by Bill Brooks
James Melton
What sort of dozen fools was I to marry her, knowing she loved that damn Tom Dooley and would never give him up? My own family was quick to ask and scorned me for marrying the shrew witch!
But marry her I did . . .
For better or worse . . .
Isn’t that the vow we make before God?
I know they laugh at me down at Swain’s. They laugh and whisper and talk behind my back about how it is a man could let another man fornicate with his wife.
I’d kill any sumbitch I caught putting the horns to my woman!
I’d cut off his nuts and boil ’em up good and feed ’em to my dog!
Old Jim’s got himself a real tart. Why I wouldn’t mind having a go at her myself since she seems so willin’ to give it away!
But they ain’t none of them knows what it is to love a woman so hard and mightily he’d do anything, put up with anything to keep her. And who among them has a wife looks anything like Ann—the most beautiful woman in all the valley and all up and down Reedy Branch, whose beauty extends all the way to the far mountains and beyond? Not a damn one of them! They don’t know anything about beauty. They live their lives in the most unbeautiful way and they do not read and wonder at things beyond what they can see with their own eyes and taste with their own mouths. They do not dream of beauty nor sleep with it close to them. So, how would any of them understand me, or anything about what I’d put up with to keep even a very little bit of Ann’s beauty close by? Let them talk. It is a thing beyond me, out of my hands, not of my doing. I’ll bide my time and pray God strikes a bargain with the devil and rubs Tom out, for all our sakes.
Tom Dooley
We marched, the boys and me, and bivouacked, and lay out under the stars and under the rain and under the snow, the seasons eroding us with the certainty of time passing. And I beat the drum for them and they told me stories about their gals back home. They told me about their Mams and Paps, and their longing burned a hole in my heart.
Some could read and some could not, and those who couldn’t, asked me to read the letters to them and some asked would I write for them as well.
Read it for me will you, Tom, but over here where the others can’t listen in.
And I would read letters that arrived to my best comrade, Louis, of such things as crops and weather and of a wife’s heart broken and full of longing. Sad sweet things put into words oft stained by teardrops that would smudge the fine blue ink.
Dearest Louis. Oh, how terribly I miss you. It is like a piece of me has been torn out leaving a deep hole where my heart once resided. The baby is doing well, had the colic last week but fine now. The cow stopped giving milk and now I must go to the Carters for it. Night is when I miss you most, for it is the loneliest hour here in our bed and time feels endless and unbearable without you here beside me. I miss your hand upon my . . .
Oh, stop reading, Tom.
And I would hand him over the letter he could not read for himself and he would take it and fold it carefully and put it inside his breast pocket and go off to mourn. Louis, a strapping strong boy of the most handsome countenance and who I’d seen do a thousand brave deeds. But his eyes would fill with tears at the thought of home, at the thought of his darling Minnie and darling babe, Louisa, named after him. And oft I would hear him in the night mewing like a sad kitten and crawl into his blankets with him, for I was just as lonely.
I think he is out there waiting for me still.
In the silence of the privy I can hear the frost crackling as though the world is splitting in two. I finish what I came for and step out again and the sun behind the blind-eyed sky is sharper now, piercing through to warm us all again and bring us all fresh hope.
I see a shadow behind the cabin’s window, behind the circle Melton made now frosted over again. I’m sure Ann has awakened because of Melton’s movements about the cabin and is lying still, feigning sleep. They are a couple wordlessly bound, their marriage one of silent, aching hearts. Ann calls me the healer of her heart.
James Melton
Look at her there sleeping as though struck dead by love, her bed still warm where he did lay. I want to take the old gun and shoot her, him, myself. Maybe someday I will if it does not end soon. He steals a little of her beauty every day. Takes it with him when he goes and never brings it back when he returns. I go and lay down next to her, feel the hollowed place where he lay and listen to her sleepy breathing. Her beauty shatters inside me like sun-warmed ice. I wish his name had been on the death lists posted down at Swain’s, that I’d gone there one day and read the name: Tom Dooley. Kilt.
