Aunt Jane Watson looked too old for a woman not so far into her thirties. Had a shine to her pale skin, like a rabbit pelt been scraped too thin, so the shadow of the sun come right on through. Soon after the old Frenchman died, she got so sickly that Mister Watson took her to Fort Myers, but she never abandoned him out of her own woe. She made up her mind to go that very day her husband shot the mustache off Ed Brewer. She didn't want her children in a place where strange men might come gunning for her husband-I heard her tell him that myself, and when she did, he took out that big watch and looked at it, which is as close as Mister Watson come to a nervous habit, though it made other folks a heap more nervous than him. There weren't too much that he could say. Also, George Storter in Everglade was sending his kids up to Fort Myers to go to high school, and Mister Watson already had the idea he would do the same.
When Mister Watson took Aunt Jane to see Doc T.E. Langford, Mrs. Langford said, That island life is too darn rough for someone gently reared, you're coming to stay with us until you're better! Miss Carrie stayed on, too, helping take care of her, and Eddie and Lucius was lodged someplace, and went to school. Mister Watson told 'em all good-bye and come on back to farming his plantation.
That fine white house, so proud on Chatham Bend, was built for Mrs. Jane Watson and her children, and when the family went away, it seemed to mope like a old dog off its feed, a mite dirty, y'know, and kind of smelly. We was like strangers come in off the river, camping there and messing them nice rooms. Mister Watson had lost interest in his house. He was real somber for a year, he set inside a lot, and more and more he took to heavy drinking. I missed them children, especially Miss Carrie, and her father missed her even more than I did. Him and Rob hardly spoke a word from one week to the next.
When I asked Rob why he had not gone with his family, he snarled, "Because that's not my family, any more than she is your Aunt Jane!" He was feeling sarcastical, I guess, and made me feel awful. "Reckon you miss your natural mother pretty bad," I said. And Rob said, "Wrong as usual, stupid. I never knew her."
Me and Rob was close to the same age, and I was willing to be friends but he just wasn't. All the same, we was never far apart, cause even enemies could pass the time better than nobody. After Bill House went away, after the Frenchman died and the Hamiltons left to spend a year down to Flamingo, we never saw another boat along our river.
Miss Carrie was soon spoken for by Walter Langford, who was kin to Sheriff Tom W. Langford, so Mister Watson knew he'd get no trouble in Lee County that he didn't ask for. Mister Watson's rowdy ways got him throwed in jail in Tampa and Key West, but he went out of his way to avoid trouble in Fort Myers, and so far as I have ever heard, he never had none.
After the family left, around '97, we traded mostly in Fort Myers so's he could visit with his people. Sail up the Calusa Hatchee in the evening, passing Punta Rassa after dark. In Fort Myers, Mister Watson dressed real nice and talked real quiet, never wore a gun like them drunk cow hunters, at least not on his belt where you could see it. But he always had a weapon on him somewhere, and he kept his eye peeled. We never went to no saloons and never stayed long, just tended to business first thing in the morning and went back downriver.
One time when Walter Langford's friend Jim Cole come up behind him at the Hendry House, slapped him on the shoulder, Mister Watson told him, "Better not come up on me so sudden, friend." When he called a man friend, that was a warning, you could not mistake it. And Jim Cole, big talker though he was, backed off so fast he stumbled off the boardwalk, splattered mud on his new trousers, got himself whistled at by some drunk cowboys. Mister Watson turned and said, "I made another enemy"-not sorry, you know, but more like it was Cole who better watch his step from that day on. Didn't say it to no one in particular, not even me.
Round about '98, maybe '99, Mister Watson found Miss Jane a nice house on Anderson Avenue, which wasn't for colored like it is today, and Rob went away one season to Fort Myers school. He was older than any kid in class, and done poor cause he didn't try. He got in trouble, give his stepmother all kind of fits. Rob declared he would never be a bona fide member of her family, said he belonged at Chatham Bend if he belonged anywhere, said it so often that finally she agreed. His father brought him back to make a boatman of him, and it seemed right that he would take my place. Rob were Mister Watson's rightful son, and I never forgot it.
Not long after she moved to her new house, Miss Jane begun to waste away. That cheered her up, her husband claimed, being as how she was tired of life and knew her death was not so far away. I looked real close to see if he were teasing about death, the way he often did, and he said, No, Henry, I am serious. She makes a joke of it. The other day I said to her, You're not afraid of death, I see. And Mandy said, I guess I had it coming.
Telling me this, he had to smile, though I never knew if he was smiling at her joke or smiling because she could joke about such a thing or smiling because he seen I didn't get it. That is the trouble with no education-I guess I still don't get it. It was just some little joke between theirselves.
