That day, riding homeward through Lake City, who should I see but Miss SueBelle Parkins in a rose-decked yellow gown tilting down the sidewalk; plainly she was in that painless state in which she might share her bounteous person with a friend. I eased up behind her. Low and soft, I whispered, “sweet sweet Sooee gal,” and a tipsy grin inched all the way back under her ears. Even drunk, she knew better than to display acquaintance with a white man, but she hummed a little as she sashayed her hips back and forth to tease me, blocking my path and murmuring under her breath, “Doan you go to whisperin sweet Sooee, Mistuh Wil’ Man, cause SueBelle ain’ no white man’s li’l shoat.” Already those firm smoky hips shifting along under that cloth had fixed me hard as a bird dog up on point, and Sooee knew this, never had to look. She was having such fun lighting the fire in her Wil’ Man that she clean forgot to move aside to let a white man through. Folks coming out of church had stopped and some were pointing.
Recalling that day on the square at Edgefield Court House when the neighbors jeered at Ring-Eye Lige for challenging General Butler to a duel, my brain hammered and heat swelled my face. In the next moment, with no warning, Jack Watson banged the hard heel of his hand between her shoulder blades-Out of my way! The blow pitched her forward and she almost fell. Finding her balance, she reeled around and squinted at me with a cunning smile, hollering “Wil’ Man? Dat you? Ain’ you my own big brutha?” What had she meant? Could this be why she had been so full of dread? Did this explain Aunt Cindy’s iron coldness toward my father?
Thinking herself safe in the bright sunlight of a Sunday morning, Sue-Belle grinned saucily, waving her perfumed lace whore hankie as she pirouetted. “How come,” she cried out loud and clear, “you never come around no mo’ to visit?” Only then did she see Jack Watson and squawk and skedaddle in her haste to flutter off that sidewalk, but she was too late. Jack’s hand flew from behind and cupped her forehead, pulling her head back against his chest. The other hand held the knife blade to her throat. Her eyes and mouth popped open as he bent her head back onto her shoulder blades so far that her face was almost upside down, eyes staring out from beneath the nose and gasping mouth. That upside-down mask of terror startled Jack and stayed his hand, but not before he feigned a pass across her throat, using the rough nail of his forefinger.
When his hand withdrew, she remained motionless, eyes rolled upward, mouth opening and closing as if struggling to find air. Her eyes entreated but she made no sound. Slowly she sagged, slowly, slowly to her knees, as her fingers wavered up under her chin, dislodging one cheap tinsel earring as her thumbs pressed up to hold her life in. There was only a faint crimson thread, a minute trickle that, seen on her fingertips, she took to be the first freshet of the fatal spurt. At the sight of it, she groaned and coughed, then vomited, soiling her yellow gown.
Church bells. Figures transfixed. The dying bells. No one drew near. When I straightened, the figures backed away.
I left her there. Refusing to make way, a drunken whore had sassed a white man. He had scared her to teach her a lesson. That was that. And I was thankful Jack had done her no real harm. Yet a bad murmur followed me down that street and around the corner. Trouble-making nigras should be taken care of after sundown and somewhere out of sight, and inevitably Edgar Watson would be blamed for an unpleasant offense committed in broad daylight on a Sunday in front of an assembly of decent citizens. Why, that ruffian came within an inch of spilling nigger blood on our new sidewalk, right down the street from church! He had no call to give God-fearing folks such a bad fright!
When SueBelle vanished from Lake City, the madam started rumors that Edgar Watson knew more about her disappearance than perhaps he should. Hadn’t he killed some nigra back in Carolina? Soon the word was out that this Ed Watson hated blacks, shot ’em left and right. In Lake City, the coloreds shied across the street to get out of my way, causing painful embarrassment to my family, when the truth was, I got on fine with nigras, always had, ever since early childhood with the slaves back at Clouds Creek. Treated ’em as people in those days when most whites hardly knew one from another, couldn’t be bothered.
Our Watson ladies at Fort White heard all the gossip thanks to Sam Frank Tolen, who spared ’em no detail, not even those he had made up. However, in my star-crossed mood and ugly disposition, nobody dared ask questions, not even Mandy. Perhaps she didn’t care to learn more than she had to. But Great-Aunt Tabitha passed the word to Captain Getzen, who knew no way but to ride straight out and confront me in his field.
