by Bill Brooks
You didn’t go out of love for me?
Not that kind of love.
She looked as forlorn as Raymond had. The world was at once a beautiful and sad place to be.
Her female troubles came and we had no relations for several days and I was just as relieved we didn’t because it gave me time to think on a solution and what I came up with surprised even me a little, but it seemed the right thing to do and so I went to Melton’s and spoke to Ann.
I told Ann the story of what Swain had done and how Pearl had come to me, but I didn’t tell her of our intimacy. At first she seemed suspicious, then disinterested.
What you reckon I should do about it?
She’s your kin, Ann.
I know you and her been carrying on . . . you come thinking you’d trick me.
If nothing else, hire her to work for you and Melton. Wouldn’t it be pleasant to have someone cook and clean for you? You probably wouldn’t have to pay her much over room and board.
I won’t have her in my house, especially since I know what you and her did.
It’s a lie. We never did a thing, except I gave her what anybody would: shelter and consideration, the milk of human kindness.
Damn liar, Tom Dooley, that’s what you are.
Look at it this way: with her here you won’t have to worry about her and me being together. You’ll always be able to keep an eye on her, make sure she ain’t up to nothing.
That seemed to do the trick. Ann moved close to me.
James has gone to the tavern.
I can see he has.
It’s been almost two weeks since I seen you.
I’ve counted the days too, Ann.
You still ache for me, Tom? My cousin Pearl hasn’t taken all the ache out of you for me?
Don’t be foolish.
Then show me she hasn’t.
So ours was a bargain struck, no better or no worse, perhaps, than that of Swain’s with Raymond, or that of Shinbone with the devil. But this time when I lay with Ann, it felt different. Something was missing that had always been there before. It was like a crack you see in the ice when the weather turns and it starts to thaw and you’re standing out on it. You know it won’t hold you for long. That soon it will shatter and you’ll drown if you stay on it.
So when I left her, I left dispirited because of this new feeling that had begun in me. I knew it would never be the same way between us, and yet I also knew that I would keep going back until whatever ice we were standing on finally broke completely.
A purple dusk was settling in over the valley by the time I passed Melton on the trail.
I wanted to tell him I’d gone to his place for a rightful reason, that what I done was to save poor Pearl, somehow thinking I would feel better if I told him this. But I could see by the beaten look in his eyes he wanted no truck with me, or anything I might have to say. He had it already set in his head why I’d been up to his place even though it wasn’t totally true—just some of it was.
In a single day I had made new enemies: Swain, Raymond, and if Raymond left the valley, certainly Grayson. Meeting Melton on the trail only reminded me of how easy it is for a man to make enemies without half trying.
All I ever wanted was to live a happy, peaceful life.
Elizabeth Brouchard
These things you tell me, Tom. These happy and sad moments of your affairs that you have me record in—call it the Book of Life, if you will—I listen to with my own heart nearly breaking under the weight of your love for others when all the while you should have loved me.
But what is done is done and my love bears the burden of your burden and though your words wound me quite often, I shall put them on neat little lines where they will appear clean and unstained—bereft of sorrow. And so many of the words will make a sentence, and so many more a paragraph, and more still, an entire story.
Call it the Book of My Life, or, Tom Dooley’s Folly, or whatever you will, for it is your words I write and none of my own.
O, hand, bear not rancor nor judgment nor
Prejudice for loving wrongly. Sustain
Thee in love’s sorrow and give thy heart
Gladly away to him that never lov’d you,
But to him, whom you lov’d too freely.
For love is not to be bartered for the price of love.
I confess I saw us once in a canoe going slowly down the river together, the sun through the trees and arabesque upon the water, the river’s cool wetness kissing my trailing fingers. You played the fiddle for me there in the stern and sang of the future, said, We’ll ride this boat clean to the sea, Liza—you and me together and nothing shall ever catch us.
But it did catch us, Tom.
It caught us and held us tight in its talons, you around the neck and me around the heart and squeezed and squeezed until there was nothing left.
CHAPTER 9
Tom Dooley
The winter lay long o’er us, and I made my trips back and forth to Melton’s even though Pearl was there now, working for Ann, cooking and cleaning and being a servant to her. Melton had cleared out a small shed and chinked the logs and put in a stove fluted out through the wall at the south end. The only other comforts were a bed, a chamber pot, a small piece of broken mirror over a shelf, water pan, and hairbrush. I came there one Sunday when Ann and Melton had gone together to town on a rare occasion.
Oh, Tom, it’s almost as bad as Swain’s, how they treat me.
It can’t be, Pearl. Leastways nobody’s taking advantage of you like Swain was.
Ann’s so bitter toward me most the time. She accuses me of trying to steal you from her. James averts his eyes, but sometimes I catch him staring at me.
You understand how it is between Ann and me, don’t you?
I always knowed. I just pretended like I didn’t, but I always knowed.
That’s just the way it is, Pearl. Nothing’s going to change I can see.
That mean you ain’t ever going to love me again?
Depends on what you call love . . .
