Tom Dooley

by Bill Brooks

  I don’t want you to.

  I was angry was partly it—the reason I took up with him. You left me for Laura. Then that pit-face Billy Dixon come round saying how you’d sent him; I felt like I was your slops you was offering to any old hog that came along. You made me sad, Tom, your leaving me, you telling me how you didn’t love me.

  I know it, Pearl. I know you were sad.

  She tried to throw her arms around me and kiss me, but I held her off. I had to make a stand, stay true to it or forever be a man without any sort of conviction that was worth having.

  Go on now, Pearl. Go on back to Tyree.

  Okay, Tom, if that’s what you want.

  Shouldn’t be what I want but what you want.

  I don’t have no say in nothing, Tom. I’m just a gal given to the lies of men. I’m just a plaything for them to have their ways with. I know I ain’t nothing but side meat, Tom. I know it.

  And over the rise she went, her head hung low, the wind tugging at her faded dress, the brown flour dust rising and falling round her feet.

  She seemed doomed. But it wasn’t her who was doomed, but me.

  Pauline Foster

  Cousin Laura asked me to carry Tom a letter for her. I didn’t want to. I was afraid if I saw him again, I’d make a fool of myself. I’d been with Tyree in his camp and I knew Tom saw us one day and what we was doing with one another. I didn’t care he saw us at the time—I liked he saw us. I wanted him to hate what he saw us doing. I wanted it to eat his heart out with jealousy, but I guess it never did. I knew the minute I saw him again I wanted him worse than I wanted Tyree. But Tom wouldn’t have nothing to do with me no more. I can’t say’s I blame him. I wouldn’t want nothing more to do with me was I him.

  I guess I’m sad to hear of him going to the gallows.

  I guess I’m sad in every little part of me.

  But he shouldn’t have done what he done.

  Tom Dooley

  I opened the letter and read it.

  Dear Tom,

  Pap has swore I won’t ever see you again. And I have swore I would. He got good and drunk and took a belt to me and said he’d see me dead before he’d see me married to Tom Dooley. I told him I loved you and no other and it made him even more het up. He lashed me across my back and legs and tore my dress and said was anyone going to ruin me, it’d be him and not some goddamn no account. Oh, Tom, I hate using such words, but use them to make you understand how strongly he intends on keeping us apart. But I’d rather be dead than to not have you. I will take Mr. Lee and sneak away on Friday morning and meet you by the springs at eight o’clock. Be there waiting for me if you love me. Your darling sweet-heart—Laura.

  The trap had sprung, I guess you could say, only I didn’t know it and Laura didn’t know it and no one knew it except the one who’d see her dead. I think of her riding away from her pap’s that early misty morning, her hopes pinned on me. Oh, God, how I think and think and think of her.

  What’s that I hear?

  The tolling of the church bells.

  Is it Sunday?

  Yes, Tom. Look out your window and see how the sun smites the trees.

  Winston Newbolt

  I knew time was running out for Tom, that soon they’d send him to Statesville to be hanged and my assignment would be finished. I still hadn’t gotten any of the real answers I wanted, nor a confession—nor even a complete denial that he had a hand in the young woman—Laura Foster’s—murder. I remember one of the last times I went he told me the story of how he’d tried to deceive James Melton into giving him money to run away with Laura. And perhaps he was this time telling the truth. It got so I couldn’t tell with him which was true and which false.

  Tom Dooley

  I had only one place, one soul I could go to in hopes of borrowing some money. There was only one man I knew who had what I thought I needed, but I knew I couldn’t get it from him direct. I’d have to go at it another way. I’d have to lie and make myself appear something I was not, and it would be the worst lying I’d ever do in my life.

  I took up residence in the brambles outside of Melton’s. I waited over a day and a half. Near to dusk on the second day is when he came out and climbed in his wagon and headed toward Reedy Branch, no doubt to Swain’s for an evening of drink. A greasy light glowed inside the cabin. I went on over and knocked on the door and Ann answered it.

