Lost Man's River (30 page)

Hearing her mother's wry account of Cousin Ed, April laughed hoarsely, snubbing her cigarette. “ ‘Year after year, we keep on hoping,' Daddy used to say, ‘but Cousin Ed is like the elephant, he
never
forgets, not even the smallest thing!' ”

“He had a sincere attachment to these woods,” Hettie reflected. “He'd drive into the yard and get out and look around at these old hickories and oaks, hands on his hips, then heave him a big sigh and say, ‘I sure feel like I've come home when I come back here!' We never could figure why this poor of place meant so darn much to him, cause he hardly went outdoors again after he got here!”

“Free bed and board, that's all it was!” Ellie Collins said. “Penny saved is a penny earned—that's Cousin Ed!”

“Put you right out of your own room because you were just a kid!” April scowled at the older women when they laughed.

Hettie said, “I guess it
was
a place where he felt welcome. After his children were all grown, and Neva died, he thought nothing of bringing a female friend, might be a week! One friend he brought before he married Augusta, she 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 had eaten up all our food, that was the only thing that we could figure!” April was doubled up with laughter, egging her mother on. “And Gussie! Tell about the one he finally married!”

“Now our Augusta didn't sweat, y'know. Too ladylike to sweat, didn't even perspire! All us poor country females, we'd be all worn out and soaking wet from the damp and heat in these old summer woods, our hairdo slack and all collapsed and
beads
of sweat, you know, on brow and lip. And here was Mrs. Augusta Watson there beside us, buttoned up tight right to the collar, sitting straight up on the edge of her chair, cool as a daffodil!”

“Those two were buttoned up, all right! I never once saw Cousin Ed without white shirt and tie, even when cooking!” Ellie said. “He was a churchman and a businessman who kept up appearances or else, and Augusta Watson kept 'em up right along with him!”

The women whooped and gasped for breath, falling all over one another now with the exploits of Cousin Ed. And Lucius was laughing, too, delighted by tales which tended to affirm his years of exasperation over Eddie, even while feeling dishonest and disloyal. Such stories would never have been told had these good women known that he was Eddie's brother.

“Oh yes, Cousin Ed dearly loved to cook! But he was like most men who get the idea that they are cooks, they make your kitchen such a mess that you wish they'd just stay out of there, go read the funnies! Before Edna Bethea came into their life, Cousin Ed cooked for his daddy in the house on the hill, that's where he learned it, and each time he returned, he'd fall back into it. March up to the stove, bang pots around, and take right over.”

“Uncle Edgar usually kept a cook when he was married, but in those five years while he was a widower, he figured he didn't need a cook just for the two of them. Cousin Ed never tired of telling how hard his daddy worked him, how he had to rake the yard by moonlight after doing chores all day. And each time he told that old story, Gussie would cry out, ‘Rake the yard at
night
?' And she'd turn real slow, hand to her mouth, and stare round-eyed at the rest of us, just a-marveling, you know, like she was trained to it.

“And Cousin Ed would be chuckling along, shaking his head over his own anecdote to warm us up a little bit, and 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
!' And those two would just double up with all the fun, they'd enjoy the heck out of that one right through supper!
‘Never had free time during the day!'
Just couldn't get over it, you know! Year after year! And later Cousin Ed would tell us how Augusta's sense of humor was the thing he liked the best about her, by which he meant that poor ol' Gus
would spare no effort laughing at his jokes. She never said anything humorous herself, not so's you'd notice.”

Hettie smiled gently at Lucius, to remind him that all of this was in the family, all in fun, that none of this irreverence meant any harm. “ ‘Raking leaves by moonlight'—that one
never
failed! They never let that grand old story die!”

“Well, Daddy said that Uncle Edgar was a neat man in his habits, liked the place neat as a pin even out of doors,” said Ellie Collins. “So I bet it was true about raking in the moonlight, because he was a stickler for getting things done right, he was famous for it all around the county. He was a hard worker, and saw to it that everybody on his place worked as hard as he did. But he never did mistreat his nigras, at least not in Fort White. Even after Uncle Edgar was safe under the ground, Doc Straughter claimed that his ‘Mist' Edguh' was the best boss man he ever worked for.”

“Doc wasn't taking any chances!” April laughed. “Best stay on the good side of Mist' Edguh, dead or alive!”

Hettie rummaged from her box a letter from Cousin Ed, of unknown date.

