Whidden Harden laughed. “I believe that, too! On account of you already told me about her yesterday. You met her at the cemetery, remember?”
They had a piss before returning to the others, and facing the woods, Lucius located the bird which made that small, insistent song. “White-eyed vireo!” he blurted, wondering if Papa had ever heard its ancestor, or rather, listened to it.
“White-eyed? You sure?” Whidden was shading his brow like an explorer, staring purposely in the wrong direction. “Sure looked like a wall-eyed to me!” Affectionate, he patted Lucius’s shoulder.
On the porch, Andy was talking to Sally, instinctively keeping his voice low as if there were somebody asleep inside. “When we come here in 1924, this good old place was already stunk up by every kind of varmint, not just humans. Coons and possums, sometimes a bear, all kinds of snakes and lizards—I seen a rattler by the cistern one time, big around as my arm. Upstairs, all kinds of bats and rat snakes and swallers flying in and out all them empty winders, and ceilin wasps, and some of them big narrow black hornets, flickerin their wings under the rafters—you never knew what kind of varmint might be layin for you up that stair, that Cox included!”
Whidden went up on the porch again and put his ear to the door. “Thought I heard creakin.” Again they called, and again they got no answer. “I don’t reckon this new paint will keep them people from burning this place down,” Whidden said. “The Island homes was mostly lean-tos and old shacks, whacked together any whichy-way, ain’t that right, Colonel?—palmetto fan thatch, driftwood scrap, patched out with tarpaper and tin. Weren’t much lost when Parks destroyed ’em except lifetimes of hard work, which don’t count for nothin these days, it don’t seem like.” In his quiet way, Harden was very angry.
“Setting this old house afire, that is something else,” Andy House said. “Dade County pine, cures hard as iron, so her frame and flooring is as sound as ever. Likely Parks don’t even know that, and don’t care. Why them people are so hot to burn this good old house is hard to figure. Got the rest of ’em destroyed already, I suppose. Want to look like they’re doing somethin to earn them government salaries, is what it is.”
Lucius told Andy about Fred Dyer, who had built the porch and cistern. Andy nodded. “I sure heard about them Dyers from an early age. Back in 1905, my uncle Dan ran the mail boat, Punta Rassa to Cape Sable, and he had young Gene Gandees as his crew. Them boys was maybe fifteen at that time. So one day they turned up here when Mr. Watson was away, and the Dyer family come flyin out with their little girl and baby boy, leavin toys and clothes all scattered out behind. Never went back for that stuff neither, just jumped aboard the boat and yelled, ‘Let’s go!’
“On the way downriver, Uncle Dan asked ’em why they was in such a hurry. They admitted that they never seen no bad deeds while they was here, no sign that Watson killed his help on payday, the way people said. But they knew somethin very bad had happened to the young couple that was here before ’em, and they was worried about their little children. Around that time, rumor come about Watson murderin the Audubon warden at Flamingo—well, that done it. The woman seemed calm enough, Uncle Dan said, but her husband was sick afraid.
“Mrs. Dyer let on how it was her who wished to leave, and how she was always scared in this wild country, what with all the snakes and panthers and wild Injuns. But Uncle Dan believed she only said that to cover up her husband’s fear of Mr. Watson. On the way north, she mentioned that in her estimation, Mr. Watson was a good and generous man, a gentleman, and a good Christian. Every Sunday morning without fail, they would all sing hymns in the front room and Mr. Watson would read aloud out of the Bible.
“Twenty years later, Dan House saw the husband in Fort Myers, and he said to him ‘Well, Mr. Dyer, you might not be walking around this town if it weren’t for me.’ I reckon Fred Dyer thought so, too, cause seein Uncle Dan, he whooped for joy and hugged him like a long-lost friend.”
Sally Brown said shortly, “Maybe Dan House and Gene Gandees made so much of that story because both of ’em were in the Watson mob a few years later, and they wanted to justify the execution of a neighbor who helped folks out when times were hard and never did a bit of harm to either one of them.”
“Well, Miss Sally, that is possible,” Andy House said.
