In '99 we sold our claim on Mormon Key to E.J. Watson and moved another ten miles south to Lost Man's River, halfway from Chokoloskee to Cape Sable, and as far away to hell and gone as a man could get. Moved between Hog Key and Wood Key, hugging the Gulf breeze to keep off the skeeters. We dried and salted fish for the Havana trade.
Folks might tell you that Hamiltons moved away from Chatham River because we was scared of Mister Watson, like them others. Well, I was the youngest boy, at seventeen, and all three, Walter, Gene, and me, could shoot good as our daddy, and our mama could handle a shooting iron, too. We was friendly with Ed Watson, but even if we weren't, the Hamilton clan was there to stay and Watson knew it. The Hamiltons wasn't going to be scared off.
Richard Hamilton moved because he had no taste for company, said his family was as much society as he could handle. Once Jean Chevelier up and died, there wasn't much to keep us around Chatham River. Squatters was roosted on every bump between Marco and Everglade, and some was already drifted south of Chokoloskee Bay. Gregorio Lopez and his boys was in north Huston River, that stretch that is called Lopez River today, and the House clan was farming a bird hammock off Last Huston Bay, and new people named Martins built on Possum Key. But in all them miles south of Chatham River, the only settlers besides ourselves was the James Hamiltons on Lost Man's Beach and Atwells up in Rodgers River.
Along in these years the news come out how it was wrote right in a book that Edgar Watson killed Belle Starr, Queen of the Outlaws. Justice George Storter seen that book when he went to put his kids in school up in Fort Myers. Justice Storter could read good, and he read that news with his own eyes and brought it back to Chokoloskee Bay.
Not long after that, I went with Watson far as Chokoloskee, and Isaac Yeomans seen us going in McKinney's store. Isaac was always pretty brash, and once he's got a few there with him, he sings out, says he wants to know was there any truth in that there story about a feller name of Watson and the Outlaw Queen.
Mister Watson was paying off Old Man McKinney, and I seen his hand stop on the counter. That hand just set there for a minute, tapped a silver dollar. Then he turned slow and looked at Isaac until Isaac spooked and started in to grinning like he'd made a joke, and then Watson turned back the same weary way and went right on paying out his money. When he was done, he turned again and leaned back on the counter, looking the men over, cause by that time they was crowded in the door.
"That same book says that this man Watson got killed breaking out of prison." He pulled out his big watch and looked at it while everybody thought that one over, and then he said, turning to Isaac, "Nobody asking nosy questions about Watson should put much stock into that last part."
Isaac give a wild scared yip, trying to be comical the way Tant used to do, and them others done their best to laugh, and Watson smiled. But them stone-blue eyes of his weren't smiling, nosir, never even blinked, and pretty quick he let that grin fade out, just stood there gazing at them jackasses while they stopped braying one by one and tried to put their faces back together. Then he looks at me and winks, and we walk out.
Life wasn't the same down in the Islands once all them stories started up. His neighbors liked Ed Watson, sure, some called him "E.J." and was proud to let on to strangers what good friends they was with the man who killed Belle Starr. Well, their women never thought in that same way. To most of 'em, Ed Watson was a killer and a desperader who didn't draw the line at killing women, and them quiet, winning ways of his that women liked-that feller drew women like flies all the time we knew him-only made him the more dangerous to deal with. It was a long way to the next neighbor, too far to hear a rifle shot, let alone a cry for help. The men knew this but would not admit it. They liked ol' Ed-you couldn't help but like him!-but in their hearts, they was all deathly afraid.
By the turn of the century, the wild things was so scarce and wary that a lot of the trappers went over to fishing. Some guided Yankees in the winter, then come back mullet-seining in the summer, shot all our curlews off Duck Island, set their trout nets right there on the grass northwest of Mormon Key. They wanted our key for their own camp, they'd shout ashore at night-You damn mulattas ain't got no damn claim to it! They took to crowding us so much we was fixing to shoot one, give the rest something to think about. And it got so they wanted us to shoot, give 'em their excuse to put an end to us once and for all.
Already the fish was getting few because every creek down in the Islands was crawling with plume hunters and gator skinners, never mind the sports off them big yachts in winter and gill netters all summer and moonshiners the whole damn year round. You'd see some stranger once a month where you'd never seen a man every other year, and you'd be leery of that stranger, too, never wave or nothing, just watch him out of sight and go your way.
So Daddy sold Mormon Key to E.J. Watson, and nobody pestered a man like that about no claim. We bought Tino Santini's Lost Man's claim when Tino moved north to Fort Myers, but before settling, we went on south to Flamingo for a year so's Mama could be with granddaddy John Weeks before he died. When we come back, we settled on Wood Key, raised good board houses, put in gardens. Dried salt fish until 1905, when run boats started coming in with ice, took our fresh fish away.
It was 1901, same year we got well started in the fisheries, that E.J. Watson followed us down south, bought the claim to Lost Man's Key from Shelton Atwell. That island lies in the mouth of Lost Man's River, seven-eight acres, enough high ground for a garden, with good charcoal timber, black mangrove and buttonwood, and one of the few springs along that coast. Has a little cove on the east side we called Home Creek where the old Frenchman's maps showed buried treasure.
Atwells was first real settlers in that section, come up from Key West back in the seventies, and they was first ones had a claim on Lost Man's Key. But when they was pioneering, Shelton said, they seen the damage up and down the coast from the hurricane of '73, and they was cautious. Up Rodgers River they located some good hammock ground with protection from the wind and common tides. Later on, when some years passed without no hurricane, Shelton's two boys got to thinking about Lost Man's Key, out on the Gulf, a lot less skeeters with that sea wind and very handy to fresh water, but some way they never got around to it. Said the move might be too much for the old woman, so they best leave well enough alone. Meanwhile they let squatters come and go, to keep the key cleared off. Ones that was on there in 1901 was young Wally Tucker from Key West and his wife, Bet, who had worked the year before for E.J. Watson.
