Tom Dooley

by Bill Brooks

  But you chop off your damn leg and see what happens to you, see how the world changes for you. All of a sudden people feeling sorry for you, people pitying you, people looking at you like you’re some sort of queer thing—like you belong in the circus. All they see is that stump there—that’s all they care to see. People don’t look you in the eye when they talk to you, they look at that damn wood leg at the end of that stump. And suddenly you ain’t got the world no more by its scrawny neck. You ain’t got nothing.

  And there goes college and there goes the banker’s daughter and there goes everything you ever thought about getting. And so yes, I’m lucky to have me a decent job, meal money, a place to live, even if I do got to keep men locked up like dogs for it.

  I seen both sides of the fence. You ever seen both sides of the fence? Because you sure don’t look like you have seen even one side.

  O, I was once fair and pert, a mighty fine man.

  Then came the accident, the swift stroke of steel

  That did me in, the thing least expected of all the

  Things I could have feared. Just a blade of steel

  Sharp and mean as the devil’s teeth. All done.

  Had Tom spoken much of his Laura to you?

  All the time he spoke of her—Laura Foster, Laura Foster. I heard him some nights up there talking with her.

  Laura, Laura . . .

  Then answering, as though she was right there in the cell with him.

  What is it, Tom? Tell me true.

  Why I got the creeps listening to him talk and answer hisself.

  Two years is a long time to be locked up.

  I know it. They should have taken and hanged the poor boy after the first trial. But, Vance got him a second trial and that took another year and still they found him guilty. Tried twice for the same murder—but it sure don’t matter to Laura Foster how many times they tried him.

  What do you think of his guilt, Mr. Keyes?

  O, I don’t know there, lass. I learned to stop guessing whether any of them did it or not. I’ve not had a single one ever said he was ever guilty of anything—they’re all innocent. I reckon Tom is too.

  But in your heart do you believe . . .

  Don’t believe nothing anymore—stopped believing in things the day I saw my leg laying there chopped off . . . I drink and I whore some and I keep ’em like dogs until the law says what is to happen to ’em. It ain’t for me to say a man’s guilt or innocence.

  What is the thing you remember most? I want to add it to the accounts.

  The night before they took him on down to Statesville, I paid Nan over to the café extra to fix him a extra smart meal for his supper. I reckon he was due one, for they sure don’t feed them nothing much down in Statesville. Guess they see it as wasted expense to feed a dead man.

  I’m sure he appreciated the kindness.

  I put a little dope in his coffee to make him sleep better and not be so worn out in the morning—it’s a long ride down to Statesville.

  Can I ask you something else, Mr. Keyes?

  I guess asking’s already out of the bag—go ahead.

  If you hadn’t lost your leg, what might you have become?

  Lawyer, I reckon. Hell, I’da been a good one too, and might have even gotten old Tom off. So I guess you could say but for the missed swing of an ax forty years ago, a whole lot of us might have come to different fates—Tom included.

  It is a lovely sentiment . . .

  Ain’t it, though?

  CHAPTER 35

  The Testament of Tom Dooley

  Listen careful, Liza, for last night I had a dream. O, tomorrow they would take me to Statesville and maybe the dream meant something and maybe it dint.

  A horseman rode alone across the top of storm-ravaged ridges, lightning and thunder shattering all round him. He carried a sword raised heavenward, the blade taking the lightning bolts one after another as the horse screamed—its scream like that of a woman terrified. I could feel the ground shudder, like I was standing atop a living thing trying to rise from sleep. The horseman rode to and fro and nothing could kill him, not even the lightning that struck his sword time and time again. I stood alone in the shuddering valley and watched until the horseman rode down off the ridges, his sword afire. He rode down on me and stopped just a breath away. I saw then that the horseman was Laura, her eyes all gone, her sword terrible and swift as it swung down on me . . .

  I come awake like I was drowning . . .

  O, it was just a dream and nothing real to it, as all dreams are, Tom. Why look, you’re standing here real as anything . . .

  I may as well be dead. I may as well be.

  How can I calm you when I can’t even reach through the iron lattice to stroke your cheek, to press my fingers to your trembling mouth? How can I calm you when I cannot even say soothing words to you, my tongue so useless? If I may have but one wish, dear God, let it be that for a single minute I can speak . . .

  I hear the tremor in his voice and think any minute now he will break down, perhaps confess his sins, if sins they are. But instead he turns his face away, his hands clinging to the lattice of iron that holds him caged, that separates us one from the other. I see a transfiguration: from the living to the dead—the life visibly going out of him with each breath, and death settling in life’s place. Then I see something I can only swear to and never prove: I see a blue aura surrounding him, a pulsating light like breath itself. It lasts only the time of several heartbeats, then is gone. I see him thus and wonder if I have been too long in this place of violent men and ghostly tales and strange lurking fogs. I do not know, I do not know.

  Tom, I promise you I will write of these things as I’ve found them, without embellishment, without even judgment. For, I don’t know what the truth is, and no one has told me, and I doubt anyone will at this point.

  You think I done it, don’t you, Liza?