Mister Watson got lonely sometimes, too. We'd go to visit Henrietta and her Minnie, who was living these days at George Roe's boardinghouse there at Caxambas, and he got to know Tant's sister Josie Jenkins, who was kind of what you might call hanging fire. One day he brought Josie home to stay, but not before asking Henrietta if she minded, cause Josie were Henrietta's young half sister. Netta aimed to marry Mr. Roe, and later did so, but this night she had drunk some spirits and was feeling sassy. She said, "Mister Ed, I don't mind a single bit, just so long's you keep that durn thing in the family." They all laughed to beat the band, and I did, too, that's how good we felt, being members of our family.
Aunt Josie Jenkins was a spry young woman, small and flirty as a bird, always winking with some secret she might tell you if you coaxed her right, and tossing her big nest of black curls. Aunt Josie said she had come to Chatham Bend to make sure that Tant and me and "that poor Rob" was being treated good by that old repper bait, but I believe she was really there to look after that old repper bait under the covers. Aunt Josie would flirt her eyes and wings, dance away when he reached out for her, but them two didn't waste no time getting together. Aunt Josie said, "This place ain't built for secrets!" and us boys was told to sleep down in the shed.
Mister Watson were in his forties then, still vigorous, God knows, and his wife had been a invalid for years. I don't blame him for bedding down Aunt Josie, cause she was a lively little thing, had a lot of spirit. Sometimes we was visited by her daughter Jennie. Can't recall who Jennie's daddy was, and I ain't so certain Josie would know, neither. Might could been the one they called Jennie Everybody, because she wasn't so particular, but she was a beautiful young woman, next to Miss Carrie the most beautiful I ever saw.
Aunt Josie had a baby while she lived on Chatham Bend, called her Pearl Watson. So what with Rob and Tant and Jennie, and all our kin at Caxambas and Fort Myers, Mister Watson and me had us a family once again.
Tant was only a young feller then, not much older than me. He was Ludis Jenkins's son with his last wife, who was my grandmother Mary Anne Daniels. When Old Man Ludis got sick of life and killed himself, Grandma and her children went to live with her son John Henry Daniels on Fakahatchee. Uncle John Daniels's wife was part some kind of Injun, and a lot of it, cause wasn't one of them Daniels boys but was black-haired and black-eyed, Injun in appearance. There was bunches of Danielses and bushels of their kin, and they all kept moving from one island to another, so there was plenty of rundown Daniels cabins Tant could choose from. By the time they got done-well, they ain't done yet!-there weren't hardly a soul on the southwest coast that didn't have some Daniels in the family.
Tant was more Irish in his looks, black hair but curly, had a little mustache and Josie's small sharp nose. Tant was a sprightly kind of man, made people feel good. I never quite could get the hang of how he done that. Tant played hell with the deer and coons and gators, and he brought his venison and jokes and fleas from one Daniels hearth to the next one, all his life.
Tant never farmed nor fished if he could help it, called that donkey work. Even in his youngerhood he came and went in his little boat, you never knew where Tant would be from one day to the next. He was always a loner, never married, never lived a day under his own roof. Soon as Mister Watson went away, he was off hunting, and when he was at Chatham Bend, he fooled around making moonshine from the cane. I'm living off the land, said Tant, and drinking off it, too.
Tant were mostly drunk even when working. Sometimes he would lean way over to whisper in Mister Watson's ear, Ain't none of my damn business, Planter Watson, no sir, it sure ain't, but it looks to me like that damn worthless Tant is drinking up all your profits. How Mister Watson could grin at that I just don't know.
We hardly seen hide nor hair of Tant come time for cane cutting, late fall and winter. He persuaded Mister Watson how he'd save him money supplying victuals for the harvest workers, venison and ducks and turkey, or gator tail, or gophers, sometimes a bear. A great hunter like him would be plumb wasted in the cane field, is what he said. That's right, boy, Mister Watson would agree, kind of exasperated. Because you are bone lazy to start with and too weak for a day's work on account of drink! And Tant would moan real doleful, saying, Oh, Sweet Jesus, ain't it the God's truth! And Mister Watson cursed and laughed and let him go.
Now Tant was strong and wiry as well as lazy, but he purely hated being stooped over all day amongst the bugs and snakes, arms wore out, and brains half-cooked, and the earth whirling-you was seeing things, that's how frazzled out you was with weariness and thirst and common boredom, whacking away in the wet heat at that sharp cane that could poke your eye out if you were not careful. On top of half killing you, the work was risky, cause them big damn cane knives sharp as any razor could glance off any whichy-way when a man was tired. One bad swing from the man next to you could take your ear off, or your knife might glance off last year's stalks and slash your own leg artery or sinew.
