New Bethel Church, just off the main road on the way south, had been “built of heart pine back in 1854 and was solid as ever,” said the old sexton in the churchyard gate, shielding his eyes to admire this house of God in the fresh morning light. “Watson? Was she a Collins? Come in here back in the eighties?” He pointed. “You’ll find her over yonder.”
Lucius hunted the old rows until a flit of sparrows drew his eye to a lone juniper; half hidden by that tree was a tilted headstone with eroded lettering crusted by black lichens. He knelt on the sparse grass to piece it out.
ANN MARY WATSON
WIFE OF E. A. WATSON
AND DAUGHTER OF
W. C. AND SARAH COLLINS
BORN APRIL 16, 1862
DIED AT HER HOME IN
COLUMBIA CO. FLORIDA
SEPTEMBER 13, 1879
Ann Mary, dead at seventeen on that unlucky thirteenth of September. Her headstone was a precious record, all the more so because particulars engraved in stone could be depended on. This one provided not only the name and dates of Papa’s first wife but the earliest record of his original initials Lucius had come across. That middle A was still appearing ten years later on Arbie’s court transcripts relating to Papa’s stay in the Indian Nations; subsequently he had changed it to J, presumably to obscure his identity as a fugitive.