I stopped over at Fort Myers to pick up my horse and bid good-bye to Mandy and the children. Mandy had moved to the ground floor because she could no longer make it up the stairs. Though it was midday, I found her in bed. Entering the small chamber, I realized that this would be the last time in this life I would set eyes on this creature I first knew as the young schoolteacher Jane Susan Dyal from Deland.
She’d been reading, as usual: her prayer was that her sight would see her to the door. She looked up with that bent shy smile that had enchanted me so many years before. I smiled, too, trying to hide my shock: the woman lying there was dying while still in her thirties. Already death inhabited her eyes and skin-a sharp blow to the solar plexus to see my dearest friend in this condition. How thin she was, how watery her eyes, her hair already lank and dead.
I leaned and drew her forward in my arms, pressing my lips to her yellowed neck to hide my tears. Scenting the death in her, I must have hugged too hard to cover my distress, for I had hurt her and she murmured just a little. When I drew back she looked at me and nodded. Mandy’s brain-and eyes and hands and mouth-knew all of Edgar Watson well, I could hide nothing.
I sat on the bedside and took her hands in mine, resisting an image of long years before, our Fort White cabin in early afternoon, the hot moss mattress and this willowy creature, hips soft yet strong astride me, eyes lightly closed and sweet mouth parted, releasing my hands and leaning backwards, twining her arms upwards in the air’s embrace, as if her transport must depend on that joyous arching. Even at this somber moment, the remembrance caused a disgraceful twitching in my britches. I did not wish to think about how those hips looked now, grayish and caved in under the covers.
“I’m so happy you have come!” she sighed. Lifting her fingers, I kissed the delicate bones. “Well, Mrs. Watson. And why are you lying about in bed on this fine day?” I rose to open the shutter, thinking sun and air might dispel the cat scent and shuttered heat, but of course it was the husband, not the wife, who needed comfort. Relieved by each other’s touch, needing no words, we sat there a good while in the midday quiet, and death sat with us. In a sudden rush of feeling I whispered that I loved her dearly and always would.
“How dearly, Mr. Watson?” she inquired, teasing. She had heard, of course, about the Island women and their children but more likely she was thinking about Charlie Collins, to whom I would have simply said, I love you.
“Edgar? I am failing pretty fast. You knew that.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Good. I’m so weary of all the pussyfooting and jolly bedside manner. Even Doc Winkler puts his finger to his lips to hush me when I ask frank questions. Tells me I must be a good little patient and just rest. Isn’t it astonishing? Even the children. They’re so brave and tactful I could smack them!”
Smiling a little at that idea, she blew her nose. “Is death so dreadful, Edgar?”
“Good Lord, sweetheart! How would I know!” I tried to laugh a little, aware there was something still unsaid, something I was not so sure I wished to hear. To deflect her, I promised I would look after our children, make sure that they got on all right in life.
Oh Papa, NO!
Rob’s words jumped to mind just as Mandy turned to peer at me in a queer way. “I beg of you, dearest, don’t turn your back on Rob. For her sake as well as your own. And please don’t call him Sonborn anymore.”
I winced, shaking my head. “Never again.” She was overjoyed when I said, very embarrassed, “I’ve discovered that I’ve loved him all along.”
“Oh! Have you told him so? It’s awkward for you, I know that-”
“I think he knows,” I lied. “Lucius knows your condition, I suppose.”
“I didn’t need to tell him. Carrie and Eddie know, of course, though Eddie pretends not to. They don’t want to deal with it quite yet. Not that Lucius refers to it, either, although sometimes I wish he would.” She seemed wistful. “He reveres you, Edgar. Perhaps you can talk with him a little. He’ll be home right after school.”
I was passing through town quickly, I explained. I had to go.
“Goodness! You’re in such a rush that you can’t wait even an hour?” She stared at me, intent, then closed her eyes, turning her head away. “I see,” she whispered.
“What?” I said, fighting her off. But because her children would have to deal with any rumors, she did not relent.
