Soon after word come about them murders at the Bend-this was mid-October-Mister Watson turned up out of nowhere. We heard that motor from a long ways off, come across the wind like muffled rifle shots but steady. Then that popping stopped, leaving a hollow in the silence, and the Warrior came drifting down around the point. He poled her over to our dock, took his coat off, and begun to tinker with his engine. Hardens had no quarrel with him, nothing to be afraid of, but I had to wonder why his boat just happened to break down so close to our place.
Owen was back in Lost Man’s River seining mullet with his brothers. My mother-in-law said, “I sure do hope them boys heard his darned motor.” They heard it all right and came quick as they could but that weren’t quick enough.
We always went down to the shore to welcome visitors or run ’em off, that was the custom amongst Island neighbors. But this day Daddy Richard stayed back in the cabin, sore as a darned beetle blister cause what he called his arthur-ritis had flared up on him. What with the life pains he was feeling, he was very quick to cock his rifle and draw a bead on Mister Watson’s heart as soon as that man shut his motor down and straightened. When me’n Ma Mary started outside to go to meet him, Daddy Richard growled, “Mind you women stay well clear of my line of fire.” His wife was disgusted, told him to stop scaring his own womenfolk for nothing. He snapped back that he knew what he knew, and I reckon he still did, most of the time.
Ed Watson seen straight off he was unwelcome. Never left his boat, just tinkered, closed the hatch again. The onshore wind held her snug against the dock, though with that chop, she lifted and thumped against the pilings. “Good day, Mister Watson!” Mary Harden’s work-red hands was white, that’s how hard she clenched ’em, but I believe she was more upset about not offering our neighbor a bite to eat than fearful that this man might do us harm.
Though he doffed his hat, Mister Watson did not answer. He was holloweyed and grizzle-chinned, his clothes looked slept in. Seeing Daddy Richard’s boat moored off the dock, he must of wondered if his old friend was in the cabin and why he never came out nor even called hello. He studied all around a while, the better to listen to the silence in that clearing, which any moment was going to explode. Out of the corner of his eye, he kept the cabin window covered, never lost sight of it, as if he knew that though that hole in them gray boards looked black and empty, our old man was crouching down behind it, fingering his trigger. When Mary Harden moved a step, put her big body between him and the window, he pretended he never noticed, but now he knew for sure. “And a good day to you, Mis Mary,” he said finally. “Richard around?”
As he watched Ma Mary struggle with her lie, his smile was quizzical. Told us he was on his way north from Key West where he’d spent some days on business, told us he was calling in to see if there was anything we needed in Fort Myers, where he would be headed in the next few days. I thanked him, said we lacked for nothing.
Ma Mary blurted, “The men’s just over yonder!”-a bad mistake, because hearing they were nearby might make him stay. To get his mind off that, I squawked, “How’s Topsy? She still doing tricks?” Mister Watson shook his head. Topsy had et up all her shoats so he had a mind to slit her bristled throat, eat her: might teach her not to try that trick again. When he winked, I giggled out of nerves.
(Later, Ma Mary exclaimed, “A man who could joke about his sow eating her shoats had killing on his mind, for sure!” Daddy Richard said, “A female who could say such a fool thing as that don’t know the first thing about killers!” He never talked to her so sharp before; his nerves was wound tight, too.)
Mary Harden stood twisting her hands, never offered our neighbor so much as a cup of water, and still he acted like he never noticed. And all the while she was shifting to stay in Daddy Richard’s line of fire, in case our visitor went for his pocket handkerchief, thinking to blow his nose, and our jumpy old man hauled back on the trigger. Mister Watson watched her peculiar movements and he watched her eyes. I believe he knew his old friend had a bead on him.
A restless wind out of the northeast was racketing the sea grape and palmettas. The wind had held in that quarter for two days, with squalls and rain. This was Saturday, October the fifteenth, when the radio was already reporting that a strong offshore storm was sheering off toward the west, through the Yucatan Passage, but we never had no radio back then, we went by the winds and sky; the men was troubled by that wind and didn’t like the look of the horizon.
Mister Watson said kind of matter-of-fact that he believed a hurricane was coming. Said he’d like nothing better than to set awhile but had to get back to take care of his people. When he stooped half out of sight to spin his flywheel, Ma Mary screened him, spreading the wings of her big brown dress like a broody hen. He saw this, too, because when he straightened-knowing she’d never hear his thanks over the motor-he put one hand behind his back and made that kind of fancy bow men do for queens and such; that bow startled my mother-in-law so bad that she tried to bow back in a kind of a gawky curtsy. Smiling, he tipped his hat toward the empty window and shouted out over the motor, “My respects to Mr. Harden and the boys!”
We watched him head his boat offshore and turn toward the north. His outline at the helm was hunched and black against a narrow band of light out to the west where that wall of weather was slowly moving in off the Gulf of Mexico.