Lost Man's River (34 page)

Self-deprecating, Lucius laughed at his own recitation, inviting Burdett to cheer up, but Ad just stared at him. “My Lord!” he said. “You
memorize
that stuff?” He stared at his splotched shoes. “Might as well get going, then,” he said.

Lucius tailed his lump of a half brother west on the county road, wondering why he was looking up the tailpipe of that pokey two-tone car when he already knew Ruth Ellen's address and could probably get there faster by himself. If Ruth Ellen turned out as obdurate as Addison, he would not stay long. He would not even bother to wake Sally.

In a quiet street of one-story houses shaded by sycamores, Ruth Ellen Parker stood awaiting them upon her stoop. Mrs. Parker hugged her stolid brother, who said, “Hullo, Nonnie.” Oddly, he introduced her to “Professor Collins.” Before Lucius could greet her, Ad launched forth in sudden speech on the subject of his sister's many triumphs over adversity, blurting his words in the inchoate way of someone with a real horror of human converse. Persisting doggedly even after her hands started to flutter, speaking faster and faster to get it over with, he described how his sister had lived in this small house since her marriage to the late Mr. Parker. Nonnie had always hoped to be a teacher, and later in life, during the summers, had paid her own way to three different colleges in order to obtain a teaching certificate from the state board—

“Well, that's really something!” Lucius exclaimed, cutting him off as kindly as he could manage, for the sister had fled, leaving the brother to peer mystified at the screen door. Behind Ad, he saw Sally's blond head pop up in the backseat window and pop down again, not wishing to be observed, far less introduced.

Inside, Ruth Ellen greeted him anew, holding his
History
in both hands
like a hymnal. Not having seen him since she was five, she did not really recognize him, and after five decades, he could scarcely perceive in this middle-aged woman the snub-nosed child in the sun and salt Gulf breezes at Chatham Bend, who had dressed up in her peppermint frock and bright wildflower bonnet to kiss “Woo-shish” good-bye, yet had been so hurt by the abandonment that she'd run away around the house and set up a great caterwaul behind the cistern.

Like Addison, Ruth Ellen had retained the auburn hair of their late father, and her scrubbed pink countenance was plump as a fresh bun. “I believe Mr. Watson's sister married a Collins,” she told the Professor, who smiled back. It did not seem the moment to remind her that he was a Watson—in fact, her half brother. Politely she offered him a seat, but not before she had backed herself into a stuffed chair under a lamp where he supposed she passed most of her days. From this redoubt, having smoothed her feathers, she permitted herself a better look at him. What do you want with us? her scared eyes said.

On the walls all around were cheerful oils, unframed, including a painted copy of an old photograph of the Bethea homestead at Fort White. Ruth Ellen Parker thanked him kindly for gathering so much information about her family, and Lucius complimented her on her floral still lifes, and Ruth Ellen said she regretted her lack of training. Addison stood awkward in the doorway, hat in hand, anxious to be sent away. When Lucius smiled in his direction, trying to include him, Ad said gloomily, “Besides all this art, she designs and sews all her own clothes and makes fine patchwork quilts—that's another hobby.”

“Addison, do please sit down,” his sister said, as if he had stood up at his school desk for no reason.

They skirted fifty years of family news but soon gave up on these civilities—the ways had parted far too long ago. Lucius told them of the plan to burn the house at Chatham Bend and asked them to sign a petition which might save it. “You and Ad and little Amy were the last of our family to live there, and anyway, it would help our claim if we could show that the whole family supports it.”

“Who is ‘we'? You and that attorney? Count me out,” growled Ad, shaking his head. His sister sighed.

On a little table set out for Lucius's arrival were a few mementos from the Watson years that Ruth Ellen hoped might make his visit worthwhile. Her pale fingertips moved these about like counters, to be offered one by one as the spring day ticked past on a big loose alarm clock in another room. The first was a gold wedding ring, inscribed “E.D. and Edna”—perplexing, they agreed, since
E.D
. had been not their father's initials but their grandfather's.

