Shadow Country (45 page)

“He's bad news,” said Arbie. “Stay away from him.”

Next morning, Arbie lay so still in bed that Lucius was afraid to awaken him in case he couldn't: he was loath to touch him. His neck was arched and the parched mouth stretched too wide; his bloodless lips were dry on dry small teeth. With his dry hair, he looked as flat and scanty as a run-over rabbit on a summer highway.

The cadaver sucked up breath and coughed. One eye sagged open, contemplating Lucius, as a spavined hand went palpitating toward the cigarette pack on the bedside table. Lighting up, he growled in phlegmy tones that he had better things to do than waste a day with some gabby old-timer.

ANN MARY COLLINS WATSON

New Bethel Church, just off the main road on the way south, had been “built of heart pine back in 1854 and was solid as ever,” said the old sexton in the churchyard gate, shielding his eyes to admire this house of God in the fresh morning light. “Watson? Was she a Collins? Come in here back in the eighties?” He pointed. “You'll find her over yonder.”

Lucius hunted the old rows until a flit of sparrows drew his eye to a lone juniper; half hidden by that tree was a tilted headstone with eroded lettering crusted by black lichens. He knelt on the sparse grass to piece it out.

ANN MARY WATSON
WIFE OF E. A. WATSON
AND DAUGHTER OF
W. C. AND SARAH COLLINS
BORN APRIL 16, 1862
DIED AT HER HOME IN
COLUMBIA CO. FLORIDA
SEPTEMBER 13, 1879

Ann Mary, dead at seventeen on that unlucky thirteenth of September. Her headstone was a precious record, all the more so because particulars engraved in stone could be depended on. This one provided not only the name and dates of Papa's first wife but the earliest record of his original initials Lucius had come across. That middle
A
was still appearing ten years later on Arbie's court transcripts relating to Papa's stay in the Indian Nations; subsequently he had changed it to
J,
presumably to obscure his identity as a fugitive.

THE DEACON

Turning off the old Fort White road, Lucius followed Grover Kinard's directions into low dust-filmed woods (“alive with redskins,” according to an 1838 report). At the specified address, he was shown inside by a bespectacled man attired in black trousers, cream-colored jacket, and open-collared shirt. Deacon Grover G. Kinard bade him no welcome and scarcely troubled to introduce him to his wife, a pretty-pink person sitting primly on the front room sofa in a bower of artificial flowers and silver-framed photos of smiling offspring seated with their own smiling offspring; she was listening to a sermon on her radio. “That there's Oriole,” said the Deacon, passing by without a glance, and Oriole Kinard fluttered timid fingers at the visitor as her husband marched him into her shining kitchen. The churchman offered him no coffee, just sat him at the kitchen table while he hammered out on its linoleum just what was what.

“Yessir, I knew all them folks,” the Deacon said, drumming his fingers. “I'll show you where Edgar Watson lived, tell you all about Coxes and Tolens and all the killing down in them old woods.” Kinard jerked his thumb in the direction of the little person on the other side of the pasteboard wall. “She ain't a Cox exactly but she's related,” her husband said. Over the churchly exhortations on her radio, Oriole protested, “No, I ain't never! Leslie's grandmother's daddy was my granddaddy's cousin, but I wouldn't know that murdering devil if I bumped into him in church!”

The sight of Lucius's notebook made the old man suck his teeth. “My information must be worth a lot to you,” he suggested. When Lucius cheerfully agreed, the Deacon coughed, then got it over with. “How much?” he said. “Forty dollars?”

“Well, to be honest,” said Lucius, taken aback, “most folks
like
to talk about old times. I guess you're the first I've come across who wanted payment.”

The Deacon squinted, not shamefaced in the least but ready to dicker. “Thirty, then,” he said. When his visitor forked over the money, he counted the bills twice before getting up and going out back to squirrel them away. Returning, he said, “Guess we can go then, lest you want coffee,” but he never slowed on his way toward the front door.

“Back later,” he informed his wife. “Next year, maybe.” Outside, he climbed into Lucius's car. “That old rattler of mine don't run too good,” he said, once he was settled. The Deacon had a certain grim mean humor, Lucius decided, but a painful hacking was as close as he would come that day to honest mirth.

