"I am… homesick?" he would tell my children, to explain his tears. "That is how you say it? Sick of home?"
When the kids visited, they would set him outside like a doll while they cleaned the cabin, but he never noticed nothing, in or out, just set there on his little stoop staring at the sun till he couldn't see no more. Struck his self blind. Might let out a yelp once in a while, but that's about all. Wouldn't let them bathe him, just waved 'em off, that's how furious he talked inside his head. Showed no interest in his feed, just wasted away. Jean Chevelier died of his own spleen, he choked on life.
Young Bill House had been gone a while from Possum Key, and Elijah P. Carey only came and went. Toward the end, as lonely as he was, the old man got tired of Cap'n Carey. "I am alone," he said one day, "no matter he is here or isn't. Silence is better."
Cap'n Carey weren't such a bad feller, but he told himself too many lies. He was a man needed to talk, couldn't stand no silence very long, and when that old man paid him no more mind, didn't hardly notice he was there, the poor man took to giving speeches to the wild things that watched from the green walls that was closing in. He was getting so crazy back in there with that silent old man glaring at the sun that he could hear the sun roar and the trees groan in the night, that's what he told us. Had to listen to God's silence, and what he heard put a bad scare in him, is what it come to. He weren't cut out for solitude, and anyway he was always scared his neighbor Mister Watson might recall him from Ed Brewer's posse, maybe take a mind to put a stop to him for good. As for Indins, he was sure them devils was spying on him night and day.
The captain clean forgot how much he despised redskins, that's how lonesome he got when he seen they would not make friends. He was always a big cozy feller, arm around your shoulder, but Indins didn't feel so friendly, not in them days. They was up to something, in the captain's estimation. He'd feel their eyes on him and whip around and see 'em standing there. He'd laugh, you know, like they had played a joke to fool him, but they never blinked. The Indins took what he had in trade for plumes and pelts and hides, then went away again, as deaf as ghosts, paying no attention to his holler.
When he got desperate, the captain would pay us a call, and get all upset and red in the face over how mean and ungrateful that old man was who wouldn't even talk to him! We didn't have nothing to say to that, and anyways, our family never spoke much cept on Saturdays. Nobody spoke much in the Islands cepting our gabby Liza. That river silence closed over our words like wet mud filling a fresh coon print. Still and all, we'd set with him a little, simmer him down some with good coffee, fish, and grits, and more and more he would not leave, he'd want to stay the night. He wasn't easy in our company, and as my dark boy, Walter, said, you had to feel sorry for a man would take the charity of mixed-breed people. All his life our Walter spoke real quiet, and I never did learn how to read his smile.
One morning that big white man heaved up from our table and kept right on going, headed south. He left some money but not much to take care of his old partner till he come back, he almost threw his arm out waving good-bye. That is how afeared he was we might think poorly of him, which I guess we did, cause we knew that was the last we'd see of Elijah Carey. That big cabin we built for him on Possum Key is up there yet, all thorn-growed and blind windows, and the varmints slinking in and out, and flowers growing through the chinks where wind and rot clear space for the sun and air.
Not long after the captain left, E.J. Watson and his missus paid a call on the Old Frenchman and engaged in a fine educated conversation. When Chevelier told me that, I thought he must of had him a French nightmare, but years later, Watson told me the same thing. Neither one cared to speak about it much. But Old Jean told John Leon later he had satisfied himself our neighbor was a murderer, and crazy, too. He begged us to shoot Watson like a dog, first chance we got.
I guess I liked that cantankerous old devil. He spoke plain, he knew some things, and he give me a education, right from the day he came to Chatham Bend. This was four-five years before Watson came there. Jean Chevelier was first to see that Mister Watson would mean trouble, and that he would change our life there in the Islands.
John Leon and Liza tended the old man on his deathbed. He called 'em his godchildren and kind of let on he would leave 'em his property to repay their kindness cause he had no kin. And Leon was very happy about that, cause he had took a liking to Possum Key the time we lived there, and had his heart set on a life down in the Islands.