After so many years, Ruth Ellen could not bring herself to say “my father,”
only tweaked her pink blouse or crisscrossed her plump ankles at each mention of him. On the other hand, she betrayed no shame or resentment. Such a man had nothing to do with her, her manner said. She had led a God-fearing life, as the world knew, and had nothing to fear in the Lord's eyes. However, she asked for Lucius's assurance that he would keep her location and identity a secret.

“All those bad things happened when we were small,” Addison complained, “but to Nonnie we aren't talking about the past, we are talking about her father, we are talking about horrible crimes in her own family that none of her neighbors know about even today!” His voice was rising, and his color, too. “What would they think of her? Our younger sister won't mention his name, not even to us! And you intend to
write
about it!”

“Addison? Please, dear.”

Ruth Ellen touched a few mementos before tendering a photograph of a mother and small infant—“me.” She smiled. Her mother was posed formally in a large round hat of black straw perched atop thick upswept honey hair—a wistful young woman, pretty enough, tense, sensual, large-featured, with a guarded smile. “Mama had hazel eyes,” Ruth Ellen said fondly. The portrait studio was in Fort Myers—on the back was scrawled “Fort Myers 1906”—and Lucius supposed that “Mr. Watson,” as Edna always called him, must have brought his new wife and baby daughter through Fort Myers while tending to his cane syrup business in the Islands.

“I really have no recollection of my … of Mr. Watson, but Mama always said I had his hair.” She touched her auburn hair. “A strong and handsome man, they say! He didn't have a potato face like mine!” She blushed at Lucius's protest. “I've wished so often I could find his picture, to see if it matched the one in my mind's eye, but no one in our family kept a photo of him, not even Mama!” Eager, still wary, she was sitting forward. “Do you have one, by any chance?” Told about the Collins picture, she shook her head. “I don't suppose that I shall ever see it.”

“Nonnie?” Ad growled. “Let sleeping dogs lie.” She smiled at Ad briefly, out of kindness.

In two of her photos dim figures were grouped on the porch steps at Chatham Bend. The imposing man in black suit and black hat, central and dominant in both, was E. J. Watson, but the features were lost in the dark of the hat shadow. “That's all I remember anymore—that shadowed face!” She giggled uneasily. “A memory of shadows!” Startled by that phrase, she took a great deep breath. “I will tell you everything I can recall,” she said. “Then we'll be finished with it.”

“Mama's mother died when she was twelve. A few years later, Grandfather Bethea and her new stepmother encouraged her to go to Mr. Watson. They wanted the grown daughter out of the house, so her own family encouraged her marriage. Mr. Watson had a fine house and plantation, and he came courting in a red buggy with a fine big horse. They were married in May of 1904, and I was born in Fort White in May of 1905.

“Mama's half brother, William P. Bethea, is only a year or two older than I am, but he claims he remembers meeting Mr. Watson. He says that he liked Edgar Watson and so did all the rest of the Bethea family, he doesn't recall a single adverse comment. My cousin Pearl McNair felt the same way.”

Ruth Ellen's curiosity about her father had been intensified a few years earlier by a letter from her Cousin Pearl. When she said this, her brother lunged forward and seized the letter from her little table and shoved it at the Professor, creasing the paper. At his needless intrusion among her things, his clumsiness and ungovernable impulse, her brow knitted minutely but soon cleared again.

On another occasion, Cousin Pearl had told Ruth Ellen that when she was a girl, a number of things happened that didn't make sense to her at all. One day at Fort White, she was riding with Aunt Edna and Uncle Edgar in the buggy when Uncle Edgar stopped at a crossroad. He had very small feet, and he put on Edna's shoes and went over to a fence corner and walked all around there making footprints. He would not explain it, just said it was a joke. Not long thereafter, they received word that Sam Tolen had been ambushed at that very spot.

In regard to her father's role in the Tolen killings, Ruth Ellen said that her mother's only comment was “He was found innocent.”