Lost Man's River (20 page)

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.

So Leslie got arrested in the Banks case. And sure enough, a mob formed quick and come to get some justice. But a minister was present, and that minister put his arm around that fine-looking young feller, saying, “If you take the life of this young man, you must take mine, too.” Well, nobody had
no use for that minister's life, so some concluded that Leslie Cox was spared by the Lord's mercy.

Leslie, Leo, Lem, Doc Cox, and Levi. I believe Leslie had three sisters and four brothers. If Leo Cox was your friend, all right, but if he was your enemy, look out! He was like Leslie that way. Sheriff Babe Douglass took Leo as his deputy so's he wouldn't be out looking for him all the time, but somebody killed Leo off—one of his own cousins, come to think of it—and darned if somebody don't come along real quick and kill that cousin! My wife's brother, who's related to them Coxes, he claims it was Leslie who came back to revenge Leo, but that might be just my brother-in-law's idea.

I guess I knew Lem Cox the best. Big likable sort of man. Lem never looked for any trouble, just lived down along the river, built him a shack, bootlegged some whiskey, sold a little fish bait for a living. Worms, y'know. Everything he could lay his hands on he spent up on whiskey. Got by best as he could, then coughed and died. Before he done that, Lem persuaded his daddy into mortgaging his farm, so pretty soon Will lost his land, then he died, too. Later on the youngest, Levi, bought back a few acres, and I reckon he is on there yet today. Got cancer, last I heard. His wife is crippled.

Yep, Levi Cox is still alive in Gilchrist County. And there may be a sister that married a Porter still living back in what old-timers call the Clay Woods. And maybe Les still comes to visit her, is what I heard. Few years ago, his brother Lem told a friend of mine that Leslie were not dead, said Les used to come around there pretty regular. Lem said he knew where his brother was hiding out but would never tell.

After they killed off the Tolens, people wouldn't hardly mention one without the other, they'd say, Ed Watson and Les Cox, or Cox and Watson. But after Calvin Banks, it was just Cox, he had the blame for Bankses to himself. And because they was nigras, he might of got away with that one, too, except that people was dead certain that this feller had took part in them Tolen killings, so them nigras give 'em a last chance to get some justice. Even Leslie's friends turned state's evidence against him. Folks wanted that mean sonofagun out of the way.

Although Will Cox was good friends with the Sheriff from way back in his Lake City days, his boy was convicted for the rest of his natural life. Hearing that, Les got very upset. He told the judge, “You got no call giving no sentence like that to a young feller who can't tolerate no cooped-up life! I weren't cut out to make it on no chain gang!” Maybe the judge winked, as some has said, and maybe he didn't. One thing for sure, the judge give Les the eye. Finally he said, “You'll be all right, boy.” That judge knew what he was talking about, too.

Les Cox was sent to the penitentiary for life and stayed three months. One day he was on the road gang out of Silver Springs, and it just so happened that Will Cox was there, passing the time of day with his boy's guard. The gang was shifting railroad cars, and it looked like one got loose some way, rolled down the grade for quite a distance to a place where Les jumped off and run. That's how they told it. His guard was faced the other way, never even fired.