Walking down to the river, Lucius passed the old red Langford house between Bay and First streets where he had lived with his mother in his early school days. Mama! The thought of her made him sad: he had missed her more and more over the years. And how kind she had been to her difficult stepson-had Rob appreciated this? And how brave she’d been to reprove Papa for the cold way he treated him.
In the riverside park, a gaggle of pubescent girls in new white sneakers, shrilling and giggling, squirting life, were observed without savor by decrepit men fetched up in the corners of the benches like dry piles of wind-whirled leaves. In the river light, the noisy nymph troupe juxtaposed with those silent figures was unreal. One of these men could be Leslie Cox, drink-ravaged, syphilitic.
Queerly, one man removed his toothpick and pointed it straight at him. In the sun’s reflection off the river, the wet pick glinted like a needle. “That you, Lucius? Where you been hidin, boy?” The man was not old, simply worn out. He shifted a little to make room on his bench.
Tant Jenkins, whose mustache had gone to seed, seemed unaware that they had not crossed paths for years. They talked at angles for a while, finding their way. When Lucius mentioned he’d just seen Tant’s cousin Crockett, Jenkins said unhappily, “One them Cajun Danielses. We ain’t hardly related.” He looked away over the water, where gulls planed down the wind between the river bridges. “Which is a lie. It’s just I ain’t so proud about it.” Tant tried to laugh. “One them Cajuns scratched his head, said, ‘I’ll be doggoned if my own dad ain’t my son-in-law!’ ”
Lucius mustered a chuckle at this old joke to shield Tant’s dignity. “Is he kin to me, too? He used to think so.”
“Well, I have heard that, which don’t mean it’s true. Speck weren’t born a Watson, he were born a liar. Never had no first-hand experience of the God’s truth-just flat don’t care about it. Course Josie and Netta lived a while at Chatham Bend, had daughters there…” Tant spoke cautiously, not certain how much Lucius might care to acknowledge.
“My half sisters, you mean.”
“I reckon that’s right,” Tant said, relieved. “But back in the nineties, when your dad first showed up, he met a young Daniels girl one night that ran so wild they called her ‘Jenny Everybody.’ Just the one time, far as I know, but she claimed her kid was his, never mind that Crockett was kind of dark, looked like a wild Injun. Course nobody never knew for sure just who the father was, not even Jenny.
“Netta’s Minnie, now, she has her daddy’s color, blue eyes, that dark rust hair. Lives in Key West, never signed up as a Watson, but Netta called her ‘E. Jack Watson’s love child.’ Netta liked to recall how E. Jack Watson ‘ravished’ her, and when Josie was drinkin, she’d get that same idea: ‘That darned Jack took me by storm!’ Them ladies weren’t one bit ashamed about Jack Watson, they were proud about him.”
Tant reminded Lucius of Pearl Watson’s visits in his Lost Man’s days, how she’d hitch rides on the runboat that picked up the Hardens’ fish just to go warn him about the Chokoloskee men, beg him to leave. “Young Pearl was out to mother you,” Tant said, “and here she was half your age.”
Sometimes she called herself Pearl Jenkins, sometimes Pearl Watson. She was a pretty girl and kind, but her life had always been a sad one, looking in the window. “I guess a real home was what that poor girl wanted most,” said Lucius.
“Well, she wound up in one. Her mind kind of let go on her so they put her in some kind of a home over in Georgia.”
“Oh Lord! I never knew what became of her!”
“Pearl was always so proud how you come and hugged her like a sister at your daddy’s burial. Which was more than them others done, she said.”
Subdued, the old friends stared away across the broad brown reach of the Calusa Hatchee. Westward, toward Pine Island Sound, the lifting gulls caught glints of sun where the current mixed with wind in a riptide. “Mister Ed and me, we had some fun,” Tant mused. “Lots of comical times. I ain’t never goin to forget my days at Chatham. Never seen so much food in all my life, that day to this.”
“Papa had known a lot of hunger so he enjoyed providing food.” Happy to share fond memories of his father, Lucius smiled.
“I reckon he was all right before that Tucker business,” Jenkins blurted. “That’s when I quit. You ain’t asked my opinion and likely you don’t want it but I better say it anyways just so we’re straight about it.” Tant cleared his throat again, frowning and worrying, torn between tact and integrity. “Some way your dad was crazy, Lucius, only he was the dangerous kind that never showed it. Act like everybody else, joke and talk and go about his business, and all the while there’s a screw loose in his brain.”
“No,” Lucius said patiently. “No, I don’t think he was crazy.” He shook his head. But Tant persisted, eyes wide behind round glasses; he wore the dogged look Lucius remembered. “You realize how near your daddy come to bein killed before they killed him? It’s terrible to be so deathly scared day after day, folks just can’t handle it. And finally they had enough.” Tant glanced at Lucius as they walked along, distressed by his friend’s silence. “Naturally his own kids never knew that fear nor his friends neither. Captain Jim Daniels flat refused to believe all them bad stories. ‘That ain’t the Ed Watson I know’-that was all he’d say.”
They paused at the foot of the Edison Bridge to gaze at the brick mansion on the corner opposite. Walter Langford had built that house in 1919 and died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1921, leaving Carrie with more debts than assets.
“Them years you lived down in the Islands, your sister had a dog’s share of misfortune, but she had some spirit and she had some style. Liked to drink some, have a good time like her daddy. Never talked about the scandal”-Tant shot a glance at Lucius-“but would not act ashamed about him, neither. Nobody spoke bad about Ed Watson around Carrie Langford.
“In Prohibition, she run the Gulf Shore Inn, down Fort Myers Beach. Had a speakeasy in back but Tippins never bothered her. Course Carrie was well up in her thirties, she’d put on a little heft, but a fine-lookin widder woman all the same. And pretty quick, she got hooked up with a fish guide at the Beach, Cap’n Luke Gates on the Black Flash.
“One night I was in there when Gates’s wife come in-thin scratchy little blonde, she was just a-stormin! Run right over and tore into her husband where he was settin at the poker table. Picked up his glass and let his liquor fly into his face. Cap’n Luke never lifted his eyes up off the cards. Never blinked, never reached to wipe his face. Kept right on studyin them cards with the whiskey runnin off his cheeks. ‘See you, raise you five,’ he told them men.
“Makin no headway at the poker table, the wife let loose an ugly speech about Carrie Langford’s morals or the lack of ’em and how Carrie come by her bad character real natural, her daddy bein a cold-blooded killer. Well, darned if this banker’s widow don’t ring open the cash register, break out a revolver, and fire off a round into the ceilin. Ever hear gunfire in a small room? And in that silence Carrie said, real calm and ladylike, ‘Let me tell you something, honey. That kind of mean and lowdown talk is not permitted in my place just because some little fool can’t hang on to her man.’ And seein a weapon in the hands of Watson’s daughter, that little blonde cooled off in a hurry. She run outside where it was dark and yelled some dirty stuff in through the window but nobody paid her no attention after that.”