Now the Atwells had a longtime claim on Lost Man's Key, but they let the Tuckers knock that jungle down, set up a cabin. There was plenty of game and fish down along there, and a patch of good ground with a freshwater spring across the river mouth, not far from the north end of Lost Man's Beach. Wally figured they knew enough by now to live along. Bet was expecting, and Richard Hamilton was nearby, he delivered all the babies in the Islands. The Tuckers aimed to buy the quitclaim from the Atwells as soon as they could save a little money.
Both gangs of Hamiltons and the Atwells back in Rodgers River, all had big clans for company and help. Without that, only peculiar people could stand up to the lonesomeness and heat and insects in them rivers, and that mangrove silence that lay over everything, like mold in rainy season. Being stuck too long in muddy camps with toilsome chores, half bit to death, nothing to look at, and nothing but scuffed-up kids and dogs to talk to, it was mostly women who went crazy in the Islands. The men drank moonshine and got violent, to work them silences out of their system.
With the Tuckers it was just the opposite. We thought it was Wally might not have the grit to make a go of it on Lost Man's Key, but Bet had all the spirit in the world. Without his Bet, that sweet young feller would have howled his heart out in them swamps within the year.
LEON HAMILTON
In '99 we sold our claim on Mormon Key to E.J. Watson and moved another ten miles south to Lost Man's River, halfway from Chokoloskee to Cape Sable, and as far away to hell and gone as a man could get. Moved between Hog Key and Wood Key, hugging the Gulf breeze to keep off the skeeters. We dried and salted fish for the Havana trade.
Folks might tell you that Hamiltons moved away from Chatham River because we was scared of Mister Watson, like them others. Well, I was the youngest boy, at seventeen, and all three, Walter, Gene, and me, could shoot good as our daddy, and our mama could handle a shooting iron, too. We was friendly with Ed Watson, but even if we weren't, the Hamilton clan was there to stay and Watson knew it. The Hamiltons wasn't going to be scared off.
Richard Hamilton moved because he had no taste for company, said his family was as much society as he could handle. Once Jean Chevelier up and died, there wasn't much to keep us around Chatham River. Squatters was roosted on every bump between Marco and Everglade, and some was already drifted south of Chokoloskee Bay. Gregorio Lopez and his boys was in north Huston River, that stretch that is called Lopez River today, and the House clan was farming a bird hammock off Last Huston Bay, and new people named Martins built on Possum Key. But in all them miles south of Chatham River, the only settlers besides ourselves was the James Hamiltons on Lost Man's Beach and Atwells up in Rodgers River.
Along in these years the news come out how it was wrote right in a book that Edgar Watson killed Belle Starr, Queen of the Outlaws. Justice George Storter seen that book when he went to put his kids in school up in Fort Myers. Justice Storter could read good, and he read that news with his own eyes and brought it back to Chokoloskee Bay.
Not long after that, I went with Watson far as Chokoloskee, and Isaac Yeomans seen us going in McKinney's store. Isaac was always pretty brash, and once he's got a few there with him, he sings out, says he wants to know was there any truth in that there story about a feller name of Watson and the Outlaw Queen.
Mister Watson was paying off Old Man McKinney, and I seen his hand stop on the counter. That hand just set there for a minute, tapped a silver dollar. Then he turned slow and looked at Isaac until Isaac spooked and started in to grinning like he'd made a joke, and then Watson turned back the same weary way and went right on paying out his money. When he was done, he turned again and leaned back on the counter, looking the men over, cause by that time they was crowded in the door.
"That same book says that this man Watson got killed breaking out of prison." He pulled out his big watch and looked at it while everybody thought that one over, and then he said, turning to Isaac, "Nobody asking nosy questions about Watson should put much stock into that last part."
Isaac give a wild scared yip, trying to be comical the way Tant used to do, and them others done their best to laugh, and Watson smiled. But them stone-blue eyes of his weren't smiling, nosir, never even blinked, and pretty quick he let that grin fade out, just stood there gazing at them jackasses while they stopped braying one by one and tried to put their faces back together. Then he looks at me and winks, and we walk out.