But it never was, and I never read it, and then one day he was back, a hero of sorts, as if his returning wasn’t bad enough.
She does not move next to me. I wait, but she does not move.
Tom Dooley
Three years, nine months, twelve days since the first time we fornicated. Why I remember this exactly I can’t say, except the war has made me conscious of every minute of my life.
I close my eyes and see again that sunlight that came through the slats of the corncrib as Ann wriggled beneath me, her body warm and damp with the fever of desire. The taste of her breath was sweet in my mouth. We fucked urgently on the cobs of the previous season’s harvest, our weight shifting, pressing them down.
Won’t you run away with me, Tom, before old Melton can get his hands on me?
A corncrib on a hot summer’s day is a stifling place, the bed of cobs rough as shifting rocks under us. But comfort wasn’t the quest, and first desire is the strongest of all desire.
Oh, Tom, I can’t bear it, the thought of Melton and me this away. He’s old and has big horse teeth and smelly breath. He looks at me with his starved eyes. Save me from him, Tom.
It was my first time, but desire is its own teacher. She held my cob in a grip so sweetly painful I thought it would burst open but for her holding it so firmly.
Farther out in the fields we could hear men cursing their mules to plow with vigor the hard unyielding earth, the oaken handles blistering their hands, the unfortunate blades striking buried rock. Their labor a chorus to our pleasure. And being naïve in such matters I asked cautious questions.
Have you done it with other boys?
Oh, Tom, I love only you.
You seem to know your way around these matters.
I’ve dreamt this day for a year, of what I’d do to you and what I’d have you do to me.
I held fast to her slender hips as she worked over me. The first touch of her wet sex against the tip of my cob was like fire. It was beyond what a body can imagine, especially the body of a boy not yet tested by love or war.
Oh, goddamn mule, pull along there! Gee, haw! Pull along there!
We looked between the slats.
Is that Melton?
Laughed.
Then in small slippages she settled onto me until there was no more she could slip down or me push up.
Tom, Tom. Oh, my sweet, sweet darling.
The first words of lust spoken to me by anyone.
And there in that hot corncrib with the silage dust floating in the air and sticking to us, my heart fluttered like a starling trapped in barn rafters.
The ring of plow blade striking hidden rock sounded crisp as a church bell.
Oh, goddamn mule, whoa up there!
The field hand’s curse a condemnation?
Don’t let old Melton have me, Tom. Don’t let him have me this away.
And as she bared her teeth in sheer pleasure, I thought of the boys and war and becoming a drummer, knowing my hand would not fit a rifle, that I had no murder in me. And as the bony prominences of her hips knifed into me each time she rocked to and fro, I came to realize that without the pain there can’t be no sense of pleasure. And even as my blood percolated within my flanks and I felt as if I were being split in two, I thought of places beyond the mountains I wanted to go.
Don’t let Melton come do this to me, Tom. O, don’t
let him have me!
Curse you old mule! Curse ever goddamn hard acre of this ground!
Laughter and curses, the long hee-haw of protesting mules, then collapse in a sighing breath, her weight o’er and upon me fully, heavenly, as though an angel fallen from the sky lifeless.
Ann Foster Melton
O, a girl never forgets her first time and she never wants her fellow to forget his, and though Tom was not my first I was mighty careful to give to Tom all the pleasure I’d learned about being a woman before my Tom came along. The others meant nothing to me—no more than a scraped knee.
He asked me if I was his first and I couldn’t disappoint him and tell him that he wasn’t. What’s a small white lie when it comes to such thing? My first was Billy Dixon, of all folks. Billy twenty years old, and just returned from Raleigh where he earned a teaching certificate. Billy with his poor pitted face so awful no girl would freely go with him for such matters, offered me three dollars to let him do it and I did. O, the money was nice, but it wasn’t the whole reason I let him. The thought of what it was to fornicate with a man had consumed me since I had witnessed my uncle fornicating with my aunty while staying with them on a visit. I was ten years old, and the sheer strangeness of watching them on that hot, hot day as I lay in the cool dark loft of their barn and looked down upon them, caused my skin to itch in a funny way.