She asked me what sort of love I saw ours as. I told her if I came around and Ann was there it would be me and Ann, but if Ann wasn’t there, then it could be the two of us.
You mustn’t ever let Ann know. Were she to find out, she’d pitch you out in the cold.
Oh, Tom, I don’t know if I can bear it, this sort of love.
It’s this way or nothing at all.
Then I guess it’ll have to be what it is.
She took my hand and led me into the small cramped quarters. I could smell the earthen floor, the tang of wood smoke—the odor of the living.
Cousin Ann will be gone the whole morning, won’t be back till this afternoon.
Then we best not waste any more time.
We undressed and lay on the narrow bed and Pearl placed her body atop mine and I could smell her skin, her hair, her oniony breath. She took my cob and put it between her legs and I didn’t try and stop her. Ever since that day Ann accused me of being with Pearl, I had a stronger hankering for Pearl. There was something mean in my wanting Pearl out of spite for Ann, mean and dishonest and I admit to it now. I ain’t proud of what I done. Don’t think me a prideful man for certain things I done.
It was over quick as it usually was. We lay there for a time, tight together on that narrow bed, not saying anything.
Can I ask you something, Tom?
I allowed as how she could.
Why do you love Cousin Ann when you know she’s married and you could have just about any gal you wanted? Why take up with a married gal?
It’s not something I chose to happen, it’s just something that is. We can’t always choose who we love and who we don’t. Ann and me were lovers before the war—before old Melton came along. His coming along didn’t change anything.
We heard the call of geese—a wild far-off call that meant spring was returning soon, bringing with it a whole new season.
Winter’s about faded and I’m glad it is.
<
br /> There’s something so mean about winter, Tom.
I placed my hands upon her, ran them down along her bare limbs, along the spine of her back, her skinny arse, between her legs. She lay like a child and allowed me to feel her body and I felt greedy. Knowing I could do anything with her I pleased made me feel greedy. I don’t think there is anything I could of thought of or done to her that she wouldn’t have let me. That’s a powerful thing, to know a body will let you do whatever you will.
Tom.
What?
She got on her hands and knees and put her hindquarters to me.
My cob grew hard again.
I like it when we do it this way.
I took her like that, on her hands and knees, like two barnyard animals. I told her I liked it that way too. I’m ashamed to tell you such things, Liza, but if I’m going to tell it truthful I’ve got to tell it all, the good and the bad so people won’t think I’m lying, think I’m trying to come across as some saint or something. But I am sorry if it wounds you to hear it.
Elizabeth Brouchard
Between us is a woven door of steel—black and cold and unyielding. His voice comes through the small spaces, sometimes weak with shame, as it is now as he tells me of his consort with Pearl. I can see his eyes watching to make sure I write it down.
In this regard he is naïve—the way he tells of it so freely to me who loves him, as though such lewd details will hammer away all deception. But instead, they hammer away at my heart. But what am I to do, if not listen? For love does not run away when the truth of a lover is exposed. Love does not stick its head in the sand and pretend that the lover’s history is all a fairy tale.
Is it better to know or not know? That is the lover’s quandary.
O, I listen to him tell me these things and it aches worse than anything, for I cannot save him from the truth no more than I can from the fate of a jury’s decree.
I understand, Tom, why you must tell every little thing. Does it trouble me that you do? Yes. Does it cause me to flush with embarrassment? Yes. But you are what you are and Pearl and Ann are what they were. Nothing will change any of it, the truth or a lie, for the Great and Holy Judge shall judge us all in the end.
Tom Dooley
When I left Pearl that day, I took the long way round back to my place out of concern I’d run into Ann and Melton on the trail. Still, a part of me wanted to crow about the fact I had two women I could visit anytime I wanted, the fact I was free and young and alive and not dead like dear Louis and a thousand other boys I knew. I had about everything a man could want. But I knew if I crowed too loud, or crowed in front of Ann, she’d pitch Pearl out, or maybe worse. So I kept it to myself and walked through the quiet woods and felt not the presence of life anywhere.
My cabin always seemed more empty each time I returned from Melton’s and it did this time too. I thought I’d go to the tavern, but first I’d check on Shinbone and see if the winter had killed him. I don’t know why I felt any obligation toward him, but I did. I thought I might invite him to come with me to town, test his mettle so to speak.
I found him in the same little clearing, his tent pitched, sitting on the blackened stump of his “church” reading his Bible. He looked shrunk some, his skin the color of candle tallow.
I see the winter has come and nearly went and you’re still here.
He looked up, the wind fluttering the pages of his big red book.
I suppose if God had not wanted me here, Tom, he’d have took me this winter. She was a hard one and I had dreams about angels and old Satan himself fighting over my bones, but now I taste spring in the air and new life, don’t you?
I sniffed, said I didn’t smell or taste much of anything but allowed as to how the weather changed often and quick in the mountains and spring could come one day and be gone the next.
You don’t believe in a whole lot, do you, Tom? Don’t hold many hard convictions?
I allowed as to how that was so and asked did he want to come to town with me.
