by Bill Brooks
It was that day that I met my true fate—Laura Foster.
Elizabeth Brouchard
You had eyes of love for everyone but the one who loved you truest. Laura was the prettiest of the lot. Pretty and sweet and not plain and naïve as Pauline, or beautifully tart like Ann—but sweet as a fresh persimmon and you could not pass her by without a taste.
O, I know the story well enough, but tell me again how you fell so madly in love with Laura Foster and how such madness transpired, by your hand or another’s, into murder?
Was she as simple and sweet as she appeared, clinging like a persimmon to the greenest branch of life, airy and ripe for the plucking, Tom? Or did you take her too soon from her airy loft? & when you took a taste of her, was it sweetness you tasted or the bitter poison of life itself?
Tell me true and I’ll record it true, for all around us is false rumor.
Tom Dooley
I don’t know, I don’t know.
&
was she took or was it me?
&
did the stars all fall from the sky that night?
CHAPTER 13
Tom Dooley
The day I met Laura Foster, Melton stood talking to a man over the back of a horse. The man wore faded coveralls, a gray felt hat mapped by sweat. He was barefoot and sorry looking. I thought maybe he had come to buy a pair of shoes from Melton—him being the valley’s only cobbler. The man was about Melton’s age I guessed, forty, fifty years old. Hard to tell with mountain men, for they have the age of earth in their faces. The horse was a fine-looking black Morgan, maybe, with white socks; its eyes were dark as smoked glass. It wasn’t a wagon-pulling horse, but was nonetheless harnessed to a wagon loaded down to the axles with furniture and trunks and even a spinning wheel.
Melton stopped talking to the man when he saw me approach the cabin. His eyes got on me and stayed on me. The man he was talking to swung his head about and looked at me as well. He had a briar patch of red whiskers and a face near long as his horse. His fists were balled in the pockets of his coveralls. I reckon he was about one of the poorest-looking mountain men I ever saw.
He paid me no more attention than he might a chicken that had wandered into the yard. He leaned and spat tobacco juice and turned back to Melton. Droplets of brown juice clung to his whiskers and he didn’t bother to wipe them away.
I hear tell you might have a patch of ground to lease.
Maybe. Who’d you hear it from?
Feller in the tavern.
Swain?
He didn’t say his name, I didn’t ask. I come out here to look at it.
You aiming to raise cotton, maybe some tobacco?
No, sir, cotton’s too damn hard a raising, and so is tobacco, and ’sides, I couldn’t afford no hands to pick it if I was to raise either.
Then what you need a patch of ground for?
Hogs, maybe.
Hogs?
The man looked about in all directions. He studied the land, the hills, the buildings, everything in sight like he was reading a book.
It looks like a right good place. Better’n where we come from.
Rocky in some places, clayey in others. It’s hard to find flatland, unless you get you a piece of river bottom.
River bottom’s too dear. I reckon hogs is a good thing to raise. Hogs don’t get et by bole weevils and don’t get ruined from too much rain, and you don’t need no flatland for ’em either. Hogs eat about anything, snakes, slops, whatever. Hog meat is dear.
Hogs, eh? Well, I don’t know about no hog—stink is bad.
I went on in the cabin. Ann was sitting at the table and another young woman sat opposite her. Pearl was at the stove stirring something in a pot. All three looked at me when I entered. The room smelled of cooking and of woman.
Ann didn’t allow I hardly take off my hat.
Why, Tom, what are you doing here this time of day?
Her eyes flashed like dry lightning when she saw I was taking notice of her guest. So did Pearl’s.
I was just on my way to town and thought I’d stop and say hidey.
I just couldn’t let it pass, so I introduced myself when I saw Ann wasn’t about to.
Name’s Tom Dooley, ma’am.
Mine’s Laura Foster, and hidey, Tom. I’m another cousin to Ann and Pauline here.
You sure favor these two. But truth was, Laura was prettier than either Ann or Pearl. Ann was a beauty but in a hard way, whereas Laura was younger and bright-eyed and it was her brightness that caught my attention most. And I didn’t make any pretenses about it. For I was, as Shinbone had called me, unfettered in my ways. But Ann picked up on my unfettered ways and spoke up.
