My Nettie has read me from a famous Florida book where the man who fired the first shot at Watson was Luke Short, a white fisherman. That is dead wrong but about as right as all the rest. Same writer claimed that the leader of the posse, C.G. McKinney, got wounded when Watson fired. Well, Old Man McKinney wasn't leader of the posse, he wasn't even there, and the only man got wounded on that day was E.J. Watson.
All them stories in the books and magazines, they never mention who was on that posse, and that is because nobody would tell 'em. When strangers came around asking nosy questions, nobody would talk to 'em at all. Me, I don't know for a fact who pulled the trigger and who didn't, but from the look of him when they got done, very few hung back.
If Watson's gun had not misfired, my daddy would been deader'n a doornail. Knowing that, he turned his back on all that racket and just walked away. Some way he had busted a gallus and was holding up his trousers with an arm across his belly, walked soft and slow like he had a gut ache or was carrying new ducklings. I never forgot that way he walked, I never before seen my pap as an old man.
We followed him, though us boys wanted to stay, being so bad twisted up over the end of it. Dan was in tears, he was so mad, and didn't even know what he was mad at. The men who shot and the men who stood aside, they felt relief and they felt sick, too, because all of 'em had enjoyed Ed Watson and didn't have nothing personal against him-the most of us had known his generosity, one way and another. We tried to spit it up, over and over. But D.D. House never spoke of it again, and it went bad in him, turned him stiff and sour and old within the year.
When the crowd drifted back into the dark, and the dogs forgot why they was barking, Charlie T. Boggess hobbled down there with a lantern, helped Ted turn him turtle, drag a canvas over him. Smallwood tried to fold the arms across the chest, but ever so slow them arms opened up wide, like the two claws on a crab. Or that's how Charlie Boggess told about it, cause Charlie T., he made up for his short size with his tall stories. He was spooked by them slow-opening arms much worse than by that bloody eye, is what he would tell to visitors in later years, when everyone had forgot the truth, Charlie T. included.
Ted tried to close the blue eye that was left, but he come too late, the dead lid peeled right back off the gory eyeball. So they hunted around amongst the hurricane scraps spread through the bushes, found a boy's flag from the Fourth of July to lay across his face. Might been a sacrilege up North, who is to say. In the South it wasn't fifty years yet since the War Between the States, and D.D. House, who had rode off for a soldier, he never did get used to the Stars and Stripes.
Leaving a body out all night on the cold ground was bothersome. Didn't feel no guilt or nothing, just couldn't sleep with Watson laying down there by the water, so I went and paid my respects under the moon. Ted and Charlie aimed to drag him under cover but they didn't, and I went down with the same plan, didn't touch him neither. There was no place for him, he wasn't even welcome where he was. Dogs or boys had snapped away the tarp and tore that flag off him. I tucked him in again as you might say, then took my hat off and said, Mister Ed, I stand by what was done, but I want to say it sure weren't nothing personal.
One-eyed Ed Watson stared up at the stars, arms wide in welcome. Looked kind of strange with his black hat off, you didn't often catch him out without it. Hadn't been no rain at all, not since the hurricane, and the beard and mouth was caked with dust and blood, like a bear that's snuffled out a gator nest. In the lantern shine, that one bald eye was glaring through the black snakes of dry blood down his forehead. One of them little cowboy boots was shot away, and the other stripped off for a souvenir, and his small feet looked like gray-white dough, with yellow toenails. That broad tooled cowhide belt from the Wild West was missing, and that good black hat from Fort Smith, Arkansas.
Already kids was acting out how Bloody Watson fell, you could hear the yelling pow-pow-pow-pow all over the island. Got too excited altogether, it took 'em a good week to calm down-course this was natural, Watson being the first violent death they ever seen. Charlie and Ethel's boy Dinks Boggess, down the street, I believe that Dinks was one them little fellers prowled around that body, and he might could recall which one of 'em got Watson's revolver. More likely Dinks won't talk at all, cause Dinks don't like invaders. Willie Brown's boy Billy, he was there, too, but he's another one don't take too good to questions.
That night it was agreed without no argument that there wouldn't be no burial on Chokoloskee, cause even dead, that man still scared the island. It was voted we would take him out to Rabbit Key. By the time we went to scrape him up, at sunrise, he'd lost his good eye to a crow or gull, or a poked stick.
