Lost Man's River

by Peter Matthiessen

  Some say Les’s mother was there with him. Found small boot prints behind that fence corner, looked like a woman. Never heard nothing bad about Will Cox, but we heard some rough things said about the mother’s family—all mixed up with Injuns, some said. And it sure looked like Leslie had some Injun from his mother’s side, that dark straight hair and the high cheekbones, too. Maybe that revengeful streak come from the half-breed in him.

  Before he got suspected in the Tolen case, Leslie and his cousin Oscar Sanford used to come courting our sisters, Kate and Eva, just set and talk with ’em in the front parlor. Oh yes, Leslie was in our house many’s the time, we knew him well, we was good friends with him. He come to our house once or twice even after the Sam Tolen killing, but my mother and dad and older brother had withdrawed from him by then, he weren’t welcome around our girls no more. Didn’t arrest him till the following year, but everybody in these woods knew who had done it.

  That’s generally the character of Sam Tolen and the reason he was killed. Sam Tolen loved baseball more’n he loved people, and he weren’t a saint by any means. Supposed to killed a couple nigras back up toward Columbia City, and they say Les Cox was with him when he done it. Anyway, that was the end of the Tolen Team. We had to ride over to Fort White to see a ball game!

  Nosir, Sam Tolen was not popular, not popular at all. I don’t say people hated him or nothing, but being so afraid of Sam when he was drinking, nobody was sad to see him go. Even Mike had trouble with him, but blood is thicker than water, so they say. At Sam’s funeral up in Lake City, Mike Tolen finished shoveling and mopped his brow, then announced right there over the grave that he knew who killed his brother and would take care of it. In those days, with our kind of people, you might not like your brother much but you took care of family business all the same.

  Watson and Cox had nothing against Mike, they probably liked him, everybody did, but making that threat because he was upset cost him his life. There weren’t nothing the killers could do straight off, it wouldn’t look right, so they laid low awhile, that’s what we figured. Sam Tolen was killed in May, nineteen-ought-seven, and Mike Tolen was killed in March of the following year.

  Mike’s killers was hid in a big live oak used to stand here at the southwest corner of the crossing. There was an old shack all sagged down, vines crawling in the windows, and one of those fellers might been hiding back in there. Coxes lived not one hundred yards from where we are this minute, but their old cabin is lost today back in that tangle.

  They shot Mike Tolen square in the face when he come to his mailbox on this corner. Our mailman Mills Winn from Fort White came down Herlong Lane in his horse and buggy, and he found Mike laying in his own life’s blood right where I’m pointing at. Must been about eleven in the morning. Mike never got to mail his letter, he still had it in his hand, that’s what Mills said.

  Down here a little on the west side of the lane is a very old and dark log cabin in a grove of big ol’ oaks—see it yonder? That is Mike Tolen’s place. Them live oaks is the heaviest I know of, around here. Probably them oaks was pretty big when William Myers built this house when he first come down from South Carolina in the War. Then his young widow and her mother lived here, and then Tolens. When the Watson women had the big house built, late 1880s, Sam Tolen had already married the Widow Laura, and he let his brother Mike have this house here. It was us Kinards took it over from Mike’s widow. She was a Myers, I believe, come visiting her uncle, married up with Mike against her family’s wishes, wound up back home in South Carolina with nothing much to show for it besides four little ones.

  When we moved here from across the Fort White Road, there was nothing left in Mike Tolen’s cabin but some old broke cedar buckets and bent pots, a couple of cane chairs, and some torn mattresses that the field rats had got into. Them old mattresses was stuffed with Spanish moss right off these oaks, but most people used chicken feather down or straw or cotton, sewed up in their own homespun. Made their own clothes so everything was scratchy, didn’t have none of this slick factory stuff like I got on here today. Wool in winter, cotton in summer—that was all we wore.

  My dad burned Mike Tolen’s mattresses, and us kids was glad about it, cause with so much blood on ’em, they drawed the ghosts. There’s blood spots on the wall right now that’s been there since the day they brought Mike home. That’s how bad they shot him up, that’s how much blood there was.

