Mr. C. G. McKinney made the bad mistake of losing track of his post office cash: when the federal inspectors showed up, he didn’t have it. I’m not saying it was stolen, only loaned out or mislaid, but by law he had to have it handy. Mr. Smallwood lent him the money to keep him out of jail and got appointed postmaster instead. By now my Ted was the biggest farmer and biggest trader and owned most of Chokoloskee, so I guess you could say that Smallwoods had replaced Santinis as our leading family.
Nobody forgot that day in 1906 when E. J. Watson brought his new young wife to Chokoloskee. Paid a call on Storters over in Everglade, opened a new account, then done the same with us. Not only that but he showed up in his new motor launch, pop-pop-popping down the Pass from Sandfly Key. (Called her the Warrior but the men called her the May-Pop because she didn’t always start when he cranked her flywheel.) Though not all of us knew it, we were way behind the times and hungry for a look at something new, so folks left their tomato patch and hustled along after the children who came flying and hollering down to our landing.
Even a quarter mile away out in the channel, we recognized the helmsman, the strong bulk of him and that broad hat. My heart skipped like a flying fish-he dared come back! When he saw the crowd, he lifted his hat and the sun fired that head of dark red hair-the color of dried blood, said my mama, Mrs. Ida House. A quiet fell like our community had caught its breath, like we were waiting for lightning to break from those dark clouds that in deep summer build in mighty towers over the Glades: a great split of thunder, then that cold breath of coming wind and rain.
“Speak of the Devil,” Mama sniffed, though nobody besides herself had spoken. Ida B. House was looking straight at Satan and she knew it. Some of our fool women moaned and gasped, raised fingertips up to their collarbones and rolled their eyes, O Lord-a-mercy, staring wall-eyed like a flock of haunts. Then all together they dared look again, with a grisly moan of woe like Revelation. Wouldn’t surprise me if I moaned right along with ’em. Regular Doomsday! Nobody tore their hair far as I know, but a few God-fearing bodies went squawking and scattering like fowl, hurrying their offsprings home, not because they really thought E. J. Watson might do them harm but only to show the other biddies how decent Baptist women should behave when faced with a Methodist murderer.
As Mister Watson came into our dock, a young woman with a babe in arms stood up beside him. The females fleeing, hearing a babble from the other women, turned right around, picked up their skirts, tripped down the hill again. Might have been scared of Mister Watson, but they were a lot more scared of missing out on something. By the time he helped the new young wife step out onto the dock, it was a barnyard around here, pushing and squeaking and flapping off home to find a bonnet or a pair of shoes for such a high-society occasion.
Say what you like about Ed Watson, he looked and acted like our idea of a hero. Stood there shining in the sun in a white linen suit and her on his arm in a wheat-brown linen dress and button boots. When she picked up her sweet baby girl in sunbonnet and pink bow frock, that handsome little family stood facing the crowd like they were posing for a nice holiday photo. That’s the picture I see every time I recall how that man died on that very spot on a dark October evening only four years later, with that young woman huddled in my house staring out at the coming dark, and that little girl like a caught rabbit, squeaking in the corner in the wild crash of men and their steel weapons.
Since that bad business at Lost Man’s Key, we’d heard plenty of talk that if Ed Watson dared to show his face around these parts again the men would arrest him, turn him over to the Monroe County sheriff, or string him up if he offered the least resistance. I guess Mister Watson knew that, too, because when he came back the first few times, he steered clear of Chokoloskee; he stopped off quick at Chatham Bend and was gone quicker, after burning off his cane field. Though we never heard he’d been there till after he was gone, we got used to the idea that he’d be back.
I will say I admired the man’s nerve. He took all the steam out of them that said he would never dare return, that he’d have to sell his house and claim and his cane syrup works. Turned out he’d been back every year, tending to business all along; he’d even seen the Lee County surveyor about getting full title to his land. Brought in a carpenter to build him a front porch, gave the house a new coat of white paint-not whitewash, mind, but real oil paint. But some way that carpenter died there on the Watson place, and bad rumors started to fly again, and next thing we knew Watson was gone.