In the hard daylight you could see how E.J. Watson was pretty well shot to pieces, mostly buckshot but plenty of bullets, too. Them nice clothes was black-caked with blood-Bloody Watson!-a stiff blind carcass in the dirt, shirt ripped, hairy belly-button, black pellets deep under the skin and all them mean red holes like bites, and the flies buzzing. The mouth in them sunburnt dusty whiskers was the worst of it. His front teeth all busted out, lip tore and stretched like he was snarling, but a little twist to his expression like a smile. Seeing that, the men scared themselves all over again, telling how Mister Watson grinned as he kept coming at the crowd through the hail of fire.
Looking around, I seen no sign of Edna Watson. My sister was making sure she didn't see him. "Give us a hand," I told the men, but only Tant stepped forward, who had took no part. Tant was tearful, might of had some drink. He took the ankles. Hoisting him, he give the opinion that dead men are heavy cause their bodies yearn for rest deep in the ground. Well, Tant, I said, he's full of lead, besides.
"It ain't no joking matter, Bill," Tant says, because Tant loved him.
"No, it sure ain't," I said.
A angry moan come from the burial party when we swung that bloody carcass to the gunwale. Wouldn't help hoist him over, lay him in the cockpit, wouldn't even touch him-as if touching him might be bad luck-though I reckon it was more some kind of horror. Some then announced they would not travel with him in the boat, you'd of thought one slow black drop of Watson's blood might could start a plague. We had to hear all this superstitious horseshit while we was still struggling to get him in.
Then the boat rolled and Mister Watson got away from us, slid off the gunwale, flopped into the mud. Now that was the real horror, and it made me mad. I hollered out, To hell with it, let's get this done with! I was in outrage and did not know why, but there ain't no doubt I was too rough, and some would bring that up against me long years later as a way to show how Houses had it in for E.J. Watson. I grabbed some line, bound up his arms and run a hitch around his ankles, yanked it up hard like he was some kind of dead gator, then run a bridle off the stern cleats of his boat. Then I cranked his engine and dragged the body off that shore like some old log. That rolled him back over on his belly, and he come along backwards and face down, and the kids darting right into the shallows, kicking and flailing him. I seen Jimmy Thompson, Raleigh Wiggins, Billy Brown, one-two others. It might been Raleigh who was wearing Watson's hat.
"Get away!" My own voice sounded cracked, half kind of crazy. Where in hell were their parents, who claimed to be Watson's friends? How come they let their kids behave like bad-trained dogs? Night before, not one of them so-called friends of his had tried to warn him, wave him off, nor even advise him to put down his gun. Were they that scared to go up against their neighbors? I don't think so, not them Lost Man's fellers. They was always pretty ornery, went their own way.
My opinion, even his friends knew that his time had come, and his reckless behavior makes one wonder if Ed knew it too, though there ain't a soul I know of who agrees with me. Smallwood knew, too, for all his protest. But I will say this for Ted, he didn't watch it. The rest stood in a line there by the store and watched us kill him.
On the way to Rabbit Key, the body caught up on an orster bar, got tore up worse. Them little feet come twisting up out of the water as he rolled. The grisly head was thumping on the bottom, I could feel the thrumming when I took in on the bridle-damn! It turned my guts. Finally we got him in the channel, and he towed all right the whole rest of the way. But that was a very long slow trip, cause a boat motor in them days had more pop than power, and that dead weight down there dragged like a sea anchor. By the time we got to Rabbit Key, the clothes was tore off him and what was left of his face, too. Didn't hardly look like a man, he looked like something from the ocean deep thrown up by storm. He was scraped so raw you could not say what kind of sea monster this might of been.
Same rope was used to haul the body from the shallows to the pit, trussed like a chicken. Them men were still so fevered that they buried him face down. "Give that bloody devil a good look at Hell" is what one said. They dragged two slabs of coral rock right in on top of him, one across the upper legs and the other across the back, to make sure this thing-cause a thing is all he was, with legs and arms bound tight and no damn face on him-make sure this thing would not rise at dusk and come hunting the ones that turned against him. Before throwing the sand back in on top, one of them brave fellers who boasted how he'd emptied his gun into the body-I won't mention his name, him being kin-he rigged a noose around the neck, hitched it up tight, then run the bitter end across to that big old twisty mangrove that stood alone out on the point, the only tree left standing by the storm.
