"You boys know Sheriff Tippins," Collier says.
At Marco Island, most of the men are gathered at Bill Collier's Mercantile Store. The small limestone building stands apart from his Marco Hotel, with its twenty small guest rooms, parlor, dining room, and bathroom. Constructed from burnt oyster shell the year before, the store has a hurricane crack three inches across from roof to ground and is still draining eighteen inches of high water. The bare ground around both buildings, littered with brown fronds, is set about with salt-killed planted palms.
Worn by wind and liquor to a nervous edge, the men talk fitfully. Two days before, on the eve of the hurricane, Captain Thad Williams had delivered the black suspect at Fort Myers. I returned with Captain Thad to Marco, where the Cannons and Dick Sawyer and Jim Daniels had confirmed Thad's story that in his first testimony at Pavilion Key, the black suspect had implicated E.J. Watson.
Turns out Watson had come through here on Monday, and crossed to the mainland before the storm struck in. He had probably arrived at Fort Myers this very morning. Said he was looking for the sheriff, Bill said, and might been hunting up that nigra, too, while he was at it.
"You ask me, that nigger told the truth when he claimed that crazy Watson was behind it."
"Nigra changed his story," I tell this man. The Monroe sheriff has been notified to come get him, and I wonder if I shouldn't start on back, in case Watson finds a way to get him first.
Teet Weeks snuffles his tin cup, wipes his stubbled chin with the back of his hand, gets my boots in focus. "Them fucking cattle kings and bankers gone to cover up for him again, ain't that right, Sheriff? Likely got you in their pocket, too-"
Bill Collier sets down the spring line he is braiding and hoists Teet off the floor and sets him down again facing the other way. Weeks spins and draws his fist back for a comic roundhouse punch, knowing that some kinsman will catch his arm before he gets himself in too much trouble. When no one bothers, he feigns imbalance, which carries him back to a safe distance, bobbing and weaving by himself in a small circle. That's how Teeter Weeks, a drunkard at fifteen, had got his name. Taking the laughter as approval, Teet winks and prances, spits on his hands. "Damn you, Bill Collier, you looking for a fight? You found your man!"
Captain Bill Collier is a broad-backed man, calm and slow to anger. His father founded Marco settlement way back in 1870. Today the son is storekeeper and postmaster, trader and ship's master, he is shipbuilder and keeper of the inn. He has a copra plantation of five thousand palms and a citrus grove on the mainland at Henderson Creek with fifteen hundred orange trees. He designed and owns the floating dredge that works the clam flats at Pavilion Key.
It was Bill Collier who discovered the strange Calusa masks off the Caxambas trail while getting out muck for his tomatoes, Bill Collier who lost two sons when his schooner Speedwell sank off the Marquesas. He has done a lot and seen much more. Ignoring Teet Weeks, he picks up his rope and resumes braiding.
I ask if anyone knows Watson's foreman.
"Your prisoner seen him last, on Chatham Bend. Nobody knows where he might of got to now."
What I should do, I think, is deputize some men, keep right on going, south to Chatham River, jurisdiction or no jurisdiction, because whoever was responsible for those three killings was not likely to wait there for the sheriff.
"…and no goddam law!" Teet cries. "Ought to take and put a bullet through them kind of crazy sonsabitches fore they get loose from their damn cradle, be fucking well done with it-"
"That where you're headed, Sheriff? Chatham River?"
"Cross the Monroe line?"
The men grin when I play dumb and say, "That's not Lee County? Guess I lost my map," but they keep pressing.
"John Smith. You found out who he is?"
"I believe the nigra knows, but he's not telling."
"Had that black boy here tonight, I guess he'd tell us."
"That could be."
The restless men half listen as Dick Sawyer describes how he once saved Watson's life.
One day he'd seen the Gladiator at Key West, and getting no answer when he hallooed, he went aboard. OF Ed was down with typhoid fever, couldn't move or talk. Dick Sawyer went up the street, brought Dr. Feroni back down to the boat, and the doctor cured him. "Ed give me not one word of thanks for saving his damn life," Dick Sawyer says. "And that is funny, cause Ed's manners was so excellent."
