Lost Man's River (44 page)

Sounds like the Tucker story. Down at Lost Man's Beach.

Those young folks were killed and had rocks around their necks and they were found out in the water by the Harden men and that mulatta feller I was talking about. And after that, this Henry Short grew superstitious about Papa, he was scared to death of him. This stuff didn't come from any book, my Mama told me. Earl said to me, “Know something, Pearl? A lot of people did not care for your daddy, but I loved him!” It was only lately I figured out that when our daddy died, Earl Helveston was only ten, a kid like me! So I can't for the life of me figure out how he knew my dad so well, but he sure loved him! Earl and Speck both
.

Isn't that something? A lot of young men—

My mother was in that Hurricane of 1910 and lost her baby. You know who that baby's daddy was?

Yes I do, Pearl.

It was all so hush-hush, you know, back then
.

Did you ever hear the rumor that the baby lived?

Speck tell you that one? He's a damn liar, then! Excuse my language, sweetheart! But I never knew why Speck wanted so bad to join up in our family, when all the rest of 'em were trying to get out!

Hello? Are you still there? Hello? Can you still hear me, Pearl?

Who are you anyway? Whoever you are, you must be a liar! My brother Lucius would have called me before this! He would have called me! I'm his baby sister! They say I look like him! Lucius loves me more than anybody in the world!

Please don't cry, Pearl. Please don't be upset. I am ashamed I never called. I've thought of you so often—

Who are you? Who is calling me? You tell my brother to call me, hear? I'm all alone in this sad place! They won't let me go home because they say I have no home. They say Mrs. Barfield's Hotel is gone, can you imagine such a thing? They say I have no job there anymore! It's been years and years since anybody came to see me! Lucius Watson never came! And my name is Pearl Watson! I'm his baby sister!

Lucius rang up Eddie's daughter the next morning—she who had led her unbeloved stepmother to the cemetery and told her the truth about E. J. Watson—whichever truth she had decided to bestow, since as she now declared over the telephone, she knew “nothing worth knowing” about Grandfather Watson. She had little information about family history and no interest whatever in acquiring more. “I scarcely heard Grandfather mentioned until I was sixteen, and even then, I was only told that he came from good family in South Carolina and died of a heart attack. Aunt Carrie's daughters, Faith and Betsy, they were told the same!”

Having scarcely laid eyes on him since she was a child, she did not hide her suspicion of this stranger on the telephone, who might or might not be her long-lost uncle Lucius. She finally agreed to receive him at her clothing store downtown, but when he turned up, she rushed to intercept him even before the little bell over the door had finished tinkling.

In place of the rather pretty girl he had remembered stood a cracked vessel in bony horn-rimmed glasses and a mad red dress. Katherine Watson was bitter, offhand, sharp, with a pained laugh like the rasping of a tern. “Why did you ask about my mother? If you are Uncle Lucius, then you
knew
my mother. Neva Watson died in 1924. I suppose you remember Dorothy? Your own niece? My sister was very beautiful, like Aunt Carrie's daughter, but she
died many years ago in an automobile accident up north, as you would surely know if you are who you say you are. That's every last thing I know about the Watson family, so you needn't waste any more of your good time!”

“I didn't mean to upset you, Katherine. Why did you agree to see me?”

Katherine's voice went a little higher. “Your phone call startled me, I wasn't thinking! You told me you were Lucius Watson, but I have no idea who you are or what you're up to!”

His niece glared at him in alarm and dislike. He scarcely recognized the tight-pinched mouth, the worried hair, the famished shins. Was Walter's funeral the last time he had seen her? “This is family business!” she cried fiercely, darting sharp flashes off sharp corners of modern spectacles into his eyes. “I can't recall one thing worth speaking of about our family,” she repeated, “because nobody bothered to remember anything. That's the way the Watsons are—indifferent!”

He could not seem to reassure this frantic person, and, in a sense, what she had said was true. Compared with his siblings and their children who had lived out their lives in the deep shadow of the scandal, he was not “family” but a feckless drifter.