These same brave fellers was the most confused about the killing of their neighbor E.J. Watson, cause he never fit their notion of a bad man-shifty-looking, dirty, don't you know, pocked skin and scars, maybe an ear gone, or one eye. Watson didn't look that way at all. Oh yes, you'd hear 'em talk about "them crazy Watson eyes," and it was true, those soft blue eyes could set real hard, they kind of fixed you. Mostly they was a mild pale blue, as Nettie said, that went good with his ruddy skin and chestnut hair. He was strong and handsome and his clothes was clean, altogether a fine-looking man. Maybe they hated him and feared him, the way they say today, but they esteemed him, too.
His boldness, facing 'em down that way, disturbed 'em bad, but that temper got the better of him, that was the end of him. And now he was all shot to pieces, it was real pathetic. He wasn't "Mister Watson" anymore, and they could take out on this meat lump with no face the anger and despising he had made so hard for 'em while he was still alive-while he was still "made in God's image," like the rest of us.
Wouldn't be surprised it was me started it, the rough way I dragged him off the landing, but I didn't want no part of mutilation. I was relieved that he was dead, but I missed him, too. I run into many a man in life was a lot less likable than E.J. Watson, I'll tell you that much.
Over by the shore, ol' Tant was telling how Mister Watson treated him so good all them long years. When we seen them fellers lead that rope out of the grave, Tant only shrugged, he just stayed out of it, but I went back over to see what was what, and got too hot about it. I told that feller to take that noose off his damn neck right now cause he were as dead as the law allows already.
Man said, Well, ol' Bill thinks hanging is too good for this fine feller, that right, Bill? And another said, Now, Bill, don't you go getting lathered, we just rigged a rope so's them cattle kings can find him, case they send down for the body.
Around the neck? I said.
But them others backed the first one, cause they was feeling ugly, they was spoiling for a fight, same way I was. I was so disgusted I just washed my hands of it.
That's how that story started up about crackers who shot Watson to pieces, then hung his neck to a lone tree and piled on coral slabs so big that it took a couple chain-gang niggers to lift them off when his Fort Myers kin sent down for Mister Watson a few days later.
Sheriff Tippins was down from Marco with the Monroe County law when we got back to Smallwood's, long about noon. Bill Collier brought these lawmen on the Falcon.
The men told the law how nobody killed Watson, they fired all at the same time in self-defense. "Did he fire at you first?" says Tippins, and the men scratched their heads and looked around to see if anybody could remember. Isaac Yeomans didn't care much for that question. "Nosir," he growled.
"He tried," I said.
Tippins looked me over, that's his habit. Then he mimicked me, kind of ironical, you know-"He tried." And then him and his Monroe County sidekick exchanged a look that was supposed to mean something, except it didn't, cause they didn't know nothing.
Right from the start, Frank Tippins seemed as tangled up about this death as we was, couldn't set still for a minute, he was fuming. Only difference was, he had somebody to take it out on. "Your name's House," he said, like the name had me incriminated right from the start. "You was the ringleader, they tell me."
"We didn't have no ringleader. No leader, neither."
He looks me over again, so does his Monroe sidekick, who's got a cowboy hat on too.
"How come you're so fired up? You ashamed of something?"
"Nosir, I ain't. I ain't got a thing to be ashamed about."
Tippins was trying to make us mad so we'd bust out with something. Mister Watson's death was homicide, he said, and "those responsible" had to go to Fort Myers for a hearing, and any man who did not come of his own free will would go in handcuffs.
Charley Johnson asked the postmaster to come along to testify to our God-fearing characters, Ted being the closest thing we had to a upstanding citizen. Bill Collier said he'd be glad to take Mrs. Watson and her family at no extra charge.
After Watson's death, Ted Smallwood had to hold his wife in Chokoloskee. Mamie was scared and she was horrified, she didn't want to live in such a place no more, she wanted to leave the Ten Thousand Islands for good. She knew Ed Watson for what he was and never said no different, but she hated the way them men licked his boots, then turned and shot him down, is the way she said it. My sister took it hard.
Them men weren't bootlickers, not by no means. We were just ordinary peaceful fellers, never knew how to handle this wild hombre till we had him laying face down in the dirt. If ever a man brought it on himself, it was Ed Watson, but somehow we was getting blamed for doing what the ones who blamed us wanted.
I never cosied up to Ed like some, and I never had no regrets, that day or later. We done what we had to do, and I stand by it. But I will admit I am still ashamed of how the crowd kept shooting after he was dead, as if trying to wipe the memory of him off of their conscience. Some of them men shot and shot until their guns was empty, wasn't one live shell that left that place that day. There was a young boy run in afterwards, shot his.22 into the body. His older brother was standing right there with us and never stopped him.
