I had not tarried long enough to see the Owl-Man’s body through the musket smoke. It had no head.
Without a tool to chip a grave in the frozen ground, we piled half-burned timbers on the trunk and legs. Tap mumbled prayers. “You was a good man, Cop’n Selden, suh,” he finished, bowing his head. “A very good man. Black folks ain’ gwine fo’get you.”
Standing behind him, I lifted the musket and sighted down the barrel at the gray-frizzed scalp, the bare skin of the crown, the ears, the twitching skin and throbbing pulse, the humble skull. How fragile and transient the bent human seemed, with death hovering so close. One inadvertent twitch of my forefinger, already half numb with cold on the frozen metal. In leading me to kill by accident, Fate had betrayed me. In tempting me to obliterate the only witness, regaining my lost life, was Fate redeeming me?
At the base of my tongue was a quick metallic taste—not the taste of death but the taste of an unholy power to take life. I held my breath as with great care I lifted that numb finger from the worn and shiny lever of the trigger, but not before Tap Watson jerked his head around and stared into the eye behind the hammer.
FLIGHT
Even as I hurried toward Clouds Creek, my criminal sire, roaring with drink, was driving Major Coulter’s cart like a loose chariot, careening around the Court House Square, scaring and scattering old ladies, dogs, and children, whipping his poor roan bloody. When one wheel was struck off by the wood sidewalk and the buggy pitched him headlong into the mud, he was seized and hauled forthwith up the courthouse steps and through the courtroom to the cells behind. Next morning he was charged with disturbing the peace, endangering life and limb, resisting arrest, and public drunkenness—everything the constable could think of that might hold him without bail until the next session of the circuit court.
I knew none of this when on Sunday before church, I went to collect my wage. From the stoop, I called good morning to the Colonel’s wife as she crossed the corridor. Aunt Lucy only shook her head and did not answer. Then her husband came. He did not offer his hand, only coldly informed me that someone had reported a charred corpse in the Deepwood ruin and someone else had seen me on the road near Deepwood early yesterday morning. “It seems you were carrying a weapon. And a shot was heard.”
He stood in wait, perhaps still hoping that I might explain. I was struck dumb. Who would have gone into that ruin? And just stumbled on a body beneath stacked timbers? Tap had betrayed me.
“You must leave this district.” Colonel Robert’s voice seemed far away. “You have no future at Clouds Creek.”
“Sir? If my work—”
“It has nothing to do with that. You are an exceptional young farmer.” Having no son of his own, he looked truly bereaved. He drew forth a money packet. “I’ve included fair payment for your hogs. Now go at once, you are in danger here.”
I searched his face as a shot bird follows the hunter’s hand descending to wring its neck. There was no absolution in that gaze. I wanted to howl, It is not just! It was an accident! And he was already dying! An inner screaming, a ringing like crazed bells. I must have gone straight over backwards. Later I recalled a faraway whump made by my head and shoulders as I struck the ground.
Muffled hog grunts and the croon of chickens. Cold white winter sun.
“Edgar, try to sit up.”
“He fainted, did he? Wily as the father!”
A close warm smell of horse tack, burned tobacco. “He has these spells. Look at his color.” Less patiently, the man’s voice said, “Mrs. Watson, please do as I ask. Fetch him a blanket.”
Rummaging, she called, “Does he know his father is in jail?”
I rolled away, sat up—“I’m fine”—fell sideways. Taking me under the arm, Colonel Robert tried to help me up off the cold earth onto the steps. Wrenching away made me dizzy and I sat down hard. I said, “It was not my doing. I never wished him harm.”
Cousin Robert nodded, leading me behind the house out of sight of the road. “Yet you know what was done and you know who did it.” He paused a moment. “I have come to know you, Edgar. You are prideful and stubborn. You will not betray the guilty. And since, to defend yourself, you must accuse—” He put his big hands on my shoulders, squeezing hard to make sure I understood that he understood. “Pay attention, Edgar. Men are out looking for you. If you’re caught, you could be shot or hung.” He offered his hand. “You have had a hard bad road for one so young and were set a poor example. I am truly sorry.”
