The Happy Valley Fiddlers' Convention

The lightning bolt seemed to have come out of nowhere, scaring me half to death, its flash of white light very briefly illuminating Laura Foster’s tombstone that had chiseled on it, LAURA FOSTER/MURDERED May 25, 1866/TOM DULA /HANGED FOR CRIME. Looking up, I saw that the darkening sky was clear except for one lone cloud floating in front of a full moon. Not only was the moon full, it was a blood moon, huge and red-orange.

Laura Foster’s gravesite is located just inside the camping/parking area of the Happy Valley Fiddlers’ Convention. Laura was murdered in Wilkes County, North Carolina, in the heat of a triangle love affair between herself, Tom Dula (his last name pronounced locally as “Dooley”) and Laura’s cousin Anne.

As a Convention volunteer, my current job was to place and light Mason-jar candles around the perimeter of Laura’s gravesite for tonight’s Tom Dooley presentation.

After I had placed and lit the last candle, I returned to my tent, which I had pitched about ten feet from the gravesite, stashed the candle lighter inside and put on my denim jacket because there was a nip in the air. (Normally, the Happy Valley Fiddlers’ Convention is held on a warmer second weekend in June, but because of the COVID-19 lockdown, this year’s Convention was postponed until the colder last weekend of October.)

While I walked across the field to the concession stand to spend the last of the twenty-five-dollar food certificate each volunteer was given, the sound of someone buck dancing to a fiddle was coming from the main tent. The Tom Dooley presentation was the final event of the Convention. I thought it was very appropriate the presentation was to take place at a gravesite, because not only would the blood moon be full, tonight would be Halloween night.

At first, I wasn’t going to attend the presentation; I’ve heard the Tom Dooley story a zillion times before, but I changed my mind about not attending when I found out that this year’s narrator had done some up-to-date research on the story. She might have found out something that I didn’t know, or she might prove as false one or more of the legends that many people swear are “honest-to-God” truths.

Carefully carrying a plastic cup of Cheerwine and a plastic plate of food, I returned to my tent.

A smattering of people, sitting in their nylon, aluminum-framed folding chairs, had already gathered at Laura Foster’s gravesite to hear the presentation and more people, folding chairs in hand, were walking across the field to join them. At the foot of the gravesite, the narrator was sitting in a wooden, straight-back chair, a dulcimer that looked homemade in her lap. The narrator was very old, but had made an exaggerated attempt to look young: Too much rouge on her sunken cheeks. Too much pancake makeup on her wrinkled face. No amount of makeup, though, could hide her many liver spots. Too much red lipstick. Penciled-in eyebrows. False eyelashes. Under the padded bonnet that she was wearing, a blond wig covered her what-had-to-be-gray hair. She wore an ankle-length, homespun cotton dress and button boots. A white shawl was draped around her boney shoulders. I thought that maybe she was dressed like that because it was Halloween.

Since my tent was within listening distance, I decided to stay there.

The narrator raised one of her skinny arms to get everyone’s attention and began her lecture:

“Our story begins on April 9, 1865, the day the Civil War ended,” she told her audience. “Tom Dooley, who had enlisted in the Confederate Army, was returning to his home near here.” Suddenly, the narrator went into deep-remembrance mode. Coming out of her trance, she preened herself and smiled seductively when she said, “Tom liked the ladies and the ladies liked him!”

Then she told the familiar story of the love triangle, of Laura Foster’s murder, of Tom Dula being found guilty of the murder, and the hanging of Tom.

Lying on the ground with my head out of the tent’s entrance, I only half listened to the narrator until she mentioned the Calvin Cowles store, near where Tom Dula was living in a one-room cabin.

My “day job” was as the curator of the Brushy Mountains Museum. I was currently gathering up as much information as I could about Calvin Cowles’ store for a future issue of the museum’s newsletter.