Captain Tom was a Confederate war hero, a small, fierce, feisty feller. He did not touch his hat when he rode up but stayed stiff in the saddle, whacking his peg leg smartly with his crop; that crop rapped that hardwood shin like the snap of rifle fire. I rested my hoe, touched my cap, and smiled politely, asking what I could do for him; he cleared his throat and said it might be best if I cleared out of this south county for a while. “Best for whom?” I said. He didn’t answer. “Cleared out?” I said. I much disliked the way he’d spoken, as if I were some kind of po’ white drifter. I reckon he saw that in my face, for he danced his horse back as I came forward, raising his crop just enough to give me warning. This good old man no longer trusted me not to attack him, and that hurt, too.
“Best for you,” he said.
I bowed my head as if to pray and took a few deep breaths. Then I said that Edgar Watson was the man who should determine what was best for Edgar Watson, who had been driven unjustly from his own plantation in South Carolina and did not intend to be driven out a second time, having done no wrong.
“No wrong, you say.” Tom Getzen shook his head, extracting a money packet from his coat. He refused to give reasons or name my accusers. I dropped his money in the mud and left at once, before Jack Watson could appear to worsen matters.
Confronted, Billy Collins said that “the family” agreed with Captain Tom: I should leave the county. “Which family do you speak for, Billy?” I demanded. “You weren’t a Watson, the last time I heard.” He shrugged that off, advising me I could come back when things blew over. “It’s not up to you to give me that permission,” I told him. “Anyway, don’t act like I’m the only one who has brought trouble to this family.” At this, Minnie fled the room.
“The reason my brother killed a man-if Lem was the killer-was self-defense.” Billy set himself as I swung off my horse, for he was nerved up now or at least felt safer in the proximity of my sister and my little nephews.
“If? What are you saying, Billy?”
From the other room, his Minnie screeched, “Tell Edgar you’re sorry!”-the boldest thing I ever heard my sister say, which only shows what a terrified creature she was. Billy blurted, “How about Aunt Cindy’s man, back in Carolina?” I raised my hand in warning. “Never say that, Collins. It wasn’t me.”
“And those knife fights over in Suwannee? One of those men nearly died! And that darkie prostitute? Lake City? What became of her?”
I took out my clasp knife and opened it and tested the fine edge with the ball of my thumb. “You aim to insult me every time you open your damned mouth?” When I raised my eyes to his, his nerve ran out. An opened blade will do that to a man. He said, “You’d even murder your own sister’s husband? A man half your size?”
Billy was a Collins, he was proud; I was content to let his own shrill voice and shameful plea ring in his ears. I pared my nails. “As for your brother,” I resumed after a pause, mostly to reassure my sister, “I only advised him to leave this county because otherwise someone might be killed, most likely him.”
It must have been Billy who reported his version of Watson’s “confession” to the sheriff, which was all it took to implicate me legally. It wasn’t even evidence, it was just hearsay, but the sheriff issued a warrant for the arrest of E. A. Watson as an accessory before the fact in the Hayes murder. Knowing he had no real case, he leaked word of his warrant in the honest hope I might get lynched or flee the county as Collins had done, leave him in peace.
Job, my old strong-hearted roan, was spavined from long months of hard riding. Since it looked like I might need a sound horse in a hurry, I hunted up another roan of the same temperament and gave him that same name. Sam Tolen came to warn me. “Looks like you might be havin you a necktie party,” said pig-eyed Sam, who was all read up on the Wild West, knew all the lingo. “Better light out for the Territory,” he added. Sam’s little brain was working fast, I could hear it sizzle. He was after my prime hogs and he wanted ’em cheap with my gratitude thrown in.
I said, “Hell, no,” to his insulting offer. “Those hogs are the county’s best.”
“That’s why I’m buyin ’em,” Sam grinned, hauling out his greasy wad. “You’re runnin out of time, Ed. Better take it.”
“They say a Tolen will short-change you even when he’s cheating you,” I said, counting the money. Sammy guffawed and clapped me on the back. I told him not to laugh too hard, he just might hurt himself, but Sam didn’t scare as easy as his daddy. He was always a nervy sonofabitch, from lack of imagination or a fatty brain. In his view, fate had nothing disagreeable in store for such a fine fat feller. “Don’t forget to write!” he yelled, breaking wind in a loud carefree manner as he departed.