The narrow county road shot south across farmland and woodlots, straight as a bullet. Sixteen miles out of Lake City, near a pasture pond on the east side of the road, Kinard tapped Lucius's arm. “Where you see that grove, that was Burdetts. Old cabin might be in there yet. Many's the time I been there Sunday visiting, the way us country people done back at that time. And these woods on this side, this was Betheas. Ain't no cabin there no more. Betheas rented from Sam Tolen, they were sharecroppers, same as Burdetts. Young Herkie Burdett was courting a Bethea daughter, we thought Herkie and Edna would get hitched, but Preacher Bethea was dead set against it. Burdetts was dirt poor, even poorer than Betheas, so he wanted his pretty Edna to marry better.

“By the time Ed Watson come back to this community, the whole county had heard that Mrs. Billy Collins's brother was a desperader out of the Wild West, so folks was surprised that Edna's daddy encouraged her to go to him instead of Herkie. According to gossip, Preacher Bethea figured any outlaw must be rich and he did not intend to let that rich man get away, no matter if he broke his daughter's heart. Folks mean-mouthed Ed Watson and the Preacher both.”

The Deacon coughed awhile. “Our house was down yonder where them woods are now—still there, far as I know, grown up in trees. The baseball diamond was right out back of it—that's gone, too. Herkie Burdett played a pretty good third base but he was shook apart when Edgar Watson took his girl away to them Thousand Islands. Just moped around, he never married, couldn't hardly play third base no more. And two-three years after that, all hell broke loose.”

A white clay lane left the county road to enter the forest shade. “Turn there,” his guide commanded. “Herlong Lane. Runs west a few miles to the railroad. We still got Herlongs back in here, you know. Old Man Dan Herlong was the first to come south from Carolina, and he always said the Carolina Watsons was good people, prosperous farmers, all but Edgar's daddy. Still got Collinses here, too. Live in the old schoolhouse over yonder, far side of the woods.” He pointed south. “Edmunds's store was over that way, too, but they didn't have no post office or nothing.” He shifted in his seat. “All along this north side, that's Myers's plantation, the old Ichetucknee Plantation from before the Civil War. Twelve hundred acres, one of the biggest around. Once Sam Tolen got hold of it—he married the Widow Myers—he called it Tolen Plantation, and when our post office come in, he got that called Tolen, Florida. But Sam sold off a lot of land, drove Watsons crazy, on account they were kin and seen it as family property.”

The car ran silent on the soft white track under the trees. Spanish moss swayed listless in the air. “It's kind of spooky how these woods ain't changed, when most places are growed over so much I can't hardly recognize where I grew up. Them black-and-white cattle you see in there back of them trees is the same stock Tolen raised, turn of the century, and these white clay tracks ain't never changed since Watson came along here on his horse. Course there weren't so much scrub oak back then, we had open woods and great big virgin pines, but all of them big trees got timbered out.”

He signaled Lucius to pull over. “See where that track is blocked by that deadfall tree? That's Old Sam's road. Runs a quarter mile through the woods up to his house. I never seen that road closed off before.” He peered about him. “You want to walk in there, have a look, you go ahead. I don't want no part of that old place.”

THE EMPTY MANOR

The carriageway was still dimly defined by a woodland aisle through the tall trees. Burled oaks and hickories were interspersed with vine-shrouded magnolias and tupelos, rising through long shafts of morning light to fragments of blue sky. In the forest, the old road was innocent of wheel tracks, nicked only by neat heart prints of deer, the flutter marks of dusting quail, rat tail of possum and thin hand of coon, the wispy tracings of white-footed mice. Cardinal song, sweet plaint of titmice, the spring bell note of a jay in the fresh forest air.

In misty sunlight where the deepwood opened rose a white-columned facade with broad veranda, strangely out of scale with the frame house and the small kitchen wing stuck on behind. Its twin brick chimneys looked too thin, and an upstairs room under the eaves had a pinched small window. Chinked sheds and a dying barn sagged down amongst the live oaks; the worn pasture beyond had given way to ragged woodlots.

How odd that in this abandoned place, the ground-floor windows were unboarded and the grass all around the house appeared rough-mowed. No junked vehicle or rusted harrow, no litter of neglect, only the bareness of worn paint, only the silence. Everything looked tidied and in place as if the house awaited guests. Strangest of all, the kitchen door stood open. Had the inhabitants fled, hearing him coming?

He was startled by the shriek of a red-tailed hawk, poised for flight from its nest limb in an oak by the house corner. The nest's location so close to the building was sign that the house was uninhabited and yet he felt a childish dread of arousing unknown denizens, quick or dead. Something—this heartbreaking spring wind—had swept the intervening years from the veranda where on such a morning Great-Aunt Tabitha Watson might have creaked in her high-backed rocker, gazing without forgiveness at the forest wall from which old friends from Carolina had never arrived for a long visit, hailing her gaily from among the trees.