When he didn’t show up for another year, it looked like we’d seen the last of him for sure. The men concluded he was on the run, having killed that carpenter along with the Frenchman and the Tuckers and probably Guy Bradley, that young warden. Lynch talk started up again, and Charlie Johnson, that boy Earl Harden-some of these fellers got just plain ferocious.
Well, here was their chance: the villain had walked into their clutches, but no one seemed to recollect about that lynching. Those same fools jostled for a look when Ed Watson stepped ashore, that’s how bad they wanted to step up and shake his hand. Not a man hung back when his turn came to show how much he thought of Mister Watson, and joke and carry on with our longlost neighbor. Charlie T. Boggess wanted to know what kind of motor Mister Watson had in that there motorboat, and the man said, “Why, that’s a Palmer one-cylinder, Charlie T., and she’s a beauty!” And all the rest of ’em winking and nodding as if any man but Charlie would have known that motor was a Palmer soon’s he heard it pop-pop-popping up the Pass. Charlie and Ethel Boggess, they’re our dear old friends, they were married back in ’97, same year we were, but that man was a pure fool around Ed Watson, and he wasn’t near as bad as some of the others. Probably told their wives later, “Well, them Tuckers was just conchs, y’know, goldurn Key Westers. Might have had it coming for all we know.”
Young Earl Harden was here who was all for lynching E. J. some years back. A young Daniels had some drink that day and told that Harden boy, “It ain’t your place to go talkin about lynchin no damn white man!” And Earl said, “You sayin I ain’t white?” Oh, those two had one heck of a fight behind our store! Well, here was Earl Harden gawking with the rest and smiling like his life depended on it, too.
The only man who stood back a little was my oldest brother, who would puzzle over E. J. Watson his whole life. Bill never stopped working long enough to get any kind of education but he had more sense than most when it came to people. He had often talked with Henry Short, who helped those young mulatta men with that Tucker burial, and though Henry would never accuse a white man in so many words, Bill had to conclude that E. J. Watson was the killer.
Bill had grown up broiled beef-red by the sun, broad-shouldered and steady as a tree. I reckon Mister Watson felt his eye. He turned around and eyed him just a little bit too long, then said real quiet, “Hello, Bill.” And Bill said, calm and easy, “Mister Watson,” tipping his straw hat to the young woman. “Glad to see you again,” Ed Watson said, like he was testing him.
Bill House hated all his life to seem unfriendly but he hated false friendliness even worse; he could not go that far with E. J. Watson so he didn’t. Looked amiable enough, I guess, but all he did was nod and put his hat back on by way of answer. Mister Watson considered that before he nodded back. But maybe because Bill was a well-respected feller he wanted on his side, my brother was the first man Ed Watson introduced to Mrs. Watson and his baby girl, who had the same auburn red hair as her bad daddy.
Kate Edna Watson was a handsome taffy-haired young woman, serious, not solemn, with a sudden shy beguiling girlish smile. Mister Watson said, “This fine young lady is a preacher’s daughter so you boys watch your language, hear?” He was just teasing along, just being sociable, but my mama Ida Borders House was determined not to take it like he meant it. Nearly knocked herself cold, that’s how hard she sniffed; she dearly liked to make a point with that big sniff of hers. Then she said loudly, “Praise to goodness, there’s no call to instruct First Florida Baptists about blasphemies!” But Mama could not meet Ed Watson’s eye, even when his expression was as pleasant as it was now, and she was glaring someplace else by the time she finished.
All this while, young Mrs. Watson soothed her infant. She had nice manners by our local standard, smiled politely, but she was tuckered out from travel, with a babe in arms and another on the way. I watched her face to see how much she knew. She cast her eyes down when she caught me looking, from which I saw that she’d heard plenty but did not know what to think. Then she looked up again and smiled as if she’d spotted me as a new friend of her own age. I went forward to welcome her and the women followed.
Ed Watson acted more tickled to be home than the Prodigal Son.
