Lost Man's River

by Peter Matthiessen

  The Deacon introduced Oriole briefly on the way out. Her TV show had a patriotic theme, and its glad light spangled her snowy head with stars. “Be back later,” her husband informed her. “Next year, maybe.” Lucius grinned but the Deacon did not. He marched outside and climbed into Lucius’s car. “Better take your auto,” he said, once he was settled. “That old rattler of mine don’t run too good.” The Deacon’s harsh cough and painful hacking were as close as he would come all day to honest mirth. He had a certain grim mean humor, Lucius decided, but his days of open laughter were long since behind him.

  They drove south on the old Fort White Road to Columbia City, which the Deacon identified as the former site of a huge sawmill. Today this pineland had been timbered out and the poor woods were second growth and Columbia City was a fading hamlet scattered about an old white church in a grove of live oak. “Ain’t but that one nigra church out here today. Had a murder in there three years back, handcuffed and robbed the deacon, put two bullets through his head.” Troubled, he looked over at Lucius. “Nigra, y’know, but a man of God the same as me. Don’t understand that one, do you?”

  A few miles farther, a dirt track called Watson Road led off toward the west, and Kinard remarked, “That’s all black Watsons. All these nigras in through here used to be Watsons. Good people, too, nothin wrong with ’em. This is their descendants, and a lot of ’em have different names, but they’re all Watsons far as I’m concerned. Old Bob Watson was the grandfather, hardworkin little feller, maybe five foot tall, lived back over in there. In Reconstruction, his brother Simon got to be a county commissioner, but it was Old Man Bob done all the work, put that black family out ahead. Jerusalem Baptist, there back of them trees, that’s their Watson church.”

  Had these black Watsons arrived with Tabitha Watson, whose daughter Laura was to marry Samuel Tolen? The Deacon, startled by the question, nodded, saying, “Wouldn’t surprise me,” and kept right on nodding. “That’s right. Old Man Sam married a Watson. I clean forgot that.”

  The Fort White Road, straight as a bullet, shot south across woodlots and farmland, a narrow county road unmarred by signs. Sixteen miles south of Lake City, a pasture pond on the east side of the road tugged at the old man’s memory, making him grunt, for he patted urgently at Lucius’s elbow, pointing at a grove of trees. “Where you see that grove, that was Burdetts’. Old cabin might be in there yet. I been there many a time, and Burdetts come to our place. Sunday visiting, y’know, the way us country people done back in the old days. Our house was on yonder a little ways, where them woods are now—the old house is still back there, far as I know, grown up in trees. And this land you’re looking at right here”—he pointed at the open wood on the west side of the road—“this was Betheas’. Young Herkie Burdett was courting a Bethea daughter, and he was desperately in love. We thought Herkie and Edna would get hitched. Next thing we knew, this man Watson came and married her. And a couple years after that, all hell broke loose around this neck of the woods.”

  The community had been disappointed that Edna hadn’t married young Burdett, and folks were surprised that her father, a Baptist preacher, had encouraged her to go to Edgar Watson. “He must of knowed something about Watson,” Mr. Kinard said. “Whole county had heard tell that this man was a killer, I knew it even as a boy. So folks started in to gossiping and wondering if Preacher Bethea encouraged the wedding just because Edgar Watson was well-fixed. Their neighbors mean-mouthed Watson and the Preacher, both.

  “Course Betheas never owned this place, they rented from Sam Tolen. They were sharecroppers, same as Burdetts. Right in there where I’m pointing at, that’s where it was. Ain’t no cabin there no more, it was tore down.

  “Preacher Bethea was dead set against young Herkie. The Burdetts were even poorer than Betheas, and he wanted his pretty Edna to marry better. After Edna and Herkie became teenagers, he forbade them to see or talk to each other, so they exchanged love letters in a big stump out in the woods, one going in the early morning and the other at dusk. Edna left cookies or cake that she had made, while Herkie would leave flowers for her in a jar of water. When E. J. Watson returned to this community, Preacher Bethea was not about to let that rich man get away, and when Watson failed to take his widowed daughter off his hands, he gave him young Edna instead, and broke her heart.