"Yes, sir," Jim Daniels says, disgusted. He is worried about his sister Josie on Pavilion Key. "Very well knowed to settle his accounts, keep on the right side of the storekeepers, but he still owes my oldest boy eighty dollars for motor repair. Watson as much as told my Henry he could go to hell, but he says it real polite, cause his manners is so excellent. A very mannerly man, specially when he has you where he wants you. And he has most everybody where he wants 'em, that right, Dick?"
"Had a couple your sisters, Jim, right where he wanted 'em, as you might say-"
Jim Daniels, in his fifties, hard-armed, dark-haired, with a trace of silver, cuts off Dick Sawyer just by sitting up straight.
"I was down at Lost Man's, 1901, nearby my daughter Blanche's people-that's her brother-in-law, Lewis Hamilton, cooks on the clam dredge? Well, one evening I seen a little boat burning down against the sun, way out there on the Gulf horizon. Went out there to see if we could help, found what was left of Tucker's little sloop, no trace of nobody. Nice mannerly job." He looks grimly at Sawyer. "Before that it was mostly rumors. Wasn't till after Tuckers died that folks got scared of him. If he hadn't of took off for the north, he could of had about any mound he wanted cepting Richard Hamiltons'."
"Old Man Richard's bunch, they's kin to your wife, ain't that right, Jim?"
Jim Daniels says, "Not so's you'd notice, Dick."
"Now Netta and Josie-"
"You speaking about my sisters, Albert?"
"I'm speaking about their little girls, over Caxambas. Ain't them kids Watson's?" The speaker is a morose man whose wife, Josephine, had presented him only this year with a chestnut-haired baby boy. Josie Parks-she used the name of the original ex-husband-had refused to abandon Pavilion Key before the storm, and her latest spouse, who had left without her, had been drinking for two days to drown his worry. "Thought that was common knowledge," he adds carefully, seeing Jim's expression.
"Best ask Mister Watson about common knowledge, Albert. Might could tell you some more common knowledge that you ought to know."
In the hooting, Josie Parks's drunk husband raps his cup down hard, as if set to fight, but Captain Collier, waving his long arms, has no trouble at all deflecting his attention.
"Talking about common knowledge, Albert," Collier says. "One time on his way back from Fort Myers, Mister Watson got as far as here but needed a boat to take him down to Chatham River. Hiram Newell setting over there, he worked for Watson, but Hiram had his boat up on the ways, so them two went on over to Sawyer's, that right, Dick? And Hiram told Dick through the door that Mister Watson was outside, said he wanted to know if Dick would take him home. And Dick thought Hiram was playing fun on him, and hollers out, 'To hell with you and your goddam Mister Watson!' Then he come to the door, and when he seen who was standing right outside, he said just as nice as rice, 'Why hello there, Mister Watson! How the hell you been?' Remember, Dick?"
"I took that sonbitch home, yessir!" Dick Sawyer says. "Too damn scared not to!"
Josie's husband yells at Sawyer, "You always been his friend, ain't that right, Dick? Friend of Walt Smith, too. How do you like them two fine fellers now?" Dick Sawyer, as every man there knew, had been aboard Smith's sponge boat a few years earlier when Smith had killed the game warden, Guy Bradley.
"I worked with Walt Smith, that is right," Dick Sawyer says, "and I left Key West right after that and come up here. Cause I ain't Smith's friend after what he done, and I ain't no friend to Watson, neither, not no more!" Sawyer, frowning, pounds his fist, but he has to give this up. "Ol' Ed told me that himself," he says, and laughs.
"This here time," Dick says, "me and Tom Braman was having some drink in Eddie's Bar there in Key West, and Ed Watson banged in there roaring drunk and set up shots for everybody. And two black women came in and ordered rum, because Key West being a Navy town, it allowed niggers to act that way ever since the War Between the States. So Watson turned at the sound of nigger voices, and one of them females, she lifted a glass to him, she was drunk, too. There was a bad silence for a minute while he thought that over. He did not toast back. Everyone felt a whole lot easier when Ed got up off his stool without a word and left the place. Ain't nobody never going to see Ed Watson take a drink with niggers!-I hollered that out to make sure them women knew what was what.
