by Bill Brooks
What you want, Tom Dooley?
You know what I want. I come for what you promised me.
Ann laughed like I’d told her a wicked joke.
Would you listen to him, Cousin Pauline. I swear; Tom Dooley’s become so starry-eyed over Cousin Laura he can’t think straight. Believes things not yet told or happened.
Pearl laughed a little too, but not as loudly as Ann.
You said for me to come tonight and you’d give me the money.
Why I said no such thing. Whatever money are you talking about?
Their laughter trailed after me into the outer dark as I walked away from that awful place of conspiracy.
Go marry your little she bitch, Tom Dooley. The only thing you’ll be buying with your empty pockets is a passel of misery. You’ll see. You’ll see.
There was something evil on the loose that night. I should have gone straight to Foster’s cabin and taken Laura away from that evil place.
But you didn’t.
No, sir, I dint.
Newbolt says he must go take care of his sour stomach with a libation. I guess he means a drink at Swain’s for that is the only place in Reedy Branch a body can get sound liquor unless you favor the nigger’s place, which most white men don’t. I would give anything for the freedom to go and buy a drink of Swain’s liquor and pour it down my gullet and hear the rough talk of the trade there and have a stranger’s hand clap me on the back and ask me about war and women and hunting squirrels. That which I once hated so well, is now the thing I’d wallow in if I had the chance.
But more than this, I would go to the sea, go to the sea, go to the sea.
Dear Mother. I am sending this farewell to you to let you know my last thoughts, no matter when they might come, will be of you. I know I’ve not written and not wanted you to travel all the way to come to the jail and see me like this. Understand it is the last pride I have left—to be thought of in the light you always knew me and not as a convicted and imprisoned man. I know it must be rough on you to have to hear the mongrel crowd talk about me—to hear that your darling son, Tom Dooley, is a murderer. But don’t believe them, for I would not lie to you about such a terrible act. Surely not now, when the die has been cast and I am nearing my final hour. I will send on with this letter a few things: my Barlow knife, two tintypes—one of me taken in Va. when I was in the Army, the other of me and my friend, Louis Stephens, who was killed, a few dollars script, my fiddle. Do with them what you will, sell them if you must to help feed yourself. Somebody might pay you a decent dollar for Tom Dooley’s fiddle. For my friend Shinbone says I am timeless. Oh what a terrible time this must be for you. Please don’t fret over me. My friend Shinbone also says heaven is a lovely place to be and that he thinks I’ll go there if I confess my sins to Jesus Christ. I ain’t yet, but he’s near got me convinced. Your loving son, Tom.
I blow the ink dry and know the words are forever writ.
That night I dream of Ann.
I see her riding through the woods, her hair snagged with briars—she is riding Melton’s dark bay, a fury of muscle between her scratched and bleeding legs.
Ooweee, horse. Ooweee!
The thunderous hooves toss up clots of dirt and I don’t know why she’s riding so.
The dream shifts.
I see Shinbone dancing naked round a glorious fire. I see Pearl crawling on all fours. I see Jesus nailed to a tree lift his thorn-capped head and open his eyes until they are staring directly into mine. I see Laura staggering with a pale hand clasped to her bloody bosom.
I awake, but the dream is terrible enough to drag me back into it, again and again.
Shinbone tosses something into the fire causing the flames to flare violently at the darkness. Pearl waggles her pale hams, lewdly winking. The howling mouth of the nailed Jesus matches Ann’s howling: Ooweee, Ooweee!
I fall from my cot to the hard floor striking my chin. I huddle in a corner, certain I’m going mad, praying that I will before that final hour strikes. The thought of madness seems to me the only refuge. I will myself to stop breathing, my heart to stop beating—but life seems indestructible by my own hand. I cannot do it.
Keyes calls up the stairs.
Tom, Tom, you all right up there? What’s all that racket?
I hear only my labored breathing now. The death is in my veins. I can feel it, black and whispering, seeking me out.