Excuse us, Cousin Laura. Tom, would you mind stepping out back with me a minute?
I followed Ann outside through that little back door Melton had cut in, he said for the purpose of escaping a fire in case there was one at the front. Melton was a mighty practical and fore-thinking man. Once outside, Ann lit into me good.
Damn you, Tom Dooley. I saw the way you was looking at her.
Where’d you want me to look?
It ain’t enough you got me and Pauline to rut around with, is it?
You know there’s nothing between me and Pearl.
Pearl is it? I know you’d probably do it with a heifer given half the chance.
No, ma’am. Them heifers fall in love too easy.
She didn’t find any humor in me and went to slap my face but I caught her by the wrist and told her not to act so dangerous.
She ain’t staying, so no use you getting any ideas about her.
It’s just as well. I’d hate to have to fit you ever day of the week over your crazy notions about me and some woman or another.
The anger made her taut as a spring and caused her cheeks to flush a shade of primrose. Ann was a strong gal and I had trouble holding her still when she got like that. She pushed up hard against me until I felt the length of her taut body. She pushed until she knew I was feeling her like that, like the way she got when we was ravenous with each other. O, I hate to tell you these things, but I must so you’ll understand the way things were. I’ll take all the blame you want to heap on me, for I was unfettered and maybe too much a fool—mistaking desire for love and all those things I didn’t understand until now.
We spat and argued some but Ann knew me too well.
You like to get me this way, don’t you, Tom? You’re the only man who could ever get me this way and you know it and that’s why you do it.
I could see the corncrib, sunlight drifting through its slats. I could smell the hot must of the corn and remember the bone-hard way they felt when we first laid on them that time of our beginnings. And shelled, the cobs were the color of dried blood. My own cob hard and hot with her pressed up against me, her body taut like that, hard in a way a woman is seldom hard.
I ought to make you take me over to that corncrib right now, do it like we did that first time.
Don’t be a fool—your husband is round the other side talking land with a man.
Go ahead, Tom Dooley. Go ahead, take me here and now. Take me in front of Melton and Laura’s daddy and Pauline and Laura her damn self. Let them all see how you take me, let them see it and envy it!
She took my hand and slipped it under her skirts until my fingers touched the warm hardness of her thighs. I felt the heat of her drift down on the back of my hand when it brushed up against her sex. O, I’m ashamed to say such things now.
She was the devil and the devil is a powerful wicked thing when it comes in the form of a woman. But I mustn’t blame it all on her. It was a lot of it me too.
We’re both the same you and me, Tom. We’re both willful and wretched.
I didn’t come here for this.
Then what did you come here for?
Hell, I don’t know anymore.
You put murder in my heart when I think about you and other women, Tom.
Such crazy damn talk!
I pulled
free and pushed her away from me. She hissed like a cat and tried to come at me again, but I held her off.
I got to get on.
You coming back this evening?
Might. Might not.
Maybe I should find me a man who is more regular in his wanting.
Maybe you should. I hear Billy Dixon’s in the market for a gal.
Oh damn you, Tom Dooley.
She slammed the door going into the cabin. I felt as if I was standing on the edge of something deep and fatal. I wanted to leave her as much as I wanted to take her. I wanted to punish her with my desire. I wanted to steal her pleasure and keep it as my own. She was like a slow poison in my blood I knew would kill me, but a poison I wasn’t sure I could go without, much like a starving man will eat putrid meat knowing it will kill him but he can’t help himself.
Ann Foster Melton
Tom came sniffing round the day Cousin Laura and her pap showed up at our place. Came round like he had an instinct for any new pretty gal in the valley. He was cocksure of hisself and I think he tried his best to provoke me as often as he could. He liked me riled in order to shame me, in order to show his power over me. O, he had power over me aplenty and he knew it. And I was powerful crazy over him and he knew that too.
That’s the trouble when a woman loves a man so much, he steals her power from her. She can’t control herself, her mortal thoughts nor desires. I did things for Tom Dooley I wouldn’t have done for any man.