After her death, the rich widower Sam Tolen had lived here all alone. In the years since, Kinard had said, others had come but quickly gone away again. All had shunned this high queer manse at the end of its dark path through the forest, this dwelling where the mold of dread could never be aired out.

Lucius stood still and simply listened. Though drawn toward the door ajar on the back steps, he hesitated to approach, but neither could he turn his back on it, lest the shade of Tolen loom into the opening, threatening to set his hounds on a damned Watson.

Returning down the shadow drive, he glanced back more than once at the lost house until finally it withdrew behind the trees. In the midmorning heat, birdsong had stilled. The crack of a dead limb, the rush and earth thump of its tearing fall. The doleful groan of cows from the feed barn on the far side of the county road came as relief.

THE FASTEST FASTBALL IN THE U.S.A.

“Sam Tolen growed him a big stomach,” the Deacon resumed of his own accord once they were under way. Grover Kinard was busy earning his thirty dollars and any questions would be interruptions. “Besides whiskey and cattle, the only thing Sam cared about was baseball. Sent all the way to St. Louis for
The Sporting News.
Never played himself, y'know, just got het up over it, mowed off some pasture for a baseball diamond. Might been the one time in his life that feller gave something for nothing.

“Tolen and the Cox boy was friendly for a while because Sam had the diamond and Les was his star pitcher. America was crazy about baseball then. Every boy aimed to be a professional ballplayer and every community that could scrape up nine young men had 'em a ball club. The Tolen Team would go from place to place and teams came here to play, had games every Saturday all spring and summer. Find some horn players, have a parade out to the field before the game. Played some grand old Confederate marches and some new tunes, too.

“My brother Brooks was catcher for Les Cox and when them two played we wasn't beat too often. Les could throw the hardest ball I ever heard of and he never minded throwing at your head. Batters was scared to stand close to the plate: just poked at the pitch as it flew by, got no real cut at it, he'd strike 'em out as fast as they come up. We figured Leslie had the fastest fastball in the U.S.A. and I guess Les thought so, too. Sam Tolen said them Major League scouts was bound to hear about this boy, come get him, pay him a hundred dollars every month just to play baseball. Might of went to his head cause he grew kind of overbearing, and he had him a hard and raspy tongue would scrape the warts off you. Made some noise, he jeered a lot, but he never had too much of a sense of humor. Local hero when we won and when we lost, he blamed his team. Took razzing all wrong, wanted to fight, same as Ty Cobb on the Pirates. No matter what, Les always figured he weren't getting a fair deal and that give him a real ugly disposition. Folks pretended to like him because he was a baseball star but in their hearts nobody liked him much. I imagine Les was kind of lonely but maybe he wasn't—very hard to tell.

“As I remember Les at age nineteen, he was five foot and eleven, maybe six, not extra tall but husky for his age and looked much older. They say he had some Injun from his mother's side, dark straight hair and them high cheekbones, and maybe his revengeful streak come from the breed in him. My sister's best friend, May Collins, was crazy about Les but her daddy thought Coxes was po' white, wouldn't allow him in the house. Pretty soon Billy Collins died—this was before all the bad trouble started—and with May's mama sick most of the time, Les hung around the Collins place, which is probably how he got to know Ed Watson.

“Sam Tolen drank heavy, and when that man was drinking, he had no friends. One day Sam cussed out Les's daddy. Will Cox was one of his sharecroppers, had a log house right there at the southwest corner of this crossing where I'm pointing at. Hearing Tolen talk rough to his dad, Leslie went inside and got Will's rifle, come back out on the stoop without a word: he was fixing to shoot Sam Tolen dead and might of done it if Will hadn't knocked away the barrel. Seeing that rifle, Sam wheeled his horse, he just departed. But he hated being run off by a boy because folks heard about it and they laughed, and after that, Sam was spoiling for a showdown, never mind that this young feller was star pitcher on his team.

“Freight train came south from Lake City in the morning, went back north in the afternoon: see that old railbed shadow through them trees where these two lanes meet? There was crossties piled there. Les was setting on them ties a few days later when Tolen rode up drunk, threatened to kill him, which ain't a good idea around backcountry people.

“Sam never lived long after that. He was waylaid along the road—growed over now—that used to cut back through these woods to Ichetucknee Springs. Rumor was that Edgar Watson might of been involved but there weren't no evidence and no one looked for none. These old woods kept their secret,” the Deacon said, peering about him.