When Lucius Watson first returned to the Ten Thousand Islands, people made sure that he heard the rumors about Henry Short and the death of Lucius’s father. Though he thought these stories dangerous and absurd, he eventually decided to seek out Henry and hear what he had to say.
Henry had not been easy to track down. He no longer visited the Hardens, who claimed they did not know where he might be found. This was more or less true, but it was also true that, much as they liked Lucius, they could not be sure of his true intentions. Only later did they tell him that Henry Short, still feeling unsafe, had dismantled the Frenchman’s shack again and moved it by skiff piece by piece from Gopher Key all the way south to Cape Sable, where he lugged the boards three miles or more inland to a desolate area of scrub and brackish water (“That whole cabin traveled on that one man’s shoulder,” Lee Harden marveled) only to have it blow away in the Hurricane of ’26. Meanwhile he worked from time to time for the House family here on the Watson Place, and learning of this, Lucius came to see him. Not wanting to scare Henry into hiding, he slipped up Chatham River with the tide and was at the dock at daybreak. Trying to calm the House’s mean dogs, he walked unarmed toward the house, careful to keep his empty hands out to the side.
Bill House was already on the porch. In his nightshirt, he stood like a ghost in the porch shadows. Warning Henry, he sang out, “Ain’t that a Watson?”
“Morning, Bill.”
“Lookin for me?”
“Looking for Henry.”
“What you want with him?”
Henry Short appeared at the corner of the boat shed, holding his rifle down along his leg. When Lucius said good morning, Henry Short lifted his hat a little but did not come forward. He was a strong, good-looking man with blue-gray eyes, composed and very clear in his appearance. Like most men in the Islands, he went barefoot, but unlike most, he kept himself clean-shaven, and his blue denims were well-patched and clean.
Lucius drew closer, out of earshot from the porch. He had planned to open this difficult conversation with a few civilities, but at the last second he came right out with it. “There’s been some rumors, Henry.”
Oddly, Henry chose this moment to lean his rifle against a sawhorse by the boat shed wall. His face was set, without expression, like a prisoner resigned to a harsh sentence.
“Some say you took part in my father’s death,” Lucius continued, keeping his voice low. “That you were first to shoot.”
The night before, camped under the moon at Mormon Key, his purpose had seemed clear, but standing here in the new heat of morning, with the Houses watching from the porch, he no longer knew why he had come nor what he might be looking for. He had finally caught up with Henry Short, yet within instants his whole inquiry seemed empty and unreasonable—what was the man to say? How could he act on anything this man confessed to, since even if Short’s bullet was the first one, striking Papa dead before the others fired, that astonishing circumstance could not have changed the outcome in the slightest way.
“Well?” he demanded stupidly. “Is it true?”
The man’s headshake was scarcely more than a twitch, as if he were bone tired of telling a truth which had never been believed—tired of lying, tired of running, tired of an unfulfilled existence. He seemed to indicate that the white man could do anything he liked, and Henry Short would go along with it out of indifference. “Your daddy always treated me real good,” Henry said politely, not to ingratiate himself but to ease the ridiculous situation in which Lucius had put them.
Lucius saw that he and Henry Short could have been friends. He had an impulse to offer his hand, but under the sharp eye of Bill House he could not bring himself to do that, knowing
how weak and sentimental it would appear. Instead he told him, “You have nothing to fear from me,” and Henry nodded. “All right, Mist’ Lucius,” he said simply. They did not say good-bye. Lucius turned and walked toward the dock.
“Well, that was quick!” Bill House called out as he went by the porch. Lucius raised his hand, taking time to smile at the husky blond boy who stood close as a calf at House’s elbow. The boy had to subdue a friendly grin. This chip off the old block had his gun with him, too—the oldest boy, named for Bill’s cousin Andrew Wiggins.
“How’s your list coming, Colonel?” Bill House called after him. “I sure hope you got my name on there!” When Lucius kept on going, he yelled angrily, “You hear me, Watson? Next time, don’t try slippin up on us so quiet!”
Lucius Watson’s visit to the Bend fired up old rumors in regard to Henry Short and did nothing to resolve the ambiguities. He had been too circumspect, failing to demand that Short refute the story in so many words—not that his denial would signify a thing. But in that case, why had he gone there in the first place?