Now Hamiltons had their eye on Lost Man's Key, but Ed Watson wanted it much worst and made sure we knew it. What he aimed to do was salvage that old Everglades dredge that the Disston Company abandoned up the Calusa Hatchee, ship it on a barge to Lost Man's River, deepen the channel, dig out a good harbor, set up a trading post like Old Joe Wiggins had at Sand Fly Key, give work to everybody. Stead of shipping our produce to Key West and losing half of it to spoilage, we would sell direct to E.J. Watson. He aimed to supply fresh vegetables and syrup, meat and fish, fresh water, dry goods, fish hooks, bullets, to hunters and fishermen and the Yankee yacht trade, make Lost Man's Key the most famous place on the southwest coast. If his friends farmed the few pieces of high ground, he would control the whole Ten Thousand Islands. Ideas like this one got him that name Emperor Watson, and they weren't crazy, cause on the east coast Everglades development was well started.
Watson's plan depended on that key in the mouth of Lost Man's River, and the Emperor told everybody who would stand still that he aimed to nail down Lost Man's Key just as soon as Old Man Atwell saw the light. The Atwells never rightly knowed just what he meant by that, and they weren't so anxious to find out. Not wanting to be unneighborly to Mister Watson, they passed the word they was thinking the deal over, and after that, they just set tight back up in Rodgers River, never went anywheres near to Chatham Bend.
It weren't that the Atwells didn't like Ed Watson, they sure did. One time when their cane got salt-watered by storm tide, Shelton and his older boy, one we called Winky, went to Watson for some seed cane for replanting, and Watson treated 'em like kings. Put 'em up for four days at the Bend and sent 'em home with hams and venison, anything they wanted. Atwells never did stop talking about how kind Mister Watson was when Winky and his dad went up to Pavioni. Well, everybody in our Hamilton clan had the same experience. Come to old-fashioned hospitality, you could not find a better neighbor in south Florida.
Them Atwells was twenty-five years in the Islands, longer'n anyone before our time. They had two plantations and a lot of fruit trees, grew cabbages, onions, pumpkins, melons, sweet potatoes, and Irish potatoes, too. They got them Irish potatoes off Ed Watson. All the same, and before that year was out, they moved back to Key West. Old Mrs. Atwell upped and said that twenty-five years in the mangrove was enough, she was going back where she was born and die in peace. Said she didn't mind getting bled to death by the dang skeeters, but she'd be darned if she would end her days having her throat slit or her head shot off by some darn bushwhacker from the Wild West. Anybody who wanted to tag along was surely welcome, but she was leaving home sweet home whether the rest of 'em went along or not. Turns out the whole bunch was raring to go, but nobody had wanted to come right out and say so.
They needed a grubstake for their new life, so the first thing Winky and his brother done was go up to the Bend and sell the claim on Lost Man's Key to E.J. Watson. Then they come to say good-bye to us before they left. How come you never offered it to us? we said. Cause we didn't want to cross him, they admitted. They didn't let on they was leaving the Islands, being scared that Mister Watson would take advantage. But taking advantage was not E.J. Watson's style, he was not a small man in that way. He was so excited to get hold of Lost Man's Key, and happy that his Island plan was working out without no trouble, that he just nodded at their asking price, he never blinked.
Yes, Mister Watson was very excited-too excited, Winky said. Not till he'd pocketed the cash did Winky tell him that the Atwells was leaving the Islands for good. Swamp angels finally got the best of us, ol' Winky said-that was Old Man McKinney's name for the damn skeeters-and Watson told 'em in a jolly way how grateful he was that "sharpshooters" and not him had run 'em off.
That day the Atwells paid their call at Chatham Bend, Mister Watson was the perfect gentleman, he went so far as to put on his frock coat before offering 'em a toast of his best whiskey. Yessir, said he, he seen Lost Man's Key as the heart of his whole scheme for this wild coast. Surveys was needed, he explained, because most all of southwest Florida was "swamp and overflowed" land turned over to the state back in 1850, and the state gave most of it to the railroad companies for laying rails into north Florida. The Everglades and the Ten Thousand Islands were still wilderness, and nobody knowed what was where nor who owned what. But he was in close touch with his friend Joe Shands, Lee County surveyor at Fort Myers, and Shands had told him this, that, and the other… and so on and so forth, waving his arms like our old Frenchman used to do when he got his wind up.
Course Storters in Everglade and Smallwoods at Chokoloskee, they knew how to work them land claims, and them families are well-to-do today. But in the Islands, E.J. Watson was the only feller ever wanted paperwork. The rest of us went down there to avoid it. Didn't want no surveys nor preemption, didn't want to know what preemption was. Never got it through our heads that if we didn't file a claim we'd wind up handing it over to outsiders who had paid off politicians to make it legal to steal it out from under us. Some feller would show up waving a paper that proved he owned the land we'd done the work on-damn rock-hard mound we had cleared and hacked and hoed all them long years before that city feller ever heard of southwest Florida-and a couple of sheriff's deputies right beside him to make sure them squatters got off his land quick, didn't try no mulatta tricks on this here city sonofabitch that called himself the rightful owner.
All we knew was, no good would come from getting surveyors nowheres near to Lost Man's River. All filing land claims meant to us was paying good money that we never had for our own land that we cleared off when it was wilderness. First thing you know, we'd be paying taxes with nothing to show for it-no schools, no law, no nothing.
See, it wasn't only just the payment we was dodging but the whole damn government, county, state, or federal, didn't make one goddamn bit of difference. A man would live in a lonesome place like the Ten Thousand Islands is a man that don't like any kind of interference. Ain't got much use for humankind, you come right down to it, including some that I won't name in his own family. Or maybe his neighbors don't like him-don't matter. Them kind I'm talking about don't want no part of them damn paper-wavers from the cities, trying to tell a man where he could take a shit.