“Lucius is jeered at brutally at school. He refuses to believe the slanders, gets in dreadful fights.” In a different voice, she said, “Here in town, there is a story that when Mr. Watson goes to Colored Town, the darkies hide from him, that’s how scared they are that he might kidnap them.” She paused, hand clutching the coverlet. “They say no darkie ever comes back. They are thrown to the crocodiles.”
Overcome by what could never be undone, I stifled my protests, sinking onto my knees beside the bed, to pray or clear my heart or be forgiven before it was too late.
“Is Rob all right? He’s not involved?”
“Rob was in no way involved. He’s fine.”
I leaned and kissed her, overcome by an impulse to just quit, to lie down in her arms, lie down and give in to a flood of hopeless weeping-me! Mr. E. J. Mr. Watson, dry-eyed all these years, ached in his need of solace for so many losses. I longed to whine. I could have been the best farmer in south Florida, you know that, Mandy! All my great plans!-disgusting! A disgusting, low, self-pitying temptation to beg pity from a dying woman, especially this one who had never been fooled, who knew too well that for all the harm I had inflicted on myself, I had done far more to others. True, there were reasons, or at least excuses; she must be spared those, too.
I pulled myself together and sat up straight, tried to make light of it. Gruffly I said, “I don’t believe your Good Lord will forgive me, what do you think, Mandy?”
“Do you care?” she said. She had not recognized my reference to our Oklahoma days and the tale of that huge and bloody hellion, Old Tom Starr-either that or she was simply unamused. I stood up, kissed her brow in parting, crossed the room. She did not detain me even when I faltered and turned back in the door. She had not forgotten my Tom Starr story. Now she finished it. “No, dear Edgar”-her voice came quietly-“I don’t believe He will.”
I had skulked behind my poor tin shield of irony and she had pierced it with the hard lance of bare truth. Her cool tone stunned me. I dared to feel betrayed. I longed for the last sad smile of understanding which, after all these years, she now denied me.
I returned slowly to the bedside. She saw that my agony was real and touched my cheek but quickly withdrew her hand, for she was resolute. She closed her eyes and thought a moment, then opened them and whispered, “I’d like an answer to one question before you take your leave since I don’t think we shall ever meet again.”
My heart pounded. “You never believed me? Even when you testified in Fort Smith court?” Her flat gaze hushed me.
“The truth, Edgar. I beg of you. It’s late.”
So long ago, eleven years, and yet… one escapes nothing.
My silence was all the answer that she needed. “May God forgive you,” she sighed softly. “May God rest her soul.”
“Do you forgive me? That’s all that matters…” My voice trailed off. Mandy took my hand and squeezed it one last time, then pushed it away. Though our gaze held and her eyes softened, she would not speak. I went away bereft and suffocated for want of a coherent way to cry out the love I found no words for while she searched my face.
In a stiff river wind under hard skies, I crossed the Calusa Hatchee on the Alva ferry and took the horse coach to Punta Gorda, from where the railroad would carry me north to Columbia County. Seen through the window, the sunlight pouring down through green-gold needles of the piney woods was liquefied by damnable soft tears, so late in coming and no longer in my control. I was truly astonished that E. Jack Watson, with his fury and cold nerve, could come apart and weep much as he had when, still a boy, he grieved for the dead slave boy in the swamp. Whom are you mourning, you sad sonofabitch, Mandy or Edgar?
By the time the news came to Fort White that Mandy had passed away, I knew I’d loved her as entirely as the wood nymph I called Charlie my Darling, and perhaps even more deeply, though I don’t suppose that true love can be reckoned in that way. Sometimes I think we cannot know whom we loved most until all the lovers in our lives are gone forever. Looking back down our long road, our great loves are those summits that rise above the rest, like those far blue Appalachian peaks beyond the Piedmont uplands on that day when Private Elijah Watson of the First Edgefield Volunteers lifted his enchanted boy into the sun above the courthouse terrace. The light (so Mama always said) was like an angel’s halo in my hair.