Knowing Winky, I reckon he was winking, along with taking desperate care, he said, not to stare at Watson's boot, which was about on the same level with his face. Ed Watson had the smallest foot of any man his size you ever seen, it was one of the very first things that you noticed, and after that it was hard to take your eye off, even worse than another man's blind eye.
Finally Winky started talking, and his words come out all in a ball. He told Ed Watson that Wally Tucker never had no kind of claim on Lost Man's Key, nosir, no claim at all, it was just he had been on there for a while-
"I know how long that sonofabitch been on there-"
"-and being as how Atwells never used it, we never had the heart to run him off."
Watson nodded and kept right on nodding, with the Atwells setting in the boat trying to show how much they agreed with him without saying nothing that might turn him ugly. They was nodding right along with him like a pair of doves.
"I'll tell you what you people do," Ed Watson said after a while. He cleared his throat and spat clear across their boat, and the Atwells looked politely at his big ol' phlegm floating away on the black water. "What you do, you notify that conch sonofabitch on your way home that the claim is sold to E.J. Watson, and you tell him to get his hind end off of there as soon as he can dump his drag-ass female and all the rest of his conch shit into his boat and haul up that old chunk of worm rock that he calls an anchor and get to hell back to Key West, where he belongs. Now how is that?"
The Atwell family being Bahamians, Winky didn't care much for that "conch" talk, but what he said was "That's just fine, Ed, not one thing wrong with it."
Watson's fury was so raw that Winky got him a bad scare, knowing there was a shooting iron under that coat. Must been winking like a baby rabbit. He had clean forgot Watson's quarrel with the Tuckers, if he ever knowed about it. But what with all the whiskey he had drunk, he got his courage up and tried again. Thing was, he said, young Tucker had built him a nice thatch house and a good dock, and cleared off a good piece of land, and had his crops in, and his wife was about to bust with her first baby. Atwells knowed from their own firsthand experience how generous a man Ed Watson was-they let that sink in, Winky said-and maybe he could see his way clear to letting them young folks finish out their season.
Ed Watson didn't care one bit for that idea. Why should he ride herd on them damned people, with Lost Man's Key so far off down the coast? The Atwells had let Tucker on there, and it was up to them to get Tucker off there, right? And Winky said that sure was right, Ed, not one thing wrong about it.
"Something's eating you," Ed said, after a moment, and took out his watch.
And Winky said, No, no, no, Ed! It was only that Tucker was a proud kind of young feller, and might not take to being told flat out to get his wife, who was in a family way, off of that Key with not a scrap laid by to eat, no place to go, and not a cent to show for his hard work.
Watson was looking down at his own boot where it trod the rope, and in that silence, Atwells said, they felt like screeching. There was no sound at all in that slow heat but the river sucking at the mangroves. Finally Watson said, "I sure do hate to hear a white man talk that way. Where I come from, a damn squatter can be proud till he's blue in the face, that don't give him the right to go up against a feller that has bought and paid for legal title. Where I come from, the law's the law."
Well, Winky didn't argue none with that. He just couldn't believe that a man so kind to all his neighbors could turn so cold-hearted so quick. Winky weren't by no means a bad feller, and he seen Atwells was in the wrong. They should of damn well got it straight with Tucker in the first place.
He decided to give Watson back his money. Kind of sudden-like-he was nervous and upset-he stuck his hand into his pocket, and the next thing he knowed, he was looking straight down the black hole of a Smith & Wesson.38. From that close up, it put him in mind of a cannon he seen once, down at Key West.
Very slow, young Mr. Atwell come up with that envelope and stuck it out, and very slow Ed Watson put that gun away under his coat.
Watson paid no attention to the money. He was angry he had showed that gun, and being drunk, he was red-eyed and wheezing heavy, staring away like he was thinking hard about something else. Winky murmured how he sure was sorry for giving Mister Watson such a turn, and when Watson just grunted, looking past him down the river, as if planning what he aimed to do with these boys' bodies, Winky's nerve broke and his voice broke, too. What he meant was, Winky squeaked-he got nervous all over again, just describing it-what he meant was, Atwells would be happy to return the money until they got this Tucker business straightened out. But Watson only shook his head and finally Winky's arm got tired and he put the money back into his pocket.
