Lost Man's River (28 page)

“Who confided it to everybody else,” said April.

“I wonder if Governor Cone took pride in the Cox case,” Ellie said. “Because he'd hardly got through persuading the jury that this good-looking young man from a churchgoing family was a nice neighbor boy at heart when that nice neighbor boy turned around and murdered those poor old colored folks right up the road here! And within the year he killed three more in the Ten Thousand Islands, and white people at that! Committed six murders
after
the Tolen deaths, and here he was, hardly old enough to vote! Murdering fool, that Cox boy was! What Fred P. Cone turned loose on our community was a murdering fool!”

Ellie glared at each of them, one after the other, to make sure they understood that such a travesty of justice was unacceptable to Ellen W. Collins of Olustee Street, Lake City, Florida.

Mr. Edmunds, still agitating for the floor, revealed that sex had been a factor in the Cox-Tolen feud. “As I recollect it, Will Cox's wife Cornelia was some kind of a half-breed Injun, which might of accounted for her boy's revengeful nature. So when Jim Tolen done her sister wrong, Cornelia could never forgive that deed, let alone forget it. She swore a feud against that family, cause nobody messed with that mean bunch and got away with it. Trouble was, one of her brothers was already killed off, and the other one in the state pen, so she mentioned to Leslie, who was her oldest, that she aimed to defend poor Sister's honor by herself, being as how she was fresh out of brothers.

“Knowing Cornelia, Jim Tolen went on home to Georgia, so Leslie consulted with Ed Watson. Didn't hardly take no time at all for them two fellers to agree that Jim Tolen's brother Sam might be better off dead than running around making a nuisance of himself.”

Lucius tried in vain not to sound annoyed. “Mr. Edmunds? Are you sure all this is true?” Just when he thought he was getting things sorted out, local legend had come banging through the door like the town bully.

“That's the story, son,” the old man snapped. “Take it or leave it. Don't make a goddam bit of difference, not to us home people around here.”

“Now, now, Paul,” Letitia murmured, patting his old knee, which twitched in fury.

“It ain't like Tolens was his first!” Giving up on Lucius, Edmunds turned back to the women. “There was two niggers—
niggeras
—killed up by Columbia City. Leslie helped Sam Tolen out with that one, is the story.”

“Maybe that was just a rumor,” Hettie said.

“Mr. Kinard mentioned it, too,” Lucius sighed.

“Grover Kinard tell you that?” the old man said. “Well, he got
that
one right!”

“Leslie Cox would kill a man just to see him wiggle, that's what my daddy used to say.”

“My daddy used to say that, too,” April notified her aunt. “ ‘Leslie Cox would kill a man just to see him wiggle.' If he said that once, he said it—”

“April?” her mother said. “Honey, what's got
into
you today!”

“Now at the time of the Sam Tolen killing, Watson was past fifty and Cox only nineteen,” Edmunds was saying. “I reckon Leslie was some kind of a hero-worshiper, otherwise that friendship made no sense. What that Cox boy seen was this big strong well-dressed feller back from the Wild West, supposed to been some kind of a gunman, supposed to killed some famous outlaws in the Injun Country.”

“And what Uncle Edgar saw was a dull, vicious boy sent straight from heaven to do his dirty work. Uncle Edgar was smart and Leslie wasn't—it's as simple as that.”

“No, Leslie was not well thought of around here,” gentle Hettie agreed wistfully, as if still open to the possibility that the Cox boy was held in high esteem in other parts. “He was a sort of rough-and-ready person, you might say.” In her wide-eyed light irony, she smiled innocently at Lucius, who was struck by how much he admired the well-worked leather of these country women and how proud he was to be related to them.

“Rough and ready! Yes indeed!” Her daughter laughed.