One day John Leon took Gene to Possum Key because that day his sister could not go. John Leon was twelve-thirteen at the time, Gene two years older. Going upriver with the tide, the two boys passed the Watson Place and never seen a soul, but when they got to Possum Key, they found Ed Watson standing on the shore watching 'em come, and when they waved at him, the man did not wave back. Gene was all for turning tail and heading home but his young brother said Nosir, not till we give Mr. Jean his fish and vegetables. Watson watched them till they had that skiff tied up, they was sidewinding to walk on past him when he cleared his throat and said, Good morning, boys. When he asked what they wanted, John Leon tells him they have brought some vittles for the Frenchman.
Mister Watson says, "He has died off of old age." He points to a fresh mound of earth where he has buried him, and the three of 'em stood a little while, thinking that over.
After a while John Leon says, "Never said nothing about me and Liza?" Watson shakes his head. Says he has bought the quitclaim to the place, he is the owner, and that is all he knows. Leon is upset. He says, "Mr. Jean looked pretty good, day before yest'day!" And Watson says, "He don't look good today."
Seeing that man smile a little, Gene give a moan and lit out for the boat, John Leon close behind. The boys never knowed nothing bad about Ed Watson-I never told 'em nothing, cause I didn't want to scare 'em-but that day they got wind of something dark, and they headed for home as fast as they could row.
The way John Leon told it puzzled me awhile, cause he admitted Mister Watson never said a single thing to fright 'em. And there was no doubt Jean Chevelier was going to his reward that week if he had one coming. He didn't need no help from E.J. Watson, never mind what Eugene would say later. So maybe those kids was just upset by the shock of hearing the old man had died.
Only mystery was why my old friend changed his mind about his will. Lige Carey always did complain that Jean Chevelier was born ungrateful, and I guess he was.
Next time I seen Mister Watson was in McKinney's little trading post at Chokoloskee, but I never asked that man a single question. Never asked how a dying man planned to spend the money that he got from Watson for the quitclaim, nor what become of that quitclaim money after Old Jean died. So far as I know, ain't nobody asked them questions, then or later, and I'll tell you why.
Folks told themselves they didn't know Chevelier, never liked him any, he was a outsider, ain't that right? Hobnobbed with the Devil and never cared who knowed it, so maybe it was the Devil who come got him. Anyways, it wasn't nobody's damn business what that cranky old foreign feller done with his money. Maybe them mulattas done him in, maybe Carey run off with his silver dollars, who's to say? Never could trust them Key West pirates-that's the way it went. Nobody blamed Ed Watson, even behind his back, that's how scared they was that he might hear about it, cause after Santini, the fear of E.J. Watson had grown up thick as weeds in a June garden. Watson knew this and enjoyed the stir in every place he would walk into, and later this was held against him, too, along with being better educated than most everybody else, not to mention smarter, and a better farmer, and a better trader.
But I was in friendship with that Frenchman, we was both outsiders, and I couldn't come up with a good excuse to turn my back on it. Watson knew what my kids must have told me about Jean Chevelier's fresh-dug grave on Possum Key, and maybe he knew I could not let it pass. He never missed much. I seen as quick as I come into the store that he knew I was on the island, he expected me. It was very hard to take that fell
er by surprise.
I told John Leon, Stay outside. I don't mind saying I was feeling gloomy.
Ed Watson and me got on all right, and it was natural to say good morning. He had on that frock coat he always wore when he come up to Chokoloskee Bay on business, and he shifted as I come forward, cocking his head with that little smile of his, and put the lard tin he was buying back down on the counter with a small sharp click. That freed his hands and give me fair warning, both.
Facing him down made Watson dangerous, you could feel him coiling. I had heard how quick he struck Santini, how quick Dolphus went from a big mouth to a slit throat. Watson's smile had no give to it at all, he was just waiting on me, ready to let go whatever I seen building up behind them eyes.
"Why, howdy, Ed," is what I said.
"Howdy," he says, dead flat. Didn't use my name. His voice advised me there was no way to question him about Chevelier without hinting that he knew more than he should of, and it also advised me to back off while there was time.