Declared how homesick he had been for fresh palm heart and his canemash-flavored pork at Chatham Bend, and how fine it felt to be back here in the Islands. Never raised his voice, just toed the ground with his tooled boots, waiting for these folks to inspect the Watsons and be done with it. But even while he smiled and nodded, he was looking our men over one by one, as if he might see from some shift in their faces who had spoken out in favor of his lynching.
Ed Watson broke that uneasy silence by looking at the ground, looking up again, then declaring he’d be proud to have a look at our new store. Leading the way, he took his hat off as he climbed the steps and crossed the porch, and most of the others, pushing in behind him, snatched off their hats, too-the first customers I could recall who ever came in bare-headed.
Looking around, our guest smote his brow in wonder, unable to believe his eyes. He was just brimming over with congratulations to Ted and his “Miss Mamie,” said no place of business had Smallwoods beat this side of Tampa. He reminded Ted of the good old days when they first met at Half Way Creek, back in the nineties, and how far both had come in the decade since.
Well, E. J. Watson built him a fine house and plantation in the Islands beyond any that was seen down there before or since, but he never did near as well as Ted, who never had to kill to get ahead. My man worked hard for everything he had: getting him to stop work was the problem! Lord knows where Watson’s money came from or how much innocent blood might have been spilled to pay for those fancy boots and a linen suit, not to mention that new motorboat.
Our man of God (who would last no longer than the others) came hurrying down to meet the newcomers, tell them how welcome they sure were to worship with us on a Sunday, when the Good Lord hung His hat in Chokoloskee. This young man was small-headed with droopy ears, looked more like a sheep than like our shepherd: he raised his eyes to Heaven and said “Amen!” in a little bleat when E. J. Watson told him that while Chatham Bend was a long distance from a house of God, he aimed to continue his lifelong custom of reading aloud from the Good Book on the Lord’s Day whether his people needed it or not.
When everybody laughed, C. G. McKinney frowned. He pulled his long beard and coughed real loud and sudden to warn folks not to joke about Sunday worship. Being our local humorist, Mr. McKinney was never one to encourage jokes from other people: if any jokes were to be cracked, it was
C. G. McKinney who would crack ’em or know the reason why. So C. G. told his trusty story of the first man of God to reach the shores of Chokoloskee Bay. When Reverend Gatewood arrived at Everglade back in ’88, his first sacred duty was to preach last rites over the body of a man slain in a dispute with the skipper during the voyage.
I reckon E. J. Watson knew the Gatewood story but he had the manners to pretend he didn’t. Said he sure hoped that darned boat captain paid dearly for that sin cause what was needed in the Islands was some law and order. Hearing those words from a desperado, Isaac Yeomans whooped and hooted until he heard his own voice in the quiet and fell still.
While Mister Watson was away, a story spread that after he had killed Belle Starr, he “throwed in” with the James and Younger boys who rode with Quantrill in the Border Wars and later became outlaws. Our men could talk of nothing else for weeks. You would have thought those bloody renegades were the greatest Americans since General Nathan Bedford Forrest and Robert E. Lee. And some way, just for knowing outlaws and getting the credit for killing that outlaw queen, Ed Watson became some kind of a hero, too. If he’d showed up here a few years back with a jug of moonshine and a bugle, yelling, “Come on boys, we’re headed for them Philly-peens to kill us some dirty Spaniards, are you red-blooded Americans or ain’t you?” why, half the fool men on the island would have marched off after him, tears of glory in their eyes, without once asking where or why they might be going, or what was wrong or right in the eyes of God.
E. J. was talking very fierce, pounding his palm. “If the Ten Thousand Islands have a future,” he declared, “then those who place themselves above the law have no place in our peace-loving community!” Everyone stared and he stared back with a great frown like Jehovah. “A-men!” he shouted. Except for Isaac, who would laugh at the Devil Himself, my Ted was about the only one who dared to smile. Then Charlie T. smiled because Ted had smiled, and Isaac whooped again and slapped his thigh, and everybody got to laughing but C. G. McKinney. Naturally our more pious females started hissing about sacrilege but they couldn’t keep it up. Heck, they were thrilled! And the silliest just tittered happily, tee-hee-hee-hee.
