“You already did,” her aunt Ellie snapped, taking over her story. “They had wood sidewalks at that time, of course, and the sidewalks were narrow and the streets were muddy, and I guess he figured this darkie should have made way for him, stepped off into the mud. And Uncle Edgar was drunk and there were words, and then he killed him, right there in broad daylight. Now that was in Redemption times when no one paid too much attention if you killed a nigra. But you didn’t go do it in broad daylight! In the public street!”
“Right in front of church!”
“April? I don’t remember anything about a church.” Ellie Collins shook her iron head in disapproval, worried anew about their visitor and not concealing it. “The whole thing was probably made up, one of those Watson stories. But Granddad Billy always said that when Uncle Edgar walked Lake City’s streets, the nigras got clear over on the other side!”
“Well, Aunt Ellie, I would imagine so!”
This time even Ellie had to giggle.
“Years ago, somebody read someplace that Uncle Edgar had to move away to Oklahoma because he’d killed his brother-in-law!” Hettie smiled at Lucius with astonished innocence. “Seems funny the victim’s family never heard about it!” she added, smiling happily when Lucius grinned. She had also read somewhere that Edgar Watson killed three men in Georgia on the way to Oklahoma and a couple more in Oregon before he returned east. “You’d think he’d say something about it to his mother or his sister if he’d gone to Oregon!”
“I suppose you know the one about Belle Starr?” Ellie inquired. “How Uncle Edgar did away with Belle in Oklahoma? When asked, he admitted it was true, but he said he’d had no choice about it. Belle would ride around his place at night, shooting guns and carrying on, spooking his horses, so one night, he said, he just ‘stepped out and took care of it.’ ”
“Maybe he was only fooling. They say he never boasted much but he sure liked to tease.”
“Well, Granddad Collins was offended by that story. He told his boys it was dishonorable to shoot a woman, no matter what. Granddad died before the trouble with those Tolens, but he had a pretty good idea about his brother-in-law before he went.”
“One thing we do know, Uncle Edgar’s favorite song was ‘Streets of Laredo.’ He used to sing it with real feeling. Said it came from an old Celtic lament which tingled up his blood—The iron blood of our Scots Highlands ancestors,’ he used to say.
“Brought that song back from Oklahoma, along with his black hat. A black slouch hat was the way it was described to us. You didn’t catch him out without that hat on.”
“Probably going bald,” April suggested. “Wore black most of the time, sang those sad songs. Had a premonition he would die before his time and was already in mourning for his misspent life.”
“Oh, what nonsense!” They all hooted in delight.
According to their old documents, the Collins family had descended from the brothers Charles and William Collins, English immigrants and pioneers. Charles H. B. Collins founded the section near Fort White still known as Tustenuggee. Mary Lucretia or “Minnie” Watson married Charles’s grandson Billy—“that’s our branch of the family”—and Uncle Edgar married William Collins’s granddaughter, Ann Mary.
Asked why Grandmother Minnie was missing from the oval photo, Cousin Hettie murmured, “We don’t rightly know. We have an idea—”
“Family business,” Ellie snapped.
Hettie said, apologetic, “There is a letter in which Grandmother Minnie is described as beautiful!”
Ellie nodded. “We’ve always heard that, but there’s no known picture. She hated the idea of her own likeness. She died a couple of years after Uncle Edgar—I was just a baby—and those who might recall her face are all gone, too. None of her grandchildren have the slightest recollection what the poor soul looked like!”
What these women knew of the years of family shame had come mostly from Laura Hawkins Collins, whose husband, Julian, with his brother, Willie, had harbored such tormented feelings about Uncle Edgar. Laura had been Edna Bethea’s dearest friend, and had spent six months with her in the Ten Thousand Islands after Edna’s marriage to Edgar Watson. When Laura died, her daughter-in-law Hettie had taken over her research into the family, poking into shelves and crannies, satchels and letter packets, stirring up the crusty reminiscences of ancient neighbors.
“Oh yes, our in-laws care more about our family history than we do ourselves,” said Ellie, with an undisguised edge to her voice that made Hettie raise her brows. “For the blood relatives, you see, the scandals are still too painful, too close to the bone.”