O, Dora, I’ve got me a need.
Not here, Hiram. What if the children were to come in?
Surely they won’t. I seen them all go off toward the swimming hole together. Come on now, let me have at it.
She struggled with him, but laughingly so. He turned her around and bent her over and lifted her skirts so that her bare arse was exposed to him and to my eyes. I watched as he unbuttoned his trousers and took out his swollen cob and pushed it into her like you’d see the animals doing to one another. At first she didn’t say anything and he didn’t either, except for little grunts he made. But in a short bit she began to moan and he said to her:
Yes, yes, yes. You like it now don’t you, Dora? You like it ever bit as much as me. Tell me you do, gal. Tell me now.
I do . . . I like it.
I held my breath, afraid they might hear me, and pretty quickly he finished and replaced himself and she straightened her skirts and they went back out into the hot sunlight together. My cousins numbered seven so I was sure my uncle and aunty did it quite a lot.
So when Billy Dixon approached me after class one day—I was one of thirty or so of his students—and asked me to let him and offered me the money, I did. I always sensed something womanly in you, Ann—not like the other girls.
His talk swole my head.
It hurt quite a lot, but he finished quick and told me to go clean myself up and gave me the three dollars. I told myself I’d never do it with him again. But the hurt didn’t last so long and neither did the money and I let him do it to me several more times for the same amount. Then too, there was my cousin—one of those seven of my uncle and aunty’s. We went back to visit, and I let him do it to me there in the same barn, making him do it to me in the same manner I’d seen his folks do it to each other. And by then I’d gotten some pleasure from it. Then I met Tom and told Billy I wouldn’t let him anymore and if he ever said anything, I’d tell my ma and she’d tell the High Sheriff and he would come and arrest Billy and put him in prison. And that was that, for I promised my heart only to Tom and aimed to keep my promise.
Tom Dooley
The lovely Louis was shot and killed at Malvern Hill, the bullet gone through his tunic and through the letter I’d read him three weeks before. His blood stained the words of his sweet wife’s longing, the baby’s colic, all the rest. I took it and let it dry in the sun, then folded it as carefully as he had done and built a toy boat and tied the letter to it, then sent it down into the current of a stream whose name I did not know. It would either find a resting place or it would not, and stood and watched it sail out of sight.
Sail away with thy memories of truest love, and with thy memory of what was lost here on this day.
Beat the drum, Tom, beat the drum.
The boys and me buried Louis and the others under clouds of acrid smoke and venomous thoughts. Another soldier asked for Louis’s shoes and I would not let him take them. We fit over Louis’s shoes. He bloodied my nose and I his and Louis wore the shoes to his grave. For what the soldier did not understand was the kinship between Louis and me. For, in spite of his having a wife and me a sweetheart (Ann), there were nights when the loneliness and fear were too much to bear singly. So we shared what we could to sustain us for another minute, another hour, another night. And in the morning we marched like soldiers, fought like men, and kept what secrets we owned to ourselves. Why I think of all this just now, I can’t say. Except perhaps that love is love and love is often strange and immeasurable.
I walk away from Melton’s cabin, the frost breaking like glass underfoot, the hoary mountains turning slowly to a deeper darkness under sun’s growing strength. The chill in me eases a little. I walk toward home, toward the empty cabin I have built where I will lay me down and think of what life has yet in store for me. For since the war, I’ve learned not to make plans.
I walk away remembering, too, Ann’s words that first time there in the corncrib, her voice heavy with exhaustion, whispering to me even as she fell into sleep:
Marry me, Tom. Make a decent woman of me before old Melton can . . .
But I did not marry her, and of decency I know so little it seems. And now Melton has her, and I have her, and silently we share, the three of us, this triangle of whatever you would call it. But love isn’t one of its names.
