Mister Watson told me he had family someplace, but he never said too much about it, not in front of Henrietta Daniels. Henrietta-he called my mother Netta-come to keep house for Mister Watson and brought Tant with her. Tant Jenkins was her young half brother, not much older than me.
That day Mister Watson come back from Everglade so darn excited, Tant was plume hunting back in the rivers. He snuck off every time Mister Watson went away, left the work to me. Henrietta is setting there on the front stoop with Minnie hitched up to her bosom, and Mister Watson ain't hardly tied up before he hollers all the way from the boat landing, "Netta honey, you better start thinking about packing up, I have my people coming!" He shows me a letter from a Mrs. Jane D. Watson of north Florida, and in it was a brown picture of three kids in Sunday best. Young Eddie and little Lucius wore white high collars and black knicker suits, and Miss Carrie in her prim white frock with a big ribbon bow and buckle shoes was the prettiest little thing I ever saw. On the back was written, "Rob was shy, he would not sit for his picture!"
"Rob's not shy," Mister Watson said, "Rob is so sore at his daddy that his tail's sizzling like a rattler!" I don't know why that struck him funny but it did, and he laughed some more when he seen that I weren't laughing. "Well," he sighed, "I don't believe that Mrs. Watson would have got in touch with us if her husband was such a terrible bad feller, what do you think, Henry?" And he chuckled some more, that's how tickled he was by the way his life was working out. Before leaving Everglade, he said, he telegraphed money for their tickets, and expected to meet 'em at Punta Gorda toward the end of the month.
Mister Watson was so overjoyed he clean forgot about our feelings. So there I am down at the landing helping with the boat, and I don't know where to look, that's how ashamed I am, for me and my mother both. I got on good with Mister Watson, and after two years, his place was my home. This was the first real family I ever knew, cause Mister Watson was kind of a dad to me, and let me think so, that's how good he treated me. Now I'd have to head out, too, with no idea where to go and start all over.
When my mother first come to Chatham Bend, I been out on my own for a few years, and she seemed more like some noisy older sister. I never known my father, never laid eyes on him, he was a English sailor at Key West that came and went. I got borned there back in 1879. Had a younger brother, Joe, called him Thompson, too, but Henrietta left Joe behind with our uncle John Henry Daniels at Fakahatchee, hardly seen him one year to the next.
Well, Henrietta was good-hearted, never mind her loose bosom and loud ways, and with her and Tant there, we made a family at the table, I got to feeling I belonged someplace. So I hated the reckless way that Mister Watson was fixing to toss her out like nigger help, and his own infant, Minnie, along with her. I was feeling all thick and funny in my heart and chest, ready to fight somebody. When he swung that crate of stores to me off of the boat deck, I banged it on the dock so hard that a slat busted.
That bang was somewhat louder than I wanted, and the sharp noise caught him by surprise, cause he crouched and dropped the next crate to the deck, that's how fast his hand shot for his pocket. Then he straightened slow, picked up the crate, carried it across himself and set it carefully on that dock longside the other.
"You look like you swallowed a frog, boy. Spit it out."
He was hot, but I was hotter, and I set my hat forward on my head and spit, not too close and not too far from them Western boots he always wore when he went up to town. I was scared to talk for fear my voice was pinched or all gummed up, so I just give him a sideways look like a mean dog and put my hands on the next crate, to let him know I'm here to do my work, never mind no questions.
But he keeps on gazing, stone eyes, no expression. Put me in mind of a big ol' bear I seen with Tant one early autumn evening up back of Deer Island, raring up out of the salt prairie to stare. It's like Tant says, a bear's face is stiff, never moves no matter what he's thinking. He don't look mean or riled, not till his ears go back, he just looks bear down to the bone, that's how intent he is on his bear business. It's up to you how much you want some trouble, he will wait you out while you make up your mind. Mister Watson had that bear-faced way of letting you know he had said his piece and weren't going to repeat it and weren't going to take no silence for no answer. I couldn't look him in the eye.
"Well, heck, ain't you the daddy of that baby girl? Ain't we your people, too?" Sure enough, my voice come out all garbled and too high, and I spat hard again to cover that up, and show who didn't give a damn one way or the other. Mister Watson looks down beside his boot, nodding his head, like inspecting another feller's spit was common decency, and then he's looking me over again. All this time he's never blinked, not even once.