Why that’s a sparkling idea.
I was a little surprised he didn’t take time to think on it before accepting.
He washed his face in a bucket of water still with a skin of ice on it, broke it with his fist and splashed water up on his cheeks, and combed his hair with his wet fingers, then wiped a thumb across his teeth and rinsed his mouth with the same water.
I could use some stores and a fat meal of cooked hog.
He seemed happy as a child to be going.
We walked along together and I noticed he had a limp.
You hurt yourself?
Oh, had it since the war. Got it at Gettysburg. Sometimes the damp makes it worse.
You were at Gettysburg? So was I.
Why, you don’t say. I wonder who killed the most Yanks, you or me?
I tried not kill more’n I had to.
Me, either. Hopefully God will forgive us our duty.
He laughed and his laughter seemed to reach the mountains and skitter along the ridges.
Why’d you join, you believing so much in God? Don’t it say something about you not killing in the Bible?
I was a fool for Glory, proud and vain, is what I was. What about you?
I was a drummer, mostly, but they was times I had to fit my hand around a musket just to save my own skin.
I know it. It was a terrible time, the war was. Woe that we should ever see such again.
We didn’t stay long on the subject of war.
The tavern was full of men I knew and they looked ’round at me and Shinbone and some said hidey and some did not. The air was smoky and sour as unwashed drawers. I stood Shinbone to a glass of regular whiskey and he stood me to one, pulling a coin from a small deer-hide purse heavy with silver dollars.
You best be careful flashing that big money around.
You think?
Somebody’s liable to bash you over the head for it. Been lots bashed over the head for less.
He didn’t act worried. I wondered where he came by such a poke.
Here’s to the saints, Tom.
He held his glass momentarily aloft, then knocked it back. He made a pleasant face.
She’s got a good bite.
You ain’t like any preacher I ever met.
No, sir.
Drinking and all.
Jesus turned water into wine. I reckon if he was opposed to drinking, he’d not done it.
Don’t know as I ever read where he drank any of it.
I ain’t read anywhere he didn’t. That’s the thing with the Good Book—it ain’t always about what it says, a lot’s about what it don’t say. Most folks figure if it ain’t writ down Jesus did this or did that, he didn’t do this or that. Me, I look at it from the other side.
That’s some good reasoning, I reckon.
We found us a small table set toward the back and took up residence and nobody seemed to care one way or the other. Some of the men acted as though they were conspiring, for they spoke in whispers, their mouths close to the ear of their listener. I thought of Louis, how he and I would sometimes whisper our feelings in the cold night so the others around us couldn’t hear our soul’s secrets.
He tried to do right, didn’t he, then got killed because of it, your Jesus?
Yes, sir, that’s some of why they did him like they did—they couldn’t stand no change, nobody telling ’em different than what they knew all their lives. But change is bound to come whether a body likes it or not, and change ain’t always the worst thing that can happen to you.
It seems to me that the good always get the short end of the stick.
Seems like, Tom. But that shouldn’t keep a body from doing what he knows is right, what he believes in.
I tried to do a right thing here lately and all I did was make some new enemies.
Swain came over and looked at Shinbone, then at me.
You ain’t welcome here, Dooley.
Shinbone put another of his shiny silver dollars on the table.
My friend and I have come to drink and eat. You serve victuals? Or should we take our business elsewhere?
Swain’s eyes fell to the money.
Beef and potatoes is what we’ll have, and more liquor.
All’s I got is smoked pork.
Smoked pork it is then. Throw on some beans with it and corn-bread.
Swain left with the money stuck to his fingers.
That one of your new enemies, Tom, or is he an old’n?
New.
In spite of misgivings, I was starting to take to Shinbone. He had a generous heart to go along with his good nature. He ate like a wolf. All the while Swain stood off behind the bar conspiring with another fellow.
Shinbone talked around spoonfuls of his food.
My guess is you got woman troubles, Tom.
You figure rightly, preacher.
I’m guessing that’s the reason you got you some new enemies is on account of a woman.
It was a little spooky the way he seemed to know my mind.
About the only thing worth fighting about in these mountains is either a woman, a dog, or a patch of ground.
Tom, that’s about the only thing men fight about ever where. Clear back in the Old Testament days, men fought over the exact same things—women especially.
You ever had one?
Had several.
Then you understand.
Of course I do.
I’m about tired of setting in this place, ain’t you?
We went outside and the evening sky was bruised blue and black like somebody had hit it with a big fist. The air was cooled considerable and I thought about going back to Melton’s. Being with Pearl earlier had made my blood hot for Ann. I thought of her and Melton gone to town and back, how maybe they talked some and Melton told her how he couldn’t stand it, my coming around. I guessed that maybe she argued with him over me and told him she’d not have it any other way. And I guessed that saying a thing like that would set him off and he’d force her into his bed and later they’d both feel bad over it.
Shinbone stopped and pointed to the sky.
Dog Star.
I looked up.
Calling us home, Tom, me and you.
I ain’t getting your meaning.
Someday you will. That’s our heavenly home up there.
