Lost Man's River (25 page)

“Well, now, Mister,” he began, “we hear you are some kind of a damn historian. These ladies and me have talked for years with all the old folks around here who still remember anything, and we think we've got the history down as good as you are going to get it.” He bent a bushy eyebrow toward the upstart, to show he meant to brook no opposition, then cleared his throat to give himself some speaking room.

Mr. Edmunds related how Col. William Myers had come here with his slaves during the War, being scared that he might lose 'em to the Yankees. He had left his wife, the former Miss Laura Watson, back in Athens, Georgia, because this Suwannee country was still wild and life uncertain.

“Grover Kinard gave him some history, Paul. Showed him all around the old community.”

“Grover Kinard? He never lived in Centerville in his whole life!” Indignant, the old man blew his nose, trumpeting for silence. “Now Colonel Myers was struck and killed by lightning. He was standing under a big tree between his log house and the old Russ cabin off southeast of it. We know that happened in 1869, cause we seen the will. The Widow Laura and her mother came down here to see to the estate, they were too grand to live in that log cabin so they stayed over at Live Oak. We found 'em there in the 1870 census.”

“Colonel Myers left that whole plantation to his
mother-in-law
!” Ellie Collins was still incredulous over this outrage. “And when the old lady died, it was supposed to go to his darn nephews instead of to the Watsons! That's where the trouble started!”

“It certainly looked like Colonel Myers married poor Cousin Laura for her money, and later on Sam Tolen did the same,” Hettie Collins said. “Cousin Laura was very kind and generous, but rather simple-hearted when it came to property—”

“Simpleminded,” April said. “Retarded, probably.”

“I don't know about all that,” Paul Edmunds warned the women, harrumphing a little in impatience, fingers working like big inchworms on his chair arms.

“There's no proof of that, April dear. That's just your own idea.”

“You have a better one? Why did Myers leave the whole thing to his mother-in-law, with instructions to pass it straight along to his own nephews?”

“Probably the Colonel just wanted to make sure that our Watson property stayed in the Myers family,” Cousin Ellie said tartly, and the women laughed.

“ ‘We don't know about all that,' ” April said to Lucius, mimicking Old Paul, who could not hear her. When her elders stifled smiles and frowned, this lawless person grinned at her new relative, inviting him to giggle along with them. He felt an upwelling of happiness, a return into his family, which he had not known since before his father's death.

Wishing to make some sort of contribution, he pointed out that those Myers nephews were Watsons on their mother's side. Cousin Ellie frowned at him severely. The family didn't look at it that way. It was not only his information they resisted, but the idea that it should come from an outsider, he decided later. He was not yet accepted by the family, since none of them were quite sure who he might be.

In 1870, the year after Colonel Myers's death, Ellen Watson and her children came from South Carolina. Granny Ellen and the Widow Laura, who were
nearly the same age, had been childhood friends. “We don't know if they corresponded, or if Aunt Tabitha invited her, or if Granny Ellen just appeared and they took her in.”

“Herlongs always used to say that before Edgar left Carolina, a freed nigger told him he weren't plantin the peas in a straight row, and was fixin to let on to his daddy. Well, somebody went and killed that doggone nigger.” Noticing his wife fluttering at his side, Paul Edmunds scowled. “And they never knew whether Edgar shut him up out of fear of punishment over them peas or because that nigger had spoke up too smart for his own good.”

“Folks say ‘nigra' these days, honey,” his wife coaxed him.

“Niggera?”
Old Paul glared suspiciously about him. “Well now, I reckon there
was
some question how that niggera died—at least, that's all Edgar was ever heard to say about it. Couldn't very well deny it, knowing the Herlongs come from that same section.” The old man shrugged. “Never had no regrets that Herlongs knew about.” He winked at Lucius, whispering harshly behind his hand. “I doubt he give that sonofabitch a second thought, how about you?”

“Maybe the whole story was just rumor in the first place,” Lucius said shortly.

“Well, darkies aren't treated that way anymore, not around here.” Distressed by Paul Edmunds's way of speaking, Hettie seemed anxious to believe what she'd just said, and her pained smile entreated Lucius not to believe that this community was still mired in such bigotry. “Oh, there's a social difference, yes, but as far as mistreatment, or not taking care of a neighbor because he's black—no, not at all! The Collinses aren't like that, and they never were!”

“Not all of 'em, anyways.” Paul Edmunds snorted, shrugging off all this darn folderol as pure irrelevance.

“In the old days, folks hurt black people and got away with it because nobody thought a thing about it,” Ellie said. “And maybe Uncle Edgar learned that evil lesson from his father and never unlearned it.”

“Old Ring-Eye conked our uncle once too often, knocked his brain askew,” April told Lucius, tapping her temple as her elders hushed her. Ellie cried, “Now, April, you're not suggesting he was crazy? Nobody ever thought any such thing! Hotheaded, yes! Violent, yes! But
crazy
?”

“At least that's some kind of excuse! Anyway, there is all kinds of ‘crazy.' He went crazy when he drank too much, we sure know that!”

Hettie Collins said carefully, “We always talked about the two reasons he went wrong. First, because his father was so mean to him. Granny Ellen said that Uncle Edgar started out in life just fine, but you take a good dog and you keep whipping him, he will turn bad. Another thing, he was very young
when he tried to take care of his family in the War. Those were hard years of want and famine, and after the War came dreadful anarchy and violence, and those young men on the frontier had to take the law into their own hands just to survive. So perhaps he was not naturally bad, not in his young years, he just went sour after poor Ann Mary died in childbirth.”

