to light. I thought I would have to be the person to keep prodding everyone to wonder about the fate of Laura Foster, but I reckoned without J.W. Winkler. He’s a young fellow with a farm near Elkville, and I don’t know what any of it had to do with him, for he wasn’t a magistrate or a lawman, or any kin to the Fosters that I knew about, but he took it into his head to take charge of the hunt for Laura, and he for one did not believe that she had gotten away to Tennessee.
At Cowle’s store I heard some of the neighbors talking about how groups of men had gone out in search of some sign of Laura. Most of them gave up after a day or two, for it was the busy time of year for farmers, and they had enough to do to take care of their livestock and their fields, but J.W. Winkler would not let the matter rest. After the others went home, he kept on combing the woods alone, starting at the old Bates’ place, where Laura had told Mrs. Scott she was headed, and he walked every path he could think of to get from there to the Dulas’ place.
“He is bound and determined to find her,” said the storekeeper, handing me the candy I had bought with the two pennies I had to spare.
“Why?” I asked her. “He wasn’t sweet on her, was he?”
“No, that’s not it. He said she deserves a Christian burial. And he said there’d be no peace for her family until she was found.”
Well, strictly speaking, I was part of Laura Foster’s family myself, and it didn’t make any difference to me whether he dug her up or not, but I simply nodded to the storekeeper, big-eyed and solemn, and told her what she expected to hear: what a fine and determined man Mr. Winkler was, and how I hoped there was nothing out there in the woods for him to find.
I think he gave up for a little while, because, after all, he had a farm to run same as the rest of them. The month of June dragged on, and we went ahead with the planting and the weeding, and the rest of the weary round of chores on a farm in summer. The searching may have eased up for a while, but the talking didn’t.
On Saturday the 23rd of June, after we had finished a long day’s work, Tom Dula stopped by the house, as he did most days. I was stewing up a mess of soup beans and corn pone for supper, and James was working on sewing the sole of a shoe, sitting on his bench in the doorway to catch the fading light. Ann was somewhere about the place, using the outhouse or taking a stroll to cool off likely as not. She wasn’t doing anything useful, that’s for certain.
Tom came up to the door, smiling and sniffing at the smell of supper cooking, but I didn’t speak to him, for whether or not he stayed to eat with us was not on my say-so. As he stood there on the threshold, James Melton put down his needle and looked up at him. I watched them there side by side in a shaft of sunlight-one blond and tall, with sharp features and hands never still, even in the evenings, as he worked his other trades to shore up his efforts at farming; the other dark-haired and handsome, as gracefully lazy as a cat on a hearth rug. I didn’t feel much of anything for either one of them, except maybe a little respect for Melton, because he earned his keep, and disgust at Dula, for lazing about, living off his mother and doing not a hand’s turn if he could help it. I always did like dogs better than cats. I wondered how those two felt about each other. They had been neighbors all their lives, even in that Union prison camp, and they shared a woman-whether one of them knew that or not. I wondered about that, too.
James Melton set down the shoe he was holding and looked up at Tom. “I didn’t expect to see you back here anytime soon.”
Tom squinted down at him-maybe from the glare of the sun. “Why is that?”
“Well, people are going around saying that you killed Laura Foster, so I thought you’d have lit out of here by now.”
Tom stood very still then, but his expression did not change. “Who has been saying that?”
“The Hendrickses, for one.”
There was such a long, taut silence between them that I was sure Tom wasn’t going to answer. I even thought he might haul off and hit James Melton without even letting him get up. But then Tom laughed and said, “Well, I reckon the Hendrickses will just have to prove that, and perhaps take a beating besides.”
Melton nodded, and I don’t know if that nod meant that he believed Tom or that he hadn’t expected him to say anything else. Anyhow, he picked up his shoe again and went back to work without saying another word. Tom came in and sat for a minute. He nibbled at a piece of corn pone, but then he got up and started pacing, and before too long he had barged back out the door and was gone.
ZEBULON VANCE
Tom Dula and Ann Melton… what a long time ago that was. A brief interlude in my life, really, when I practiced law in order to feed my family while I waited to be let back into politics. As soon as the government permitted Confederate officials to reenter the political fray, I went back into the election business, and ended up in the Senate, where I mean to die in harness. I have not represented a defendant in court in decades, and I never will again, but from time to time my memory summons up those two star-crossed clients of mine, and I see them as they were in 1866-young, handsome, and indifferent to the opinion of the world in general. I did not understand them at the time, and I believe I thought that when I had attained age and wisdom, I would come to know what it was that motivated them, what was in their hearts. But as I sit drowsing by this fire in a Washington parlor, I know that I am as far from comprehending them as ever.
We are bound for different heavens, those two rustic souls and I.
They loved each other, I suppose, or what passes for love with young and passionate people, whose impulses are not tempered by education or moral guidance. Their lives were without purpose or direction, and so perhaps they became each other’s purpose.
But Ann Melton was married to another. I recall that well enough, for that is the one thing in this matter that I do understand. She was born to a drunken slut of a mother, and by some wondrous chance she grew up to be a beauty-that was her one chance to escape the squalor of her mother’s life, and it is no wonder that she took it. A prosperous man with a house and land and the means to put food on the table offered her a home and marriage, and at the age of fifteen she took it. I find no wonder in that. It is the best thing I know of Ann Melton.
I would have done the same. Perhaps I did, in fact. I would like instead to think that in marrying my Harriette I was fortunate to have fallen in love with a gentlewoman whose breeding and social connections were so perfectly suited to advance my own ambitions. I hope I made her a good husband. I meant to, and she never uttered a word of complaint, bless her, but she was worth her weight in gold for a man with political and social aspirations well beyond his personal means. So in my youth I let my head rule my heart, so that my choice of a partner should further my ends, for I had much to accomplish.
How then to explain my second marriage? My dear Harriette, delicate soul that she was, passed away in 1878, and by then I was forty-eight years old, well past the giddiness of youth, and serving in the United States Senate. Having established myself as a respected and prosperous statesman, I no longer had need of anyone’s assistance to make my way in the world. I was never a ladies’ man, nor one who had any interest in dalliances with the fair sex. Like a plow horse with blinders on, I saw only the furrow that I must plod along, and no amiable distractions ever kept me from my duty.
I suppose when I became a widower, I could have indulged myself in sensuality at last: married some fair- haired beauty, and eased into my dotage with a pretty doll to amuse me as the fires of ambition burned low. Or I could have dispensed with matrimony altogether, and immersed myself in the neverending duties of a serving senator.
But I did neither of those things.
Precious little, I’ll warrant. My Harriette was beloved in my home state, for its aristocrats counted her as one of their own, and she stood by me through all the tribulations of the early years, braving the dangers of war in the Governor’s Palace, never leaving my side until I sent her away in those last frenzied weeks of the conflict. To the North Carolinians who elected me Governor twice over, and sent me back to Congress to represent them before the nation, Harriette Espy will forever be Mrs. Vance.