  I just don’t know.

  I guess I could say I did it, or I could say I didn’t do it and it wouldn’t matter none at this stage of the game, now, would it?

  O, the truth we shared like an unhappy meal—Tom Dooley and me.

  Listen, Tom, whatever confessions you feel you must make, might be best made between you and whatever god you may believe in. No, I don’t think after two judgments brought against you by juries of your peers, it would matter much what you said. You know these people round here as well as I do. I doubt they’d believe other than what they already do no matter what you said . . .

  They’re good people, some of them, even if they are wrongheaded about me. But they’re still my people. And I guess there’s no getting around that.

  I’d offer thee my hand, but the latticework won’t let either of us do naught but touch fingers and so we shake like two proper souls at a tea—with the minimal of touching and I feel electric when your fingers touch mine and look deeply into your sorrowful eyes.

  I cannot save him, I cannot save the one who would be my lover—and now, he cannot save me either.

  Liza . . .

  Yes, Tom?

  O, nothing, nothing at all.

  I’ll stay as long as you like . . .

  Would you stay forever and evermore?

  Yes, forever and evermore . . .

  No. You must go on now. Go on and leave me as I am . . .

  And so I leave with the common unspoken knowledge between us that were it possible, I would bear his remains in a small sailboat and carry him far out to sea and offer him to King Neptune, for I know that would be his wish—to become a sailor, to rest for all eternity in the sea.

  Outside the jail I see someone has planted flowerbeds—peonies and poppies and dahlias. They are like bright-eyed children kissing the wind. I turn one last time and look up and see a pair of eyes who have lost their light of hope and wave feebly, then turn away again.

  O, love, that memory has not faded, will not fade.

  Even as I watched them lower Billy into the grave, I thought of you and that moment
I saw you waving so forlorn in the jail window, stone and iron between us and other untold forces.

  FINI

  CHAPTER 36

  Tom Dooley

  I hear the thump of Keyes’s wood leg on the stairs, coming, coming. I smell the plate of food: hominy and bacon and black-eyed beans and cornbread fresh-baked, still warm and coffee.

  Tom . . .

  I ain’t hungry.

  Best eat.

  Why?

  Because . . . well, because tomorrow they’re going to take you down to Statesville. Dang it, I hate to be the one to tell you, but I reckoned you’d want to know. I had them cook you something special. Why, look, I even got you a slice of cherry pie . . .

  Take it away.

  O, Tom, you got to eat to keep up your strength . . .

  So I’ll be good and plump for the hangman?

  O, don’t be talking that away, Tom. Why anything could happen between now and . . .

  Sure it could.

  You oughter eat before it all grows cold . . .

  Hand it on in then.

  Now, you wouldn’t try anything foolish, would you?

  Don’t know what you mean.

  Like try and break jail on me, or something foolish like.

  I’d never do nothing to hurt you, Augusta.

  No, of course you wouldn’t. Why, you wouldn’t hurt an old one-leg man now would you?

  The pitiful fools we’ve become—far, far from the angels we began as . . .

  Never hurt nobody . . . well, with the exception of the war, I reckon.

  That’s a good boy there . . . go’n eat your grub and drink your coffee. I’ll bring you some more coffee if you need it.

  Augusta . . .

  Yes, Tom.

  Would you go on out and ask Liza to come up and visit with me?

  Liza?

  She’s been sitting out in the courthouse square all day.

  Lord, why’d she do something like that hot as it is?

  Could you ask her to come on in, I’d like to visit with her.

  Sure, sure.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  I have no appetite, none at all. All day I have watched out the window toward the square where Liza sits like a stone statue, like something you might find in a cemetery—a resting angel waiting for the dead to speak to her. Well, I guess I’m the dead and it’s only right I should speak to her. I know that last time she left, she left in haste because I ordered her to. But I can’t stand to see her thus . . . out there in the courtyard alone waiting for something to happen to stir her from her patient rest. O, I should have known what true love was all along. But I dint.

  I should finish up my writing, too. Hard to write with a rope around my neck, tell the world I’m finished—all done in . . .

  I hear the heavy door downstairs open and close. The corn-bread is warm and sweet in my mouth, but I have no taste for it. The coffee has a funny bite. Across the way goes Keyes—his wood leg tattooing out a sound on the cobblestones. He walks like he’s riding the deck of a ship. O, the sea, the far, far sea—I won’t ever go there now, unless . . .

  She looks like a wilted flower craving rain from being out there in the sun all day, not moving, looking up here now and then. I’ve seen dogs wouldn’t stick as long for their master as she has stuck for me out there in that square. What a sad child she seems. But what do I know about it, the heart of one so pure.

  My hand finds the pen, the bottle of ink, nearly gone now, the last few sheets of foolscap. I guess it’s my warning to finish up the story. For, Mizrus Boots died last Wednesday—Keyes said it was her heart when he told me the news. Poor, poor woman. Every time I think of her I think of the foul words Shinbone said about her. I can’t believe him, not a single word. My hand moves the pen over the paper.

