Mister Watson kept bad company but doted on his family, and anyone as ever seen him said the same. 1907, he took Edna home to Columbia County for the birth of little Addison, and her Amy May was born at Key West in May of 1910. Mister Watson would not stand for having his young wife pawed over in her pregnancy by that barefoot old man down in the Islands, using his oyster knife for the delivery, more than likely. Ted didn't like it when I talked like that, claimed Mister Watson had nothing against that old mulatta, he just wanted the best there was for his young Edna. But Ted only said that cause them people was his customers and he didn't want 'em switching to McKinney's.
Excepting maybe for Gene Hamilton, who was ashamed about his family, Ted didn't like that bunch no better than I did. Didn't know their place, or never paid attention to it, one. Course you'd have to say that Old Man Richard knew his birthing business, because there's quite a few was shucked by him down in the Lost Man's section that growed up none the worse for wear.
Long before Amy May was born, Mister Watson had the Bend right back to where it was the best farm in the Islands, never mind his unpaid legal debts. The word was out that field hands were welcome on the Watson Place, no requirements of sex nor color, no hard questions. No real trouble down there neither, not to speak of, or we'd of heard about it from Miss Hannah, who kept in touch with her many friends at Chokoloskee. Mr. Jim Howell, whose daughter Nettie was engaged to my brother Bill, Jim Howell worked down there one harvest season, and Mister Watson made a fast worker out of a slow one. Jim Howell said he was "scared to death the whole durn time" but never got treated better in his life. Even folks who lived in dread of Mister Watson began to cheer up some and crack some jokes, cause it sure looked like that man had changed his ways.
First one give me a clue there might be trouble was Henry Thompson, who still ran Mister Watson's schooner now and then. Henry mostly stayed down there at Lost Man's, he wasn't on the Watson Place no more, but he had worked for that man since a boy and knew his ins and outs as good as anybody.
One day Henry was trading in Fort Myers when an old darkie come up and asked if her son was still hoeing cane down there for Mister Watson. Said the colored there on Safety Hill had no word from the missing man for close on to a year, and another field hand that she knew about had never turned up neither. Well, Henry seemed to recollect that Watson himself had run that darkie back up to Fort Myers when his time was up and he needed his pay. Mister Watson visited with Carrie and her children, then picked up another colored and came back.
"Funny we ain't seen him, then," the woman said.
"Probably took his saved-up pay and run off to Key West," Henry Thompson told her. "Might of heard about them nigger-lovers down that way." Didn't say that for a joke, cause Henry never was a one to joke much, and he never bothered his head about her nigger feelings.
Next, a pair of men showed up in a small sloop, said they was just out gallivanting from Key West. Mister Watson decided they wasn't no such thing, he got to brooding about how them two might be deputies out to make their mark at his expense, just waiting for their chance to lay him low. But the cane was ready so he put 'em to work, kept a close eye. Well, one day Henry brought the boat back from Port Tampa, and their little sloop was still tied to the dock but the men was gone. Mister Watson mentioned he had bought the sloop and run 'em up the coast as far as Marco, paid 'em off, give 'em the names of some likely folks in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Henry never thought a thing about it at the time, but another day, cleaning out that sloop, he came upon a picture of a woman and small kids, love letters, too, that was stuck in a dry cranny under the cabin roof. He wondered why those men would leave such things behind, and he put that stuff away in case they sent for it. They never did.
One day I took Henry to the side and asked what he was really saying with these stories. Was Mister Watson killing off his help instead of paying 'em? Because if Henry had no such suspicions, how come he was spreading these darn stories-well, not so much spreading 'em as letting 'em drop for the rest of us to sniff over.
Henry's eyes opened up real wide, first time in years I seen him pay attention. He backed up fast, got mean-mouthed on me, saying it just goes to show how rumors get their start, said he never believed no such thing about Mister Watson! Why, that man was like a father to him, always had been! Ask Tant Jenkins, Tant would say the same! But Tant would never say the same, cause Tant left Chatham Bend after the Tuckers and did not go back, and anyways, I knowed James Henry Thompson since a boy. Henry and I was always the same age, he couldn't fool me.
Henry Thompson was loyal to Mister Watson and he always would be, leastways until he grew old and needed drinking money. And drinking money was about all he got for that magazine interview about his dangerous youth with Bloody Watson. Maybe he started dropping hints to let off his own worries, cause there weren't no doubt at all Henry was troubled. And if that feller was troubled, so was I.
Another man knew Watson pretty good was Henry Short, and I knew Henry Short real well, he was our nigger. Called him Nigger Short, sometimes Black Henry, to keep him separate from Henry Thompson, Henry Smith. He was the same age as my brother Bill and raised right up by the House family, and he stayed close to us the first half of his life.
