Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Tom Dooley

Ann stood in the middle of the clearing and looked all around her, and I could tell that she was trying to see the woods through somebody else’s eyes-the searchers, like as not. Was there anything out of place that might make them take a closer look?

“There’s newly spaded earth yonder by that bush,” I said, pointing to a bare patch of ground. “Anybody could spot that.”

She gave me a hard, unbroken stare. “What do you know about it, Pauline?”

I shrugged. “More than I care to know. Just that this is as far as our poor cousin Laura got that day. I reckon you’d know the rest, though.”

She turned away without a word, and walked over to the bare patch, which was next to a big bush at the edge of the clearing. Then she knelt down and crawled partway underneath it. I went over there, too, and I got down so I could see what she was looking at. I was more interested in watching Ann than I was in what she was investigating. After all these months of watching her laze in her bed whilst James Melton and I did all the work about the place, it was strange to see her so energetic and determined. Seeing her hunched under that bush in her brown calico dress put me in mind of a fox, trying to dig out a nest of rabbits. I reckoned Ann had already got her prey, though, though I wouldn’t have said so out loud just then. She has a fearsome temper, does Ann.

She crawled back out, dusting her hands on her skirt, and I peered down through the leaves, but there wasn’t much to see: only a line of newly spaded earth, as if someone had dug a four-foot trench and then filled it back in. The lower branches of the bush covered it well enough, if you didn’t know where to look, but we both knew that hunting dogs don’t go by the look of things. I decided not to point this out to Ann, though, for she was in a high-strung state as it was, and if I’d told her that trench might be discovered, I’ll be bound that she’d have tried to make me dig it up with my bare hands. Ann Melton never dug that grave, I thought. She may have stood by and watched the damp earth being spaded, but I could not imagine her soiling her tiny white hands with a shovel handle, nor putting forth the effort to dig a hole in the ground big enough to receive a human body. Oh, I could see her killing somebody quick enough. That fearsome temper of hers would carry her through that enterprise, but the arduous task of hauling a corpse up the ridge and concealing it under the soil-no, she would leave the spadework to someone else, and since I had not been pressed in to service to do it for her, I knew who had.

As it was, she contented herself with picking up a few handfuls of leaves and putting them down over the bare spot. She made me do the same, so I scooped up a pile of wet oak leaves that had been there all winter, and I let them fall on top of the spaded earth.

It seemed funny to think of somebody I knew and was kin to being down there, just a few inches below my fingertips. I reckon if I was to claw at the earth instead of dropping leaves on the spot, I could uncover her face and see her looking up at me.

I would like to have seen what her face looked like, after two months dead, but I had Ann to reckon with, and I knew that if I tried to dig, Ann would either collapse in a screaming heap or else pick up the nearest rock and lay me out where I stood to keep me from telling what I knew. So I contented myself with dumping another handful of leaves on the grave.

We didn’t stay much longer after that. Ann walked twice around the clearing, studying that bush from every possible angle, but she made no move to do anything more. I figured she wouldn’t. Moving the body was not to be thought of, even if her nerves could have stood it, which I doubted. We had brought no tools with us. Besides, I had yet to see Ann lift a finger to do anything.

Finally she sighed and wiped her muddy hands on her skirt. “They won’t see anything. Let’s go back.”

As I followed her out of the clearing, she turned and caught my arm, digging her nails in to my skin. “You know what’s down there, don’t you, Pauline?”

I could see there was no point in lying to her, so I just nodded.

She dug her nails deeper in to my arm. “Well, if you don’t keep your mouth shut about this, you’ll be out here, too.”

I believed her, and I resolved to be more careful of her in future. I wasn’t afraid of her-just wary, same as you’d be if you saw a snake on the path in front of you. I knew she had a temper and she was too selfish ever to be trusted, but now she had told me something she ought to have kept to herself. Now she had cause to be afraid of me, and Ann always struck out at what made her fearful. So I must be watchful.

They say that once a dog has killed chickens, you might as well shoot it, for it has got the taste of blood and will never stop killing. I didn’t think it would come to that with Ann, but I reckoned it would be easier for her if she took a notion to do it again.

Late August 1866

I took to visiting the little general store in Elkville every chance I got, just to hear what people were saying about Laura Foster. Mostly, I’d just listen, but if the story looked like it was dying down, I’d blow a little on the embers to get it going again. No more than Ann talked to most of our neighbors, I didn’t figure any of it would get back to her, but she must have had her ear to the ground from worry about news of Laura, because it did.

One time I ran into Jack Adkins and Ben Ferguson there at Cowle’s store, and they were still talking about the disappearance. Ever since they went and fetched Tom Dula out of Tennessee a few weeks back, they had fancied themselves lawmen and thought it was up to them to set everything to rights-or else they were just nosier than six old ladies.

It is more than a mile from the Meltons’ place on Stony Fork Road down to Cowle’s store, and by the time I had walked it in the summer heat I was so hot and tired that I was in no mood to suffer fools gladly.

Jack hailed me as I came up the path. “Pauline-here-stop a minute. You’re a cousin of Laura Foster, ain’t ye?”

I nodded, trying to edge past him and into the store, out of the burning sunshine. “We don’t much bother about the begets in the Foster family,” I told him, “but I reckon I’m kin to her right enough, through my daddy and hers. Why?”

“We’re trying to work out what happened to her,” said Ben Ferguson. “Tom Dula’s not talking, so we’ll have to figure it out for ourselves.”

I set my face into polite blankness and heard him out. People thought that we Fosters should care more than other people about what happened to our cousin, being blood kin, but if anything, I think we cared less, for we knew her better, and she wasn’t much use to anybody.

Ben said, “She took her daddy’s horse and went off on her own, so we know she wasn’t kidnapped. And when she saw Miz Scott on the road that morning, she said that she was going off-with Tom Dula, some say. Only she’s gone and he’s still around, so you’ve got to wonder what became of her.”

It was all I could do not to laugh. The two of them looked like puppies smelling guts at a hog killing. I think Ben could read, and he must have been filling his head with pirate tales or some such folderol out of a book. Or maybe they had missed the War, and were trying to scare up a little excitement now to make up for it.

“We’re going to go on searching for her,” Jack told me. “She’s dead. We’re certain of that. And Tom done it, but we don’t know what he did with the corpse. But we reckon we’ll find it.”

I didn’t think the two of them could find their bottoms with both hands, and for all my vows to hold my peace about the matter, I could not stop myself from twisting the tails of those two fool hounds. “Why, you may be sure she is dead,” I said, just as solemn as a burying preacher. “Why, I killed her myself. Me and Tom Dula did. Can’t tell you where we put her, though. But you all keep looking. You’re sure to find her sooner or later.”