  “Joe Burdett’s field reached almost to our ballpark, which was over beyond where that feed barn is today.” The Deacon, ruminating, coughed a good long while. “The Burdett boy was shook apart when Watson took his girl away to the Ten Thousand Islands. He just moped around, he never married. After Watson’s death, Edna’s brothers told Herkie she had gone to stay with her sister Lola in north Florida, and he just went after her, and he never came back. His mama never got over that, nor his daddy neither.”

  The old man sighed. “If there’s Burdetts left around here now, I sure don’t know where they could be. Betheas all gone, and Watsons, Coxes, too. Ain’t many of them good old families left.”

  A narrow white clay lane led west from the paved road under deepening trees. “Turn there,” the Deacon commanded. “That is Herlong Lane. Still Herlongs back in there, you know. The Fort White Road has been paved quite a few years now, but all the old woods roads are white clay, same as they were when Watson came along here on his horse or buggy.”

  Asked about D. M. Herlong, who had written about Watson, Deacon Kinard laid a cold hand on Lucius’s wrist. “Wrote something about Watson? D. M. Herlong? Must been Dr. Mark. Mark’s daddy was Old Man Dan Herlong, the first one to come here from Carolina, and he never had no use for Edgar Watson. Lived right here at the head of Herlong Lane, which runs west a few miles to the railroad.

  “The Collinses still live in the old schoolhouse. That’s back in these woods, pretty close to a mile south of here. Edmunds’s store is out there somewheres, too. Called that section Centerville, but they didn’t have no post office or nothing. Watson’s nephews Julian and Willie Collins lived right near that schoolhouse, and his niece May was a close friend to my sisters.

  “All along this north side was Sam Tolen’s place, what was left of the old Ichetucknee Plantation. Them black-and-white cattle you see in there back of them trees is just the kind Sam Tolen had here sixty years ago, so what with this old clay road and all, it’s kind of scary how these woods ain’t changed. Most places in this county has growed over so much I can’t hardly recognize where I grew up. Weren’t near so many oaks, y’know, we had open woods and great big virgin pines. Today all them big pines have been timbered out.”

  The car ran silently on the soft track, under the forest trees. Spanish moss stirred listlessly in hot, light air. “Had a turpentine still down by the railroad and twelve-fifteen small cabins for the workers—hard work, too. Cut the pine with a hack, make a deep V-mark on the trunk, collect the resin in a bucket. They hauled that over to the still, made turps and varnish.”

  Soon the Deacon signaled Lucius to pull over. “See that road that’s blocked by that felled tree? That’s Old Sam’s road, runs a half mile through the woods up to his house. I never seen that road closed off before, and I been around here all my life.” He peered about him. “I can’t take you up to Sam’s house with that road stopped up cause I don’t walk so good. I better give you the whole story on the Tolens while I got it right here in my head.”

  GROVER KINARD

  Sam Tolen had twelve hundred acres, one of the biggest farms around. Once he got hold of the plantation by marrying the widow, he called it the Tolen Plantation, and all around here became known as Tolen Settlement, and when our post office come in, it was called Tolen, Florida. Mike Tolen’s place was about a hundred eighty acres, back over to the west along the railroad. He wasn’t near as wealthy as what Sam was.

  Sam Tolen was in his forties, heavyset, growed a big stomach. Besides whiskey and cattle, the only thing he cared about was baseball. He didn’t play baseball himself, just got het up over it. Sent all the way to St. Louis for The Sporting Ne
ws, mowed off some of his pasture to make a baseball diamond. Might been the one time in his life that feller gave up something for nothing.

  At that time, Sam and Leslie Cox was friendly, because Sam had the baseball diamond and Les Cox was the star of our Tolen Team. And our heroes was Honus Wagner, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Napoleon Lajoie, who played second base for Cleveland, Ohio. I remember that ad for Red Devil tobacco: Lajoie Chews Red Devil! Ask Him if He Don’t! Called that team the Naps right up until Nap left, did you know that? Ain’t too many as remembers that today. After that they called ’em the Indians, don’t ask me why. Folks had no use for Injuns around here.

