by Bill Brooks
For in thy harbor I am safe, thy love is a fortress against my enemies.
The waters are calm, Tom. The waves have all been broken upon the shore.
Afterwards she lay in my arms seeming hardly more than a child to me, small and warm and vulnerable, but happy. I closed my eyes and thought I must surely be in a dream, for nothing real could be as sweet. And she spoke to me as a lover would speak.
Was I everything you hoped for, Tom?
Can’t you tell?
I want to hear you say it.
You were more than everything I expected, Laura. You were more than any man could want.
I want it to always be this way between us.
It will be. I promise you that it will be.
Tom . . .
She wept softly, she said, from the happiness that was in her. Her tears were a warm rain against my shoulder that cooled with time. The delicate way she wept stirred my pleasure for her again. I think somehow she knew it would, for she didn’t protest when I positioned her o’er me. She didn’t resist when my cob entered her, did naught but close her eyes and arch her back and take me as deeply as either of us could go.
Oh, lovely Prince, how shall I be for thee?
A wanton girl, a daughter of Jerusalem, a virgin bride . . .
And pray thee hear my call and answer it and
Never leave me outside the harbor of your love—
Nor lock the door upon my heart, nor cast me away
From thy sanctuary—I love only thee, Tom. I love only thee.
This I write even though I don’t know if she said these words or they were simply words born in my bones that fateful day and are there in my bones still. For, love is a tangled thing that tangles the mind and ruins all reason.
We spent the entire day in each other’s embrace and by the time the sun had crossed from the east mountains to the west, we were weak from our passion. I knew that our fates were forever tied together; that whatever happened to one, would affect the other.
Tom, I must go, or my pap will come looking for me.
He will be fearful his lovely daughter has fallen into the hands of someone like me.
No, not that.
Her laughter was like a wren’s chirp.
He loves his dang horse more than me and he’d be feared someone had stolen it and come looking for it.
And he’d be disappointed to find you here with me.
He has high dreams of me marrying above my raising.
Go on, then, and marry rich.
O, don’t make my tears of joy turn to tears of sorrow—don’t ruin it, Tom, this special hour.
I thought of course she was fooling with me, but she assured me that her pap treasured his horse more than her.
He’d trade ten of me for one like Mr. Lee.
That’s what he named it, Mr. Lee?
After the general.
Then you better ride home fast and stay there until I come for you.
Oh, Tom, will you come for me? Will you come and take me away and make me your wife?
Yes, yes, soon, soon.
I watched her ride off toward the bald, my heart wanting to race after her. I watched her go just as I watched her every time she came to visit me, always worried her pap would discover us whilst coming to look for his horse. I thought often of shooting his Mr. Lee just so he’d quit loving it more than his own daughter.
Now my thoughts and hand are weary and through the small window I see a field of stars, a moon tipped on its side, all against a chalkboard night. The walls are cool and damp, my life is a tomb that shrinks round me, and Laura sleeps alone in a dark grave of desire’s doing.
I wish I were with her—and soon enough I reckon I will be.
My solace is, that you will not read some of this while I am still alive, Liza. But if you do, know this: love made me its wretched fool.
Elizabeth Brouchard
O, I’ve read it a hundred times, Tom. I could not help but reading it. I read it on quiet days when the little mademoiselles aren’t here playing the piano. I read it in the dull winter light and sip warm tea with a shawl over my shoulders and wonder what it would have been to have you love me with such passion and desire as you did Laura that day when she came to you, when you were all snubbed up at her, your anger and jealousy and gladness all stirring inside you until it became a fire that burned you up.
Following the heat of anger is the heat of passion.
This I know, Tom.
Not by your hand, but by another’s.
But it is with regret, love; with the warmest and saddest regret of all regrets that I confess such things to your ghost.
O, but that your hand had been the one and only hand that touched me in my desire. That would have been my fondest wish. And now there is only memory of those things, of those touched and untouched places and my regret is still great, but less so with each passing day.
My love may have saved you, saved us all.
But love so mute has no voice.
And who listens to the silence?
CHAPTER 19
Tom Dooley
Once I had made my vow to marry Laura, I knew I had to contend with Ann. But Ann wasn’t the only one—there was Pearl too.
I felt it only fair to tell Pearl straightaway that I loved another and would not see her again. Of the two, she would be the easier to deliver the news to. So I went first to her place. Once arrived and into her little shack she was full of questions.
Who, Tom? Who do you love so that you won’t see me again? Is it Cousin Ann? It doesn’t matter to me—see her and see me if you must.
No, it’s not Ann. But you must not mention to her about this.
Oh, Tom, I will kill myself. I will throw myself into the Yadkin and take my own life!
Like Raymond did? Because he couldn’t have the one he wanted?
Oh, how can you mention his name to me? You’re so cruel, Tom. This love you speak of has made you cruel.
I’d stood off in the brambles waiting for Melton and Ann to leave together so I could visit with Pearl, and one day they did when the sky was gray and lifeless as flannel. I stood and waited for them to go round the bend toward Reedy Branch. Chickens scratched in the yard and a rooster stood atop an upturned bucket and crowed and crowed.
