Lucas Beauchamp Timeline and Summary

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• Lucas is a descendant of Carothers McCaslin, a white plantation owner, through McCaslin's daughter with one of his slaves.
• He's been married for forty-five years.
• Lucas grows up on the plantation with Zack Edmonds, one of the white McCaslin descendants.
• Carothers McCaslin's white descendants set aside $1000 for each of their black cousins.
• When Lucas turns twenty-one, he demands his own as well as his brother James's share of his grandfather's legacy. (James has disappeared.)
• Isaac McCaslin gives both to him. Are you counting? That's $2000 in the bank.
• Lucas becomes a tenant farmer for Cass, Zack and Roth Edmonds.
• He marries Molly, a town woman. He lights a fire in their hearth the day of their marriage, and they manage to keep this fire going for as long as they are alive.
• After Lucas and Molly have their first child, Henry, he has a run-in with Zack, whom he accuses of trying to steal his wife. He tries to kill him.
• Lucas continues to live on the plantation and farm using his grandfather's farming techniques. Lucas also successfully runs an illegal whiskey still on the plantation.
• Lucas has two daughters. One of them, Nat, turns eighteen and is being courted by George Wilkins, who runs a competing moonshine business.
• After trying to put George out of business, Lucas gets in trouble himself and eventually lets his daughter marry George.
• While hiding his still, Lucas finds a gold coin and gets really obsessed with finding the rest of a treasure supposedly buried on the plantation.
• He gets a metal detector salesman to bring him a metal detector and manages to cheat the salesman out of the price of the machine.
• Despite his usual even demeanor, he becomes more than obsessed with this treasure-hunting.
• Lucas's elderly wife Molly, however, worries that he's sinning by searching for a buried treasure and not doing his proper farming work.
• She goes to Roth and declares that she wants a divorce.
• Roth tries to talk sense into Lucas, but Lucas says he also wants a divorce.
• Halfway through the divorce hearing, Lucas changes his mind and asks the judge to cancel the case.
• Lucas takes the metal detector to Roth and tells Roth to get rid of it for good.