He was silent for so long that I didn’t think he heard me. Finally he looked down at that boot again, and he barely whispered, “I don’t think I’ll have time. I don’t suppose she’ll be locked up for very long-one way or the other.” He went back to sewing the leather then, as if he had forgotten I was there.
I don’t know if James Melton ever went to see his wife in jail or not, or if she even wanted him to. I never went.
That was in September 1866, and the trial was set for the beginning of October, which is when they held Superior Court in the courthouse in Wilkesboro. I thought it would all be over quick. Trials only lasted a day or two at most, for the high court only met twice a year, and they had so many cases to settle that they could not dally over any of them, not even something as serious as a killing. I thought there would be more graves in Reedy Branch before the leaves fell.
I was wrong about that.
The court went and appointed Governor Vance, that was, to defend Tom and Ann, and they ordered him to do it for free. He got his teeth into that case like a terrier cornering a rat. First he moved the trial over to Statesville, so that all the witnesses had to travel forty miles or more to get to court, and nobody thanked him for that, but he managed to drag the proceedings out for another year and a half out of sheer contrariness.
None of us could read, so it’s no use asking me what the rights of it were, because I never did know. I just went when they told me to, and said my piece on the witness stand as many times as they asked me to.
One thing did worry me, though. I never understood all the legal twists and turns as the lawyers tried to sort out what a jury could hear, and what some clerk had got wrong in filling out the legal papers. I thought of it as a game of noughts and crosses, and I figured that everybody had just clean forgotten about Laura Foster, who was tucked away by now in a solitary grave on the Foster farm in German’s Hill. All she had wanted was to get away from there, and in death they took her right on back there, so now she must stay forever. Unless she went to heaven, if there is one. I never heard it said that anybody had ever seen her ghost lingering about the place.
The one thing that worried me was the one person who knew almost as much as I did. John Anderson. In the weeks leading up to that first day in court, the lawyers from both sides were scurrying around, collecting witnesses, until it seemed like most of Elkville would be congregated in that courtroom, telling what they knew.
I was afraid that someone would think of adding John Anderson to the list, or else that he would hunt them up himself and offer to testify. But when I said something to Wash Anderson about it, he just laughed at me.
“What would they want to talk to him for, Pauline?”
I wasn’t about to tell him, so I just hung my head and muttered, “I only wondered because I hear that you and your sister are on the witness list, and your house is right next to the Bates’ place. So maybe they think he saw something.”
Wash snickered. “You don’t know nothing, Pauline. John may be near as light as you are, but to the law he ain’t nothing but a darky. He can’t testify in court, not when the accused and the dead victim are all white folks. What would he know about it anyhow?”
“I just wondered,” I said.
It set my mind at ease somewhat to know that John Anderson could not be a witness in court, but I was still afraid he might go seek out one of the lawyers, and tell them the truth about Laura’s elopement. I had not seen him alone since Laura went missing. I think he knew how dangerous it would be for him if anyone guessed the truth. But if he ever got to the point where he didn’t care, he could ruin everything, for he could put me squarely back into the case. I didn’t want it known that I had lied to Ann. If everyone kept quiet about how it really happened, the law might hang them both.
I waited it out, though. Least said, soonest mended. I was right to do that. They found Tom guilty. The court ordered him to hang in Statesville on November 9, 1866, but the lawyer, Governor Vance, labored on Tom’s behalf as if he were being paid in gold instead of working for nothing. He fought and objected and quibbled about every little thing, fighting like he was back in the War again. He was an important man with half the quality folks in the state counting themselves as his friends, so he got his way.
By and by we heard there was to be a new trial for Tom, on account of they hadn’t got it right the first time around. I never understood the rights of it. Since the high court only met twice a year, spring and fall, that gave Tom another six months of life, or six more months to spend penned up in a cell, depending on how you looked at it. I remembered what he had said about that Union prison camp, and I reckoned he was burning to get out, one way or another.
Ann continued to bide in the jail, and months went by with nothing done about her. Since Governor Vance had arranged for them to be tried separately, she would have to wait until it was settled with Tom, once and for all, before they would consider her part in it.
The next time the court met, we all got ready to traipse down to Statesville to say our piece all over again, but then we heard that the defense wasn’t ready, on account of some of their witnesses not turning up. That was Mr. Vance, up to his old tricks again, we figured, so things got moved along to the fall of 1867. A year in jail for Tom, with that first death sentence hanging over his head. I thought that if I were the Iredell County jailer, I’d invest in a couple of extra guards.
I was back in Elkville in June, visiting folks, and mainly asking around to see what was transpiring in the court case. That’s when I heard that Governor Vance was trying to round up new witnesses for the second trial, and I began to worry that he might stumble on to somebody who knew more than he bargained for. He might use his fancy tricks to get Tom off on new evidence, and then turn around and get Ann freed based on her beauty and the Governor having friends in high places.
I decided to pay a call on someone while I was there. I went to see James Melton first, and found him well and working as hard as ever. He looked older than his years, perhaps from all the worry and from having to run the place all on his own now. The little girls were still too young to be much help.
“I just came by to say how-do,” I told him, sipping the tin cup of well water he had given me. “How is my cousin Ann faring in jail?”
He sighed and mopped his forehead with a rag. I thought that I could see strands of gray in his yellow hair. “You’d do better to ask her mother about her. It’s a long way to town, and I have no time to go.”
“Don’t you miss her?”
He thought about it. James never was one for making hasty replies. “She was beautiful, you know. Like having a fairy maiden out of an old ballad come to stay, but you know how those songs end. The fairy always goes back to where she came from. She never stays forever. And after a while it just seems like it was all a dream.”
I just looked at him, while I tried to picture lazy, foul-tempered Ann Melton as a fairy queen, but it sounded like pure foolishness to me. One thing was clear, though: as far as he was concerned, she was gone.
I left him soon after that, just as it was gathering dark, and I walked down the hill to the Andersons’ house, but I didn’t aim to pass the time with Wash or his sister Eliza. Wash was all right when he was sober, but that Eliza was a milk and water miss, and it near ’bout put me to sleep to try to talk to her.
Everything looked just the same as it always had. The Bates’ place was as desolate as ever, though I didn’t suppose anybody ever gave it a second thought anymore, if they had to look at it every day. Laura was dead and buried, and Tom and Ann were away in jail, so life went on. But there was one person that I thought would still remember, and it was him I had come to talk to.