Lost Man's River by Peter Matthiessen

Orlando—”
    â€œBillie Jimmie, you mean?”
    Arbie Collins shook him off, impatient.
    â€œâ€”that a feller who met Cox’s description had been holed up for years out on the Loop Road. That’s why I went out there in the first place, to huntdown that sonofabitch, ask him some questions. Never found hide nor hair of him. Ran out of money, never made it back.” He resumed reading.
    â€œWhat did you plan to do if you had found him?”
    Arbie Collins lowered the manuscript. “Same thing you did with that posse list of yours,” he snapped. “Pass the dirty job along to someone else.” Scowling hard, he hunched down again behind the pages.
    â€œYou saw that list?”
    â€œRob Watson showed it to me.”
    â€œI never knew that Rob ever received it!”
    Arbie Collins scoffed, using the manuscript page to wave him off. Every old cracker in southwest Florida had a story about that list, he said. The only man who thought that thing was secret was the fool who made it. He winked at Lucius, blowing smoke, then claimed he’d found the list among Rob’s papers.
    â€œYou’re the one who showed it to Speck Daniels.”
    The old man nodded. One evening out at Gator Hook, noticing the name Crockett Daniels on the list, he’d called it to Speck’s attention as a joke.
    â€œSpeck think it was funny?”
    â€œNo, he sure didn’t.”
    â€œMr. Collins? I’d like that list back.”
    The old man resumed reading, raising the page to hide his face. “That list is the lawful property of Robert B. Watson, who left his estate to me.”
    Lucius sat down carefully on a blue canvas chair. “Are we related? Through the Collinses in Fort White?” This old man, washed and clean-shaven, reminded him of his Collins cousins—slightly built and volatile, black-haired, with heart-red mouths and pale, fair skin.
    â€œSure looks like it!” Arbie waved the title page, derisive. “ ‘L. Watson Collins, Ph.D.’!”
    Sheepishly, Lucius explained that the publishers had insisted on a pseudonym and also on citing his degree. That “Ph.D.” was ridiculous; he had not bothered to attend his graduation, much less used his title. In fact, he was not really an historian—
    â€œA historian.” Arbie grinned slyly at his host’s surprise.
    This raffish old man was somewhat educated. He was also careless, dropping and creasing pages, flicking ash on them. Finally Lucius stood up and crossed the deck and snapped his notes off Arbie Collins’s stomach, exposing the white navel hair that sprouted through the soiled and semibuttonless plaid shirt. “You certainly make yourself at home!” he said.
    â€œWell, I’m a guest. You invited me, remember? You sure don’t act too glad to see me—”
    â€œI don’t like people rooting through my notes—”
    â€œI
found
’em.” Arbie Collins sat up with a grunt and swung his broken boots onto the deck. “Right where you left ’em, on the table inside. And they look to me like notes for a damn whitewash.” He stood up spryly and performed a loose-boned shuffle, snapping his fingers. “ ‘
Notes on the Ol’ Family Skeleton
.’ ” He cackled. “Clackety-click.” Like a skeleton danced on a string, the old man shuffled jerkily through the screen door. In a moment he was back, lugging a big loose weary carton. “The Arbie Collins Ar-chive,” he announced, setting it down.
    Politely, Lucius rummaged through the carton, in which dog-eared folders stuffed with clippings were mixed with scrawled notes copied out of magazines and books—mostly lurid synopses and brimstone damnations from the tabloids, dating all the way back to the newspaper reports from October and November of 1910. Most of the items were well-known to Lucius—the usual “Bloody Watson” trash, all