Back there before the century's turn, when Bill was working for the Frenchman, Black Henry used to visit Bill down in the Islands. Stayed with them mulatta people, and for a while he sailed Ed Watson's schooner. Well, one time he sank the Gladiator in a squall down off Cape Sable, got picked up by Dick Sawyer, who was headed north. Henry owned right up to Mister Watson, which is more than most of our men would have done. Gregorio Lopez always said, That nigger was too scared to think if he took a piece of news like that to E.J. Watson.
Mister Watson had to chase off Key West scavengers to save his boat, but never once did he raise his voice to Henry. He was very tolerant that time, Henry never forgot it. Course Henry Short was always saying how good he was treated by this white man and that one, he sure knew better than to speak out otherwise. But the way he carried on about Mister Watson, he was not just grateful, he was truly thankful the Lord had let him live to tell the tale. Cause he never forgot that day at Lost Man's when he went upriver with the Hamilton boys to find the Tuckers.
After Mister Watson disappeared, back in 1901, I asked Henry Short straight out if Watson done it. Black Henry never said one word, just kept on sorting avocados in the sun. Jim Crow days was well begun, and cruel punishment was being done to upstart niggers all around the country, and after the age of about twelve, this feller would never talk alone with any white woman. So I told him give me a hand packing tomatoes, led him over toward the produce shed where the men could see us talking but not hear us, and I whispered, Answer me! Did he do it or did he not?
Henry Short was looking straight ahead, and he turned his head away like he was talking to the skeeters, but I heard him murmur, "Mister Watson was sure good to me." That was Henry's way of telling that in his opinion, E.J. Watson killed them Tuckers.
When Mister Watson come back here in 1909, he tried to get Henry to come work for him again, offered good pay, because Henry always was outstanding at whatever he would put his hand to, he could farm, fish, or run boats, mend net, set traps, go hunt a deer and not come back without one. Henry was working at House Hammock on and off, and he got my dad to advise Mister Watson that he could not spare him. That colored man was just plain spooked by Mister Watson.
Sometimes in that last long summer Henry Short went mullet fishing with the Storter boys and their nigger man Pat Roll, set gill nets down around the mouth of Chatham River. Most of them Storters lives at Naples now, long with my brothers Dan and Lloyd. Well, not so long ago Claude Storter told me that Henry never once went past the Watson Place without he had his rifle loaded in the bow. That might could be, but all the same, Black Henry thought the world of Mister Watson.
Mister Watson had a fugitive off of the chain gang hiding out down there, a desperado, killed a lawman in Key West; he also had a older man, Green Waller, supposed to been some kind of jailbird, too. The only law-abiding help was Hannah Smith, great big strong woman, farmed awhile on them Turner River mounds at Old Man McKinney's place, where he called Needhelp, not so far from where our family settled when the House clan first come down into this country. Hannah worked good as any man, and the men will tell you so, though they was mean about her. "The next size comes on wheels," Charlie Boggess said. Well, you know something? Her sister showed up at Everglade not long after Charlie said that, and she come on wheels! Sadie Smith went a size bigger than Hannah, and she drove an ox-cart!
Green Waller was at Needhelp for a spell, them two old loners got along like rum and butter. Waller went down to Chatham River to tend Mister Watson's big prime hogs, and Hannah got sick and fidgety all by herself, fighting skeeters and panthers for a year with no man to help her haul her crops, and that old breed Charlie Tommie trying to take advantage. Long about April 1910, Old Waller went up there and fetched her back with him to Chatham Bend. We heard there was also a Injun squaw got kicked out by the tribe for laying with white men, and a black man who come south with Watson from Columbia. If that field hand ever had a name, I sure don't know about it.
In that dry dark year of 1910, the evil feeling that was growing in the Islands come out in the open and could not be put away. Even my Ted knew something bad was stewing. The one that brought the whole stew to a boil was a "John Smith" who come through Chokoloskee that same spring. He was a well-set-up young feller, middling handsome, with dark brown hair worn long, close to the shoulders, and close hard green eyes. His lower lids cut straight across, no curve to 'em, and his eyebrows grew too close together. Had a old-fashioned kind of black frock coat that he wore over torn farm clothes, looked halfway between a gambler and a preacher. As Tant remarked, you couldn't bet your life he would go to Heaven.
Ted was leery of this stranger right from the get-up-and-go. Said, Sure'n hell, that hombre has run off from someplace, way a tomcat runs off to the woods, goes wild and mean-Ted took agin him soon's he come into the store. Kept tugging at my apron strings, with all his whispering. Young man that's lived according to God don't never have a face as hard as that one! That durn frock coat might be hiding a whole arsenal! I never paid Ted much attention, knowing how excited my man got when he smelled an outlaw.