Tom?
I don’t answer.
Elizabeth Brouchard
These words now are like a scattering of dead birds amid my garden. There, between the roses and dahlias and marigolds, are the fallen sparrows and a stink rises up that cuts off any sweetness the flowers may have offered.
O, Tom, when you fell through the gallows, dropped from this world to that, the sparrows fell with you, fell from heaven without God’s knowing it.
CHAPTER 27
Tom Dooley
All night I lay in fevered sleeplessness, listening to the darkness scrape against my windows, listening to the moon tilt in the sky, listening to falling stars, listening to the river thirstily licking its banks.
I could not rest for thinking of the coming morning. I had hardly enough script to pay for travel as far as even Tennessee much less beyond the blue mountains beyond and beyond where I’d promised myself I’d take Laura and our babe to the sea.
I could see her leaving her pap’s at dawn—the first light barely risen across the fields, creeping up the slopes of the mountains, that gray ripe dawn that comes on slow and flares up fast once the sun strikes it. Old man Foster would come awake later and find her missing and his horse missing and curse us both, for he wasn’t a fool about such things. We’d have to travel fast and steady and make it as far as we could the first few days. Laura would want to dally along brook and field, for she was ever the bearer of a child’s heart, full of romantic notions and she would try and get me to dally too.
But I knew Foster was the sort who would see it as his fortune fled, his opportunity to have a son-in-law who owned a tavern where he could go and drink, or one who owned a large farm upon which he could live without rent. He would see his future gone and want it back and come after it with blood in his heart for the man who’d stolen it from him.
It wouldn’t take him long to find us if we dallied. We mustn’t dally.
I had packed a kit: extra shirt, long drawers, my razor, fiddle and bow and sundry things—those worth owning and needing. Once we reached the sea, I’d become a new man with new things—a rubber coat and boots to keep me dry. Oh, I had such hopes of becoming a new man. I knew no matter how much Foster craved an easy future he would not follow us as far as the sea. Instead he’d suffer his loss in Swain’s, drinking and lamenting his stole fortune of a daughter.
Why they even goddamn stole my horse, can you believe it!
And his besotted brethren would lament right alongside him and curse my name, but I did not care, for I cared not for any of them.
Are you feeling better this evening, Mr. Newbolt?
Somewhat, yes. Thank you for asking, Tom.
I wish I could say the same, about feeling better, I mean.
Tell me more if you will about what happened the morning you were to meet Laura.
There is an odor of sickness about the reporter that even the smell of his cigar can’t mask. Perhaps it’s attached itself to his clothes and he doesn’t realize it.
I wrestled with the devil all that night.
And did you win, or he?
He, of course, for see what terrible events occurred.
Scribble, scribble goes his pencil as he takes notes in that little book of his.
This story will age over time, Tom. It will age like wine and be drunk forever.
Oh, I don’t care nothing about it, Mr. Newbolt, about it lasting and aging and being drunk. Can’t you see none of that matters to me?
Yes, yes, of course. But what is done is done, and we may as well tell of it as well as we can, lest it build into some so
rt of legend that only flirts with the truth.
Then go ahead and write it how you will.
I did not tell Newbolt that I am writing my own account of the events, or about you, Liza, who comes and helps me with the words. I don’t want to give away my last secret, the last thing left to me as my own.
Here’s how it went.
I went straight off to Billy Dixon’s first light.
Why Billy’s?
He was the last resort, the last hope for me to get some money. Billy had been a bachelor all his life and I figured without a family to feed and support he might have saved a little—certainly enough to pay for slatterns when he wanted; and I’ve seen him spend freely in Swain’s. It was an odd coincidence that when I knocked on his door and he opened it, I could see the slattern, Flo, there in the room in his bed.
He scratched his haunch trying to wake up and his hair was stuck wild on his head; he had some bruises on his neck.
You been wrestling, or what?
He offered me a sloppy grin.
