“All those deaths and tragedies and bitter conflicts in the family,” Hettie agreed. “And then Aunt May eloping with that murderer”—“We didn’t tell him that part!” Ellie warned her—“and Uncle Edgar’s evil reputation and his grisly death. And we had a drug addict in poor Grandmother Minnie, and we had a suicide—that was our cousin Martha Collins Burdett, whose son Herkie was to marry Edna Watson. And all these tragedies befell our family in the space of a few years! The family was in shock!”
Lucius inspected the photos of Billy Collins and the two sons, Julian and Willie—“Willie Collins was my daddy,” Ellie reminded him. Like their father, the two Collins boys had been small and slight, with black hair and thin beards and handsome faces. What he recalled of them from his visit years ago was the pensive quality in their dark eyes, as if their young manhood had been saddened by their father’s early death, their uncle’s infamy, their mother’s utter failure of the spirit. Like their father, they had tired early and died young.
“No one can blame our Collins men and Cousin Ed for wanting everybody to hush up about it,” Hettie murmured. “My brother-in-law never laid eyes on him, but he won’t mention Uncle Edgar to this day.”
“No indeed! His daddy wouldn’t talk about it, so my uncle knows only a little bit, but he guards that little bit extremely closely,” April said. “So closely we don’t even know if he knows anything!”
The women laughed with the affectionate malice of close families. All three seemed festive in this chance to dust and air the old closed rooms of the family past. The Collins clan, their manner said, had no reason to hang its head, even if its men were hopelessly old-fashioned.
Paul Edmunds, whose family had owned the general store in Centerville, had been invited by the Collins women to meet their guest. Mr. Edmunds wore his blue serge Sunday suit and high black shoes and a denim shirt without a tie. The shirt was buttoned to the top, pinching his gullet. Behind him his wife Letitia, in fussed-up hair and glinty glasses and dust-colored woolens, came in out of the sunlight like a large timorous moth.
“Your store is still out there in the woods,” young April shouted, aiming her voice at his hearing aid. “I bet I could still find it for you, Mr. Edmunds!” Paul waved her aside and kept on coming. He wanted to get down to business, which for him signified men’s business, and men only.
“Well, now, Mister,” he began, “we hear you are some kind of a damn historian. These ladies and me have talked for years with all the old folks around here who still remember anything, and we think we’ve got the history down as good as you are going to get it.” He bent a bushy eyebrow toward the upstart, to show he meant to brook no opposition, then cleared his throat to give himself some speaking room.
Mr. Edmunds related how Col. William Myers had come here with his slaves during the War, being scared that he might lose ’em to the Yankees. He had left his wife, the former Miss Laura Watson, back in Athens, Georgia, because this Suwannee country was still wild and life uncertain.
“Grover Kinard gave him some history, Paul. Showed him all around the old community.”
“Grover Kinard? He never lived in Centerville in his whole life!” Indignant, the old man blew his nose, trumpeting for silence. “Now Colonel Myers was struck and killed by lightning. He was standing under a big tree between his log house and the old Russ cabin off southeast of it. We know that happened in 1869, cause we seen the will. The Widow Laura and her mother came down here to see to the estate, they were too grand to live in that log cabin so they stayed over at Live Oak. We found ’em there in the 1870 census.”
“Colonel Myers left that whole plantation to his mother-in-law!” Ellie Collins was still incredulous over this outrage. “And when the old lady died, it was supposed to go to his darn nephews instead of to the Watsons! That’s where the trouble started!”
“It certainly looked like Colonel Myers married poor Cousin Laura for her money, and later on Sam Tolen did the same,” Hettie Collins said. “Cousin Laura was very kind and generous, but rather simple-hearted when it came to property—”
“Simpleminded,” April said. “Retarded, probably.”
“I don’t know about all that,” Paul Edmunds warned the women, harrumphing a little in impatience, fingers working like big inchworms on his chair arms.
“There’s no proof of that, April dear. That’s just your own idea.”
“You have a better one? Why did Myers leave the whole thing to his mother-in-law, with instructions to pass it straight along to his own nephews?”