Killing Mister Watson

by Peter Matthiessen

  "Oh Lord!" she cries. "They are killing Mister Watson!"

  HENRY THOMPSON

  We never had no trouble from Mister Watson, and from what we seen, he never caused none, not amongst his neighbors. All the trouble come to him from the outside.

  Ed J. Watson turned up at Half Way Creek back in '92, worked on the produce farms awhile, worked in the cane. Hard worker, too, but it don't seem like he hoed cane for the money, it was more like he was getting the feel of our community, what was what and who was where. He was a strong, good-looking feller in his thirties, dark red hair, well made, thick through the shoulders but no fat on him, not in them days. Close to six foot and carried himself well, folks noticed him straight off, and no one fooled with him. First time you seen the man you wanted him to like you-he was that kind. Wore a broad black hat, wore denim coveralls over a frock coat with big pockets. Times we was cutting buttonwood with ax and hand saw, two-three cords a day-that's hard and humid work, case you ain't done it, and even them coveralls got sweated-Ed Watson never changed his outfit. Used to joke how he kept his coat on cause he expected some company any day now from up north.

  Nobody knew where this man come from, and nobody asked him. You didn't ask a man hard questions, not in the Ten Thousand Islands, not in them days. Folks will tell you different today, but back then there wasn't too many in our section that wasn't kind of unpopular someplace else. With all of Florida to choose from, who else would come to these overflowed rain-rotted islands with not enough high ground to build a outhouse, and so many skeeters plaguing you in the bad summers you thought you'd took the wrong turn straight to Hell.

  Old Man William Brown was cutting cane, and he listened to them men opining how this stranger Ed J. Watson was so friendly. And when Old Man William never said a word, they was bound to ask him his opinion, and he took him a slow drink of water, give a sigh. "Never knew a real bad feller yet that wasn't nice and easy in his ways. Feller running his mouth all the time, I done this and I'm fixing to do that-no need to pay that feller no attention. But a feller just taking it easy, waiting you out-you better leave that man go his own way."

  So Willie Brown, strong and lively little feller, thought a lot of Mister Watson all his life, Willie Brown said, "Well, now, Papa, are you telling us this man is a bad actor?" And his daddy said, "I just feel something, is all, same way I feel the damp." The men respected Old Man William, but there wasn't one out in the field that day that took him serious.

  All the same, we noticed pretty quick, you couldn't draw too close to Mister Watson before he eased out sideways like a crab, gave himself more room. My half uncle Tant Jenkins claimed he once come up on Mister Watson letting his water, and Mister Watson come around on him so fast that poor Tant thought this feller aimed to piss on him. Well, it weren't his pecker he had in his hand. By the time Tant Jenkins seen that gun, it was halfway back into them denims, he wasn't so certain he seen it after all.

  Tant was always brash and kind of comical. He says, "Well, now, Mister Watson! Specting some company from the north?" And Mister Watson says, "Any company that shows up unexpected will find me ready with a nice warm welcome." Very agreeable, y'know, very, very easy. But he never let nobody come up on him.

  For many years Tant Jenkins and myself run his boats for Mister Watson. Especially when Tant was drinking, which was mostly all the time, he would tease poor Mister Watson something pitiful. Told him that no friend of S.S. Jenkins had a single thing to fear from north or south, though sometimes east and west could give Tant trouble. Mister Watson got a real kick out of that. "Well, Tant," he'd say, "knowing you are on the job, I'll sleep much better."

  Ed Watson had money in his pocket when he come to Half Way Creek, which ain't none of my business nor yours neither. In all the years that I knew Mister Watson, right up until them bad days near the end, he always come up with money when he had to. We didn't know till later he was on the dodge, and maybe even Half Way Creek-half way between Everglade and Turner River, on the east side of Chokoloskee Bay-was too close to the lawmen for his liking. Ain't nothing much out there today but a few old cisterns, but Half Way Creek had ten or a dozen families then, more than Everglade or Chokoloskee or anyplace else from Marco Island south to Cape Sable. Weren't hardly more'n a hundred souls in all that hundred mile of coast, counting the ones that perched awhile at the mouths of rivers.

