Pleasure-Dome (1979)

David Madden's novel, published by Bobbs-Merrill in 1979, is narrated by Lucius Hutchfield, a young writer compelled to tell how, in the early 1950s, he tried to get his little brother Bucky off the chain gang in the mountain town of Greenbrier, and had to become a con man like their big brother Earl to persuade Bucky's victims to drop the charges. Its second half follows Lucius higher into the mountains to Sweetwater, where he coaxes the ancient Zara Jane Ransom into telling of her romance with Jesse James. (Open Library)

Watches

Elgin watch: Remembering 1948, when Earl turned up at the Bijou as a fugitive from reform school and won twenty-five dollars imitating Al Jolson, Lucius tells how his brother slept on the kitchen cot, laughed at him for crying, and stole his gold-plated, radium-handed Elgin wristwatch and new leather jacket the next morning; the parenthesis adds that it is the watch he is wearing now. Later, watching from a tree, he times the missionaries by the same Elgin. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: And the next morning, he steals my gold-plated, radium-handed Elgin wristwatch (the one I'm wearing now) and my new leather jacket that made me feel like Alan Ladd in China. (David Madden, Pleasure-Dome, scan cataloged as Bobbs-Merrill, 1979, p. 36; he times the missionaries by "my radium-handed, gold-plated Elgin wristwatch" on p. 139; Internet Archive scan OCR)