The boys agreed we would leave Henry Short out of it, we didn't want to cause Henry no trouble, because word had come down from Deep Lake that around Frank Tippins, things went hard with niggers. Never did find out what happened to Watson's colored man who come to Pavilion Key and was handed over to the sheriff at Fort Myers. Can't recall his name if they ever give him one. They say he was sent to Key West, but there ain't many as believes he ever got to go to his own trial.
One thing I ain't never going to forget. After all that noise, there come this echoing silence, like the Lord was about to send down word from Heaven. There was only the fool chant of a scared bird. Then we heard Edna Watson's high clear voice, Oh my God, they are killing Mister Watson! By that time, of course, he was in Hell already.
Mamie stood guard where Watson's little family had sunk down before the store all in a heap. My sister wore a look of last perdition, bored right through me. I knew from my Nettie that our Island ladies had shunned Edna Watson for some days, and I seen at once that the poor woman was plain terrified that this night crowd of armed men that had tasted blood might put to death the victim's wife and little children. I hate to say it, but knowing how feverish some of 'em got, she had good reason.
The ones who was most dangerous in that crowd was the same ones as had looked the other way for years and years, same ones who said Ed Watson never killed a soul down there cept maybe a nigger or two that had it coming. These very same fellers was the ones that eased their nerves by pumping every last bullet that they had into his carcass, the very same ones was so angry he had scared 'em that they had to scare Mrs. Watson just as bad, scare her so bad that she grabbed her kids and crawled under the store on hands and knees before Mamie could stop her. They was the ones liked to dirty joke about how lucky Old Man Watson was to mount this firm young filly, and jeered and hooted at the fine sight of her hips in her nice petticoats when her store-bought dress got hung up on a slat as she crawled down in the filth to get away. If E.J. Watson could of seen how that crowd terrified his poor young wife and children, he'd of stood right up in his life's blood, come straight back from Hell to kill us all.
I felt terrible, and sick. I went to my knees and I called in there to Mrs. Watson, It's all right, ma'am, ain't nothing to be scared of! Poor woman must have thought I was a crazy man, to say something like that with my gun still warm and her husband, too, still warm and bleeding, and boys and dogs running around, gone wild.
Well, I weren't one bit better than the others. No, that young woman had got deep under my skin, though she never knew it, and she stirred my desire then and there, may God forgive me. And here I was just newly wed to Nettie Howell! I was so ashamed that I hollered at the others, shoved them away, like we'd caught some lady in the bushes by mistake.
The swamp angels was something terrible that evening, but that poor little family crouched back in the dark with them putrefied chickens for damned near an hour and never made so much as a whimper, that's how frighted they was. They lay there just as still as newborn rabbits. Mamie done her best to soothe 'em, murmuring down through the storm-raised boards in the house floor, same sweet way as a young girl she talked a scairdy cat out of a tree. When finally she got the poor things calmed, and coaxed 'em out of there, them Watsons stunk so bad of rotten chickens that the people where they was staying wouldn't take 'em back. Said they wasn't fit to set foot in a decent house with that stench of Hell on 'em, and here it was dark, and three scared hungry little kids whimpering for their daddy and no place to turn to, and their mama's poor mind starting to unravel, what with all her terror.
The stink of that pathetical little family was only the excuse for what them people was aiming to do anyway. They didn't want to be anywheres near no Watsons, not with Leslie Cox still on the loose. Man sent his wife out to tell Edna Watson they couldn't put up with 'em no more. Never even let 'em in, they pushed their stuff at 'em through the cracked door.
The ones that drove that desperate family from their house, the husband was supposed to been a friend to Watson, and the wives was close-well, this man and his brother, who was visiting from Marco, they was in that crowd. He was one of 'em claimed later on he never pulled the trigger, which means he was along with us for the wrong reason. Don't matter if he pulled the trigger or he didn't.
I don't need to name no names. The men who scared Watson's little family and those folks who drove 'em out, they know who they are right to this day.
So Mamie took Edna and her children into that tore-up house of hers, and that family never did forget her kindness. Mamie had redneck ideas when it come to certain people, but she had grit and a big heart, no doubt about it. Lots of Chokoloskee folks are the same way-you hate some of that stubborn ignorance, that prejudice against everyone except their own, but you got to admire 'em all the same. They are good, tough, honest, and God-fearing people, got a lot of fiber to 'em. They have 'em a hard life, and they don't complain.