“It is not just,” I growled in a stony voice, as my kinsman’s face began to blur. When I blinked my eyes clear, his hand was still extended. It withdrew at just the moment my own hand started upward to accept it.
“God knows it is not just,” he agreed quietly, scanning the countryside. “That is the way of His world.” He crossed the yard to the back stoop. With a last warning to stay off the roads till I crossed the Georgia line, he closed the door behind him. On the white wall of his house, in winter shine, the window glass, clear and empty, reflected the black limbs of the trees.
All my life I have recalled the proffered hand of Colonel R. B. Watson, the grained and weathered skin of it, the wrist hairs like finespun golden threads in the cold sunlight.
THE COWARD
I fled across the frozen fields. At Grandfather’s house, I flung the hog pen gate clean off its hinge and drove my burly boys to freedom with hard kicks and curses. Their snouts would lead them to the Colonel’s troughs. If not, let them run wild, grow black and boarish. I tossed my rags and a few books into some sacking along with cold clabber and a knife and slung this meager bindle from the musket barrel. Leaving the Artemas plantation open to the world for all to pillage as they liked, I headed out across my fields, following Clouds Creek upstream through the home woods to the Ridge spring behind the church. Seeing no sign of riders on the highroad, I headed west toward Edgefield Court House.
Nearing Deepwood, I took to the wood edge at the sound of cantering horses. Armed riders passed. At Edgefield, crossing the back lots, I saw Tap Watson in the distance, gleaning in the field. Climbing the livery stable fence, I paid my father’s bill out of my pay, reclaimed the roan. “Heard you had some trouble, boy,” the hostler sneered, counting the money. “You and ol’ Ring-Eye both.” He knew I was a fugitive, considered seizing me, and sidled up too close, but respectful of the musket and the cold cast of my eye, he decided against any attempt to take me prisoner.
“Ye’re a hard one, ain’t ye.”
“Try me and find out.”
I walked the roan down the dirt lanes between dwellings. In the Sunday silence, the lanes were empty. At Mama’s cabin, a note on the table read “Dear Son.” They had left in haste while “your father” was in jail. She hoped that one day I might join them at this address in north Florida but if not, why then, good-bye. Did she mean, God be with you? Not thinking clearly, I returned the musket to the rafters.
The jail cells were upstairs back of the courtroom. I fiddled the old lock and slipped in quietly and listened. No deputy, no guard, not a sound. They were all out on the hunt for the young killer. The lone prisoner, sprawled upon his bunk, rolled over, squinted, jerked in alarm, yelled for the guard. I should have realized the whole truth then and there.
He asked me furiously what I wanted. Challenged, I did not know. Had I come to say I was sorry but I must take his horse? Had I, despite everything, merely come to bid farewell to my treacherous Papa?
I blurted foolishly, “I am no longer your son.”
“You walked all the way here from Clouds Creek to tell me that?” Hooting at my pomposity, my father lay back again, boots on the blanket, arm over his eyes.
“As of today, I am Edgar Addison Watson,” I persisted. “Uncle John Addison—”
“Damn him!” he sat up. “In this family the eldest son shall take the name of the paternal grandfather or be disowned!” I wanted to jeer—disowned from what?—but he was already commanding me to go make sure that his roan was gettin
g the good oats he’d paid for at the stable. I told him that account was settled. Job awaited me outside. “Mama has left home and Minnie, too. I aim to follow ’em.”
He shook off this news of wife and daughter as the roan might shiver off flies. “Don’t try taking my horse, you sonofabitch!” he yelled. “I’ll get the law on you!”
“You’ve already done that, Papa,” I said. If he heard, he gave no sign. “Take the musket, then,” he begged. “Leave me my horse. I reckon I don’t amount to much without that horse,” he added, seeking pity.
A shout rose from the square. Someone had recognized the tethered horse. Scared of a mob, Papa was on his feet, his blanket like a hood around his head and shoulders. Having come off the drink the hard way, all alone in his cold cell, he looked puffy and haggard, wheedling piteously, “They aim to hang me, son!”
“Nosir,” I said. “It is me they’re after.”