Ed Watson didn't see it like the rest of us down in the Islands who never cared if the whole world passed us by. He told them Atwells all about Free Enterprise and Progress, that's what made this country great, is what he said. The Philippines! Hawaii! Puerto Rico! America was bringing light to the benighted, yessirree, expanding our commerce all over the world, same way them Europeans done in Darkest Africa! Asked did we ever stop to think about all them Chinamen? The millions of customers just ready and waiting once them Philippines was ours? Talk about "swamp and overflowed," Ed was just overflowing with good spirits, Winky told me, and hard spirits, too.
Mister Watson's oldest boy was there, never said one word. Rob Watson stayed a little ways off to the side, went back to the field soon as his father started in to drinking. Tant Jenkins's sister was there too, down from Caxambas, served up a fine ol' feed of ham and peas. Ol' Ed got a bit boisterous and hugged his Josie around her bottom as she passed his chair, she had to rap his knuckles with her ladle. She was a pretty little thing with lots of spirit, had her a brand-new baby, Little Pearl. At that time Mrs. Watson hadn't died yet at Fort Myers, so Josie said, "The less said about our Pearl, the better!"
Ed give them Atwell boys plenty of drink, told stories about comical nigras that his family owned back there in Edgefield County, South Carolina. "You doan want to 'rest me foh no Miz Demeanor, Shurf! Ain' nevuh touched no lady by dat name!"
He had cracked that joke at the Hamilton table, too. When we didn't laugh much, he opined, "Well, I guess Choctaws don't care too much for nigger jokes." We knew he was baiting us, and we didn't like it, but Daddy never seemed to mind. Said something easy like, "Is that so, Ed?" and him and his guest would set there nodding and grinning at each other like they knowed a thing or two about this life, which I guess they did.
Anyways, Ed got to boasting, and he let on to them Atwells in no uncertain terms that he didn't need no goddamn Corsican or whatever to hell kind of Spaniard Dolphus Santini called himself to show Ed Watson one damn thing about land surveys, nosir, he didn't, not no more! His daughter Carrie had married one of them cattle kings, and them cattle kings would make damn sure that nobody messed with E.J. Watson. As for getting deeds and titles, his son-in-law's good friends had connections all the way up to the capitol in Tallahassee, so E.J. Watson was on his way! Can't hold a good man down, that's what he told 'em.
So they drank to his success, and he drank to their safe journey and happy days down at Key West, and after that, he come out into the sun with that black hat on and spread his boots and stuck his thumbs in that big belt of his and stood in front of his fine house, to see 'em off. Yessir, says Ed, I'll be down that way tomorrow, have a look at my new property.
Casting off the lines, Winky decided he'd better advise the new owner about Wally Tucker farming Lost Man's Key. Seeing Mister Watson so excited, he had not got around to that, but he felt bolder with the whiskey, so he did.
Mister Watson took the news calm as you please. He come down to the water, not hurrying or nothing, and set his boot onto the stern line as it was slipping off the dock. The current had already caught the bow of their little sloop, and she swung downstream till she was snubbed, then warped back hard against the pilings. Watson had his whiskey in his hand, still looking amiable, but he never took his boot off of that line. Never said a word while the Atwells tried to figure what them blue eyes warned 'em had better be coming next, and damn quick, too.
Knowing Winky, I reckon he was winking, along with taking desperate care, he said, not to stare at Watson's boot, which was about on the same level with his face. Ed Watson had the smallest foot of any man his size you ever seen, it was one of the very first things that you noticed, and after that it was hard to take your eye off, even worse than another man's blind eye.
Finally Winky started talking, and his words come out all in a ball. He told Ed Watson that Wally Tucker never had no kind of claim on Lost Man's Key, nosir, no claim at all, it was just he had been on there for a while-
"I know how long that sonofabitch been on there-"
"-and being as how Atwells never used it, we never had the heart to run him off."
Watson nodded and kept right on nodding, with the Atwells setting in the boat trying to show how much they agreed with him without saying nothing that might turn him ugly. They was nodding right along with him like a pair of doves.
"I'll tell you what you people do," Ed Watson said after a while. He cleared his throat and spat clear across their boat, and the Atwells looked politely at his big ol' phlegm floating away on the black water. "What you do, you notify that conch sonofabitch on your way home that the claim is sold to E.J. Watson, and you tell him to get his hind end off of there as soon as he can dump his drag-ass female and all the rest of his conch shit into his boat and haul up that old chunk of worm rock that he calls an anchor and get to hell back to Key West, where he belongs. Now how is that?"
The Atwell family being Bahamians, Winky didn't care much for that "conch" talk, but what he said was "That's just fine, Ed, not one thing wrong with it."
Watson's fury was so raw that Winky got him a bad scare, knowing there was a shooting iron under that coat. Must been winking like a baby rabbit. He had clean forgot Watson's quarrel with the Tuckers, if he ever knowed about it. But what with all the whiskey he had drunk, he got his courage up and tried again. Thing was, he said, young Tucker had built him a nice thatch house and a good dock, and cleared off a good piece of land, and had his crops in, and his wife was about to bust with her first baby. Atwells knowed from their own firsthand experience how generous a man Ed Watson was-they let that sink in, Winky said-and maybe he could see his way clear to letting them young folks finish out their season.
Ed Watson didn't care one bit for that idea. Why should he ride herd on them damned people, with Lost Man's Key so far off down the coast? The Atwells had let Tucker on there, and it was up to them to get Tucker off there, right? And Winky said that sure was right, Ed, not one thing wrong about it.
"Something's eating you," Ed said, after a moment, and took out his watch.
And Winky said, No, no, no, Ed! It was only that Tucker was a proud kind of young feller, and might not take to being told flat out to get his wife, who was in a family way, off of that Key with not a scrap laid by to eat, no place to go, and not a cent to show for his hard work.
Watson was looking down at his own boot where it trod the rope, and in that silence, Atwells said, they felt like screeching. There was no sound at all in that slow heat but the river sucking at the mangroves. Finally Watson said, "I sure do hate to hear a white man talk that way. Where I come from, a damn squatter can be proud till he's blue in the face, that don't give him the right to go up against a feller that has bought and paid for legal title. Where I come from, the law's the law."
