I set my face in what I hoped was an encouraging smile.
Arthur straightened as best he could and walked to a wheelbarrow loaded with rocks and dead vegetation. When he removed his shirt I saw scrawny arms and hands covered with liver spots the size of lima beans. Exchanging the pitchfork for a hoe, he tottered back to the row where he'd been working.
“I'd like to ask you about a piece of property near Running Goat Branch.”
For the first time Arthur looked at me. His eyes were rheumy, the rims red, the irises so pale they were almost colorless.
“I believe you used to own acreage in that vicinity?”
“Why you coming to me?” His breathing sounded wheezy, like air being sucked through a filter.
“I'm curious about who bought your land.”
“Are you FBI?”
“No.”
“You one of them crash people?”
“I was with the investigation, but I'm not any longer.”
“Who sent you here?”
“No one sent me, Mr. Arthur. I found you through Luke Bowman.”
“Whyn't you put your questions to Luke Bowman?”
“Reverend Bowman didn't know anything about your land, except that it might have been a campground at one time.”
“That's what he said, was it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Arthur pulled a parrot-green kerchief from a pocket and ran it across his face. Then he dropped the hoe and hobbled toward me, his back as rounded as a turkey vulture's. When he drew close I could see coarse white hair sprouting from his nostrils, neck, and ears.
“Can't say much about the son, but Thaddeus Bowman was as pesky a man as ever drew air. Ran a hallelujah house for forty years.”
“You were one of Thaddeus Bowman's followers?”
“Till I learnt all that casting out o' demons and speaking in tongues was a heap of horseshit.”
Arthur hawked up phlegm and spat into the dirt.
“I see. You sold your land after the war?”
He went on as if I hadn't spoken.
“Thaddeus Bowman kept hounding me to repent, but I was on to other things. The damned fool wouldn't accept my leavin' until I put it to him from the business end of a squirrel rifle.”
“Mr. Arthur, I'm here to ask about the property you bought from Victor Livingstone.”
“Didn't buy no property from Victor Livingstone.”
“Records indicate Livingstone transferred title to you in 1933.”
“I was nineteen in 1933. Got myself married.”
This seemed to be going nowhere.
“Did you know Victor Livingstone?”
“Sarah Masham. She died in birthing.”
His answers were so disjointed I wondered if he was senile.
“The seventeen acres was our weddin' present. They got a word for that.”
The creases around his eyes deepened with concentration.
“Mr. Arthur, I'm sorry for taking you away from your garden, bu—”
“Dowry. That's the word. It was her dowry.”
“What was her dowry?”
“Ain't you asking 'bout that land t' Running Goat?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sarah's daddy give it to us. Then she died.”
“Victor Livingstone was your wife's father?”
“Sarah Masham Livingstone. That was my first wife. We was married three years when she passed. Wasn't but eighteen. Her daddy was so tore up, he went and died, too.”
“I'm so sorry, Mr. Arthur.”
“That's when I lit outta here and threw in with George Hensley over t' Tennessee. He's the one got me to
