The Ballad of Tom Dooley (3 page)

Back in a cold winter of the War, when times were hard and food was scarce, my daddy took sick of the fever and inside of a week, he was dead. Didn’t none of his people come up for the funeral. Maybe the message never reached them, and with bushwhackers prowling the roads, such a perilous journey wasn’t to be thought of anyhow, but I don’t believe they would have come even in the best of times. They don’t exactly consider us kin. We didn’t grieve for him ourselves, and maybe his Wilkes relatives mourned him even less. The Fosters keep to themselves, but just because we didn’t live in one another’s pockets didn’t mean I couldn’t find them when I needed them. They all lived in some proximity to Dr. George Carter, and that was all they were good for.

But I had to go somewhere. My daddy was dead, and Mama had no use for me. Times was hard, and I was past eighteen and on my own. But for the War, I might have had a husband and two young’uns by now, but the Confederacy turned most of our young men into worm food, and I didn’t care to make a match of it with the old men and the maimed veterans who were left.

My grandfather’s niece, Lotty Foster, had herself a cabin and some scrub land alongside of a creek called Reedy Branch, maybe a mile before it empties into the Yadkin River. I reckon she might have taken me in: any woman that has borne five bastards hasn’t had much practice saying no to anybody, but the family all said that Lotty was bad to drink, and, despite having that grown-up daughter Ann, the family beauty, out and gone, she had four other young’uns still at home. No use putting myself there, I thought. I would end up tending children as well as doing all the chores and, like as not, spending my evenings being expected to nursemaid the old sot herself. I wasn’t feeling well enough for such a burden as that, and I was by no means sure her little cabin would have room for me nohow. Best seek an easier place to begin with, and leave Lotty’s cabin for a last resort.

I didn’t have far to go to seek other lodging. Across the road from Lotty’s cabin was a steep hill with a little house and some outbuilding on the top of it: James Melton’s land. My handsome cousin Ann had married him before the War, and the chores there were likely to be fewer, though not because Ann was doing a hand’s turn of work, for it was gospel in the family that she never had and never would. We were near to the same age, but I had not set eyes on her since we were children, and she was pretty enough then, but proud and bossy with it, too. I did not expect to find her much improved.

They call that part of Wilkes County “Happy Valley,” though I couldn’t see that the folks there were any better off than the rest of us. There were fine houses scattered here and there, same as anywhere else, but between the showplaces were ramshackle cabins and ordinary houses—again, same as anywhere else.

The one thing I did notice when I got there on the first day of March: it was warmer down there than it was up on the mountain. Though the hillside forests were still bare, new leaves with a yellow tint to the green were budding on the valley oaks and chestnuts, so I judged that Wilkes County was a week closer to spring than where I had just left. The road was muddier, though, and the wind was still sharp. I’d be glad to get shut of the foul weather, and sit down by somebody’s fireside, for my cheeks felt like snowballs.

I asked the way a time or two of the farm folk who gave me shelter in the course of my journey, not wanting to spend any more time in the wind than I had to, mindful that I was sick, but since the road followed the Elk Creek, it was simple enough to find my way to the Stony Fork Road. By late afternoon I was standing on the dirt track, looking up that long hill toward the farmhouse where my cousin Ann lived now. I had heard tell that there were fine plantations down in the bottom land around the Yadkin, and that may be so, but I had not fetched up on the doorstep of one of them. The Elkville community could boast of no river mansions with colored servants to wait on you hand and foot, though I heard tell there were such places in Wilkes, owned by the likes of the Isbells and the Carters. Not my Foster kin, though, and not the Meltons, either, from the look of this place. Ann’s husband’s property was a shabby hill farm that would be hard-pressed to feed the owner’s family, much less anybody else around the place. I was used to such as that, though. Thanks to the War, we were all schooled in doing without.

The wood frame house had no upstairs, no fancy pillars or porches, and its steps were two flat stones set in the dirt. It could have used a lick of paint, too. It was a toad of a house, squatting on its hilltop under bare trees in a yard of scraggly brown grass. A thin wisp of smoke drifting out of the stone chimney told me it was no warmer inside the house than out. Still, Cousin Lotty’s place was no more grand or kept-up than this, and hers was child-infested to boot, so I reckoned I had better make the best of things here, if they’d have me, which I reckoned they would.

