Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Tom Dooley

Well, I had. Moreover, I couldn’t see any percentage in going back into the thick of a legal tangle. Ann made it sound as if she was worried about me, but I’d never be foolish enough to believe that. Ann Melton would not walk forty miles up a steep mountain to save me from being torn apart by wild hogs, much less just to keep me from being arrested. In fact the only thing I could think of that would make her put forth that much effort was him: Tom Dula. I can believe that she’d walk barefoot through a briar patch for his sake-and not for much else.

Sam Foster stayed silent in all of this, looking as embarrassed as a man watching childbirth. He had done his duty to see his kinswoman safely up the mountain, but it was plain enough that he wished himself elsewhere now. James Melton had not come with her. He would have said that the farm, the children, and his shoe making kept him too busy for such an excursion, but I think the truth was that he did not much care what happened to her, and he was tired of dancing to her tune.

I studied her gaunt face, trying to work out what she had really come about. How would my coming back help Tom? Did she want me to tell some lie on his behalf? But perhaps there was no subtle scheme for me to divine. Ann’s only gift from fortune was her perfect face; being able to think clearly and make a plan were not skills she possessed. I thought it most likely that she missed having someone to talk to, especially now. Hardly a word ever passed between Ann and James Melton, and she could hardly expect him to care that Tom had been put in jail. To Ann, it was no use fretting unless there was someone to hear you out, and she had no woman friends, for not a soul in the settlement could abide her. She thought of no one but herself, and she cared nothing for the womanly concerns of home and children. Who among them would hear her out if she wanted to weep and wail about her lover being imprisoned? Why, nobody. But she paid me eleven cents a day to cater to her whims, and I suppose that in the end she forgot that my friendship was boughten. All along she had thought she was doing me a favor by taking me in, and now she was here asking me for the favor of coming back.

“I never bargained on being mixed up with the law, Cousin. Eleven cents a day won’t buy that.”

She frowned a little, for she wasn’t used to being denied anything. “But we’re kin, Pauline. Couldn’t you come back for my sake?”

Why do handsome folk always think you ought to be honored to do them a kindness? I didn’t owe her nothing. I just stared at her, wondering if she would ever realize that.

“Pauline, there ain’t nobody to talk to. I can’t tell James about any of this, and like as not he’d be glad to get shut of Tom anyhow. You know that none of those sanctimonious biddies in the settlement will give me the time of day. And with Tom gone…”

Ann began to weep, though she might flood the room with tears for all I cared.

“Ain’t we friends, Pauline, as well as kin? Didn’t I take you in when you was sick? And now I am most sick to death with worry over all this, and I miss you. I miss having you around.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said. “Let me get my things.” I did not agree to go because I wanted to help either Ann or Tom, or because I cared one whit for her tears and her tribulations. I went because I wanted to watch what was going to happen. I also thought that I might need to be there in order to make sure that it happened.

I went back with them, leaving the cool shade of the mountain groves for the blistering sun on the cornfields of Happy Valley, and many’s the time I cursed myself for a fool for doing it. I settled back in to doing the chores on the farm, tending the Meltons’ girls, and milking the cows, and listening to Ann fret about what would become of them.

Once she said, “Poor Dula. I wonder if he will be hung. Are you a friend of Dula? I am. Are you a friend of mine?”

I thought that worry and eating next to nothing had addled her brain, but I forced myself to smile. “Why we are of the same blood, Ann. I am more than your friend. Did I not come back with you in your time of need?”

She sprang up from her chair, and grabbed my arm. “Come with me now then. I need to see that it’s all right.”

I hung back, knowing what was in her mind. “Come on where?”

She gave me a sullen glare. “Just out to the woods. Not far from here.”

I knew what she meant, but I wouldn’t say it out loud any more than she would. Finally, I said, “You mean… to where the horse was tied up?”

She shook her head, as pale as I’ve ever seen her. “Not there. Just down the Reedy Branch Road a ways and up the ridge.”

I was tempted to ask her how she knew exactly where the horse had been, but she looked in no mood to be trifled with, so I kept on pretending I didn’t know what had happened. She strode to the door and held it open, nodding for me to come with her, but I just blinked at her, like I was slow to understand, and finally she said, “Come on! I need to make sure that the grave has not been disturbed. Animals might have dug her up.”

“But what if one of the neighbors was to see us going there and tell the searchers, Ann? What then?”

“What neighbors? My mama? Wash Anderson and his sister? They won’t think anything is amiss. They haven’t yet, have they? We’re just going out for an afternoon walk.” She tried to laugh and show that she wasn’t a bit afraid. “T’ain’t far. Come on.”

She shooed me out the door like a stray cat, without even giving me time to stir the stew pot or put on a shawl, and a minute later, we were making our way down that steep hill that leads down to the Stony Fork Road just opposite Lotty Foster’s cabin. She wasn’t out in the yard, though- drunk already, I thought as we passed her door-and I saw no one about at the Andersons’, either. The Bates’ place was as deserted as ever. I had thought we might be heading there, for the searchers had been milling around it for weeks now, and I knew they had found the horse’s rein there, but Ann did not spare a glance for the west side of the road. She trudged ahead another quarter mile or so, directing her steps toward the wooded ridge that ran alongside the Reedy Branch trace. It was down that road near a mile that the Dulas lived, and I expected her to set off following the creek down to the Dulas’ woods, but she just kept forging straight on through the field and threading her way through the weeds, heading up the ridge. She didn’t hesitate, either. She knew exactly where she was headed.

About two hundred yards past the creek and up the ridge, we had left the open fields of the valley, and now we were stumping along through the woods along the southern slope of the ridge, with Ann forging so purposefully ahead that it was plain she knew the way by heart. I was trailing along after her, dodging briars, trying to keep up with her, and hoping that if one of us trod on a rattlesnake, it would be her.

I stepped on a dead branch once, and the crack it made when it broke under my foot made my heart jump clear up to my throat. I don’t get scared the way other people do, but I can be startled, by sudden moves or loud noises, same as anybody. I was more careful after that, and not so intent on keeping up with Ann. If she wanted to show me something, she could wait for me.

We went a good ways up that ridge. I think that if it had not been high summer, I might have had a good view of the valley below, but the trees hemmed us in, making it as dark as twilight in midafternoon. The scrub oaks and pines made a canopy over the clearing, shading it from the sun. There was a bare patch underneath one of the trees, and around it the grass had been trampled down. The rest of the clearing was covered with grass or leaves, so this one bare patch caught my eye at once.