  Rat smell everywhere, that’s what I remember. House dead silent and so empty, only bat chitterin and cheep of crickets, and the snap of rats’ teeth in them old mattresses. A house can have bloody rape and murder, or it can have folks who live good churchly lives, but rats don’t pay that no attention, do they? Gnaw a hole in your Bible or your daddy’s body, just depending.

  Anyway, Mills Winn drove all around putting the news out, his old horse was overdrove that day. Sam Tolen’s death never stirred folks up, but down deep I reckon we was worried about having them two ambushers in our community. In killing Mike Tolen, they had went too far. Mike was a county commissioner and a well-estimated man, and when word spread, this whole section was buzzing like a swarm of hornets.

  Old Man Edmunds, ran the store at Centerville, he was the most religious man we ever knew about, we never heard a cussword from his mouth. But when he heard about Mike’s death, Mr. Edmunds hollered, “All right, boys, let’s lynch them sonsabitches!” And my brother Luther was in the store, and he was so shocked that he turned to young Paul Edmunds, to make sure what Paul’s daddy had just said. And young Paul being so excited hollers, “Sonsabitches! That’s what Pa said, all right! Heard it myself!” And his daddy was so riled to hear that word that he run right over and twisted up Paul’s ear and whapped him one!

  So the people gathering, and the men carried their firearms, ready to go. Besides being riled up, they was scared, and I believe they was more a-scared of Leslie than they was of Edgar, because Edgar was good company and a pretty good neighbor till you crossed him, whilst Cox was a lazy kind of feller with a very very ugly disposition. They figured Cox was the real killer, but they also knew Watson’s reputation, and reckoned both had took a part. Cox and Watson weren’t afraid of anything this side of hell. All the same, they bushwhacked them two brothers, shot ’em down like hogs.

  The Sheriff’s men knew before they come here that they was after the same fellers that was already suspected in Sam Tolen’s death. Leslie had took off quick as a weasel, no one could find him, but they found hoofprints in the woods, and them bloodhounds went south a mile or so to Watson’s place. And Edgar Watson was at home, he come right to the door, though he surely knew they would be coming for him. Either he was innocent or he had some kind of alibi he thought would hold.

  Come time to step up and arrest Ed Watson, there weren’t no volunteers, nobody was as riled up as they thought, So Joe Burdett—that’s Herkie’s daddy—he said, “I’ll go get him.” My brother Brooks was there, he heard him say it. Nobody asked Joe to volunteer, he just upped and done it. Small fella, y’know, very soft-spoken and shy, seemed to hide behind that bushy beard that come all the way down to his belt buckle, like a bib. He never joined in all the yelling, but when he said he would go get Watson, well, they knew he meant it. So Deputy Nance called for another volunteer, and Brooks was so impressed by Joe Burdett’s courage that he piped up and said he would go, too.

  Them two went up the hill to Watson’s fence, went to the gate, and Joe called, “Edgar, ye’d best come on out here!” When Watson came out, they had their guns on him. Burdett pulled out the warrant, saying, “Edgar J. Watson, you are hereby under arrest, by order of the Columbia County Sheriff.”

  Ed Watson took that very calm, never protested, but Edna busted right out crying, and her babies, too. Edna sings out, “Uncle Joe, Mr. Watson ain’t done nothing wrong! He been home here right along!” But Joe Burdett only shook his head, so Watson said kind of ironical, “Well, then, Joe, I will change to my Sunday clothes, cause I don’t want to give our com
munity a bad name by going up to town in these soiled overalls.” That’s how Brooks Kinard described what Mr. Watson said and the way he said it.

  Burdett was too smart for that one. He says, “Nosir, Edgar, you ain’t goin back into that house.” Says, “Edna can bring your clothes out to ye, but you can’t go in.” So Edna brings out some clean clothes—she is still crying—and Watson says, “I’ll just step into the corncrib there to change, I’ll be with you fellers in a minute.” Well, Burdett was too smart for that one, too. He told Brooks, “You search that corncrib over yonder, make sure there’s no weapon hid in there.” And sure enough, there was an old six-gun, loaded and ready under a loose slat on the crib floor.