I wasn’t smiling, not because of sacrilege but because this man was treating us like ninnies. He saw that I saw this-saw that Mamie House Smallwood and her brother Bill were not folks liable to forget about those Tuckers or forgive either. Knowing what he was up against with our House family, he did not scowl to scare or threaten, he did something worse: he disarmed me with a wink, a reckless confidential wink that made my righteous indignation feel downright foolish, made everything he’d told this crowd a joke, made all our hopes and struggles in this world simply ridiculous for the fundamental reason that our precious human life, for all its joys, was blood-soaked, cruel, and empty, with only sorrow, fear, disease at its dark end, fading to nothingness. Staring back at him, I thought, Was this a society of human beings or some purgatory where folks was condemned to live their lives with a laughing killer loose amongst them like a wolf?
Ted leaned and whispered it was only fitting to put ’em up in our house for the night. A murderer? That was my first reaction, I admit. No, I didn’t want to do it. No? I had to! After all, I told myself, no one else had a spare room. The real truth was, I didn’t want some other household claiming our famous visitor. Hadn’t my Ted called this man his friend before most of these other folks had even met him?
Aunt Lovie Lopez-Penelope Daniels she was, married Gregorio-Aunt Lovie was jealous, and she could not hide it. “You’d shelter a desperado under the same roof as your little children? You ain’t scared?” I was uneasy, yes, I whispered, but my man’s wish was good enough for me. “Wouldn’t be near good enough for me,” Aunt Lovie humphed. Course her Gregorio “come with the bark on,” as the men said, he was rough. A Spaniard with any kind of pride had to act crusty in those patriotic days when we ran ’em out of Cuba and the Philippines. Right from Injun times, the Spaniards been disliked here in south Florida and that won’t change.
That evening E. J. gave Ted news of Columbia County where the Smallwoods came from. In the kitchen, young wide-eyed Mrs. Watson described the new house her husband had built north of Fort White and how his hard work got that land producing after years of erosion and ruin. Yes, she confided, she knew all about the blame laid on her Edgar in his youth due to his hellfire temper, as she called it, but if she’d heard anything of his reputation in the Islands, she did not let on. She was out to redeem him, it was plain to see, she’d made that her holy mission in this life, she got all breathless just whispering about it. Mister Watson called her Kate but all the rest of us who came to love her called her Edna.
“E. J.’s got a bad feud brewing in Columbia County,” Ted whispered when he came to bed.
“That why he’s suddenly so homesick for Lee County?”
Ted reached across and put his hand over my mouth, lest our guests hear me from the other side of a slat wall. I was irked that my husband seemed so proud of having a killer for a friend. Saying nothing, I just lay there in the dark. I felt an intrusion in my heart, like a poison tendril twitching through the wall from the spare room. Ted was puffing, he was dreading my sharp tongue, yet just as eager as the rest of ’em to be first with his Watson news. Finally he muttered, “Family trouble over land. He come back south till things cool off. Didn’t care to shoot nobody in self-defense.”
There was something hungry in his voice I didn’t want to hear, something I picked up every time he told his tales of the bloody mayhem he had witnessed up around Arcadia or over on the east coast, Lemon City. Being a peaceable good man who hated fighting, he was bewitched by men of violence, of which we had more than we could use down around south Florida. Most of our Chok neighbors were just as bad, yet under their patched shirts and scraggy beards, they were gentle fellers, same as he was. For all their big talk, they were boys and pretty childish.
I kept after him. “That man Quinn Bass that Daddy knew up in Arcadia-didn’t your ‘friend’ call that self-defense, too? If your friend is such a peaceable feller, how come all these men try to attack him?”
“Mamie, his wife believes in him, you seen that for yourself, and she was up there with him in Columbia and knows his family a lot better’n we do. Heck, she’s a preacher’s daughter. If she believes in him, we got no reason not to.”
“Maybe those kinfolk are in his way like those poor Tucker people. One day your family might get in his way, too, ever think of that?”