I did not have the charm of Cousin Ann, but I have a knack of knowing what folk want, and for being that, as long as it suits me.

I wasn’t used to much in the way of comfort up home, either. Beggars cannot be choosers, and beggar I was, so I picked up my bundle of clothes, and waded uphill through the dry grass to the door.

By the time I got there, a couple of scrawny hounds had crawled out from under a shed, and were yapping and baying at my heels, but I gave the littlest one a hard kick with my boot, and they thought better of trying to light into me. Them dogs didn’t worry me none. They’d have to have the teeth of a handsaw to get through two petticoats, a wool skirt and my old leather boots, and when they saw no fear in me, they gave up, and slunk back under the porch. But I was hungry and shivering from my journey, and I could have done with less noise. Nobody came to see what all the commotion was about, so I rapped hard on the door with bare knuckles numb from cold, hoping they wouldn’t keep me standing out there in the sharp wind for too much longer.

By and by the door opened a crack, and a tall, gaunt man peered out at me, neither angry nor welcoming, but looking as if he had only opened the door to stop the knocking. He didn’t say a word—just stared out at me, waiting, I guess, to be told what I had come about.

“I’m Pauline Foster,” I said, investing in a smile. “If you be Mr. James Melton, I am blood kin to your wife. I come to see her.” Without giving him time to answer back, I picked up my sack of clothes, and shouldered my way past him into the house, calling out for Ann. He stood aside and let me pass without a word. I reckoned James Melton was the kind of man that nobody paid any mind to, so maybe he was used to it.

I saw then that there weren’t no use to be hollering, for Ann could not help but hear me. The inside of the house was one great room with a fireplace at one end, and a pine table and a bench seat set back a few feet from the hearth. At the other end of the room two narrow beds stood side by side on a rag rug. At the foot of one bed was a wooden trunk, its lid open, and clothes were spilling out of it and onto the floor, so that told me where Ann slept. The walls of the cabin were wide chestnut logs, chinked with clay to keep out the wind, and there was one little square window set in the far wall, but in the dusk of a gray winter day, it didn’t let in enough light to do much good. That was just as well. Brighter light would have showed the dirt and untidiness of the place, which was bad enough as it was.

Ann was sitting on a stool near the fire, and the flames made shadows on her face ’til I didn’t hardly recognize her, but once I got up close I could see that the kinfolk’s tales were true. She had grown up to be a rare beauty, right enough. She had big dark eyes, set in a heart-shaped face, and her black hair was drawn back in a bun so that you could see the sharp line of her jaw and the cheekbone ridges that made her a wonder to look at. Her mouth was thin, and gave her a peevish look of discontent. When she got old it would wrinkle like a draw-string purse, but for now she was just past twenty, and not even an uncertain temper could mar those looks. I wondered why she had settled for James Melton, who was tolerable to look at but still unprosperous, when her perfect face surely would have taken her higher than that. I made up my mind to ask her about her choice of a husband, but not just yet; not until I had settled in as one of the household.

She sat there on her stool, looking up at me with an expression of mild curiosity, like she didn’t know who I was and didn’t care overmuch, either. I didn’t think Ann ever had much use for other women, nor they for her. But speaking my mind would not get me bed and board, so I knelt down, all smiles, and threw my arms around her, as if she were my dearest friend in the world.

“Why, Ann, it’s Pauline. My daddy, rest his soul, was first cousin to your mama, and I have just come down from the mountain to see my kinfolks here.”

Ann shrugged. “Well, you’re a scrawny little thing, ain’t you, Pauline? And you don’t have much of the Foster looks about you. I’d not have knowed you. But you had better sit yourself down here by me. Your cheek feels like ice. —James! This fire needs another log!”