By now, all the Atwells wanted was to get to any other place as quick as possible. But Watson stood there, his boot on the rope, and all Winky could think about was trying to look away from that little boot. Finally Ed blinked, kind of surprised, as if he had just woke up from a long dream-them's Winky's words-and found these strangers setting at his dock.
"You people can return that money," he says in a thick voice, "or you can give the money to that fucking Tucker, or you can stick it up your skinny damn conch ass. But no matter what you do with it, E.J. Watson bought that claim on Lost Man's Key, and he wants them people off of it by Monday next."
Talk as rough as that kind of took the fun out of the visit. So Winky said, All right, then, Ed, why don't you just write out a paper saying what you want, and we'll take that paper down to Wally Tucker.
Watson reared back and throwed his whiskey glass as far as he could throw it, way out halfway across the Chatham River. And he stomped inside and scratched out a quick note and brought it back to them. He wasn't wearing his coat no more, and he didn't wave at 'em, nor watch 'em go. Drifting downstream toward the Bend, they seen him heading back into his field. Said young Rob just turned away and kept on working.
Wally Tucker was a fair-haired feller of a common size. Took the sun too hard, went around with a boiled face. Slowly, he read Watson's words, then looked up at the Atwell boys, who couldn't read.
So Winky said, Well, what's it say, then? And Wally read it off:
The quit-claim to Lost Man's Key has been sold lawfully to the undersigned on present date. All squatters and trespassers and their kind are strongly advised to remove themselves and all their trash human and otherwise immediately upon receipt of this notice or face severe penalty. (signed) E.J. Watson.
Reading them words out loud like that made Tucker so plain furious he flung the note away, but Winky picked it up before he left, we seen it later. He turned around and looked back at his new house, where his young wife stood watching from the door. Told 'em Watson once grabbed at Bet's backside and she had slapped him, that's why he insulted her. "She never told me what he done till yesterday. Bet's going to have her baby any day now," he said, kind of dazed. "She don't need this kind of aggravation."
Then him and the Atwells hunkered down and looked out over the water for a while, getting their breath. "You people have sold our home right out from under us," he told them, making angry X marks in the sand, "and you sold what you never even owned, what you never had no right to, by the law. This is state land, swamp and overflowed, think I don't know that? Atwells ain't got quitclaim rights, cause you never squatted here, and you never made no improvements." He tossed his head toward his house and dock. "If any man was paid, it should been me."
Winky glanced over at his brother Edward, and then he took out Watson's envelope. "That ain't the way we figure it down in the Islands," he warned Tucker, "but we aim to be fair, and we will split it with you." For the second time that day the money was held out, and for the second time nobody took it. Then Tucker snatched it and peeled off sixty dollars before handing it back.
"Tell him I never took his dirty money," Tucker said, "only what he owes us in back pay." For a moment he looked frightened but then set his jaw again. "I ai
n't getting off of here," he whispered. "I ain't going to pull up stakes."
Tucker's grit surprised them, they was quite alarmed, they warned him about Mister Watson's temper. He give Winky a funny look and said, "I already rubbed up against Ed Watson, and he ain't scared me yet. Long as I don't turn my back to him, I'll be all right."
Tucker wrote out his own note then, and the Atwells took it back to Watson the next day. Winky never knew what might be in it, because Watson never told 'em, just read it quick and tossed it on the table. He went away into the field. He wouldn't talk to them and he wouldn't listen. They called after him, said they'd sure be happy to return his money, but he never even turned around.
Starting south, the Atwells was uneasy, that's when they came in to Wood Key to say good-bye. They begged us to go reason with Wally, and we said we'd get over there in a day or two. So that's how the Atwells set sail for Key West, left it all behind 'em.
A fisherman, Mac Sweeney, showed up that same evening at Wood Key. Mac was a drifter, lived on a old boat with a thatch shelter and a earth bed built up in the bilges for his cooking fire. Didn't belong nowhere and took his living where he found it. He was looking for a easy feed, as usual. Says he went by Lost Man's Key at daybreak, seen Tucker's little sloop in there, but after he left the river, he heard shooting.
