If I did cross paths with Mister Watson, what would I do? Was I scared or just alert and leery? Both, I guess. I hoped I wasn't headed for Walt's office just to be careful, but if E.J. Watson was hiding in his wife's house, feeling skittish, whoever went down to the telegraph office to send a message to Key West might not be me.
Remembering Carrie's wide eyes at her wedding, and also my envy of my old partner-brooding how a bad drinker like Walt might fail to treat such a young girl with the reverence Frank Tippins could provide her, and how Walt never deserved her in the first place-all this made me shift my wad and spit my old pang of regret into the dust beside the First Street boardwalk, making old Mrs. Summerlin hop sideways, pretending I was aiming at her shoe. Good morning, ma'am! Carrie had been married three whole years and she still skipped rope sometimes down at Miss Flossie's and it interested me a lot more than it should have that there were no children.
To console myself-"to pick the scab," said that damned Cole, who saw right through me-I continued visiting her mother after Carrie's marriage, when Mrs. Watson and the boys moved to Anderson Avenue. Walter and Carrie were still stuck at home with the Widow Langford, but having no children, Carrie escaped much of the day. My visits gave me an opportunity to observe her for exciting little signs of discontent, and perhaps to hear stray news of Mister Watson. At that time, I had seen him only once, a broad-backed figure in well-cut suit and broad black hat, walking down First Street to the dock one early morning.
Mrs. Watson, who knew why I was so attentive, threw cold water, relating how, when the blushing newlyweds returned from their New Orleans honeymoon, Walter's mother had shown them to separate rooms, saying, "I declare, I can't get used to the idea of those two children in one bed!" Mrs. Watson watched me flush, then soothed me with a quick warm smile.
"Why, heck, ma'am, talk about the West!" I said, trying to change the subject. "We had buffaloes here in Florida, as far south and east as Columbia County, right up until the early eighteenth century!" But I recalled even as I spoke who'd told me that Columbia County lore-it was Walt Langford, who had got it straight from Mister Watson. I went red as a berry, while the Watson ladies feigned astonishment. In a duet, they cried out, "Buffaloes? In Florida?"
I tipped my small chair over backwards in my haste to rise, looking off somewhere so as not to see them smiling. Stung by those smiles all the way to the front door, I called back in desperation, "Why heck, ma'am, it was right here in Fort Myers that Chief Billy Bowlegs surrendered up his warriors and took ship for Wewoka, Oklahoma!"
Like all of the town's small emporiums, Langford & Hendry down on First Street was a scrawny old frame building, slapped up loose, unpainted, on a weedy dirt street with wood sidewalks, ramshackle storefronts, and a cow town's blacksmith sheds, livery stables, and saloons.
Outside the side door which led to the upstairs offices I saw Billie Conapatchie, a Mikasuki Creek raised up and educated by the Hendry family. He wore a long calico shirt with bright red and yellow ribbons, and also a red neckerchief and bowler hat instead of the traditional bright turban. Somehow he had stuffed his shirt into hand-me-down white man's britches, which stopped well short of his scarred ankles and his scuffed brown feet.
Squatting on favorite lookout points all over town, this man spied on city life, attending church services, public meetings, and theatricals without exception, whether he understood the words or not. For learning some English at Fort Myers school back in '78, he came real close to being wiped out by his own people, and he was the only Indian seen in town for years thereafter. All the same, he sent his son, young Josie Billie, to the Seminole School established by the missionaries at Immokalee, where my niece Jane Jernigan, lately of Arcadia, had married the Indian trader William Brown. In my cowboy years, visiting the Browns, I came to know the Billie family well.
"Tell Josie we'll go hunting soon's I get myself caught up," I said. He barely nodded. Billie Conapatchie might speak English but he had not lost his Indian indifference to our white men's hollow social ways.
Past Billie's ear, which pushed through his black hair like a wood fungus, I saw a thickset curly man coming straight for me down the muddy street, fixing me in place with a pointed finger. Jim Cole was a city man at heart, and hated silence. Crossing the street from one group to another, he'd shout jokes to get attention to himself, taking over the conversation before he arrived. "Nailing down the Injun vote, that what you're up to? You go on that way, we'll have to give it to 'em!" The sally was certain to be followed by a backslap and loud laugh, he raised that meaty hand of his as easy as a dog raises its leg. But I didn't crack a smile or stop my squinting, and when his hand faltered, I lifted my own hand toward my hat, which I didn't tip. Being offended for the Indian, I only said, "That so, Captain?" His hand retreated to adjust his trousers at the crotch.
