Arbie wasn’t altogether wrong, but neither was he relevant, and Lucius wished he’d left him back at the motel. The women’s affection for young Myrtle might be patronizing, but it was real. When one of them asked if she could help them, and Arbie snapped, “I doubt it,” the young black woman said coldly, “That the way you were brought up to talk to ladies, sir?”
And Arbie said, “That the way you were brought up to talk to white men, girl?” Surprised and stung by her disdain, he had struck back before he thought, and was instantly afire with chagrin. But when red spots jumped out on his pale cheeks, what the young black woman saw was rage, as bleak and unregenerate as Old Jim Crow, and she rolled her eyes on her way through the door to her own office. Arbie started to call after her, then stopped. A little hunched, he turned away and shuffled out into the corridor.
“Well!” one of the women said. The others glared, offended that the old reprobate’s confederate had the gall to remain standing at the counter.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that Mr. Collins—” He stopped. It was no use. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.
Taking a breath, Lucius inquired about documents pertaining to the murder trial of a man named Watson, back toward the turn of the century. The women informed him in no uncertain terms that deputy county clerks had more important matters to attend to than private research on some darn old jailbird. Why should they nasty up their fingernails and perms (their tossed hairdos seemed to say), digging out old dusty ledgers and disintegrating dockets on behalf of rude out-of-county people who hadn’t bothered to find out the precise dates? Were these people aware, one complained to another, how busy the county clerk’s office must be with the case of the real live honest-to-goodness up-to-date and otherwise outstanding mass murderer Mr. Bud Tendy, who had best-selling books and TV appearances and the Lord knows what all to his credit, and was on trial for his horrible life right here in Columbia County Court this very morning?
Madison County
E. J. Watson’s trial, Herlong had written, had been transferred to other counties, due to the threat of “a necktie party” in Columbia. Sally stayed behind to do some further research in the library while Lucius and Arbie drove northwest across the Suwannee River to the Hamilton County capital at Jasper. The grim three-story brick courthouse with its high clock tower where Lucius’s father had been tried for murder had burned down in 1929, but the old brick jail near the brick cotton gin beside the railroad tracks was dark, high, and forbidding. Part of its facade was a closed shaft like a chimney which plunged from the eave gutters to the ground—an old-time hanging shaft, Arbie explained. “Kept the hangman in out of the rain, I guess.”
“Today they’d call that a ‘departure facility,’ ” Lucius said, thinking about that “under-utilized facility” at the library where even now sweet Sally Brown sat hunched over the archives.
Arbie laughed. “I bet that ol’ departure facility gave your daddy food for thought on his way to and from the courtroom!” But chastened by Lucius’s bleak expression, he turned away.
Finding no old records in the new one-story courthouse, they continued west over the Suwannee into Madison County, crossing flat cattle country of small blue pasture ponds under live oaks, abandoned phosphate mines, hog farms with old corncribs and silos, and small clear black rivers winding southward from the hardwood foothills of the Georgia mountains to the marshes of Apalachee and Dead Man’s Bay.
In Watson’s day, the Florida Manufacturing Company at Madison had processed more Sea Island cotton than any place on earth. Today, laid low by the boll weevil, the county capital was a tranquil backwater of empty streets. The old jail where his father had been incarcerated was now the Suwannee River Regional Library, across from the Baptist Church. Presumably the trial witnesses had been lodged at the Manor House, a pink brick edifice with white columns which faced on the small park in the town square where oaks as thick as twenty men bound in a sheaf cast a soft shade. In the park stood a blockhouse from the Seminole Wars, and across from the blockhouse stood the two-story brick courthouse where in December of 1908, his lawyers had argued on behalf of E. J. Watson’s life.
The county clerk, summoned forth from an inner office, was a small quick man, thin-haired, squeaky. “Yessir? What can I do you for today?” Lucius Watson explained that they were looking for court transcripts of the trial of a man named E. J. Watson, accused of the murder of a man named Samuel Tolen—a historic case which had involved Governor Broward, he mentioned quickly.
