FLIGHT
Even as I hurried toward Clouds Creek, my criminal sire, roaring with drink, was driving Major Coulter’s cart like a loose chariot, careening around the Court House Square, scaring and scattering old ladies, dogs, and children, whipping his poor roan bloody. When one wheel was struck off by the wood sidewalk and the buggy pitched him headlong into the mud, he was seized and hauled forthwith up the courthouse steps and through the courtroom to the cells behind. Next morning he was charged with disturbing the peace, endangering life and limb, resisting arrest, and public drunkenness-everything the constable could think of that might hold him without bail until the next session of the circuit court.
I knew none of this when on Sunday before church, I went to collect my wage. From the stoop, I called good morning to the Colonel’s wife as she crossed the corridor. Aunt Lucy only shook her head and did not answer. Then her husband came. He did not offer his hand, only coldly informed me that someone had reported a charred corpse in the Deepwood ruin and someone else had seen me on the road near Deepwood early yesterday morning. “It seems you were carrying a weapon. And a shot was heard.”
He stood in wait, perhaps still hoping that I might explain. I was struck dumb. Who would have gone into that ruin? And just stumbled on a body beneath stacked timbers? Tap had betrayed me.
“You must leave this district.” Colonel Robert’s voice seemed far away. “You have no future at Clouds Creek.”
“Sir? If my work-”
“It has nothing to do with that. You are an exceptional young farmer.” Having no son of his own, he looked truly bereaved. He drew forth a money packet. “I’ve included fair payment for your hogs. Now go at once, you are in danger here.”
I searched his face as a shot bird follows the hunter’s hand descending to wring its neck. There was no absolution in that gaze. I wanted to howl,
Muffled hog grunts and the croon of chickens. Cold white winter sun.
“Edgar, try to sit up.”
“He fainted, did he? Wily as the father!”
A close warm smell of horse tack, burned tobacco. “He has these spells. Look at his color.” Less patiently, the man’s voice said, “Mrs. Watson, please do as I ask. Fetch him a blanket.”
Rummaging, she called, “Does he know his father is in jail?”
I rolled away, sat up-“I’m fine”-fell sideways. Taking me under the arm, Colonel Robert tried to help me up off the cold earth onto the steps. Wrenching away made me dizzy and I sat down hard. I said, “It was not my doing. I never wished him harm.”
Cousin Robert nodded, leading me behind the house out of sight of the road. “Yet you know what was done and you know who did it.” He paused a moment. “I have come to know you, Edgar. You are prideful and stubborn. You will not betray the guilty. And since, to defend yourself, you must accuse-” He put his big hands on my shoulders, squeezing hard to make sure I understood that he understood. “Pay attention, Edgar. Men are out looking for you. If you’re caught, you could be shot or hung.” He offered his hand. “You have had a hard bad road for one so young and were set a poor example. I am truly sorry.”
“It is not just,” I growled in a stony voice, as my kinsman’s face began to blur. When I blinked my eyes clear, his hand was still extended. It withdrew at just the moment my own hand started upward to accept it.
“God knows it is not just,” he agreed quietly, scanning the countryside. “That is the way of His world.” He crossed the yard to the back stoop. With a last warning to stay off the roads till I crossed the Georgia line, he closed the door behind him. On the white wall of his house, in winter shine, the window glass, clear and empty, reflected the black limbs of the trees.
All my life I have recalled the proffered hand of Colonel R. B. Watson, the grained and weathered skin of it, the wrist hairs like finespun golden threads in the cold sunlight.
THE COWARD
I fled across the frozen fields. At Grandfather’s house, I flung the hog pen gate clean off its hinge and drove my burly boys to freedom with hard kicks and curses. Their snouts would lead them to the Colonel’s troughs. If not, let them run wild, grow black and boarish. I tossed my rags and a few books into some sacking along with cold clabber and a knife and slung this meager bindle from the musket barrel. Leaving the Artemas plantation open to the world for all to pillage as they liked, I headed out across my fields, following Clouds Creek upstream through the home woods to the Ridge spring behind the church. Seeing no sign of riders on the highroad, I headed west toward Edgefield Court House.
Nearing Deepwood, I took to the wood edge at the sound of cantering horses. Armed riders passed. At Edgefield, crossing the back lots, I saw Tap Watson in the distance, gleaning in the field. Climbing the livery stable fence, I paid my father’s bill out of my pay, reclaimed the roan. “Heard you had some trouble, boy,” the hostler sneered, counting the money. “You and ol’ Ring-Eye both.” He knew I was a fugitive, considered seizing me, and sidled up too close, but respectful of the musket and the cold cast of my eye, he decided against any attempt to take me prisoner.
“Ye’re a hard one, ain’t ye.”
“Try me and find out.”
I walked the roan down the dirt lanes between dwellings. In the Sunday silence, the lanes were empty. At Mama’s cabin, a note on the table read “Dear Son.” They had left in haste while “your father” was in jail. She hoped that one day I might join them at this address in north Florida but if not, why then, good-bye. Did she mean, God be with you? Not thinking clearly, I returned the musket to the rafters.
The jail cells were upstairs back of the courtroom. I fiddled the old lock and slipped in quietly and listened. No deputy, no guard, not a sound. They were all out on the hunt for the young killer. The lone prisoner, sprawled upon his bunk, rolled over, squinted, jerked in alarm, yelled for the guard. I should have realized the whole truth then and there.
He asked me furiously what I wanted. Challenged, I did not know. Had I come to say I was sorry but I must take his horse? Had I, despite everything, merely come to bid farewell to my treacherous Papa?
I blurted foolishly, “I am no longer your son.”
“You walked all the way here from Clouds Creek to tell me
“As of today, I am Edgar Addison Watson,” I persisted. “Uncle John Addison-”
“Damn him!” he sat up. “In this family the eldest son shall take the name of the paternal grandfather or be disowned!” I wanted to jeer-disowned from what?-but he was already commanding me to go make sure that his roan was getting the good oats he’d paid for at the stable. I told him that account was settled. Job awaited me outside. “Mama has left home and Minnie, too. I aim to follow ’em.”
He shook off this news of wife and daughter as the roan might shiver off flies. “Don’t try taking my horse, you sonofabitch!” he yelled. “I’ll get the law on you!”
“You’ve already done that, Papa,” I said. If he heard, he gave no sign. “Take the musket, then,” he begged. “Leave me my horse. I reckon I don’t amount to much without that horse,” he added, seeking pity.
A shout rose from the square. Someone had recognized the tethered horse. Scared of a mob, Papa was on his feet, his blanket like a hood around his head and shoulders. Having come off the drink the hard way, all alone in his cold cell, he looked puffy and haggard, wheedling piteously, “They aim to hang me, son!”
“Nosir,” I said. “It is me they’re after.”
When he realized what I’d said, he loosed a loud whoop of relief; Whatever it was he knew, he’d got away with it. Then he stopped laughing and grew wary. “Don’t look at me that bad way, boy. I weren’t the one put it on you.”
For the second time that day, the blackness swirled so thick before my eyes that I had to grasp the bars. “The