When he realized what I’d said, he loosed a loud whoop of relief; Whatever it was he knew, he’d got away with it. Then he stopped laughing and grew wary. “Don’t look at me that bad way, boy. I weren’t the one put it on you.”
For the second time that day, the blackness swirled so thick before my eyes that I had to grasp the bars. “The Regulators meant to ride out there and take care of that traitor that scared you,” he confided. But next morning, returning to finish the job, they had heard a shot, seen Watson’s boy run out with a musket. They rode away but somebody must have talked. “Ol’ Zip, I reckon.”
“I might have gone and murdered that old nigra,” I muttered, as the truth fell into place.
“Tap, you mean? Tap knows?” Slowly he rose and came over to the bars.
“You left him dying. You’ve implicated me.” He deserves to die, I thought.
“For the love of Jesus, boy! Don’t show that devil face to your own father!” Blaming everything on Coulter, he spat up the rest. Coulter had sent Claxton to the Union garrison with word about a shooting out at the old Tilghman place. As the only person in Edgefield District known to frequent Deepwood, young Edgar Watson was the natural suspect, but just to make sure, Claxton reported that the Watson boy, armed with a musket, had been seen out there early that morning. “Can’t hardly believe that skunk’d go and do that to me,” my father said. He had lowered his voice, conspiratorial, as if inviting me to help him plot the Terrible Retribution of the Watsons.
Eyes closed, I pressed my forehead to the cold iron of his bars. Until he had confessed it by mistake, I had not even been aware that my life had been put at risk to cover their tracks!
“You’re pale, Edgar! Are you all right?” Reaching through the bars, the Coward Watson cupped my nape gently in his big hand. The hand remained too long. I stiffened. Had it occurred to him that I might go fetch his gun and shoot him through the bars? I thought, he aims to break my neck right now while he has his chance.
“You have grown up too fast,” Papa said sadly, letting go.
“Yessir.” My voice broke with despair. “I have grown up very fast.” With all of Edgefield District on my trail—even the jailer was out looking for me—I had risked coming here, not to kill him, not to tell him his family had forsaken him, nor even that I meant to take his horse. After all these years of terror and humiliation, I had come here to see him one last time, hoping to receive his thanks for shouldering the blame for the botched murder of Selden Tilghman.
“You hate me, don’t you.” He was whining. “First the mother and the girl and now my only son.” The victim’s eyes glistened in self-pity when I nodded. He whispered, “I am forsaken, then.” And I said, “Yes, you are.”
I was at the door when he called after me a last time. “Tap knows what happened? That what you come to tell me?” He gave me an awful smile. “Son? You’ll take care of that before you leave?” When I was silent, he said meanly, “Never mind, boy, the men will take care of it. Just you run away after your mama, save your own skin.” How I hated him for that! “Come back and see your poor old Papa someday, will you do that, son? You promise?”
“Yessir. I will be back, I promise. I aim to kill you, Papa.”
Crossing the still courtroom, I heard Lige Watson’s howl of woe as the truth of his lost life fell down upon him.
From the courthouse terrace, I stared at my home country—the first time I’d really looked at it since Corporal E. D. Watson of the First Edgefield Volunteers had borne me up these steps in the first year of the War. The terrace was not so high above the square as I remembered, and its noble prospect of blue mountains appeared sadly diminished. The countryside looked commonplace and the world small because my heart and hope had shrunken down to nothing.
The hostler had raised the alarm and people in the square were pointing as I ran down the steps and mounted. Tap was still out in the field. He, too, must have heard I was a fugitive, must imagine now that I was riding out to kill him. Having no place to run, he only straightened as the big horse came down on him. Slowly he laid down his hoe and sack and removed his lumpy hat to await the rider.
“I done jus’ like you tole me, Mist’ Edguh.” His voice was dull and dead. “I ain’t spoked to nobody about nothin, nosuh.” He was trembling.
Behind me, a shroud of winter dust arose from the hooves of horses. I said, “All the same, you know too much. They will be coming.” I told him he must find Lulalie, hide till nightfall, then depart. I handed him all the money left in the Colonel’s packet. “Buy a mule,” I said. They should slip away at dark, head for Augusta, catch up with the womenfolk on their way to Fort White, Florida.
