William Parker Bethea, a Baptist minister, sharecropped a piece of the plantation across the Fort White Road from Joe Burdett, and his family grew close to the Burdetts and Porters. His widowed daughter from his first marriage came to visit, and John Porter, a born meddler, suggested to both parties that Mrs. Lola McNair and Mr. E. J. Watson might take kindly to each other. Having nothing in the world against sweet widows, I fluffed up my whiskers, borrowed the red trap with bright gold spokes in which Billy Collins had once courted his Miss Minnie, and sparkled over there of a nice Sunday to pay my respects.
The Reverend in black preaching suit, white socks, and high black shoes was sitting in a rocker on his front porch. “Good day, sir,” said I. “E. J. Watson is my name. I am a friend of John L. Porter, come a-calling.” When I lifted my hat and introduced myself, he rose from his chair as if preparing to defend his hearth and home. Like so many in the preaching line, he looked like a more steadfast man than he turned out to be.
“Yessir,” he said in a stiff voice. “We know who you are.”
Hearing those cold words, I almost left without another word. But even as he spoke, Preacher Bethea was hastening out into the sunlight for a better look at my red trap with its fringed canopy, and after an uneasy kind of pause while he scratched his neck, this man of God stuck out his knobby hand. I gave it a good honest shake and he waved me up onto the porch, saying, “Make yourself to home here, Mr. Watson.”
Watching me was a young girl in a white frock who stood behind his rocker like a servant. She had wide brown eyes in a calm and kindly face and long soft taffy-colored hair down past her shoulders. This was not Lola but her younger sister Catherine Edna, who was of that age when a female of our species can be handsome and pretty both. Showing nice manners for that part of the country, she curtsied to her father’s guest and ever so winsome skipped away to fetch her sister.
What Preacher Bethea was up to in that moment only his Lord knew, but my guess would be, he was tussling with the Devil. And ol’ Beezlebub whipped God’s messenger well and quick, because even before I flapped my coattails up and sat my arse down in his rocker, I knew this man would never give me trouble. As farmer and preacher, he was well acquainted with my neighbors, including his landlord, the loud and loose-mouthed Tolen, and surely he’d heard rumors about E. J. Watson. Yet never once, on this day or later, did this man seek to assure himself that this stranger of dark repute would not sully his daughter.
By the time I left that afternoon, I had concluded that the Preacher’s plan was to sweep out the leftover girls from his first marriage, make room for the second batch coming along. He had two new kids and a third one in the oven, and no doubt dreaded the burden of the widow and her children somewhat more than permitting the younger sister to fall into the grasp of a known criminal.
By now Catherine Edna had returned, busting out onto the porch all in a flurry. When she smoothed her skirt and bowed forward a little to sit down on the steps, I could not help but note the apple bosom swelling in her frock. However, that was my own need, there was no guile in her. If she noticed all my noticing, she gave no sign, just beamed into my face like a fresh fruit pie. By the time Mis Lola and her little girl had joined us on the porch, it was already too late, I had my wicked sights set on her sister. All in a moment, Catherine Edna, whom I would call Kate, had twisted my loins harder than any female since poor Charlie Collins, who had moldered in the Bethel graveyard many a long year by the time this randy man of God, panting and croaking, had clambered aboard and fired up the womb of his late wife, setting this sweet child on the path of Life and Glory.
“Expected you Saturday,” the Preacher said, a little sour. “Lola’s just fixing to leave.”
The Widow Lola had the same calm, kindly manner as her sister, but also the sad quiet in her face of a young woman suddenly condemned to live mostly in the past who expects little or nothing from the future. Her hair was up in a big roll on her head, the way all married women wore it, and childbearing had thickened her a little through the midriff.
Lola McNair did not stay long. She was taking the afternoon train to Lake City, and the Reverend went off to hitch up his buggy to drive her and her children to the Junction. When she rose to go, she took my hand, smilng a little, having sensed what was already taking place. “So-o”-she drawled that small word slowly-“Mr. Watson.” I bowed, we exchanged a smile. Releasing my hand, she said how much she’d enjoyed meeting me, adding, “Next time, y’all come calling just a little sooner.”
Miss Lola was not flirtatious and she was not teasing me, only herself, having lost a suitor before she had even laid eyes on him-even before she knew whether she might want him. And she did not mind that I had seen her bittersweet glimmer of regret-all of that went back and forth between us with not one word spoken. That woman and I were friends from the first moment, as if we had been lovers in some other life. I loved her sister but I loved her, too, being full to overflowing with a grand bold feeling. Yet she was protective of young Kate, and her eyes were troubled. Unlike her father, she did not pretend she had not heard the rumors-that shadow went back and forth between us, too.