“You see, I'm kind of a historian, apart from being your uncle. I'm trying to dispel some of those lurid myths about your grandfather. And I have to ask about a list of names—”

“It's family business!”

The lone customer turned to look at them. His niece gave up trying to back him through the door to the bright street and herded him instead into the shoe department.

“Did Eddie—did your father ever speak about his older brother?”

“No! I can't remember! An older brother? A
half
brother visited just once that I remember—I was still a child then, eight or nine. He didn't stay long. This man came in search of Uncle Lucius, and became unpleasant because my father didn't know or care where Lucius was. My father and his brothers were never close. My father always told us that his younger brother—is that you?—had upset the family by wasting his good education and going to live among lowlife rednecks in the Ten Thousand Islands. He said he never saw you after that. But as I said, I don't think it was hostility so much as plain indifference!”

He sought to reassure her by relating a few details of his recent visit with her cousins in Fort White. She interrupted him. “I beg your pardon? They told you my father
cooked
when he came to visit? I never knew he cooked. We always had a colored person to do the cooking. Aunt Carrie never went back to Fort White, but my father lived there for some years after his mother died.
He considered that place home, don't ask me why! We had to go there every summer, stay at the Collins farm, and my sister and I just hated it! They were nice people, I suppose, good country people, but as poor as church mice!

“My father trained us to be snobs from an early age. We were poor ourselves a good deal of the time, but he was determined to be snobbish all the same. Oh yes, he always had a darkie, to keep up appearances, but he never had nearly as much money as Uncle Walter, so he had to be extra friendly to make up for it. When he had money, he joined up—what? Just about everything there was to join! A real glad-hander. He flattered folks, he made bad jokes, he bragged.

“What's that? Why do you say that? Did
you
like him? I don't think compensating for his father's reputation had a thing to do with it! That's just the way he always was—a braggart! Yes! My father is a braggart and his wife's a fool. Augusta reveres my father for some reason, but that woman is nothing but a fool. She tries so hard to be genteel, but she never had one nickel she could throw away. And now that he's retired, of course,
I
have to help them—well, that's not your business, I'm sure,” she added bitterly.

“Actually,” he said gently, “I was hoping you might help me with a question that I'm afraid your father just won't answer.” Had she ever heard about a list of names of the men who'd killed Grandfather Watson? A list given originally to Lucy Dyer? Lucy Summerlin? “I'm trying to find out who has this list—”

“No!”
Katherine cried, rising abruptly in her torment, hard heels clacking on her hard new floor like hooves in a stone court. “I've already told you! I'm not interested in my family! I'm not interested in your lists and pictures! I don't even care that we are related,
if
we are related! Why should I bother my head about an uncle who fled this godforsaken family when I was a little girl? Not that I blame you, Lord knows! I don't blame you! I'd have done the same!” She gasped for breath, pointing at his notes. “If my grandfather was a monster, I can't help it! It's got nothing to do with me, that's all I know!”

“Katherine, go ahead and take care of your customer—”

“No!” Beside herself, his niece hurried him toward the door. When he turned to say good-bye, she snatched off her glasses and wiped frantically. Without her horn-rims, she looked strangely naked, like a baby bird. She blew again upon her glasses, wiped them with another tissue fetched up from the hard bodice of that cantankerous red dress, then set them on her nose again to get him back in focus. “I guess you're Uncle Lucius, all right,” she complained. “But I told you I couldn't help before you came. So if you'll just excuse me, please, I have a customer!”

Was she saying that he should not wait? She nodded gratefully. “I'm
sorry,” she said, polite now that he seemed to be departing. And once again, glimpsing the prettiness that had forsaken her, he was touched by this bristling niece of his, though he couldn't for the life of him think why.

The customer departed and they watched her go.

“I'm sorry, Katherine.”

“And don't you go pestering Aunt Carrie either! She has not been well!” She banged the door, with its small bell of greeting and farewell.

Carrie Langford lived nearby in a small house in a court off First Street, almost in the shadow of the bank. Dreading recriminations, he had not announced his visit, and turning the corner, he found Carrie outside fetching the newspaper. In pale blue breakfast gown, she straightened by the gate of her rose fence, unkempt gray head in a bright morning aura of trellised wisteria and bougainvillea. At the sight of him, her hands rose to her hair, her temples, and she tottered a little before steadying herself on the white post.

