Shadow Country

niece.

“That’s the first photograph I’ve ever seen,” he explained, finding his voice.

“That’s the only photograph: how could you have seen it?” Cousin Ellen sat stiffly, arms folded on her chest, ready to bar his admission to this household. “If I hadn’t told you, how would you even know that that was him?”

“He’s kin, Aunt Ellie! L. Watson Collins? Got to be kin!”

“For all we know, that’s an alias,” said her aunt severely. Plainly she was having second thoughts about permitting this self-styled Collins to cross their sill. “If Julian ever got wind of this, or Cousin Ed-”

Lucius cut her off by asking boldly if, in the opinion of this Collins family, Great-Uncle Edgar had really been a cold-blooded killer. Startled, his cousins deflected the question. April jumped in. “When that man smiled, watch out! Uncle Edgar-”

Ellen Collins cut her off. “Uncle Edgar could be ever so pleasant and considerate, but nobody dared cross him. Oh, just a violent temper! My brother has that explosive temper, too. He’d pick a quarrel with a fence post. More than once, I’ve heard him say, ‘If I had lived in Uncle Edgar’s day, I’d have killed those Tolens, too.’ ”

“Uncle Edgar was acquitted, Ellie,” Hettie reproved her. “But he never learned to control his temper, that is true. We know something dreadful happened in his youth in Carolina. That story arrived with the Herlongs, who came south from Edgefield County after Granny Ellen, but the grownups would never repeat it.”

Ellie inquired, “I suppose you know about Belle Starr? That was a story he never quite denied. He always said he’d had no choice because she’d ride around his place, shooting her pearl-handled six-guns, spooking his horses, so one day, he just stepped out and took care of it.”

“Probably fooling,” Hettie said. “Everybody said he liked to tease.”

“Granddad Billy Collins was very offended by that Belle Starr story. He told his boys it was dishonorable to shoot a woman, even an outlaw queen. Granddad died young, before the Tolen trouble, but he’d made up his mind about his brother-in-law before he went.”

“One thing we heard, Uncle Edgar sang ‘The Streets of Laredo’ with real feeling. Claimed it came from an old Celtic lament which had tingled up the iron blood of his Highlands ancestors, but we think he brought that song from Oklahoma along with his black hat. You never caught him out without that hat on.”

“Probably going bald,” April suggested. “Wore black hats and sang sad songs because he knew he would die before his time and was remorseful for his misspent life.”

“Oh, what nonsense, girl!” The ladies tittered.

Lucius liked these new cousins very much, especially Hettie, who was pretty in her old-fashioned brown dress, though slight and fragile as if ill. He knew he should confess right now that he was Cousin Lucius but this would make them instantly suspicious-Why are you masquerading as a Collins? Once they mistrusted him, they would tell him nothing. On the other hand, the telephone could ring at any moment-strait- laced Julian warning them that nosy Cousin Lucius was in town.

His kin awaited him in a stiff row like frontier women squinting over the hammers of long muskets. Mind racing, he frowned intently at the picture. “I’m named for Granny Ellen,” Ellie Collins said. “And that’s Aunt May at about fourteen. Her brothers are my daddy, known as Willie, and my uncle Julian, who won’t so much as mention their late uncle.”

April grinned. “Hold everything they know so tight that nobody knows if they know anything at all!” Hettie and her daughter laughed with that affectionate malice reserved for family folly. They seemed quite willing to air out old closed rooms, since the Collins clan had nothing to be ashamed of, but for the moment, Ellie’s presence kept them in line. “Collins honor,” she reproved them, trying not to smile.

“Watson honor!” April cried. “If it weren’t for darned old Cousin Ed, this family might have loosened up a little after all this time!”

RAKING LEAVES BY MOONLIGHT

The ladies recalled that Uncle Edgar’s four children had returned with their mother from Oklahoma to live in this community while their father was finishing his new house in the Everglades. When these cousins departed, all tears and smiles, they promised to come visit, but the only one who ever did was Eddie.

“Cousin Ed must have been fifteen when he came back here to help out on his father’s new farm. Like Rob and Carrie, he was born in that old cabin near the Junction but the place he called home was Uncle Edgar’s new house on the hill.

“Over the years, Cousin Ed never tired of talking about Carrie Langford and her banker and her fine riverside house. He rarely mentioned his brothers, so the Collins memory of Rob and Lucius more or less died out. Ed said he knew little about Robert and Lucius because he only heard from those two when they wanted money. As for Edna’s children, they weren’t Watsons anymore. His stepmother-Ed always said ‘my stepmother,’ although he was older than she was-had changed her name and cut off communication with the family.”

Hettie sighed. “Ed’s saying that doesn’t make it so, because much as we loved our dear cousin, he mostly saw things in a way that suited his idea of himself. We told him where to get in touch with Edna but he wasn’t really interested and never tried.

“When Ed got his first auto, he would come through on vacations twice a year and bring his children. They’d stop here coming and they’d stop here going, and every visit without fail, he would tell us about yesteryear, how he went to Fort White school and got beaten with peach switches when he failed his lessons, and all about the meat and biscuits in thick syrup that the kids brought to class in their big lunch pails, and the three brass cuspidors lined up for tobacco-spitting contests at the general store, and the town marshal with a club lashed to his wrist and a big pistol, and the saloon where passersby might see some poor fellow pitched through the swinging doors. There wasn’t one detail of the old days in Fort White that Ed forgot.”

April laughed. “Year after year, we hoped he would forget. He never did.”

“Well, Ed had a sincere attachment to these woods,” her mother reflected. “He’d drive into the yard and get out and look around at the oaks and hickories, hands on his hips, y’know, then heave a great big sigh and say, ‘I sure feel like I’ve come home when I come back here.’ We never could figure why these old woods meant so much to him, cause when he got here he hardly took a step outdoors.”

“After his first wife died, Ed thought nothing of bringing a female friend, might be a week,” Ellie said with disapproval. “One was the weirdest woman we ever saw. Before she sat down to her supper she would take her belt off, put it around her neck!”

“Didn’t want to constrict her stomach till she et up all our food. And Gussie! Tell about the one he married, Mama.”

“Augusta was too lady-like to sweat, you know, didn’t even perspire. All us poor country women were worn out and soaking wet from the damp summer heat, hair gone slack and beads of sweat on brow and lip. And here was Augusta perched on the edge of her chair, cool as a daffodil, even though she was buttoned up right to the chin. Him, too. Buttoned up tight.

“We never saw him without white shirt and tie even when cooking. Oh yes, Ed dearly loved to cook! Before Edna Bethea came into their life, Ed cooked for his daddy in the new house on the hill-Uncle Edgar wouldn’t pay a cook just for the two of them. Ed never tired of telling how hard his daddy worked him, how he raked the yard by moonlight after doing chores all day. And without fail his Gussie would pretend she’d never heard that story. ‘Raked the yard at night?’ She’d turn real slow, hand to her mouth, and stare at him round-eyed, just a-marveling. And Cousin Ed chuckling along to let us know something pretty good was coming our way. Then he’d bust right out with it-‘Well, heck! We never had free time during the day!’

“Then those two would hee-haw and carry on, just enjoy the heck out of that story right through supper. Couldn’t get over it, y’know. ‘Never had free time during the day!’ Year after year.”

The women whooped and gasped for breath, falling all over one another with the exploits of Cousin Ed. “Raking leaves by moonlight!” April cried. “They never let that grand old story die!”

Hettie smiled at her guest to assure him that this family irreverence was all in fun and was not meant unkindly. And though Lucius was laughing, too, he felt disloyal, knowing such stories would never have been told had his