I did. I ain't proud about it, but that is what I done. If his knife come out, never mind his gun, there wasn't a man in Chokoloskee would jump in on the side of Richard Hamilton, cause no damn redskin, let alone no damn mulatta, asked hard questions of a white man. The only one who would jump in was John Leon, and I couldn't risk him even if I felt like going up against Ed Watson, which I didn't.
When Watson seen I was aiming to be sensible, he sticks his hand out, and I shake it. Only hand was offered me all day.
"What's the news," he asks me, "from the Choctaw Nation?"
I was raised not far from where Watson used to live, out in the Nations, Oklahoma Territory, so this was just to pass the time of day. But some of my wife's Daniels kin, they heard us, and took his words as a joke on Richard Hamilton. They laughed real loud to flatter their friend Ed, and I grinned, too. I told myself long, long ago to live and let live, not react to the mangy ways of white people, and I never regretted it. I said, "Indins ain't never got no news, Ed, you know that."
My second boy was the one who spread that story about how he caught Ed Watson red-handed at Possum Key, and how it sure looked like Watson killed the Frenchman. Gene was scared to death of Watson, claimed he hated him, but the rest of us had growed accustomed and were not afraid. Ed Watson was always bountiful with my family, never failed to help us out when times were hard. John Leon got real friendly with him in later years, and his sweet wife, Sarah, even more so. They knew what kind of man he was and liked him anyway. Yessir, they was proud to know that feller.
My opinion, Watson never killed my friend Chevelier, and he never bought nor paid for Possum Key. He went over there to talk about it, found Jean Chevelier dead, and he just took it. Being it was only that mean Frenchman, folks was content to let him get away with it.
Even when Mister Watson disappeared, not long after the turn of the century, no one squatted on Possum Key for a long time. Not until a few years later, when it looked like he was never coming back, did people here start in to saying that he done away with that old foreigner to get his money and the claim on Possum Key. And I reckon that's what Mister Watson wanted people to believe, so long as he knowed we wouldn't do a thing about it. It was less trouble to scare squatters off the mounds than it was to shoot 'em.
There's another part to this Chevelier story I don't tell too much. Some way them Mikasukis in the Cypress, they learned about what was dug up at Marco, and they didn't like it. Them old things should been left where they belonged. An Indin burial place had been disturbed, the earth was bleeding from the massacre of birds and gators, and the Mikasukis was afeared that bad spirits of their old enemies might be set loose.
To give fair warning to the white people, the chief medicine man, Doctor Tommie, went to Fort Myers with the trader from Fort Shackleford, east of Immokalee. That trader brought in a covered wagon with three yoke of oxen, an eighteen-day round-trip of seventy miles, all loaded down with gator flats for Henderson's store. Doctor Tommie set quiet on them flats until they got there, then stood up on that wagon to protest all the ruination of his country. That old Indin give warning to the white people, especially Bill Collier and Cushing, and also Mr. Disston, who had paid, that something bad was bound to happen if them sacred masks and ceremony cups and such were not give back to the mother earth where they belonged.
This was early 1898, the Maine had just been sunk in Havana Harbor and the Spanish-American War was cranking up, and nobody had time to listen to no loco savage in queer headgear and long skirt. Straight off Doctor Tommie seen that the white people did not care to hear his warning, and so he wouldn't speak no more but walked back out into the Cypress before they decided to ship him off to Oklahoma.
Weren't two weeks later, Bill Collier's schooner Speedwell capsized in a squall in the Marquesas, down here about eighteen miles off of Key West. Two of his young sons drowned in the cabin along with a whole family of passengers, and Captain Bill, who scarcely got away with his own life, seen their little hands scratching on the porthole glass as that boat slid down. Meanwhile, Disston killed himself from not knowing what to do with all his money, and pretty soon Frank Cushing died, not fifty years of age, never knew fame nor fortune from his great discovery. Cushing's house burned down after his death, and most everything he looted from sacred Indin ground went back into the earth by way of fire.
You will say that all of this is funny coincidence, but if you was Indin, you would understand it. Indins don't know about coincidence, that is just white-man talk.