  The Tolen Team would go from place to place, and teams come here to play them, had a game every Saturday all spring and summer. America was crazy about baseball then, never thought nothing about football and basketball, way they do now. It’s like some big leaguer once said in the papers, baseball was played by men of normal size. Every boy in America wanted to be a professional ballplayer, and every community that could scrape up nine young men had ’em a ball club, and bigger towns that could afford uniforms might find some horn players and have ’em a parade out to the field before the game. They played some grand old Confederate marches and some new tunes, too.

  The Tolen Team, as best I can recall, was Les Cox, pitcher, Luther Kinard, substitute pitcher and first baseman, Brooks Kinard, catcher, John Livingston, second base, Herkie Burdett, third base, Gordon Burdett, left field, Sam Kinard, center field. Them boys played regular. Brooks Kinard was catcher for Les Cox, and when them two played, we wasn’t beat too often. Luther pitched when Les weren’t there, but he couldn’t pitch nothing at all like Leslie Cox.

  I recall one game with Fort White, they hired two ace players from High Springs so they could try and beat the Tolen Team, and one of our players went with Fort White because he thought that this time they were bound to beat us. That feller was the only one who got as far as second base all afternoon, because Les Cox struck out the rest of ’em as fast as they come up, and we beat them boys from High Springs ten to nothing!

  Les Cox never minded throwing a few beanballs, and he could throw the hardest ball I’ve ever heard of in my life, so none of their batters stood up close to the plate. Just poked at the pitch as it flew by, got no real cut at it. We read all about Cy Young and Christy Mathewson and them, but we figured Les had the fastest fastball in the whole U.S. and A., and I guess Les thought so, too. Sam Tolen said it was only a matter of time before the major league scouts would hear about this boy and come to get him, that’s how good he was, or Piedmont League, at least. Pay him a hundred dollars every month just to play ball!

  As a rule, Les Cox was kind of overbearing, and he had him a hard and raspy tongue would scrape the warts off you. Being such a fine ballplayer made it worse, because everybody bragged on him. My big brothers Brooks and Luther and them other players, they admired him so much that they copied the way Les hung his glove off his belt on his left side, kind of like a six-gun. Wore it that way even when he was at the plate. Course gloves was a lot smaller back in them days, never had all this webbing and padding that you see today.

  Les Cox was lively, made some noise, but he never had too much of a sense of humor. Local hero when we won, but when we lost a game, he couldn’t handle it, so he blamed the loss on Brooks or one of the other players. Took razzing all wrong, and he done that on purpose cause he wanted to fight so bad, you know, same as Ty Cobb. Leslie always figured he weren’t getting a fair deal, no matter what, and that give him a real touchy disposition. Folks wanted to like him, pretended to like him, because he was a fine-looking feller and a star, but in their hearts nobody liked him much, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was kind of lonely.

  I remember one time Brooks and Luther and our cousin Sam Kinard, they made these little popguns for us, shoot chinaberries, sting like anything. And Les came along, and me being the smallest one, he just grabbed my popgun and got into the game with ’em instead of me. Oh we was mad, all right, but there weren’t nothing we could do cause we was scared of him. Point of the game was to sting the other boys, not really hurt ’em, but when Les got stung, he got mad straight off, got too excited, and after that he was out to hurt someone and generally did. So that game broke up pretty darn quick, because Les Cox took the fun out of it, as usual.

  As I remember Leslie Cox, he was five foot and eleven, maybe six. He wasn’t extremely tall but he was muscular, weighed a hundred eighty or one ninety pounds, would be my guess. He was only about nineteen back then, but looked much older, and I guess young May Collins was just crazy about him.

  The Collinses were a very good old family around here, had a fine house, had a big land grant cause they fought the Injuns and settled this section back in the 1830s. Them were the days when Alligator and his Seminoles was raiding our outlying homesteads, murdered and scalped all around these parts for seven years! Had to run them redskins all the way south to the Peace River!