  Our folly is near to us now. Is coming quick like labored breath upon us. Those we loved and those we said we loved will find us out soon enough. And those who hated us will rejoice in our defeat. Love and folly are but bride and groom in life’s long and temperamental marriage. We survive or we divorce. Death comes quick. Strike me down, O Glory, in my vanity and let my bones wash upon the shore of lov’d ones’ memory. And remember ye who survive, not so much my misfortunes or my folly, but those things I was to you who lov’d me, and whom I lov’d. A man is not but a mirror with many faces . . .

  Door opens again. I hear Augusta speaking in that guttural tongue of his.

  Right up here, Miss. Careful now not to trip on that loose stair. Most any day I aim to nail her down. Up you go—he’s right up there.

  I hardly hear her step at all and then suddenly she is there, in the small shadowy hall outside the bars—standing like a waif gone begging for bread.

  Come closer.

  She eases nearer.

  Why’d you sit all day out in that hot sun?

  The late afternoon light slips in through the side windows just enough to stroke her cheeks with the golden kiss of its ending.

  She shrugs.

  Surely it wasn’t to see me, was it?

  Her eyes clasp onto mine.

  She nods. She takes the tablet from the pocket of her dress, the small worn pencil and begins to write.

  I would wait forever to see you.

  Why, when all is lost to me?

  Because . . . because . . .

  She takes a moment to breathe, her pencil pinched between her fingers.

  Go ahead, take your time—why time is about all I got left to me. They say they will take me to Statesville tomorrow . . .

  Scribble:

  What for?

  I want to scream What for but it isn’t her who should carry my burden.

  The light shifts downward, grows less golden. Shadows deepen and she seems to me the most vulnerable creature in the world. I see there in the shadows too, Laura lying quiet in the moss near the rotted log, the morning light playing out across the Irishman’s field, the fog lifting up from the river like the breath of God. That morning so innocent I could not take a breath for fear it would crush me—death lying close by. Love gone. O, Laura.

  To be hanged.

  Her face crumbles and I think she will fall, but steadies herself.

  O, it’s true. They’ve made it true—my guilt. And now they must hang me for it.

  She writes something, then takes the piece of paper, rolling it tightly, and passes it through the bars, but before I can read it, she puts a finger to her lips and waggles her head to tell me not to read it or say anything.

  She comes so near I can smell the scent of her hair and it is like the fresh and blooming flowers there in the square where she’d sat all day.

  The shadows encroach more still as though to devour her, us, everything. She places her face against the quilt of iron as though she is touching cheeks with a lover. She sighs, then rushes away, down the stair again. And in a moment, I hear only the yawning of the thick oak door accompanied by Augusta’s heavy voice.

  Well, good evening to you, Miss . . .

  I shuffle to the only window afforded me and keep watch over the square until I see her going across it, hurrying along as though fearful night will catch her. The old lamplighter, Wells, going about lighting his lamps, barely turns a head as she hurries past—his work everything to him.

  I watch until there is nothing but shadows, and the flickering of Wells’s lamps dancing over the small patch of ground at the foot of each lamp pole. It is a night alive with shadows and small lights and empty spaces where once a girl sat all day under the hot sun.

  I light my own meager lamp and sit on the cot where the few remaining sheets of my foolscap await the last words in me. My limbs feel leaden of a sudden. I sip the coffee to awake me; it does no good. I unroll the small bit of paper seeing still the startled eyes of the one who wrote it. I bring the paper closer to the lamp.

  I love you, Tom. I shall always love you. Goodbye, my darling. Goodbye.

  In these words burn the last flicker of true light. Beyond them is onl
y darkness.

  Love seems as ancient to me as the time of Genesis.

  With great effort I rise and go again to the window to watch outer darkness with its meager little dancing lights and announce my final testament to anyone who would listen.

  I love you too, Liza Bouchard. As much as I have it in me to love anyone, I love you for your charitable heart and . . . and . . .

  Then I retire to my cot again to write out of me the last words I have regarding Laura Foster and Ann Melton and Pearl and all the rest who were with me there in that valley of travail—in that Season of Sorrow—and are still there now, the living and the dead.

  Elizabeth Brouchard

  O, I could not stand those last minutes with him like that. I craved so to hold him, to kiss his dry sallow cheeks—kiss color and life into them again. Time and accusation had turned him from a boy into an old, old man in just the span of two years. Nightmares had tortured him and the light of day had tortured him and all the memories had tortured him.

  But I could not torture him further by avowing my love in his presence.

  And I’ll never know the truth of what we could have been together.

  And this is my one great regret in all of life—having not known true love.

  I hope the children come early today & I hope they play well.

  And I hope it does not rain in Paris

  CHAPTER 37

  Tom Dooley

  Morrow arrives on a stiff wind carrying rain. In the not far distance I hear the whistle, then the huff of the train that will carry me down. I close my eyes and see the curious faces as they watch me shuffle aboard, ankles chained, wrists chained, armed men front and back.

  Why, I wonder what that feller done?

  O, why wonder, ain’t it enough he done something.

  Why, he’s hardly more’n a boy.

  Old enough to have done something to put him those chains.