"Turned out two niggers was waiting for their women right outside. One of 'em said how-do to Watson, so Ed took out his knife and went right after him. There come a shriek and Ed's friends ran out, thinking to keep him out of trouble. They yelled, No, no, don't do that, Ed! Better listen to us, cause we're your friends! And Watson rolled up onto his feet as the crowd backed off. He was panting, you know, squinting. When he yanked out a neckerchief to wipe his knife, every man flinched, thought he was going for his pistol. But all he said was, very calm and quiet, I don't have no friends. Not sorrowful about it, more kind of confused, you know, like he was trying to remember something."
"Watson said that?" Jim Daniels looks surprised.
"I don't have no friends-that's what he said! You ask Tom Braman!" Dick Sawyer looks all around the place, triumphant. "Then Ed put his black hat back on and went down to the wharf to where his schooner was. On the way, he run into a deputy, and he says, Depitty, best get your ass on up to Eddie's Bar before they kill someone. Course by that time, he had one them niggers killed already, and the other one figuring he might as well be dead. By the time a posse got back down to the wharf, his boat was gone, and nobody went north eighty miles to Chatham River after E.J. Watson, not on account of no dead nigger."
"Way I heard that one, Dick, you wasn't even there! Heard it right from Braman and you wasn't there!"
"I wasn't there, Jim? Where was I at, then?"
"Way I heard that one, wasn't no niggers messed up in it at all. Ed Watson had some mixed-breed feller on the floor and was hauling out that goddam bowie knife, said, Maybe I'll fillet this one here in case he's a damn Spaniard, cause I never got to go to San Juan Hill.
"The Roberts boys, Gene, Melch, and Jim, was over from Flamingo, tried to talk him out of it. Gene Roberts was always Watson's friend, and he'd tell you that today. And Gene said, Come on now, Ed, you're looking for some trouble, and you don't need no more. You better listen here to us, cause we're your friends. And Watson looked around at all them men, then blinked as if he was coming up out of a dream. He wiped his knife off on the Spaniard's hair and snapped it shut, let that half-dead bleeding feller crawl away like he'd never noticed him in the first place. Got up and put his knife away and dusted himself off. Then he looked all them men over once again, and said real quiet, Boys, I ain't got no friends."
"Haven't got no friends, more like it," Sawyer says. "Ed don't say ain't."
Hiram Newell, who had served as Watson's schooner captain, clears his throat. "Well, I ain't ashamed to say ain't, Dick, and I ain't ashamed to be in friendship with Ed Watson. If Tant was here tonight, he'd say the same. Ed Watson got him a big heart-"
"Jesus!" Jim Daniels snorts, and stamps the floor. "Got him a big heart, all right, to go with them good manners. Too bad them Tuckers ain't here this evening, tell us their opinion! Jesus Sweet Christ!"
"Where is Tant, anyway?"
"Pavilion Key, unless he been washed off." Daniels scowls again at Josie's husband. "Had to stay on there, tend to his baby sister."
"Your sister, too, ain't she? Half sister anyway."
"Big family," Jim Daniels says.
"The reason Ed and me ain't friends no more," Dick Sawyer says, taking advantage of a silence, "he got in trouble some way in Wakulla Springs and was headed back to Chatham Bend. Come through here, asked me to take him home. No moon that night and no stars neither, I didn't want to go. But I seen that stare he gets sometimes, and knew not to say no. We weren't hardly clear of Marco when he went below to sleep it off. Pretty quick he stuck his head out of the cuddy and looked around him at the night. He shook his head, says, Can't see much, from the look of it. And I said, Can't see is right! Can't hardly navigate! I was thinking he would tell me to turn back. And he said, Partner, if you run this boat aground, I guess I'll kill you.
"That was the first time I was not so sure Ed Watson was my friend. Might been one of them little jokes he makes when he is drinking, but I couldn't count on it. So what I done, I headed way off shore, let the flood tide rise a little before I tried them flats off Chatham River.
"Well, we never once scratched bottom. Landed Ed safe on his dock, and he yawned and stretched and told me then, You come on in and drink with me, have a bite of supper. So I said, I'd be proud to do that, Ed. Be with you in a minute. But when he went on up to the house, I just slipped my lines and drifted off downriver. He come out of his house and looked, but he never called. Just stood there in the moonlight up against that big white house and watched me out of sight around the Bend."
