In early 1903 I replaced Green Waller as foreman with a man named Dyer whose wife Sybil had befriended me back in ’93 when I first passed through Fort Myers after my long horseback journey across the country.
Sybil worked for the local haberdasher and had made me my new clothes, coming to my room for all the fittings. Not long after that, she married Dyer, and a little boy they called Watson or Watt had come into the world while I was clearing my plantation at Chatham Bend. We renewed acquaintance briefly on my way north in 1903, and when she mentioned that her husband was out of work and was also a good carpenter, I hired him.
Fred Dyer was handy and did most of his work but found too many excuses to go off on the Gladiator. He drank a lot, he was gone a lot, and there were women. I learned this from my mean-mouthed skipper Erskine Thompson who did not wish anyone to get away with anything. Sometimes Fred failed to show up on the dock for the trip home, and his family might not know his whereabouts for the next fortnight. Even after my return, he went off with the schooner every chance he got, claiming we needed various stores and supplies, and I let him go because it suited me to have him elsewhere. Mis Sybil seemed to welcome the change as well.
Often we two sat on the screened porch on those long river evenings. Lucius was off at Everglade, in school, I missed Mandy and was lonely, so pretty Sybil was indeed a comfort. At Christmas, I brought her children presents from Key West. I brought Sybil some small things, too, but she said that as a married woman, she could not accept them. Finally I persuaded her that my gifts were not presents but practical things for household use. With the sewing machine, for example, she would soon be making all our clothes and sewing mosquito bars for every bed.
When Lucius returned to Chatham for his Christmas holiday, I embarrassed him. One evening, exasperated by the general torpor of the table conversation, I made a drunken declaration that Mis Sybil was the only soul worth talking to on the whole place. I think I needed her too much. I realize it probably wasn’t so, but at the time it seemed to me I was in love with Mrs. Dyer.
Anxious to mend my reputation, I did not want scandal any more than she did. Yet I couldn’t trust myself when drinking, which meant she couldn’t trust me either, so I bought her a small silver revolver for her own protection. After teaching her how to target-shoot (standing too close behind, I fear, while supporting her trembling arm at the elbow as she aimed), I urged her to bar her door to Edgar Watson even if he was out there hollering that her cabin was on fire. She laughed in protest at any such idea but I was serious, commanding her to shoot right through the door if I made any attempt to break it down.
Mis Sybil was horrified, thought I’d gone mad. She cried out, “Oh pshaw, Mr. Watson, I couldn’t even shoot a snake!” And I said, “Well, ma’am, you had better learn, and the sooner the better.”
Back in that summer of 1905, our friend Guy Bradley was murdered at Flamingo. By the time I heard the details from Gene Roberts, the story that
E. J. Watson was the killer had already spread, even though Guy had been my friend, and even though I was in Tampa on the day he died. As soon as folks heard I had been absent from the Bend, they concluded I was in Flamingo, where I murdered Bradley because he’d threatened to arrest me for plume hunting next time he saw me. This was nonsense, too. With so few birds left to hunt, I had not shot an egret in years.
Gene Roberts was the man who found Guy’s body in his boat, washed up on shore. Before Gene left for Chokoloskee the next morning, I sat him down with Lucius, made him tell my son the whole true story so that Lucius would know his Papa was innocent. Lucius said that he knew that already, and I said, “Well, son, I sure appreciate your attitude, but you’d better listen to Mr. Gene here all the same.” Here’s how Gene tells that story:
“Guy Bradley had a quarter mile of shore west of Flamingo, and us Robertses was the next section west, toward Sawfish Hole. We still had fair numbers of plume birds in our swamps but every place else, them birds was slaughtered out and the competition for ’em had grew deadly. The reddish and blues and blue-and-whites, they wasn’t worth much, but the white plumes brought thirty-two dollars an ounce, more than pure gold, and the rosy spoonbills brung good money, too.
“Before the rest of us, Guy seen there weren’t no future for the plume birds, said them white aigrets was bound to disappear same as them flamingos that give our Filly-mingo settlement that name.
