I fled across the frozen fields. At Grandfather’s house, I flung the hog pen gate clean off its hinge and drove my burly boys to freedom with hard kicks and curses. Their snouts would lead them to the Colonel’s troughs. If not, let them run wild, grow black and boarish. I tossed my rags and a few books into some sacking along with cold clabber and a knife and slung this meager bindle from the musket barrel. Leaving the Artemas plantation open to the world for all to pillage as they liked, I headed out across my fields, following Clouds Creek upstream through the home woods to the Ridge spring behind the church. Seeing no sign of riders on the highroad, I headed west toward Edgefield Court House.
Nearing Deepwood, I took to the wood edge at the sound of cantering horses. Armed riders passed. At Edgefield, crossing the back lots, I saw Tap Watson in the distance, gleaning in the field. Climbing the livery stable fence, I paid my father’s bill out of my pay, reclaimed the roan. “Heard you had some trouble, boy,” the hostler sneered, counting the money. “You and ol’ Ring-Eye both.” He knew I was a fugitive, considered seizing me, and sidled up too close, but respectful of the musket and the cold cast of my eye, he decided against any attempt to take me prisoner.
“Ye’re a hard one, ain’t ye.”
“Try me and find out.”
I walked the roan down the dirt lanes between dwellings. In the Sunday silence, the lanes were empty. At Mama’s cabin, a note on the table read “Dear Son.” They had left in haste while “your father” was in jail. She hoped that one day I might join them at this address in north Florida but if not, why then, good-bye. Did she mean, God be with you? Not thinking clearly, I returned the musket to the rafters.
The jail cells were upstairs back of the courtroom. I fiddled the old lock and slipped in quietly and listened. No deputy, no guard, not a sound. They were all out on the hunt for the young killer. The lone prisoner, sprawled upon his bunk, rolled over, squinted, jerked in alarm, yelled for the guard. I should have realized the whole truth then and there.
He asked me furiously what I wanted. Challenged, I did not know. Had I come to say I was sorry but I must take his horse? Had I, despite everything, merely come to bid farewell to my treacherous Papa?
I blurted foolishly, “I am no longer your son.”
“You walked all the way here from Clouds Creek to tell me that?” Hooting at my pomposity, my father lay back again, boots on the blanket, arm over his eyes.
“As of today, I am Edgar Addison Watson,” I persisted. “Uncle John Addison-”
“Damn him!” he sat up. “In this family the eldest son shall take the name of the paternal grandfather or be disowned!” I wanted to jeer-disowned from what?-but he was already commanding me to go make sure that his roan was getting the good oats he’d paid for at the stable. I told him that account was settled. Job awaited me outside. “Mama has left home and Minnie, too. I aim to follow ’em.”
He shook off this news of wife and daughter as the roan might shiver off flies. “Don’t try taking my horse, you sonofabitch!” he yelled. “I’ll get the law on you!”
“You’ve already done that, Papa,” I said. If he heard, he gave no sign. “Take the musket, then,” he begged. “Leave me my horse. I reckon I don’t amount to much without that horse,” he added, seeking pity.
A shout rose from the square. Someone had recognized the tethered horse. Scared of a mob, Papa was on his feet, his blanket like a hood around his head and shoulders. Having come off the drink the hard way, all alone in his cold cell, he looked puffy and haggard, wheedling piteously, “They aim to hang me, son!”
“Nosir,” I said. “It is me they’re after.”
When he realized what I’d said, he loosed a loud whoop of relief; Whatever it was he knew, he’d got away with it. Then he stopped laughing and grew wary. “Don’t look at me that bad way, boy. I weren’t the one put it on you.”
For the second time that day, the blackness swirled so thick before my eyes that I had to grasp the bars. “The Regulators meant to ride out there and take care of that traitor that scared you,” he confided. But next morning, returning to finish the job, they had heard a shot, seen Watson’s boy run out with a musket. They rode away but somebody must have talked. “Ol’ Zip, I reckon.”
“I might have gone and murdered that old nigra,” I muttered, as the truth fell into place.
“Tap, you mean? Tap knows?” Slowly he rose and came over to the bars.
“You left him dying. You’ve implicated me.” He deserves to die, I thought.