Since my chance of finding Cox is small, I had to locate E.J. Watson. That's what I'm thinking when the door bangs open in the wind, bangs closed again with a man backed up against it, as the Marco men heave back, groaning like cattle. Hand hid in his baggy coat's right pocket, the man is watching nobody but me. Picked me out through the window, and picked out his own vantage point, as well. He knows that every man in this small settlement would be here in Collier's store, leaving the women to huddle where they could.
"Mister Watson."
Bill Collier's greeting warns the room. Collier gives me a blank gaze of comical astonishment, but Watson hasn't missed the shift I make to free my holster, so I elevate my knee real slow with both hands clasped on it, resting my boot carefully on a keg of nails.
Watson acknowledges the signal with a small nod of his chin and draws his hand out of his pocket. He stays where he is against the door, to cover his back and the whole room at the same time. He looks windblown and sleepless, waterlogged, his ruddy sunburned face packed with dark blood, his breathing hoarse. Also, he appears alert, even exhilarated, not the least likely to make a move that would put him at our mercy. Being endangered, he is very dangerous.
"Mister Watson." E.J. Watson nods. He grins. He has been drinking. But Watson could come in here dead drunk and buck naked and still have us buffaloed, that's how surprised we are. Where did he come from, how did he get here? Worn stubbled faces are turning toward me to see what the sheriff will do. What I am trying to do is to think clearly.
Teet makes a half move toward the door. When Watson turns, Teet freezes like a dog on point, and his tin cup clatters to the floor. A voice whines "Jesus!"
Watson removes his hat and sets it on a peg. Keeping his hands loose at his sides, he spreads his feet a little. He is wearing a soiled white shirt missing the collar, and a frayed Sunday frock coat over rough pants. On his face the friendliness subsides like a wash of tide sucked down into the sand.
"I didn't do it, boys. Let's get that straight."
The room is silent. Sawyer says, "Ed? Ain't no one says you done it, Ed."
Watson nods sourly, as if Sawyer's plea only confirmed his poor opinion of the man. Watson says, "What brings you out in such weather, Sheriff?"
I tip my hat. I could try an arrest with all these Marco men behind me, but if I do, Watson will resist, and somebody will get hurt, most likely me.
"Heard you was looking for me, Mister Watson."
"That depends. Maybe we better discuss it, Sheriff, see who's looking for who."
I get up slowly, taking a deep breath to calm myself. Here is the meeting that I'd always wanted, and my stomach rumbles as my guts go loose, and my voice is reedy, saying, "You fellers stay here."
"Nobody's going no place," says Bill Collier, braiding line.
When Watson holds the door open, I don't want to turn my back. However, I walk straight on out. The door bangs behind me, cutting off the light.
In the wind and darkness his gun barrel prods me and he takes my gun.
"Someone set you on shore someplace? You walked here?"
"Know Caxambas? South end of the island?" He prods me toward the dock.
Black ragged clouds race across the moon, which casts dim light on the white sand. Already we have left the glow from the store lantern. With the open hole of the gun barrel behind me, my back feels naked.
At the dock where the Falcon is tied up, I turn my head, keeping my hands out to the side. I cannot make out the face under the hat, only the barrel-chested silhouette and the small feet. "After you, Frank," E.J. Watson says politely.
At the schooner's mess table, we are face to face, by lantern light. Watson leans back into the corner of the bulkhead where he cannot be seen from outside the cabin window. I say, "You'd be safer in jail." I am not calm yet.
"Ever hear Ted Smallwood's story about Lemon City? The mob goes right into the jail to get this feller, shoots the nigger jailer, too, while they are at it."
"They won't lynch you in Fort Myers."
"No? How about a legal lynching like that stranger got, a couple of years ago, for self-defense against some local meanmouth who picked a fight with him? That feller was as good as lynched, my Carrie tells me, not because he deserved to die but because that's what the local people howled for. And nobody had to dirty their hands excepting you." He puts his watch back, then waves his hand to quiet me, as if reminded by the hard night wind that the world is closing in on him too fast. "I know, I know, the law's the law, it was your duty."
"You knew that feller?"
"Nobody knew him. That's why he was hung."
