Lost Man's River(48)
Farther west on the Old Bellamy Road, pecan trees and wisteria in the hedgerow commemorated an old homestead now long gone. “I believe Edgar Watson lived in an old cropper’s shack right over by them oaks when he worked as a young feller on the Getzen place. Later on he got hold of some good Collins land and built his house, right down this road a ways.”
In a mile or so, they came over a low rise. On a hilltop on the north side of the road stood a yellowing frame house with rust-streaked tin roof, a big dark porch, and a fuel tank on the open ground, under the Spanish moss of a red oak. “Oh, yes,” the Deacon said, “there’s his ol’ pecan trees. That’s where Mr. Joe Burdett served him that warrant.
“Ed Watson farmed several hundred acres, and he was a pretty good farmer, far as I know. If he’d of been a bad one, we’d of heard about it. One time I was up there with my dad, William Kinard, I don’t recall whether we was driving him a well or fixing his pump, but I do recall that my dad was not too comfortable when Watson asked him to come. I wasn’t old enough to do much work, I’d fetch the tools, but I remember Watson, I sure do, never forgot him. Husky kind of man, thick through the shoulders. Later Dad told me that E. J. Watson was very very strong—unusual strong. He was pretty close to six foot tall, big pork chop whiskers, ruddy hair and complexion. Rode a horse and had a fine red buggy, too. Good-looking man, but not so handsome as Les Cox. Course he was older.”
Yes, Papa had been very strong and somewhat vain about it. Past fifty, with his son full-grown, he could lift Lucius off the ground with one hand placed under one armpit—“You get smart with your Papa, Master Lucius, you might just find yourself chucked into the river!” He could almost recall Papa’s body smell, the redolence of fine Tampa cigars and shaving lotions, the charcoal in the bourbon on his breath—all rose, mysterious, from the well of memory, light as the fleeting scent of rain on sunbaked stone.
“I don’t rightly know who farmed this land after Watson left,” Kinard was saying. “The paper company took over most of the old fields in this section. Grew pines for pulpwood.”
Capt. Thomas Getzen had been deacon of the Elim Baptist Church, which they visited on their way to Fort White. The old church had been replaced and the Getzen name had vanished from the region, but the Captain and his wife and those children born in the first years after the Civil War remained the most prominent citizens in the graying churchyard. The Deacon’s parents, William and Ludia, were buried near the Getzens, and so was his sister Eva and his beloved brother Brooks, who had perished at the age of twenty-three.
The lettering on the Kinard gravestones had been blurred over the years by moss and algae, and the stones had shaggy grass around the base. “My people ain’t had a visit in a good long while,” the Deacon mourned, scratching the dry wrinkles of his cheek. He scraped at the moss disconsolately with a small penknife. “Been too long,” he said, giving it up. Without a word, he headed back toward the car.
The solitary Tolen in the cemetery was D. M. Tolen, 1872–1908. His gravestone read “How Desolate Our Home Bereft of Thee”—a shard of funerary irony, Lucius thought, which Arbie would no doubt enjoy, since Mike’s widow and children had returned to South Carolina right after his death.
He turned toward the car. In the car window, in spring light, Mr. Kinard’s bald head shone like a skull.
They went south a few miles to Fort White, where the county road narrowed to a shady village street set about with high frame houses in old weedy yards.
“I’m happy to see Fort White, you know. Born right here in town.” Kinard pointed through the rolled-up window. “That’s Mills Winn’s house—the postman who found Mike Tolen’s body. Dr. Wilson had that house before him. Dr. Wilson drove his horse out our way every day for weeks after Brooks took sick, but Brooks died all the same. That was in the month of May, in 1910.” The Deacon sighed. “That spring, we saw that great white fire in the sky. Some thought poor Brooks had took sick from that comet, but I guess he didn’t.”
Kinard gazed about him at the passing street. “I ain’t been as far as here in years, and it ain’t like I lived so far away, you know. Eleven miles, is all! Never seen my own family graves since they was put in there! Too busy watching that TV, is what it is. Just goes to show you how life leaks away, now don’t it? One day you look up, look around, and it’s all empty, cause the real life’s gone. You’re setting there like you always done, but your hands are empty, there ain’t no color left to life, and you ain’t got no more hope of nothing—cept the Lord, of course.” He turned from the car window to glare at Lucius, outraged, inconsolable, waving Lucius away in case he might try to comfort him.