Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Tom Dooley

“Did she tell you that?”

“Not in so many words, but why else would he be in such a hurry to marry her?”

“What would that matter? That baby could be anybody’s.”

“Well, she’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she? So meek and frail. Maybe he wants to think it’s his.”

Ann flung herself away from me, and started up the road. “I’ll scratch his eyes out!”

Now I grabbed hold of her arm. “You need to simmer down, Cousin. Do you think that’s likely to do any good? If he is fixing to run off with her, then having you tell him he can’t will just make him bound and determined to go. At least, that’s how it looks to me.”

Ann stopped, took a deep breath, and looked up at the stars instead of at me. “But I can’t let him go. He’s all I ever cared about, Pauline.”

“I know,” I said softly, hoping that she would hear sympathy and understanding in my voice, even though it wasn’t there.

“I could tell Uncle Wilson. He could stop Laura from running off.”

I nodded. “For a day maybe. Or even a week. But if they mean to do it, they will. Besides, Uncle Wilson might be relieved to see somebody make an honest woman of Laura. Why should he care how you feel about it?”

We stood in silence for a moment in the cold night air, Ann staring up at the stars and me thinking furiously, trying to stay one step ahead of her threats. It was too early for lightning bugs, and even the crickets were silent that night. I waited, letting her turn the whole problem over in her mind. I thought I heard her choke back a sob.

“He doesn’t care nothing about her, Pauline!”

“Well, he wouldn’t be the first man to marry to get a housekeeper, would he? Maybe he just wants to settle down-like you did. And you may think Laura cares little enough about him, too, but you must know how bad she wants to get away from that house, tending all those young’uns. For all she knows, this may be her one chance. A lot of good men died in the War. There aren’t enough of them left to go around.”

Ann had been drinking already that evening, and that was a stroke of fortune for me, for it dulled her thinking even more than usual. She didn’t think to wonder why two unmarried people of legal age would bother to run away to Tennessee to get married, when they could have invited the whole of Elkville to a wedding if they’d a mind to wed. I’m glad she didn’t think of that, for I had no answer ready there. And she didn’t seem to think it strange that an idle fellow like Tom would leave a comfortable home where he did precious little work to go and shift for himself in a strange place. It’s hard for people to think straight when you have hit them with the thing they fear most in the world. She went right past wondering if it was true and straight into wondering how to stop it.

“Where is she meeting him, Pauline?”

“Why, at the Bates’ place around daybreak,” I said. “I think if you were to watch the road from your mama’s house, you’d likely see her go by, if you wanted to go over there and talk to her. You’d want to get her alone, though-before anybody else comes.”

I could tell by her breathing that she was mad enough to spit nails. That and the drink is likely why she didn’t ask me a sensible question, like why Tom and Laura would meet up at the Bates’ place. Laura lived five miles away, and Tom’s house was a mile east, down the Reedy Branch Road, and from the Bates’ place they’d have to backtrack to get on the road that led up the mountain to Tennessee. Why would they meet there when there were miles of woods between Laura’s house and the mountain road? Why the Bates’ place? Because it was a stone’s throw from John Anderson’s quarters . But if my luck held, Ann would not know that-at least not until it was too late to save her.

May 26, 1866

On the last Friday night in May, old Wilson Foster was stumping all over the settlement complaining loud and long about Laura running away from home. The weather was fine that evening, and after supper, instead of staying home, people congregated up at the Meltons’ house, passing the pleasant evening with one another and enjoying the fresh air after a long winter of being cooped up in smoky little cabins. We had a houseful, and hardly enough likker to go around. Ann’s brother Thomas Foster had come over, along with Will Holder. Jonathan Gilbert, who sometimes worked for James Melton, was still there, helping him cut leather for shoe making. Washington Anderson turned up, of course, hunting Tom, but he wasn’t around, for once.

Foster hadn’t been asked to the party, but he showed up in the yard outside just as the light was fading, dressed in his usual raggedy farming clothes, and he shuffled into the cabin, looking forlorn.

“Have any of you’uns seen my Laura?” Wilson Foster asked them, after he’d downed a few swigs from the jug to take the chill off his bones.

Nobody had.

“Well, I reckon she might have took off with Tom Dula. I’ve caught them in bed together a time or two. Has he been around?’

Tom Foster spoke up. “I seen him just a while ago this evening. But he was by hisself. I never did see Laura.”

The men looked peeved to be put off their drinking by an old man bearing troubles, but at first they were polite enough, saying it was a shame that Laura had gone missing. Nobody reckoned there was much to it-maybe she had gone off visiting kinfolks up in Watauga. Will Holder said he hoped he’d find her soon, then they’d turned their backs on him and went back to what they were saying before, not giving him another thought. Well-brought-up people will be civil to anybody, but you shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking you matter to them. I wondered if old Foster had figured that out, or if he even cared.

He didn’t seem to heed their indifference, but just went on moaning about how ungrateful Laura was to have gone off and left him, and how he didn’t know what he was going to do with all those young’uns to take care of, in addition to all the extra chores. I wondered if I was the only one wondering who was looking after his children while he was out and about, visiting with all and sundry, but nobody spoke up, and I never heard that anybody in the settlement offered to do any cooking or laundry for him, either.

While he went around, asking if anybody had seen his daughter, I kept still in the doorway, watching Ann to see how she was taking this news, but her face was as blank and innocent as a barn cat’s. I wished I’d had more turns at the jug. It’s easier to put up with fools when you have a tot of likker warming up your insides to deaden the noise. Good thing I’d had a drop or two to drink before he came, but it was wearing off now, and I could have used reinforcements.

Somebody handed old Foster a gourd of whiskey, and I hoped that would shut him up, but between gulps, he went on and on about how hard it was on him with Laura gone, and then he started in again, bewailing the loss of that infernal horse, and saying that he reckoned he could do without Laura well enough, but he wanted that mare back.

“She ought to be easy to track,” he said. “She’s got a sharp pointy place on one hoof where I had started to file it down, but had to leave off afore it was done. You look for that pointed hoof print in the dirt, and you’ll find my Belle. I know which way she was a-going. I tracked her past the Scotts’ place and down the river road. Picked her up again on the Stony Fork Road, and found tracks all the way to the old Bates’ place. She went off the road then. Started through an overgrown field, and I lost the trail. Don’t reckon she can have gone far, though.” He looked around, hat in hand, eyebrows raised, waiting in certainty for someone to offer to help in the hunt.