Grandma House declared how meet and fit that Mister Watson should vanish in great storm, like the demon she herself had always said he was. And we thought we seen the last of him when he went north the day before the hurricane, cause he surely had his chance there to go free. But Mister Watson wasn't done with us, not by a long shot. Came back through from Fort Myers on the twenty-first, brought his launch across from Everglade, saw to his family. He was so red-eyed with hard travel, day and night, that he laid down on our counter while he talked, keeping a sharp eye on the door. He told us Sheriff Tippins got as far as Marco, then turned tail and headed back up to Fort Myers, awaiting reinforcements from Monroe County. The sheriff would not deputize Mister Watson, so Mister Watson deputized himself. He was on his way to Chatham Bend to "apprehend that scoundrel" while the apprehending was good.
Mister Watson had stopped off at the store to pick up some shells for that old double-barrel, but shells was paper-wrapped in them days, and all we had was swollened storm-swept shells. I said, These ain't the shells you want when you go manhunting! Because I wanted him to kill this Cox, shoot him down same as a panther or a wolf. Everyone did. And he give me his little wink and said, Well, now, Miss Mamie, if these shells are the best you've got, they will do me fine.
The House family was back on Chokoloskee, also Lovie Lopez and her boys, and Tant Jenkins, Henry Smith, from Pavilion Key. A lot of folks from Lost Man's straggled in after the hurricane-Thompsons, James Hamiltons, young Andrew Wiggins. None of them families ever went back south, the storm left 'em nothing to go back to.
Daddy House and Charley Johnson, a few others, came down to where our landing used to be. They had a plan to arrest Ed Watson, though they never let on about that plan till he was gone. Mister Watson had his double-barrel out where they could see it, he had come too far to tolerate no interference, and nobody wanted to stand in his way, cause he looked half-crazy with exhaustion. His eyes were dull and teeth gone yellow, and that lively chestnut hair of his all dank and dead.
He said, "I will be back," as if to challenge anyone might try to stop him, and Daddy House, who had some dander, said, "If you are aiming to come back, you better bring Cox with you." Mister Watson said, "Is that a warning, Mr. House?" And D.D. House said, "You could take it that way, Mister Watson."
Mister Watson didn't like that, not one bit. He said, "Dead or alive?" and D.D. House said, "Dead is good enough."
Mister Watson pushed off in his boat. He said, "If I don't bring him, I will bring his head," and cranked the motor.
He went away without a word, pot-pot-potting down the Bay toward Rabbit Key Pass. For the second time that week we told each other that if that feller had one bit of sense, we'd seen the last of him. But Mister Watson, as Ted said, never did learn where to draw the line, he weren't that kind. Maybe we were finished with him, but he weren't finished with us, not with his family here.
Mister Watson weren't hardly out of sight when his poor wife felt a shift toward her on our island. Folks closed her off, wouldn't look her in the eye. They walked around her, moved out of her way. It got so bad she wouldn't let her kids out of her sight, for fear that one of 'em might come up missing.
The silence that followed that poor body all around our ruined island weren't nothing but pure fear and hate-fear of her husband and his murdering henchman, and hate toward this fool north-county girl who must of known what kind of bloody man fathered her children-that's what the women muttered-and more fear yet because her being in our midst with his fire-headed little demons might be enough to draw that devil back. And the people who was coldest of them all, she told me later, was the ones invited her into the house where she was staying.