“Among the many things that Augusta didn't know was that Cousin Ed had had a second wife before her, nor had she been told one word about his father. He told her that his father died of heart failure down in the Islands, and I guess that was true because his heart sure failed along with everything else. But after they'd been married quite a while—she told us this herself—Cousin Ed's older daughter, who didn't care for Gussie, took her out to the Fort Myers cemetery one afternoon to show her her mother's grave. And she
showed her Edgar Watson's grave while she was at it, and gave poor Gus the lowdown, too, informing her that she'd got herself hitched up to the son and spitting image of a famous murderer! Because Cousin Ed had grown up husky like his father, big man, six foot, that dark auburn hair.

“Well, Gussie got flustered up, for once, and Cousin Ed had to assure her that his Katherine had exaggerated, that his father had been innocent, that he'd only kept quiet about the scandal to spare her feelings, and so on and so forth. After that they never spoke of it again.

“For many years, Cousin Ed had his own insurance agency in Fort Myers, he was doing fine, but he still had his little ways when it came to money. Our family was dirt poor thanks to Great-Uncle Lem Collins and his forfeited bail, and even Granny Ellen and her daughter, who'd had servants all their lives, had to be buried under wooden crosses when their time came. My father-in-law died early in the thirties and there was no money for his headstone, either. It wasn't until recent years that the family recovered just a little, and scraped the wherewithal together to put some stone memorials on its graves.

“Anyway, it was untrue that Ed didn't know where Granny Ellen was buried,” Hettie said sadly, “And despite all his lengthy visits, and his strong feelings about ‘the Family,' and his sentiments about Fort White as ‘my real home,' he would not help out with his grandmother's tombstone, nor his Aunt Minnie's, either. Now that he thought about it, Ed told us, he couldn't recall being close to either one.”

Another letter in Hettie's cigar box was postmarked Somerville, Massachusetts, January 14, 1910, about a month after Leslie Cox's conviction for the Banks murders. It carried two green one-cent stamps bearing the profile of Ben Franklin, and was addressed to Mr. Julian E. Collins, R.D. #2, Ft. White, Florida.

“We think that must be Rob Watson, though we can't be sure,” Hettie told Lucius, who was startled by this unexpected word from his lost brother.

“Rob never came back here to Fort White?”

She shook her head. “Papa Julian would have said something about it.”

“And that's the last letter signed Rob?”

“That is the
only
one. Rob makes it sound like my father-in-law had a regular correspondence with him, but that wasn't true. All Julian Collins ever did was notify Rob about May's marriage, and being upset, he must have mentioned something about those dreadful murders.” She looked distressed. “Perhaps poor Rob pretended to be in close touch with the family because he was homesick but could not come home.” She looked at the others. “Later we wondered if he might have been in prison.”

Lucius read the letter again, trying to recall what Rob had looked like the last time he had seen him more than fifty years before. Lucius had been eleven at the time, and the older brother he remembered was a handsome dark-eyed youth with black hair to his shoulders like an Indian, nothing like the righteous author of this letter.

“Long ago,” Hettie said carefully, “there was some trouble in the Islands, and Rob took his father's ship without permission and sold it at Key West. At least that's what Uncle Edgar told this family. He said Rob did that with the help of a young kinsman named Collins.”

Lucius nodded. “R. B. Collins,” he said, looking at Ellie.

The women glanced at one another. “We don't know who this R. B. Collins could be,” Ellie reminded him a bit too sharply, pointing at Hettie's lineage sheets, spread on the table.

In a long and awkward silence, Lucius said, “R. B. Collins is an old man now,” as if this changed things. Upset for Arbie, he resisted the intuition that was fighting its way to the surface of his mind. “He's in Lake City right this
minute, he almost came with me today,” he pled, as if Arbie's physical presence in Fort White might somehow validate him.

“You see”—in her distress for him, Hettie was whispering—“Rob's cousin Thomas Collins told us many years ago that
he
was the young man who helped Rob at Key West.”

“There
is
no R. B. Collins in this family.” Ellie said flatly. “I tried to tell you this the other night, but you didn't want to hear it.” She pointed at the sheets again. “We rechecked every sheet before you came this morning, to be certain.”

“Now R. B.
Watson
—Robert Briggs Watson—that is Rob, of course,” Hettie said slowly. “And Rob's mother was a Collins, as you know—”

September 13, 1879. Of course. That date had nagged at the corner of his mind ever since this morning at the Bethel churchyard. The date of Ann Mary Watson's death was Arbie's birthday.

In disbelief, he studied Rob's letter. He knew Arbie's hand from the rough notes in his “archive,” and this oddly familiar script, with its looping
y
's and
g
's, could indeed have been written by a young, stiff, priggish Arbie, working seven days a week to gain a meager living, pathetically tending the frayed threads that still connected him to home and family.

“We can't find any L. Watson Collins, either,” Ellie was saying. “If that is your real name, then we have no idea who you might be.”