“How historical would this gentleman be talking about, girls? Older’n me?” The county clerk threw a wink over his shoulder at his middle-aged staff, and the girls laughed. “1907? Nineteen-ought-seven? Well, sir, I was pretty young back at that time! My daddy hadn’t hardly thought me up yet!” Hearing no giggle, he hastened on. “Excuse me, girls, while I go peruse them terrible murders we got stored up for our perusal right outside the men’s room in the basement!” Mollified by a titillated titter from the office ladies, the county clerk went whistling off, not to reappear for three quarters of an hour, by which time that ancient archivist, Mr. Arbie Collins, had nodded off on a park bench that had somehow come to rest in the outer office.
“We got us a Edgar but we ain’t got no Sam,” the county clerk announced on his return. “It’s D.M. Tolen, and it’s nineteen and oh-eight. That close enough?” From behind his back, as if presenting a bouquet, he whisked a thick file packet stuffed with yellowed papers.
Lucius supposed that some earlier court clerk must have made an error. He sat on the bench, passing the pages to Arbie as he read them. The file included random scraps of testimony from a jury hearing at Lake City on April 27, 1908, and also court orders for changes of venue from Lake City to Jasper and from Jasper to Madison, together with sheriff’s expense vouchers and subpoenas. Though Dr. Herlong had specified Sam Tolen, all these documents concerned the murder a year later of his brother Mike. Also, there was a co-defendant, one Frank Reese. Though neither Lucius nor Arbie could recall any such name in any Watson document they had ever come across, Lucius had a dim and uneasy memory of a “Black Frank” at Chatham Bend—could Reese have been “the Negro” mentioned in Bill House’s deposition?
On April 27, 1908, in Lake City, Sheriff D. W. Purvis had opened the spring term of the Columbia County Court by proclamation.
STATE OF FLORIDA V. EDGAR J. WATSON AND FRANK REESE:
MURDER IN THE FIRST DEGREE
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE THIRD JUDICIAL CIRCUIT OF FLORIDA, IN AND FOR COLUMBIA COUNTY, SPRING TERM, A.D. 1908.
IN THE NAME OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA:
The Grand Jurors of the State of Florida … upon their oath present that Edgar J. Watson and Frank Reese, on the 23rd day of March, A.D. 1908, in the County and State aforesaid, with force and arms, and with a deadly weapon, to wit: a shotgun, loaded and charged with gunpowder and leaden balls, and which the said Edgar J. Watson had and held in his hands, in and upon one D. M. Tolen, unlawfully of his malice aforethought and from a premeditated design to effect the death of the said D. M. Tolen, did make an assault, and the said Edgar J. Watson … did then and there shoot off and discharge the leaden balls aforesaid out of the shotgun aforesaid, at, towards, against, and into the body and limbs of the said D. M. Tolen, and said Edgar J. Watson did then and there strike, penetrate, and wound the said D. M. Tolen … twenty-two mortal wounds, of and from which said mortal wounds the said D. M. Tolen did then and there die. And the grand jurors aforesaid … do further present that the said Frank Reese was then and there unlawfully of his malice aforethought and of and from a premeditated design to effect the death of said D. M. Tolen, present, aiding, abetting, conspiring, assisting, and advising the said Edgar J. Watson the felony aforesaid to do and commit.
Identical charges had been filed against Reese, with Watson as aider and abettor.
Most of the material in the packet concerned court business in the grand jury indictment and the trial—witness selection, depositions from count
y residents on both sides of the question of whether or not the accused could receive a fair trial in this county, courtroom disputes over lynching threats to the defendants, motions for and against a change of venue. Following the intervention of Governor Broward, who ordered the defendants removed to “a place of safety,” they were taken to Jasper on the night train, and a change of venue to Hamilton County was granted the next day, May 4. The trial at Jasper commenced on July 27 and ended with a hung jury three days later. On October 2, another change of venue moved the trial to Madison.