Cowles’ store also served as a gathering place for the residents of the valley. Perhaps its most famous (or infamous) regular customer was Lotty Foster, who traded work for goods at the store. Lotty was Anne Melton’s mother. Anne Foster Melton was Laura Foster’s cousin and Tom Dula’s childhood sweetheart. Even though most people believe it was Tom who murdered Laura, some people believe that it was actually Lotty (or maybe Anne) who murdered her.

“My research clearly shows that I—” The narrator suddenly stopped talking, mid-sentence. She began talking again: “My research clearly shows that Lotty DID NOT kill Laura.” The narrator had almost screamed the words “did not”; it was almost like she was trying to convince her audience of Lotty Foster’s innocence. “Besides, what would have been my—” Once again, she abruptly stopped talking, mid-sentence. Leaning forward in her chair, she began once more: “Besides, what would have been Lotty’s reason? For one thing,” she told her audience in a much calmer tone, “Lotty was a right-smart older than Tom. For another, (and this is the most important thing),” she stressed, “Lotty was a married woman.”

I can think of a reason, I thought to myself—jealousy. Maybe Lotty saw Laura as her rival and wanted Laura out of the picture.

The narrator had my complete attention when she mentioned something that my research hadn’t uncovered:

“Of an evening after Mr. Cowles’ store closed, we—” The narrator seemed to have wanted to quickly correct herself: “That is, folks from all around would drag up the store’s straight-back chairs and gather around the pot-belly stove in the middle of the store. We, that is, they would sing and play our, that is, their musical instruments. Most of the instruments were homemade, because we, that is, they were too poor to afford store-bought ones.”

As I lay listening, I was puzzled as to why the narrator kept correcting herself.

“My, that is, Lotty’s instrument was a dulcimer that her daddy had made. A homemade dulcimer like this one.” The narrator held up her dulcimer for the audience to see. She started playing “Pretty Polly” on it, which the narrator said was Lotty Foster’s favorite ballad.

When she was finished, the narrator told her audience that every once in a while Tom Dooley would show up with his store-bought fiddle, which had once belonged to Tom’s daddy. To mark the fiddle as his, Tom had carved “TD,” his initials, into the fiddle’s wood.

“Mr. Cowles loved to hear me, that is, Lotty sing,” the narrator pointed out. “He said that I, that is, Lotty had a voice like an angel. But he also said that whenever Tom Dooley showed up, I, that is, Lotty would sometimes get all tongue-tied.”

Since it was Halloween night, especially one with a full moon, the narrator told one of the area’s ghost stories:

She began speaking in a spooky voice. “On nights like tonight when the moon is full,” (She pointed up at the full, blood moon, her long, gnarly finger looking like a witch’s finger) “it is said that the ghosts of the folks who made music in Mr. Cowles’ store, once again would get together and make music. Many local folks have reported hearing that music.”

***

I was awakened sometime during the night by a woman singing “Pretty Polly,” accompanied by what sounded like a dulcimer. The voice singing the ballad was the most angelic voice I’d ever heard. Crawling from my sleeping bag and into my clothes and grabbing up my flashlight, I went outside to investigate.

Although it was dark, the full, blood moon, brightly shining above the low-lying ground fog that covered the entire valley, provided enough light to see by. The Mason-jar candles that outlined Laura Foster’s gravesite were still burning. Except for the screech of a screech owl coming from deep in the woods, all was quiet. There were no musical sounds coming from the main tent and not a person around. Where was the woman with the angelic singing voice?

Even though the people who came to hear the presentation were gone, for some inexplicable reason their chairs were still there. Upon closer examination, I saw that the chairs weren’t nylon, aluminum-framed folding chairs, but wooden, straight-back chairs. Each chair had beside it or on its caned seat, a musical instrument. Almost all of the instruments looked homemade.

Like the attendees, the narrator wasn’t there either, but her chair up front was still there. In the chair’s caned seat lay her homemade dulcimer. There was a chair next to the narrator’s chair. In its seat lay a fiddle. Shining my flashlight on the fiddle, the first thing I noticed were the letters “TD” carved in the fiddle’s wood.