Lucius recognized that the Bay families, despite their wariness of “Watson’s boy,” had done their best to welcome him when he came back—that it was his own ambiguous behavior which had scared and angered them. Even the Hardens had warned him from the start that in asking his questions, he was making a serious mistake. The Harden clan was already shunned at Chokoloskee Bay, and Lucius Watson’s presence made their danger worse, since it was believed that in any showdown, Lucius Watson would throw in with the Hardens, and would bring his gun. Except for Earl Harden, they had not complained, for they were tough and independent, but feeling guilty about worsening their danger, and trying to ease the tension on the Lost Man’s coast, Lucius would leave from time to time, live on his boat and fish out of Flamingo or fish-guide out of Marco or perhaps go on a long bender at Key West. Yet he never strayed from the Harden family very long. For thirty years, until the Park came in, the wilderness at Lost Man’s River was his home.
Two years later, the House family had gone north to the Trail to grow tomatoes and the Thompsons had replaced them on the Bend. “Probably heard there wasn’t much hard work involved in caretaking,” Andy said, “or maybe Thompson believed those tales about Watson’s buried gold. Henry Short must of heard them stories, too, because he stayed behind here after we left, kept right on diggin.
“Bein friends of E. J. Watson, Thompsons resented Henry Short. They believed he had raised his gun against a white man. Told him to start his digging over here back of the cistern, and when he was done, Gert made that place her kitchen garden, which she had planned to put in all along. Had him dig a pit for a new outhouse that bein a nigra he was not allowed to use.”
Lucius visited Henry Short again after the arrival of the Thompsons. “He’s hidin on ye,” Thompson told him when Lucius showed up at the Bend—his way of hinting without saying so that Yes, indeed, Henry Short had been involved. Thompson shooed his girls inside without offering help, and Lucius hunted Short down by himself.
It was the first real autumn day, a norther, when mosquitoes seemed listless even at dawn and dusk. He found the man mending net around the corner of the boat shed, perched on a sawhorse in the October sun, out of the wind. The ancient Winchester was leaned against the shed, well out of reach, though Short had heard his motor on the river and could have kept that gun at hand if he had chosen to.
Henry Short laid down his net needle and touched his hat. He rose slowly, ceremoniously, standing not stiffly but dead straight, and as before, he appeared resigned to anything his black man’s life still had in store for him, including its relinquishment here and now at the hands of Watson. Had Lucius put a revolver to his temple, he might have flinched but would have remained still, less out of fortitude than fatalism and perhaps relief that his trials were coming to an end.
Henry brushed coon scat off a fish box for his visitor. Yes sir, he agreed, he had gone down to the shore that day. He had done so because his Miz Ida had told him to go keep an eye on Mist’ Dan Senior.
“Why did you carry your rifle down there if you never meant to use it?”
“I don’t know, suh.”
“If you don’t know, then why should I believe your story?”
“I don’t know, suh.” Neither insolent nor evasive, careful to speak in an open, earnest manner, Henry had looked his inquisitor straight in the face.
Lucius tried to be hard-minded and objective. “My father knew that Mr. D. D. House adopted you when you were little, and that you owed a debt to Mr. House. And we can assume that my father saw you standing in that crowd of armed frightened men who might panic and gun him down at any second. He knew that you were a crack shot, and he knew you might feel obliged to shoot if any of the House men became threatened. That correct so far? And being afraid of him, you probably feared that he might shoot you unless you shot him first—was that your thinking?”
“Nosuh,” Henry mumbled, suddenly retreating into negritude. “Wouldn’t nevuh shoot Mist’ Edguh Wasson, nosuh, wouldn’t nevuh shoot no white mans, nosuh.” When Lucius gave him a severe look, he hunched a little in subservience, neck bent, eyes cast down. “White folks ’customed to seein Nigger Henry with Mist’ Dan’s old rifle. Maybe dat las’ afternoon, dey imagine dey seen Henry raise it up like he fixin to shoot.” He shook his head. “Jus’ mistaked dereself, dass all. Dem mens was busy watchin yo’ daddy, see what he might do, dey nevuh paid no mind to no ol’ nigger. Anyways,” he wheedled, “dem white folks roun’ de Bay was allus good to me. Dem Chrishun folks wouldn’ nevuh tell no lies ’bout po’ Henry.”