  So Ed Watson changed his clothes out in the yard on a cold March day, had to go right down to his long johns. And when he was near stripped like a plucked rooster, he grinned and give a wave to the armed crowd waiting on him down by the road. Joe told him he could have ten minutes to instruct Edna what he wanted done about his farm, and Edgar said Nosir, that would not be necessary. If you boys aim to arrest an innocent man, he said, let’s get it over with. However, he would sure appreciate it if he could just step inside the door so he would not have to kiss his wife good-bye in front of all these men. Burdett shook his head. Let Ed Watson get a foothold, see, there wouldn’t a-been no Joe Burdett nor no Brooks Kinard, neither, because Watson knew how to shoot, he didn’t miss.

  Edgar give his wife a hug, told her to calm herself, he would be home soon. He walked down to the fence to where the men was waiting, and they lashed his wrists. Never turned to wave to that poor girl, never looked back, but strode off down the road, until they had to hurry to keep up. It was like he was leadin ’em, and all them fellers spoke about this after. Edgar Watson had some inner strength, like his innocence and faith in God would see him through. If he was afraid, he never showed it. And that terrible calm was what got poor Brooks to worrying that Mr. Watson might be innocent after all, he got to praying by his bed at night for his own salvation. But Luther Kinard told him, “Brooks, a guiltier man than Edgar Watson ain’t never yet drawed breath, not in this section, so don’t you go to pestering the Almighty, cause He got enough on His hands without that.”

  Next thing, Les Cox got arrested for Sam Tolen, but a grand jury hearing in Lake City never come up with enough evidence to try him, so they set him free. As for Watson, he paid for fancy lawyers, got his trial moved to here and there, and by the end of the year he was acquitted.

  My brothers, they was in that posse that went up to Lake City to lynch Watson, so I heard a lot about it as a boy. The posse men was the ones most angered up, but now they was the ones that was most frightened. They had wanted to make sure Watson was dead, once and for all, and when he ducked the noose, and his partner did, too, they figured that men as ornery as Cox and Watson would be honor bound to get revenge. Both them men were on the loose, and they knew just who was in that mob that had wanted to see ’em lynched, and folks around these parts was very frightened.

  This was early in 1909, and I recollect that long dark winter very well. Everyone in the whole countryside was on the lookout, cause those killers could show up any evening and drill the man of the house right through his window. So when the Betheas passed the news that E. J. Watson had took Edna and went back south to the Ten Thousand Islands, folks around here was overjoyed. But Leslie Cox had come back home because somebody had seen him on a January evening, walking down the road just before dusk.

  One night when my dad was away, my cousins played a trick on us, prowling around outside our house pretending to be Cox. Luther Kinard grabbed one gun and Brooks the other. Luther dropped down behind the windowsill, he was going to shoot from inside the house, but Brooks run outside, cause he was the kind that if he had to kill a man, he would do it face-to-face. And knowing how brave this boy must be, coming right out after ’em that way, them two trickers got bad scared and lay down on the ground behind the hog pen and went to hollering, “Don’t shoot! We ain’t Leslie at all!” That was a trick that nearly ended up all the wrong way.

  A year later, our poor Brooks took sick, died of consumption. I wept in the woodshed for a week. I often told myself for consolation that a boy as honorable as Brooks Kinard was too good for this evil world and would of died or got killed anyway, sooner or later.

  That spring there weren’t no Tolen Team, so Les Cox tried to pitch for Columbia City. I was going on fourteen by then, I was there for his last game, and it was just so pitiful that I felt sorry for him. Nobody wanted no part of Les but nobody dared to razz that feller neither. They just sat quiet, watched him fall to pieces. His nerves was gone, he couldn’t throw nothing like the way he used to, the ball hit the ground in front of the plate or flew behind the batter or whistled high over the catcher’s head. He was just dead wild, and nobody wanted to go to bat against him. The worse he pitched, the harder he threw and the more dangerous, and after a while it got so bad that his own team wouldn’t take the field behind him. I can see him yet today, slamming his glove down on the mound, raising the dust. So that give Les his excuse to pick a fight, and he punched some feller bloody till they hauled him off, and still nobody razzed him. He stomped off that field in a dead silence, and he never come back once all that summer.

  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 go to get it. I imagine he was still feeling humiliated by the time he got there, and when that feller felt humiliated, someone would pay.

  Beyond there—that line of pecan trees?—is where the Banks family had their cabin. Ain’t there no more, but I remember it real good. Two rooms with a small kitchen and the shed in back, same as all the cropper cabins. I seen that old house many’s the time in the days they lived there.