Oh that, and touched his neck.
I need your help, Billy.
Well, shoot fire, Tom, couldn’t you come round later when I got no company?
Need it now or not at all. I’m in a fix.
Come in and have a drink.
Yes, sir, believe I will.
The room smelled of violence and sex but I tried not to mind it and instead set myself at Billy’s little table and allowed him to pour us each a cup of liquor from a bottle near empty with two or three other empty ones lying about the floor, one chair busted, a curtain torn, a picture knocked off the wall and tumbled in a corner.
Billy cast a glance toward the snoring Flo, then lifted his cup.
A man has to fortify himself against such assaults.
This said with a wink, as though I’d know and appreciate what battles he’d fit the night before, him and Flo. But I didn’t care nothing about it other than I was a little glad Billy had gotten over his heartache of Pearl quick enough.
Now what sort of fix are you in, Tom, to be coming round so early of a morning?
I told him I needed the loan of some money. He asked me why. I lied, told him I was in trouble with Grayson and had to clear out of the valley or Grayson might swear out a warrant for my arrest with the High Sheriff.
Why not expose him to the truth of your plight, Tom?
Dint want him to know about Laura. Dint want anyone to know, for the fewer that knew, the less chance they’d track us down.
Go ahead with the rest if you will . . .
Newbolt cuts loose with a loud belch—the escaped air sours the room.
Well, sir, I could see by Billy’s look he didn’t fully believe me but wanted to badly enough because of the friend I’d become to him, how I’d tried to help him with his romantic problems with Pearl. So I straight out asked him for money.
Boy, I wished I had her to give, Tom. But I ain’t.
Why ain’t you? You been a bachelor all your life, Billy. Why ain’t you got it to give?
That there lying on the bed is a lot of the reason. I’ve spent most all I ever earned on women like Flo there. I’ve bought whores since I was of a mind to notice ’em. Man with a face like mine ain’t exactly what marrying gals is looking for.
I’ve a notion to rob her, Billy, take off her what you paid her for last night.
Go ahead, Tom. If that’s what you’ve a mind to do. I won’t try and stop you.
My hand was played out and it was a losing one. I gathered what I had left of my pride and shook Billy’s hand and went off to meet Laura, knowing she’d probably been waiting by the spring for me nearly an hour already.
And that is where you found her?
Yes, but not like I’d thought I would.
Dead?
Yes, already so.
And you had no hand in it?
No, sir, I dint.
Tell me if you would, what she was like that first moment you saw her.
I close my eyes and try not to see it—Laura, there by the fallen tree, her body reclined, one arm flung over her eyes as though not to witness the terrible act committed upon her—a red flower stain on the front of her dress.
She had on satin shoes.
Such expensive shoes for an impoverished girl. How do you think it is she came by them?
I don’t know.
Grayson, maybe—a gift?
My heart raced even as hers had stopped, as though it were beating for the both of us. I kneeled there in the moss beside her and lifted away her arm and looked into her half-closed eyes. For a moment I thought they saw me, but then what might have been was lost. I called to her and held her close, but I knew there was nothing could be done for her. Too often I’d seen such eyes in the war, such dead beauty unmarred except for a single wound. I kissed her cooling lips and they did not kiss back. O that they would and I could have breathed new life into her and cleaned away the stain on her bosom and taken her with me to the far sea.
What happened then, Tom? Did you run then?
What happened was the strangest thing and I don’t know if it were coincidence, or what.
Suddenly Ann was there.
Had she been there all the while?
I couldn’t say.
One minute she wasn’t there and the next she was.
Oh, Tom, what’s happened to Cousin Laura?
She did seem genuinely surprised—her face struck with horror at the sight of the still wet bloodstain now covering the whole top of Laura’s dress.
Someone’s killed her.
Oh, Tom, why’d you do it?
I dint do it.
Surely you must have, for who else would come along and hurt such an innocent girl as Cousin Laura?