Well, Winky didn't argue none with that. He just couldn't believe that a man so kind to all his neighbors could turn so cold-hearted so quick. Winky weren't by no means a bad feller, and he seen Atwells was in the wrong. They should of damn well got it straight with Tucker in the first place.
He decided to give Watson back his money. Kind of sudden-like-he was nervous and upset-he stuck his hand into his pocket, and the next thing he knowed, he was looking straight down the black hole of a Smith & Wesson.38. From that close up, it put him in mind of a cannon he seen once, down at Key West.
Very slow, young Mr. Atwell come up with that envelope and stuck it out, and very slow Ed Watson put that gun away under his coat.
Watson paid no attention to the money. He was angry he had showed that gun, and being drunk, he was red-eyed and wheezing heavy, staring away like he was thinking hard about something else. Winky murmured how he sure was sorry for giving Mister Watson such a turn, and when Watson just grunted, looking past him down the river, as if planning what he aimed to do with these boys' bodies, Winky's nerve broke and his voice broke, too. What he meant was, Winky squeaked-he got nervous all over again, just describing it-what he meant was, Atwells would be happy to return the money until they got this Tucker business straightened out. But Watson only shook his head and finally Winky's arm got tired and he put the money back into his pocket.
By now, all the Atwells wanted was to get to any other place as quick as possible. But Watson stood there, his boot on the rope, and all Winky could think about was trying to look away from that little boot. Finally Ed blinked, kind of surprised, as if he had just woke up from a long dream-them's Winky's words-and found these strangers setting at his dock.
"You people can return that money," he says in a thick voice, "or you can give the money to that fucking Tucker, or you can stick it up your skinny damn conch ass. But no matter what you do with it, E.J. Watson bought that claim on Lost Man's Key, and he wants them people off of it by Monday next."
Talk as rough as that kind of took the fun out of the visit. So Winky said, All right, then, Ed, why don't you just write out a paper saying what you want, and we'll take that paper down to Wally Tucker.
Watson reared back and throwed his whiskey glass as far as he could throw it, way out halfway across the Chatham River. And he stomped inside and scratched out a quick note and brought it back to them. He wasn't wearing his coat no more, and he didn't wave at 'em, nor watch 'em go. Drifting downstream toward the Bend, they seen him heading back into his field. Said young Rob just turned away and kept on working.
Wally Tucker was a fair-haired feller of a common size. Took the sun too hard, went around with a boiled face. Slowly, he read Watson's words, then looked up at the Atwell boys, who couldn't read.
So Winky said, Well, what's it say, then? And Wally read it off:
The quit-claim to Lost Man's Key has been sold lawfully to the undersigned on present date. All squatters and trespassers and their kind are strongly advised to remove themselves and all their trash human and otherwise immediately upon receipt of this notice or face severe penalty. (signed) E.J. Watson.
Reading them words out loud like that made Tucker so plain furious he flung the note away, but Winky picked it up before he left, we seen it later. He turned around and looked back at his new house, where his young wife stood watching from the door. Told 'em Watson once grabbed at Bet's backside and she had slapped him, that's why he insulted her. "She never told me what he done till yesterday. Bet's going to have her baby any day now," he said, kind of dazed. "She don't need this kind of aggravation."
Then him and the Atwells hunkered down and looked out over the water for a while, getting their breath. "You people have sold our home right out from under us," he told them, making angry X marks in the sand, "and you sold what you never even owned, what you never had no right to, by the law. This is state land, swamp and overflowed, think I don't know that? Atwells ain't got quitclaim rights, cause you never squatted here, and you never made no improvements." He tossed his head toward his house and dock. "If any man was paid, it should been me."
Winky glanced over at his brother Edward, and then he took out Watson's envelope. "That ain't the way we figure it down in the Islands," he warned Tucker, "but we aim to be fair, and we will split it with you." For the second time that day the money was held out, and for the second time nobody took it. Then Tucker snatched it and peeled off sixty dollars before handing it back.
"Tell him I never took his dirty money," Tucker said, "only what he owes us in back pay." For a moment he looked frightened but then set his jaw again. "I ain't getting off of here," he whispered. "I ain't going to pull up stakes."
Tucker's grit surprised them, they was quite alarmed, they warned him about Mister Watson's temper. He give Winky a funny look and said, "I already rubbed up against Ed Watson, and he ain't scared me yet. Long as I don't turn my back to him, I'll be all right."
Tucker wrote out his own note then, and the Atwells took it back to Watson the next day. Winky never knew what might be in it, because Watson never told 'em, just read it quick and tossed it on the table. He went away into the field. He wouldn't talk to them and he wouldn't listen. They called after him, said they'd sure be happy to return his money, but he never even turned around.
Starting south, the Atwells was uneasy, that's when they came in to Wood Key to say good-bye. They begged us to go reason with Wally, and we said we'd get over there in a day or two. So that's how the Atwells set sail for Key West, left it all behind 'em.
A fisherman, Mac Sweeney, showed up that same evening at Wood Key. Mac was a drifter, lived on a old boat with a thatch shelter and a earth bed built up in the bilges for his cooking fire. Didn't belong nowhere and took his living where he found it. He was looking for a easy feed, as usual. Says he went by Lost Man's Key at daybreak, seen Tucker's little sloop in there, but after he left the river, he heard shooting.
"Shooting varmints, most likely," said my brother Gene. Gene wouldn't look at me.
The day Mac Sweeney came was not long after us Hamilton brothers moved on to Wood Key to start our fishing ranch. Gilbert Johnson was already on there, and me and Gene had our eye on his two daughters.
My Sarah was a slim and handsome girl without no secrets, ran like a deer and laughed and jumped and said most anything she wanted. Sitting on the sand one day, her arms around her knees, something struck her so sudden and so funny that she rolled straight back and kicked them hard brown feet up in the air in the pure joy of it. Kept her skirt wrapped tight, of course, but I seen her bottom like a heart, a beautiful valentine heart turned upside down. I mean, I loved her for the joy in her, and that sparkly laughter, but I was drawn hard to her, too. It wasn't only wanting her, it was like she was a lost part of me that I had to have back or I'd never get my breath. Later on we lived at Lost Man's Key.