“Trashy, that's what my daddy called 'em!” Ellie said, cutting off her niece with a fierce look. “Coxes and Tolens were trashy people. We always wondered
how Aunt Tabitha could ever let her poor dim daughter marry a trashy Tolen. But Leslie Cox! As my daddy said, ‘Now there was a
real
sonofabitch!' ”

“Some of those Coxes were good people and still are,” Hettie reminded her, pale eyebrows elevated in mock alarm at Ellie's sporty language. “I don't know what Leslie ever did except get in trouble, but his people were hardworking farmers, well-respected, and well-connected, too.”

Everyone laughed but Mr. Edmunds, whose knobby knee jumped about to beat the band. “Connected with the Sheriff, you mean! Connected enough to get Leslie let loose off the chain gang!” He turned to address the Professor, man-to-man. “Everybody in this section knew that Leslie was dead mean, but nobody wanted to suspect Ed Watson. Cause he was real likable, and I liked him, too, from what I seen of him. I was a young feller tending store, and Mr. Watson paid his bills on time, went out of his way to help you out. I talked to my dad all about it, talked to the old-timers who knew Watson, and I never met a one who got crossed up with him!”

“Know why? The ones that got crossed up with him were dead!” said Cousin Ellie. To heal their spat, April laughed too hard at her aunt's joke, until Ellie peered at her, suspicious.

Paul Edmunds's fierce frown made it all too clear that this was no laughing matter. When he had their attention once again, he declared that after Colonel Myers's death, his coachman Calvin Banks kept the location of his buried gold from his Watson women for fear the Tolens might get hold of it. That secret hiding place was lost with Calvin's murder. Right out here this minute in these hot old woods—Mr. Edmunds was pointing through the window—that buried treasure shone unseen beneath the pine needles. “And that was the money Leslie Cox was after and never got,” the inspired man told the Professor triumphantly, enjoying the expression on his face. “So Leslie come back here all his life, huntin that money, havin gone and killed the only man who could tell him where it was!”

Lucius held his tongue. What he was hearing was disgraceful fabrication, and yet it rang with a certain mythic truth.

“Some say those poor darkies were killed because Calvin testified against Uncle Edgar at his trial. Calvin was black, and he opened his mouth against a white man—that was enough!”

“Damn right, boys!” April gave a rebel yell, and her mother had to hide a smile as the others frowned. “If that ain't Southren honor, I don't know what is!”

“See, what Watson done, he got word to Cox how there was one thousand dollars waitin for him if he killed that niggera, and if he found Calvin's money, they would split it. Course that is hearsay,” Mr. Edmunds went on,
with a resentful glare at Lucius. “Can't put no trust in us local people that has lived in these woods all their lives and knowed every last soul who knowed anything about the truth of it.”

He allowed a moment for his big barb to sink in before resuming. “The story was that at his trial, Watson made a slit-throat sign to that old niggera, drew his finger crost his throat soon as Calvin first stood up to get sworn in. And Leslie was there—he was already turned loose in the Sam Tolen case—and Leslie seen it, so Calvin was as good as dead already.”

“From what I heard, Uncle Edgar liked to joke in court, to tease the prosecutor, get the jury on his side,” said Ellie. “But being Leslie, he would take it seriously when everyone else knew it was a joke.”

“Judge never throwed Cox out of the courtroom, just ordered Calvin not to be scared off. Him and the public persecutor reminded Calvin he weren't no damn ol' slave no more, but a bona fide American citizen and a franchised voter, so he better stand up and do his civic duty. And Calvin bein such a proud stubborn old mule, that's what he done. Well, nobody couldn't expect a man to let no niggera get away with
that
!”

“Uncle Edgar had his good name to think about, right, Professor?” April whispered. But the others raised cries of protest over Mr. Edmunds's headstrong version of events. “Where would Uncle Edgar get a thousand dollars, Paul? He was dead broke! The whole family was poor! For a half century, we buried our dead with wooden crosses!”

“Ain't none of my damn business where he got it! But he always come up with money, we know that much!”