Yesterday you’d not a kind thing to say about her; how do I know it wasn’t you who did this?
Me, me! Oh, Tom, how could you think such a thing?
I grew suddenly sick and wretched knowing I’d never again hold my sweetheart, that our babe would not see the light of even its first day—that three futures had been ended in the swift stroke of an angry blade.
Ann took to ranting and carrying on and I thought she’d draw the attention of others by the way she was doing so. I grew fearful that if others found us thus, Laura’s blood now on my hands, my clothes, they’d think I done it. And surely as I’ve already told you, Mr. Newbolt, I’d made a lot of enemies just trying to be Tom Dooley.
Can you tell me how she ended up in a grave?
That part I am ashamed of. But mostly it was out of fear and Ann’s wild claims . . .
Do not destroy us both, Tom Dooley, with your false accusations. I would not hurt poor Laura for love nor money.
Odd how you just happen by at this self same hour when I was to meet her.
Surely coincidence that I did, for I was coming to your cabin to bring you the money you’d asked me for.
But my cabin is the other way . . .
And felt a thirst and diverted my journey to come down to the springs for a drink.
It all seemed too much coincidence, but still . . .
If not Ann, whom do you suspect had a hand in it?
Your voice has the tinge of suspicion in it, Mr. Newbolt. I already swore to you I’d nothing to do with it.
I’m just trying to learn the truth here, Tom.
Yes, sir, I understand you are and I’m trying to give it best I know how. But the truth can be a strange creature.
I pleaded with Ann to calm herself, that I wasn’t accusing her of anything, that I was distraught as she over the event and that we’d do no good drawing attention to ourselves with poor Laura’s body not yet cold. I reminded her of a fact or two . . .
Pearl for one has heard you swear vengeance on Laura and me. Don’t you think she’d swear to it in a court of law?
This stopped her raving.
Then what should we do, Tom? For we’ll both be suspects in this . . .
I don’t know, but we mustn’t be foun
d this way and we sure can’t just leave her thus . . .
And so it was agreed that even though we’d nothing to do with Laura’s death, we’d bury her and that I would leave the valley for a time and Ann would remain with Melton as though nothing had happened.
And of this, I am greatly ashamed, for all the scheming did no good, and the deed was ignoble and I question now how true my love for Laura was knowing what I done to her earthly remains—how unceremoniously Ann and me dug her grave and put her in it.
That surely was a hard decision.
I can’t talk of it anymore.
I understand, Tom. I’ll come back tomorrow.
Oh, I wish you wouldn’t. I wish you wouldn’t ever have to come back.
He stops writing, closes his little book, and slips it into his pocket saying he’ll return again when I’m feeling better.
There is something bursting in me, a great hot stone of something that needs to come out. I take my pen and dip it into the pool of ink. The sheet of foolscap lay blank, waiting to bear its children: words.
Sin, who calls? Thy great voice roars within me.
But I will not answer, I mustn’t answer once nor
Twice nor ever. Love’s lamp put out, Darkness
Grows all around me. Thy flame Extinguished,
I am lost in darkness—the Stars & Moon provide
Me not enough to light to find My way. Sin’s call,
Call no more, for Loveless darkness has claimed me.
My head grows too weary, Liza; I’d just as soon the hangman’s noose end my misery as to live yet another moment with thoughts of Laura death plaguing me as they do.
Ann Foster Melton
O, great liar!
It was Tom who suggested we bury her in a quick grave. I wanted to go for help, to bring back a wagon and carry lovely Laura in it to town and see she had a proper funeral, but Tom was against it.
You fool! he warned me.
What was I to do? I thought if I refused, his murderous heart might murder me too, for when a mountain man gets his blood in a boil, there is no telling what he might or might not do.
Jealousy is more dangerous than liquor in the heart of a mountain man.
So I went along, helped dig Laura’s grave with a tree limb. We had to bend her legs to fit her in.