By reputation, I was two men in this district, the jovial, hardworking brother-in-law of Billy Collins and the coldblooded desperado-the Man Who Killed Belle Starr. While the Preacher might claim he knew only of the first, he stood ready to practice his divine Christian forgiveness on the second or know the reason why, for this man Watson had not arrived straddling a dusty mule like the rest of the young bucks around this section. He was a planter and a gentleman of property with a second plantation in the southern islands, a man of fine manners who came calling in a pretty two-horse trap, bright red with a gold trim, the only one like it this side of Lake City. Once the Preacher had seen this E. J. Watson, the other one went right out of his mind. His wish was to make a good marriage for his daughter as I had done for my Carrie in Fort Myers, so it wasn’t for me to condemn this hungry man. However, I know this: a caller with Ed Watson’s reputation would have gotten nowhere close to my young daughter, no matter how rich that rufous rascal seemed to be.
Although Bethea didn’t know it yet, I wasn’t rich-I had borrowed that red trap-but I was an old rascal, no doubt about that. From the first day I met his daughter, all I could think about was snuffling up under that sweet dimity like some bad old bear, just crawling up into that honeycomb, nose twitching, and never come out of there till early spring. Think that’s disgusting? Dammit, I do, too, but that’s the way male animals are made. Those peculiar delights were created to entrap us, and anybody who disapproves can take it up with God.
In their wondrous capacity of knowing the Lord’s mind, churchly folks will tell you that He would purely hate to hear such dirty talk. My idea is, He wouldn’t mind it half so much as they would have us think, because even according to their own queer creed, we are God’s handiwork, created in His image, lust, piss, shit, and all. Without that magnificent Almighty lust that we mere mortals dare to call a sin, there wouldn’t be any mere mortals, and God’s grand design for the human race, if He exists and if He ever had one, would turn to dust, and dust unto dust, forever and amen. Other creatures would step up and take over, realizing that man was too weak and foolish to properly reproduce himself. I nominate hogs to inherit the Earth, because hogs love to eat any old damned thing God sets in front of them, and they’re ever so grateful for God’s green earth even when it’s all rain and mud, and they just plain adore to feed and fuck and frolic and fulfill God’s holy plan. For all we know, it’s hogs which are created in God’s image, who’s to say?
So while church folks might judge that Edgar J. should be cast into damnation for longing to become one with His creation, Catherine Edna, the dirty-minded one (in God’s own eye) might be this man of the cloth who had whistled the girl’s sharp-eyed stepmother onto the porch while he took her sister to the railroad to protect his investment and make damned sure that this Watson feller didn’t finger the merchandise or get something for nothing.
Soon we were joined out on the porch by young brother Clarence, who claimed to be the first in these parts to work a camera and wanted to show a picture he had taken single-handed of this very porch on which we sat. When the womenfolk went back inside, I picked the boy’s slim brain about his family background, in hope of some clue to his sister’s expectations. The obliging youth provided in one blurt the history of the Bethea tribe as best he understood it, which to judge from his first sentence was not well at all: “Columbus,” he said, “thought the world was round but the queen told him it was square so he ended up at the Little Peedee River.
“First Betheas was Hoogen-knots and signers of Secession where we split off from the damn-Yankee Union,” he continued. “Life got too crowded in the Tidewater so Granddaddy William P. Bethea Sr. hitched his ox team to a covered wagon and he come ahead, driving his stock south by the old Cherokee Trail to Cow Ford, where it’s Jacksonville today. But the St. John’s River was too high, stock couldn’t swim it, so he headed ’em off west to Little Bird, crossed over at a tradin post that had a moonshine still and a brush arbor with no roof where them first Florida Baptists worshipped before churches was put up. Went on south and homesteaded down yonder on the Santa Fee, which flows over west to the Suwannee.
“My daddy, W. P. Junior, was ordained a minister at age twenty-one. He had thirteen head by Miss Josephine Sweat, who died of it all back at the century’s turn; we was seven head that was still under his roof when he done it again with the Widder Jessie Taggart. Oldest still amongst us is Catherine Edna, borned in eighty-nine. Youngest is Bill P. the Third, showed up last year.
“Now Daddy don’t hardly make a livin preachin, he got to raise his cows and chickens, got to sharecrop, too. Corn, peanuts, common greens, also velvet beans for fodder. New Ma Jess got her a crank churn, turns out three, four gallons of good cream every other day. Daddy goes up to town on Sat’days, peddles eggs and butter…”
Clarence’s voice was dying down at last. The poor boy had lost interest in our talk because he saw that I had, too. Catherine Edna was born the same year as my son Lucius, I informed him-that’s all I could think of to contribute. “Is that a fact,” he said politely. Neither of us gave the other the least encouragement to continue.
Kate Edna spared us any worse by bringing lemonade. As I was to learn, the girl had taken good care of her daddy after Lola married, and when New Ma Jess showed up, it was hard to turn him over to a stranger; she and her stepmother just got in each other’s way. Plainly she felt unwelcome in this house and was all set to run away with a boy who shortly rode up on a mule, likely young feller with black hair cut with a bowl. This was Herkie Burdett, son of Josiah Burdett from across the Fort White Road. When Kate Edna came out, he went rooster red and tripped over his boots coming up the steps, couldn’t make his big feet work at all: I had to grin when she said he played third base for the Tolen Team. Kate Edna had blushed at the sight of him, but whether she blushed out of young love or embarrassment for her tangle-footed beau, she was too kind and discreet to let me see.