Lucius had jumped up in a rage. This man had lived his whole life among whites, and spoke like one, and furthermore, Henry knew well that Lucius Watson would never be taken in by this performance. What Henry was saying to him was, Is this minstrel show what I must offer before you will let me live my life in peace?
Henry Short stood motionless, staring straight back at him. Then he blinked and slowly shook his head. That might have been all the denial Lucius needed, but Henry, reverting to his normal voice, resumed, unbidden, as if alerted long before to Lucius’s coming, and to the inevitability of his questions, and to the necessity of answering him, at whatever risk. Very carefully, Henry said, “Mist’ Edguh knew as good as anybody that Henry Short would never raise a gun against him.” Lucius searched his face for any sign of ambiguity. It remained impassive. They held that gaze and then, minutely, both men nodded.
After that meeting, their paths would cross from time to time along the rivers. They would lift their hats or make a vague half wave. Rarely, they smiled, then looked away and kept on going. Both were outcasts, taken in by the same outcast family, and that alone should have disposed them to a common trust, yet they shared an instinct not to seek the other out. They had spoken together only twice, yet felt no need to speak, because they knew. And though neither man would have referred to this odd bond in terms of friendship, a friendship was what, in its mute way, it had become.
High cirrus. Sun. A strange loud racketing, rising and falling, coming downriver.
“Ah hell.” Whidden stood up. They hurried the blind man back toward the boat.
Ibis and egrets scattered out across the sky, their squawking lost in the oncoming noise, which grew violently loud, as if the airboat had sprung free of the river surface, to rise over the treetops and crash down on them. Though it had not emerged from behind the bend, leaves shuddered and spun where the windstream from its airplane propeller tore at the trees. Then the motor howled—“They seen the Belle!”—and the airboat skidded into view, skating out wide onto the open river. There it idled, slopped by its own wake. When it circled back toward the bank, the metal hull pushed a bow wave crossways to the current.
Perched on a platform raised above the propeller, which was housed in a heavy wire cage over the stern, Crockett Junior in black T-shirt and dark glasses yanked at the controls with dexterous grabs and swings of his good arm
. Dummy and Mud on the deck below were jamming clips into their carbines. On the bow, straining to jump, crouched the brindle dog.
“Ah hell,” Harden repeated, cranking the engine.
Andy and Sally were already in the cockpit, and Lucius was ready to let go the lines when Whidden raised a hand to check him. He cut the engine and, in no hurry, joined Lucius on the bank. An attempt at flight could excite a predatory instinct which might get them shot at, and anyway, the airboat could overtake them within seconds.
That they were so suddenly in peril, that the battering wind and awful racket might end in senseless violence, seemed incredible to Lucius, who could scarcely take it in. In this instant, there was less danger from the guns than from that dog—a large knob-headed male, squat and tawny, patched with brown, as if hacked rudely from a block of tropic wood. “He ain’t tied,” Whidden’s mouth was shouting, over the airboat’s roar.
Crockett Junior spun the propeller in reverse, and the roar died in a buffet of hot wind as he killed the engine. In the stunned quiet, the airboat lost headway, riding its bow wave toward the bank. “You huntin trouble, Whidden boy? You come to the right place!” And Sally shrieked, “Junior? Take it easy, honey! There’s no need to act crazy!”
Mud and Dummy had lowered their automatic rifles but neither made a move toward the dog. The pit bull, shivering, strained forward on the bow, tendons, jaws, and dirty gold eyes taut. As Whidden yelled, “Mud, grab that fuckin dog!” it sprang, striking the bank with an audible hard thud of bone-filled paws.
Stiff-legged, the dog circled the two strangers, leg by leg, the bristles of its nape as stiff as wire. A rank canine smell rose from its hide, and from its clamped jaws came a low steady rumble. Lucius’s instinct was to freeze and not look down, as if the least twitch might betray his fear to this morose animal. That in these stark instants he could still hear the light tsik-teriu-tsik of the vireo would strike him later as the furthest reach of hallucination.
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