"Which one's gonna get it first, Frank, Injuns or women?"
Under Billie Conapatchie's gaze, we white men smiled in mutual distaste, and you had to wonder what was passing through that Indian's head. Billie watched us kind of sideways, not as a spy but as a sentinel, like the lone crow. He hung around the city, learning what he could, so's to warn his people of any dangerous new course that the white man's itch might take.
Jim Cole jeered at Billie's silence. "How'd that go, Chief? Don't talk our ear off, Chief!" He let fly a short laugh like a belch and followed me into the building, heaving himself up the narrow stairs.
I was rapping on Walt Langford's door, ignoring the noisy clumping boots behind, when a shadow appeared behind the glass of the adjoining office. Before his door closed, old James Hendry lifted a finger to his lips to hush my greeting and spare himself an encounter with Jim Cole.
"Climbed a lot of fences," Hendry had observed two years before, in warning me that "Cole will own you" if I made the mistake of accepting his help in my campaign. "Can't say just why they run him out of Taylor County, but that feller arrived here with hot buckshot in his butt, I'll tell you that much."
Like other cattlemen, Jim Cole invested his war profits in a big new house on First Street, but unlike the Summerlins and Hendrys, and the Langfords, too, this man had no sense of land, no feel for cattle. As Jake Summerlin used to say, Cole sat a horse with as much style as a sack of horse shit. Despite his big coarse cowboy talk, Cole had rarely ridden that wild lonesome country between the Calusa River and Big Cypress, and had more calluses on his broad ass than anywhere else.
Arriving at Langford's door, he boomed, "Look who's settling right into his dad's seat, and his dad not cold yet!" and shouted that raucous laugh of his to the whole building. Never thought once about Walt's feelings, or whether he himself might be unwelcome.
But Langford grinned at his old family friend, showing him in. "My office once," Jim Cole declared, throwing himself back in the big chair and slapping his hands down on its leather arms, his rough boots smearing street mud on the floor. He sprawled back, gut out, getting his breath in a redolence of hard sweat and cigars.
"How's the child-wife, you damn cradle-robber? How come we ain't seen no kiddies yet?"
I ignored his wink, feeling ashamed for wondering the same thing, and also sorry that Walt felt obliged to snicker.
Walt was still ruddy from his years out in the pinelands, and ruddier still because his morning had apparently been blurred somewhat by drinking spirits. Plainly James Hendry gave him too little to do.
"Got some business with you, Walt," I said. But when Jim Cole said, "Spit it out, then," I stayed silent.
Langford said gently, "No use trying to keep nothing from Captain Jim. A man can't cut a fart here in Fort Myers without your say so, ain't that right, Jim?"
"Isn't," Cole said, mopping his neck. "Ain't Carrie told you about 'ain't'? You ain't out hunting cows no more, young feller, you're a damn cattle king, same as your daddy. If I'm putting you up for county commissioner, you got to talk right, same as the rest of us cracker sonsabitches."
Like him or not, I had to admit there was
something shrewd and humorous about Jim Cole, something dead honest in his lack of scruple. All the same, I found it hard to smile.
They were awaiting me. Through the window I could hear faint barking, and the rattle-clop of horse and wagon.
"Heard yesterday your father-in-law might be in town." Langford moved behind his desk. "That so?" he said, and glanced at Cole, who had rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. Then he took a seat and waved me to a chair.
I took my hat off but remained standing, gazing out the high and narrow window at the store-front gallery across the street. There on election day a Tippins crowd had been scattered by gunfire and the whine of bullets from the general direction of the saloon owned by the incumbent's cousin, Taff O. Langford. I stayed where I was until a few regathered, then spoke the lines that won me the election: They have the Winchesters, gentlemen. You have the votes. "Ol' T.W." was turned out of office the next day.