“For the love of Jesus, boy! Don’t show that devil face to your own father!” Blaming everything on Coulter, he spat up the rest. Coulter had sent Claxton to the Union garrison with word about a shooting out at the old Tilghman place. As the only person in Edgefield District known to frequent Deepwood, young Edgar Watson was the natural suspect, but just to make sure, Claxton reported that the Watson boy, armed with a musket, had been seen out there early that morning. “Can’t hardly believe that skunk’d go and do that to me,” my father said. He had lowered his voice, conspiratorial, as if inviting me to help him plot the Terrible Retribution of the Watsons.
Eyes closed, I pressed my forehead to the cold iron of his bars. Until he had confessed it by mistake, I had not even been aware that my life had been put at risk to cover their tracks!
“You’re pale, Edgar! Are you all right?” Reaching through the bars, the Coward Watson cupped my nape gently in his big hand. The hand remained too long. I stiffened. Had it occurred to him that I might go fetch his gun and shoot him through the bars? I thought, he aims to break my neck right now while he has his chance.
“You have grown up too fast,” Papa said sadly, letting go.
“Yessir.” My voice broke with despair. “I have grown up very fast.” With all of Edgefield District on my trail-even the jailer was out looking for me-I had risked coming here, not to kill him, not to tell him his family had forsaken him, nor even that I meant to take his horse. After all these years of terror and humiliation, I had come here to see him one last time, hoping to receive his thanks for shouldering the blame for the botched murder of Selden Tilghman.
“You hate me, don’t you.” He was whining. “First the mother and the girl and now my only son.” The victim’s eyes glistened in self-pity when I nodded. He whispered, “I am forsaken, then.” And I said, “Yes, you are.”
I was at the door when he called after me a last time. “Tap knows what happened? That what you come to tell me?” He gave me an awful smile. “Son? You’ll take care of that before you leave?” When I was silent, he said meanly, “Never mind, boy, the men will take care of it. Just you run away after your mama, save your own skin.” How I hated him for that! “Come back and see your poor old Papa someday, will you do that, son? You promise?”
“Yessir. I will be back, I promise. I aim to kill you, Papa.”
Crossing the still courtroom, I heard Lige Watson’s howl of woe as the truth of his lost life fell down upon him.
From the courthouse terrace, I stared at my home country-the first time I’d really looked at it since Corporal E. D. Watson of the First Edgefield Volunteers had borne me up these steps in the first year of the War. The terrace was not so high above the square as I remembered, and its noble prospect of blue mountains appeared sadly diminished. The countryside looked commonplace and the world small because my heart and hope had shrunken down to nothing.
The hostler had raised the alarm and people in the square were pointing as I ran down the steps and mounted. Tap was still out in the field. He, too, must have heard I was a fugitive, must imagine now that I was riding out to kill him. Having no place to run, he only straightened as the big horse came down on him. Slowly he laid down his hoe and sack and removed his lumpy hat to await the rider.
“I done jus’ like you tole me, Mist’ Edguh.” His voice was dull and dead. “I ain’t spoked to nobody about nothin, nosuh.” He was trembling.
Behind me, a shroud of winter dust arose from the hooves of horses. I said, “All the same, you know too much. They will be coming.” I told him he must find Lulalie, hide till nightfall, then depart. I handed him all the money left in the Colonel’s packet. “Buy a mule,” I said. They should slip away at dark, head for Augusta, catch up with the womenfolk on their way to Fort White, Florida.
Tap refused the money. “Nosuh, Mist’ Edguh. Dis yere Carolina country is mah home. I ain’t done nothin wrong so I ain’t goin. Trus’ in de Lord! Dass what Preacher Simkins tole ’em at our church when dem riders come for him. Dem white men listened, den dey went on home.”
“This kind won’t listen, Tap. They won’t even ask.” But Tap had always known better so he never heard me. He was watching the dust over the town. “I b’lieve dey comin. You bes get goin. Tell dat woman, please, dat Lalie and me be waitin on her when she get ready to come home.”
“God help you, Tap,” I said, turning the horse.
Avoiding the main roads, I headed south and west and forded the Savannah River near the fall line early next morning. When the roan clambered up the Georgia bank, I turned in the saddle to gaze back. I had left my native Carolina, and everywhere ahead was unknown country.