Tap refused the money. “Nosuh, Mist’ Edguh. Dis yere Carolina country is mah home. I ain’t done nothin wrong so I ain’t goin. Trus’ in de Lord! Dass what Preacher Simkins tole ’em at our church when dem riders come for him. Dem white men listened, den dey went on home.”
“This kind won’t listen, Tap. They won’t even ask.” But Tap had always known better so he never heard me. He was watching the dust over the town. “I b’lieve dey comin. You bes get goin. Tell dat woman, please, dat Lalie and me be waitin on her when she get ready to come home.”
“God help you, Tap,” I said, turning the horse.
Avoiding the main roads, I headed south and west and forded the Savannah River near the fall line early next morning. When the roan clambered up the Georgia bank, I turned in the saddle to gaze back. I had left my native Carolina, and everywhere ahead was unknown country.
CHAPTER 2
ON ECHO RIVER
I caught up with the women on the old Woodpecker Trail down west of the Great Okefenokee. Rode up alongside the wagons on a warm afternoon as if joining them had been my plan right from the start. Those poor females looked relieved, Aunt Cindy, too, but seeing that roan horse made them uneasy. Perhaps because I was unsmiling and untalkative, they never asked about Job’s ring-eyed owner and I never offered to explain, not then, not later, having no wish to lay open the wound of my lost life at Clouds Creek, and the great waste of it. On that cold afternoon, I hitched the roan to the tailgate of the wagon and crawled inside amongst their bedding and slept straight through until early the next morning.
Seeing my head poke out, Aunt Cindy whooped; she fixed me a big dish of scraps before pressing me about her little family. How was her sweet Lalie getting on? Had that fool Tap sent word?
I could scarcely look her in the eye. The truth would worry the poor woman to distraction, and in the end, a lie—that Tap and Lulalie were on their way to join us—would be still worse. Finally I said that, living at Clouds Creek, I had scarcely seen them. In my gut I knew that Tap was done for, and as for Lalie, who knew what had become of her? Aunt Cindy soon saw that behind my stiff smile and tough manner, my heart was crippled, and she gave me a queer look, but it was not her place to question me too closely so she didn’t.
On the twelfth of March of 1871, we crossed over into Florida. With two state lines behind me, I was breathing easier. Only now did I introduce myself to my fellow pioneers—Edg
ar A. Watson, overseer of the Artemas Plantation at Clouds Creek, South Carolina, at your service, sir. Nobody knew quite what to make of this husky youth who was no boy but not a man yet either. What he was, in truth, was a fugitive from his own land and rightful heritage, angry and dangerous as a gut-shot bear.
The last leg of the journey was by slow barge south to Branford Landing on the Suwannee River, “far, far away, that’s where my heart is turning ever, that’s where the old folks stay.” That old song misted my eyes with upwellings of loss. Curled in my nest in the warm tar-smelling hemp hawsers on the bow, I wallowed in tender emotions.
Try as I would to find relief in my escape from the cold rain and mud of Piedmont winter with its meager food and numbing drudgery, nothing seemed to ease the ache of longing. The farther I traveled from where I belonged, the more unjust my exile seemed. I reviled my misbegotten father, reveling in fantasies of a dire patricide. From Cousin Selden’s Iliad I had memorized a passage about the great rage of revenge which “swirls like smoke within our heart, and becomes in our madness a thing more sweet than the dripping of honey.” That fury had not abated, nor the will to vengeance, which chewed like a black rat at my lungs. My one consolation was knowing that justice would be done, that one day “in my madness,” I would deprive my father of his raw red life.
Before my eyes daily as we sailed way down upon the Suwannee River were visions of spring furrows at Clouds Creek, the warmed earth opened up behind the plow; of wildflowered meadows, cool and verdant, and airy open woods along the shaded creeks, winding southeast to the Edisto. That spring landscape turned forever and away in my mind’s eye, changing softly into the gold greens of upland summer in that lost land where I was born, the country of my forefathers, the heart of home. Clouds Creek—my earth—was the wellspring and the source of Edgar Watson, all the Eden he had ever wished or hoped to find.
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