All Watson had for help at Chatham while he was in north Florida getting in trouble was a man wanted for hog theft in Fort Myers. Green Waller had a way with hogs same as his boss, who kept hogs as a boy back in Carolina. Drunk or sober, them two could talk hogs all day and night. But one evening when Watson was away, Waller got drunk, went to the hog pen, and give his hogs a speech and their freedom, too. Them animals went straight to the damned syrup mash, tottered around, keeled over drunk, and one full sow that was sleeping it off got half et by a panther. Waller left the Bend before his boss got back, but the next year he showed up again and presented Watson with a fine young sow, said he had seen the error of his ways. Mister Watson admired that young sow so much that he forgot that she was probably stolen property. He named her Topsy, trained her to do tricks.
Watson was in Storters’ trading post one day when Green Waller come in with a lady three times the common size. Miss Hannah Smith from the Okefenokee Swamp had cleared and farmed for C. G. McKinney up in Turner River, then drifted down to Everglade where Waller come across her. He introduced her to his boss as a prime female who could outwork four men ricking buttonwood and show a horse a trick or two about spring plowing. Watson said, “You aim to put the traces to her, Green?” When she busted out laughing, he bowed real courtly and informed her that his mule Dolphus was getting on in years and if Miss Smith would care to come on home with him, he could yoke her up alongside Dolphus when time come to plow. Or maybe-he whispered this loudly behind his hand-him and her could get yoked up together while this old drunk of a hog thief here was snorin away under the table.
Well, we all had a good laugh over that except Green Waller, who had fell deeply in love with that big female. Hannah was handsome the way a man is handsome-looked like a man wearing a long-hair wig-while Green was horse-faced with bad skin and a gimp, all bones and patches. Watson told her that the sorry help at Chatham Bend these days couldn’t pour piss out of a boot that had the instructions written on the heel. When the men laughed again, he tipped his hat to Waller-this was the bully that come out when he was drinking. Hannah looked worried about what Green might do but all he done was belch.
Hannah Smith related how her sister Sadie was camped in the south Glades over east near Homestead when she got word from their folks in the Okefenokee who wanted to know where her Little Sis was at. Asked Sadie would she hunt her up, see how she was getting on. Sadie learned that Hannah was working all the way across to the west coast with a hundred miles of Everglades between, so she bided her time until the dry season, then hitched two oxen to a cart and yee-hawed and wallowed and hacked her way clean across the state. First time that was ever done, and most likely the last; she weren’t called the Ox Woman for nothing. Come north along Shark River Slough and west through the Big Cypress, dug her wheels out of the muck, chopped her way across them strands and jungle hammocks. Parked her oxen near Immokalee and made her way south to Chokoloskee Bay. Just showed up one day in her black sunbonnet, smelled like a she-bear.
Up to that time Hannah Smith, called Big Squaw by the Injuns, was the largest female ever seen around south Florida, but Sadie went a whole hand taller, six foot four, built like a cistern, with a smile that opened her whole face like a split watermelon. Said she was hunting Little Sis, aimed to come up with Little Sis or know the reason why. “You boys think us girls’re big? We got two more that’s bigger yet back home.” Sadie’s husband got hisself hung at Folkston, Georgia, so she took work hauling limestone, cut-ting crossties for the railroad. Ran a barbershop in Waycross for a while, claimed she could handle a razor so good she could shave a beard that was still three days under the skin.
The Ox Woman, and Hannah, too, could work a ax good as any man we ever saw, made that ax sing. Them two was that old style of pioneer womenfolk that come roarin up out of the swamps and down out of the mountains. Allowed as how their sister Lydia liked to set in a rocker on the porch with her husband in her arms, singin him lullabies. Ed Watson said, “It’s a damn good thing they don’t make women of that kind no more or they’d run the country.”
Hannah had her a sweet voice to go with her feats of strength and winsome ways. Evenings she hauled on her other dress and set out on the dock singing “Barbry Allen” to the Injuns that come in to trade. Remembering that heap of womanhood singing so pure under the moon over the mangroves, and them Injuns by their fire gazing past her so polite while keeping a sharp eye on this big wild thing that might turn dangerous any minute still gives me the shivers just to think about it.
Tant Jenkins was an expert in the hunting line and always claimed that common labor disagreed with him. I told Tant that if he was smarter’n what people said he was, he’d send away to the Okefenokee for one of them big lonesome sisters to do his chores for him, keep him in whiskey, and rock him to sleep when he come home at night drunk and disgusting.
Them two giant girls celebrated their reunion, drunk Tant and Isaac and two-three Daniels boys to a dead halt. Sadie said that while they lasted, them nice fellers made a body feel at home, but in a day or two, she hitched up her oxen, yee-hawed north, found a big hammock with good soil east of Immokalee. She lived on there quite a while, died on there, too, likely from heartbreak over the bad news that was comin her way about her Little Sis.
Not long after Sadie took her leave and Waller went back to Chatham Bend, Big Hannah got sick and fidgety on McKinney’s Needhelp Farm, pining away for her hog-loving admirer and fighting off the skeeters for a year alone with no man to help her with the crops except a dirty old Injun called Charlie Tommie, who chased her even harder than the skeeters, till finally she had to slap him away, too. Not till April 1910 did Green and Watson pick her up at Smallwood’s store as they had promised. Watson warned her that her man had stole hogs all his life, so the first time a hog went missing at the Bend, a well-knowed hog thief might come up missing, too. Waller could hoot over coming up missing but he never laughed none when it come to Hannah because he was deeply in love-them were his words-and women in his life was very few and very far between. When his sweetheart went off to fetch her stuff, he confided to the men how he’d promised his mama at her deathbed that her virgin boy would go to his grave as pure in the Lord as the first day she wiped his bottom. “Them holy words made my old mama die happy. But Satan sent me this big Smith girl that is stronger’n what I am,” Waller moaned, “and next thing I knowed about it, boys, she had me down and was doin somethin dirty!”
Hannah brung her ax and gun and a spare dress in a burlap sack she slung across her shoulder. Follered her boyfriend to the boat and headed south for Chatham River and that was the last time we ever seen her. From what we heard, that big bashful lady and her dog-eared boyfriend got along like rum and butter; they done their sinning in that little shack downriver from the boat sheds. Hannah chopped wood for the syrup boiler, helped the young missus with the chores, ate a whole lot, washed up good under the arms, and lugged her hog thief home, took him to bed. Ed Watson claimed they yelped all night like a pair of foxes.