  Well, would you look at what the cat has dragged to my door.

  Ann.

  What you want here, Tom Dooley?

  Came to see you.

  She looked beyond me to the gathering darkness.

  You been out there waiting, ain’t you? Waiting for James to leave, waiting to come see me.

  Yes, that’s right. I come to see you, for I realize now that I made a mistake.

  That so?

  O, she acted mighty pious. But I stood my ground, ate whatever little pride I once had—all in the name of love.

  Yes, but if you’re going to give me grief over it, I’ll just go on.

  I turned to leave, I had to make it convincing.

  No wait.

  I won’t beg.

  Nobody’s asking you to beg. Come on in.

  So in I went, my mouth full of lies waiting to be spit out.

  I prayed for the day you’d come back, and now here you are. I’m so het up with loneliness . . .

  Sure, me too. I ain’t hardly been able to sleep, eat, do nothing, for the thinking about how it was between us, how much I missed you.

  Tell me something, Tom.

  What?

  Why we doing all this talking when we could be loving in the bed?

  I don’t rightly know.

  And so there it was, me having to do the thing I didn’t want anymore to do. I had told myself I would always be faithful to Laura, but now to save her, I had to break that promise. I didn’t see no other way around it.

  She acted starved for me. The fear in my mind was that Melton would change his mind, turn around and come back and this time rip loose—shoot us both maybe, ruin everything as far as me setting Laura free. I tried to make quick work of Ann’s passion; I put the cob to her hard and fast and relentless; I told her lie upon lie about how I loved her and how it drove me near crazy not to be with her like I was now. Her hunger for me only seemed to grow instead of wane; she entwined her limbs around me strong and tight as wild grape vines; clung to me so tightly it seemed that we became one thing, one terrible beast of a thing.

  She drew out my strength, tore it from me instead of the other way around, until I almost prayed that Melton would change his mind and come find us thus and kill us both—relieve us of our dark ways.

  And by the time she was sated, the lamp had guttered out and we lay in that blackness of night and I thought I could make out the shape of her, but really what I was able to see was what I’d come to memorize, like a blind man, in all those days we’d been together. Hers was a familiar landscape to my hands: the broad forehead, the pert nose and wide mouth, the long swan neck. Even the weight of her breasts I knew so well. And the rest of her I knew equally as well—her thin arms, the roughened hands, the ropes of muscles in her legs. She was a ground I’d plowed and planted my seed in so often I dint need no eyes.

  Tell me, Mr. Newbolt, has imprisonment changed her much?

  It has taken its toll well enough.

  All is rottenness.

  Everything is just as it used to be ’tween us, Tom. Ain’t nothing changed ’tween you and me. We’re just who we are and just who we’ll always be. We are joined by mother fate and we must never again fight against it.

  O, my hand does take up the cause:

  Did the urchin god avow to

  Set the world afire with

  Love so counterfeit that

  Lovers deceiv’d could be

  Persuaded to purchase

  What could not be owned?

  Scratch goes the pen across the page—the timeless page—leaving in the nib’s wake the wet blue t
endrils of words unbidden, timeless, infested in the soul. Laura’s hand or mine?

  God’s?

  A dark demented muse?

  Nobody’s.

  I confessed in a humble way the reason I’d come to see her. Confessed it so it sounded like an afterthought, to try and keep the deception alive.

  I need money.

  Is that why you came to me, for money and nothing else?

  No. I came to you because I needed to come to you—for no other reason.

  You’ve been deceitful to me before, why should I trust what you say now?

  I’ve always been truthful with you. I told you about Laura.

  But not about Pauline.

  Pauline didn’t count with me.

  You counted with her, and it counted with me.

  I arose and walked to the door and opened it and felt the cool winds trailing down from the midnight ridges, felt the cool wet feel of a coming rain upon my naked skin.

  There was no moon and the sky was starless and the world seemed perfectly dead to me, and I perfectly dead to it.

  O, come back to my bed, Tom. I’ll give you money if it’s what you need.