"You want me to tote this crate or what?" I says, trying some sass on him.
He's still waiting. He aims to ream this thing right out of me. That makes me madder still, but damn if I don't come blurting out again with something stupid. "You want to run me off this place along with her, ain't that right? Ain't it?"
He turns his gaze away like he can't stand the sight, same way that bear done, giving a woof and dropping back down to all fours. He steps back over to the deck and swings me another crate, too hard. "No," he says. "Rob will be with 'em, and I mean to train him in your job. With all these orders for our syrup, we're going to need a full-time schooner crew, so you and Tant can run this boat if we ever get Tant in out of the Glades."
Well dammit if tears don't jump into my eyes, and he seen that before I turned away. Know what he done? Mister Watson stepped over to the dock and took me by the shoulders, turned me around, looked me straight into the eye. He seen right through me. "Henry," he says, "you are not my son but you are my partner and you are my friend. And the Good Lord knows poor old Ed Watson needs every last friend he can find."
Then he roughed my hair and went off whistling "Bonnie Blue Flag," to make his peace with Henrietta Daniels. I picked up a crate but set it down again. Looking over my new ship give me something to do while I pulled my nerve together, in case they was laughing at me from the house. At sixteen years of age, at least in them days, a man was a man and could not be seen to cry.
For a long time I stood there, thumbs looped into my belt, shaking my head over the boat like I was planning out the captain's work. Knowing Tant, I knew who would be captain-Tant was twenty and already a fine hunter, but he didn't care none for responsibility.
That afternoon, to work off his high spirits, or maybe just to get away from Henrietta, Mister Watson come out with a hoe into the corn patch. Me and the niggers hoeing weeds was stunned by the weight of that white sky that sank so low over the mangrove in the summer, but Mister Watson was singing his old songs. Hoo-rah! Hoo-rah! For Southern rights, Hoo-rah! He was the only man I ever saw who could outwork everybody and sing at the same time: Hoo-rah for the bonnie blue flag that flies the single star! He straightened long enough to do the bugle part: Boopet-te-boopet-te-too, Te-boopet-te-boopet-te-boopet-te-poo, marching around us, hoe over his shoulder.
That man never took his shirt off, not even when it stuck to them big shoulders. One time he told me, "A gentleman don't strip his shirt when he works with niggers. It's all right for them but not for us."
There was another reason, too. He usually wore a striped shirt with no collar that Henrietta sewed him from rough heavy mattress ticking, but it weren't thick enough to hide the shoulder holster that would show up underneath when he got sweated. Even out there in the cane, he had that gun where he could lay his hand on it. The niggers seen it, too, and he didn't mind that, he just grunted when they went to hoeing harder.
Another time he said, "I learned to keep my shirt on, Henry. It's good manners. You never know when you might have a visitor."
That day Tant spoke up kind of smart to Mister Watson, "A visitor from the north?" Mister Watson turned and looked at Tant, and I did too, first time I ever took a look at Tant, I was so used to him. Tant were skinny as a fish pole, black curly hair and a big smile stuck to the top. He done his best to hold that smile but couldn't do it. Then Mister Watson said, "Boy, don't outsmart yourself." That hard way with Tant were most uncommon and it kept the smile off of Tant's face almost till supper.
Tant weren't out there that bad day when Mister Watson, chopping a tough root, swung back hard and caught me good long-side the head. Next thing, I was laying on the ground half-blind with blood, and them scared niggers backing off like I'd been murdered. Mister Watson went right ahead, finished off that root with one fierce chop-"That got her!" he says-and then he stepped over and set me on my feet. There was blood all over, and my head was burning. "Got to give a man more room, Henry," he told me. Never said he was sorry, just told me to run up to the house, get Henrietta to stick on a plaster, he'd be along there in a little while.
Henrietta was plenty upset already, she was raging and caterwauling in the kitchen. "I bore his child!" she howled, jouncing poor Minnie and kicking hens and banging a tin pot of sweet potatoes. The way I look at it today, my mother was in love with Mister Watson, but back then I thought they must be sick and crazy to get into the same bed with the other.