“I was just going out. You almost missed me.” Cross that her poor lie was so transparent, Carrie fussed with the pink satin on her collar. “You could have called first, Lucius.”

“I'm sorry, Carrie.” He paused at the fence. “I suppose Eddie warned you I was here.”

“He said you were hobnobbing with those Daniels people. The Backdoor Family,” she added coldly. “I never thought you'd bother to come
here
.”

“I ran into them. They are good old friends.”

“Good old friends. And how about your sister?” She raised her palm to ward off any blustering. “Well, come on in, since you are here. I suppose you want something.”

It made things more painful that his sister moved like an old lady. Slowly she led him up onto the porch, swinging her left leg first for each upward step, and he held the screen door as she preceded him into a small sitting room stuffed up with dark antique furniture from the much larger house at the Edison Bridge. “From the good old days,” she said, with a tired wave. In the louvered shade, in the whir of fans, the dark and silent room seemed to bar the southern light, as if somewhere within, Walter's body lay in state.

Carrie indicated a hard chair by the door, in sign to him that his stay should be a brief one, and he perched well forward on the edge to show that he understood this, and would depart promptly when the time came. Carrie herself sat on the sofa, but she sat erect, hands folded on her lap, awaiting him. He handed her Dyer's petition form in regard to Chatham Bend.

“This why you came?” She glanced over the paper. “Should I trust you, Lucius?” She signed it carelessly and tossed it back.

“It was my excuse to come. I wanted to see you—”

“Spare me.” She raised her hand. “No, it was not Eddie who warned me you were here, it was his daughter. You mustn't mind our poor unhappy Katherine. She just can't bear any talk about the family. Never cared for her father, let alone her stepmother, and her husband went off with someone else, and her sister died in an auto accident up north.” She gazed at him. “You missed the funeral, of course. Dorothy Watson, in case you don't recall her, was the most beautiful girl in all Lee County.”

“Carrie, listen, I don't want to make excuses. I know what a poor brother I have been. But I always thought that you and Eddie disapproved—”

“Don't lump me in with Eddie, if you don't mind! Whatever you may think of us, Eddie and I are not consulting about Little Brother!”

“Good.” He offered a small smile. “I mean, he might persuade you not to see me.”

“He knows better than to try any such thing.”

To ease matters, he talked about Ruth Ellen and Addison, reminding Carrie that her Faith was about Ruth Ellen's age. Those two little girls must have stared gravely at each other when Papa's new family came through town on the journeys between Fort White and Chatham River.

“Our dear stepmother was eight years younger than I!” Carrie shook her head. “I scarcely remember their names,” she added curtly. “I'm afraid I have always thought less of Edna for running away before a decent burial could be arranged. And then, of course, she changed the children's names. Made everything much easier, I imagine.”

But Carrie had no heart for her own unkindness. Abruptly she faced him, her face crumbling. “Lucius, you refused to understand what I had to deal with, how much my in-laws disapproved of Papa. Walter got upset every time he came, reminding me over and over that his father-in-law's reputation ‘was not exactly an asset in the banking business.' You may remember Walter as quite wild in his youth, but later on he was conservative, extremely strict.” She laughed despite herself, that delighted laugh that he'd almost forgotten. “Dear Walter could be so darned
dignified
that our girls joked about it—how their daddy had ordered stiff-collared pajamas!”

Her mood shifted again, like a wind gust over water. “I honored the family decision about Papa, but those dreadful writers pestered me year after year, they would not let that scandal die a merciful death. And sure enough, someone would show me another lurid article about ‘Bloody Watson,' just slapped together in a hurry to make money, no regard for truth. Well, the rest of that day I would just sit quiet, all shrunk up into myself, looking
straight ahead and not saying a word. On those days I told my girls not to come near me. And it was on those days that I thought to myself”—here she looked up—“how badly I needed my dear brothers, how much I longed for Lucius to come see me.