We asked John Smith if he might be kin to Miss Hannah Smith down Chatham River, or to Henry Smiths, who was one of our ten families here on Chokoloskee. He said, real short, "They ain't no kin at all." He was looking for an E.J. Watson, and he wasn't bothered the least bit to hear that Mister Watson was away down in Key West, with his wife expecting. "I'll wait on him," that's all he said.
This man paid John Demere to run him down to Chatham River. After he'd gone, my husband said, "Ed might be tickled pink to see this hombre, but I doubt it. I believe this could be that feller from the north he's always talked about."
When Ed Watson returned from Key West with his wife and baby, they traveled by steamer to Fort Myers, then came back on the mail boat far as Chokoloskee before they went on home to Chatham River. Ted warned him on the way through that a stranger had come lately, and was waiting on him. Mister Watson turned real quick, to check behind him, then glared at Ted kind of impatient. Ted said, "I mean, waiting at Chatham Bend."
When Mister Watson got took by surprise, he kept his mouth shut, not like most people. Making that little bow, he asks me, Please Miss Mamie, could he impose on my hospitality again? Would we take in Edna and the children while he looks into the situation at Chatham Bend? As I enjoyed her company, I did not mind.
Before he left, he said, "This man look Injun?" and Ted said, "Dark straight hair. Might be a breed." Watson said, "Does he look like some kind of a defrocked preacher?" This time it was me who nodded, but Ted said crossly, "No, he don't look like no preacher." Ted Smallwood would not tolerate the least resemblance between that stranger and a man of God.
I didn't contradict my husband, but Mister Watson never missed much, and when he seen me nod, he had to smile. Said, If this John Smith was who he thought it was, he might look like a preacher but he wasn't.
When I asked, Is John Smith his real name? he said, "Today it is," and went on out.
Next day he came back for the family, and him and Edna had a quick cold quarrel up in our spare room before she came down all teary-eyed to pack the children. Whoever this stranger was, it was pretty plain that his coming was a dreadful blow to that young woman, and all the way down to the dock, she done her best to persuade her husband to let her stay behind. Going aboard his launch with her new baby on her arm, she waved back at me real sad, you know, shaking her head. I didn't pester her about the stranger, and Edna would never tell me nothing, then or later. She always said, "Mister Watson wouldn't like it," even after Mister Watson was stone dead.
A few months before the stranger came, Mister Watson's gun-slinging young foreman done some vandaling down there and then run off someplace. Mister Watson made this John Smith his new foreman because Old Waller drank too much, but next thing you know, the first feller was back, asking after "Mister Ed." On his way through, he told Charley Johnson he would get his job back or his name weren't Dutchy Melvin.
Ted said straight off, "There is going to be trouble." And I said, "Fine. Them two young devils might shoot each other dead, which is good riddance." But the one I resented most was Mister Watson, for bringing these hellions into our community.
Mister Watson always dealt fair with us, and he done a right smart amount of trade with Smallwood's store. One year syrup sales was slow, and Snow and Bryan up in Tampa paid him off in trade goods for several hundred gallons of his syrup, and we took those goods and sold 'em on commission. In Watson's years the store was in our house, long with the post office; wasn't until 1917 we rebuilt it down beside the water, and wasn't till 1925 that we had sense enough to put it up on pilings, way it is today. Nick of time, cause that Hurricane of '26 would of cleaned her out. That was a bad one, killed a lot of folks when Lake Okeechobee busted out its dykes, but it wasn't near so terrible as the Hurricane of 1910, not in the Islands.
Now that storm of October 1909 was plenty bad enough, tore away half of Key West, blew the cigar business all the way to Tampa. We plain wasn't ready for another one still worse in 1910. But there was that comet in the sky, April and May, that was bad sign, and the worst drought in years all that long summer, with our crops withering, poor fishing everyplace. Even Tant Jenkins had to go dig clams to make a living.
Through all that hot dry summer of 1910, Edna Watson and her children visited regular at Chokoloskee, she spent more time here than at Chatham Bend. Stayed with us, stayed with the Wigginses, stayed with Alice McKinney and with Marie Lopez, who married Walter Alderman under that dilly tree at Lopez River-first real wedding with a preacher we had around these parts in years and years. Walter Alderman had worked for Mister Watson up Columbia Country, but he left there quick when Mister Watson got arrested, Marie said, so's he wouldn't have to testify in court. Forbid Marie to tell us anything about what happened, that's how scared he was that you-know-who might come at night and shut him up for good.