The one time I was ever snake-bit I was out with Sarah running coon traps, went ashore in a swampy place, walked up a log and jumped to cross a piece of water, landed barefoot right on top of a big cottonmouth. He got me, too, he couldn't help it, two foot of him was free to come around on me. I made a good clean jump away but I could feel it. I leaned back against a tree, too weak to kill him, just watched that deathly white mouth waving in the dusk, felt worse each minute.
Sarah hollers, "What's the matter?"
"Think I'm snake-bit!"
"Think? Are you bit or ain't you?"
So she comes across the swamp, hikes up my britches to have a look, and there ain't a sign of nothing, not a mark. "Well," I said. "I think I'm feeling a mite better." "Don't think so much," says Sarah, plumb disgusted. She pokes that snake so it raises up its head and whacks it dead with one cut of her stick.
Sarah and Rebecca knew Bet Tucker well. Said it was her had the real pioneer spirit to make do with the hardship and the loneliness, said that her husband was a nice enough young feller but lacked the ambition and the grit to hack him out a livelihood there in the Islands.
Young Tucker had a lot more grit than Sarah and Rebecca give him credit for. He aimed to stand up to Ed Watson, which not many did. Ed could shoot, and Ed would shoot, that was the rumor. Lot of us could shoot real good, but we wouldn't trade shots with E.J. Watson less we had to, and by the time we knew we had to, we'd be dead.
Sarah Johnson weren't but twelve that year, we married two years later, but she was already the bossy kind that gets into the thick of the men's business. She said Bet was like an older sister so she wanted to go look, but I said no, cause night would fall before we got there. The men would go down there first thing in the morning, and Miss Sarah Johnson would stay home.
For once Sarah didn't argue, maybe because she loved me so darn much. "If Bet loses that baby, it's all Wally's fault" is all she said. And Gene busts out, "If that baby's all she loses, she'll be lucky!" We all knew that, of course. There was no call for Gene to upset my brave young girl.
This fine and frisky female had a way with E.J. Watson, knew how to smooth him down. He thought a lot of Sarah, he respected her, and later on it would surprise me how kind of shy this hard man seemed around her, almost like he needed her approval. Oh, she was blunt, she would come right out and want to know the truth about his life. He seemed grateful that someone cared to hear his side of the story, and it got so he confided in her, he told her things he would never say to no one else. Maybe some of 'em was true, maybe they wasn't. But Sarah couldn't believe that Mister Watson would "ever, ever harm such a sweet young person."
We was just figuring what we should do when Henry Short come in looking for Liza. Not that he ever said as much. He couldn't. He never mentioned that girl once, though he could hear her singing by the cook shack. Poor feller knew we liked him pretty good and he was welcome, but he also knew how our mama might feel about a brown boy paying court, never mind that Liza was browner'n he was.
In them days, all around the country, they was lynching black men left and right for lusting after our white virgins. Most of the settlers in these parts had come south to get away from Reconstruction, so they brought their hate of nigras to our section, wouldn't tolerate 'em. Earlier this same year I'm telling about, it come in the papers about a nigra in New Orleans who was desperate enough to resist arrest when they come to lynch him. This man turned out to be a deadeye shot, which nigras ain't supposed to be, and he killed a whole covey of police before they finished him. So these days Chokoloskee folks was talking about how Henry Short was a crack shot, too, and who the hell taught a nigger to shoot like that, don't people know no better?-stuff like that. So Henry Short spent a lot of time back in the rivers. He stuck close to the House clan, didn't make no extra commotion.
Well, Henry hunted around for an excuse for rowing the twelve miles down here from House Hammock, said he forgot his pocket knife last time or some fool thing, and we helped him off his hook as best we could, all except Gene, who was full of himself and full of piss and finding trouble every place he looked. Gene said, "Your dang knife ain't around here, boy. Liza ain't neither." To smooth this over, we asked Henry if he noticed anything at Watson's on his way down Chatham River from House Hammock, and he nodded. "Funny thing," he said, "I always notice everything at Mister Watson's." Said there was no boat at Watson's dock, no sign of anyone. Nobody hailed him, and there was nobody out in the field. The Bend was silent as the grave when he drifted by. And Mac Sweeney said, Oh sweet Jesus, boys! It's like I told you!
Crossing to Lost Man's first thing in the morning, we had rifles ready but we come too late. Smoke was rising from the shell ridge where the cabin was. Coming in there through the orster bars, I could feel something waiting for us on that shore. We was still a good ways off when Henry pointed.
Something had stranded on the bar, lifting a little on the current. "God, boys, what's that!" Mac Sweeney yelled.
"That's him," I said.
Wally's hair was lifting and his eyes was sunken back, made him look blind, and he hadn't been there very long cause his sockets wasn't loaded up with mud snails. Still had his boots on, slippery as grease from the salt water. A boot was what Walter grabbed ahold of, first time we tried him, and he slipped away. When I jumped over the side and took him up under the arms, the shadow of a shark moved off the shelf into the channel.
Hauling the body out onto the sand, I seen a dark stain spreading on my pants. It were not a shark bite leaking but a hole blowed through his chest, took his heart right with it. "Ah shit!" Gene said, and begun coughing. Walter looked peculiar for a dark-skinned feller, not pale so much as kind of a bad gray. Henry Short's light face looked a little green.
Me, I don't know how I looked, but it wasn't good. I was breathing through my mouth just to keep my grits down.
"Back-shot," Henry said, and us three brothers starting hollering and cursing-"Back-shooting bastard!"-to keep from puking or busting into tears. Henry just shook his head a little, but he quit even that when he seen Gene watching.