I waited for Pearl to come into the yard. She had a butcher knife in her hand and I watched as she chased down one of the hens, then sliced off its head, its wings flapping furiously, then tossed it aside. The chicken stumbled and fought the death visited upon it, splattering bright red raindrops of blood over the ground. Pearl stood and waited, the knife in her hand. It looked like a small smile played at her mouth—but maybe it was a grimace.
I came out of the brambles and she started, then ran to me and flung herself into my arms.
I’m needy for you, Tom. Where you been? Cousin Ann and Melton have gone to Reedy Branch. We’ve all day alone.
I can’t, I can’t.
This is when I told her I loved another.
What is there for me to live for if you don’t love me anymore?
Why, everything. Fact is, I know a fella right this minute who is interested in you.
Some of the gloom went out of her eyes.
Who?
Billy Dixon.
Billy Dixon?
Yes.
That pit-faced schoolteacher?
He talks to me all the time about you, how he’d like to come courting you.
But Tom, I don’t want nobody’s love but your’n.
All the while she pressed herself to me, held me in her grip, and I admit I was worried a little she might take that big knife of hers and plunge it into my liver, for I’ve seen what crazy love will do.
I know it, Pearl, but I’ve met another. Give me credit for my honesty.
O, how could this be? How can you say you met another when you said you loved only me?
She was distraught and I wasn’t sure I could calm her. I knew she’d subside given time, but
what I didn’t know was if she’d tell Ann. If she did, I had a whole other problem to contend with.
What can I do to make it up to you, the hurt I’ve carried to you this day?
Nothing. O, nothing at all, Tom Dooley.
Surely there has to be something.
She wept and chattered her teeth and stormed about. I wondered then and there if it was a mistake to tell the truth. I wondered if those we love, or those who love us, ever really want the truth said when it comes to matters of the heart—lies seem life’s only real comfort.
It’ll do you no good, Pearl, all this weeping and carrying on. I’ve made up my mind and I come here out of respect for you and your feelings. I could have lied to you, kept carrying on with you and nobody the wiser. But I didn’t.
She knelt in the dust meowing and declaring how life was over for her, that she’d never love another, me trying to convince her otherwise but growing weary of such dramatic carryings-on.
Well, I’ve done about all I can, Pearl. I don’t know what else there is to say or do.
I turned to leave, figuring I’d take my chances she’d not tell Ann. But I wanted a little insurance too.
You know if Cousin Ann finds out what we been doing behind her back, she’d throw you out, you’ll be without even a bed to sleep in.
I felt bad having to use a threat, but it was probably the truth; Ann would throw her out without an ounce of pity. That seemed to stop momentarily her anguish.
I should plunge this here knife into my heart!
Billy Dixon would sure be sorry if you did.
She was further removed from her distress by the small flattery. I took it as an opportunity for a more gentle approach. I knelt down next to her, took the knife from her hand.
Why love never goes on forever, Pearl. Nothing ever goes on forever, even the most beautiful love. Things change, people change, their hearts change with them. Why even if I’d never met another, who’s to say things between you and me would have lasted forever?
I guess I can see some of the reasoning in what you’re saying.
Sure you can. Old Billy will love you twice as hard as I ever could. Why, me, I’m just a wild weed. I wouldn’t make you a good man. Billy’s got himself a fine profession. He’d make you a better man than I would Pearl—give you a home and babies.
She looked at me with her mud brown eyes, the little dark centers like drops of ink.
I’d a made you a good woman, Tom.
Sure you would have. And you’ll make Billy a good woman too.
He really talks about me?
All the time. Boy is just pining away after you, day and night. Drinks because he’s so lonely for you, Pearl.
Well . . .
You’ll see. But you can’t say nothing to Cousin Ann about us, it’ll ruin everything.
She suddenly lurched for me, threw her arms about my neck, and held on tight, the warmth of her breath blowing on my cheek like summer wind.
Just one more time and I won’t say nothing, Tom.
One more time of what?
Of going in the bed with me.
Pearl, I promised to remain faithful to my new love.
O, Tom, become faithful to her on the morrow, but today be unfaithful with me. Just once more before you go, before Billy comes to court me, before you and me can’t be unfaithful anymore.
I tried to slip her embrace, to walk away and remain faithful to Laura. You see, Liza, how it was for me? How hard I tried to do the right thing? I tried my almightiest. But there we were alone in the glade, our secret guarded by the wind and pines and the mountains—guarded by the silent sun and silence.
I promise I won’t say anything to Cousin Ann if you’ll be with me just this once more . . .
And the pleasure of her mouth wasn’t completely unwanted.
Afterwards, when I came out into the yard, buttoning my trousers and hitching on my shirt, Pearl, exhausted on the bed, I saw the chicken lying dead—a lump of bloody feathers—where it had finally quit fighting its fate. I wondered if chickens had worries like humans, or if they were just chickens and didn’t know anything. Surely they were incapable of thinking about things such as death. I thought I’d rather be a chicken in that bloody moment.