“How about that colored man the Herlongs claimed he killed in Carolina?” April demanded. “Looks to me like dear old Uncle had gone kind of sour by the time he got here!”

“Did this family ever think he was
really
crazy?” Lucius was certain his uneasiness had now betrayed him, for the room fell still, and everybody turned in his direction.

“Crazy like a fox, we used to say,” Mr. Edmunds told him. “Everything that feller touched turned to pure gold. Anyways, there were plenty like Ed Watson back in frontier days! Robber barons, y'know! Killings all over the damn place! Didn't stop at
nothing
!”

“They say those darn old robber barons made this country great, and made great fortunes, but they never let too much stand in their way.”

“Human life, for one thing. Uncle Edgar—”

“Well, not all men who resorted to violence were unscrupulous,” Hettie warned her daughter. “In Reconstruction, the Union soldiers and carpetbaggers and uppity colored people all around made life bitter and miserable, that's all. There were
many
men who felt they had no choice but to take the law in their own hands. They weren't
all
crazy, April dear!” Hettie went pink in the face. “My own grandfather,” she confessed. “There was this bold darkie who gave insult to his mother. Grandfather killed that man. Furthermore, he would not submit to trial for having done what he thought was right. They promised him the judge would let him off, they warned him he would be worse off as a fugitive than if he stayed. No, he said, what it came down to was his honor. He
knew
he would get off, of course, but he refused to be put on trial by ‘those damned radical scalawags,' whom he despised! He came to Florida and changed his name, called himself Ben Scroggins!”

Cousin Ellie sighed. “No, Uncle Edgar was not the only one who resorted to violence back in those days, no, far from it. He had fine qualities, but because of his bad reputation, he was accused of a lot of things he didn't do, which made him bitter. Anyway, that's what came down in the family.”

Because of his feud with the Tolens, Edgar Watson left the Myers plantation to sharecrop a piece of land for Captain Getzen, but he used the Collins store at Ichetucknee, and was good friends with Lem and Billy Collins. Hettie showed Lucius the yellowed cashbooks salvaged from the store, where Edgar Watson was one of six customers (out of twenty-two) who were identified as “good” prospects to pay their bills. In the late 1870s, his purchases
included tobacco, schnapps and bitters, and a pocketknife. On different dates in 1878, he bought ceiling and weather boarding, apparently to patch his cabin on the Junction Road. “Uncle Edgar was fixing that old Robarts cabin for his bride-to-be,” Hettie told Lucius.

“That same year, Minnie Watson married Billy Collins, and both couples lived there after their marriage,” Ellie added. “We have a courtship letter from Granddad Billy that turned up in her things:
‘Dear Miss Minnie, I would very much like you to accompany me on a buggy ride this Sunday.…
' Then Uncle Edgar married Ann Mary Collins, whose nickname was Charlie. We believe it was Edgar who gave her that odd name. Even on the marriage record, she is Charlie.”

Lucius glanced quickly through these documents. Papa had used the pet name Mandy for his second wife, Kate for his third, exchanging the staid Ann Mary, Jane, and Edna for more “wanton” names. He considered using this esoteric theory as a deft first step in introducing himself as the long-lost cousin Lucius, but before he could do so, Ellie boasted, “I have already told him about poor Charlie, even where to go to find her grave!” She avoided referring to him as Professor Collins, lest that name prove spurious.

Hettie said that Great-Grandfather Collins died in the same year as Charlie Watson, and they had his will. Edgar Watson had bought a double-barrel shotgun and a horse from that estate, paying $10.50 for the gun and $55.00 for the horse. She passed a scrawled receipt. “Far as we know, that was the double-barrel he would use till the day he died.”

“Probably used it on Belle Starr, she was the first one,” Mr. Edmunds said. “I knowed a feller who read all about it in a book.”

“After his darling Charlie died, Uncle Edgar went hog wild. It was five or six years, at least, before he calmed down and married that young schoolteacher from Deland. Still lived in the log cabin by the Junction, the same one he rented later to his friend Will Cox. That's where our cousin Carrie was born, and Cousin Ed, who was still a baby when the family left for Oklahoma later that year. We know that was in '87, because Julian was born to Minnie and Billy just a few months later.”

Grandpa Billy's brother Lem had killed a man in the Collins blacksmith shop behind the store. It seemed this man was angry because Lem Collins had been fooling with his wife. The Collins family put up hundreds of acres for a $4000 bond posted mainly by Laura Myers, and when Lem jumped his bond and ran away to Georgia, the family sold off most of its land to repay the debt. There was a Sheriff's sale of more Collins property in 1886, but Laura
Myers never recouped her loan, and the fortunes of the Collins clan never recovered. Grandpa Billy always said that Uncle Edgar had been a bad influence on Lem and might even have been involved in the killing, and other people were suspicious, too.

Uncle Edgar had gone away to Oklahoma, and once he was safe out of the way, Sam Tolen had married poor old Cousin Laura. The widow's marriage to an ignorant cracker almost thirty years her junior (and well beneath her social station, Ellie noted primly) had seemed to vindicate Colonel Myers's precaution of bypassing this foolish creature in his will. Sam Tolen proceeded soon thereafter with the construction of the manor house, which was scarcely finished when Laura died in 1894. Upon her death—at Tolen's urging, they supposed—Tabitha Watson, now an old lady, had transferred her daughter's “child portion” of the estate to her son-in-law, who wasted no time in selling the whole plantation out from under her.