On my way west to Edgefield Court House and the road to Georgia, seeking some sort of empty absolution, I rode into the old carriageway at Deepwood. The old house had fallen. All but vanished, it lay beneath a blanket of wisteria and creeper and dark ivy. The ancient sheds leaned away into the weeds, seeking the earth. I sat my horse, not daring to dismount, in dread of spirits. Since the Owl-Man’s death, I had dreamt of Deepwood many times, a nightmare involving a buried body sure to be discovered. The grave, too shallow, quaked underfoot, as if the cadaver was on the point of emerging from the earth. Unable to flee, I was often awakened by my own sharp cry.
Riding hard, I arrived toward dark at Hamburg on the Savannah River. A few years after Selden Tilghman’s torture in this small, sad, sorry town, half of it had been burned to the ground as a “nest of Radical Republicans” and the rest rechristened North Augusta, Georgia.
An old hostler who shared his bad cold food confirmed the story that Hamburg was the place where a war hero turned traitor had been tarred and feathered as a lesson to the Republican inhabitants and their detachment of black militia. “Them Regulators whipped that feller to strips! He was just a-beggin ’em to kill him!” He also related the details of the celebrated massacre, just four days after Independence Day of 1876, when the unarmed black militiamen had been taught their lesson. The old man had seen both events with his own eyes. When I asked if a big rufous man with a red ring around his eye had taken part, the man gave me a queer look. “Damn!” he said. “Know something? He sure did!”
For all their talk, the Northerners never knew black people and never really liked ’em. Our home nigras learned that truth real quick when they were sold out by the Yankees, who turned their backs overnight on their black friends. The quiet ones were living along as best they could but many were treated no better than those smart-mouths who were paid off for their swagger with the rope and bullet. Slavery was gone according to the law, but with the Black Codes and the KKK and then Jim Crow, life hadn’t changed much for the black man. A hell of a lot more burning and lynching was still going on than anybody could remember back before the War.
In this great depression year of 1893, Cousin Selden’s cousin Ben Tillman and his rabble-rousers would found their own Populist Party, which jeered at other parties (and the press) for their shameful subservience to the industrialists and their bought-and-paid-for politicians. The Populists joined with factory workers and the small black vote to go after the capitalists, who hogged all the profits and bribed the police to pound on any who protested while permitting the poor to starve in the cause of progress. Pitchfork Ben would go on to win election to the U.S. Senate, taking his safe seat away from Calbraith Butler. But very soon, Ben would revert to the know-nothing nigger-baiting of his snag-toothed faithful, who had barely scraped acquaintance with the English language. Maht not know nuthin but Ah sho’ knows whut Ah know! By that time, he had lost his black supporters. “The negro has been infected with the virus of equality,” he complained.
Pitchfork Ben would go far in life with his foaming at the mouth about black rapists out to sully the sacred honor of our Southern womanhood. As my fellow fugitive Frank Reese had once observed, only white rapists could be found in prison because black ones never got that far alive.
Next morning, crossing the Savannah on the ferry, I headed south to Waycross, over east of the Okefenokee. There I hunted in vain for Lemuel Collins, being curious to hear my erstwhile friend explain why he’d shifted the blame for the John Hayes killing onto Edgar Watson. However, I was able to locate that Mr. Smith who had kindly befriended me on my first journey south back in 1870. We went to a tavern for some talk. Remembering my name, he cocked his head to look at me more carefully. Finally he told me that a young feller named Watson had got himself lynched here in this district just a few years back. “Kind of looked like you, is why I mentioned it. Jack Watson. Ever hear of him?”
“Nosir, I never did.”
“Ain’t nobody forgot Jack Watson, not around here,” Mr. Smith was still disturbed. “White as you or me to look at but called himself a nigger. ‘Nigger to the bone!’ Had to be crazy as a shithouse rat but he showed plenty of sand there at the last of it.” Eager to relate the whole grim story, he was only restrained by my show of indifference. “Lynchings are all pretty much alike,” I said, “when you get right down to it.”
Mr. Smith invited me home to wash my feet and meet the daughters. There were four if I counted correctly, and every one a head taller than their guest, huge strong young females twice my weight who ate like stallions and drank me right under the table. Once their daddy had turned in with a loud snoring, those giant girls came down there after me and played hell with the clean duds their dad had lent me while mine got a wash. I never saw such love-starved critters in my life. The biggest lugged me over to her cornshuck mattress to finish up the job and I do believe the others had their way with me before the smoke cleared. I did my best but never got the hang of ’em some way, they just weren’t built right. I was glad to make my getaway next morning, clawed and gnawed up pretty good but in one piece.
The daughter known as Little Hannah would loom into my life again years later, by which time, with no sisters around to steal her thunder, she was called Big Hannah. By then we couldn’t quite recall just what had taken place under that table, but it made Hannah blush. “You had you a whole heap of young womanhood, for sure,” she giggled, “and done pretty good with it, too.”