Most of our cutters was just drinkers or drifters, or wanted men, or hard-luck niggers, maybe young folks like them Tuckers from Key West, trying to get a start. Mister Watson scraped 'em off the docks at Port Tampa and Key West, sometimes Fort Myers, brought 'em back and lodged 'em in a dormitory we built back of the boat shed. Told 'em the roof and corn-shuck mattresses was theirs to enjoy to their heart's content but half their day's pay would be deducted for their grub. Made you sad to see them worn-out people working them hard fields in their old broken shoes, never had straw hats nor gloves nor canvas leggings like what we had less they rented 'em from Mister Watson. Anyplace else, they was here today and gone tomorrow, but they was stuck on Chatham Bend, couldn't get off. Kept 'em scared of running off with all his talk of Injuns and cottonmouths and giant gators, and anyways, there was nowhere to run to, nothing but mangrove and deep-water rivers, miles from anywhere. Knowing how hard it was to find trained help, Mister Watson made sure they was always owing, never let 'em back aboard his schooner until they was too sick or lunatic to work. By that time they was begging to swap any back pay they had coming for a boat ride to most anywheres, having come around to Mister Watson's view that they was a lot more trouble than they was worth.
Sometimes his wife might protest, saying, Do unto others, Mister Watson, as you would have them do unto you. And he would say, They would do the same unto Mister Watson first chance they got-that's human nature. You're a hard-hearted man, she would say, shaking her head. And he would answer, I am not hardhearted, Mandy, but I am hardheaded, as a man must be who aims to run a prosperous business and support his family.
Only man who stood up to him was a young feller name of Tucker who needed his back pay before we got the harvest finished in the autumn. Mister Watson got so irate that he run him off without no pay at all. But Tucker was mad, too, and hollered out, This business ain't finished by a long shot! And Mister Watson yelled, Might be finished by a short shot, I ever catch you on this place again.
The only feller who ever come back for more was a drifter and drinker, Old Man Waller, who had the same way with hogs as Mister Watson did. When Waller was sober, them two could talk hogs day and night. So Old Man Waller got put in charge of livestock, and snuck out of a fair amount of field work. One evening when Mister Watson was away he got drunk with Tant and went to the hog pen, give the hogs a speech and their freedom, too, and the hogs went straight to the damned syrup mash, got drunk right along with Old Man Waller. One full sow that went to sleep it off got half et by a panther, piglets and all. I told Old Waller it wasn't funny, but he didn't agree.
Waller decided to leave Chatham Bend with Tant early next morning, but a year later he showed up again with a fine hog, said he had seen the error of his ways and made amends. Mister Watson explained that Old Man Waller had replaced the hog but was wanted for hog theft at Fort Myers. But Waller said, Nosir, what it was-begging your pardon, Mister Watson-island life has been prescribed for me by my physician.
As time went on, something changed there at the Bend. I never was around too much of it, I was off running the boat most of the time, but everybody got to drinking up Tant's aguedente, they got the idea that they could let things go. Mister Watson would shout, "This place ain't fit for niggers!" and they'd jump up, rattle things around, go right back drinking. Tant might even holler out, Did I hear "niggers"? How about white trash? How about outlaws? Then Tant'd pretend he'd scared himself half to death, and apologize for calling Mister Watson a outlaw when he weren't nothing but a common desperader. Mister Watson might grunt a warning, but pretty soon he'd say, To hell with it, and pour more liquor. He grew heavy.
Finally our boss went on a rampage, just took and cleared that whole bunch out of there after the harvest, including some no-account niggers he brung in to cut the cane. Told 'em they had drank up all their pay, and his profits, too. He picked a day when Tant were gone, cause he hated to blame a single thing on Tant, who drank more than the rest of 'em put together.
That day I had come in from Key West, and I hardly had the boat tied up when them females and young come quacking down the path like a line of ducks, with Mister Watson right behind kicking their bundles-should of been kicking their fat bee-hinds, he said later. Hollered at me to get 'em the hell out of there before he lined 'em up and blowed their brains out, if they had any. Told me to take 'em out into the Gulf and throw 'em to the sharks, for all he cared.
I don't guess he meant that but they thought he did. Nosir, they weren't sassing him that afternoon! Them women was dead sober, they looked scared. They finally knowed that they had played with fire. It was only after we dropped down out of the river and was safe at sea that they started in complaining they had not been paid. If I had not come back there when I did, Cousin Jennie blubbered, that ginger-haired monster would have murdered the women and children, never thought twice about it.
In years to come, when them kinfolks who kept house with Mister Watson was living at Pavilion and Caxambas, they would repeat Cousin Jennie's words when they was drinking-not spiteful, you know, they done it to get attention to theirselves, get some excitement out of life, cause they was all of 'em sweet on Mister Watson, always would be. I never paid none of 'em much mind, and don't today.