  I had it in me to walk out into the night and keep walking and never look back.

  But your need to save Laura was greater than your repugnance, Tom?

  Yes, sir, it was I reckon.

  I went back to her bed and lay beside her, and let her warm wet mouth stipple my flesh trying to resurrect my cob in order to satisfy her renewed desire. But I could not raise it and she could not raise it no matter how hard she tried.

  What is it, Tom? What ails you?

  I owe a lot of money that I must pay off if I’m to remain living in this valley.

  To who, Tom?

  I can’t say. You’ll just have to trust me.

  Melton’s got some, but he keeps it on him, and the rest he keeps hid and I don’t know where. But I can find out where and get it for you.

  I felt my heart sink like a stone dropped in a bottomless river.

  He don’t give you none to keep handy?

  No.

  How soon do you think you could get it off him?

  Soon’s he comes back, I reckon.

  Tomorrow, maybe?

  If he comes back by then.

  I got to get on home now.

  No, don’t go just yet—it’s been a long time; my need has been building up. Don’t go just now, Tom.

  And so I stayed and I did the best I could to satisfy her in all the ways I knew how and by the time morning came round she’d fallen asleep and I made my way on back up the trail to my place feeling tired and ruined. When I got there Grayson was waiting, sitting on his stud horse, as though he’d been waiting a long time for me.

  Elizabeth Brouchard

  The crème of your story is raised to the very top. It is thick and sweet from all the churning, but soon sours when left unattended.

  The little mademoiselles play so dutifully the scales

  While their mamas eat sweets in aromatic parlors

  As their

  lovers

  recline and dream of novel ways to entice them.

  Billy bled to death the doctors say from old habits: whiskey consumption, bad diet, tobacco that eventually ulcerated vital organs and left him for me to find in the water closet, down on his knees in a lake of black bile.

  Liza, Liza—even God can’t save me. A fella knows when his time has come and mine surely has.

  He was thirty-nine, hardly in his prime

  &I

  yet childless.

  O, what lovely little songs the lovely little mademoiselles do sing:

  Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques, Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous? Sonnez les matines. Sonnez les matines. Ding, ding, dong. Ding, ding, dong.

  CHAPTER 25

  Tom Dooley

  His eyes shone under the broad brim of his hat—a smooth gray felt hat with a black ribbon round the low crown. He was a pretty man the way he dressed: black Prince Albert coat, brocade waistcoat underneath, trousers tucked down inside his bull-hide boots. I half expected he carried a pistol in one of his pockets—men like him usually do. He shone his eyes on me.

  I came to deliver you a piece of news, Tom Dooley.

  Go on and deliver it.

  Comes to my attention through Mr. Foster you be bothering Laura; troubling her with insane ideas of marriage.

  What’s your interest in all this?

  Why that’s easy enough. I got me need of a young wife, someone sprightly and pert. Laura fits the bill.

  There it was, you see—my notice, delivered by Grayson by way of old man Foster. Hell, like he didn’t want to trouble dirtying his hands with me knowing I’d fit him till one of us couldn’t stand up no more, so he sent the rich man instead, for the promise of a sprightly pert young wife.

  He’s playing you off, Foster is. He’s double dealing, only you don’t know it.

  Grayson’s eyes shone a little less on me.

  How so?

  He was here the other day telling me how nice it would be to have a son-in-law owns a tavern. Last I heard you don’t own any tavern, but Swain does.

  Swain’s a lowbrow. Laura wouldn’t hardly toss a bucket of ditch water on him if he was afire.

  Swain ain’t the only one Foster’s considering; there’s Sam Pie and George Hare too.

  Grayson shifted his shoulders and set his jaw a little stiffer. I was hoping he’d fall clean off his blooded horse, that’d I’d gave him a belly full of worms telling him about the others Foster was appraising for his lovely child.

  I intend to have her, Dooley.

  You and half the other men in Reedy Branch. But none of you are going to have her, for you can’t steal a heart already given away.

  He heeled his horse a little closer.

