Shadow Country (84 page)

Lem's beloved, Mrs. Prudence Hayes, told the grand jury she had no idea why Lemuel P. Collins would wish to murder her dear departed John. If the jurors wanted her opinion, sobbed the little widow, looking the accused straight in the eye, what this man deserved was a good hanging. Repeated those cruel words with her hand on the Bible and her sweet little honeypot keeping its own counsel under her widow's weeds. “I aim to see justice done,” she cried, “and who can blame me?” In need of just a little more of that nice limelight, his sweet Prue pointed a trembling finger at poor Lem.
Hadn't this same drunken brute come through her window on previous occasions, bent on God knows what? My goodness, woman! When? Why, sir, only last week, may it please Yer Honor!

Sweet Prue having overplayed her hand, the grand jury was tempted to indict two lovebirds for the price of one. But even knowing that his darling had betrayed him, Lem remained a stiff and starchy Collins, too well brought up to testify against a tiny widow. The jury being generally agreed that there was understandable emotion behind the death threat made by the deceased, my friend was indicted for murder in the first degree.

As cash poor as most families in our section, the Collinses gave up hundreds of acres of good land plus a large loan from Cousin Laura to make the $20,000 bond for Lem's release. Having no case worthy of the name, Lem jumped bail and lit out for Georgia. Some of the debt was eventually paid off by the sheriff 's auction sale of Collins land, but Laura Myers would never recover a penny. Kind Laura forgave this cheerfully enough but her husband and mother did not, and the situation created difficulties in the family which were very hard on the newlyweds, Billy and Minnie.

In short, Lem Collins brought about a fatal downturn in his family's fortunes. Naturally anxious to ease his guilt by transferring responsibility, he wrote a letter to his brother Billy concerning the murder weapon he claimed Edgar had given him, along with some very bad advice. I don't know just what Lem said or what Billy repeated, but pretty soon the death of Hayes was blamed on E. A. Watson. There was even a rumor that Ed Watson went along with Lem and did his shooting for him.

Though my neighbors gave me funny looks, only Fat Sam had the gall to bring it up. “Some fellers been tellin me lately, Ed, how it might been you behind the killin of our farrier. Course I told 'em straight off you was clean as a baby's bottom. ‘Why hell, no, boys!' says I. ‘There weren't no money in it! Ed never had no damn motive at all!' ” Sam gave me that big dirty wink of his but stopped chuckling quick when he saw my expression. “Only jokin, Ed,” said Sammy Tolen.

Only joking, Ed. As the saying goes, it's a damned good thing there's enough bad luck to go around because otherwise I'd have had no luck at all. Here I was, still in my twenties, and for the second time in my young life, my reputation was buried deep in mud, and my prospects, too.

I think it must have been about this time that my whole outlook began to change. I was learning the hard way that I had to make my own luck in this life if I aimed to survive. And so, having no choice about it, I grew hard, as a shrub battered by wind grows gnarled and woody.

SONBORN

I was twenty-nine when, in 1884, I married a schoolteacher, Jane Susan Dyal. Jane was a lady even by my mother's standards, well-educated and softspoken and pleasant in appearance, though no longer young. If not a creature of passion like my lost Charlie, she was a kind, sensible person, glad of my attentions and not offended by coarse, manly needs, having missed a maiden lady's fate by a cunt whisker.

Goodwife Jane (I called her Mandy) would soon present me with a lovely baby girl. We named her Carrie. Two years later came a boy, named Edward Elijah for good luck after the rich Old Squire at Clouds Creek. As if her own little smellers weren't enough, Mandy worried about Sonborn, as I referred to Charlie's child on those rare occasions when I felt obliged to acknowledge his existence. Since I had refused to ride eight miles to Lake City simply to name him, he remained “Son Born” in the county register and legally, perhaps, did not exist at all; in truth I had not laid eyes on him since the bloody hour of his birth eight years before. I knew, of course, that his mother's parents had taken him, and I also knew because Mandy told me that those folks were old and pretty well worn out. Lately Charlie's mother had been poorly, Mandy added, and Old Man Curry had trouble enough tending his wife and chickens without taking care of a young grandson, too.