Near the burned-out cabin we found a crate where Tucker had been setting, and his gill net and needle, and dried blood on the mesh and in the sand. There was no sign of Tucker's boat, no trace of Bet. We come on a circle in the sand and a bag of marbles, and a big sand castle by the water, like a boy had been there, but there was no sign of a boy neither. Must of been the tomboy in young Bet, passing the time. We hoped she'd run away and hid, but no voice answered our calls, only the crying of big orster birds out on the bar.
We rolled Wally Tucker in a piece of canvas and hoisted him into the boat. Nobody wanted to find Bet but we went looking, rowing east into First Lost Man's Bay and all around the back side of the key. We crisscrossed the island back and forth, we worked the riverbanks and the long strand of Lost Man's Beach, all the way south to Rodgers River.
"Sonsabitches!" Gene burst out, real close to blubbering.
We called and called. A hoot owl answered, way back in the trees. Dusk come from the mangroves and dark caught us at Wood Key.
Sarah came down to the boat and stared. All she seen was boots and canvas. She said, "Why did you bring him back?" I said, "We didn't want to leave him all alone." She whispered then, "Bet's alone too." One of the few times in this life I seen my Sarah cry.
Next morning Mac Sweeney took off for Key West. He was headed there anyway for a good drunk and wanted to be the first with the bad news. Sarah said we should take Wally back and bury him close to his new house, and so Wally was still with us in the boat when Henry Short and us three brothers went next morning.
Crossing the flats, I seen a keel track in the marl. My heart give a skip and I hollered out, cause it never come to me before that I knew Watson's boat track when I seen it. Must of watched his big old skiff cross a flat somewhere back up into the bays and made a point to notice what his boat track looked like.
"Mist' Watson," Henry said.
Henry Short recognized that track the same time I did. Come to think of it, most men in the Islands would probably know that keel mark when they seen it. Noticing small signs is a good habit when you take your living from wild land. Maybe we all had the same instinct, to know where that man was, to know his markings.
I could feel Bet near, and pretty quick I seen her, though I couldn't rightly say what I was seeing. When you know a piece of country good, what nags you first is something in the view that don't belong, but sometimes it takes a blink or two to pick it out.
During the night poor Bet had surfaced in a kind of little backwater behind the point where a thing floating downriver might fetch up. Face down in the river, silted up, ain't no way at all to find a pert young woman big with child who laughed and waved the last time you ever seen her. I pulled Bet in toward the boat, using an oar, and she rolled over very slow, spun loose again. What I took for river silt was small black mud snails, giving off a faint dull glinty light. Them snails was moving as they fed, they was pretty close to finished with Bet's face. Weren't no blue eyes to reproach us, thanks to Jesus, and no red lips neither. Without no lips, them white buck teeth made that pretty little thing look like a pony.
Gene had ahold of her long skirt, and he hauled up on it and grabbed an ankle stead of taking the time to get a proper hold under the arms. Gene is always in a rush, that's the life itch in him. Not wanting no scrap with him that day, I took the other ankle, but when we hauled on her, her head went under and her skirt hitched high on the oarlock coming in, and we seen the white thighs and hair and sex of her, and swollen belly. The indecent way we done it made me mad, and when I yanked that flimsy skirt back down her legs, it tore halfway off her hips cause it was rotted.
Being Gene, he has to holler out "Show some respect!" Much too rough, he stripped that canvas right off Wally's carcass, rolled that dead man out into the bilges, and flung it across to me so's I could cover her. "Make her decent!" he yells, giving the orders as usual.
Bet Tucker had a bullet through her head. There was no way to make that poor soul decent, never again. But what was most indecent came from Gene's hurry, so he scowls at Henry. "Don't want no niggers looking up her skirts, ain't that right, Henry?"
Henry Short don't show no more expression than poor gray Tucker laying in the bilges, so Gene hollers louder.
"That right, boy?"
"We heard you, Gene," says Walter. "No niggers allowed."
Now and again Walter is poked into the open, and even though Gene shuts his mouth, Walter don't let it go. "We heard you, Gene," says Walter. "No damn niggers." The bodies have him very bad upset, long with the rest of us.
Though he is older, Walter is the underdog, so I hoot at Eugene to back Walter up. Naturally Gene glares at Henry, not his brothers. Henry Short don't meet that glare but he don't cast his eyes down neither. He looks straight over Gene's shoulder like he's trying to read the weather in the summer distance, and his squint looks kind of like a wince.
Gene goes red, he snarls at Walter, "You want to call yourself a nigger, go ahead!"
Gene wants to grow up to be a cracker, so he thinks like his friends in Chokoloskee Bay. That's why they like him. When me and Walter hoot at him, he says, "Dead people laying here and you make jokes? Show some respect!"
We went ashore and hunted around till we come up with Wally Tucker's shovel. There was high ground behind the bank, and we dug two graves in the sea grape above tide line, lashed together two crosses and stuck 'em in the sand. We buried Bet Tucker, mud, blood, unborn babe, and all. Gene was fixing to throw the sand down on her face, though he was looking pretty shaky, but Walter stopped him, took off his old shirt, spread it across her.
"That smelly shirt don't do no good," Gene muttered, and Walter said, "Just you shut up. Just shovel."
I went to the boat, took a deep breath, and grabbed her husband under the arms, got him hoisted up a little, leaking. Walter and Henry took his ankles. In the sun, he was warm on the outside, but under that warmth this fair-haired boy was cold, stiff, smelly meat, like some sun-crusted old porpoise on the tide line.
A dead man totes a whole lot heavier than a live one, don't ask me why. When I hoisted the head end so he'd clear the gunwales, his cold hair flopped forward over his face, and he seemed to sigh. When his belt caught, I had to grab a breath to wrench him free, and near gagged on a stink so sweet and heavy that I ain't cleared it from my nose hairs to this day.