“That was the finish of Sam Tolen and our Tolen Team. Sam loved baseball more'n he loved people. His brother Mike had trouble with him, too, but in those days, with our kind of folks, you might not like your brother but you stood behind your family all the same. At Sam's funeral up in Lake City, Mike declared over the grave that he knew who killed his brother and he would take care of it—very bad mistake! Course the killers couldn't act too quick without drawing suspicion so they laid low till March of the next year. Mike was ambushed right here at this crossing.

“Down here on the west side of the lane is a big old log cabin in a oak grove—see there yonder? That was Mike's place. Kinards took it over from Mike's widow. When our family moved here, there was nothing left inside but some old broke cane chairs, cedar buckets, a bent pot. Dead silence. Bat chitterin and cheep of crickets and the snap of rats' teeth in old mattresses stuffed with graybeard moss right off these oaks. Our dad burned them mattresses and us kids was glad, cause with so much blood on 'em, they drawed the ghosts. There's stains on the wall in there right now from the day they brought Mike home, that's how much blood there was. Rat musk everywhere, I can still smell it. A house can have bloody rape and murder or shelter folks who live good churchly lives—either way don't mean nothing to them rats. Gnaw a hole in your body or your Bible, just depending.

“So these ol' woods was buzzing like a hornet swarm, and the men gathered, all riled up and ready to go. When the sheriff showed up from Lake City, his deputy come across hoof prints in the woods and followed that track south a mile to Watson's place. Folks suspected Leslie was in on it but he run off someplace. Anyway, they didn't have nothing on him.

“Ed Watson stood boldly in his door though he surely knew what that crowd of men was there for. Come time to step forward and arrest him, there weren't no volunteers, nobody weren't as riled as what they thought they was. So Josiah Burdett—that's Herkie's daddy—Joe said, “Well, I will go.” Just upped and done it. Dogged little fella, y'know, soft-spoken, he seemed to hide behind his scraggy horse-tail beard that come down like a bib right to his belt buckle, but when he said that he would go get Watson, they knew he meant it. My brother Brooks was so impressed that when another volunteer was called for, Brooks raised his hand and said, ‘Well, I'll go with him.'

“Them two went up the hill to Watson's gate. Watson had gone back inside, so Joe called, ‘Edgar, you better come on out!' When he came out, they had their guns on him but didn't have no warrant, so Watson said, ‘I'm sorry, Joe, but if you have no warrant then I can't come with you.' And Joe Burdett said, ‘Well I reckon you better come.” Probably didn't care to shoot him down in front of his boy Herkie's childhood sweetheart.'

“Watson took that very calm, never protested. ‘If you boys aim to arrest an innocent man,' he said, ‘let's get it over with.' Seeing Herkie's dad, Edna busted right out crying, and her babies, too. ‘Uncle Joe, Mr. Watson ain't done nothing wrong! He's been home here right along!' But Joe Burdett only shook his head, so Watson said, ‘Well, then, I'll just step inside, change to my Sunday best, cause I don't want to give our community a bad name by going up to town in these soiled overalls.' Burdett says, ‘Nosir, Edgar. You ain't going back inside.' So Edna brought him his clean clothes and Watson says, ‘I'll just step into my shed to change, be with you fellers in a minute.' Joe Burdett was too smart for that one, too. Told Brooks, ‘Go take a look, make sure there ain't no weapon hid in there.' And sure enough, Brooks found an old six-gun, loaded, back of a loose slat on the crib wall.

“Ed Watson changed his clothes outside on a cold March day, stripped right down to his long johns. Joe told him he better instruct Edna what he wanted done around his farm, and Edgar said, ‘Nosir, that will not be necessary, cause bein innocent, I will not be gone for long.' Said he would sure appreciate it if he could just step inside while he give his dear wife a kiss good-bye. Joe Burdett shook his head. Let Watson get a foothold, see, there wouldn't a-been no Josiah Burdett and no Brooks Kinard neither. Watson, he knew how to shoot, he didn't miss.

“Edgar told his wife to calm herself, he'd be home soon, on account he was innocent and had a alibi. Never turned to wave, never looked back. That man walked down to where the crowd was waiting, looked 'em in the eye, and strode off down the road like they'd made him their leader. They had to hurry to keep up.

“For years after, all them fellers spoke about Ed Watson's inner strength that saw him through. If he was afraid he never showed it, and that scary calm got poor Brooks worrying that Mr. Watson might be innocent just like he said; Brooks prayed for guidance from the Lord when he went to bed. But our older brother Luther told him, ‘Boy, a guiltier man than Edgar Watson ain't never drawed breath in this county so don't you go pestering the Almighty. The Good Lord got plenty to take care of without that.'

