In the dull white summer of 1912, Lucius enlisted in the Merchant Marine, taking along a duffel full of books. Since his arrival there at the age of seven, Lucius had been fascinated by southwest Florida history, all the way back to the first aborigines and early Spaniards, and his interest had widened like a circle in a pond to encompass the natural history and archaeology of this low flat limestone peninsula lately risen from the sea, whose only hills were the astonishing shell mound accumulations of the seagoing Calusa which the Indians had climbed in time of hurricane. Ever since, he had explored every corner of its history, from its subtropical flora to its coastal fisheries, ancient and modern, also its pirates, pioneers, plume hunters, and gator poachers, its rum-runners, smugglers, and fugitives, from the Calusa Hatchee River south to Cayo Hueso or Bone Key, now called Key West.
On his return to Fort Myers he was prevailed upon by Carrie and Walter to attend state university and study for a degree in Florida history. The topic he proposed for his senior thesis was an objective study of the Everglades pioneer sugarcane planter Edgar J. Watson that might challenge the lurid legend propagated in the press about the man now commonly referred to as “Bloody” Watson.
Lucius Watson’s proposal was rejected as “inappropriate,” by which was meant that its subject’s identity as the author’s parent must surely compromise his objectivity. However, the faculty was much impressed by the applicant’s wide knowledge of remote southwestern Florida and invited him to prepare instead a history of that all but unknown region called the Everglades Frontier, which in 1916 was still a wilderness of swamp and raining river, lacking a written history more recent than the U.S. Army accounts of the Seminole Wars of the mid-nineteenth century.
Discomfited (though not honestly surprised) by the rejection of his first proposal, Lucius was nonetheless intrigued by the proposed history of “the undiscovered country,” as his father had called the Everglades, invoking its immensity and mystery with that metaphor for death from Mama’s cherished Hamlet. In his father’s honor, he chose “The Undiscovered Country” as a working title, and with so little new research to be done, commenced at once. Proceeding too rapidly, perhaps, he was nearing completion when his inspiration faltered: he lost faith in his thesis structure and kept wandering off course to work on the aborted biography of E. J. Watson at the many points where the two books overlapped. He drank too much. Debilitated and depressed, he “forced” his prose, doing it such damage with his fitful scribblings that finally, trying to patch all this poor stuff, he came to hate it. Late one evening, reeling drunk, he uttered a despairing howl and swept the whole unpaged scrawled manuscript off his table, notes and all. A fortnight later, after an alcoholic odyssey that ended disreputably in jail, he was suspended from the university a few months short of receiving his degree.
Returning to Fort Myers weak and ill, in a deep pit of melancholy, Lucius went directly to the Langford household to accept responsibility and blame for his disgrace. His sister gasped at his haggard demeanor. “Oh, it’s such a waste!” she mourned: she was not referring to the lost tuition fees, though Lucius heard it that way. Lucius’s morbid clinging to the past, his refusal to grow up, his brother Eddie informed him, were what caused him to drink too much and fail to finish everything he tried.
A minor officer at Walter Langford’s bank, Eddie Watson was already well settled as a married man with children, a churchman and sober citizen who shared most if not all of his brother-in-law’s conservative opinions. Sprawled in an armchair, one leg over the arm, he shook his head over his brother’s chronic folly while deploring his ingratitude to their generous host, whose vision and hard work had paid for that wasted tuition. Embarrassed, Walter frowned judiciously, rapping out his pipe. Whether he frowned over the waste of money or the waste of Lucius’s education or in simple deference to the onset of his evening haze, brought on by whiskey, was not clear, but that frown intensified Lucius’s regret that he had accepted family assistance in the first place.
Because he’d never lived in Fort Myers long enough to make good friends and had not felt much like making any after his father’s death, Lucius became a loner. Absurd as it seemed even to him, a young girl, Nell Dyer, had become his only confidante, hearing him out on those rare occasions when he felt like ranting and encouraging him to eat something when he felt well enough.