But before you think it, before anyone thinks it, I never murdered Laura or nobody else for him.
Tom Dooley
On my way back round the cabin, I passed by the window again and looked in and saw Laura Foster sitting there alone while Ann was standing by Pearl at the stove, giving her every what-for judging by the way she was waving her hands about. Then, as though she knew I was there, Laura turned her head slightly until her eyes met mine through the green glass and we just looked at each other. She smiled and I smiled back.
I went on back round front, past Melton and Laura’s pap talking about land still. I went past them for Melton’s benefit, so he could see I was leaving. His eyes trailed after me and I could almost hear his heart rejoicing that I was leaving.
Go on, Tom. Go on the hell home and don’t come back.
I figured someday if things with Ann and me went on long enough, he’d go mad and kill me. His love for Ann would surpass my own and it would steal his soul, like it had stole mine, and he’d go mad and that would be all she wrote.
In a way, we were all mad from something.
I was mad with desire for Ann, and Melton was mad with hatred for me, and Billy was mad with longing for any love he could find. Ann was mad for me, and Grayson was mad with loss over his field hand, and Pearl was mad with loneliness and Shinbone was mad with the holy spirit.
Then there was Swain who was mad with greed and an old recluse who was mad with lust for his own daughters. There was the war that had been mad for the blood of young men and young men mad for the war.
The world spun and spun with madness until we all were dizzy.
Elizabeth Brouchard
Tom, do you think it was all this madness that drove you to it?
I wasn’t driven to anything.
But you’re here in this place with darkness looming o’er you.
It wasn’t my doing put me here, wasn’t my hand in it. But it was fate—that untrustworthy old bitch.
But surely you had to know that you couldn’t just go on and on the way you were—that things couldn’t just go on and on the way they were.
I can’t say.
You can’t or won’t?
A body knows what a body knows.
Then tell me what you know for certain; don’t leave me to believe things that aren’t true.
Those mountains looked more dear to me that day. I saw them as a fortress, something to keep me in or keep others out. I’m not sure. I should have gone on back across them right then, that very day I met Laura Foster. If I had, I wouldn’t be here now. My whole life would be different.
And you and me, well, there might have come something of us, don’t you see, Liza?
Did you love her true? Did you love Laura truer than the others?
Love’s a slippery thing. It changes. First it’s one thing, then another.
What you’ve written in your journal, and what you’ve had me write—it all sounds like love confused with something not close to love at all.
My words don’t seem my own when I look at them. They seem writ by a hand other than mine. I read them and they don’t seem my own.
But surely they are your words, Tom.
At times it’s like there’s a power taking over my hand, guiding it to write the words. I just let it. I can’t say if the words are always true or not.
The sweet dove flies without thought to its wings or how it is able to soar. Perhaps the words in you are like the wings of the sweet dove, Tom.
Maybe so.
This lattice of iron between us is hard and cold and cruel. Was your love for Ann like that, Tom? Was it that way for Laura near the end?
O, don’t ask me such things, Liza.
I watch you pace and limp beyond the lattice of iron.
The dampness hurts my feet. I got my feet froze that first winter during the war.
I bet you wish you had them stuck in sunshine.
I bet so.
Do you wish me to write about your feet as well?
Tom Dooley
I woke in the woods somewhere on the trail between my place and Melton’s. I don’t know what happened, I guess I must have fainted for lack of eating anything for several days. I had lost my appetite for no understandable reason. I woke and smelt the mossy ground there in the woods where old trees lay in rot and the shade was deep and cool. There was something comforting about lying there, hidden from the world. I didn’t want to get up. I wanted to just lie there and become part of the land, my roots grown deep in the black wet loam.
Would you like me to read you something I wrote the other day about my time in that old war?
Yes, read it to me, Tom.
The weight of my words are trapped here inside this book. The weight of it feels about like the weight of a heart if you was to hold one in your hand, I reckon.