My husband said, “It just ain’t fair to talk like that. We know he cut Santini but that’s all we know for sure. All the rest is rumors. There ain’t no proof he ever killed a single soul.”
My Ted has a fine head of hair, big black mustache, and a big deep voice he only has to raise to clear the drunks and drifters from the store. Generally “his wish is my command,” as Grandma Ida likes to say about her feisty husband, Mr. D. D. House. This was different. E. J. Watson had Ted Smallwood in his pocket, others, too, and no good could come of it. Ted fought off my questions, getting angry, but our little kids were right under this roof with Mister Watson. I would see this through.
“How come he dusted out of here so fast after that Tucker business? And again two years ago when his carpenter just happened to die, too?”
“Weren’t his fault that feller’s heart quit! E. J. knew the blame would be laid on him, and by golly, it was. When Guy Bradley got murdered a hundred miles away, who was the first man they laid it on? He might of been lynched! He’s scared of men taking the law in their own hands and you can’t blame him.”
“I don’t believe he was ever scared our men might lynch him. He’s too hardened by his sins to be scared of anything.” Thinking about that wink of his, I got upset all over. “Does what he pleases, then laughs at us, dares us to stop him.”
Ted’s big hand covered my mouth again; he pointed toward the wall. And suddenly I was so frightened that I wept and trembled. He took me in his arms. “E. J. is a fine farmer,” he murmured, starting in on the little speech that most all the women got to hear that night in every shack on our scared little island. “A real hard worker with a good head for business, always ready to help his neighbors. They ain’t a family in the Islands won’t say the same.”
But this time the old refrain of his same old song left him still restless. “All right, sweetheart,” he whispered. “But maybe this new family will steady him down. He opened an account this evening, paid down two hundred dollars in advance. I got no choice but to give that man a chance.”
“It’s your friendship he has paid for, Mr. Smallwood. Paid in advance. He thinks if he’s got the postmaster on his side and the House clan, too, Chokoloskee won’t give him any trouble. Well, he hasn’t got the House clan. He hasn’t got Daddy nor my brother Bill, nor young Dan neither, only Mr. Smallwood.”
“And Smallwood’s wife? You always liked him, Mamie.”
Ted rolled over with his back to me when I didn’t answer. We lay awake for quite a while. I wanted to holler in his ear. “Where does his money come from? You said yourself, If E. J. had no money, he’d be on the chain gang to this day for the attempted murder of Adolphus Santini.” But Ted would assume that E. J. had made money on his farm crop in north Florida and tell me to hush up and go to sleep.
Ted’s esteem for E. J. was sincere, of course. Even Daddy House admired the man’s enterprise and plain hard work. And because folks liked him, our local families were all set to give him the benefit of any doubt. “E. J. Watson ain’t the only one who makes his own law in south Florida,” Ted always said. “Those plume hunters and moonshiners will take and shoot at anyone who messes near their territory! Look what they done to young Bradley!”
It was Gene Roberts visiting from Flamingo who notified our community all about that murder. The Florida frontier is far behind the nation’s progress, Mr. Roberts said, because men continue to settle their accounts with knives and pistols. But when I asked Ted if that included his friend Watson, who was suspected in the Bradley case, Ted rolled away again with that big sigh that said, There’s no sense talking no sense to a woman.
With Ed Watson’s return, folks would be waiting to see what my menfolk would do. Ted and Daddy were leaders in our community and my brother Bill was thought to have good sense. If these three men made up their minds to give Ed Watson a fresh start, the rest would go along. Charlie Boggess, Wigginses, and Willie Browns were already on E. J.’s side, and that was close to half the Island families.
I gave in to Ted after a while. I had to admit that once they got used to the idea, most folks were content to have Ed Watson back: he took some interest in our common lives, which we had thought so dreary. He was full of curiosity, he kept things lively, and his great plans for the Islands gave us hope that the Twentieth Century progress we had heard about might come our way. Maybe we weren’t so backward as we thought if a man as able and ambitious as Ed Watson chose to live here.