  Mister Watson weren't at Half Way Creek but a few days when he paid money down for William Brown's old seventy-foot schooner. Later he bought the old Veatlis off Ben Brown, and he always remained in friendship with that family. Used to stop over at Half Way Creek, talk farming with the Browns, every time he come up to the Bay. Ain't many men would buy a schooner that didn't know next to nothing about boats, but a man that is good at one thing most generally's good at another, and Ed Watson could put his hand to anything. Time he was done, he was one of the best boatmen on this coast.

  I seen straight off that Mister Watson was a man who meant to go someplace, I seen my chance, so I signed on to guide him down around the Islands. I had already worked for a year down there, plume hunting and such for Old Chevelier, before I turned that Frenchman over to Bill House. Me and Bill was just young fellers then, a scant fourteen, but a man got started early back in them days. Until some years into this century, there weren't no regular school on Chokoloskee, so you went to work. Nothing else to do when you come to think about it.

  Folks ask, Would I have throwed in with Mister Watson if I knowed about him what I know today? Well, hell, I don't know what I know today, and they don't neither. With so many stories growed up around that feller, who is to say which ones are true? I was just a kid, though I never would admit it, and what I seen were a able-bodied man, quiet and easy in his ways, who acted according to our ideas of a gentleman. And that was all we had, ideas, cause we never seen one in this section, unless you would count Preacher Gatewood, who first brought the Lord to Everglade back in '88 and took Him away again when he departed.

  Mister Watson and me cut buttonwood all around Bay Sunday and down Chatham River, run it over to Key West, three dollars a cord. Cepting Richard Hamilton, who run off down there back in the eighties and stayed on in the Islands fifty years, most of the Island pioneers was drifters. There was even a few old runaways from the War Between the States, never got the word that the war was finished. Never had nothing but thatch lean-tos and a skiff and pot and guns, and maybe a jug of aguedente for fighting off the skeeters in the evening. Plume hunters and moonshiners, the most of 'em. Put earth in a tub, made their fire in the skiff, had coffee going morning, noon, and night.

  A man who called himself Will Raymond was the only settler down on Chatham River-more of a squatter, you might say, camped with his wife and daughter in a palmetta shack on that big forty-acre mound down on the Bend. Will Raymond was like most of 'em down in the Islands, getting away from it all, you know, living along on grits and mullet, taking some gator hides and egret plumes, selling a little moonshine to the Injuns. The Frenchman had the Bend before him, and Old Man Richard Hamilton before that. Biggest Injun mound south of Marco and Chokoloskee, which was why the Frenchman went there in the first place. The Injuns always called it Pavioni. But in them days Pavioni was all overgrowed cause Will Raymond weren't much of a farmer, and Mister Watson would cuss him out every time we went downriver, saying how pitiful it was to see so much good ground going to waste. And maybe he'd already reckoned that Chatham Bend was across the line, in Monroe County, with the closest law near a hundred miles away, down to Key West. But that never occurred to nobody, not at the time.

  Oh yes, we seen plenty like Will Raymond in the Islands, thin piney-woods crackers with them knife-mouthed women, hollow-eyed under bent hats, lank black hair like horses, touchy, on the run. Go crazy every little while, get their old-time religion all mixed up with guns and whiskey, shoot some poor neighbor through the heart. I guess that's what Will done more'n once, he got the habit of it.

  Will must have been wanted pr
etty bad-dead or alive, as you might say. Probably should have picked him a new name, got a fresh start, cause the law got wind of him some way and deputies come a-hunting him, out of Key West. Will said Nosir, he'd be damned if he'd go peaceable, and he whistled a bullet past their heads to prove it. But he was peaceable and then some by the time the smoke cleared, so they threw his carcass in the boat. The law asked the Widder Raymond would she and her daughter like a boat ride to Key West along with the deceased, and she said, Thankee, don't mind if we do.

  Next thing you know, Ed Watson tracked the widder down and bought Will's claim, two hundred and fifty dollars. That was a lot of cash in them days, but there was forty acres of good soil and more across the river, the most high ground anywhere south of Chokoloskee, and Mister Watson liked Pavioni from the start. Protected on three sides by mangrove tangle-you had to come at him straight on or not at all. And he admired the deep channel in that river, used to talk sometimes of dredging out the mouth, make a harbor and stopover place for coastal shipping.