I look back only long enough to see my boot prints in the frost and wonder if the little boat with Louis’s bloodstained letter ever found a safe harbor.
Beat the drum, Tom.
Elizabeth Brouchard
O, such strange details, written down on bits and pieces of tattered paper—like a tattered heart long after the love is all fled and we become whole again. Details you’d never suspected my eyes would see—you who played your roles so well under heaven’s assemblage, directed by gods and minions of gods and moons and stars.
Tom: The Good. Ann: The Horrid. Melton: The Cuckold. A cast of fools.
&
Then
There
Was
Me
Who
Brought
The
Final
Curtain
Down.
CHAPTER 4
Tom Dooley
Grayson stands in the midmorning air listening as the broke-through sun shatters the frost till it lies wet and dewy. He is brushing his prize horse, a stud named Hero. A Tennessee Walker that stood sixteen hands tall with bright clear eyes that look round toward me when I come up the road and past Grayson’s farm.
Morning there, Tom.
Hidey, Mr. Grayson.
He looks down the road whence I’ve come with a grim mouth of recognition that the nearest place is Melton’s.
You’re out awful early, Tom.
I still have the night’s feel of Ann’s warm body in my blood, the taste of her mouth in my mouth.
Early bird gets the worm, they say.
Yes, I’ve heard it said.
Fine-looking stud you have there, Mr. Grayson.
Best in all Wilkes County. Fast as a bullet, why nothing can outrun him.
I heard stories of Grayson killing a man over such a horse, but no one knows much about him round these parts. He drifted down over the ridge from Tennessee, spitting distance from here practically. Calls himself The Colonel and others who know him do too. He’s asked me some about the war, knowing I was in it.
Three years, eh Tom? Long time for a boy to fit a war.
Every time I think of it, I remember Louis: the flower of blood staining his tunic, his tender hands trembling, his yearning sobs. Seems that war’s been over for eons, but it’s hardly been a year.
I never ask Grayson why they call him The Colonel, and did he fit in the war himself. Most men I know don’t like to talk about it except in dread and regret. And them that do, mostly didn’t go, or mostly ran at the first shot.
Grayson brushes long strokes over his stud’s back and haunches until its hide gleams like polished oak.
Winter’s about to set in, Tom. Why you can taste it in the air. Tastes bitey, don’t it?
Ann has by now probably arisen and washed herself clean of me, and serves Melton his breakfast of hominy and ham with blackstrap molasses poured over everything. His warm wet eyes probably watch her as she sets his plate in front of him, his hand wanting to reach out for her to pull her to him and ask things of her she can’t answer.
How come him and not me?
Yes, sir, Mr. Grayson, you can taste the air. And on I go toward home.
Ann Foster Melton
I awake and find James next to me on the bed. He is shaking. I quickly dress and go to the window and look out. There, in the frost, I see Tom’s boot prints leading away toward the ridges. James snuffles on the bed, the blanket pulled up to his chin, his eyes peering over the hem at me.
He’s long gone, that Tom of yours is. Not even the decency to say goodbye to you. That’s what you want in a feller, someone that will use you up and skedaddle first light?
O, his words are bitter.
If you can’t stand it, why don’t you do something about it?
What would you have me do, kill him? Maybe you? Maybe all of us?
I ache for Tom, ache for his touch, ache for his mouth on my mouth. But all I see are boot prints in the frost.
Tom Dooley
Soon I come to the little schoolhouse, a drift of smoke rising up from the stone chimney, the din of children, of lessons to be learned, of song singing—a clattering of high voices rattling around like pebbles in a pail. Billy Dixon is inside standing in front of the clutch of faces, ramrod straight in his worn black suit, his pocked cheeks huffing and puffing the lessons he is trying to impart: Shakespeare, the Holy Bible, poems about Mariners—multiplication tables and how many rods in an acre. Their little skulls trying to take it all in, tongues lolling, eyes shiny like buttons, their limbs restless to play.