We laid him in the ground face up, one arm beneath him-couldn't unravel him, he'd went too stiff. His eyes was bruised-looking, gone gray, but they still stared at the sky. When I closed his lids, they sagged back open like he didn't trust us. I felt ashamed of humankind, myself included. "I'm sorry we come late"-them words twisted right out of me, and tears behind 'em, but Gene didn't hear me, and he didn't see. He leans on the shovel and spits the dead-man's taste across the sand.
Before I puked, I grabbed that shovel and covered Tucker as fast as I could swing, covered that swollen-up face that was straining toward high heaven, crying for mercy. Never stopped to take off my own shirt-I wouldn't copy Walter out of pride. I closed both of them gray sockets with one shovelful, and with another filled that thirsty mouth. But throwing hot sand into his mouth shook me so bad that I let out a groan, and the next load hit Gene in the gut, to stop him smirking. Gene knew better than to say one word.
After that, I swore with every shovelful. Don't know what terrible things I hollered, I just hollered. I buried men since then, I buried children, but them poor Tuckers was the worst job in my life.
When the graves was banked, I looked around, getting my breath. It was so quiet on that little island, under that white sky, that I could hear the beat of my own heart. If I think about that morning beach, and it's been fifty years, I remember that silence and I smell him still, now ain't that something? Smelling a dead man after fifty years?
Being the oldest, Walter stood up straight, jammed the shovel blade into the sand, and growled a prayer: Almighty God, here's two more meek inheriting the earth. Something like that. Me and Henry said Amen, but Gene just hee-hawed and slapped Walter's back.
I took deep breaths, trying to figure out what should be done. I felt like heading straight for Chatham Bend to put a bullet through the crazy brain of that red bastard. Anyone else would of buried them bodies, at least got rid of 'em someplace, run 'em out into the Gulf and dumped 'em over-had the common humanity, I mean, to clean up his own mess, though he must of knowed there was no hiding from the Lord.
One time not long before he died, the Frenchman warned me about Watson. "Is truly charmant, I am as-tonish! I like vair much, I cannot help." He nodded, pointing at my eyes. "Also I hate Watson, you understand? John Leon! I warning it to you! This man is not vermins ordinaire, he is other thing, he is…!" Chevelier struggled for the word, and failed. "Crazy?" I said. At that, he wagged his finger hard, tapped his temple, waved both hands, like a speared frog. "No, not foo! He is-accurs-ed?"
We never got cured of Chevelier's idea that Watson could not help himself, that he was cursed. That was the excuse we give ourselves for liking him. My Sarah, who had real good sense, thought the Frenchman must be right, and so did some of 'em in Chokoloskee. But now I ain't sure what we meant by "cursed," unless God cursed him. If God did that, then who was we to blame, God or Ed Watson?
Chokoloskee never known the Tuckers-not to eat and joke with, the way we done, not to bury-and in a few years the whole story got changed. Henry Short, he knew the truth of it, but he had sense enough to keep his mouth shut, even when a rumor come up from Key West about some young boy who had been visiting with Wally Tucker, and it was recalled how the Atwells thought they seen him. Smallwood and them put out that story how Watson killed "Tucker and nephew," not wanting to believe such a good neighbor would put a bullet through the head of a young woman. It took them Hamiltons, people said, to make up such a frightful story. And by the end of it, my brother Gene, who had seen right up Bet Tucker's skirt, came to agree with 'em.
We don't know a thing about no boy. But Watson-or somebody-killed Bet Tucker, and the four of us buried her that direful day.
Two deputies showed up a few days later, said the Key West sheriff had been advised by a Mac Sweeney that foul murders had been done at Lost Man's River. This Sweeney declined to name no suspects, but Sheriff Knight had reason to suspect Mr. E.J. Watson. "Told us to deputize you mulatta boys here at Wood Key," one feller said.
Pap never give 'em a flat no, just started in to teasing. Pap never teased lest he was angry. Spoke in a big muddy groan, more like a cow, moaning and mumbling and taking on how his only begotten sons was too young to die just cause these deputies was looking to get their ears shot off, and anyways, Mister Watson was their friend and generous neighbor, and how could Hamiltons turn around and go against him?
Walter had went out the door as soon as the law come in, that was his answer. How 'bout you, boy? Two dollars just for guiding us, they said, and I said, Nosir, I sure won't. I felt sick angry at Ed Watson, and wondered what Pap might have said if he'd seen and smelled and handled that cold flesh, but I told the deputies I didn't want no part of it.
Our mam was snorting loudly in disgust-she was disgusted most all of the time, on general principles. Pap said, Maybe you fellers can deputize that big white woman that's setting over there fixing them snap beans. She's tough as a nut, can shoot a knot out of wet rope, and won't settle for no ifs, ands, or buts.
Mam banged down her pot and went inside.
The deputies was scared of Mister Watson, and their nerves was short, so what they done, they advised Richard Hamilton that this were a pure case of cold-blooded murder and no time for no damn mulatta jokes. And I said, that's twice. Better take care who you go calling mulattas.
Pap hushed me. He said then, Don't you men get us wrong. This family don't hold with cold-blooded murder, nor warmblooded neither, cause unlike some of your more common Christians, us Romans don't hold with murder of no size nor shape, nor race, color, nor creed. And some people was bloody murdered, they had that part right, but he hadn't seen no proof against Ed Watson.
Gene had come in just in time to catch our daddy playing possum. Hell, Pap, he yelled, we seen his keel track! Ain't that proof? And Daddy said, Might been proof, but like I say, I never seen it.
He was finished now, and his face closed down, but Gene did not take warning, he was too busy showing off for them two men. He stepped forward and got deputized, proud as a turkey, he even threw 'em a salute. Once he was deputy, he got to jeering, said, "Looks like Pap and his precious John Leon is scared to death of ol' Ed Watson."
Pap grabbed my wrist before I went for my own brother. You said a mouthful that time, Gene, Pap says, and now he's talking in his normal voice, only dead cold. You might got something there, Gene, who's to know?
