cousins known that he was Eddie’s brother. Sensing his discomfort, the ladies had stopped laughing. “As for his father,” Hettie sighed, “Cousin Ed approved the vow of silence, saying his sister Carrie felt the same: only Lucius was still living in the past, Ed used to say.”
A loud bang on the door announced Paul Edmunds, whose family had owned the local store. Mr. Edmunds wore a blue serge Sunday suit, white socks, and high black shoes; his denim shirt, buttoned to the top, pinched his jumpy gullet. Behind him, his long-limbed Letitia in dust-colored woolens much too hot for such warm weather crept in out of the sunlight like a large timorous moth.
“Your store’s still standing out there in the woods,” April Collins called by way of greeting. “I bet I could still find it for you, Mr. Edmunds.”
Sent word last evening that a real historian was coming to research Edgar Watson’s years here in Fort White, Mr. Edmunds was eager to get down to business, which signified men only. “Well, now, mister,” he began, “me’n Hettie here has talked for years with every last soul in these parts that might remember anything, and we think we’ve got the history down as good as you are going to get it.” Bending a bushy eyebrow on the interloper in sign that he would brook no opposition, he cleared his throat at exhaustive length to ensure himself ample speaking room.
“Colonel William Myers, who married Edgar’s cousin, came here with his slaves during the War for fear he might lose ’em to the Yankees. He left his bride and her mother in Athens, Georgia, because this Suwannee country was still wild and life uncertain. Sure enough, Myers was killed by lightning in 1869 and his widow and her mother came to see to the estate.”
“Colonel Myers willed that huge plantation to his
“Well,” Hettie said mildly, “Cousin Laura was very kind and generous but perhaps a bit simple-hearted, apt to give too much away-”
“Simple-minded, you mean. Probably retarded.”
“There’s no reason to assume that, April dear. That’s just your idea.”
“You have a better explanation, Mama? Why else would Colonel Myers leave the whole thing to her mother with instructions to pass it straight along to his Myers nephews?”
When Lucius said he understood that those Myers nephews were Watsons on their mother’s side, Ellie’s expression made it clear she resented the idea that an outsider should be privy to such information.
Paul Edmunds stuck his hand up as he must have done in this same room as a boy scholar in knee britches, kicking clay off high black shoes of the same country style he wore today. “I don’t know about all that,” he harrumphed in impatience. “Herlongs claimed that before Edgar left Carolina, some nigger threatened to let on to his daddy that Edgar was planting peas in a crooked row. Well, somebody went and killed that doggone nigger.”
He scowled at his wife, who was fluttering for his attention: “Church folks say ‘nigra’ these days, dear.”
“
“Perhaps that Herlong story was mistaken,” Lucius said shortly. “I’ve always heard that Edgar Watson got on fine with black folks, much better than most men of that period.”
“Well, darkies were never treated cruelly around here.” Hettie’s pained gaze begged the Professor to believe that this community was no longer mired in crude bigotry. “Oh, there’s a social difference, yes, but as far as mistreatment, or not taking care of a black neighbor-no, no. Folks in Fort White aren’t like that.”
“Not all of ’em, anyway,” scoffed Paul Edmunds, for whom all this darn folderol was pure irrelevance.
“Granny Ellen used to confide that his daddy whapped Uncle Edgar once too often, knocked his brain askew.” April tapped her temple.
“Nobody thought Uncle Edgar was crazy, miss. Hotheaded, yes. Violent, yes. But
“Aunt Ellie? He went crazy when he drank, we sure know
“There were plenty of bad drinkers back in those days,” Mr. Edmunds said. “Nothing else for the men to do once the sun went down.”
“Well, in frontier days, not all men who resorted to violence were crazy or unscrupulous,” said Hettie. “No, far from it. But because of his bad reputation, Uncle Edgar was thought guilty of many things he didn’t do, which made him bitter. Granny Ellen would say her son started out fine but his father came home from war a brutal drunkard who beat his son unmercifully. You keep whipping a good dog, he will turn bad.”
SHINING ON UNSEEN BENEATH THE PINES
When Edgar Watson returned here from the West in the early nineties, he was a fugitive on horseback, passing through at night, Mr. Edmunds said. After his wife died at the turn of the century, he came back, stayed several years. “Leased a good piece of this Collins tract. Nothing but bramble and poverty grass when he took over but he brought these oldfields back. Built his own house, too-I seen him buildin it. Used to hear him target-practice up there on his hill. Doc Straughter did odd jobs for Watson, and the rest of his life, that old nigger-a would talk about how his boss man worked a revolver. Set out on his back porch, pick acorns off that big red oak that’s up there yet today. Most every man back then could work a rifle pretty good but they couldn’t hit their own barn with a handgun. Ed Watson could beat your rifle with his damn revolver.”
“Do you remember what he looked like, Paul?” Letitia inquired dutifully.
“A-course I do! That silver glint in them blue eyes made a man go quaky in the belly.”
“Did he ever look at
“When Billy Collins died in February 1907, Uncle Edgar and Edna came back north to be with the family. That was when the whole Collins clan moved in with him.”
“Which means they were all living in his house when Sam Tolen was killed a few months later,” Lucius said. “Would Julian and Laura have stayed under his roof if they thought he was a killer?”
“I do know they worried,” Hettie murmured, looking worried, too. “There was
“Well, Calvin Banks must of knowed something,” Mr. Edmunds said, “cause they had that old nigger-a up there to Edgar’s trial.”
“Do you recall the other black man in the case? Frank Reese? I found his name in the court records as a defendant in both Tolen murders.”
All turned toward the visitor in disbelief. “Nobody in our family recalls any such name,” said Ellie in a tone of warning.
“ ‘Pin it on the nigger,’ that’s all that was,” April said. “Nigra, I mean.” The women deplored her cynical view of Southern justice but Paul Edmunds nodded; her time-honored remedy needed no defense.
“Calvin Banks was Colonel Myers’s coachman,” Edmunds resumed. “Knew the location of his buried gold. Kept the secret from the Watson women for fear the Tolens might get wind of it. That secret was lost with Calvin so that gold is out there right this minute.” Mr. Edmunds jerked his thumb toward the window.
“Shining on unseen beneath the pines,” Letitia said. April opened her eyes wide and the ladies giggled.
“Mr. Edmunds? Do you think that story’s true?” Lucius tried not to sound skeptical.
The indignant old man blew his nose. “Take it or leave it, mister. Don’t make a goddamn bit of difference to us home people.”
“Now, now, Paul,” Letitia murmured, patting his old knee, which twitched in fury.
“When Watson was in jail, he got word to Cox that a thousand dollars was waiting for him if he killed that witness. If Les found Calvin’s gold, why, they would split it,” Edmunds cackled. “Cox come back here all his life hunting that money, having gone and killed the only man who could tell him where it was!”
Lucius held his tongue, resigned. Just when he thought he was getting things sorted out, local rumor had turned things murky yet again. But the legend of the buried gold rang with a mythic truth and would prevail.