After six months in jail, that prisoner still wore his hat, as if certain he would go free at any moment. I invited him out of his cell to eat a dignified last supper on my desk. He took his hat off. The drifter-Edwards was his name-was almost bald under his hat, skin white and raw. He looked up grizzle-chinned from his tin plate when he was finished. "Sheriff," he said, "I never picked that scrape, it was him or me. And if it was me, that feller would be free today, you know that just as good as I do." He wiped his mouth. "You got a planter down here name of Watson, escaped the noose up where I come from on account of his daughter married the bank president, that's what I hear. But I'm a stranger with no money, so I'll pay with my life tomorrow morning."
The man stepped over to the sink and scraped his plate. "Justice," he said.
"No need to wash up," I said.
Stolid, the man washed the plate. "What kind of justice you call that?" he insisted.
Unable to answer, I shrugged as if to say, The law's the law. He said it for me, bitterly, "The law's the law." Then he said, "I've had enough of people, you know that? Enough of you and especially of me. First time in my whole damn life I ever thought I had enough of anything." He set down his dried plate carefully, with its knife and fork, then put his hat back on. "Thanks for the feed," he said. He walked back into his cell and shut the door.
The man lay on the bench knees way up high and to the wall, awaiting daylight still and mute as if waiting to be born. Seeing the sad round holes in the cracked boot soles, I was surprised by a wave of sorrow that this drifter's road was coming to an end. I longed to go in there, touch his shoulder, but could see there was nothing of comfort to be said, so I locked him in.
"Don't stare," he said in a muffled voice. "It ain't polite."
At daylight the preacher came, fearing his duty, and the man refused him. "Brother, your God and J.P. Edwards has parted company for good." He wet his pants before the public hanging in the yard. Who knows if God watched over him or not.
Watson has been ranting, his words hang in the air. So don't try telling me they won't hang Ed Watson high, first chance they get, because you don't know any such thing!
In the echo, he hauls a small flask from his pocket. "Island Pride?"
The white lightning surprises me. I shiver like a horse. "Whoo, boy," I say, eyes watering.
"Ed Watson's syrup turned a little hard, that what you're thinking?"
I nod, in a warm flush, trying not to smile. "I saw an article in August, out of Kansas City, says Ed Watson was hung in Arkansas back in the nineties. Any truth to that?"
"Get downwind of me these days and you'll sure think so. They don't give us wanted men much time to dab under the arms." He refills my cup. "I'm not the wanted man you want," he says.
"Where do I find him?"
"Deputize me. We'll go get him."
"He's still there?"
"No way to get off. My launch is at Chokoloskee, and the nigger took the skiff, and this John Smith is dead scared of the water. Don't know enough to run that schooner by himself, even if she's still afloat after the storm. And he won't have the first idea of the bad trouble he is in, so I can come right up on him, he won't suspect me."
"He won't suspect you."
"He doesn't know that anything went wrong."
"Something went wrong, then."
Watson's eyes go flat, to measure me. The pause before he answers is one breath too long.
"If you were this man Smith, and you found out that the one witness to your crimes got away to Pavilion Key and told a story, I reckon you might conclude something went wrong." Grimly he considers me. "Am I a suspect, then? I wasn't there."
"Your nigger says you were behind it."
Under the black hat, the eyes go oddly pale as if the blue was fading back into the white. A wolf or a treed cat would show more agitation than this man is showing, an ear twitch, a shifting in the eyes, a little curl along the gums. What I see instead is the stiff muzzle, the bald unblinking eyes, of a turned bear, a transfixed visage like a block of hairy wood-like an ancient spirit mask of the Calusas, drained of all expression. I feel faint. "That was his first story." My voice sounds far away but oddly calm. "When he was warned he'd have to face you with that charge, he took it back, blamed the killings on your foreman."
The life returns to Watson's face, the blue eyes soften. "John Smith," he murmurs.
"How come you don't use Cox's name?"
Watson refuses to show surprise. "Because he don't, I imagine."
"What was Cox's motive, Mister Watson?"
"Cox don't need a motive. Not to kill."
"You knew that, but you kept him there with your wife and children?"
"Needs a motive to work, maybe, but not to kill." When I don't smile, he says, "The family mostly stayed in Chokoloskee. Also, I owed Les a favor."
"You owed Les a favor," I repeated. "Want to tell me about that?"
"Nosir I don't!" Watson drinks and gasps and frowns hard at his flask, to clear his flash of anger. "Looks like some dumb sonofabitch distilled my syrup."
