Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Tom Dooley

I gloried in the sunshine, not even minding the chores so much as long as I could be outside, and I was feeling stronger with every passing day. I thought maybe Dr. George Carter’s treatments had worked and made me well, but when I asked him about it, he said not. He thought it was only the mild spring weather that made me feel better, and that I still needed more treatments of bluestone and mercury. I hoped he was wrong about my sickness, but I did see how the sunshine could make me feel well, even if I wasn’t. The farm work was still hard and never ending, but at least I didn’t have to do it in bitter cold. There was less wood to tote, and soon we’d all be eating better as the gardens began to come up, and the game became more plentiful in the woods. There ain’t much meat on a baby rabbit, but it’s easy to kill, because it ain’t got the sense to run from the hunter. And full-grown courting rabbits aren’t much harder to pick off, because they seem to lose their minds come mating time, and forget to be careful.

My dim cousin Laura put me in mind of a courting rabbit herself these days, for she was so snake-charmed over that dark lover of hers that she’d walk into any snare you cared to lay in her path, so little did she notice anything going on outside her own head. All I had to do was nod and smile, and sit still and listen while she rattled on-and she’d have kept it up by the hour, if I could have stood it, but nothing she ever said interested me in the least, except that when I wasn’t thinking about six other things, then I was sifting through all the babble, listening for something I could use. She wanted me to brush that long scraggly hair of hers until my arm ached, and all the while she’d be daydreaming out loud about that golden day when she’d get shut of her old life forever, and ride off into the west with her man. She hardly remembered I was there, for she was barely there herself. She had moved clear into the future, and she’d be sleepwalking until she caught up to it.

Tom Dula looked in at the Fosters now and again, but not nearly as often as Ann thought he did, for he loved the fields and woods, and the coming of spring meant that he could spend more time rambling in the sunshine, or-more likely-out napping under a tree where nobody could find him to put him to work. I reckon he did his share of hunting, too, though, because somebody had to put food on the Widow Dula’s table, and with her other boys killed in the War, the job of supporting the family fell to Tom. He was happy enough to fish for his supper, or to snare some rabbits in the woods, but I never did see him behind a plow.

I never failed to ask Laura had she seen him since I last stopped in, and she’d give me a blank look as if it took her a moment even to recollect who he was. Then she’d shrug and tell me if he had or hadn’t been by, as if it didn’t matter to her one way or the other, and she couldn’t be bothered to spare him a second’s thought while she was busy dreaming about her sweetheart.

All of this news of their mutual indifference would have made Ann shout for joy, but I took care that she would learn none of it.

At least the walks I took for my visits to German’s Hill were easier now, since the wind had stopped cutting through the valley like a skinning knife, and the lengthening spring days meant that I could near ’bout get there before nightfall now. Laura would be weaving in the evening after supper was done with, making cloth for a new dress for herself, and I always made a show of admiring it, hoping to put her in a good enough mood to make me one, too, for Dr. Carter’s nostrums took all the money I made at the Meltons’, and I couldn’t even remember the last time I had anything new to wear. Everything I had was faded, or patched or threadbare, and I longed to throw the lot of it into the fire, but I had no way of getting anything better.

What the War didn’t make impossible to get, it made too expensive to come by, so mostly we did without, and I was tired of it. If I could get a decent dress for the price of honeyed words and listening to a daydreaming fool, then I’d do it. I wish there had been a loom at the Meltons’, for I’d even have been willing to learn weaving myself to get something clean and new to wear, but since Ann never did much of anything, there wasn’t any use in James Melton buying one, for it would have been quilted with cobwebs before Ann ever got a yard of cloth out of it.

Anyhow, I suppose it was best that I kept going over to Wilson Foster’s place to keep abreast of Cousin Laura’s doings, while I kept on thinking what I could make of that secret. Meanwhile, I had each long walk back to think up new tales to tell Ann about how devoted Tom was to Laura, and how she doted on him. Of course, Ann could have gone over to German’s Hill herself anytime she pleased and found out the truth of the matter, but I knew full well that she would do no such thing. Walking five miles up a muddy trace was not something Ann would willingly do, even for the best of reasons, and the Meltons had no horse, so she must go everywhere on foot. Her mother lived down the steep hill and across the Stony Fork Road, and she made that journey tolerably often, mostly to foist the children off on her, but there were few other destinations that she deemed worth the effort it would take to get there.

Ann never did care much for the society of other women, nor they for hers. She felt it was her right to be the center of attention, and she liked to be petted and made much of. Having to pass an evening sewing, or listening to the prattling talk of another woman on subjects that did not pertain to her, would have bored her to screaming fits. The thought of listening to other people’s babies wailing, and having little children underfoot, putting their sticky hands on your dress, was enough to keep her from visiting most of the women on nearby farms, except when being stuck at home had made her miserable enough to endure a neighborly call.

Ann was never one to do anything out of duty or for the sake of other people’s good opinion. Besides, she was so furious with Laura these days that she would never willingly go over there and face her rival. Ann was fond enough of shouting at folks and leaving her finger marks on them when they displeased her, but she dreaded looking the fool. I only had to hint a time or two that Laura would laugh at her jealousy and make sport of her misery, and when she got to believing that, it would have taken wild horses to get her over to Wilson Foster’s place. It’s funny how easy it is to make people believe what they want to believe or what they are most afraid of.

Ann hated every word I said about Tom Dula and Laura Foster, but never once did it cross her mind to doubt my word. One time she got so furious over what I had to tell that she went and kicked over a slop jar I had not yet emptied, and I had to get down on my knees with a rag and mop it up and then scrub the newly cleaned floor all over again, but it was worth it, just to see her weep.

You know how the Bible said that God called things into being just by saying the words of creation out loud? Let… there… be… light. Well, I reckon I know what that must have felt like, because in my own way I was doing much the same. It seemed like things I made up in my head turned into truth just because I spun tales about them and passed them off as gospel. The hardest part was to keep from laughing.

Ann practically pushed me out the door to go visiting in German’s Hill, and when I got back, sometimes around sun-up, if I had stayed late and slept over, she’d be in a bate to get me off alone so she could hear what I had to tell. It wasn’t easy, either. Sometimes I had been up drinking until the wee hours, and on that damp morning walk back, with my stomach queasy and my head pounding with every step I took, I’d be hard-pressed to get my thoughts together well enough to dissemble to Ann.