felt safe there with her, told her I did, and she spoke gentle with me all the while.
I am shelter to your love.
You are my harbor from stormy seas.
Rest for a while here in me.
I will rest for a while.
I kissed where my hand had been resting, the tiny golden hairs tickling my nose. I wanted to drink in her scent, never be without it as she trembled and whispered to me. O, I was drunk with her and she with me.
I’ve never had it so, Tom. I’ve never let a man do these things to me.
Then I want to be the first.
Then be the first. Be the first man to do these things to me, Tom.
My hunger was greater for her than it had ever been for any woman and I took my pleasure in her, giving her, as she told me afterward, the greatest pleasure she could have ever imagined. And the more I gave her, the greater my own pleasure. The more I took from her the more I wanted to take. And she let me do every little thing to her.