Sharyn McCrumb: The Ballad of Tom Dooley

The wood frame house had no upstairs, no fancy pillars or porches, and its steps were two flat stones set in the dirt. It could have used a lick of paint, too. It was a toad of a house, squatting on its hilltop under bare trees in a yard of scraggly brown grass. A thin wisp of smoke drifting out of the stone chimney told me it was no warmer inside the house than out. Still, Cousin Lotty’s place was no more grand or kept-up than this, and hers was child-infested to boot, so I reckoned I had better make the best of things here, if they’d have me, which I reckoned they would.

I did not have the charm of Cousin Ann, but I have a knack of knowing what folk want, and for being that, as long as it suits me.

I wasn’t used to much in the way of comfort up home, either. Beggars cannot be choosers, and beggar I was, so I picked up my bundle of clothes, and waded uphill through the dry grass to the door.

By the time I got there, a couple of scrawny hounds had crawled out from under a shed, and were yapping and baying at my heels, but I gave the littlest one a hard kick with my boot, and they thought better of trying to light into me. Them dogs didn’t worry me none. They’d have to have the teeth of a handsaw to get through two petticoats, a wool skirt and my old leather boots, and when they saw no fear in me, they gave up, and slunk back under the porch. But I was hungry and shivering from my journey, and I could have done with less noise. Nobody came to see what all the commotion was about, so I rapped hard on the door with bare knuckles numb from cold, hoping they wouldn’t keep me standing out there in the sharp wind for too much longer.

By and by the door opened a crack, and a tall, gaunt man peered out at me, neither angry nor welcoming, but looking as if he had only opened the door to stop the knocking. He didn’t say a word-just stared out at me, waiting, I guess, to be told what I had come about.

“I’m Pauline Foster,” I said, investing in a smile. “If you be Mr. James Melton, I am blood kin to your wife. I come to see her.” Without giving him time to answer back, I picked up my sack of clothes, and shouldered my way past him into the house, calling out for Ann. He stood aside and let me pass without a word. I reckoned James Melton was the kind of man that nobody paid any mind to, so maybe he was used to it.

I saw then that there weren’t no use to be hollering, for Ann could not help but hear me. The inside of the house was one great room with a fireplace at one end, and a pine table and a bench seat set back a few feet from the hearth. At the other end of the room two narrow beds stood side by side on a rag rug. At the foot of one bed was a wooden trunk, its lid open, and clothes were spilling out of it and onto the floor, so that told me where Ann slept. The walls of the cabin were wide chestnut logs, chinked with clay to keep out the wind, and there was one little square window set in the far wall, but in the dusk of a gray winter day, it didn’t let in enough light to do much good. That was just as well. Brighter light would have showed the dirt and untidiness of the place, which was bad enough as it was.

Ann was sitting on a stool near the fire, and the flames made shadows on her face ’til I didn’t hardly recognize her, but once I got up close I could see that the kinfolk’s tales were true. She had grown up to be a rare beauty, right enough. She had big dark eyes, set in a heart-shaped face, and her black hair was drawn back in a bun so that you could see the sharp line of her jaw and the cheekbone ridges that made her a wonder to look at. Her mouth was thin, and gave her a peevish look of discontent. When she got old it would wrinkle like a draw-string purse, but for now she was just past twenty, and not even an uncertain temper could mar those looks. I wondered why she had settled for James Melton, who was tolerable to look at but still unprosperous, when her perfect face surely would have taken her higher than that. I made up my mind to ask her about her choice of a husband, but not just yet; not until I had settled in as one of the household.

She sat there on her stool, looking up at me with an expression of mild curiosity, like she didn’t know who I was and didn’t care overmuch, either. I didn’t think Ann ever had much use for other women, nor they for her. But speaking my mind would not get me bed and board, so I knelt down, all smiles, and threw my arms around her, as if she were my dearest friend in the world.

“Why, Ann, it’s Pauline. My daddy, rest his soul, was first cousin to your mama, and I have just come down from the mountain to see my kinfolks here.”

Ann shrugged. “Well, you’re a scrawny little thing, ain’t you, Pauline? And you don’t have much of the Foster looks about you. I’d not have knowed you. But you had better sit yourself down here by me. Your cheek feels like ice. -James! This fire needs another log!”

He got up without a word to do her bidding, and, as he was shoving fresh wood into the blaze, I saw him close up in the firelight, and I revised my estimate of his age. What I had taken for gray hair in the dim light turned out to be naturally fair hair that shone like bronze when he was kneeling by the fire. He stood tall and straight, his face and hands were free of veins and creases. Why, he couldn’t be much past our age from the look of him, for all that he acted twice that. I wondered if he was ill himself, or if the War had sapped his vitals, or-I stole a glance at Ann, staring drowsily into the fire-maybe living with her just drained the life out of him. I wasn’t sorry for him, though. Any man who insists on taking up with a beautiful wife ought to pay dearly for the purchase. I could see that he had.

Ann had taken the pins out of her hair, and she shook her head to let it fall about her shoulders. From the folds of her skirt, she drew out a wooden comb and began to brush the tangles out of her black curls.

I summoned a smile and held out my hand for the comb. “I’d be glad to do that for you, Ann. It’s hard to reach there in the back.”

She frowned a little, but then she gave a little shrug and handed over the comb. I was sure she was accustomed to accepting kindnesses from the male sex, but that it was a rarity for a woman to offer her anything. “What is it you came for, again?” she said.

I had it in my mind to lie about the purpose of my journey, but I could see that Ann Melton was not one to be swayed by fine words about sentiment and family feeling. She had no use for relatives, nor for the society of a woman friend. What did she have a use for? I looked again around the shabby room that stank of stale food and unemptied chamber pots.

“I was hoping you could use a hired girl,” I said, making even strokes with the comb through the thicket of hair. It could have used a wash with soap and lavender water more than a brushing, but the weather was mortal cold, and most women would rather have greasy hair than risk the chills and fever that could come from washing it afore spring. Anybody else would have looked scraggly and foul with lank, dirty hair, but it hardly took the shine off Cousin Ann, lit up in the firelight like Jacob’s angel.

“I can cook and do the washing and mending. Scrub floors. Bake bread. See to the chamber pots. And I reckon I can do farm chores. I’ll work cheap enough.”

She pushed her hair out of her eyes, and turned to study me now, her interest captured at last. “You want to work here? As a hired girl? What for?”

“I came down here to see the doctor,” I said. Best go with the truth. Ann Melton understood selfishness. “I’m sick, and I need to stay close by for a couple of months while I get treatment for my ailment.”

She pulled away from me then, making the comb jerk against her hair, and she swore and snatched it back from me. “What’s the matter with you, then? Consumption?”