All the same, it was them Daniels women got that story started how Mr. E.J. Watson always killed his help on payday, and of course our competition in the syrup business was glad to hear an explanation of how come Mister Watson done so much better raising cane than they did.
That puts me in mind of his old joke down in Key West. Feller would ask him, What you up to these days, E.J.? And he'd wave his bottle and yell out, Raising Cain!
Heck, even I got that one! I would laugh my head off every time I heard it, and told it every time I had the chance, till folks begun to ask me to hush up about it. Well, I'd tell'm, it just goes to show you it ain't true that Henry Thompson got no sense of humor, way some say! Heck, I'd say, I like a joke good as the next man! They'd laugh along with those words, too, though some way I felt kind of left out.
Anyway, I never knowed him to be nothing but fair in his dealings with his help, he was hard but fair, and Hiram Newell, S.S. Jenkins, and all them other ones that worked for him would say the same. As for niggers, I never heard a nigger speak a word against him.
I took them women on back to Caxambas and stopped over for supper to George Roe's place, where Miss Gertrude Hamilton from Lost Man's River, age fourteen, was a new boarder. By that time Henrietta had hitched up with Old Man Roe, and a few years later, must been 19 and 03, some Yankees started the Caxambas clam factory, so our whole gang went down to Pavilion Key for the clam fishery. Uncle Jim Daniels was the crew boss, and Mr. and Mrs. Roe had the store and post office, and Aunt Josie was there, too, with her latest husband. Josie took seven by the time the smoke cleared, counting the one that she took twice, and she saw every last one of them fellers into his grave.
Speaking of funerals, old Johnny Gomez drowned in 1900, tangled his cast net on his ankle, looked like, and the weights pulled him off balance, tugged him overboard. He was still tangled when some men from Marco, stopping by on their way north from Key West, found him hooked by his trousers in the mangrove at low tide, with his nose-warmer washed up alongside him. Had a funeral at Everglade, and Mister Watson's good friend R.B. Storter-Mister Watson always called him Bembery-took the Widow Gomez home to Panther Key. She was still on the young side so didn't stay long. In later years, running the Gladiator for Mister Watson, I used Johnny Gomez's thatch shack for my camp when I stopped off at Panther Key to get my water and moon a little about Carrie, and when Hiram Newell took over my job, he used it, too. Matter of fact, it was Hiram found Old Johnny's body, him and his brother-in-law Dick Sawyer. Dick was another friend of Mister Watson, least he claimed to be. Claimed he was in the bunch that seen Santini's throat slit, and helped to get the knife away from Mister Watson.
One afternoon of autumn, 1901, I seen the towering black smoke of burning canefield from way out in the Gulf off Pavilion Key, and the fire was still going strong all the way upriver, the growing roar like storm, and the hard crackle, and that sweet odor in the air like roasting corn. As I come nearer, I could see the woods just shimmering in that heat, and the dark hawks and buzzards and the white egrets that will come from as far as they can see that oily smoke to feed on the small critters killed or flushed from cover in a burn.
I believe that Mister E.J. Watson might been the first planter in south Florida to try burning his field before the harvest, figuring work would go much faster with less labor once the leaves and cane tops was all burned away. Nothing but clean stalks to deal with, not much sugar lost, and a smaller payroll. Only thing was, cane sugar don't extract good from the stalks even a few days after a fire, and this here was a field of thirty acres, and he hadn't brought no cutters in for the fall season. There was only him and me and Rob, and maybe Tant if we were very lucky. He must of gone crazy is the way I figured, he was firing a canefield we would never harvest.
When I come into the Bend, first thing I seen was Mister Watson all alone out in his field, still setting fires, on the half run like he'd heard a shout from Hell. I didn't see no sign of Rob, let alone Tant. Mister Watson was the only man on that plantation, drifting over that black ground like a huge cinder swirled up by the wind, in a ring of fire. Had his shotgun with him, and that made no sense neither, cause the birds had no plumes in this season, and he hadn't lit fires on three sides the way we done sometimes when we wanted a shot at whatever run before the flames. In a unholy light where sun rays come piercing down through the smoke's shadow, something was hanging in that hellish air and whatever it was kept me from calling. I wouldn't go nowheres near a man who looked like he had set himself afire. I didn't go near the house even, just waited for him by the river. Toward nightfall, when the flames died down, and he come in, his face was fire-colored, eyes darting everywhere. He was coughing hard, fighting for breath. "Who you hiding on that boat?"-that's his first words. He went on past, down toward the dock, and halfway down, he swings that gun around quick as a viper, like he means to throw down on me and fire.
I yell out, "Hold on, Mister Ed! I come alone!" Cause orders was, if ever I come into the Bend with someone hid aboard, I would lay off there on the river, give him time to get in close behind the poinciana, get the drop on any man who tried to come ashore.