  Oh, he had big plans, all right, about the only feller down there ever did. Started right out by building a fine cabin, used buttonwood posts to frame it up, had wood shutters and canvas flaps on the front windows, brought in a wood stove and a kerosene lamp and a galvanized tub for anyone that cared to wash. We ate good, too, all the fish and meat you wanted, had a big iron skillet and made johnnycakes the whole size of that pan. Put a little oil to his good flour, cooked 'em up dry. I remembered them good johnnycakes all my whole life.

  Mister Watson said Will Raymond's shack weren't fit for hogs, so he patched it up before he put our hogs in it. We had two cows, and chickens, too, but E.J. Watson had a old-time feel for hogs. I can take a hog or I can leave it, but that man loved hogs and hogs loved him, they followed him all over, I can hear him calling down them river evenings to this day. The hogs was brought in every night cause of the panthers, which was very common on the rivers, and he fed 'em garden trash and table slops and such so they wouldn't get no fishy taste from feeding on crabs and orsters at low tide like them old razorbacks of Richard Hamilton. Kept a old horse for breaking up the ground, and sometimes he'd saddle up of a fine evening and ride around his forty-acre farm like it was a spread of four thousand and forty.

  Mister Watson worked us like niggers, and he worked like a nigger alongside us. Brought in a couple of regular niggers from Fort Myers for the dirty work, and they worked hard-that man knew how to get work from his help. The niggers was scared of him cause he was rough, but they kind of liked him when he wasn't drinking. Told 'em nigger jokes that had 'em giggling for hours, but I never got them nigger jokes too good. Me and niggers just don't think the same.

  The old-time Calusas was the ones built up that shell mound, same ones that killed Old Man Ponce de León maybe right in that same place four hundred years ago. And Calusas was still there, the Frenchman said, back in 1838, at the time of the Army expedition to the Islands. In his opinion, them Pavioni people was the last of them big fishing Injuns, said that big Pavioni mound must of been Calusa for two thousand years, same as the big mound at Chokoloskee. Them redskins set there shucking a good while, to fling a forty-acre shell pile over their shoulders. Somewhere not far from Pavioni, on a mound hid from the rivers, there had to be a sacred burial place, the Frenchman said. Used to talk sometimes about sacred rites and human sacrifice and such, like it was common knowledge, but I never really got the hang of it.

  Old Man Chevelier spent most of his last years out hunting his lost mound, shooting plume birds and museum specimens just to get by. Most of my knowledge about Injuns come from him. Maybe he wasn't no American, and atheistical, to boot, but he was the most educated man ever turned up here. Seems funny it would take a foreigner to know more about Injuns than we did. Our own old fellers never cared one bit. Said, Shoot them pesky redskins first, ask questions later, cause they ain't one bit less ornery than your common Spaniard.

  Old Man Richard Hamilton was mostly fishing when he had that place, and Chevelier and Will Raymond, who come after him, never farmed neither, not to speak of. Ed Watson was the first one since the Injuns to hack out all that thorn, dig out palmetta roots thick as your leg, scrape off enough of that old shell to make a farm. That's why it's called the Watson Place today. Grew all kinds of vegetables, and cane for syrup, and tomatoes and alligator pears that the old Clyde Mallory Line shipped straight out of Key West for New York City. One time Mister Watson come back from Fort Myers with some seed potatoes! Them farmers at Half Way Creek and Chokoloskee liked to laugh behind his back, but Mister Watson shipped potatoes for three-four years before he reckoned potatoes didn't pay, and he always raised a few for our own table.

  We got good money for our produce, but too much spoiled before it reached the auction room down to Key West. Coleman and Bartlum, General Commission Merchants-we're probably on the books down there today. And pretty soon, except for our own table, we give up on general vegetables. Long as he could scare him up some field hands, Mister Watson figured there was more future in sugarcane, cause cane don't spoil. After that he figured out that making syrup right on the plantation, instead of shipping all them heavy stalks, made a lot more sense in a out-of-the-way place like Chatham River, cause syrup could be stored till he got his price.

  Meanwhile he worked out his own way of letting the cane tassel before cutting. Syrup from tasseled cane will boil down a lot stronger without sugaring. When he went over to our high-quality syrup is when Mister Watson made his first good money, and got him a bigger schooner from Key West, called her the Gladiator. Packed that syrup in one-gallon tin cans, six to the case, shipped it to Port Tampa and Key West. Our Island Pride syrup become famous. There was planters at Half Way Creek like Storters and Will Wiggins, and Old Man D.D. House up Turner River, they made plenty of good syrup, but Mister Watson had 'em beat right from the start.