Life wasn't the same down in the Islands once all them stories started up. His neighbors liked Ed Watson, sure, some called him "E.J." and was proud to let on to strangers what good friends they was with the man who killed Belle Starr. Well, their women never thought in that same way. To most of 'em, Ed Watson was a killer and a desperader who didn't draw the line at killing women, and them quiet, winning ways of his that women liked-that feller drew women like flies all the time we knew him-only made him the more dangerous to deal with. It was a long way to the next neighbor, too far to hear a rifle shot, let alone a cry for help. The men knew this but would not admit it. They liked ol' Ed-you couldn't help but like him!-but in their hearts, they was all deathly afraid.
By the turn of the century, the wild things was so scarce and wary that a lot of the trappers went over to fishing. Some guided Yankees in the winter, then come back mullet-seining in the summer, shot all our curlews off Duck Island, set their trout nets right there on the grass northwest of Mormon Key. They wanted our key for their own camp, they'd shout ashore at night-You damn mulattas ain't got no damn claim to it! They took to crowding us so much we was fixing to shoot one, give the rest something to think about. And it got so they wanted us to shoot, give 'em their excuse to put an end to us once and for all.
Already the fish was getting few because every creek down in the Islands was crawling with plume hunters and gator skinners, never mind the sports off them big yachts in winter and gill netters all summer and moonshiners the whole damn year round. You'd see some stranger once a month where you'd never seen a man every other year, and you'd be leery of that stranger, too, never wave or nothing, just watch him out of sight and go your way.
So Daddy sold Mormon Key to E.J. Watson, and nobody pestered a man like that about no claim. We bought Tino Santini's Lost Man's claim when Tino moved north to Fort Myers, but before settling, we went on south to Flamingo for a year so's Mama could be with granddaddy John Weeks before he died. When we come back, we settled on Wood Key, raised good board houses, put in gardens. Dried salt fish until 1905, when run boats started coming in with ice, took our fresh fish away.
It was 1901, same year we got well started in the fisheries, that E.J. Watson followed us down south, bought the claim to Lost Man's Key from Shelton Atwell. That island lies in the mouth of Lost Man's River, seven-eight acres, enough high ground for a garden, with good charcoal timber, black mangrove and buttonwood, and one of the few springs along that coast. Has a little cove on the east side we called Home Creek where the old Frenchman's maps showed buried treasure.
Atwells was first real settlers in that section, come up from Key West back in the seventies, and they was first ones had a claim on Lost Man's Key. But when they was pioneering, Shelton said, they seen the damage up and down the coast from the hurricane of '73, and they was cautious. Up Rodgers River they located some good hammock ground with protection from the wind and common tides. Later on, when some years passed without no hurricane, Shelton's two boys got to thinking about Lost Man's Key, out on the Gulf, a lot less skeeters with that sea wind and very handy to fresh water, but some way they never got around to it. Said the move might be too much for the old woman, so they best leave well enough alone. Meanwhile they let squatters come and go, to keep the key cleared off. Ones that was on there in 1901 was young Wally Tucker from Key West and his wife, Bet, who had worked the year before for E.J. Watson.
Now Hamiltons had their eye on Lost Man's Key, but Ed Watson wanted it much worst and made sure we knew it. What he aimed to do was salvage that old Everglades dredge that the Disst
on Company abandoned up the Calusa Hatchee, ship it on a barge to Lost Man's River, deepen the channel, dig out a good harbor, set up a trading post like Old Joe Wiggins had at Sand Fly Key, give work to everybody. Stead of shipping our produce to Key West and losing half of it to spoilage, we would sell direct to E.J. Watson. He aimed to supply fresh vegetables and syrup, meat and fish, fresh water, dry goods, fish hooks, bullets, to hunters and fishermen and the Yankee yacht trade, make Lost Man's Key the most famous place on the southwest coast. If his friends farmed the few pieces of high ground, he would control the whole Ten Thousand Islands. Ideas like this one got him that name Emperor Watson, and they weren't crazy, cause on the east coast Everglades development was well started.