He got up without a word to do her bidding, and, as he was shoving fresh wood into the blaze, I saw him close up in the firelight, and I revised my estimate of his age. What I had taken for gray hair in the dim light turned out to be naturally fair hair that shone like bronze when he was kneeling by the fire. He stood tall and straight, his face and hands were free of veins and creases. Why, he couldn’t be much past our age from the look of him, for all that he acted twice that. I wondered if he was ill himself, or if the War had sapped his vitals, or—I stole a glance at Ann, staring drowsily into the fire—maybe living with her just drained the life out of him. I wasn’t sorry for him, though. Any man who insists on taking up with a beautiful wife ought to pay dearly for the purchase. I could see that he had.

*   *   *

Ann had taken the pins out of her hair, and she shook her head to let it fall about her shoulders. From the folds of her skirt, she drew out a wooden comb and began to brush the tangles out of her black curls.

I summoned a smile and held out my hand for the comb. “I’d be glad to do that for you, Ann. It’s hard to reach there in the back.”

She frowned a little, but then she gave a little shrug and handed over the comb. I was sure she was accustomed to accepting kindnesses from the male sex, but that it was a rarity for a woman to offer her anything. “What is it you came for, again?” she said.

I had it in my mind to lie about the purpose of my journey, but I could see that Ann Melton was not one to be swayed by fine words about sentiment and family feeling. She had no use for relatives, nor for the society of a woman friend. What
did
she have a use for? I looked again around the shabby room that stank of stale food and unemptied chamber pots.

“I was hoping you could use a hired girl,” I said, making even strokes with the comb through the thicket of hair. It could have used a wash with soap and lavender water more than a brushing, but the weather was mortal cold, and most women would rather have greasy hair than risk the chills and fever that could come from washing it afore spring. Anybody else would have looked scraggly and foul with lank, dirty hair, but it hardly took the shine off Cousin Ann, lit up in the firelight like Jacob’s angel.

“I can cook and do the washing and mending. Scrub floors. Bake bread. See to the chamber pots. And I reckon I can do farm chores. I’ll work cheap enough.”

She pushed her hair out of her eyes, and turned to study me now, her interest captured at last. “You want to work here? As a hired girl? What for?”

“I came down here to see the doctor,” I said. Best go with the truth. Ann Melton understood selfishness. “I’m sick, and I need to stay close by for a couple of months while I get treatment for my ailment.”

She pulled away from me then, making the comb jerk against her hair, and she swore and snatched it back from me. “What’s the matter with you, then? Consumption?”

I could hear the alarm in her voice. Consumption took young healthy people in a matter of months, and your very breath might spread the contagion to a healthy household. I forced myself to laugh and to keep my voice steady. “Naw, it ain’t that. I’m fit enough to work like a mule. Mostly, I don’t even feel sick. I am just feeling poorly is all.” I pointed somewhere between my stomach and my knees and made a face.

After I said it, I glanced over at James Melton, but he was just gazing off into the fire like he hadn’t heard a word we said, or else he didn’t care. Ann gave me a moment’s shocked stare, and then a harsh laugh. “Reckon
somebody
made her little old self the Soldier’s Joy these past few months.” She hummed a little snatch of the tune, ending in a fit of giggles.

Well, that was true enough, so I laughed with her, because getting mad about the taunt wouldn’t get me what I wanted, and anyhow it was better to laugh than to think of dying in a raddled, festering lump before I reached thirty. Either way, the joke was on me. I just wish whoever give me that dose of poison in our coupling had been worth dying for. But nary one of them was.

Ann’s giggles tailed off, and she began to twirl a hank of that greasy hair while she thought about what I said. Then she leaned in close, watching my face while she spoke, but I didn’t move a muscle. “It ain’t a baby, is it?”

“No,” I said, trotting out the lie that I had made ready for just that question. “I got shut of one and that’s why I’m ailing.”

Ann nodded, satisfied. It was the answer she expected to hear. “I wish I had thought of doing that. James and me have got two.” She pointed to a cradle set in a corner of the room. “My mama keeps them half the time, though.”

“It’s good to have her close like she is.”

Ann nodded. “And too drunk mostly to make the climb up the hill to see us. But I take the babies to her, so that’s all right. —So, Pauline, you’re aiming to stay here for a couple of months while you are seeing our Dr. Carter for physick, and you are wanting to board with us, and to pay for your keep by being the hired girl. Is that right?”