  Ed Watson was the only planter south of Chokoloskee that ever made more than a bare living in the rivers, he was the best farmer I ever saw. And all the while we done fishing, too, sold some salt fish, took turtle eggs in season, shot gators and egrets when they was handy. Up them inland creeks, Last Huston Bay, Alligator Bay, egrets was thick, pink curlew, too, and we never failed to take a deer or two for venison, sometimes a turkey. Trapped otters and coons and panthers for the hides, and every little while we'd kill a bear. I thought I was pretty handy with a shooting iron, but I'm telling you now, Mr. Ed J. Watson was a deadeye shot. Only man I ever saw could shoot like that was Henry Short.

  After D.D. House moved his farm from Turner River down to the hammocks back of Chatham River, Henry Short used to come over from House Hammock on a Sunday to see how young Bill was getting on with the Old Frenchman, who lived up the river, Possum Key. Henry and me got on all right, I never held a thing against him, but when he visited the Hamiltons, them people let that nigger eat right at the table. That ain't James Hamiltons I'm speaking about. This is Richard Hamiltons.

  Only one besides me and Mister Watson hunting plume birds in them creeks was Old Chevelier. One afternoon Mister Watson seen the Frenchman's skiff coming out in back of Gopher Key. Sometimes Chevelier had Injuns with him, and this day I seen a log canoe slide back behind the green, soft as a gator. In the Glades Injuns use dugouts made from cypress logs, and they use push poles. Never seen Injuns paddle a canoe in my whole life.

  In a dugout, the braves are standing, so they always seen you first, you were lucky to spot a Injun at all. But Injuns was watching you most all the time, that was something you got used to or you didn't. Watched us white men when we come into their country and watched us when we went away, the same way the wild critters did, the deer, the panther, stopping at the edge of cover and looking back over their shoulder. Give you a funny feeling to be watched like that, you begun to think the trees were watching, too. But a man wouldn't hear nothing but the moan of wasps, them creeks used to be full of wasp nests way back then.

  If Mister Watson seen that dugout, he never paid it
no attention. Chevelier lifts off his straw hat to mop his head, and Mister Watson hikes his gun and shoots that hat out of his hand. That bullet clipped right past his ear, made him skedaddle like a duck into the mangroves.

  You won't hear me deny it. I was shocked. There was a silence fell across that water for a mile away. Weren't nothing to be seen in them long mangrove tunnels but green air and brown stilt roots, and that hard sparkle where the sun come through the trees, but I could feel the black eyes in them stone faces right between the leaves.

  Mister Watson hollers to them trees, "Sir, that hat can be replaced at Chatham Bend!" I knew the Frenchman would not see the joke of it. Scared that poor old man to death, I reckon, cause we never heard a whisper from the mangroves.

  I told Mister Watson all about Chevelier, how he was a hermit collecting rare birds for museums, used three different-size guns so as not to spoil 'em, and paying his keep by selling plumes; how he had all kinds of books there in his cabin, knew all about Injuns and wild critters, spoke some Injun lingo and had wild Injuns visiting that would never go near to Chokoloskee Bay. Them wild ones traded hides and furs through Richard Hamilton, who claimed to be Choctaw or some such, though nobody never paid that much attention. The Frenchman was always close to that Hamilton bunch, and probably it was Old Man Richard who brought them Injuns to him in the first place.

  I could not stop telling all about the Frenchman, because Mister Watson was watching me so hard I just got nervous. That feller would look right past your eyes and not show nothing, or look at you straight for a minute or more without a blink. Then he would blink just once, real slow, like a old turtle, keeping his eyes closed for a moment as if resting 'em up from such an awful sight.

  It was that day, while he rested up his eyes, that I first took notice how fiery he looked, that chestnut hair the color of dried blood, and the ruddy skin and sun-burned whiskers. Them whiskers had a little gold to 'em, he looked like he was glowing from inside. Then them blue eyes was watching me again, out of the shadow of that black felt hat he wore winter and summer. Only hat in the Ten Thousand Islands, I imagine, that had a label into it from Fort Smith, Arkansas.