From the Getzen place, the old Spanish Road led west through Ichetucknee Springs past the Collins trading post. Mr. Collins’s gristmill turned so slow that his boy Lem (Lem said) could top its hoppers full of grain and go home and eat dinner and get back to the mill in good time for a smoke before it finished grinding. Lem was my friend and his brother Billy was courting our Miss Minnie. What Billy Collins saw in that crushed girl I will never know. I suppose my sister was beautiful in her way, but this was said by women more than men because she had no spirit. All her life she would speak in a childlike voice, keeping her head flinched over to one side, her pale underchin pulsing with trepidation; she reminded me of that little tree frog we called “spring peeper” at Clouds Creek.
One April Sunday afternoon behind the store, Lem and I were hard at work on a half jug of moonshine when a girl I had never seen before happened by with Billy and Minnie. From the first, I could not take my eyes off that clear face. Fair skin, smooth and light and pretty as a petal, small nose, and small white teeth in a dancing smile. But what stole my breath were those large black eyes, like the wondering round eyes of some night creature.
Yes, I was pierced clean through the heart, love at first sight. So stricken was I that I reeled backwards, throwing my arms wide, crying out senselessly the name of the old song, “Charlie Is My Darling!” Having read so much, I was articulate enough, but my life had been so solitary, with so much silence, that I had no graces. I used that song to cover my confusion: all I really wanted to cry out was Miss, I love you. The girl went pink and turned haughty and Minnie cried, “Oh Edgar, honestly!”
I flushed but did not falter. I sprang forward on the wings of drink, striking both knees painfully into the dirt, and seized and kissed her hand, which was delicious, cool and warm at the same time. When she snatched it back, I bowed to her little boots, banging my forehead into the dust, astounded by my own oafish behavior. Clearly this Miss Collins thought me crude as well as rude, also swinishly inebriated, which I was. She reproved her cousin Lem for keeping such rough company-though in saying this, she caught my eye and almost smiled. She even tried to assist me off my hook, saying, “You guessed my secret, Mr. Watson, I hate the name Ann Mary. I’m not your darling but by all means call me Charlie if you like.” She thought me a bold idiot, she told me later. I was indeed rough company but also such an overjoyed poor fool that she forgave me.
I had known nothing of such exaltation! By some miracle-could it be true?-a dark-eyed angel loved this overjoyed poor fool to the same degree. We sat in the grass, leaning back against the sun-warmed slats of the old mill. I described my fine plantation at Clouds Creek to the sound of flowing water. From that first afternoon, we were delightedly in love, smiling and smiling for no reason, lost in each other’s smiling eyes, abiding in the other’s smiling heart. Nothing needed to be said, nothing regretted, all was perfect and complete just as it was.
From that day forth, while her life lasted, Ann Mary Collins adopted the name Charlie; she called me plain “Mister,” as if that was my given name. This graceful creature had surprised my heart with the first joy it ever knew. I’d been dead and dry as the white clay in the road. My life had been breathed back into me at last.
She heard the bad stories soon enough. Lem Collins’s parents got them straight from Herlongs, and Lem warned me. Charlie refused to repeat what she’d been told. There’s so much good in you, she whispered. She only hoped that her love for me was so pure and so strong that no matter what I’d done, God would redeem me. “Damn!” I swore, startling her. “How do you know that I’ve done anything? Why don’t you tell me what they said and I’ll tell you the truth.”
“You don’t need to hear their wicked gossip, Mister, and I don’t need to hear your truth. Whoever you are, I believe in you, and that is truth enough for me.”
One day that fall I borrowed Aunt Tabitha’s buggy and took her to the Ichetucknee, where we’d met. We left the buggy at the store and walked barefoot down along the edge of the blue springs, beneath a canopy of crimson maples, old gold yellow hickories, russet oaks. Charlie picked watercress for our wild lettuce, and a blueberry with reddish stems: she called it sparkleberry. She led my eye to the woodland birds of fall, knew their brown names-hermit thrush, sparrow, winter wren.
Charlie gave me her hand as we walked home. Bravely she presented me to her silent family and bravely I came calling every Sunday and helped with chores whether they spoke to me or not. I burned hickory and boiled ash resin for lye soap, worked flax for linen, parched goobers for coffee, ground homespun dyes from sweetgum and red oak, stuffed Spanish moss and feathers into mattress casings. I even helped with the washing, which I’d always hated. Built a fire in the yard, stirred flour for starch into cold rainwater before heating up the tub, then shaved a soap cake into the water. Barefoot, Charlie sorted the wash into white and colored, dirty britches, rags. We rubbed out spots on a rough board, then boiled them. Never boil the dyed things, Mister Watson, Charlie frowned, wagging her finger under my nose and blushing when I caught it in my mouth. The parents watched.
“Mind you, it’s Sunday, miss,” warned Mr. Curry Collins.
Fished out with a broom handle, the fresh wash was spread to dry, then the soapy water was applied to the privy bench and floor. I cursed my dirty nature for imagining, God forgive me, my dearly beloved’s bottom, neat as an upright pear on that wood seat. I emptied the tin tubs as she slipped indoors and bathed, and of course I pictured that sweet ceremony, too. She came out in a fresh dress, combing the water from her hair, and brewed some tea. Those eyes over her porcelain cup drew me deep into her soul as her mother came and went just out of earshot. We were lost in each other’s awe. She pressed my hand. “The greatest blessing ever to befall this foolish girl,” she said, “is Mister Watson.”
As a middle-aged bachelor, William Curry Collins had married the Widow Robarts, one of whose sons was my friend John Calhoun Robarts, called “J. C.” Ann Mary was their late and only daughter. I offered to accompany Mr. Curry down the Santa Fe and the Suwannee all the way to the Gulf at Cedar Key, where we hired two black men and boiled half the Gulf of Mexico for a few barrels of salt. After that hard expedition, Mr. Curry thought the world of me, informing Ann Mary that her beau was an exceptional young man. “Don’t I know it!” cried his happy daughter, that’s what J. C. told me.
Mama and Minnie adored Charlie, exclaiming over what this girl had wrought in a few seasons with their abrupt and sullen son and surly brother. These days he reeled off Greek quotations and Romantic poetry, bursting into song and spouting nonsense just to make them smile: “Sappy but happy with no pappy!”-that one made Minnie nervous even now. “I thought you’d never learn to smile,” Mama reproved me. I rattled her with a surprise hug just to hug somebody, and Minnie, too. “Our family has never been so happy!” Ninny cried, wailing at the great pity of it all.