Billy C. Collins married our Mary Lucretia that same year and their first child was dubbed Julian Edgar Collins. The “Edgar” honored Billy’s father, but poor Minnie, frantic to please her wayward brother, tried to hint that her sprat was named for me. However, no Methodist Collins would name his firstborn after Edgar Watson, and anyway, her husband much disliked me. Hadn’t his vile brother-in-law sent poor Cousin Ann Mary to an early grave? Had he not insulted her memory by refusing to attend her funeral and letting her parents take responsibility for the child?
When Lem and Billy’s father died, I paid his estate fifty-five dollars for a beautiful gray filly, long-legged and delicate, with big dark eyes. I named her Charlie. For ten and a half dollars more, I acquired the old man’s.12-gauge double-barrel, which in those days was a fancy gun, not used by common farmers. The right barrel threw a broken pattern but I soon learned to compensate for that. I would use that old firearm all my life and without hearing one complaint.
That spring, still shaky, I gave up my night wanderings and made a good crop for Captain Getzen, who had been patient, liking the way I worked. With my debts paid, I tried to heal our family by inviting the Collins boys to celebrate. Entreated by my sister, Billy accepted. And so, one Saturday, we rode to the O’Brien tavern in Suwannee County, the only place for thirty miles around that would still serve me. I had promised Minnie I would pick no fights, even in fun, and that evening things went fine. For such good Methodists, Lem and Billy got uproarious, and Lem toasted me over and over, yelling, “See that, Bill? Ed ain’t near so bad as what you thought!” Made me feel so kindly toward my fellow men, even my brother-in-law, that I jumped up on a table to lead all my new friends in a grand old marching song of the Confederacy, to which every man present knew the rousing chorus:
Hurrah! Hurrah! For Southern rights, Hurrah!
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that flies the single star!
When I sang out the cornet part (buppa-ba-buppa-ba-boo, ba-buppa-ba-buppa ba-buppa ba-boo!), Lem hollered to the crowd that his friend Ed might be the finest kind of farmer but his singing voice was a greav-ious insult to Southern rights and maybe our blue flag, too. He did his best to haul me off that table, with the whole room cat-calling and laughing, the singer included. But when I caught Lem with a boot swipe to the mouth, he grabbed my heel, and my momentum swung me off the table in a whirl of walls and faces, yells and smoke, and the oak floor struck me so hard that I couldn’t place the pain; when I tried to jump up, cursing and laughing, I collapsed and fainted. I was carted home in a wagon, both knees broken.