SARAH HAMILTON
Richard Hamilton asked the Frenchman to be godfather when Leon and Mary Elizabeth, called Liza, got baptized by a traveling priest. Seemed peculiar that Daddy Richard chose the Frenchman in spite of the way Chevelier ranted on against the Church, and even more peculiar that a man in cahoots with the Devil would agree to it. But both those old fellers were mischievous to start with, and Daddy Richard, once in a long while, liked to stick a pin in that big wife of his to hear her scream. As for the Frenchman, he esteemed Richard Hamilton without ever admitting how much he depended on his kindness. Them two was a couple of old misfits, sure enough, but Daddy Richard stayed real calm, never tangled with nobody, while the Frenchman was thorny as old cat-claw, raked everyone who come across his path except Liza and Leon.
Richard Hamilton was dead honest, and there ain't too many who can handle that. Never said what he did not know to be a fact, he'd tell you no less than the truth but not one word more. He was very cut and dried, never added and he never took away. When Leon's fool brother got all lathered up, yelling what he would do to this one, say to that one, and working himself into a uproar, his father would just set there looking innocent, like he was listening to a bird or something. "That so, Gene?" he'd say. He believed in live and let live, and if Eugene wanted to holler, let him do it. But if you asked him straight if there was anything to what Gene said, he'd shake his head. "No, there sure ain't," he'd say, and spit, case you missed the point.
Right to his end, and he lived close to a hundred, Leon's pap was a no-nonsensical old man. He wore a white mustache and beard on skin smooth as mahogany, wore a round straw hat and galluses, and he went barefoot. Pap walked away from his last pair of shoes back in '98 and his feet still thanked him every day, is what he said. His boys took after him. Up until the day we left the rivers, 1947, there weren't one self-respecting pair of shoes in the whole family.
The way Mother Mary always told it, Richard Hamilton's mother was a Choctaw princess who got wooed out of her doeskins by an English gentleman, a gun dealer, back in Oklahoma. "Booze peddler and his squaw woman is more like it," Pap said. All the same, Pap had narrow English features to go with his mother's skin, which you might call dusty. He was reared up around a Catholic mission, and he read the Catholic Bible and lived by it, too, till the day he died, and called himself a Oklahoma Indin.
My mother-in-law, she was Seminole on her mother's side, but because her daddy was old John Weeks, the pioneer settle
r at Chokoloskee, she seen herself as white as a nun's buttocks. She always acted like she done her man a favor to run off with him, though to my mind just the opposite was true. My husband, John Leon, was her baby boy and her favorite among her children, and mine, too. That was about the only thing I ever did agree upon with that gruesome female, and even on that one, our reasons were not the same.
I loved that big strong boy because he stuttered when he got excited, and had him a generous heart under all that roughness. But his mama liked him mostly for his looks, and his fair skin especially. However, I will say for that woman, she was loyal to all her children, even Gene. To hear her tell it, they were the only children in southwest Florida that was worth their keep. She'd say, Folks is always carrying on about how lonely it must be for womenfolk in them awful islands, rain and mud and nothing but skeeters and sand flies to keep you company. And I just say, Heck no, it ain't lonely! Don't need no company when you got children like mine!
John Leon was born the year the Hamiltons give up farming Chatham Bend and went fishing for a year on Fakahatchee. The next year they came back to Chatham Bend, but they were fishermen from that time on. Walter, Gene, and Liza was all born on Chatham Bend in the 1880s, then Ann E. on Possum Key about the time Mister Watson first showed up. Walter was oldest, Eugene in the middle, and then John Leon-they were all two years apart. Gene was fair-haired, and as fair-skinned as Leon, but his nose and lips was kind of thick, you know, and his hair had a kind of little wave to it.
Them long-tongues up in Chokoloskee called Leon Hamilton a white man, but that was just their way to swipe at Daddy Richard, who started the fracas by going off with John Weeks's daughter. The one reason Leon was white, they said, was because a white man got into the pen when the family spent that year at Fakahatchee.
Killing Mister Watson Page 12
