Lost Man's River(53)

Circling the house, keeping his distance, he was startled by the shriek of a red-tailed hawk, poised for flight from its nest limb in a big live oak by the house corner. So close to the building, the nest was a sure sign that the house was uninhabited, yet he could not put his uneasiness aside. That door ajar on the back steps—he scarcely dared to turn his back on it! He imagined the specter of gaunt Tabitha or even brutal Tolen looming through that opening, wiping ham fat from his mouth with hairy knuckles, demanding to know who the stranger was, what the hell he wanted, and why he should not be set upon by dogs.

Lucius walked quickly down the shadow drive toward Herlong Lane, glancing back at the lost house until it disappeared into the trees. The birdsong had stilled in the midmorning heat, there were only the dry caws of crows, the burring flight of unseen quail, a dead limb cracking, and the rush and earth thump of its tearing fall.





The Collins Farm


From Herlong Lane, he traveled south on a nameless clay track as white as bonemeal, so soft that the car tires made no sound. He passed no house, no farm, he heard no dog. The settlement called Centerville had long ago withdrawn into the woods.

In a mile or so he came to the old schoolhouse, on a knoll under great oaks in a clearing. The door was opened by a composed, iron-haired woman who introduced herself as Ellen Collins. Gazing over her shoulder from across the room were three figures in a huge dark oval photograph in a massive frame. In the portrait, between her seated elders, stood a young girl in a white dress, full-mouthed, innocent, and knowing. To her left sat a pert, quizzical old lady in white scarf and cameo brooch. On her right was a handsome and imposing man in black suit, embroidered white shirt, and black bow tie. His hair was plastered to his head after the fashion of the time, and a heavy mustache flowed sideways into heavy sideburns. His gaze was forthright and unequivocal and his brow clear.

“Great-Uncle Edgar,” said Ellen Collins primly, as if introducing them, for she had missed his consternation in this sudden confrontation with his father. “With Great-Grandmother Watson and my aunt May Collins as a girl.” As he recalled, May Collins had been born around 1891. Since she was a near adolescent here, the photograph had presumably been taken about 1904, before his father’s marriage to Edna Bethea.

He turned as Ellen introduced two women who had now entered the room. Cousin Hettie Collins, silver-haired, had the freshness of a younger woman in the mouth and eyes. When she offered a spontaneous welcome with a warm peck on his cheek, her daughter teased her—“Are we kissin cousins?” April Collins was handsome, about twenty, with taffy hair hacked short in a no-nonsense manner, and she had the bald unswerving gaze of her great-uncle Edgar on the wall, with that crescent of white beneath the pupil shared by Watson Dyer and also Carrie Langford. When Lucius glanced back at the photograph, the young woman laughed. “Yup,” she said cheerfully, “those ‘Crazy Watson eyes.’ Still in our family.”

Ellen Collins was pointing at a chair. From the sofa, the three women watched him. “This is the first photograph of Mr. Watson I have ever seen,” he explained, finding his voice at last. He searched for something “crazy” in his father’s face, but there was no sign of aberration unless it was that transfixed gaze, as if E. J. Watson had never blinked in all his life.

He thought about the Watson sons, and “the blood of a killer” seeping through their veins. Perhaps his brothers, in their very different natures, shared his dread that one day, in the eruption of a gene, they might go “crazy.” Or perhaps they had no wish to face that, far less understand it. Perhaps he was truly alien to all the others.

“It’s the one known photograph,” Ellen was saying. “How could you possibly have seen it?” She sat back stiffly, folding her arms to bar his way into the bosom of the family.

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

“That might be his nom de plume,” said her aunt severely. Though her brash niece mimicked her—num de ploom!—Ellie Collins saw nothing to laugh at. Plainly she was having second thoughts about permitting this pseudo-Collins to cross their stoop.

To confess at this point that he was here under false pretenses, that there was no such person as L. Watson Collins—that in fact he was not a Collins after all—would ruin this vital contact with the family before it started. If they mistrusted him, they would tell him nothing. On the other hand, he must declare himself before he was exposed—oh Lord! Every moment that he put it off, the more complicated it was bound to be.