"Shit!" Cole said, and banged his chair legs to the floor. "Goddammit, Frank, don't stand there looming just cause you're so tall!" His smile looked pinned onto his jowls. "You got a grudge against this Langford family, Sheriff?" The eyes looked hard in his soft face, just the opposite of Langford. Cole had a long curlicue mouth-kind of a whore's mouth, I decided-and his nostrils, cocked a little high, looked like pink and hairy holes, snuffling and yearning for ripe odors. "You ain't hardly run off with ol' T.W.'s job and now you're dogging this man's father-in-law, who ain't even in your jurisdiction! And here Walt's daddy ain't been dead a year, and li'l Carrie's mother dying right before our eyes! That's what Walt here has to think about every morning, noon, and night, and you ain't got no more decency than that? Sweet Jesus, boy-!"
"Easy, now." Walter was holding both hands high. "Frank and I been friends for a long time. It's okay-"
"No, it ain't okay!" shouted Captain Jim, cutting him off with a show of anger as if afraid Walter might concede something, or reveal it.
What Cole was angry about, or angriest about, was the Lee County sheriff's refusal, three months earlier, to back up his alibi when a federal revenue cutter seized the Lily White at Punta Rassa. On her regular run, the Lily White had delivered cattle to the Key West slaughterhouse, and rather than make the return run with her holds empty, she had met a Cuban ship in the Marquesas to take on a cargo of contraband rum on which no duty had been paid. The schooner was held at Key West for five weeks until Jim Cole, still claiming innocence, still gathering testimonials to his civic virtue, had paid the federal government a heavy fine, not because he lost his court appeal-it hadn't been heard at the time that he withdrew it-but because the loss of income from the confiscated ship was far more painful to this feller than any loss of honest reputation. He'd even shouted at the U.S. attorney, "Don't you people realize there's a war going on?" His lawyer had to remind him that the war was over.
To keep his job, the skipper of the Lily White had supported Cole's version of events, but no one who knew Cole could believe that his ship had taken on illegal cargo without the knowledge of her owner. You had to wonder at the greed that drove rich businessmen to twist the law of the land they claimed to be so proud of, steal from the government by overcharging for their "patriotic" services, and do their best to cheat it of its taxes-not to make a living, either, but to heap up money.
"No, it ain't okay!" Jim Cole was yelling, so loud that people stopped out there on First Street.
I turn back to Langford. "There's been trouble, Walt…"
"I know it," Langford says.
"You know it. He's in town, then?"
"No, he ain't."
Langford glances at Jim Cole, who is still glaring at me. "No, he isn't," Langford corrects himself, looking quickly away because he sees we won't smile with him. "He already passed through on his way north. Wanted to visit with Carrie's mother one last time, and he told Mrs. Watson there'd been trouble. She told Carrie." Walt Langford raises his hands high as if I'd said, This is a stick-up. "I never saw him. I don't know what he told her, and I don't know where he's headed, so don't ask me."
"Why, dammit, Walt, he's got no right to ask you!" Cole explodes. "Ain't got no goddam jurisdiction! That's Monroe County down there, Tippins! In Lee County, the man is clean, and aims to keep it that way!"
Because he kills across the county line, he's clean? But mainly I ignore Jim Cole, holding Langford's eye. "Monroe sheriff sent a telegraph, wants him for questioning. If he's still in town, I'd have to notify Key West."
Cole snorts with a contemptuous wave of his thick paw, but Langford's nod thanks me for the warning.
"Who was it?" Langford says.
"Young man named Tucker and his wife, some say a boy. Monroe sheriff can't get the whole story. They were squatting on Watson's claim, wouldn't get off."
"Niggers, you said?" Jim Cole sits up. "Wouldn't get off?"
This time it is Langford who ignores him. "And Carrie's father is the usual suspect, right?"
"No known witnesses, no evidence, no proof. And not much doubt." I tug my hat on.
Langford accompanies me onto the landing. "No law, you mean."
"Maybe he thought the Island men might make up their own law. That's why he left, I guess." I start downstairs.
"Don't pester Carrie with it, all right, Frank? He ain't in town no more. You have my word."
I tip my hat. Knowing I won't have to confront Ed Watson brings mixed feelings. A chance has gone that might not come again.