Pauline Foster
He told you I begged him? Now that is a foolish thing. Why should I beg a man who told me he loved another? O, you don’t believe him. Surely you don’t. Tom can be such a liar when he wants to be. Anything to save himself from slander and shame. He lied about poor Laura, didn’t he? He said he never done it. But I heard him with my own ears confess it. I heard him and Cousin Ann saying how they done it because Laura gave them the pox. Gave it to him and them he gave it on to Ann.
O, Tom Dooley is a liar and a sinner and as far as I’m concerned a murderer as well and whatever the hangman does to him cannot repay the pain and shame he’s done to all the rest of us. All any of us ever did—Ann or Laura or me—was to try and love him. But you can’t love a man who has the devil in him. You can’t ever love a man like that.
Elizabeth Brouchard
Once again I hear what others say about you, Tom. I listen and sometimes wonder if I am like them—a fool? Am I a fool, Tom? Has your tongue grown so used to lies that they seem the truth to you? Tell me what it was, Tom, that finally was your ruin, for surely love cannot cause ruin unless it isn’t true love. Surely it can’t.
Tom Dooley
Shinbone said that plenty of great and lesser men have fallen to the temptations of a woman. He said the landscape of history is littered with such deceits. Shinbone says Laura and me were star-crossed, like Romeo and Juliet.
O, such sweet references. Do you think you were really, Tom?
I don’t know. Shinbone said that some of the greatest men in the Bible were victims of temptresses.
But weren’t they willing victims, Tom?
O, I know it.
And how could a man less great than a prophet resist such temptation? Is that how you reason it, Tom?
O, I hate to tell you these things. I truly hate it.
After I left Pearl’s that day, I’d gone and told Billy Dixon that I’d talked to Pearl and that she was eager for him to come courting. He sat on the front row plank of his little schoolhouse, a stunned look in his speckled eyes.
What’d make her all of a sudden open to such a proposal, do you suppose?
Hell, Billy, don’t go looking any gift horses in the mouth.
What’d she want me for, except maybe to tease, have somebody she could reject like you did her?
Goddamn, Billy, you the most down in the mouth son of a bitch I ever seen.
O, hell, Tom.
Just go on and court her. Pick her a mess of wildflowers, stop and buy a ribbon from Mizrus Boots to tie them with. Go at night so she can’t see your face if it’ll make you feel better.
He sat and squirmed like a schoolboy being asked to recite his lessons. I cuffed him on the back of the head.
You don’t go, old George Hare or Sam Pie or one of them will. They’ll be plowing her field quicker than you can blink. Empty-headed gals like Pearl don’t last long in this neck of the country. Old George will fill her belly full of babies and Sam’ll work her like a mule.
Empty-headed and homely, you mean.
It don’t matter she ain’t the prettiest . . .
That seemed to light a fire under him.
I guess if I’m going to, I better get on over there.
You sure better. And don’t forget them wildflowers. Women go mush over flowers.
He was a sight to see, heading out of that schoolhouse. I was happy for him, damned if I wasn’t.
Elizabeth Brouchard
You were both fools, you and Billy. How strange things turn out. To have heard you say these things to me, to have read your writings about such things, was like trying to handle a sharp knife: no matter how I tried to deal with it, it always cut me and I always bled a little.
Tom Dooley
Door opens and closes—a clatter of iron, the silence that follows after the footsteps have stopped.
I take out my pen and listen for the cooing of the mourning dove, the ache of the cicada, the thrum of the frog. I wish I had my fiddle here to play. I wait for the words to come. It goes like that sometimes. I dip my pen into the bottle of ink and wait and nothing comes, as though the spirit has fled me, refuses to speak. Thump of Keyes’s wood leg on the stairs as he brings me a biscuit for supper.
I’d a brought you some side meat, Tom, but it was tainted.
He is a kindly man, what’s left of him. Thump, thump, goes his wood leg. Thump, thump, goes the heart. Thump, thump, the drum I used to beat but beat no more. My hand begins to move over the foolscap, my eye follows the flow of ink:
Thy love is like summer’s heat.
Thy eyes the color of an autumn day.
Thy lips are as cool as winter snow.
Thy heart is full of spring’s hope.
Thy promises are like the seasons
That come and go in ceaseless wonder.
My heart is bursting with untold joy.
I call to thee but never an answer.
My hand shakes and I lay aside the pen, for they are not my words, my thoughts, but those of a spirit that abides in me. I can hear her voice inside my head. The ink pools on the page like spilled black blood.
Ann called the house one morning when mist still slept in the hollows.
Tom! Tom!
Laura’s pap’s horse was tied up outside and surely Ann saw it.
Oh no. Pearl has given us away and now everything will be ruined.
And when I looked out the window and saw her there in the yard, her face a fury and she saw me, she drew a finger across her neck, as though she were slicing off a chicken’s head. I started to dress, but by time I came out, Ann was nowhere to be seen—gone back to Melton’s I reckoned, to scheme the ways in which she would rain down misfortune on us all.
Ye, who destroy my heart will I destroy his heart in kind.
And ye, who ruin my love, will have his love ruined in equal measure.