Summer 2007
Recitatives on a Murder
(Wilkes County, North Carolina, 1866)
I.
Ann Foster Melton Speaks from her
Deathbed
It’s true, yes, I had married James
but Tom and me, we could not quit.
We’d been as one since the morning
Mommy found us abed together.
Now the only thing left to do
is turn my face toward the wall.
Young Laurie Foster’s chestnut locks
and blithe blue eyes are vexing me.
I told my man and all the girls
who gathered round me in the end
the truth. I could not bear to see
Laurie and Tom Dula carry on.
We plunged the knife into her ribs.
We beat her head until she bled.
I knowed they would not hang me here.
They said my neck was just too fair
to stretch the hemp. Men could not look
at me and keep their heads. A man
in Wilkes told me my face was sweeter
than he’d seen. Tonight I dream
my hair is still coal black, my skin
as white as milk. Now do you hear
that hiss of steam, like spring water
doused on hot rocks? And can you see
the flames of hell dancing round me?
A bed afire will make a ring
and bring me back to Tom. He waits
for me beside our river spot.
I see his sweet head hanging down
while the devil plays Tom’s fiddle.
II.
Tom Dula Speaks from the Gallows
I took my fiddle to the War.
Because I weren’t but 17
they made me troop musician.
The fiddle kept the men at ease
and helped me recollect the pure
path of gals pacing for me back
home—Fosters all—Laurie, Ann, Perlene.
Lord, sometimes I saw the trouble
a bubbling like the river
at Yadkin Falls. I’ve rubbed them all
there on the bank. Laurie’s dark hair
smells rich as wood smoke, and Annie’s
little feet fit right in my hand,
her neck so handsome it takes your breath.
Perlene, my God, her waist, her breasts
shapely and high, a sight to see
and she’s as sporty as a fox.
What would I do if forced to choose?
One bloody morning in late May
the answer to that question came.
I buried Laurie. I had to,
which made me guilty of the crime
of murder. I hid her shoes,
her father’s mare. I took the blame
and swore the oath: Was only me
who had a hand in Laurie’s death.
But at the gallows they asked again.
Men! I say, do you see this hand?
I never even harmed a hair
on poor sweet Laura Foster’s head!
III.
Perlene Foster Speaks from the Kitchen
I told Laurie’s daddy I’d look
for his mare if he’d give me a
quart of whiskey. Hateful old fool,
he only cared about that horse.
I knowed that Laurie had it bad
at home, not a pot to piss in.
We was cousins to each other,
me and Laurie and Annie, and
we each one had our turn with Tom.
But it was me would do to Tom
what other women wouldn’t dare.
He told me once I was his vixen,
and I would swear a lie for Tom.
But now all four of us had it—
the syphilis—and Tom was vexed.
But me and Ann was stuck in jail—
that nasty jailer with no teeth,
the food so foul we could not eat—
so I begun to see that Ann
would never get the first degree
because them men they put such store
in her good looks and even though
the deputies had heard me brag
I’d done the deed, I testified
for the State. They convicted Tom.
Me and Annie we went back home.
A sister brung Tom’s body back.
He rests beside the Yadkin shore
where crabapples bear fruit so sour
the songbirds stay out of the trees.
IV.
Laura Foster Speaks from the Grave
Tom brung me blossoms from his trees
all in the merry month of May
when me and Tom was set to wed.
I double-dressed and bundled
the rest, lit out for the river
bank. I didn’t care to leave old
Pa and Happy Valley, although
I felt a queer sadness taking
Pa’s mare. Directly I seen Tom coming
through the sweet birch and the dogwoods,
their flowers already past peak.
I thought I seen a shadow cross
Tom’s face—he wore no hat that day—
but it must have been the sunlight
slipping through the woods like me.
Tom reached and hugged me down to him.
He begged to be excused. I joked
about his insides turned to water,
then he plumb vanished like a haint
behind a stand of black oak trees.
Upon my head I felt a blow,
the burn of blade inside my heart.
Before I fell and drifted off
I heard the laughter of Perlene
(or was it Ann?) warp and coil
around the trees, sway in the air
like a robber from the gallows.
They didn’t find me for three months.
Time enough to know my own voice,
time enough to haunt these hills.
Marianne
Worthington is the author of
Larger Bodies Than Mine, a poetry chapbook, and the reviews editor for
Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine. She lives, writes, and
teaches in southeastern Kentucky, and is learning to play the mandolin.
"Recitatives on a Murder" is written
in the voices of the four people allegedly involved in the 1866 murder
of Laura Foster, the real-life lover of Tom Dula. Dula took the fall
for the murder and was hanged, but many people believe Laura's cousins,
Ann Foster Melton and Perlene Foster, who were both involved with Dula,
may have had a hand in the murder. Doc Watson's version of "Tom Dooley"
was the inspiration.