"Why did you come hunting me if you won't talk straight?" His eyes go flat again, and I say in a more careful tone, "You warned me twice not to try any arrest. That's resisting arrest. So is pointing a gun at the Lee County sheriff. You want my help, you better stop breaking the law." I am talking much too much, and cannot stop. "Next time I get the drop on you, I'll take you in."
"You threatening Carrie Langford's dad?" Watson nods a little. "No sense us two quarreling, Frank." Then he says tiredly, "You get the drop on me, you'd better shoot, cause you're not taking me in." He shakes his head. "No threat intended, Sheriff, I am just informing you."
"Let's start again. Who's Leslie Cox?"
"Shit!" Watson snarls, as if I am just wasting his good time. He bangs his palm down on the mess table. "I went to Fort Myers in a damn hurricane to report a dreadful crime, tell my side of the story, before someone gets a rope around my neck! You think I don't know my reputation? If I was guilty, would I go chasing the sheriff?"
"Lee County sheriff. The murders took place in Monroe." I pause. "You're gambling you'll get better treatment in Fort Myers." I pause again. "You think maybe your daughter's friends will help you."
"Am I wrong?" Watson sticks the flask out. I shake my head. "Why don't I run? Is that it? Well, I thought about it. Could have kept right on going when I hit Fort Myers, took the railroad to New York." He drinks. "Well, I got sick of running. I decided to stand up to my own life."
We sit silent for a time, listening to the schooner creak against the pilings, the dying wind still wandering the rigging. Over by the store, metal is banging, in the star wind sucked down from the north in the storm's wake.
"Look. I want someone to hear my side, that's all. Just hear my side. Then you make up your own mind, all right?" He cocks his head, squinting at me over his glass. "I never told Cox to kill those people. You ask about Cox's motive-how about mine? I have the best plantation in the Islands, the best house. Every kitchen from Tampa to Key West uses my syrup. I have grown children and two granddaughters you've seen yourself, there in Fort Myers. I have a young wife and three pretty little kids. I have a good strong land claim pending, and a plan to develop this whole coast! And I have the goodwill of the governor's office. Why would I invite more trouble? And for what? Hell, I knew Broward at Key West way back in the days he was running guns to Cuba on the Three Brothers."
The ship lifts and bangs.
"Governor Broward died. Two weeks ago."
Watson shrugs. "You know John Roach? Bought Deep Lake with my son-in-law for growing citrus? Those two are counting on a new cross-Florida road to get their produce out, but the way the politicians work, that could take years. They're growing citrus, all right, but it's rotting." Watson leans forward. "Henry Ford came to Fort Myers a few years ago to visit Edison, and those boys met him. I said to Roach, How about you lay twelve miles of small-gauge rail from Deep Lake down to Everglade, use a Ford motor on a freight car, take that citrus out by sea, Key West or Tampa?"
Watson sits back, expansive, blue eyes bright. "John Roach was tickled pink. Those men have as much as told me that if I can stay out of trouble a few years, I'll take over at Deep Lake as manager, because Deep Lake has problems and I have ideas. Even Cole admits Ed Watson has a head for business. And now that Broward got those canals started, it's going to be just one big farm out there, right across the state. That's progress! And I aim to be in on it!"
I keep my face closed, not knowing what to say.
"A man who can prosper on forty acres of hard shell mound way down there to hell and gone in the damn mangrove-what do you think that man could do with three hundred acres of black loam at Deep Lake?" Watson drinks again. "That was the question Roach asked Langford!" He clears his throat, then speaks more quietly. "Think I don't want Carrie proud instead of always nervous and ashamed?"
I feel tired of Watson, why is that? And tired of Frank Tippins, come to think of it. With Watson's references to Carrie, a kind of dog-eared sadness has come over me, I feel indifferent. My two boys bring more headaches than pleasure, much like the former Fannie Yates of Georgia, their dear mother.
"If I was the killer some folks say, do you think my own people, who know me best, would still be loyal? Does that make sense? The only man against me is Jim Cole, and Cole himself is the biggest crook in your damned county. Backs temperance laws to raise his bootleg liquor prices, uses the law to break the law, that's what it is!"
