“Probably the Colonel just wanted to make sure that our Watson property stayed in the Myers family,” Cousin Ellie said tartly, and the women laughed.
“ ‘We don’t know about all that,’ ” April said to Lucius, mimicking Old Paul, who could not hear her. When her elders stifled smiles and frowned, this lawless person grinned at her new relative, inviting him to giggle along with them. He felt an upwelling of happiness, a return into his family, which he had not known since before his father’s death.
Wishing to make some sort of contribution, he pointed out that those Myers nephews were Watsons on their mother’s side. Cousin Ellie frowned at him severely. The family didn’t look at it that way. It was not only his information they resisted, but the idea that it should come from an outsider, he decided later. He was not yet accepted by the family, since none of them were quite sure who he might be.
In 1870, the year after Colonel Myers’s death, Ellen Watson and her children came from South Carolina. Granny Ellen and the Widow Laura, who were nearly the same age, had been childhood friends. “We don’t know if they corresponded, or if Aunt Tabitha invited her, or if Granny Ellen just appeared and they took her in.”
“Herlongs always used to say that before Edgar left Carolina, a freed nigger told him he weren’t plantin the peas in a straight row, and was fixin to let on to his daddy. Well, somebody went and killed that doggone nigger.” Noticing his wife fluttering at his side, Paul Edmunds scowled. “And they never knew whether Edgar shut him up out of fear of punishment over them peas or because that nigger had spoke up too smart for his own good.”
“Folks say ‘nigra’ these days, honey,” his wife coaxed him.
“Niggera?” Old Paul glared suspiciously about him. “Well now, I reckon there was some question how that niggera died—at least, that’s all Edgar was ever heard to say about it. Couldn’t very well deny it, knowing the Herlongs come from that same section.” The old man shrugged. “Never had no regrets that Herlongs knew about.” He winked at Lucius, whispering harshly behind his hand. “I doubt he give that sonofabitch a second thought, how about you?”
“Maybe the whole story was just rumor in the first place,” Lucius said shortly.
“Well, darkies aren’t treated that way anymore, not around here.” Distressed by Paul Edmunds’s way of speaking, Hettie seemed anxious to believe what she’d just said, and her pained smile entreated Lucius not to believe that this community was still mired in such bigotry. “Oh, there’s a social difference, yes, but as far as mistreatment, or not taking care of a neighbor because he’s black—no, not at all! The Collinses aren’t like that, and they never were!”
“Not all of ’em, anyways.” Paul Edmunds snorted, shrugging off all this darn folderol as pure irrelevance.
“In the old days, folks hurt black people and got away with it because nobody thought a thing about it,” Ellie said. “And maybe Uncle Edgar learned that evil lesson from his father and never unlearned it.”
“Old Ring-Eye conked our uncle once too often, knocked his brain askew,” April told Lucius, tapping her temple as her elders hushed her. Ellie cried, “Now, April, you’re not suggesting he was crazy? Nobody ever thought any such thing! Hotheaded, yes! Violent, yes! But crazy?”
“At least that’s some kind of excuse! Anyway, there is all kinds of ‘crazy.’ He went crazy when he drank too much, we sure know that!”
Hettie Collins said carefully, “We always talked about the two reasons he went wrong. First, because his father was so mean to him. Granny Ellen said that Uncle Edgar started out in life just fine, but you take a good dog and you keep whipping him, he will turn bad. Another thing, he was very young when he tried to take care of his family in the War. Those were hard years of want and famine, and after the War came dreadful anarchy and violence, and those young men on the frontier had to take the law into their own hands just to survive. So perhaps he was not naturally bad, not in his young years, he just went sour after poor Ann Mary died in childbirth.”
“How about that colored man the Herlongs claimed he killed in Carolina?” April demanded. “Looks to me like dear old Uncle had gone kind of sour by the time he got here!”
“Did this family ever think he was really crazy?” Lucius was certain his uneasiness had now betrayed him, for the room fell still, and everybody turned in his direction.
“Crazy like a fox, we used to say,” Mr. Edmunds told him. “Everything that feller touched turned to pure gold. Anyways, there were plenty like Ed Watson back in frontier days! Robber barons, y’know! Killings all over the damn place! Didn’t stop at nothing!”