He don't lower the muzzle of his double-barrel. I face the holes. Ever try that? Makes you feel like you might fall in pieces even before you're blown apart. Then he swings back around and keeps on going. He don't like having his back to me but he minded his back turned to the schooner even more. And damned if he don't poke that shotgun into every cranny on that boat, from stem to stern.
Coming out, he mutters, That's right, boy, no harvest. He don't explain that but I understood it later. With all that cane unharvested, and no fire, he was afraid that next year's crop would be choked out.
I don't know where Rob is, and I don't dare ask.
Rob was very dark in spirit along about that time. One day, setting on the stoop, he picks up his dad's old double-barrel that is leaning up against the house. First he puts the muzzle in his mouth and turns so I can see. Then he points the gun at Rex, who is laying there in the poinciana roots having a nightmare. I am close by but inside, keeping away from him, I can hear him muttering at the skeeters through the screen. Says, "Rex, if I get bit once more, I am going to pull these triggers. And if this here gun is loaded, boy, then this is your last day as a dog, cause both barrels is aimed to blow your head off."
Well, that's exactly what he done, and after he done it he ran wild, ran around the house, round and round, and let out a shriek every time he passed the carcass. Mister Watson took that poor dog by the tail and flung him in the river, and still Rob shrieked each time he turned the corner. Must of run around the house nine times before we could catch hold of him and talk him down.
All me and Mister Watson ate for supper was Tant's cold venison, left on the hearth. No bread baked and didn't fix no greens. The meat weren't smoked through proper because Tant got drunk and let the fire die, it had a purply look and old rank smell to it. "Might be nigger meat," Mister Watson growls when he seen me gag on it, and he snorts like he's going to laugh but the laugh don't come, not once, not that whole evening.
I still had fears from seeing him on fire in that field, and I prayed to God he would not start in to drinking. All you could hear besides the skeeter whine was us men chewing meat. I thought I'd never get that meat down, that's how dry my mouth was, and I never cared for venison that day to this.
He gets the bottle out, but he don't drink. He just sits there with his shotgun, panting, staring toward the river. "Sometimes it gets me," he muttered once, but he don't explain it.
That evening I got to thinking about moving on. It was time for me to start out on my own. I was near to twenty and I had my eye on young Gert Hamilton, whose brother Lewis was to marry Cousin Jennie. Mister Watson had taught me good all about farming. I could shoot and trap, hang mullet nets and skin off egret with the best of 'em, and anyways it weren't hard to tell that our good old days at Chatham Bend was near their end.
After I done the dishes, he coughs and hacks, says, I am sorry for the way I acted. You are my partner, are you not? I am, say I, and proud to be so. He nods his head for a long time. Then he begun talking, slow at first, relating all about his life, and why it was he come down to the Islands.
Mister Watson confessed he were a wanted man in Arkansas and also in Columbia County, in north Florida. As a young feller in Columbia, he had a good farm under lease, and made him a fine crop, but after he sold his crop off, he hurt his knees in a bad fall at O'Brien, Florida, was bedridden a good while and his plantation went all to hell, and he had to borrow money from his brother-in-law. This was after he lost his first young wife in childbirth-that was Rob's mother.
In a few years he found him a pretty schoolteacher, Miss Jane S. Dyal of Deland, Florida, but that brother-in-law kept after him about the money, kept hounding him and sneering, "right up until the day that feller died," Mister Watson said. He smiled just a little when he said those words, and I give him a quick smile back. "It come down to a matter of honor," Mister Watson said, and he watched me again. Mister Watson never said he killed that man, and I never asked him, but some way the man's friends must of found fault with him.
Along about then, he decided it was time to go out West. "No sense getting lynched," he said, "before getting to tell my own side of the story." He packed up his family in the same old covered wagon his mother had brung south from Carolina, and him and his boy Rob and new wife, Jane, with little Carrie and Baby Ed, left by night and lit out northward for the Georgia border.
The following spring-this was 1887-they sharecropped a farm in Franklin County, Arkansas. Got his crop in and kept right on going, all the way to Injun Territory, maybe seventy miles west of Fort Smith, what he called the Nations. Injun Country was the first place he felt safe, because there was next to no law in the Nations. Injun police never messed too much with white men so long as they left Injuns alone; Injuns figured that any white in trouble with other whites couldn't be all bad, Mister Watson said.
That whole region was a hideout for outlaws and renegades from Missouri west to Texas, because the only law was the same law we had here, eye for a eye and a man's honor, so better shoot first and get the details later. Frank and Jesse James and the Younger boys who rode with Quantrill in the Border Wars and fought in his guerrilla troop for the Confederacy naturally went on to a life of outlawry, and most of them men hid out and drank and roamed anywhere they wanted in the Nations.