"Shooting varmints, most likely," said my brother Gene. Gene wouldn't look at me.
The day Mac Sweeney came was not long after us Hamilton brothers moved on to Wood Key to start our fishing ranch. Gilbert Johnson was already on there, and me and Gene had our eye on his two daughters.
My Sarah was a slim and handsome girl without no secrets, ran like a deer and laughed and jumped and said most anything she wanted. Sitting on the sand one day, her arms around her knees, something struck her so sudden and so funny that she rolled straight back and kicked them hard brown feet up in the air in the pure joy of it. Kept her skirt wrapped tight, of course, but I seen her bottom like a heart, a beautiful valentine heart turned upside down. I mean, I loved her for the joy in her, and that sparkly laughter, but I was drawn hard to her, too. It wasn't only wanting her, it was like she was a lost part of me that I had to have back or I'd never get my breath. Later on we lived at Lost Man's Key.
The one time I was ever snake-bit I was out with Sarah running coon traps, went ashore in a swampy place, walked up a log and jumped to cross a piece of water, landed barefoot right on top of a big cottonmouth. He got me, too, he couldn't help it, two foot of him was free to come around on me. I made a good clean jump away but I could feel it. I leaned back against a tree, too weak to kill him, just watched that deathly white mouth waving in the dusk, felt worse each minute.
Sarah hollers, "What's the matter?"
"Think I'm snake-bit!"
"Think? Are you bit or ain't you?"
So she comes across the swamp, hikes up my britches to have a look, and there ain't a sign of nothing, not a mark. "Well," I said. "I think I'm feeling a mite better." "Don't think so much," says Sarah, plumb disgusted. She pokes that snake so it raises up its head and whacks it dead with one cut of her stick.
Sarah and Rebecca knew Bet Tucker well. Said it was her had the real pioneer spirit to make do with the hardship and the loneliness, said that her husband was a nice enough young feller but lacked the ambition and the grit to hack him out a livelihood there in the Islands.
Young Tucker had a lot more grit than Sarah and Rebecca give him credit for. He aimed to stand up to Ed Watson, which not many did. Ed could shoot, and Ed would shoot, that was the rumor. Lot of us could shoot real good, but we wouldn't trade shots with E.J. Watson less we had to, and by the time we knew we had to, we'd be dead.
Sarah Johnson weren't but twelve that year, we married two years later, but she was already the bossy kind that gets into the thick of the men's business. She said Bet was like an older sister so she wanted to go look, but I said no, cause night would fall before we got there. The men would go down there first thing in the morning, and Miss Sarah Johnson would stay home.
For once Sarah didn't argue, maybe because she loved me so darn much. "If Bet loses that baby, it's all Wally's fault" is all she said. And Gene busts out, "If that baby's all she loses, she'll be lucky!" We all knew that, of course. There was no call for Gene to upset my brave young girl.
This fine and frisky female had a way with E.J. Watson, knew how to smooth him down. He thought a lot of Sarah, he respected her, and later on it would surprise me how kind of shy this hard man seemed around her, almost like he needed her approval. Oh, she was blunt, she would come right out and want to know the truth about his life. He seemed grateful that someone cared to hear his side of the story, and it got so he confided in her, he told her things he would never say to no one else. Maybe some of 'em was true, maybe they wasn't. But Sarah couldn't believe that Mister Watson would "ever, ever harm such a sweet young person."
We was just figuring what we should do when Henry Short come in looking for Liza. Not that he ever said as much. He couldn't. He never mentioned that girl once, though he could hear her singing by the cook shack. Poor feller knew we liked him pretty good and he was welcome, but he also knew how our mama might feel about a brown boy paying court, never mind that Liza was browner'n he was.
