Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Tom Dooley

By the time I had finished my sojourn as an employee of the Warm Springs Hotel, I could tell Charleston from Richmond, planter’s wife from lawyer’s daughter with a glance at their apparel. In that school for society, I learned to speak and dress in a way that would make the gentry accept me as one of their own. I never felt myself to be one of them, though, for there was always an unreconstructed part of my soul that sided with the common man, and understood the pleasures of the jug and fiddle more than that of the decanter and the opera.

Not many of the well-bred Charlotte lawyers of my acquaintance would have taken the case of a penniless illiterate from the hill country, but fighting for the underdog came as naturally to me as breathing. I just hoped for both our sakes that this Dula fellow was innocent, for after the War and the Governor’s Mansion I was rusty at the practice of law.

Late April 1866

Listening to Miz Ann Melton blackening the name of her cousin Laura would have made a cat laugh, but, since I had my bed and board to think of, I just kept quiet and let her rave.

“Why, Laura Foster has got no more morals than a mare in heat!” she declared, as if such a thing would disgrace our fine family of Fosters. I had to turn away then, and bite my lip to keep from laughing in her face. Here was Ann with a lover still coming to her bed a couple of nights a week, while her husband slept nearby, and her own mother Lotty, having lost count of the fathers of her young’uns. Then there was me, with a battalion of lovers and a war wound beneath my skirts to prove it. We were fine ones to talk about the sins of little Laura Foster. She couldn’t hold a candle to the rest of the family sinners, but you would never catch me saying so to Mistress Ann, to whom I was beholden for my keep. Nor would I be sharing with her the news that drab little Laura claimed to have unearthed another sweetheart besides Ann’s beloved Tom. I don’t reckon Ann would have believed me anyhow on that score, for nothing would ever convince her that Tom Dula was not the finest, handsomest fellow in all creation.

One man is the same as another to me, except some of them stink more than others, but from the way other women act around this man or that, I can see that they have preferences in the matter of coupling, and, for Ann, the sun rose and set upon Thomas Dula, though I cannot say why this should be so. To my mind, he was no better looking than her husband, and he was a deal less steady and dependable. If you looked at the two of them the way you’d study a horse you were planning to buy, then only a fool would pick Tom.

I used to wonder what she saw when she looked at him. Not what the rest of us saw, which was a lazy, no-account boy with an easy smile and an inclination to go through life like a raft on a river, taking the easiest course as it flowed. If I was to tell Cousin Ann that Laura found some man she liked better than Tom, like as not she would call me a bare-faced liar. Well, I am a liar, but people seldom catch me at it, and, though I had no intention of sharing the news with Ann, I did believe that Laura’s affections lay elsewhere.

There are a deal of things a woman might want more than a sunny smile and a strong back in bed: land, money, dependability, honor, the respect of the neighbors. James Melton had all of that. Tom had none of it, and never would. Picking some other man in place of Melton struck me as a foolish choice, whether Ann believed it or not. I resolved to take a close look at the men hereabouts to see if I could tell which one had taken my cousin Laura’s fancy. But I would not tell Ann. Let her jealousy simmer a while longer, while I watched the pot boil, and when the time was right, I would let it scald the lot of them.

Spring’s cold rains brought the first green shoots of grass, and then deep in the bare woods the redbud trees swelled up like sores that crowned a rosy pink, and then went away, same as mine had. A week or so after the redbud bloomed and withered, Ann was washing herself and found some rosy sores of her own. They were between her legs, where it didn’t show, so she was as beautiful as ever, but the affliction took its toll on her temper, which was ragged at the best of times.

She slammed the tin washbowl on to the table, and thrust her face up close into mine, so I could feel the heat of her breath and smell her body, still unwashed, for she had come upon the sores and quit. “I am sick!” she screamed in my face. “And I reckon it is your fault!”

I have one gift from fortune. It is not grace, or beauty, or a fine singing voice, or breeding, but it is a blessing nonetheless. I cannot be moved. Being shouted at does not make me tremble, and neither panic nor insult can tempt me into a display of temper. Inside my head, I am as cold as a creek of snow-melt. Sometimes I wonder what other people feel when they weep or storm, for whatever it is I am not touched by it. While she sobbed and swore, I stood there looking at her, thinking as clearly as if she were humming hymn tunes, and I felt nothing at all.

“Why, Ann, I am sorry you have taken poorly, but it can’t have nothing to do with my sickness, can it? I reckon all the world knows how you catch the pox-from laying in sin with them that has it. But whatever else we ever did, you and I, we never did that, Cousin.”

She stared at me for a moment, letting my words sink in, and perhaps she was too frightened to reason it out, as I had been here a good while before she even took sick. I had no doubt that Ann was poxed, because, though she had not lain with me, I had been tupped by Tom, and so had she, which amounted to the same thing. I was sure of that. I had taken a roundabout way to share my affliction with her, but I had managed it in the end, and it was all I could do not to gloat over my victory. But I generally take the wiser course, and that called for me to force tears into my eyes, and clasp her hand, and say, “Oh, it cannot be my condition that ails you, Cousin! Perhaps you are just liverish.”

She shook her head. “I felt the sore just now, when I was washing myself.”

“All manner of things can cause a lump upon the body. Mayhap it will go away of its own accord.” I tried to sound as if I believed that, for it would do no good for her to know what ailed her. It was enough that I knew.

I reckon that if you are born beautiful, then the outside of your head is so important that you don’t have to worry overmuch about what there is on the inside. Leastways, I never could see any sign that Ann ever wasted any time trying to think out anything. While she was brushing her black hair into a glossy sheen, or when she rubbed lampblack on her eyelids to make her dark eyes big and calf-like, those eyes would go soft and vacant, like two puddles of spilled ink, and she rarely spoke when she was tending to her rites of beauty. Those things ought not to take up so much space in your head as to crowd out other thoughts altogether, but she never seemed bored, though she did little enough of anything. Whereas, me-why, it seems like I cannot stop myself from thinking, even when I want to. Even when I am bone-weary and trying to drift off to sleep, notions keep buzzing around behind my eyes until I wish I could swat them away like gnats. Sometimes in the back of my imaginings there is that shadow of my bodily sickness and an ugly picture of what the end will be like for me, but mostly I am able to keep away from that abyss by playing a never-ending game of draughts with everybody who crosses my path.

Do I need to repay anybody for some slight or injury, and, if so, how can I safely do them a bad turn? – Is there someone standing in the way of something I want, and, if so, what lie can I tell to push them aside? – Who is vexing me by being too rich, or too smug, or too happy? How can I put a damper on that?