All courtroom testimony had apparently been sealed, but a few scraps from an earlier grand jury hearing accompanied the court documents, including a cross-examination of Mr. Jasper Cox, who testified on behalf of the defendants on the day before they were removed to Hamilton County on the night train. Mr. Cox declared that on March 26, three days after the murder of Mike Tolen, he had been approached in front of the courthouse by a member of the grand jury, Mr. Blumer Hunter, who told him “he was helping to get up a mob to get these men and asked if I didn’t want to assist them, and I told him it was out of my line of business.”
Q. These defendants here are under indictment for killing Mike Tolen, are they not?
A. Yes.
Q. And your nephew is under indictment for killing the other one, the brother of Mike Tolen?
A. Yes.
Q. There was no charge against Leslie Cox at that time, was there?
A. No, sir.
With this brief exchange—the only mention of Leslie Cox in the thick packet—a vital piece of evidence had come to light. Edgar Watson had never been indicted for Sam Tolen’s murder. Cox was charged with it after the arrest of Watson and Reese for the murder of Tolen’s brother a year later.
Lucius stifled a small yip of excitement “like a young dog on a rabbit,” Arbie grumped, reaching for the page. Lucius went outside to savor the spring light. When Arbie caught up with him, they crossed the street to the old newspaper in its single-story shop, which provided three contemporary clippings.
MIKE TOLEN WAS MURDERED ON FARM
POSSE FORMED IN LAKE CITY. HEADED BY
BLOODHOUNDS. LEFT FOR SCENE
Lake City, March 23.—Mike Tolen, a prominent farmer residing between Lake City and Fort White, was murdered by unknown parties on his farm about 8 o’clock this morning.
News was immediately brought to the city of the murder and a posse, headed by bloodhounds, were soon off for the scene of the murder. The authorities suspect certain parties of the murder and it is believed that arrests will be made tonight and the prisoners brought to this city. Sam Tolen, a brother of the dead man, was murdered by unknown parties last summer. The trouble is the outcome of a family feud.—Jacksonville Times-Union, March 24, 1908
JURY SELECTION FOR WATSON TRIAL
The special term of the Circuit Court called by Judge Palmer for Madison County convened Monday. The term was called for the trial of a murder case on change of venue from Columbia County, the defendant being E. J. Watson, a white man, and Frank Reese, a negro, they having been indicted for the murder of one Tolen, white, in Columbia County. The case is one which excited the people of Columbia greatly, all the parties concerned being prominent.
The defendant Watson is a man of fine appearance and his face betokens intelligence in an unusual degree. That a determined fight will be made to establish the innocence of the defendants is evidenced by the imposing array of lawyers employed in their behalf.… A special venire of 47 citizens of the county was ordered from which to select a jury and at this writing a jury is being chosen.—Madison Enterprise-Recorder, December 12, 1908
E. J. WATSON ACQUITTED
Defense witnesses subpoenaed for the Madison trial were essentially the same as for the previous one, with some new faces, well over thirty in all. Testimony was heard from December 12 to December 18, when the jury was charged. On Saturday, December 19, jury foreman J. R. Lang read out the verdict: “We the jurors find the prisoners at the bar not guilty, so say we all.” In obedience to the verdict, the Court promptly discharged the prisoners.—Madison Enterprise-Recorder, December 24, 1908
Before leaving Madison, Lucius telephoned Watson Dyer, who had asked to be kept posted. He did not seem the least bit curious about Frank Reese.
“The point is, your father was acquitted,” Dyer said. “He was found innocent. ‘Innocent until proven guilty’—that’s the American way.”
“Well, I guess so. If the accused is the right color.”
“What I mean is,” Dyer said, impatient, “we can assume for our purposes that E. J. Watson did not kill Samuel Tolen. And if he was proved innocent of one false charge, there might be others. So in our book we can say that—”
Irritated by that “our” without quite knowing what was so objectionable, Lucius said sharply, “Let me repeat. My father was charged with killing D. M. Tolen. Mike. The man indicted for the murder of Sam Tolen was Leslie Cox.”