“Watson hired fancy lawyers, got his trial moved after a lynch mob went to get him in Lake City. Luther Kinard was in that mob. These were the men most outraged against Watson. But when Watson ducked the noose, and Les Cox, too, they were the ones most frightened, knowing that them killers knew who had wanted to see 'em lynched and was honor bound to seek revenge. Might show up after dark, y'know, drill a feller coming from the barn or through the winder while he ate his supper. All that winter, the whole countryside was on the lookout. So when Edna's family passed the news that Edgar had took her away to Thousand Islands, folks was overjoyed. Then came that January dusk when someone seen Cox walking down the road.

“That spring there weren't no Tolen Team so Leslie tried to pitch for Columbia City. It was so pitiful that I felt bad for him because his nerves was gone. Lost his control, he was just dead wild, and the worse he pitched, the harder he threw, till the other team become afraid to go to bat. The crowd sat quiet, watched him fall to pieces. I can see him yet today, slamming his glove down on the mound, raising the dust. Finally his own team wouldn't take the field behind him, he was out there on the pitcher's mound alone. So naturally Les picked a fight, punched some feller bloody till they hauled him off. Went stomping off the field in a bad silence because nobody dared razz him. Far as I know, he never pitched again.

“Les finally seen there was no place for him, not around here. He wanted to go to Watson's in the Islands but he needed money and he knew just where to get it. I reckon he felt humiliated, and when that feller felt humiliated, someone would pay.”

THE BANKS FAMILY

“Beyond that line of pecan trees is where the Banks family had their cabin. Two rooms with a kitchen shed out back, same as the rest of us. Calvin Banks had him a farm, run eighty head of cattle, worked hard cutting railroad ties, and done odd jobs. That nigra aimed to get ahead and had sense enough to save some money but not enough to take it to the bank. Calvin was taught that Jesus loved him so he trusted people. Carried his dollars in a little old satchel over his shoulder, and when he bought something, he'd take that satchel out and pay, so people seen he had money in there, twenty-dollar gold pieces and silver dollars and some greenbacks, too. My dad would say, ‘If he don't look out, somebody's liable to take and rob that nigra.' Well, somebody done that, robbed and killed Calvin and his wife and another nigra along with 'em, and that somebody was William Leslie Cox.

“We figured Les tried to scare Calvin into telling where his money was hid, then shot him when he wouldn't do that. Calvin Banks was maybe sixty and Aunt Celia well up into her seventies, near blind and she had rheumatism, couldn't run no more: might been setting on the stoop warming her bones. Looked like Les shot her right out of her rocker but some has said she slipped down off the stoop, tried to crawl under the cabin. Don't know how folks knew so doggone much unless Les bragged on it, which knowing Les, I reckon he sure did. Killed the old man inside, Aunt Celia on the stoop, then the son-in-law out here on the road. Didn't want no witnesses, I reckon.

“Story was that Leslie got thirteen thousand dollars but our dad said it weren't no more than maybe three hundred at the most. Back in them days a field hand got paid twelve to fifteen dollars a month, so even three hundred was a lot of money. One thing for sure, Les tore through that little cabin. I seen the mess next day. They said it was him took that metal box that two years later turned up empty in the woods, said it contained all silver dollars, so his mule had a tough time, had to walk lopsided. Les borrowed that mule from his cousin Oscar Sanford who told my brother Luther all about it.

“Our family field was directly west across the Fort White Road. On that late autumn afternoon us Kinards was picking cotton when Oscar Sanford come along, headed toward the Banks place on his mule. We heard one shot across the fields and then another, then in a little while another. Stood up to listen but finally decided someone was out hunting. Not till next day did we learn it was them poor coloreds getting killed.

“At the sound of those shots, Oscar turned that mule around and headed back home in a hurry. My brother Luther was putting in a well for Sanfords that same day, stayed over so he could finish work early next morning. In the evening Cox come by all pale and out of breath. Made my brother nervous, cause Luther had joined the Watson lynch mob and Les knew it. But Les paid no attention to him, just jerked his head toward the door, and him and Oscar went outside to talk. Might have wanted the borrow of that mule to go fetch that metal box.

“Because Bankses was nigras, Les might of got away with it, except folks knew that this young feller was mixed up in the Tolen business and most likely the guilty one; them killed nigras give 'em a second chance to see some justice. Luther Kinard was his teammate on our baseball club but even Luther turned state's evidence against him. Folks wanted that mean sonofagun out of the way.