The Ballad of Tom Dooley

lampblack on her eyelids to make her dark eyes big and calf-like, those eyes would go soft and vacant, like two puddles of spilled ink, and she rarely spoke when she was tending to her rites of beauty. Those things ought not to take up so much space in your head as to crowd out other thoughts altogether, but she never seemed bored, though she did little enough of anything. Whereas, me-why, it seems like I cannot stop myself from thinking, even when I want to. Even when I am bone-weary and trying to drift off to sleep, notions keep buzzing around behind my eyes until I wish I could swat them away like gnats. Sometimes in the back of my imaginings there is that shadow of my bodily sickness and an ugly picture of what the end will be like for me, but mostly I am able to keep away from that abyss by playing a never-ending game of draughts with everybody who crosses my path.

Do I need to repay anybody for some slight or injury, and, if so, how can I safely do them a bad turn? – Is there someone standing in the way of something I want, and, if so, what lie can I tell to push them aside? – Who is vexing me by being too rich, or too smug, or too happy? How can I put a damper on that?

I never ran out of scores to settle, and little seedlings of mischief to tend to. But Ann and Tom just seemed to roll along through life on a cart of new-mown hay and cabbage roses-never worrying about slights or rivals, never trying to come out ahead or fearing being left behind. They just… lived. Why, calves walk into the butchering shed with as much forethought as those two had about where life would lead them.-It must be restful to be able to live like that, floating, instead of fighting back against the current, but I take no pleasure in idleness.

I am always trying to win a game that no one else knows we are playing.

I figured that Ann’s habit of not bothering to think was the reason she had not worked out what was ailing her and how she had come to catch it. She knew full well that I had lain with Tom Dula, same as she had, and surely by now she knew that I had the pox. It stands to reason that I’d give it to him, and he would pass it right along to whoever he took a notion to bed down with. Funny that she didn’t see it coming, that she didn’t even recognize it when it caught up with her, while I had laid awake nights planning for just such a calamity to overtake her. Maybe for an instant or two it irked me that she could not see my cleverness behind the trap that had sprung on her, but then I remembered that I needed the Meltons’ bed and board, so I held my peace, and went back to acting like a concerned and devoted cousin.

“I reckon you caught it from Tom,” I said. “You said yourself that Laura Foster was the talk of the settlement for all her goings-on with men. I reckon poor Tom paid the price for her loose ways.” I held my breath then, to keep from laughing at this bare-faced flimflam, but Ann was nodding her head like I was telling her something she already knew. It is easy enough to lead a mule in the direction it already wants to go, and Ann had the wind up something fierce over our drab little cousin Laura. She would believe that Tom might be stolen away by that little mud hen, as if that were anything worth worrying about.

If I hated anybody in the world more than I hated everybody in general, I believe I’d wish Tom Dula on them. But Ann thought that the sun rose over his left shoulder, and it suited her to blame her troubles on Laura Foster, for she was already dead set against her.

The next time Tom darkened the door, she lit into him like a scalded cat. He had come in smiling, probably hoping for a pleasant spell by the hearth, and a plate of corn muffins, if I had made any, for he’d wait until doomsday to get anything baked by the fair hands of Ann Melton. But he got more warmth than he bargained for that day: Ann’s wrath could have melted an anvil.

She ran at him, same as she often did to fling herself into his embrace, but, though he stood open-armed to meet her, she pulled up short, and thrust her face up in to his, and screamed out her words as if he was still on the other side of the gate. “I am poxed, Tom Dula! Bound to die! And it is on account of you.”

I stood off in the corner, watching this, and holding my breath so as not to laugh. But it was interesting to watch the pair of them. I spend a lot of time watching people, seeing when they smile or frown, and what they say to good news or bad tidings, and I try to remember to do the same, for if I did not make myself remember to smile or frown, all I would ever show the world is an empty stare. I was born past caring about anything.