My wife meant well but Sonborn was not her business; I notified her she was not to speak of him again. But in the safety of the dark, on our night pillow, she would murmur in my ear, stroking my head and whispering how wonderful it might be, not only for the little boy but for his father. From Minnie she knew something of our family past, and she dared to hint that turning my back on my firstborn might have reopened an old wound inflicted by those long dark years of boyhood. I shouted at her to bluff her back before she said what she said next, that my refusal to acknowledge Charlie's child could only breed guilt and regret. Naturally I became furious, since what she said was true.

When I stopped shouting and fell quiet, Mandy continued, with that gentle resolve that I would come to dread: if the first Mrs. Watson had been the angel I extolled so often to the second Mrs. Watson—I sensed Mandy's fond ironic smile even in the dark—then she surely watched over her loved ones from on high and was grieving that her innocent child had been abandoned. (That idea gave me a start, and not because of Sonborn: if Charlie and the Lord were in cahoots on high, they might have witnessed all my dirty doings with Miss SueBelle Parkins.)

And so on a Sunday I rode over to the house of Mr. Curry Collins, who was whittling a wood toy out on his stoop. As I entered the yard, Ring-Eye's ancient roan, half warhorse and half mule, gave me a walleyed look and stamped and snorted, moving sideways and in circles.

“Been a bear around,” Old Man Curry advised me—not much of a greeting. I informed him I had come there for my son, having heard that Mrs. Collins was feeling poorly: no doubt a growing boy could be a burden, and anyway, it was high time he came home.

“Home?” Mr. Collins stood up slowly but did not come down the steps, and he never invited me into his house. “This is the only home he's ever had.”

I never even swung down off my horse, which chose this moment to drop a steaming load right in the dooryard. “No sir,” said I. “This is not his home and it's not up to him. You tell him to pack up and come out here quick unless you want me to go in there and fetch him.” At these words, Charlie's brother Lee came out and looked me over with dislike, hands in hip pockets, then returned inside without a word.

They believed all the bad stories, that was plain. Mr. Curry was concerned for his grandson and never tried to hide it. “We tended little Elton these eight years while you forgot about him. That entitles us to some say in the matter, Edgar.”

“Nosir, it does not,” I said. “You are entitled to my thanks for your hospitality to your own grandson and you have it. Now let's get a move on.”

Already I was talking past him to the small boy in the doorway, who held my eye with a cool and steady gaze. You weedy little shit, I thought, you're not much to show for the unholy joy that went into your creation. In a moment, he ran back inside, but the brief glimpse shook me, for he had his young mama's full black eyes and pale rose-pointed skin. With one look I knew that this child would stir up squalls of that hard grief which I so dearly hoped were at last behind me.

“I am his daddy, after all,” I added gruffly.

“First time you acted like it. You never even took the time to go register his name so we named him Elton.”

“His name is Robert. After his great-uncle, Colonel Robert B. Watson of Clouds Creek, South Carolina.”

A wail rose from the ill woman within. “Elton!” she cried. The boy was already through the door, both arms wrapped around a little bindle.

“Whatever happened to you, Edgar?” Curry Collins said, very sharp and cold. “You were a pretty nice young feller when you first come around these parts, as I recall.”

“Say thank you and good-bye,” I told the boy.

Robert Briggs Watson stuck his hand out, saying, “Good-bye, Grandpa,” but winced and shifted in discomfort, I noticed, when the old man leaned down to peck him on the head—no doubt old breath. “Good-bye, Elton,” Collins called after him in muffled voice as the boy ran to my horse. He looked defeated but he kept his dignity and did not call again.

I swung the child up behind me. “Your name is Robert now,” I notified him. “You ready, Robert?” “Yessir,” he said. As we rode away, Mr. Collins lifted a slow hand which his grandson never saw. The boy had his arms around me, face pressed hard, and I guided his small hands to my belt loops, feeling a coolness where his tears wet my shirt. “I knowed you'd come,” came his small muffled voice. And in a moment, he said, “Papa? I been waiting and waiting.” Not knowing how to answer that, I said, “Don't set so far back on his withers, boy. Makes the old fool buck.”