“Is that a fact?” Mild surprise rose slowly in Dyer’s voice like the first thick bubble in a pot of boiling grits.
“It’s possible, of course, that both killed both.”
“Or that neither killed either. Don’t go forgetting what’s-his-name. The nigger.”
The Deacon
Awakened next morning by diesel snorts and air brakes and the howl of tires, Lucius Watson sat up with a start and gazed at Arbie, who looked dead—as flat and scanty as a run-over rabbit on an August highway. His neck was arched and his hair dry and his bloodless lips were stretched on small dry teeth, and the parched hollow of his mouth was too wide open, as if at some moment in the night he had struggled for a breath of air and never found it.
“Today we visit Grover Kinard,” Lucius told him quietly.
The cadaver sucked up breath and coughed, and one eye sagged open, contemplating Lucius. The dry mouth closed and opened up again with sounds of sticking, as a spavined hand went palpitating toward the cigarette pack on the bedside table. Finally he growled in phlegmy tones that he had better things to do than waste a day with some gabby old-timer.
Lucius was concerned because the Royal Alligator was way out here near the interstate and Arbie had no transportation and no driver’s license—nor social security, medical insurance, or ID of any kind, as it turned out, since he did not believe in government meddling, state or federal, far less paying taxes. There was no record of him anywhere, he often boasted.
“How will you spend the day, then?”
“Hitch a ride in to the billiard hall. Good whorehouse, maybe. None of your damn business.” Annoyed that Sally Brown had joined their party, Arbie wished to be courted with more ardor, or selected in place of Sally for this outing, but having already invited her the night before, Lucius merely shrugged. “See you later, then,” he said, accepting a day alone with Sally as compensation for Arbie’s evil temper later on. However, Sally was not up, and he did not wake her.
Lucius drove south from Lake City on I-75, turning off on the old road to Fort White and working around past the 7-Eleven store to the new Honey-dew Subdivision, where dust-filmed woods—“alive with redskins,” according to an 1838 report—drew back aghast from the raw scraped wounds of new development.
At the specified “ranchette,” he was shown inside by Grover G. Kinard, retired deacon of the First Florida Baptist Church, attired in sports jacket and open-collared shirt. Mr. Kinard did not greet his visitor nor did he present him to his wife, a pretty-pink old party propped like a doll on the front room sofa, in a bower of pale plastic flowers, hand-tinted photographs of smiling children, and a small TV. “Oriole,” Kinard said in a flat tone, without a glance at either of them. In timid whimsy, Oriole Kinard fluttered fingers at their visitor as the Deacon marched him past her sofa into her spotless kitchen. He offered no coffee, just sat him at the kitchen table while he hammered out on its linoleum just what was what.
“Yessir,” the Deacon said, drumming his fingers, “I knew all them people, just about the only
one still living that really knew ’em all to say hello to. There may be details I won’t call to mind, but I’ll tell you as best as I can remember. I can show you where Edgar Watson lived, and the Tolens and Coxes, and I can tell all about the killing down in those old woods.” He jerked his thumb in the general direction of the pink person on the other side of the pasteboard wall. “She ain’t a Cox but she’s related,” her husband said. Over the loud whoop-de-do of a TV game show, a sweet old voice from the other room cried out, “No, I ain’t never! Leslie’s grandmother’s daddy was my granddaddy’s cousin, but I wouldn’t know him if I met him in church!”
“It looks to me like you only know about one killing.” Mr. Kinard held up one hand, spreading the fingers. “Well, five was killed down around that section “fore them fellers got done.” Lucius got out his notebook, the sight of which made the old man suck his teeth. “My information must be worth a lot to you,” he said. When Lucius enthusiastically agreed, the Deacon coughed, then got it over with. “How much?” he said. “Two hundred dollars?”
“Well, to be honest, I never thought of it that way,” said Lucius, taken aback. “I mean, most folks like to talk about old times. I guess you’re the first I’ve come across who wanted money.”
Thinking that over, the Deacon squinted, not shamefaced in the least but ready to dicker. “One hundred fifty, then,” he said.