When my mother seen my bloody face, she gasped straight off, "He done that a-purpose!" That fiery devil was out to murder her poor boy, that's what she said once the news come out that Mister Watson had killed in other parts. She was taking me right back to Caxambas, that was that. "In the meanwhile," she yelled as he come up on the back porch, "don't you never turn your back again on that bloody scoundrel!" I have heard it said that Netta Daniels was short on sense as well as morals, but no one ever said she lacked for spirit.
Mister Watson paid no mind, just washed his head at our hand pump from the cistern. That was the only pump down in the Islands at that time, we was pretty proud about it. When he straightened up to mop his face, he was kind of studying Henrietta. Them blue eyes under them thick ginger brows was sparking like flints over that towel, and they seen my eye go right to where his sweat marked out his gun. He held the towel there a half minute, until Henrietta stopped her sputtering and whimpered. Then he snapped it down, looking real gleeful cause he'd scared her. He got out his jug of our cane liquor and sat down to it at a table in the other room, his back into the corner, way he always done.
For once, Henrietta didn't jump on him for tilting chairs back, weakening the legs, which was her way of trying to show what good care she was taking of his home. Home was where the heart was at, that's what was wrote on the needlework sign she hung on our parlor wall to make things cozy, and prove what a good wife she would make a man with sense enough to appreciate her fine points. But this day, knowing what he had overheard, she was scared to speak.
He knew that, too. He took him a long pull and sighed, like that poor old manatee out in the river the time we shot her young 'un for fresh sea pork. Finally he whispered, "Better watch out for that loose mouth, Netta. Even a murdering scoundrel like me can get hurt feelings." And he asked if she was packed, ready to go.
She pulled me out onto the porch. "I ain't leaving you here, Henry! You can't never tell what that man will do next!" She was whispering, too, but loud so he could hear, and he made a funny bear growl for his answer. "You're coming home with me, young man, and that is that!" said Henrietta.
"Home," I said, rolling my eyes. "Where's home at? Where the heart is?"
"That nice needlework come down in our family," Henrietta said, kind of reproachful.
"What family?" I said, feeling meaner'n piss.
"Our family! Your own grandma married Mr. Ludis Jenkins that was first settler on Chokoloskee twenty years ago, Jenkinses and Weekses and Santinis!"
Nobody never counted Old Man Ludis, cause he come to nothing, he got enough of it and shot himself. I didn't remind her about that. I said, "Tant's daddy weren't no kind of kin at all."
Tears come to my young mother's eyes, made me feel wishful. But this was the first time Henrietta ever said she aimed to take me with her, and it kind of confused me. She was a young girl when she had me, and I left by the back door. She never brought me here, it was me brought her. I got her work with Mister Watson, and Tant, too. She didn't have no home no more'n I did.
I whispered I weren't going to go. And she said, Don't you backtalk me, you are my child! And I said, Since when? That hurt her feelings, too.
Anyway, said I-I am still whispering-I am the new captain of that schooner, I ain't no kid no more! Since when? she said, rubbing the blood off my head much too rough. Look out! I yell, I ain't no sweet potato! Since when? Netta said again, and we broke out giggling like little kids, I don't know why. She hugged me then and started in to cry, cause she didn't have no idea at all where her and Little Min was going to go.
I go all soft and lonesome then, and hug her back. I missed someone bad but didn't rightly know who it could be. I ain't so sure I found out to this day, not even when the deacons told me it was Jesus.
"Called her Minnie after his rotten old sister," Henrietta blubbered, "and I hate that name, and Min will hate it, too!"
That talk about his sister made me nervous. Mister Watson is doing some drinking now and his silence is coming through the wall. I hush her quick. From the gumbo-limbo by the cistern comes the voice of a small greeny-yellow bird that sings even in summer, wip-dee-chee! and pretty soon the same again, over and over.
Mister Watson calls in a hard voice, Get in here, Captain, there is business to discuss!
Henrietta tugs my sleeve, her big eyes round. How had that man heard my whispering, heard all my bragging? But as Tant used to say, Mister E.J. Watson could hear a frog fart in a hurricane. That don't come so much from hunting, Tant said, as from being hunted.