Watson's plan depended on that key in the mouth of Lost Man's River, and the Emperor told everybody who would stand still that he aimed to nail down Lost Man's Key just as soon as Old Man Atwell saw the light. The Atwells never rightly knowed just what he meant by that, and they weren't so anxious to find out. Not wanting to be unneighborly to Mister Watson, they passed the word they was thinking the deal over, and after that, they just set tight back up in Rodgers River, never went anywheres near to Chatham Bend.
It weren't that the Atwells didn't like Ed Watson, they sure did. One time when their cane got salt-watered by storm tide, Shelton and his older boy, one we called Winky, went to Watson for some seed cane for replanting, and Watson treated 'em like kings. Put 'em up for four days at the Bend and sent 'em home with hams and venison, anything they wanted. Atwells never did stop talking about how kind Mister Watson was when Winky and his dad went up to Pavioni. Well, everybody in our Hamilton clan had the same experience. Come to old-fashioned hospitality, you could not find a better neighbor in south Florida.
Them Atwells was twenty-five years in the Islands, longer'n anyone before our time. They had two plantations and a lot of fruit trees, grew cabbages, onions, pumpkins, melons, sweet potatoes, and Irish potatoes, too. They got them Irish potatoes off Ed Watson. All the same, and before that year was out, they moved back to Key West. Old Mrs. Atwell upped and said that twenty-five years in the mangrove was enough, she was going back where she was born and die in peace. Said she didn't mind getting bled to death by the dang skeeters, but she'd be darned if she would end her days having her throat slit or her head shot off by some darn bushwhacker from the Wild West. Anybody who wanted to tag along was surely welcome, but she was leaving home sweet home whether the rest of 'em went along or not. Turns out the whole bunch was raring to go, but nobody had wanted to come right out and say so.
They needed a grubstake for their new life, so the first thing Winky and his brother done was go up to the Bend and sell the claim on Lost Man's Key to E.J. Watson. Then they come to say good-bye to us before they left. How come you never offered it to us? we said. Cause we didn't want to cross him, they admitted. They didn't let on they was leaving the Islands, being scared that Mister Watson would take advantage. But taking advantage was not E.J. Watson's style, he was not a small man in that way. He was so excited to get hold of Lost Man's Key, and happy that his Island plan was working out without no trouble, that he just nodded at their asking price, he never blinked.
Yes, Mister Watson was very excited-too excited, Winky said. Not till he'd pocketed the cash did Winky tell him that the Atwells was leaving the Islands for good. Swamp angels finally got the best of us, ol' Winky said-that was Old Man McKinney's name for the damn skeeters-and Watson told 'em in a jolly way how grateful he was that "sharpshooters" and not him had run 'em off.
That day the Atwells paid their call at Chatham Bend, Mister Watson was the perfect gentleman, he went so far as to put on his frock coat before offering 'em a toast of his best whiskey. Yessir, said he, he seen Lost Man's Key as the heart of his whole scheme for this wild coast. Surveys was needed, he explained, because most all of southwest Florida was "swamp and overflowed" land turned over to the state back in 1850, and the state gave most of it to the railroad companies for laying rails into north Florida. The Everglades and the Ten Thousand Islands were still wilderness, and nobody knowed what was where nor who owned what. But he was in close touch with his friend Joe Shands, Lee County surveyor at Fort Myers, and Shands had told him this, that, and the other… and so on and so forth, waving his arms like our old Frenchman used to do when he got his wind up.
Course Storters in Everglade and Smallwoods at Chokoloskee, they knew how to work them land claims, and them families are well-to-do today. But in the Islands, E.J. Watson was the only feller ever wanted paperwork. The rest of us went down there to avoid it. Didn't want no surveys nor preemption, didn't want to know what preemption was. Never got it through our heads that if we didn't file a claim we'd wind up handing it over to outsiders who had paid off politicians to make it legal to steal it out from under us. Some feller would show up waving a paper that proved he owned the land we'd done the work on-damn rock-hard mound we had cleared and hacked and hoed all them long years before that city feller ever heard of southwest Florida-and a couple of sheriff's deputies right beside him to make sure them squatters got off his land quick, didn't try no mulatta tricks on this here city sonofabitch that called himself the rightful owner.