“Them Audi-bones up in New York, they give Guy the idea to be the warden, said they would pay his salary. Guy took the job kind of reluctant. Told us more’n once, ‘Some riled-up sonofabitch is goin to take and shoot me.’ But Guy decided he would do it anyway, he was that kind. And he figured if he was supposed to be the warden, he would give it hell. Never had no uniform or nothin, just stuck a badge on his ol’ mattresstickin shirt and hitched his galluses and went right to it, makin life miserable for all his neighbors. Bein Guy, he never cared if you was friend or stranger; if he’d of caught his brother Lew, he’d of pinched him, too.
“Course these arrests never come to nothin, cause he couldn’t prove nothin, not in Monroe County. Judge at Key West would be plain crazy to jail a man for doin what our people always done-what it was our God-given right to do, the way we look at it. Who was here first, us huntin families or them Audi-bones from New York City? Judge figured the plumers was punished enough, what with all that huntin time was lost sailin seventy miles down to Key West and back, missin day after day in the best part of the season, knowin that soon as the warden was gone, their neighbors had went right back to the rookeries and finished off what few white birds was left.
“Spring of nineteen and ought-four, aigrets was farther in between than ever and prospects was lookin very very poor. Before the next breedin season come around, Cap’n Walt Smith, a sponge fisherman out of Key West who kept a huntin camp on the mainland at Flamingo, done his best to take away Guy’s job. Smith spread the word that if the hunters would vote for him instead of Bradley, they could go on huntin to their hearts’ content.
“Before Guy got to be the warden, him and Smith was huntin partners. All the same, Guy told him to stay out of them rookeries or he’d take ’em to court. And Walt Smith said, ‘Now lookit here goddammit, Guy, I been shootin out here years and years and you right next to me so don’t you go to messin with me now!’ But Guy just went ahead, done what he said he’d do, and before the year was out, he arrested Smith’s boy twice. Tom was sixteen. Smith had a fit. He said, ‘By God, you interfere with my boy again and I will kill you.’
“Now our Flamingo folks, they always liked Guy Bradley, leastways before he went over to wardenin. Even them few that didn’t care for him no more and called him too upstandin, they liked him a whole lot better than they liked Smith, cause Smith was a mean skunk and his sons took after him. His boys was about the only ones as voted for him.
“When Smith lost out on takin Bradley’s job, he come to see this as insult and injury. Hollered to anybody who would listen that he had swallered all he meant to take: said no man could shit upon Smith family honor and live to tell the tale. That was the first us Filly-mingo folks had ever heard about Smith family honor. As my dad said, a feller’d have to hunt long and hard to come up with enough of that to shit upon.”
We had a good laugh over Smith family honor, Lucius, too. “No, them Smiths were not so famous for their honor,” Gene said, “they were famous for revenge. Eighth day of July, not long after that election, that bunch come in at sunrise, shot up Bird Key not two miles out in Florida Bay from Bradley’s house. In fact, Guy was awoke up by all the shootin, and when he looked out and seen the old blue Cleveland over there, he sighed and told his young wife Fronie, ‘Them Smiths is out there killin so I guess I got to go over there and put a stop to it.’ But he must of knew that nobody would shoot so close in to Flamingo that wasn’t lookin for a showdown with the warden.
“It was kind of funny how much pains Guy took to say good-bye-that’s what Fronie told us the next day. Picked up his two little fellers and hugged ’em hard though he weren’t goin but only that short distance and be back for supper. Later she figured her husband had a feelin what was comin down on him but was too stubborn to mention it let alone head the other way.”
(It puzzled me that Fronie Bradley never tried to stop him, I told Lucius later, because she could back up her opinions with her fists. She’d put on the gloves with anybody, man nor woman-that young Mrs. Bradley loved to box! One feller I knew held the opinion that this darn female should be taken down a peg before all our women got that boxing habit, so he took her on. I was there. I saw this. She knocked him down as fast as he got up. Finally he dusted himself off, said, Thanks for the boxin lesson, ma’am, but I reckon I have had about enough. Fronie yelled, Hold on there, mister, I ain’t done boxin! Darned if she didn’t run over there, knock him flat again!)