"That is a serious accusation-"
"And that's bullshit! You can't catch him, or you won't catch him is more like it. You are in his debt, the same as I am, but you don't like that big-mouth bastard either. Buys and sells but don't produce a thing. Bought the Royal Palm Hotel, had it sold again within the year. Bought the first home automobile, too, that damn red Reo he ran up and down the streets last year, scaring the horses. He's sold her off already, got a Cadillac."
"Weren't for Cole, you might been strung up two years back, from what I hear."
Watson has a fit of coughing. "Rigged the Madison County jury, that what you heard? Well, he did his part. Spared the Langfords a scandal, and he'll get himself well paid, you wait and see." He nods drunkenly. "You'll have to pay him, too, one of these days." He cocks his head. "Deep Lake? County road-gang labor fees?" He shrugs. "Don't know what I'm talking about, Sheriff?"
Sending county road-gang labor to Deep Lake to help Walt Langford-that was Jim Cole's sneaky suggestion, but the original idea, Cole told me once, came from this man here.
"Your idea, right?" I shrug.
"Look," he says, "I have great plans, I'm not waiting for Deep Lake. Know what these plans for Everglades drainage mean? Progress up and down this coast! That's going to happen in our lifetime!"
At the stubborn hope in him my spirit sinks.
"Not in Ed Watson's lifetime-that what you're thinking?"
The wind carries sand from the bare yard against the window.
"Why would I want those people dead? Hell, they were friends of mine! Miss Hannah? Green? Some days I even liked young Dutchy!" His voice is rising. "Think I don't know the rumors going around? Sure, I'm in debt! Those lawyers ruined me. But a few paydays saved-that's not going to help!"
I wait.
"Look, I'm a businessman! I keep my credit up! Ask Ted Smallwood, ask C.G. McKinney. I've had no trouble since I came back to the Islands! My wife warned me I shouldn't let Cox stay, but I owed him something, that's what it was, a man has to repay an obligation. 'Honor is the highest good'-ever heard that? Plato said that. Never read Plato?" When I shake my head, Watson shakes his, too. "Well, I paid Cox back that obligation, and he'll pay me this one. If you deputize me."
"Deputize a man pointing a gun at me?"
Watson opens his hand, lets my cartridges roll across the table, then returns my revolver, barrel first. "Take it," he says. When I take the barrel, which is pointed at my chest, he grips it, holding my eye before releasing it. "Don't load up," he says.
Putting the gun away, I lay both hands flat on the table in sign that our talk is over, but he raises his hand abruptly when I start to rise.
"All I want-"
"If Cox is taken alive, then it's your word against his, and due to your past reputation, his word might get you hung even if you're innocent. So either you kill him or you make sure he escapes." I'm feeling out of breath. "You want to go down there and kill Cox, because killing Cox would destroy a witness, maybe tend to show Ed Watson's heart is on the side of justice. And you want the sheriff alongside of you, to make it legal."
Watson nods. "That what you think?" Slowly he takes up his own gun and looks it over. "Man that cold-blooded, now, no telling-"
"I don't know what I think." Seeing his face, I am so scared I have to piss, I don't want to hear the end of Watson's sentence. Where's Bill Collier? All those men? Why don't they come?
Later I wonder why I got so scared, and why, so suddenly, my chest has eased and I grow calm enough to say, "You're a suspect, Mister Watson. I can't throw in with you, and I wouldn't do it if I could." I take a breath. "As far as Lee County is concerned, you are under arrest." When Watson says nothing, inspecting the gun, I rise carefully to my feet. "You have a clean record in Lee County-"
"Oh, shut up!" He lurches to his feet, waving me at pistol point into the night. He totters and stumbles, heaving around to close the cabin door, turning his back to me. He doesn't hurry, that is his contempt. He knows I won't jump him from behind, and shout for help. He knows I won't try an arrest, though whether out of fear or pity, he will never know, and I won't either.
To his back, I say, "I'm heading to Fort Myers, meet the Monroe sheriff. If you kill Cox or take him off the place before we get to Chatham Bend, you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."
Watson considers me, but already his mind is someplace else. With me in Fort Myers, he will have three days head start.
"Just you trot over to that store," he says, "and don't look back."
Crossing the sand to Collier's store, I duck out of the light. Under the eaves, in a stew of bad emotions, I piss my tension and relief into the dark, nagged hard by the night wind, the heavy wash of seas in the night channel. When I get my breath, I fish out my cartridges, reload my gun.