All we knew was, no good would come from getting surveyors nowheres near to Lost Man's River. All filing land claims meant to us was paying good money that we never had for our own land that we cleared off when it was wilderness. First thing you know, we'd be paying taxes with nothing to show for it-no schools, no law, no nothing.
See, it wasn't only just the payment we was dodging but the whole damn government, county, state, or federal, didn't make one goddamn bit of difference. A man would live in a lonesome place like the Ten Thousand Islands is a man that don't like any kind of interference. Ain't got much use for humankind, you come right down to it, including some that I won't name in his own family. Or maybe his neighbors don't like him-don't matter. Them kind I'm talking about don't want no part of them damn paper-wavers from the cities, trying to tell a man where he could take a shit.
Ed Watson didn't see it like the rest of us down in the Islands who never cared if the whole world passed us by. He told them Atwells all about Free Enterprise and Progress, that's what made this country great, is what he said. The Philippines! Hawaii! Puerto Rico! America was bringing light to the benighted, yessirree, expanding our commerce all over the world, same way them Europeans done in Darkest Africa! Asked did we ever stop to think about all them Chinamen? The millions of customers just ready and waiting once them Philippines was ours? Talk about "swamp and overflowed," Ed was just overflowing with good spirits, Winky told me, and hard spirits, too.
Mister Watson's oldest boy was there, never said one word. Rob Watson stayed a little ways off to the side, went back to the field soon as his father started in to drinking. Tant Jenkins's sister was there too, down from Caxambas, served up a fine ol' feed of ham and peas. Ol' Ed got a bit boisterous and hugged his Josie around her bottom as she passed his chair, she had to rap his knuckles with her ladle. She was a pretty little thing with lots of spirit, had her a brand-new baby, Little Pearl. At that time Mrs. Watson hadn't died yet at Fort Myers, so Josie said, "The less said about our Pearl, the better!"
Ed give them Atwell boys plenty of drink, told stories about comical nigras that his family owned back there in Edgefield County, South Carolina. "You doan want to 'rest me foh no Miz Demeanor, Shurf! Ain' nevuh touched no lady by dat name!"
He had cracked that joke at the Hamilton table, too. When we didn't laugh much, he opined, "Well, I guess Choctaws don't care too much for nigger jokes." We knew he was baiting us, and we didn't like it, but Daddy never seemed to mind. Said something easy like, "Is that so, Ed?" and him and his guest would set there nodding and grinning at each other like they knowed a thing or two about this life, which I guess they did.
Anyways, Ed got to boasting, and he let on to them Atwells in no uncertain terms that he didn't need no goddamn Corsican or whatever to hell kind of Span
iard Dolphus Santini called himself to show Ed Watson one damn thing about land surveys, nosir, he didn't, not no more! His daughter Carrie had married one of them cattle kings, and them cattle kings would make damn sure that nobody messed with E.J. Watson. As for getting deeds and titles, his son-in-law's good friends had connections all the way up to the capitol in Tallahassee, so E.J. Watson was on his way! Can't hold a good man down, that's what he told 'em.
So they drank to his success, and he drank to their safe journey and happy days down at Key West, and after that, he come out into the sun with that black hat on and spread his boots and stuck his thumbs in that big belt of his and stood in front of his fine house, to see 'em off. Yessir, says Ed, I'll be down that way tomorrow, have a look at my new property.
Casting off the lines, Winky decided he'd better advise the new owner about Wally Tucker farming Lost Man's Key. Seeing Mister Watson so excited, he had not got around to that, but he felt bolder with the whiskey, so he did.
Mister Watson took the news calm as you please. He come down to the water, not hurrying or nothing, and set his boot onto the stern line as it was slipping off the dock. The current had already caught the bow of their little sloop, and she swung downstream till she was snubbed, then warped back hard against the pilings. Watson had his whiskey in his hand, still looking amiable, but he never took his boot off of that line. Never said a word while the Atwells tried to figure what them blue eyes warned 'em had better be coming next, and damn quick, too.
Killing Mister Watson Page 18