Even before we arrived home, I knew this boy would bring his mother's ghost into our house—just what I feared most. I glared at Mandy when she came running out with a big smile. “You wanted him so bad so you take care of him.” I swung him off and galloped away down the woods roads, headed for nowhere, riding my heart into the ground. In the next days I drank, worse than before. Morning after morning, I woke up sick to death on some sawdust floor or in some shed or ditch, and finally in a stinking Suwannee jail, bruised, bilious, broke, and mean down to the bone.

WILD

That day, riding homeward through Lake City, who should I see but Miss SueBelle Parkins in a rose-decked yellow gown tilting down the sidewalk; plainly she was in that painless state in which she might share her bounteous person with a friend. I eased up behind her. Low and soft, I whispered, “sweet sweet Sooee gal,” and a tipsy grin inched all the way back under her ears. Even drunk, she knew better than to display acquaintance with a white man, but she hummed a little as she sashayed her hips back and forth to tease me, blocking my path and murmuring under her breath, “Doan you go to whisperin sweet Sooee, Mistuh Wil' Man, cause SueBelle ain' no white man's li'l shoat.” Already those firm smoky hips shifting along under that cloth had fixed me hard as a bird dog up on point, and Sooee knew this, never had to look. She was having such fun lighting the fire in her Wil' Man that she clean forgot to move aside to let a white man through. Folks coming out of church had stopped and some were pointing.

Recalling that day on the square at Edgefield Court House when the neighbors jeered at Ring-Eye Lige for challenging General Butler to a duel, my brain hammered and heat swelled my face. In the next moment, with no warning, Jack Watson banged the hard heel of his hand between her shoulder blades—
Out of my way!
The blow pitched her forward and she almost fell. Finding her balance, she reeled around and squinted at me with a cunning smile, hollering “Wil' Man? Dat you? Ain' you my own big brutha?” What had she meant? Could this be why she had been so full of dread? Did this explain Aunt Cindy's iron coldness toward my father?

Thinking herself safe in the bright sunlight of a Sunday morning, Sue-Belle grinned saucily, waving her perfumed lace whore hankie as she pirouetted. “How come,” she cried out loud and clear, “you never come around no mo' to visit?” Only then did she see Jack Watson and squawk and skedaddle in her haste to flutter off that sidewalk, but she was too late. Jack's hand flew from behind and cupped her forehead, pulling her head back against his chest. The other hand held the knife blade to her throat. Her eyes and mouth popped open as he bent her head back onto her shoulder blades so far that her face was almost upside down, eyes staring out from beneath the nose and gasping mouth. That upside-down mask of terror startled Jack and stayed his hand, but not before he feigned a pass across her throat, using the rough nail of his forefinger.

When his hand withdrew, she remained motionless, eyes rolled upward, mouth opening and closing as if struggling to find air. Her eyes entreated but she made no sound. Slowly she sagged, slowly, slowly to her knees, as her fingers wavered up under her chin, dislodging one cheap tinsel earring as her thumbs pressed up to hold her life in. There was only a faint crimson thread, a minute trickle that, seen on her fingertips, she took to be the first freshet of the fatal spurt. At the sight of it, she groaned and coughed, then vomited, soiling her yellow gown.

Church bells. Figures transfixed. The dying bells. No one drew near. When I straightened, the figures backed away.

I left her there. Refusing to make way, a drunken whore had sassed a white man. He had scared her to teach her a lesson. That was that. And I was thankful Jack had done her no real harm. Yet a bad murmur followed me down that street and around the corner. Trouble-making nigras should be taken care of after sundown and somewhere out of sight, and inevitably Edgar Watson would be blamed for an unpleasant offense committed in broad daylight on a Sunday in front of an assembly of decent citizens.
Why, that ruffian came within an inch of spilling nigger blood on our new sidewalk, right down the street from church! He had no call to give God-fearing folks such a bad fright!

When SueBelle vanished from Lake City, the madam started rumors that Edgar Watson knew more about her disappearance than perhaps he should. Hadn't he killed some nigra back in Carolina? Soon the word was out that this Ed Watson hated blacks, shot 'em left and right. In Lake City, the coloreds shied across the street to get out of my way, causing painful embarrassment to my family, when the truth was, I got on fine with nigras, always had, ever since early childhood with the slaves back at Clouds Creek. Treated 'em as people in those days when most whites hardly knew one from another, couldn't be bothered.