There was no good evidence for any of this stuff, and Lucius sighed, disheartened. He felt suffocated. He longed to get up and stretch his legs, go out for a long hard walk in the spring woods.

Letitia Edmunds was marveling aloud that her own mother had attended this Centerville school with Leslie Cox. “They sat right here in this very room, looking out these same ol' windows!” cried Letitia, who promptly looked out of the windows herself by way of proof. “And Mama told me that Leslie Cox first shaved at the age of twelve!”

Hushing his wife with one terrible frown, her husband confiscated her sole contribution to Cox lore. Leslie Cox, he informed them, was a full-grown man by the time he was sixteen, and when unshaven, he looked close to thirty.

“Maybe his body grew too fast for his brain—”

“He was never nice to
anybody
, April,” Ellie said. “I never heard one good thing about him, cause he didn't have a good side, just a bad side.”

“I never heard about the good side of May Collins, either!”

“Now, April honey, nobody ever called Aunt May a
killer
!”

“Well, this family sure got upset when she ran off with one!”

Lucius glanced at Hettie Collins. Is that true? his expression said, and Hettie nodded. “After Billy Collins died in 1907, that's when Leslie started hanging around May. Minnie Collins paid no attention to her children anymore, she let that girl talk to any boy she wanted. May had no supervision from her mother, and meanwhile Granny Ellen was getting feeble, and poor old Cindy was half blind, and May ignored them.”

According to Hettie's clippings on the Banks case, the Bankses and Jim Sailor had been slain on Monday the 11th of October, 1909, and the bodies discovered Tuesday morning. As the leading suspect in the “foul and brutal murders of three hardworking peaceable negroes” (Lake City
Citizen-Reporter
, October 19), Cox was arrested the following day when he went to the courthouse in Lake City for his marriage license. Apprised of the romantic nature of his visit, the authorities “therefore” released the young man on bond, with the understanding that he would return after the wedding in order to be charged with triple murder.

Since Cox could easily have fled after the killings instead of going to Lake City for that license, and since he passed up a second chance when he was granted a day off to get married, he was apparently confident that the whole thing would blow over and his life would go on just as before. “Never thought there'd be no problem over killin nigger as,” Paul Edmunds said, “and his dad's friend Sheriff Purvis held the same opinion. Not only let him out on bail, they let him go clear across the county line to marry.”

Early Thursday morning, arriving on muleback at the school, Leslie Cox had made off with Miss May Collins, escorting her straight to her friend Jessie Barr's house in Suwannee County, where the wedding took place at 3:00
P.M
. that afternoon. “The Barrs were kin to us some way, and kin to Coxes, too. Evidently they sent someone to warn the family,” Hettie said, “because the Collins brothers knew right where to find 'em.”

“
Willie
Collins went,” Ellie admonished her. “Your father-in-law decided to stay home.” When April rolled her eyes, her mother raised a warning finger. “I don't know who married 'em,” Ellie continued, “but somebody must have made arrangements. He couldn't just pick her up at school here and go marry her!”

“Justice of the Peace Jim Hodges married 'em!” Paul Edmunds cried, reciting his fact proudly. “I talked to Justice Jim many's the time. He says, ‘Miss May, are you aware that this young man you are about to marry will not sleep in your loving arms tonight? That your newlywed will lay his head on a iron bunk in the Columbia County jail?' And Miss May says smartly, ‘No,
sir, Judge, I ain't aware of no such of a thing! And anyways, I aim to marry this here feller, so let's get a move on!' ”

“Miss May Collins did what she darn pleased, no matter what!” Ellie exclaimed. “May was willful and May was spoiled, there was only the one way and that was her way. But Willie Collins rode over to the Barr place and warned Leslie Cox that if he tried to take his sister, he would kill him.”

“Might of had his hands full, Ellie,” Mr. Edmunds warned her, not unkindly. “Leslie was a big strong six-foot feller, and the Collins boys was always pretty skimpy.”