Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Tom Dooley

One afternoon, when James Melton had gone off to buy salt or nails-I forget which; doesn’t matter-Tom had stopped over to the house, and he and Ann were making sheep’s eyes at one another. I could tell they wanted to be alone, so I made myself look busy in the cabin so’s I could spoil their dalliance.

Finally, bold as brass, Ann says to me, “Why don’t you leave off sweeping, Pauline, and go over to the Fosters’ for a spell?”

I smiled to myself. I wasn’t to be got rid of as easy as that. “Why, I would. But coming home in the dark is a perilous journey.”

She looked at Tom and they both smiled. “Why, Pauline, what would bushwhackers want with you?” asked Tom, giving me that wink, like he always does when he thinks he is charming some silly old biddy.

I shrugged. “It ain’t that. It’s the darkness. The brush and briars is awful grown up along the way, and the ground is so uneven, that I’m afraid I’ll trip and fall in the night and break my neck.”

I could tell it would be nothing to them if I did, but Ann could hardly force me to go unless she gave the problem a lick and a promise, to humor me. She turned to Tom. “She’s right about the path. It could use some tending to, and it ain’t like you got anything better to do, Tom. Why don’t you go borrow my mama’s mattock, and see can you smooth it out some?”

Tom yawned and stretch. “Maybe tomorrow,” he said, only considering doing it at all to please Ann. I could fall down a well for all he cared.

By then I had decided that anything was better than standing around watching the two of them paw at one another, so I put away the broom in the corner, and said I would go anyhow, but that if I broke my neck coming back from German’s Hill in the dark, it would be on their heads. They just laughed and told me to be off, and I reckon they forgot about me altogether two heartbeats after I shut the door behind me.

I didn’t really have anything fancy worked out in my head. When it comes to making people do things, it’s like chasing chickens in the barnyard-you never know which way they’re going to run. Sometimes, though, I test folk in little ways to see if I can make them run the way I want them to. So most of what happened just happened. All I did was flap my apron at them to begin with, so to speak, and the rest just followed naturally.

I was a good half mile from Wilson Foster’s place when Laura came running toward me, so I stopped, and when she got near enough for me to see the grin on her face, I knew she was big with news.

“He’s wanting to go, Pauline!” she said, giving me a hug out of pure rapture, and I stood as still as I could and did not shudder.

Her sallow skin was pink with excitement and she must have brushed her hair a hundred times that afternoon, because it was shiny and smooth, tied up at the nape of her neck with a scrap of frayed pink ribbon. She had on her homemade calico under an apron, though, so I knew that whatever was going to happen wasn’t happening now. She wasn’t ready yet.

I mustered up a smile. “Well, of course he is, Laura. From the way you talked, there was never a doubt in my mind that he’d keep his word to you.” Mostly it’s easy to tell people what they want to hear. You just figure out what you really think and then say the opposite. “Just one thing though…”

“What’s that?”

“Well, Tom Dula has caught the pox, you know, and he is going around saying he got it from you. So I reckon either way, you are afflicted same as him. I wondered if you have told your intended about that?”

Laura’s smile drained away, and she scuffed her shoe in the dirt. James Melton had made her those shoes, and I wondered what he would say about how she kept them. “Well, I have seen Dr. Carter for it, and he is giving me physic. But as for Johnny… I ain’t been able to bring myself to tell him yet, Pauline. I don’t know how he’d take it. And of course I don’t reckon he knows about me and Tom, neither. I just want to get gone from here so bad, that I dare not take a chance on scaring him off.” She clutched at my sleeve. “You won’t tell him, will you, Pauline? Swear?”

I laughed and jerked my sleeve free of her bony fingers. “Why, laws, Cousin, I never even set eyes on the man except from a distance when he’s working outside. What would I go telling him for? I told you I was happy to see you get away from tending to all those young’uns. You can trust me.”

At that she hugged me again, and I stood it as best I could. “Oh, Pauline, you are the best friend I have! I knew you’d not let me down.” Those muddy eyes of hers were fair dancing with excitement. “I’m just going off now to see my Johnny. I can’t let him come to the house, of course. Daddy seen me talking to him one time, and I thought he was going to take a switch to me, but I swore to him there warn’t nothing in it. But you could come with me and meet him, Pauline. Then I could say I’d been off with you. Maybe we could bring back wild onions or a mess of salad greens for supper, and say that’s why we went.”

I nodded, and kept my smile plastered on. That was the first sensible thing I had ever heard said about Wilson Foster. But to go and see John Anderson would take me right back to the Meltons’ place, and I had no mind to walk an extra ten miles just to accommodate her, so I said, “I’ll keep my eyes skinned for wild greens as we go along then, but I’ll not come back with you once we get back to Reedy Branch, I’ll just go back up to Ann’s place and start supper there.”

I was kinda anxious to meet Laura’s nut brown boy. I reckoned he’d be more interesting than the sorry old farmers around Elkville, but we never did get all the way to the Andersons’ farm. Maybe he knew she was coming, though she had not said so. For all of Laura’s hugs and honeyed words about what a boon companion I was to her, I knew that she had got in the habit of lying to keep folks from finding out about her lover. And she had not told him about having the pox, which is a silent lie. So I had no cause to think that she would be entirely truthful with me, for all her fine sentiments of friendship. Perhaps she was not such a fool as I took her for, which was just as well for her lover, for she could get him killed quick enough. I might have told on the pair of them just to see the fur fly amongst those dull farmers in Elkville, but for the fact that I had other mischief in mind.

Anyhow we never reached Reedy Branch together, for before we had gone more than three miles, at a place where the road was bounded on either side by woods, a voice called out to us, and Laura clutched my arm and motioned for me to stop. I peered into the woods, trying to catch sight of a figure among the trees, but it was late in the day and the shadows lay deep in the pines.

A moment or so later, I heard a whistle from the woods, and before I could utter a word of caution, Laura had left the trace, and was hurrying toward the thicket, with her skirt hitched up to her shins, the better to run. I muttered a foul word under my breath, and set off after her.

I had resolved to be cheerful and welcoming no matter how awful the fellow was, but when I reached the edge of the woods, she was in his arms, and, when I caught sight of his face, I had to admit that he looked a durn sight better than I thought he would. You can’t put any stock in the descriptions a besotted woman gives you; they can’t see straight. But Laura’s part-Shawnee-or whatever he was-had a lean face with dark eyes over sharp cheekbones, and his skin had a copper cast to it that did put me in mind of the Indians. He was dressed shabby, like any old farmhand, but I had known better than to expect anything else. I couldn’t see what he’d want with drab little poxy Laura, but maybe her pale skin made up for the rest of it. I reckon it must have. He acted right glad to see her.