  The Bankses, they were black people, they were old people, and they were harmless people. Calvin Banks had been a slave for Col. William Myers, but he had been more fortunate than the average black man. He had a farm, he had about eighty head of cattle, he was a pretty prosperous old man, but still he worked hard cutting ties for the Fort White railroad. He had sense enough to make and save some money but not enough to take it to the bank. Carried his dollars in a little old satchel over his shoulder, and when he bought something, he’d take that satchel out and pay, and they give him the change and he put it back in, and people could see he had money in there, silver dollars and gold twenties and plenty of green paper money, too. Calvin Banks, he reckoned the Lord loved him, so he trusted people.

  I heard my dad mention it a time or two: Somebody’s liable to rob Calvin for that money if he don’t look out. Well, somebody did that, robbed him and killed him, and that somebody was Leslie Cox. Killed Calvin and his wife and another nigra named Jim Sailor.

  Jim was Old Wash Sailor’s boy and Calvin’s son-in-law, and he was standing on this road passing the time of day with another black feller named May Sumpter. While Leslie was over at the cabin robbing and killing, May heard the shooting and decided he would leave, but Jim stayed where he was, so it sure looks like he might of been mixed up in it. Likely let on to Leslie where the money was or something, and was hanging around there waiting to get his share.

  We figured Leslie tried to scare Old Calvin into telling where his money was and Calvin wouldn’t do it, so he shot him. Calvin Banks was maybe sixty, but Aunt Celia was older, well up into her seventies—she was near-blind and she had rheumatism, couldn’t run no more. Might been setting on the stoop warming her bones in that October sun, cause it looked like Les shot her right out of her rocker, but some said she slipped down out of her chair, tried to crawl under the house. Don’t know how folks knew so much unless Leslie bragged on it, which knowing Leslie, I reckon he did. Killed the old man inside, killed the woman outside, killed Jim Sailor out here on this road.

  Maybe Les didn’t get enough to make it worth his while to divvy up, or maybe he didn’t want no witnesses. If May Sumpter had
stayed, he would of been a dead man, too. Whole rest of his life, that old darkie thanked the Good Lord for His mercy. Folks liked to say that Leslie Cox broke off hard straws out of this field and poked ’em right into Jim’s bullet holes, for fun, but I knew Leslie and I don’t believe that. First of all, he never did know what fun was.

  So Leslie got his money, and we heard it was thirteen thousand dollars, but others said it weren’t but about three hundred. Course in them days a field hand got paid twelve to fifteen dollars a month, so even three hundred dollars was a lot of money. One thing for sure, Les ransacked that little cabin, cause I seen it next day, but they said all he could come up with was a metal box that turned up maybe two years later in the woods. Said it contained three hundred silver dollars. Had a tough time rigging it onto the mule, and the mule had a tough time, too, had to walk lopsided. Les told that part to his cousin Oscar Sanford, who told Luther Kinard. Course we don’t know for certain he found anything at all, because there weren’t nobody left to tell the tale.

  Our family field was directly west across the Fort White Road, so us Kinards all heard the shots, kind of far away. It was late afternoon in the autumn, 1909, and like everybody in that section, we were picking cotton. We heard one shot, then another, then in a little while another—sounded strange. We all remarked about them shots, but decided some neighbor was out hunting. Not till folks passed by next day and found Jim Sailor laying in the road did anyone know them poor coloreds over there was getting killed.

  Les Cox done his killing while we was in the cotton patch, and his cousin Oscar went right by us on his mule. At the sound of those shots Oscar turned around and headed back the other way in quite a hurry, like he’d left something on the stove at home. Well, that same day my brother Luther was putting in a well for Sanfords, and he stayed that night at Oscar’s house, which was across the line in Suwannee County, and who should come by that evening but Les Cox, all pale and angry, out of breath. And Luther was pretty nervous, too, because he had been in the lynch mob and he knew Les knew it. But Leslie paid no attention to my brother, just jerked his head toward the door, and him and Oscar went outside to talk. Luther and Leslie played on the same baseball team, but Luther had no use for him, and later on my brother went over to the trial and gave some testimony that helped convict him.