  Seems to me there was always some kind of fighting going on around north Florida. Spanish, Injuns, British, then the Yankees. And after the War, them Radical Republicans and coloreds tried to take us over. My granddad, he rode with the Regulators, Young Men’s Democratic Club. That started up after Reconstruction set in—Tallahassee, 1868—and later it become the Ku Klux Klan. Had to lynch sixteen nigras in the next three years, my granddad said, to get this county straightened out and running smooth again. The KKK kept going strong, and they’re still going, cause they got all the sheriffs and state cops right in there with ’em. Them boys had things pretty much the way they wanted, and they do today.

  Anyways, May Collins’s daddy never liked the Coxes, and he wouldn’t have Leslie in the house, but Billy Collins died about 1907, so he was gone before the trouble started. With her father dead and her mother sick most of the time, Les come after May, he hung around the Collins house, and that’s probably how he got to know Ed Watson.

  Now Sam drank heavy, and when he was drinking, he didn’t have no friends. Sam owned a lot of cattle, and they roamed all through these woods, because all this country here was open range. He would find some of his big herd near your place, and if he couldn’t spot one or two, he’d gallop that big bay horse of his up to your cabin, riding him just as hard as he could go. He’d accuse you straight out of stealing his cattle, and cuss you out, and threaten to run you off the Tolen Plantation for good. He could do that, too, because the fields and cabins was all leased to sharecropper families such as Coxes. We owned our place, but all the same, he done the same to us one time, he cussed our family something terrible. My dad was off somewheres and my brother Brooks was hardly growed, but Brooks took a rifle and went out anyways and stood right there on the front porch, set to protect us. And Sam Tolen just sneered at him and rode away.

  Well, one day Old Sam tried that on Will Cox. This man Cox leased a couple hundred acres from Sam Tolen, had a log house right here on the southwest corner of this crossing, there where I’m pointing at. Old Robarts house. Ed Watson was the one who fixed it up. Watson lived in the Robarts house awhile, then lent it to his brother-in-law when he went away to Oklahoma. When Billy Collins moved to Centerville, Watson let Will Cox have it. Them two men were friends.

  Now like I say, Les was big for his young years, and he had some spirit. Hearing Sam talk so rough to his dad, he went inside and got Will’s gun and come out again onto the stoop and hoisted up that gun without one word. He was fixing to shoot Sam Tolen dead and would of done it, only his daddy seen him first and knocked the gun up.

  When Old Man Sam seen Leslie with that gun, he turned that big bay horse around, he just departed, but he purely hated being run off by a boy. Folks heard tell of it and laughed, and from then on, Sam was spoiling for a showdown, never mind that this young feller was his own star pitcher.

  Railroad was here where these two lanes cross, you can still see that old railbed shadow through the trees. Train come south from Lake City in the morning, come back north fr
om Fort White in the afternoon. And right here, there was cross ties piled that an old nigra named Calvin Banks cut for the railroad company. And a few days later, Leslie Cox was setting on those ties when Tolen rode up drunk on his bay horse and started cussing him. He was threatening to kill that boy, which ain’t a very good idea around cracker people.

  Sam Tolen never lived long after that. He was riding along on an old road that used to cut across the woods from Herlong Lane to Ichetucknee Springs—it’s all growed over now—and the killers was hid in a fence corner, behind the jamb where the fence rails come together. Sam rode that bay most of the time, but the day he died he had his horse hitched up to a buggy, headed for the Ichetucknee store for his supplies. He was shot maybe half a mile west of the schoolhouse, and the horse, too. Didn’t want that horse to run off home, I guess, let people know that Sam Tolen was killed before the killers had the evidence cleaned up and got away.

  Watson was in on it, they say. I ain’t sure what Watson’s quarrel with him was, but Sam’s wife being a Watson, there might been some trouble over that plantation. Or maybe Les wanted an experienced man beside him, who is to say? But it sure looks like Cox and Watson got together and waylaid Old Man Sam. They say Watson got suspected in the Belle Starr case because Belle’s horse run off, and people follered back along the road to where they found her body before he got his boot tracks all scratched out, so he swore that next time he would shoot the horse, make a good job of it.

  His neighbors generally were not afraid of Edgar Watson, not unless he had something agin ’em, and nobody except Mike Tolen grieved for Sam. There was no evidence, and no one looked for none. We never knew for sure who pulled the trigger, but his own family always said that it was Leslie.