Time Gene left to guide them deputies up Chatham River, he had already begun to sweat. Looked back over his shoulder, hoping his father would forbid his son to go. But Pap took no notice, he just set there in the sun, whittling him a new net needle out of red mangrove. He was finished with Gene, who had went against his father. Rest of his life, he was civil to him, but he never spoke to him again like his own son. That's the way our daddy was. Never got angry, but when he dropped something, he was finished with it, like he'd took a crap. Life was too short to waste time looking back, is what he said.
When the boat was out of sight, Pap said, "Maybe Eugene was cut out to be a sheriff's deputy, what do you think?" And late in life, a sheriff's deputy is exactly what Gene Hamilton become.
When the deputies dropped Gene off on the way back south, they wasn't going to let on what they seen. Gene was raring to tell but he was told, You ain't got no authority to comment. However, once Liza got to flirting 'em along, it come out quick as a squirt out of a goose.
They had found the Watson Place empty, cleaned right out. On the table was poor Wally's crumped-up message, the big letters printed onto it with pencil. Ed Watson never burned the evidence, and the deputies never bothered to collect it, cause they couldn't read. It was Gene had sense enough to bring it home. When he pulled it out, them deputies told us kind of cross that in a court of law handwrit notes weren't hardly worth the paper they was printed on.
Miss Sarah Johnson took one look, then sung out kind of sharp, This here note might mean nothing to deputies, but it is proof to anyone can read that Wally Tucker was the fool who got Bet murdered! Through her tears, she read out loud:
MISTER WATSON
I WON'T GET OFF OF LOST MAN'S KEY TILL AFTER HARVEST
COME HELL OR HIGH WATER
Hell showed up quicker than poor Wally Tucker had expected, and high water, too.
References to E.J. Watson's career in the Ten Thousand Islands appear at least as early as Florida Enchantments, published in New York in 1908. This account (referred to previously) describes the turn-of-the-century adventures in the South Florida wildernesses of a wealthy northerner, Mr. Anthony Dimock, and his son Julian, who served as his photographer.
At least three figures in the Watson history are associated with the Dimocks. Bill House and George W. Storter Jr. (later Justice of the Peace) served him as guides, and Walter Langford apparently received the author at Langford's Deep Lake citrus plantation in the Big Cypress. Because Mr. Watson was still very much alive, his name is changed in this lively account from E.J. Watson to J.E. Wilson, but there is no question of the real identity of that "genial" man referred to here as "the most picturesque character on the west coast of Florida." The otherwise ironical author seems in awe of "J.E. Wilson" and fascinated by the legends already beginning to surround him-the first but by no means the last writer to come under our subject's powerful spell.
While making no specific mention of the Santini episode, the Dimocks confirm Mr. Watson's reputation as the barroom terror of Key West. (In this regard, see also "The Bad Man of the Islands," in Pioneer Florida, by the noted cattleman and former mayor of Tampa, Mr. D.B. McKay-specifically a lively account of an episode in the Knight & Wall hardware store in Tampa when Mr. Watson, arriving drunk, overheard a conversation about a dancing school, whereupon he "drew a large pistol and fired a shot in the floor near [his] feet and ordered, 'Well, let us see how nice you can dance!'" No one was hurt, and the miscreant was taken off to jail.)
The Dimock book refers to Brewer's failed arrest attempt and another such attempt by a Key West deputy who was disarmed and put to work in Watson's canefield. (Just when this oft-attested-to event occurred I have been unable to determine, due to the disappearance of old sheriff's records from Key West.) According to Dimock, this former deputy became his captor's admirer and friend, and on a later occasion introduced him in a Key West saloon as "Mr. J.E. Wilson of the Ten Thousand Islands" who was preparing to shoot out the lights, whereupon the clientele ran out the door. Whether or not this story is true, it seems safe to assume that Mr. Watson was chronically uproarious at Key West.
The Dimock book supports the local contention (and my own) that E.J. Watson was but one of many malefactors in this wild region:
Conditions in south Florida are primitive. Much of it has changed little since its recesses enabled the Seminoles to prolong a resistance to the United States Government that never was fully overcome. Three counties, Lee of the Big Cypress Swamp, Dade of the Everglades and Lake Okeechobee, and Monroe of the Ten Thousand Islands, contain the most that is left in this country of uncharted territory and wilderness available for exploration…
Throughout these islands society is as loosely organized as it is sparsely distributed. One of the principal men of the coast told me that court justice was too expensive and uncertain for that country, and that people were expected to settle their own quarrels, a homicidal custom that has cost me four guides during the years of my own explorations…
The mazes of the Ten Thousand Islands have proved a sanctuary for the pursued since before the Civil War. At that time they harbored deserters from the Confederate service, some of whom continue their residence within its boundaries in apparent ignorance that the need therefor has passed… Often, in the cypress or mangrove swamps which border the Everglades, you will meet men who turn their faces away, or if they look toward you, laugh as you ask their names… These outcasts trap otters, shoot alligators and plume birds, selling skins, hides and plumes to dealers who go to them secretly, or through Indians who often help and never betray them… Sometimes these outlaws kill one another, usually over a bird rookery which two or more of them claim. I passed the camp of two of them beside which hung a dozen otter skins and a few days later learned that both of them had been killed, probably in a quarrel, but possibly by some third outlaw, tempted by their wealth of skins…
The Dimocks describe what seem to have been the plantations of the Atwell family on Rodgers River, "all abandoned, all for sale, and all without purchasers. On them are splendid royal and date palms, palmettoes and tamarinds, but occupants have found skull-and-crossbones notices upon these trees, which latterly they have obeyed, influenced thereto by seven mysterious deaths which have occurred in the vicinity. The story of the murders, and the names of those who doubtless committed them, are upon the lips of even the children on the coast, but positive proof is lacking." Despite the judicious use of the plural pronoun in that final sentence, there is no question in the context that the suspected murderer is Wilson/Watson. (Ted Smallwood's memoirs also mention that Watson was accused in the death of seven men, including Quinn Bass and "Tucker and his nephew," but at least two of Smallwood's unlucky seven appear to have perished after the Dimock account was published.)