As a practiced hunter and a dead-eye shot, Private L. H. Watson had been proud at first to be made a sniper, only to discover once in combat that he detested what he had to do. In growing alarm, he observed himself moving like a wind-up toy through the mechanical routine of checking his weapon and its ammunition, selecting vantage points, aligning sights, and firing at some distant figure or more often just the head-a pop-up soldier silhouette, never seen up close as a human being. It became routine, a target practice, so long as he closed down thought, grew numb, so long as he shut off all discussion of it with other soldiers; he hid his mind behind an iron wall of cold and mechanical inhumanity, accepting his assignment as his patriotic duty. In the grinding attrition of trench warfare, executing anonymous “enemies” became a job as mundane as any other, and that illusion, for a time, sheltered his sanity.
One early morning close to the front lines, Private Watson became separated from his patrol when the small group fanned out under fire and was overtaken by a heavy winter fog. In this no man’s land, moving in any direction might be fatal: he crouched down in a gully, in hopes that the drifting fog might lift enough to reveal the whereabouts of friend or foe and better determine his position.
Before long, from somewhere not far away, came little sounds that betrayed the movement of another man; he raised and pointed his weapon, trying to still his pounding heart. Then the murk lifted just enough to reveal a crouched form with the spiked German helmet, the pallid face with small spaced teeth peering from beneath it. He had murdered that young soldier as the face turned toward him, its eyes and mouth wide open, too frightened to cry for mercy; he extinguished that life even though, in the suspended instant before squeezing off his trigger, he had seen that the Enemy was not crouched but squatting, pants down, his only weapon a clenched handful of dead grass. He had watched that soldier topple over and lie still, mud-splashed white buttocks quivering, his life relinquished for the rare blessing of privacy in the thick fog. For taking a crap, he had died bereft of dignity, as the silent fog slowly enshrouded him again and the American soldier backed away in shock.
When Private Watson’s brain stopped whirling, the questions he dreaded surfaced one by one. Had his reaction been automatic, too committed to stop? Or had there been time enough to hold his fire? Had he been cold-blooded or merely cowardly? Or had instinct told him what was evident upon reflection, that in those circumstances of proximity and drifting mist, he could not have taken the boy prisoner (Put your hands up when you’re finished, Fritz) without revealing his own location to that soldier’s comrades?
None of this mattered. Private Watson turned in his sniper scope, reporting to headquarters that they could shoot or discipline him as they liked but his days of executing men were over. Angry in his desolation, the near-legendary sniper from the Everglades notified his superiors that war was monstrous, the greatest of all sins against Creation. After due consideration of the commendable number of the enemy this soldier had destroyed, he was sent to the rear echelons to rest his brain and receive another decoration to reinvigorate his American red blood. His refusal to take part in the ceremony brought mutterings of courts martial, execution for cowardice, rank dereliction of duty in time of war, but in the end, the political problem posed by Private Watson was eliminated with a dishonorable discharge. In 1918, he returned home stunned by so much criminally insane behavior and a little ashamed because he had survived it. His medals were discovered in the bottom of his soldier pack after he’d left for Chatham River.
“Useless Lucius,” he commented sourly. “Couldn’t even die for his own country.”
“Oh that poor creature!” Carrie had protested when Lucius acknowledged he had not written to Nell nor even called on her since his return. “For God’s sake, marry the girl and settle down to something!” cried his older brother, who forsook his wife and small children almost every evening for the tranquil atmosphere and superior cuisine of a banker’s hearth. Lucius snapped, “Mind your own damned business, Eddie,” and took his leave before his brother could hold forth on domestic mores.
The first time Lucius saw Nell in the street, his caught breath closed his throat. Although an encounter was inevitable, he had not expected to be stricken by a pounding of his heart that threatened to bring him to his knees. It was already too late, he told himself, he must pretend he hadn’t seen her. She was already hastening, handkerchief to her mouth as if sickened by the sight of him. He would have cried, Nell, Nell, please wait for me had he not known how weak and destructive that would be in the light of his behavior. Nell must be twenty, almost an old maid; he could not ask her to wait for him one day longer.
Confronted later by his sister, he had lied, saying he had not seen her, although he knew that Nell knew better, having seen him switch his eyes away like a guilty dog. But an exchange of fixed smiles and desperate greetings-how much worse! He simply could not bear to face her before he had dealt with the greater shame about his father. Until then, anything he said, however honest, would ring false.
Lucius was drinking so relentlessly again that the Langfords shut their door. Eight years after his father’s death, his life had wandered away from him, he knew that. Subsisting on his one-third share from the sale of his mother’s house, he had no prospects, no direction or ambition, nothing to show for life but two book projects long abandoned. He nursed thoughts of suicide. Yet all along he had known what he must do to salvage his self-respect: whatever the consequences, he must overcome his dread and reclaim the Watson place at Chatham Bend. Subsisting as a fisherman, he might sniff out the true circumstances of his father’s death and the identities and motives of the men who lynched him. What action should be taken after that could be decided later.
Papa’s old launch Warrior, refitted with a new engine, would be ready the next week. More and more excited to be leaving for the Islands, he packed rough clothes and a rifle, bought a new shotgun, gill net, and other gear as well as a supply of dry stores and canned provisions.
On the eve of departure, Lucius submitted himself to a final broken evening at the Langfords’, who had lately removed to a new brick house on First Street, at the foot of the Edison Bridge over the river. Joining them for coffee, Eddie declared that Lucius’s “morbid obsession” with his father’s death was merely an attempt to lend significance to a feckless existence. “You’re nearly thirty! Sober up, go find a job, get on with life!” said Eddie, reminding his brother of those stern warnings against returning to the Islands “at your father’s burial”-“your father,” not “our father,” not “Papa,” Lucius noted.
“That was eight years ago. I’m sure it’s all died down.”
“Then you’re a fool!” Eddie exclaimed. His conviction that his brother must come to harm brought tears to Carrie’s eyes and deep furrows to the ever-ascending brow of her balding Walter, who rose at once and stepped into the pantry to fortify himself with another noble whiskey. Knowing better, Lucius joined him, and whiskey would fire a final dispute over Lucius’s vow to find out what evidence there was, if any, that Papa had ever killed a single soul.
“Name one person who can claim he ever saw Papa shoot at anyone.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Eddie said, even as his upset sister begged her brothers not to talk about their father anymore. “You promised, Lucius.”
“You people promised. I never promised a damned thing.” Clearly his upright siblings lived in dread, he said, not merely of scandal but of what their ancestry might signify if even one of those terrible stories about “Bloody Watson” proved to be true. If Papa deserved his monstrous reputation, then what did it mean to be the get of such a man, the blood inheritor? “That seed might sprout in one of his descendants, ever think of that? That doesn’t scare you?”
“You’re talking crazy,” Eddie said.
“Maybe I am crazy. Maybe you are, too, ever think of that?”
Going out the door, he heard his sister reprimanding Eddie. “He’s not crazy! He’s just idealistic and impractical!”
Lucius knew he had been unreasonable and also that Carrie did not disagree with Eddie, not entirely. He no longer cared. After eight years of wandering in his own head, he felt anarchic, in no mood to mend things. He was so relieved to be acting on a brave new life that he actually exulted over his break with his Fort Myers family. Scared, he suppressed a longing to seek out Nell for the blessing and encouragement he did not deserve.