July 14th 1863. We have arrived in Fredericksburg and given the task of watching over captured Yankees. The colonel has passed down orders to the officers who have passed them down to the sergeants who have passed them down to the privates:
Shoot any prisoner who tries to escape.
Me and Louis confer and both agree we couldn’t shoot an unarmed man just for trying to run away home, even if he is a Yankee. Louis asks me what should we do if one tries to escape on us. I tell him just to look mean and wave his big musket around and I’ll wave mine around. And if one actually runs, we’ll fire over their heads and let them skedaddle. So that’s what we do for several days until everybody gets used to the idea and sees it more as a sport than anything.
Each day a few of them die and have to be taken out to a field and buried. Louis and me are sometimes put on the burial detail and dig and dig until our hands grow blistered.
Louis asks me why it is I think some of them die like they do during the night. Heartbreak, maybe, is what I tell him. For I don’t know myself why they do.
One fellow we come to like quite well: a blue-eyed boy named Hank who always has a smile, even though his ribs show through and his feet are in terrible condition because one of ours had taken his shoes.
Hank tells us he’s from Michigan. Calls himself a Wolverine. Says a wolverine is the fightingest creature God ever made and asks if we had them in the South. He and Louis argue over whether a wolverine is a meaner fighter than a badger or the other way
Wolverines is the fightingest! Hank argues.
Badger! argues Louis.
No, sir. Wolverine.
You don’t look so full of fight.
No, sir, I sure
don’t. I guess you got me on that one.
Louis and me take a liking to Hank and sneak him some extra Johnny Cake when we could and he showed us a photograph of his mother, who had sorrowful eyes.
What happened to him, Tom?
He died like a lot of the others.
I use the book sometimes for a pillow, my head resting on words I must have wrote but can’t remember doing so.
And in the book are names of those you loved dearly and those you lost—Louis and Hank and others . . .
And now I’ve lost even my own life.
O, Tom, the words seem so bitter even in their beauty.
Better from my lips than those of strangers.
O, that I could kiss those pale, pale lips just once.
Liza, my heart beats your name.
CHAPTER 14
Tom Dooley
What words are there to rightly tell how it was between Laura and me? No words I know can paint a true picture of the feelings I had nor describe the fire that burned through my blood, the way it burned up every defense, every logic, every reason. It was a storm of fire that swept o’er me. It left me weak and helpless as much as some battles I’d fit in the war had. Only the lucky or profane seemed to survive such things.
But I didn’t care if I survived them or not. From the very first, when she turned and gazed at me through the green window glass, as though I was looking at her through water, I could not stop thinking of Laura Foster. I knew I had to have her.
Her pap leased a patch of land from Melton that lay the far side of Bald’s Gap. Far enough from Melton’s, I reckoned, that I could go visiting Laura out of sight of Ann’s watchful eyes. I had no choice in the matter but to go, I was full of this awful hunger for her. It was the feeling poets write about, I guess. It was the feeling I got when I’d listen to Louis’s tender words as he spoke of his Minnie. It was a feeling like watching the sun lift over the mountains where each time is like seeing it for the first time.
It was the feeling of being drunk.
And it wasn’t nearly the same feelings as I had for Ann. What I felt for Ann was raw in wanting to possess her more than to love on her—a right now feeling that could come on me sudden like a storm. And once I got my satisfaction the feeling fled me just as sudden and I had no more interest in her. It was nearly the same way with Pearl. Only with Pearl I was able to take what I wanted so easily without protest and without consequence it made me lazy and without care about myself no more than about her. With Pearl, it was like stealing from a child, and with Ann it was like trying to steal from the devil—I knew there’d always be some sort of hell to pay. It was only afterwards, as I lay in Ann’s bed or Pearl’s, that I felt bitterness close around my heart like poisoned vines that would strangle. This bitterness would leave me feeling I’d sinned as much against myself as I had them. And in the case of Ann, there was Melton to consider as well, what I was doing against him. Seven sins from Sunday it felt like. Even though Melton and me were not friends of any sort, we were still men and understood what men understood about one another and understood how easy it is to ruin a man’s pride. I felt marked and unclean each time I fornicated with either Ann or Pearl.