When Ann flew at him, Tom Dula froze, and turned ashy pale, letting her wrath break over him like a bucket of cold water. If he could have turned and run, I believe he would have. “You have killed me, Tom!” she wailed, beating her little fists against his chest, and letting loose a storm of heavy weeping.

He held her close to him, with an empty stare upon his own face, but he stroked her hair and murmured soft words to her, the way I have seen people talk to a child that has fallen down and cut itself, or to a horse that is fixing to bolt. Finally, when the nerve storm looked to be about over, he tilted her chin up so that he could look into her face, which was blotched and streaky with her tears, but she didn’t look as unsightly as she ought to have done after such a flood of temper. If I had let loose a tantrum such as that, I’d have looked like a withered winter apple dug out of the root cellar. But not Ann. She looked like a rose in a shower of warm rain. Ann had too much of everything, which was hard lines on the rest of us, and that set me to thinking again on what I might do to change that.

“What has sot you to wailing?” Tom asked her, with an edge to his voice, but he was smiling a little, too, for Ann’s tempers are legion, and most of the time they are of no more consequence than a summer squall.

This time, though, she was not to be comforted with smiles and embraces, even from her beloved Tom. She glared up, cutting him with those dark eyes. “I am poxed, Tom,” she said, not screaming any longer, but in a quiet, shaky voice that was holding back a flood of tears. “You give me the soldiers’ ailment, and since you never had it when you come home from the War, I reckon I know where you came by it lately.”

He was looking over her shoulder straight at me, but before he could say anything, Ann stamped her foot and said, “From Laura Foster! That’s where!”

I was holding my breath then, wondering if Tom was sober enough to have worked out where he picked up the pox in the first place, before he went and passed it on to our drab cousin Laura, but I need not have worried. If Tom had sense enough to work it out, he didn’t say so. He and James Melton were alike in that respect: right or wrong, they generally let Ann have her own way about things. All she had to do was weep and storm, and shout at whoever displeased her, and the men generally stepped aside and let her have her way.

I did, too, sometimes, but not on account of her carrying-on. I could watch her rave and scream from sun-up to midnight without batting an eye, but I thought it best not to let on that I was not afraid of her, nor that I cared so little for her contentment. I had my bed and board to think of, after all. I found the easiest way to deal with Miss Ann was to let her think she was getting her way, and if I could do that, and still go about my business on the sly, so much the better. I’ll take peace and quiet, if it comes cheap enough.

I was watching her, though, all the time. Looking to see where that little spot of weakness lay within her. If you intend to hurt someone, it’s best to find out where hitting them will do the most good. I studied her posture, checking for a sign of tautness in her neck that would show she was fixing to set at Tom again, once she got her second wind, but she was slumped against him with her face pressed against his chest, making little kitten noises, while he stroked her hair.

They didn’t take any more notice of me after that, so I went away to see to the chickens.

Later on I heard that Tom had gone off to see Dr. Carter to get treatment for his ailment, same as Ann did. R.D. Hall said that Tom was in a bate about his affliction, and claiming he would “put through” whoever gave it to him. But he never did any more than just complain about it. As far as I could tell, Tom’s tempers were like summer storms: quick and hard, but gone in a flash, leaving no trace they’d ever been. Women’s anger is different. We burn long and slow, and you may never see the flames, but that doesn’t mean it’s over.

***

Wilson Foster’s place is a five-mile walk from the Melton farm, over in German’s Hill, just past the Caldwell County line. Ann swears that Tom Dula makes the journey every few nights, leastways she’s afraid he does, so I reckon all that marching in the infantry got him used to the exercise. Or maybe he’s just like a sorry old dog that will travel clear across the county to find a bitch in heat. Making that five-mile walk afforded me a deal less pleasure than it would Tom, but I set my mind on doing it every week or so anyhow, taking care to arrive in the early evening so as to be gone by the time Tom made his rounds.

It’s a good thing that James Melton is an able shoemaker as well as a farmer, for I must have worn out half a deer hide in shoe leather, walking those muddy paths in the April mists to reach German’s Hill before full dark. The