There was plenty of renegade Injuns, too, and the worst of 'em, Mister Watson said, was Old Tom Starr, whose father was head of a wild Cherokee clan on a stretch of the South Canadian River where the Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee Nations come together. Tom Starr was huge, and kept himself busy wiping out another clan who had a mind to bump off Tom Starr's father.
"Killed too many, got a taste for it, know what I mean?" Mister Watson said. I thought he give me a funny look, but he probably never. "Sure do," I said.
Tom Starr and his boys set fire to a cabin in this feud, and a little boy five years old run out, and Tom Starr picked him up and tossed him back into the flames, that's how bad the feud was.
"I don't think I could do a thing like that, could you, Henry?" Mister Watson said-he was frowning, you know, like he'd thought hard on it before deciding.
"Nosir," I said.
Old Man Tom Starr asked another Cherokee if he thought God would ever forgive him for that deed he done, and his friend said, No, I don't reckon He would.
"I wouldn't care to give that answer to a black-hearted fellow like Tom Starr, what do you think, Henry?"
"Nosir," I said.
"Nosir," Mister Watson said.
Mister Watson wasn't there a year when somebody put a load of buckshot into a woman named Myra Maybelle Shirley, who lived with a dang Injun, Tom Starr's son. Shot her out of the saddle on a dead cold day of February '89, and give her another charge of turkey shot in the face and neck right where she was laying in the muddy road. At the funeral at Youngers' Bend, Mister Watson was accused by Starr of murdering his dearly beloved wife.
"They tied my hands and they rode me over to Fort Smith, Arkansas, and Jim Starr signed a murder warrant in the federal court. Some of my neighbors gave depositions, mentioned the quarrel, said I lived pretty close by the scene of the killing. But I had a good reputation with the merchants, quiet church-going man who paid his bills, and so the local papers took my side.
"Here's the lesson I learned, Henry, and I learned it well, and it's stood me in good stead all my life: No decent American is going to believe that a man who pays his bills is a common criminal, no matter what!" Mister Watson's laugh come right up from his boots, as if the whole world weren't nothing but plain foolishness, and him right with it. I laughed along with him, never knew why, I heard my own laugh clatter in my ears.
Mister Watson fetched out a cigar box, showed me a yeller clipping from the Fort Smith Elevator. Had to read me it, of course; never had no school back then in Chokoloskee. The reporter told all about how Mister Watson had stood up to that pesky Injun and denied the charge, how the defendant Watson "was the very opposite of a man who would be supposed to commit such a crime."
Reading this out, Mister Watson stopped grinning and watched my face. "By God, Henry, you never let me down! That's the one thing in my life that I can count on-Henry Thompson won't die laughing! I'll have to do the laughing for us both!"
Mister Watson sighed, took his first drink. He was feeling good again.
"The commissioner gave Jim Starr two weeks to come up with some witnesses, some sort of evidence, but he never produced a goddamned thing that would stand up in court. The case was dismissed-I never went to trial."
By that time, the newspapers had taken up Belle Starr, made her famous all over the country. Mister Watson fished out a old book with a lady on the cover packing two pistols: "Bella Starr," he read in a disgusted voice, "The Bandit Queen, or The Female Jesse James. This book of lies was cooked up in New York in 1889, not six months after she died, and they'll be making up lies about her from now on, to go with the whoppers she told about herself. Remember that time you told me, boy, to take Old Man Johnny Gomez with a grain of salt? You'd need a keg of it for Maybelle Shirley!"
Mister Watson left the Indian Territory in early March of 1889, right after the murder hearing in federal court. He wanted to head farther west but needed money, so he joined the land rush in the Oklahoma Territory, April 1889, when most of the Creek and Seminole land was throwed wide open to the whites under the homestead laws. Unlike most of 'em he knew that country. He rode out on a borrowed horse on the dead run, made a fine claim on some good bottom land he'd had his eye on. Said it almost broke his heart to let it go, cause he could have made a good crop there that very season, but his wife said the claim weren't far enough from Tom Starr's country.
Lots of settlers left behind in that first land rush was willing to pay out ready money, and he sold his claim, went back to Arkansas, leased a good farm. Next thing he knew he was jailed as a horse thief-framed by Belle Starr's horse-thief friends, the way he figured it. He escaped from jail, swum across a river with bullets kicking up the water right around his ears. Got two good horses and a grubstake, headed for Oregon. Leased a farm in the Willamette Valley and done pretty good for a year or two until one night someone who had took a disliking to him fired a shotgun through the window, giving him no choice but to fire back. Didn't wait till daybreak to head east again, for Edgefield County, South Carolina, where he come from.
