Lost Man's River(39)
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.