Walt Langford smiles. "Now that don't mean I'll let you know if he comes back!" he says.
Jim Cole booms out, "If he comes back, I'm nominating that sonofagun for sheriff!"
I manage a grin, to be polite, when Langford guffaws too loudly and too long. "Ol' Jim," Walt sighs, and pumps out another laugh, as if unable to get over such a humorous person.
"Ol' Jim," I repeat quietly, to help Walt out.
BILL HOUSE
Early in the century, the produce business for Key West begun to die. Ted Smallwood had two hundred and fifty alligator pear trees, reached all the way across Chokoloskee Island, used to ship barrels of them things to Punta Gorda, sent 'em north by railroad, got five cents apiece. Storters still grew cane at Half Way Creek, Will Wiggins, too, but nobody lived there anymore. Lopezes was on Lopez River, D.D. House had his home on Chokoloskee but his cane farm on an old bird rookery north of Chatham River we call House Hammock. Ed Watson was farming both sides of the river now at Chatham Bend, and he done better than us all. C.G. McKinney still farmed some up Turner River, and Charlie T. Boggess at Sandfly Key-these were small produce gardens-but Chokoloskee farmers give up one by one. Too much rain or not enough, too much salt water to leach out after a storm. That black soil on the shell mounds had no minerals to speak of, just tuckered out in a few years, same as the women. There was more livelihood in bird plumes, gator hides, and pelts of coon and otter. Then the wild things give out, too. Good thing the clam factory got started, cause there wasn't much left to us but ricking buttonwood, a little fishing.
Watson had been gone for years and nobody was farming Chatham Bend, although good ground high enough to settle was running out in all them northern islands. Our House clan came and went from Big House Hammock, but most all of that Watson country emptied out, all the way south to Lost Man's and beyond.
Used to be three plantations on Rodgers River, had beautiful royal palms, date palms, too, and tamarinds-quitclaims to all of 'em was up for sale and had no buyers. After all the hard labor and sweat and suffering them Atwells put in, near to thirty years of it, them houses was just rotting on them mounds, all sad and gray, boilers rusted and cisterns crusted over with green slime and rot from them poor animals that fell in trying to get their water. And the fields growed under with thorn jungle, and the dark river taking everything away, back to the wilderness, like nobody but the old Calusas ever been there. Later on, when the Storter boys and Henry Short went up in there looking for mullet, they seen signs posted on the bank at them old places, and what was on them signs was s
kulls and crossbones, kind of crude painted, white on black. No law against putting up signs, I guess, might been somebody's idea of a joke, ain't saying who.
People came and then they went. They never stayed long once the silence got 'em.
For some years after 1901, there was only two strong families around Lost Man's. Richard Hamilton and his boys lived on Hog Key, Wood Key, north of Lost Man's River, that was one clan; and Old Man James Hamilton and his sons Frank, Lewis, and Jesse was on Lost Man's Beach, south of the river mouth, that was the other. Henry Thompson was married in with the James Hamiltons there at South Lost Man's. He was Watson's friend, and the Richard Hamiltons got friendly with Watson, too, took pains to keep it that way.
Henry Thompson done some farming and some fishing, too, helped Old Man James and his youngest, Jesse, build a pretty fair shell road back in there to that old Calusa mound we called Royal Palm Hammock. Big grove of royal palms on there then, and grubbing out them palms paid for the work. Hamiltons claimed they aimed to farm, cause wherever royal palms raise above the mangrove, there is pretty sure to be a good high mound, with good black soil, but I don't believe that was the only reason. Seemed kind of funny that big mound were so far back in from the water, like them oldtime Injuns was trying to hide it. Old Chevelier had got everybody thinking about buried treasure, what with Bill Collier's finds up there at Marco, and Old Juan Gomez's tales out on Panther Key. I do know Henry Short got a bad case of it. Henry's dream was to strike treasure and get away somewhere, though I'm damned if I know where a nigra could escape to, back in them days.
Headed down around Shark River, we used to see them beautiful royal palms all along there back of Lost Man's Beach. That shell ridge must been five miles long, probably still is. All them fine trees along that coast are gone today, don't see a one. Nobody will miss 'em that never seen 'em there, I reckon.
Killing Mister Watson Page 23