Right in front of the guest, the erstwhile Widder Taggart reprimanded Kate Edna as if her young admirer wasn’t there, carping that Kate knew perfectly well that Herkimer had been told to stay away. Seeing Kate’s cheer die in her face, I knew it was high time I left, too, so that this girl would not blame the guest for being the cause of Herkimer’s humiliation.
As it turned out, William Leslie Cox had his eye on Kate Edna. One day he let drop a sly hint that he might know her somewhat better than an honorable feller should reveal. Without acknowledging he’d ever noticed her, he managed to hint that the Bethea girl had been trailing around after him at school, panting for the smallest crumb of his attention; it had got to the point where this poor scholar was so plagued and distracted from his studies that he was obliged to abandon them altogether-that’s what he said, though he’d told me earlier that he had quit rather than repeat that stupid grade.
Besides being ridiculous, this boy’s lying conceit was annoying and it stung, reminding me that I was nearing fifty while Kate Edna was not yet sixteen. And maybe she did love Leslie, just a little, because if she didn’t, she was the only adolescent female with that much sense for miles around. My niece Maria Antoinett Collins, her best friend Eva Kinard, and that whole flock of linsey-woolsey damsels at the Centerville School were all aflutter over the star pitcher on the baseball team. They blushed and gushed over his husky voice and that cheekbone scar inflicted in a duel. According to May (whose poetical nature was encouraged by her grandmother), this young swain’s hair “filled with light in summer and turned gold.” She loved the strong and graceful way he moved and ran and threw, doubtless imagining how all that rampant youth might feel entwined by a maiden’s arms and legs. No, it was not Kate Edna but May Collins who tagged after the star pitcher every chance she got, at least when her daddy wasn’t looking.
“That young man’s scar is the mortal imperfection that makes immortal the beauty of his face,” pronounced Granny Ellen, as my mother was called by Minnie’s children. (Granny Ellen still got her fanciest ideas from her old book of English poems, brought south from Edgefield.) But later on, when his zeal for taking life twisted that scar and hollowed out his face, our church folk would recognize the mark of Cain.
I told Les sharply to watch his tongue when referring to Miss Kate Edna Bethea. He cocked his head with a knowing leer, trying out a frontier drawl: “I never figured Desperader Watson would fuss hisself so bad over no filly.” I guess what he meant by this gobbledegook was that no true gunman from the West would let himself get hot and bothered over some fool girl. In my experience, sad to say, so-called desperados-like most individuals of perilous and uncertain occupation-got hot and bothered only rarely about anything else, but not wishing to spoil a young person’s illusions, I did not impart that information to Les Cox.
In the end Preacher Bethea was forced to deal with E. J. Watson’s reputation but it never changed his plans even a little. In a last-minute precaution as the day drew near, he found some excuse not to perform our wedding, after which, with his daughter safely off his hands, he assured his neighbors that he had strongly disapproved her match right from the start. Kate Edna was hurt, having done what she thought he wanted; she was learning the hard way who her father was. She said, “If Daddy disapproves of you, you see, he won’t feel obliged to provide a dowry”-the one bitter remark I ever heard this loyal daughter make. She was shocked when it turned out that she was correct.
Neither the bride’s father nor the groom’s mother was invited when we were married in a civil ceremony at Lake City by County Judge W. M. Ives, with whom I would have less amicable dealings a few years later. As a wedding present, Kate gave me a white shaving mug in floral porcelain with gold trim, the first elegant object I had ever owned. I was so proud that I grew a mustache to inset into its mustache cup, which kept my fine new growth out of the lather.
The wedding was celebrated on a two-day honeymoon at the Hotel Blanche, where Kate tasted her first champagne and oysters. For a girl who had grown up around farm animals, she set out on her erotic life distinctly nervous-not jumpy really but inert and damp, like suet, breaking out in sudden little sweats. Gently I stroked her back and rump, murmured her down and murmured her down, same way you might calm a foal, and pretty quick, with more champagne, she got taken by surprise by her own free nature. Her knees went back and her mouth opened wide and her farm girl body turned sweet pink all over, which got me cranked up, too. God’s so-called Creation, I decided a few minutes later, might be nothing more than the cumulative energy of all animal ecstasies, human and otherwise, exploding out into the universe in one mighty revelation.
We spent most of the next day in bed. Lying spent, I recalled that epitaph I saw somewhere in Texas: here lies bill williams: he done his damndest. I gave it hell but the next time around I was hard put to keep up with her. Even so, we raised such a rumpus in our squeaky bed that poor Kate felt too giggly to dress in front of me next morning.