  Don’t be some sort of damn fool. You don’t know who you’re messing when it comes to you messing with me.

  I know damn well who I’m messing with, Mr. Grayson.

  You’ll never have her.

  His words were dark and cold as the bottom of a well. He turned his stud’s head toward the blue mountains and rode off and I thought how easy it would be to go inside and get my rifle and shoot him in the back and watch him fall and writhe in the dust and take his last goddamn breath. But I couldn’t kill nobody, not even Grayson. I’d lost my taste for killing the day I built the little boat and tied Minnie’s letter to Louis on it. I made a vow I’d never lift a hand in the undoing of another.

  Meaning you didn’t have a hand in Laura’s death.

  No, sir, Mr. Newbolt. Don’t you see how I could never harm even a hair on her head?

  Yes, Tom, I think I do. But someone did harm her in the most terrible way.

  I know it. Lord, I surely do and it eats me up that somebody could do such a thing.

  And did Ann get you the money?

  Yes, she did in a little while.

  You want to tell me about that?

  Winston Newbolt

  The boy turns pasty when speaking of death. Is it the pallor of fear, the guilt of what he may have done, or is it the long days and nights locked up in a place with too little sunlight?

  O, the guilty sing like caged birds to be set free.

  But Tom hardly sings at all these days.

  Tom Dooley

  I can hear Keyes in his quarters thumping around on his wood leg. I can hear the laughter of a tart that sometimes comes to visit him late of the evening when all is settled into night. She is the same tart whose skirts Billy Dixon paid a dollar to put his head under. I think her name is Florence and that she came to the valley with a husband after the war from Statesville. Keyes calls out to her.

  Flo, Flo! Come hither, gal!

  More laughter, squawks like a chicken with its throat being cut—more squawk than laugh.

  Keyes plays the fiddle for her and she sings terribly to it. They laugh and sing and you can tell by the sounds they make what he’s doing with her when the fiddle s
tops and his wood leg takes to thumping against the wall.

  Oh, my, Augusta, what a big old scamp you are!

  Come hither to me, gal! Let me get good a sniff of you!

  Har, har. You old scamp. Do you like these?

  Indeed I do, let me have a feel. Why they’re as big as mush melons.

  Cost you a silver dollar to be touching them, Augusta old boy.

  Why, what good is money if a man can’t spend it on his pleasure?

  Then go on to it, my sweet man, touch and lick them if you like. Touch and lick them rough and long as you want.

  Eventually the light and noise from his quarters is snuffed out and darkness creeps up the stairs and finds a place to lay its wearisome head outside my cell. Generally the tart takes her leave near daybreak, Keyes’s snoring bidding her farewell.

  Oh, I think of the gayer times when love was all there was to concern myself over—the love of life and all things worth loving: the love of a woman’s kiss, her sweet laughter, a knowing glance wherein a secret is shared. All gone to me now and forever. Darkness awaits me—the eternal darkness of a long death that is forever and without end. I must write of these feelings, let come out what will come out.

  What would you have me do, O’ silly

  God who has made me thus, which I

  Have not already done under thy whimsical

  Stare, knowing I am unable to be my own

  Master, to steer my own ship through the

  Troubled seas thou hast cast me on?

  Goddamn. Why me? Why me? Why me?

  And when I come to my senses again, where Newbolt stood, now stands Tyree Shinbone.

  Tom.

  Don’t tell me. You come to crow some more about you and Pearl, or is it Mizrus Boots? Well, I don’t want to hear it.

  Mizrus Boots?

  Like you did the last time.

  You must be mistaken. Why would I say anything about Mizrus Boots?

  Oh, hell, Tyree, I’m all confused. Being locked up has messed up my mind.

  Have a taste of this.

  He slips me a bottle through the bars—peach brandy. It is a small enough comfort in a place that has so few.

  Go on, keep it, just don’t let old Keyes find it, he’ll drink it all up.

  You heard any news lately?

  Tyree burrows his eyes under his shaggy brows like two little creatures trying to hide from a hunter.