"I'd been gone from home a good number of years, and I reckoned my father would be dead, and all my boyhood trouble died away. But that old man was living still, and he was unwilling to forget, let alone forgive. I headed for Columbia County, Florida, to see my mother and my sister, see if I could fit my life there back together, but they warned me the warrant was still out, so I kept on moving.
"There was nothing to do but start my life all over. Some Columbia County folks had sent back word they were doing fine down around the Everglades, and people were saying that south Florida was the last place left where a man could farm in peace and quiet, and no questions asked.
"Only thing was, I stopped off in Arcadia, and a bad actor named Quinn Bass came after me with a knife in a saloon, so I had to stop him." Mister Watson shrugged, then cocked his head as if to see how I was taking it. "Had to pay good money to get out of that one. But some of that Bass clan was dissatisfied by the transaction, and someone will come after me, sooner or later."
He nodded his head, like revenge was a philosophy he could approve of. "I'll know him when he comes, and he'll find me ready," Mister Watson said. He was always ready, come to think of it, cause any stranger might turn out to be the man he waited for.
Mister Watson seemed pretty honest in his story, and I felt honored he had told me, it was just I could not get the details straight. I couldn't make out from the way he told it if he did or did not kill his brother-in-law, if he did or did not kill Belle Starr. He growled low every time I looked like I might pester him with questions, but them blue eyes seemed to dare me all the same. After a while, when I just kept whittling, his hand shot over quick and nabbed my wrist, and his eyes fixed me. He don't say a word but those eyes want something.
I say, kind of conversational, "I was just pondering if this Quinn Bass feller died."
"That's what the coroner claimed," Mister Watson said.
He kind of tossed my wrist away, like he couldn't understand such a stupid question. It was pretty stupid, I guess. I'd seen him shoot many's the time, and when Ed Watson shot something, it stayed shot.
That evening Mister Watson never talked no more. The man just sat there for a long, long while, hands on his legs, like he aimed to jump up quick and leave but couldn't remember where he had to go. And of course there weren't no place to go, not in the Islands. At night there was only cold, cold stars, so high beyond us, and the awful tangle of black limbs, owl hoot and heron squawk, the slap of a mullet faraway down that lonesome river.
Later days, when he was drinking, Mister Watson would brag around Key West how he took care of Belle Starr and her foreman when they come gunning for him in a narrow neck of woods. Hinted as how he'd took care of a few in his wild and woolly days out West, but claimed he'd never killed nobody less they meant him harm.
Bill House had already advised me that Mister Watson weren't the law-abiding citizen I took him for, him being wanted in three states for murder. Give me something to think about all that long evening when I and Mister Watson were setting there alone by lamplight, yeller shadows flickering, with that old black river licking through them empty mangroves, pouring away into the Gulf of Mexico.
That night I went outside, feeling small and lost. It was like I had woke in some night country on the dark side of the earth that all of us have to go to all alone. First thing I seen, the schooner was gone, just drifted away, like Henry Thompson had forgot to tie her up. My heart begun to race too hard, I was so scared I wanted to cry out and run, but there was nowhere but them blackened fields that I could run to. The earth was ringing in a silver light, the stars gone wild. It was like the whole continent of America, with all us white people and Injuns and niggers, me included, lay sprawled like poor Miss Maybelle Shirley, with her end nearing, blacking out the stars. That poor soul had stared at Heaven like I was staring now, the whole universe grieving, and these night rivers bleeding her to death.
What happened was, Rob left where he was hid and run off with the schooner, just slipped her lines and let her drift with the current. Took her as far as Key West by himself, that's how desperate he was to get away. When word come back, Mister Watson went and got her, but pretty quick he left for other parts, leaving word for Tant and me to keep an eye on his plantation.
When Tant heard how Tucker died at Lost Man's Key, he swore he would never work again for Mister Watson. I never knew Tant any way except lighthearted, I never knew he had such upset in him. Over and over I told Tant, "It ain't proved it was Mister Watson," but he never listened.
After Tant left, I stayed on awhile, waiting for Mister Watson. When he never come, I padlocked our white house and went back to Caxambas. That was 1901, when Gertrude Hamilton from Lost Man's River was lodging at Roe's Boarding House along with us. That's James Hamiltons, not Richard-them people was another bunch entirely. Gert didn't last long in Caxambas School on account I married her and took her back to Lost Man's River.
I was borned in Key West back in '79 and lived on Chokoloskee in my later life, but I guess you could say them rivers was my home.
Lately I have come across another pioneer memoir that makes special reference to Mr. Watson. The author, Marie Martin St. John, was a child of Jim Martin, former sheriff of Manatee County, who in the fall of 1899 moved his family from Palmetto, Florida (on Tampa Bay), to the old shack used by Jean Chevelier on Gopher Key, "to give them a taste" of the Florida wilderness in which he had grown up. Martin subsequently erected a new dwelling on Possum Key. The author was only five when she went to the Islands, and though her memoir is alive with savored reminiscence, it may be shaded by events and rumor of a later period.