In them days, all around the country, they was lynching black men left and right for lusting after our white virgins. Most of the settlers in these parts had come south to get away from Reconstruction, so they brought their hate of nigras to our section, wouldn't tolerate 'em. Earlier this same year I'm telling about, it come in the papers about a nigra in New Orleans who was desperate enough to resist arrest when they come to lynch him. This man turned out to be a deadeye shot, which nigras ain't supposed to be, and he killed a whole covey of police before they finished him. So these days Chokoloskee folks was talking about how Henry Short was a crack shot, too, and who the hell taught a nigger to shoot like that, don't people know no better?-stuff like that. So Henry Short spent a lot of time back in the rivers. He stuck close to the House clan, didn't make no extra commotion.
Well, Henry hunted around for an excuse for rowing the twelve miles down here from House Hammock, said he forgot his pocket knife last time or some fool thing, and we helped him off his hook as best we could, all except Gene, who was full of himself and full of piss and finding trouble every place he looked. Gene said, "Your dang knife ain't around here, boy. Liza ain't neither." To smooth this over, we asked Henry if he noticed anything at Watson's on his way down Chatham River from House Hammock, and he nodded. "Funny thing," he said, "I always notice everything at Mister Watson's." Said there was no boat at Watson's dock, no sign of anyone. Nobody hailed him, and there was nobody out in the field. The Bend was silent as the grave when he drifted by. And Mac Sweeney said, Oh sweet Jesus, boys! It's like I told you!
Crossing to Lost Man's first thing in the morning, we had rifles ready but we come too late. Smoke was rising from the shell ridge where the cabin was. Coming in there through the orster bars, I could feel something waiting for us on that shore. We was still a good ways off when Henry pointed.
Something had stranded on the bar, lifting a little on the current. "God, boys, what's that!" Mac Sweeney yelled.
"That's him," I said.
Wally's hair was lifting and his eyes was sunken back, made him look blind, and he hadn't been there very long cause his sockets wasn't loaded up with mud snails. Still had his boots on, slippery as grease from the salt water. A boot was what Walter grabbed ahold of, first time we tried him, and he slipped away. When I jumped over the side and took him up under the arms, the shadow of a shark moved off the shelf into the channel.
Hauling the body out onto the sand, I seen a dark stain spreading on my pants. It were not a shark bite leaking but a hole blowed through his chest, took his heart right with it. "Ah shit!" Gene said, and begun coughing. Walter looked peculiar for a dark-skinned feller, not pale so much as kind of a bad gray. Henry Short's light face looked a little green.<
br />
Me, I don't know how I looked, but it wasn't good. I was breathing through my mouth just to keep my grits down.
"Back-shot," Henry said, and us three brothers starting hollering and cursing-"Back-shooting bastard!"-to keep from puking or busting into tears. Henry just shook his head a little, but he quit even that when he seen Gene watching.
Near the burned-out cabin we found a crate where Tucker had been setting, and his gill net and needle, and dried blood on the mesh and in the sand. There was no sign of Tucker's boat, no trace of Bet. We come on a circle in the sand and a bag of marbles, and a big sand castle by the water, like a boy had been there, but there was no sign of a boy neither. Must of been the tomboy in young Bet, passing the time. We hoped she'd run away and hid, but no voice answered our calls, only the crying of big orster birds out on the bar.
We rolled Wally Tucker in a piece of canvas and hoisted him into the boat. Nobody wanted to find Bet but we went looking, rowing east into First Lost Man's Bay and all around the back side of the key. We crisscrossed the island back and forth, we worked the riverbanks and the long strand of Lost Man's Beach, all the way south to Rodgers River.
"Sonsabitches!" Gene burst out, real close to blubbering.
We called and called. A hoot owl answered, way back in the trees. Dusk come from the mangroves and dark caught us at Wood Key.
Sarah came down to the boat and stared. All she seen was boots and canvas. She said, "Why did you bring him back?" I said, "We didn't want to leave him all alone." She whispered then, "Bet's alone too." One of the few times in this life I seen my Sarah cry.
Next morning Mac Sweeney took off for Key West. He was headed there anyway for a good drunk and wanted to be the first with the bad news. Sarah said we should take Wally back and bury him close to his new house, and so Wally was still with us in the boat when Henry Short and us three brothers went next morning.
Killing Mister Watson Page 19
