"I was twenty-four, sir. His actions did seriously disquiet me. Mark my taking exception and reacting rashly down to the reaction of a youth intimidated by a "better," an orphan who had raised himself to an office of trust, resisting and pushing back when a belligerent aristocrat sought to belittle me. Yes, it was personal, sir, everything ought to be personal if we are respectful of the other person.
"He attacked me verbally and then physically. He thus assaulted the office of trust I held at the bequest of my fellow citizens. Sometimes the Christian admonition to turn the unwounded cheek so as to take another blow necessitates disregarding. How dare words incite violence, only violence should invite violence. His words did not provoke me to go for my knife, the thrown book did!"
His pink countenance had reddened and his eyes flashed danger as he gave me the first lesson of my educational adventure with him. Deeply felt sentiments were easily available to him. Then the anger and danger passed as quickly as it had reached full intensity.
"Maybe I'll tell you more of that occasion later, sir. I've been waiting since the fall of 1884 to tell my story. You are the first one to come wanting to hear it. The saying, 'Rest in Peace,' is exceeding true if the living don't remember.
"You're pretty resourceful, sir, finding my papers, all the skimpy secondary references to my activities, reading Friend Johnson's letters-even scouting out the geography of my home place in Virginia and trekking over landscapes in this area to see old thoroughfares, byroads, railroad lines, and houses. Exploring my space-one hundred fifty years removed! Oh, and the genealogical research was inspired, sir. My father, my mother, my brothers and sister-yes, inspired.
"I'm deeply mortified by your useless trip to Brother Martin's place in Lewisburg. I'm at a loss why that fellow lied to you. Granted it was a descendant's elbow relation you sought, and maybe some information on my furniture that Mr. Wyatt had told you about, but, well, your treatment by that cad was unseemly. It was exceedingly impolitic. Saying Mrs. Alford was dead when you'd been told at her apartment house thirty minutes earlier that she had just left for where you stood. Unfathomable!"
He looked disgusted, but then carried on in another temper, "Oh be that as it may withal. I took note early of you. Your interest in my story and early study about me were as a faint call from a far distance to me.
"You disturbed, in a most pleasant way, my rest. And then, when you came up to my grave that first time-well, let's say I heard your call clearly then, recognized you, and have been accompanying and observing your efforts close up these past few months." He thus revealed his interest in my project, in me, in a chance to get his story told, and something of the process that had brought him "awake" in the year 2004 and to Bill's Pool Room, on the south side of the Courthouse Square in Fayetteville, Lincoln County, Tennessee.