“That morning Lew Bradley was around someplace,” Gene said, “but Guy never asked his brother to go with him. Just set sail in his little sloop across the Bay. No question he knowed who that blue schooner belonged to but he never liked askin nobody for help-sin of pride, I reckon.
“Piecin together what them crewmen said in court, Tom Smith and his brother Dan was still out huntin, over on the key. When Bradley’s skiff come up alongside, Old Man Walt fired a shot into the air and his boys come in. Never bothered to hide their birds, brought ’em right in under the warden’s nose, made sure he seen ’em. Guy told ’em to stop but they went aboard and down into the cabin, like they was sayin, Well now, ye Audi-bone sonofabitch, what you aim to do about it?
“Guy told Walt Smith that his older boy was under arrest and Smith said, ‘You want Tom, you have to come and get him.’ Walt Smith had his rifle on his arm, never tried to hide it. Claimed in court he reminded Bradley of his warnin, claimed he expected Bradley to back down, but I believe he knew the man too well for that.
“That crewman and the other feller stayed below but both of ’em heard Bradley’s answer. He said, ‘Put down that rifle, then, and I will come aboard.’ Heard them words and then right away two shots.
“That evenin, we seen Walt Smith’s boat come into Flamingo. He picked up his family and took off again. When Guy never showed up, Fronie got worried, come to see me. She said, ‘Gene, my man never come home so I’d appreciate you have a look around first thing in the mornin.’
“I started across at daybreak, feelin bad. Not a sign of nothin at Bird Key, but scannin up and down the coast, I seen Guy’s little sailing sloop drifted up on shore. I went on over there and found Guy slumped forward, dead, shot through the neck.”
“Walt Smith went straight back to Key West,” I told Lucius, “and spread the word that the bird warden was dead. Someone said, ‘Ed Watson kill him?’ And Smith said, ‘That could be.’ When it turned out I was away up north, he changed his story, admitted he might of done the job himself in self-defense. Said Bradley fired first-‘malice aforemost,’ he called it-and showed two slugs he had dug out of his mast to prove it. Guy not being likely to miss a man at point-blank range, it seemed pretty clear that Smith shot those holes himself, but his crewmen would not testify against him.”
“Didn’t want no trouble,” Gene agreed. “I went to Key West and told the court that all six cartridges was still in Guy’s revolver when I found him. Smith’s bullet had pierced into his neck and down his spine because it was fired from above. I said Bradley never left his boat and probably took a very long time dyin. And my daddy, Steve L. Roberts, who built Guy’s coffin and helped bury him, told that jury about the death threat Smith made two months earlier, said that was a message Smith meant Guy to receive and Guy received it. He knew about that threat when he sailed out there.
“Well, them young Smiths stepped up and swore on their Smith family honor that Guy Bradley weren’t nothin but a deep-dyed plumer hidin behind all that Audubonin, that he was still partners with his brother Lew and them dang Roberts boys, who was not only Mainlanders but the most bloodthirstiest aigret butchers in all south Florida. Swore that Bradley harassed God-fearin Key Westers cause they give his Mainland partners too much competition. Naturally the grand jury was dead set against putting a Key West man on trial for a thing like that so they opened up the jailhouse door and sent him home.”
Gene Roberts told Lucius that thanks to Walter Smith, a lot of people still believed Guy’s killer was Ed Watson. “So when people talk about your daddy, son,” Gene said, raising his glass to me, “you has got to remember there’s been plenty killins blamed on E. J. Watson that he never done. Compared to some of the low skunks I seen around the Glades, your dad here is a fine upstandin feller. I myself have heard Nap Broward say that his friend E. J. Watson was that old leather breed of frontier American that made this country great.”
I believe Lucius felt much better, hearing these things.
Few years later, another warden named MacLeod was waylaid at Charlotte Harbor. Found his sunk skiff, found his hat, which had two ax marks through it. They never came up with the body and nobody was ever brought to court. Of course I was blamed for that one, too, but Lucius knew I was in Fort White throughout that period. He loves his Papa and I love him back as well as I know how, which is probably not as well as other dad-dies. On the other hand, I am the best he’s got.