We made port at Marco, a landing pier and little else… then sailed south for Everglades City [sic] and Chucoluskee [sic], one a landing pier, the other a mud bank. Finally we came to Edgar Watson's place, a sugar plantation on the Chatham River.
Watson was an infamous outlaw. Every lawman in south Florida was acquainted with his treachery and cunning… From time to time he was halfheartedly sought for trial, though few crimes seemed to lead directly to his door. The legend persisted, however. The native whites feared him as you would a rattlesnake, but the Indians and black people were susceptible to his manipulations. Frequently hungry, they would go to work for him, cutting cane. He rarely paid the money agreed upon, and if a worker rebelled, Watson was said to execute him on the spot. I heard that countless human skeletons were left bare in his bayou when a hurricane blew the water out. The bayou filled the next day, and it was business as usual.
This merciless man had an invalid wife whom he adored. He kept fifty cats for her to pet. Of course I was intrigued with him the day we docked at the sugar plantation. I remember Mr. Watson taking me on his knee and telling me to pick one out for my own. He seemed the kindest of men.
Not without trepidation, Papa made arrangements with Watson to bring lumber, roofing, and other materials needed from Fort Myers to build our house, which we would do with our own hands and the help of friends. Like other people in this lost place, we were dependent on Watson's big boat, which made regular runs to and fro. We felt this dependency even more after we settled and commenced to farm. There was no other way to get our produce to market on a steady basis. The stranglehold Watson had over this section of Florida was not dissimilar to the unscrupulous activities of certain lawmen, other legal crooks, and even governors that our state was to suffer through its history.
It was sundown when we arrived at Gopher Key, where we would stay until the big house was built on a neighboring island. There was the little shack, not the most gracious of living quarters, and there was a murderer for our nearest and only neighbor, about thirty miles [sic] away. [Perhaps this was the year the Hamiltons spent near John Weeks at Flamingo.]
Our new two-story house [on Possum Key] was finished that spring. Papa had built it on an old homesite known as the Chevalier Place. The Frenchman… had planted guava and avocado pears, and they were now huge trees… What with Papa's fields of tomatoes, we soon had produce to send to market. We shipped, as contracted, with Edgar Watson. Immediately trouble arose. A messenger came from the sugar plantation bringing Papa a ridiculously small sum of money. For his part Papa told this man to go back and tell Watson how much was still owed, and that he, Papa, would be coming for it. The poor messenger was terrified and begged Papa to let the matter drop. "He'll just shoot you, Mr. Martin. That's the way he settles an account. No one argues with Edgar Watson and lives to talk about it."
The next day Papa went to see Watson. Hal and Bubba accompanied him. When they drew up to the dock in their boat, Papa told the boys to sit tight while he went in the house. Watson's whole living room could be seen through a wide screen. It was an armory: the walls were lined with guns. Papa did not carry a gun.
In the argument that followed the boys could see everything. Perhaps they thought of the skeletons under their boat as Watson became more and more strident. Then came a moment when Watson started backing toward his wall of guns. Papa was unrelenting; he demanded his money, and Watson's arm rose toward a pistol. At the height of this tense moment, a smile broke on Watson's face. From where he stood he could see the two boys in the boat fifty feet away, each with a rifle held in small, capable hands and a bead drawn on the man who threatened their father.
"Look," Watson told Papa, but Papa thought it was a trick to make him turn around. Watson understood and moved away from the guns and pointed to the boat. Papa grinned at his sons and even smiled at Edgar Watson.
"Do you suppose they thought I'd shoot you, Jim?" Watson asked.
"Do you suppose you'd have had the chance?" Papa sent back.
This man who never paid his debts paid my father and walked with him to the landing to get a closer look. All he saw were two nonchalant little boys sitting with their guns beside them, slapping mosquitoes.
Despite its clear affinity with later myth-making, including the heightened drama inherent in an oft-told narrative of family courage, the many well-remembered details elsewhere in the account suggest that there is something to her story, including the growing atmosphere of terror that by the turn of the century was beginning to gather around E.J. Watson. While "the man who never paid his debts" seems at odds with Watson's reputation for impeccable dealings with Ted Smallwood and others, it may also be true that he dodged small debts with creditors who could be bullied.
The St. John account ends on Possum Key at the turn of the century, not long before the notorious Tucker episode took place. Perhaps it was the fear that swept the region in the wake of the Tucker deaths which persuaded Jim Martin to abandon his new house and uproot his wife and four small children. Apparently he remained in the Everglades region, since he appears in the local census of 1910.