The lawmen went down to Watson's on the Falcon, picked up Mister Watson's horse and four thousand gallons of his syrup to be taken up and sold off at Fort Myers. Four thousand gallons! By Jesus, if I had sweated out the hot hard hours that man must of worked that hot hard ground, raking the shell off forty acres every year to grow good cane, I'd be heartbroke to leave it all behind. All the point of his whole life was in that cane patch he had made with his bare hands in the meanest kind of snake-crawling scrub jungle.
Oh, that was a fine plantation, I can see it yet, the boathouse, sheds, that dock, that strong white house! Chatham Bend was what he had to show at the end of his hard road. He was not a youthful man no more, he was sick of running, and maybe that is when his life caught up with him.
After a while, some of them folks that had took a liking to Ed Watson and didn't feel right about the way he died, they got to saying all the trouble come from rumor and misunderstanding, that the killings down there never started until Cox come, so it must been Cox who give E.J. Watson his bad name. For some years afterward, people was nervous that Cox was still around down in the rivers, cause that was a hombre that would shoot a man just to see him wiggle.
Unless them Injuns got to him first, Mister Watson rescued Cox or killed him. Otherwise he'd be there still, because Chatham Bend is on an island in them rivers and Cox couldn't swim too good, the nigger said, and anyway he was scared of them big gators that follow the overflow down from the Glades after a hurricane, tracking fish and turtle all along the edge of brackish water. There was no one to come by and take Cox off, lest it was Watson, cause that terrible storm just cleaned the Islands out.
Some years after, one of the Daniels boys claimed he seen Cox in Key West. He said Cox spotted him, ducked away quick. We figured Cox might of shipped out on a freighter. That was the first word of him in a long time, and the last one, too.
I never met one person yet who believed Watson killed Cox. To believe that you would have to believe that hombre set there on the Bend day after day, thinking his thoughts, until Mister Watson come back home and blowed his head off. But if you don't believe it, then you have to explain how in hell Cox got away, and where he went to, and where he is living at today.
Anyway, they dug up E.J. Watson, reburied him beside Mrs. Jane Watson in the old Fort Myers cemetery. I keep meaning to get up there, have a look, but I never do. I always heard them older children built a statue to Ed Watson by the cemetery gate, but maybe they didn't. Anyway, he's still up there, I imagine, resting in peace as good as any of 'em.
THE END OF A MOST DEPLORABLE TRAGEDY HAS COME DOWN NEAR CHOKOLOSKEE
FORT MYERS, OCTOBER 30, 1910. On October 23, a week ago, the lawmen investigating the dreadful happenings at Chatham River sailed for Chokoloskee, where they arrived on October 25. By happenstance, a group of citizens of that island was just returning from Rabbit Key, where they said they had buried Mr. E.J. Watson, owner of the plantation where the murders occurred.
Sheriff Tippins was informed that after their meeting on October 19 at Marco, Mr. Watson had stopped over at Chokoloskee to advise Mrs. Watson that he was on his way to Chatham Bend. The people there were in a very high state of agitation, especially about the killing of the woman, Miss Hannah Smith, of Georgia, with whom many in the community had been friendly. Due to his past reputation, it was generally suspected that Mr. Watson must be implicated, but nobody attempted to detain him. However, the men said, Mr. Watson was to produce Leslie Cox dead or alive or accept the consequences, and he thereupon stated that he intended to return with Cox's head.
When Mr. Watson reappeared in Chokoloskee on the evening of October 24, he produced a hat pierced by a bullet hole, said to have been worn by Cox. He claimed he had killed Cox-here was the proof. Declaring that this hat was insufficient, a posse of citizens demanded that he return with them to Chatham Bend and produce the body. He refused, stating that Cox's body had fallen into the river, and that only the hat had surfaced. When this story was challenged, Mr. Watson appeared to become incensed that his neighbors were questioning his word, and one exchange led to another. The witnesses furthermore stated that when ordered to put down his gun, Mr. Watson attempted to fire into the crowd, and the posse killed him.
Thus ends one of the darkest tragedies ever recorded in the history of this State. Leslie Cox-if indeed he is alive, as most believe-is still at large down in the Islands. Even if the Negro's account of the murders can be accepted, the red truth of what happened that day, and why it happened, may never be known.